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3D DIGITAL REALITY • GENES GET CULTURE • ALZHEIMER'S DISCOVERY
AMERICAN
Scientist
March–April 2010 www.americanscientist.org
The Biomechanics
of Whale Feeding
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Congratulations
William Procter Prize
2010 for Scientific Achievement
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AMERICAN
Scientist
Departments Feature Articles
Volume 98 • Number 2 • March–April 2010
98 From the Editor 140 Gene-Culture Coevolution and

124 Human Diet
100 Letters to the Editors Biology and culture have conspired to
102 Macroscope make us who we are
Just-as-good Medicine Olii Arjamaa and Timo Vuorisalo
David M. Kent
140
B /
106 Computing Science 8 &
Avoiding a digital dark age 4

Kurt D. Bollacker
112 Engineering
Challenges and prizes
Henry Petroski
117 Marginalia
Two lives 124 The Ultimate Mouthful: Lunge
Roald Hoffmann Feeding in Rorqual Whales
121 Science Observer New technologies bring action at depth
to light at the surface
Amplifying with acid • Sunburned
ferns? • In the news Jeremy A. Goldbogen
148 Finding Alzheimer’s Disease
156 Sightings Confidence in the physical basis of men-
Tracking the Karakoram Glaciers tal disorders led to discovery of a disease
Ralf Dahm
Scientists’
Bookshelf 148
158 Book Reviews
Empathy • Earthquake prediction •
Stephen Jay Gould
132
From Sigma Xi
175 Sigma Xi Today
132 The Race for Real-time
2010 Sigma Xi awards • Student Photorealism
conference medalists Algorithms and hardware promise
graphics indistinguishable from reality
Henrik Wann Jensen and Tomas
Akenine-Möller
The Cov er
The accordionlike blubber on a blue whale’s underside extends from mouth to bellybutton (on the cover). The structure,
found only in the family of baleen whales called rorquals, is made from firm ridges (left) connected by deep furrows of
delicate elastic tissue, and can stretch to more than twice its original length. Thus the whale’s oral cavity can expand
to enormous size and hold many tens of tonnes of water and krill; the whale then filters out the water with its baleen
while retaining its tiny shrimplike prey. Exactly how rorquals engulf such quantities of water has long been obscured
by ocean depths, but as Jeremy A. Goldbogen recounts in “The Ultimate Mouthful: Lunge Feeding in Rorqual Whales”
(pages 124–131), electronic devices are aiding researchers in understanding the complex biomechanics behind how these
enormous animals eat. (Cover image and image at left courtesy of Nick Pyenson.)
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From the Editor

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Methodology in Our Madness
man eye yet remain computationally practical. To be

A
s a general rule, we avoid much
discussion of methodology in
American Scientist. Although it’s
honest, much of the driving force behind photoreal-
istic rendering has been to satisfy the ravenous con-
vitally important information for sumers who support the video gaming industry, and
scientists evaluating other scientists’ science has been the happy secondary beneficiary.
primary work, it usually has We’ll take it.
less value in a secondary Sometimes, though, the methodology confounds
publication, where the expectations—at least mine. As a photographer, I
science reported has came late to the digital revolution. And like so many
already been through reluctant adopters, I became an enthusiastic (some
the peer-review filter. might add “over-“ to the previous word) proponent.
Sometimes, though, Which is why I was so caught by surprise when I
it’s just too interesting read the caption for “Sightings” (pp. 156–157). When
for us to push aside. Fabiano Ventura set out to duplicate scenes of glaciers
Jeremy Goldbo- captured by Vittorio Sella 100 years ago, digital was
gen’s piece “The not his medium. Instead, he used a 4 x 5 view camera
Ultimate Mouthful: and film—exactly the same medium Sella used. This
Lunge Feeding in Rorqual allowed him to duplicate the geometries of the origi-
Whales” (pp. 124–131) is a great nals for exact comparisons showing glacial changes.
example. For decades, what baleen whales are up Then he scanned the film and stitched the digital
to when they dive as much as 300 meters deep in images together to produce panoramas impossible
search of krill has been shrouded in mystery. Theo- in digital alone. The result certainly throws down the
retical studies could speculate on the biomechanics gauntlet to the photorealists mentioned above.
of rorqual feeding, but it took the development of
temporary tags and infrared cameras to actually ride
along to dinner with the largest of marine mammals.
What Goldbogen and his colleagues found is truly
R ecently Sigma Xi hosted ScienceOnline2010, a con-
ference on electronic media and the communica-
tion of science held here each year since 2008. Over
extraordinary, but I won’t spoil it by revealing more that time I’ve watched the conference grow from a
than that we’re talking school-bus scale here. gathering of bloggers to a remarkably diverse meet-
Once you’ve digested the biomechanics of whale ing of minds on everything from podcasting to social
feeding, you need only turn the page to find an exam- networking to citizen science to, well, blogging. Many
ple of technology where methodology is the message. of this year’s sessions were video recorded, most of
Henrik Wann Jensen and Tomas Akenine-Möller are which should be available on YouTube by the time
experts in making dancing pixels as convincing as you read this. For starters, you might look for a talk
possible. In “The Race for Real-time Photorealism” by our own Elsa Youngsteadt and her Public Radio
(pp. 132–139) they describe approaches to represent- International counterpart, Rhitu Chaterjee, on “The
ing images in ways that prove convincing to the hu- World Science” podcast.—David Schoonmaker
American Scientist
David Schoonmaker Editor Jerome F. Baker Publisher P u b l i sh e d b y S i g m a X i
Morgan Ryan Managing Editor Katie Lord Associate Publisher The Scientific Research Society
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98 American Scientist, Volume 98
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________________ 2010 March–April 99
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Letters to the Editors

Understand the Material Monograph on the Potential Human sulfide into the vapor phase. Hydrogen
Reproductive and Developmental Ef- sulfide can also be oxidized by certain
To the Editors: fects of Bisphenol A,” at http://cerhr. bacteria to make sulfuric acid, which is
Heather Patisaul’s feature article “Assess- niehs.nih.gov/chemicals/bisphenol/
___________________________ thought to be important in cave forma-
ing Risks from Bisphenol A,” (January– bisphenol.pdf.
__________ tion. Volcanic hydrogen sulfide from hot
February) nicely illustrates the difficul- As for routes of exposure, you don’t springs at mid-ocean ridges becomes the
ties in trying to assess human health ef- need solvents to get BPA to migrate. As basis for complex biological communi-
fects from low levels of chemicals in our it turns out, you don’t even need heat. ties where chemosynthetic (chemical
environment. The author would have A Harvard University research group producing) bacteria use it and carbon
benefited, however, from collaboration reported in June that consumption of dioxide. Finally, we use hydrogen sul-
with a materials scientist. cold beverages from polycarbonate fide produced by stimulating sulfate-
Early on she notes that BPA is a com- bottles containing BPA raises human reducing bacteria to remediate ground-
mon ingredient in many hard plastics. urine levels of BPA by 69 percent. water contaminated by metals, arsenic
BPA is a monomer for polycarbonate Exposure to BPA is low but that does and radionuclides (US Patent 5,833,855).
(66 percent) and epoxy (30 percent). not mean it is innocuous. That type of With hydrogen sulfide, one should con-
Those polymers constitute only about “the dose makes the poison” thinking sider its good, bad and smelly aspects!
3 percent of U.S. plastics production of may not apply to endocrine disruptors
Jim Saunders
over 100 billion pounds in 2008. BPA is because their dose responses appear
Auburn University
hardly a common ingredient. to be non-monotonic in many cases.
By the end of the article, Patisaul Given that, if you don’t need it in food
said, “DDT undoubtedly saved lives, containers, why not pull it out and be An Apollonian Opportunity
and likely still does. No such case can on the safe side?
be made for BPA. It is time to develop a To the Editors:
clear and comprehensive strategy for as- Another View of Hydrogen Sulfide In Dana Mackenzie’s interesting col-
sessing the potential public health conse- umn “A Tisket, a Tasket, an Apollo-
quences of endocrine disruptors such as To the Editors: nian Gasket” (January–February), Pe-
BPA that may contribute only economic I enjoyed Roger P. Smith’s article “A ter Sarnak remarked on the present-
value.” To understand the public health Short History of Hydrogen Sulfide” (Jan- day inability of mathematics to prove
consequences and develop a clear strat- uary–February). Many may not know or explain certain conjectures, includ-
egy, one must understand the materials that the gas plays productive roles in ing his own. Those conjectures con-
involved, how they are used and the several geologic settings. First, hydrogen cern the number series of the bends in
routes and levels of exposure to com- sulfide occurs as a minor constituent in Apollonian Gaskets. “The necessary
pounds of concern. Why are epoxy coat- most natural gas deposits and must be mathematics has not been invented
ings used for certain cans? They reduce removed. It is then oxidized to elemental yet,” Sarnak said.
the likelihood of botulism. Someone be- sulfur, a process that produces virtually It is interesting to remember some-
hind impact- or bullet-resistant windows the sole source of sulfur in North Amer- thing stated more than 200 years ago
might value the protection they give. ica. Previously, “biogenic” sulfur had to by Carl Friedrich Gauss. In his one-
Technologies exist largely because of be mined by the Frasch process primar- page proof of the long-unproven
the underlying materials. Consider CDs. ily in Gulf Coast salt domes. Wilson’s prime number theorem, first
Polycarbonate is a lightweight, high-im- Hydrogen sulfide also plays an published by Edward Waring, Gauss
pact, heat-resistant, intrinsically flame- important role in forming metallic- noted that “neither of them was able
retardant plastic. The first three qualities sulfide ores of zinc, lead and copper. The to prove the theorem, and Waring con-
are why BPA was used in baby bottles. If bearing fluids of these base metals must fessed that the demonstration seemed
better materials are available, great. But encounter a source of hydrogen sulfide more difficult because no notation can
let’s not throw CDs, electrical appliances (either biogenic or magmatic) along their be devised to express a prime number.
and bullet-resistant windows out with flow path to precipitate metal-sulfide But in our opinion truths of this kind
the baby bottles. minerals. Alternatively, volcanic hydro- should be drawn from notions rather
gen sulfide helps form ores of gold and than from notations.”
Gordon L. Nelson silver, as the precious metals form sta- Sarnak seems to have ignored Gauss’s
Dean, College of Science ble aqueous complexes with hydrogen advice. That, unwittingly, may dissuade
Florida Institute of Technology sulfide, greatly enhancing their solubil- those who might otherwise attempt to
ity in ore fluids. Precious metals often prove those unsolved theorems.
Dr. Patisaul responds: precipitate when the hydrogen sulfide
Information about BPA production is destroyed by a number of processes, Bernard H. Soffer
levels comes from the “NTP-CERHR including boiling, which puts hydrogen Pacific Palisades, CA
American Scientist (ISSN 0003-0996) is published bimonthly by Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society, P.O. Box 13975, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709 (919-549-0097). Newsstand single copy
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To the Editors: of the larger d0 and the curvature of rem.” This relates to the question Ron
Considering that the geometry of the the smaller d1. Thus d0 is the starting Graham asked, about whether even
circle involves irrational numbers such term in a series of curvatures and d1 is 1 percent of the numbers that could
as pi and square roots, I was struck by the second term. Other curvatures are occur in an Apollonian gasket actu-
the seemingly infinite array of integers determined by the linear formula ob- ally do occur. Fuchs has shown that
in the Apollonian gaskets described tained by subtracting Descartes’s equa- the answer is yes, provided 1 percent
by Dana Mackenzie. One view of this tion written for a, b, dn-2, dn-1 from that is replaced by a sufficiently small (but
is that each pair of mutually tangent for a, b, dn-1, dn. The resulting equation, positive) number. Interestingly, her ap-
circles has two infinite series of tangent dn = 2(a + b + dn-1) − dn-2, can be used proach was to use carefully selected
circles spiraling into crevices between to determine the successive values of subsets of the Apollonian gasket, an
them. There are an infinite number dn by a process of iteration. Because approach not too dissimilar from what
of these mutually tangent pairs, each Descartes’s equation is a quadratic, the Ronald Csuha proposes. Instead of the
with a pair of infinite series. Some se- difference of the differences between sequence of all circles tangent to two
ries appear more than once and some consecutive terms is a constant and fixed circles, she looks at the somewhat
are part of other series. equal to 2(a + b) in each series. This more complicated sequence of circles
I have found a linear relation that is seems to apply to the irrational roots of tangent to a single fixed circle. The pre-
somewhat different than Mackenzie’s Descartes’s equation, also. print will be posted at the open-access
by choosing two tangent circles (say site http://arXiv.org.
with curvatures a and b) from any four Ronald Csuha
mutually tangent circles. Of the re- New York, NY
maining two circles, call the curvature Dr. Mackenzie responds: How to Write to American Scientist
I see no conflict between Sarnak’s Brief letters commenting on articles
Illustr ation quote and Gauss’s admonition. Sar- that have appeared in the magazine
Credits nak would certainly agree that new are welcomed. The editors reserve
notions, not new notations, are needed the right to edit submissions. Please
Macroscope to prove his “local-to-global principle” include a fax number or e-mail ad-
Page 103 Morgan Ryan for Apollonian packings. dress if possible. Address: Letters to
and Barbara Aulicino I am glad to report that Elena Fuchs the Editors, American Scientist, P.O.
Page 104 Barbara Aulicino (Sarnak’s student) and Jean Bourgain Box 13975, Research Triangle Park, NC
have proven a “positive density theo- 27709 or _________________
editors@amscionline.org.
Computing Science
Pages 199, 200 Tom Dunne
Engineering
Page 113 Tom Dunne
Marginalia
Pages 118, 119 Barbara Aulicino
The Ultimate Mouthful:

Lunge Feeding in Rorqual Whales
Figures 3, 4 (bottom),
6, 9, 10 Tom Dunne
The Race for Real-time Photorealism FDA Commissioner’s Fellowship Program

Figures 3, 5, 6 Tom Dunne
Figure 4 Morgan Ryan Touch the Lives of All Americans!
The FDA Commissioner’s Fellowship Program is a two-year training program designed
Gene-Culture Coevolution to attract top-notch health professionals, food scientists, epidemiologists, engineers,
and Human Diet pharmacists, statisticians, physicians and veterinarians. The Fellows work minutes from
Figures 2, 7, 8 Barbara Aulicino the nation’s capital at FDA’s new state-of-the-art White Oak campus in Silver Spring,
Maryland or at other FDA facilities. The FDA Commissioner’s Fellowship offers competi-
The Origins of Alzheimer’s Disease tive salaries with generous funds available for travel and supplies.
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Applications will be accepted from December 15, 2009 – March 15, 2010
www.americanscientist.org 2010 March–April 101
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Macroscope
Just-as-good Medicine
David M. Kent
T he rabbi’s eulogy for Sheldon

Kravitz solved a minor mys-
tery for my father: what was behind
the odd shape of the juice cups he had
Less expensive,
ly $50,000 or $100,000 per QALY), then
adoption of the innovation is deemed
“incrementally cost-effective,” since the
benefit obtained compares favorably
been drinking from after morning ser-
lower-quality to that obtainable at similar cost using
vices for the last few years? Adding accepted medical technologies (such as
a bit of levity while praising his thrift innovations abound dialysis, which has a cost-effectiveness
and resourcefulness, the rabbi told of ratio variously estimated at between
how Sheldon purchased, for pennies in every economic $50,000 and $80,000 per QALY). Above
on the dollar, hundreds of urine speci- the ratio, they are deemed not to be
men cups from Job Lot, that legendary sector—except cost-effective. That is, the (relatively
collection of pushcarts in lower Man- small) incremental benefits of the in-
hattan carrying surplus goods—left- medicine tervention do not justify the (relatively
overs, overproduced or discontinued large) incremental costs.
products, unclaimed cargo. At the risk Comparisons between alternative
of perpetuating a pernicious cultur- approaches in cost-effectiveness analy-
al stereotype, for men of my father’s than the value sacrificed. Indeed, these ses can usefully be depicted on a cost-
generation like Sheldon, raised during types of cost-versus-quality trade-offs effectiveness plane, shown in the figure
the Great Depression, bargain hunting are ubiquitous in our economy, and opposite. Most studied medical inno-
was a contact sport and Job Lot was a are especially useful when resources vations fall into the northeast quadrant
beloved arena. My father, too, would are tightly constrained. Those follow- of this plane; that is, they increase both
respond to the extreme bargains there ing the long march to health-care re- costs and health benefits. Within this
with ecstatic automatisms of purchas- form know that one of the few things quadrant, the acceptability threshold
ing behavior and come home with all beyond argument is that the old ap- would be represented by a line of con-
manner of consumer refuse, including, proach is unsustainable and threatens stant slope, indicating the “willingness
and to my profound dismay, sneakers to bankrupt the country. Perhaps a lit- to pay” (WTP) for a QALY, separating
that bore (at best) a superficial resem- tle belt tightening and bargain hunting nominally cost-effective therapies from
blance to the suede Pumas worn and of this sort might make our health-care cost-ineffective therapies.
endorsed by my basketball idol, the dollars stretch farther. Of course, if all innovation in health
incomparably smooth Walt “Clyde” care fell into this northeast quadrant,
Frazier. My father would insist that The Cost-effectiveness Plane innovation could only increase the costs
such items were “just as good” as the To help maximize the overall benefits of care. That is, even so-called cost-
name brands. But we, of course, knew in health care under a utilitarian frame- effective health-care innovations
what “just as good” really meant. work and conditions of constrained would always cost more money than
In fairness to my father and his resources, health economists use an the alternatives they replaced. This
friends, from a utilitarian perspective analytic tool called cost-effectiveness is often a point of confusion, some-
(decidedly not the perspective of pre- analysis (CEA) that quantifies the add- times purposeful, as when our politi-
adolescents), maximizing the overall ed expenditure necessary to obtain a cal leaders claim that “preventative
good of the family involves economic unit of health benefit (typically mea- medicine” is highly cost-effective and
trade-offs. Money saved from some- sured in quality-adjusted life years or would therefore save money. In fact,
thing “just as good” can be reallocated QALYs, pronounced “kwallies”). The while most recommended preventative
toward items that bring greater benefit most common application of CEA is services are cost-effective (meaning
to examine the value of medical in- the value of their benefits in terms of
novations compared to the standard QALYs gained justifies the costs in
David M. Kent is an associate professor of medicine
of care routinely available, since new terms of dollars spent), only very rare-
at Tufts Medical Center and the associate director of
the Clinical and Translational Science Program at
technologies are an important cause of ly are preventative services actually
the Sackler School for Graduate Biomedical Sciences the increase in health-care costs. cost-saving, even when all the “down-
of Tufts University. Address: Tufts Medical Center, If the “unit cost” for a QALY of bene- stream” avoided medical expenses are
800 Washington St. #63, Boston, MA 02111. Email: fit (that is, the cost-effectiveness ratio) is folded into the analysis. Indeed, new
dkent1@tuftsmedicalcenter.org
________________ less than some threshold (conventional- “cost-effective” innovations are one of
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the principal reasons that health-care

costs continue to soar.
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In fact, only innovations that fall
south of the equator in the cost-
effectiveness plane are actually cost-
saving. When those innovations are
also superior to the alternative, or
standard of care, they are considered
“dominant” (that is, cost decreasing
and quality improving); adoption of
these southeast quadrant innovations
should not be controversial. However, BDDFQUBCMF
as health-care costs continue to rise, JODSFBTFJODPTU
cost-saving innovations may be increas- m
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ingly attractive even when they do not
improve care, particularly in a weak FGGFDUJWFOFTT
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the southwest quadrant would clearly
be unattractive because they are sub- #FSOJFT
stantially worse than the available stan- LJOL
dard of care or offer only trivial cost
savings, what about innovations that
offer substantial cost saving and are
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genuinely almost as good as the stan-
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sion Making, fellow researchers and JODSFBTFE
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cost saving but only slightly qual-
ity reducing as “decrementally” cost- MFTTFYQFOTJWF m MFTTFYQFOTJWF
effective. In such cases, the savings MFTTFGGFDUJWF DPTU NPSFFGGFDUJWF
could potentially increase the overall
good despite the sacrificed benefit. Medical innovations fall into one of four quadrants on the cost-effectiveness plane, based on
Indeed, if “much cheaper, almost as how they compare with existing standards of care. For example, the top left quadrant repre-
good” products are attractive in other sents innovative treatments that are more expensive and less effective—an off-putting combi-
economic sectors because they permit nation; bottom right represents less expensive, more effective treatments—an easy decision.
the reallocation of saved resources to In between, the decision process is not so obvious. The diagonal lines represent thresholds
items of more value than the benefits for the acceptability of cost-effectiveness tradeoffs. Above the diagonals (in the red regions),
the balance of cost and effectiveness is rejected. Of special interest is “Bernie’s kink” at the
sacrificed, why not in medical care
origin, which reveals how medical markets actually behave. People prove to be unwilling to
as well? surrender quality using the same formula they would use to accept increased cost.
Bernie’s Kink
be similar, and the societal threshold 1.9 to 6.4 for two scenarios specifically
Men generally fix their affections
for accepting or rejecting a technol- related to health care. They suggested
more on what they are possessed
ogy should be symmetric and pass that rather than a symmetric accept-
of, than on what they never en-
through the origin of the cost-effective- reject threshold on the cost-effective-
joyed: For this reason, it would
ness plane as a straight line. However, ness plane, societal thresholds should
be greater cruelty to dispossess a
as David Hume anticipated, a repro- reflect the WTA-WTP gap seen in in-
man of any thing than not to give
ducible observation is that consum- dividual preferences, which would be
it [to] him.—David Hume, A Trea-
ers’ willingness to accept monetary captured by a downward “kink” (sub-
tise on Human Nature
compensation to forgo something they sequently known as “Bernie’s kink”) in
Theoretically, perfectly rational eco- have is typically greater, and often the threshold as it passed through the
nomic agents seeking to maximize much greater, than their stated willing- origin, indicating that a QALY’s selling
their welfare would be similarly will- ness to pay for the same benefit. Sev- price in the southwest would always be
ing to relinquish QALYs obtained from eral explanations exist, including the higher than a QALY’s buying price in
some routinely available standard-of- so-called “endowment effect,” the psy- the northeast.
care for a new “much cheaper, almost chological principle that people value Thus, there may be an inherent cog-
as good” therapy, if the savings could items that they already have simply nitive bias against relinquishing the
be reallocated to an item of equal or because they already have them. gains of health-care interventions that
higher value than what was sacrificed. A 2002 review of 20 studies by the have already been accepted, and the
Put another way, the selling price (of- late Bernie O’Brien and his colleagues cost savings from decrementally cost-
ten referred to as willingness to accept, at McMaster University found that the effective innovation may need to be
or WTA) and the buying price (will- ratio of individuals’ WTA to WTP was substantially greater than convention-
ing to pay, WTP) of a QALY should always greater than 1 and ranged from ally used thresholds suggest.
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Bargain Hunting respectively), but only very rare- gar, regardless of ratio. The inherent
Whereas all this fancy theory plus ly were innovations both cost- and ethical unease that decrementally cost-
a token can get you on the subway, quality-decreasing. Indeed, fewer than effective innovations can elicit poses a
might there be practical applications 2 percent of all comparisons were clas- serious public relations and marketing
of “decrementally” cost-effective in- sified in the cost- and quality-decreas- challenge.
novation? To explore this, working ing “southwest quadrant”, and only 9 However, consumers have been
with colleagues at the Tufts Center (involving 8 innovations) were found comfortable with many decrementally
for the Evaluation of Value and Risk to be decrementally cost-effective (0.4 cost-effective options outside of health
(who maintain a comprehensive da- percent of the total)—that is, they care that pose similar health risks. For
tabase of cost-utility studies), we saved at least $100,000 for each QALY example, automobile manufactur-
enlisted Aaron Nelson, then a medi- relinquished. ers produce many vehicles that lack
cal student, to help us sort through Examples of these cost-saving inter- certain safety features (for example,
more than 2,000 cost-utility compari- ventions include using the catheter- side-impact airbags), because some
sons for any potential examples that based percutaneous coronary inter- consumers are willing to forgo those
might be decrementally cost-effective. vention in place of bypass surgery for options to reduce the purchase price.
We found that about three-quarters multivessel coronary disease, which on Why not in health care?
of published comparisons described average saves about $5,000 while sac-
new technologies or treatment strate- rificing a half day of perfect health (for Lowering Health Costs: Buy Less Stuff
gies that increase both costs and ben- a cost-savings of more than $3 million Even by the standards of political
efits, and that most of these (about for every QALY lost) and using repeti- rhetoric, it strains credulity when
65 to 80 percent) were cost-effective tive transcranial magnetic stimulation politicians suggest that the declared
by conventional criteria (depending instead of electroconvulsive therapy goals of health-care reform—increas-
on which conventional threshold was for drug-resistant major depression, ing access, improving quality and con-
used, $50,000 or $100,000 per QALY which avoids the need for general an- trolling costs—are somehow mutu-
gained). Less often, published analy- aesthesia and saves on average over ally reinforcing. I’m no Peter Orszag,
ses described innovations that are ei- $11,000 but sacrifices about a week of the über-wonk overseeing President
ther dominant or dominated (about perfect health (for a ratio of more than Obama’s Office of Management and
10 percent and 15 percent of the time, $500,000 for every QALY lost). Nearly Budget, but if my father taught me an-
all the remaining innovations involved ything it was that saving money rarely
the tailored withholding of standard involves buying more and better stuff.
therapy, including watchful waiting Plain talk about ways to cut costs are
TVNNBSZPGTUVEJFTJO for selected patients with inguinal her- buried in rhetoric about rooting out in-
UIFNFEJDBMMJUFSBUVSF nia, withholding mediastinoscopy for efficiencies and various prevarications
UIBUSFQPSUFE
selected patients with lung cancer, and about savings from investing in (that
DPTUFGGFDUJWFOFTT
SBUJPTm abbreviated physiotherapy or psycho- is, spending on) more preventative
TUVEJFTJO therapy for patients with neck pain medicine, health information technol-

QVCMJDBUJPOT
or deliberate self-harm, respectively. ogy, and comparative effectiveness re-
Finally, the cost-saving innovations search about what therapies work best

included the sterilization and reuse of for which patients. While these goals
dialysate, the chemical bath used in may all be worthwhile, and there is
dialysis to draw fluids and toxins out much of little or no value in the cur-
of the bloodstream—a degree of thrift rent system (including the immense
even the late Sheldon Kravitz would amount of money spent to maintain
NPSFFYQFOTJWF
MFTTFYQFOTJWF
have to admire. our Byzantine for-profit insurance

NPSFFGGFDUJWF
NPSFFGGFDUJWF
That decrementally cost-effective in- system), ultimately we simply do not

NPSFFYQFOTJWF
novations are so rarely described in have the resources to give away an

MFTTFGGFDUJWF
the health-care literature suggests that expensive commodity like health care
medicine is distinct from most other in quantities that people want, subject
MFTTFYQFOTJWF
MFTTFGGFDUJWF
markets, in which cost-decreasing, to no budgetary constraints.

quality-reducing products are con- It is beyond dispute that some
tinuously being introduced—think mechanisms for the controlled distri-
IKEA, Walmart and the Tata car. Sev- bution of these expensive goods and
eral reasons may explain this “medical services are required. In most mar-

exceptionalism.” First, there is funda- kets, prices play this role, and many
mentally a lack of incentives both for feel that the fundamental problem in
A survey of more than 2,000 medical studies physicians to control costs, especially health care is that many consumers
that reported cost-effectiveness ratios high-
under a fee-for-service regime, and are shielded from the costs of their
lights a striking difference between medical
and other consumer markets. In the hurly-
for patients to demand less expensive care. A system based largely on prices
burly of retail markets, producing “nearly as treatment when insurance shields (that is, price rationing) may control
good” products for less money is a major com- them from the direct costs of care. Sec- costs better than our current system,
petitive strategy; in the medical literature, that ond, medical “bargains” frequently but it would of course mean that those
type of innovation (“less expensive, less effec- come with health risks, and trading with the most money have first dibs
tive”) is hardly represented at all (purple bar). health for money strikes some as vul- on scarce health-care resources, and
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there might be little left over for those sensitive, and will almost certainly taking, these strategies are certainly as-
without means. (There are other rea- mean the adoption of some decremen- sociated with small but real risks. Even
sons too why most consumers can’t tally cost-effective strategies for saving a preadolescent quickly learns the true
be expected to comparison shop for money. For example, Canadian-style meaning of “just as good”; perhaps a
emergency coronary angioplasty or delays for expensive diagnostic or sur- more mature citizenry can also come to
for charged-particle radiosurgery for gical procedures certainly pose real, al- appreciate some of the upside of hav-
their glioblastoma the same way they beit small, medical risks, and would fall ing “just as good” alternatives.
might for gasoline, underwear and into this southwest category. Getting
cling peaches). It is a fantasy to believe insured Americans to accept such new Bibliography
that price rationing alone can provide risks may be difficult, but slightly qual-
Orszag, P. R., and P. Ellis. 2007. The challenge
an acceptable mechanism for the con- ity-reducing (that is, risk-increasing) of rising health care costs—a view from the
trolled distribution of medical services, cost-saving strategies have already been Congressional Budget Office. New England
and some other means are thus also widely adopted within the American Journal of Medicine 357:1793–1795.
needed. Perhaps we should take it as system, even if not studied or widely Cohen, J. T., P. J. Neumann and M. C. Wein-
a sign of the robustness of our democ- acknowledged. The gradual increase in stein. 2008. Does preventive care save mon-
racy that this rather technical issue of the “hassle factor” in accessing medi- ey? Health economics and the presidential
the proper mix and variety of price cal care is one covert way that the in- candidates. New England Journal of Medicine
358:661–663.
and non-price rationing has somehow dustry has found to limit the distribu-
managed to plunge our national con- tion of services. More overt examples Kent, D. M., A. M. Fendrick, and K. M. Langa.
versation about health-care reform into of rationing already adopted include 2004. New and dis-improved: On the evalu-
a Jerry Springer–style shouting match, aggressively shortening hospital stays ation and use of less effective, less expen-
sive medical interventions. Medical Decision
except without the civility. and limiting formulary options (which Making 24:281–286.
But regardless of the mix, expand- sometimes require patients to change
ing coverage to the uninsured, caring from a medicine they have been toler- O’Brien, B. J., K. Gertsen, A. R. Willan and L. A.
Faulkner. 2002. Is there a kink in consum-
for our aging baby boomers, and ac- ating well to another in the same class).
ers’ threshold value for cost-effectiveness in
commodating new, effective technolo- Despite the fact that doctors regularly health care? Health Economics 11:175–180.
gies—while still feeding, clothing, (although sometimes disingenuously)
housing, and educating ourselves, and deploy patter informing patients that Nelson, A. L., J. T. Cohen, D. Greenberg and D.
M. Kent. 2009. “Much Cheaper, Almost as
catching an occasional movie—will the hospital is a dangerous place to stay Good”: Decrementally Cost Effective Medi-
require our system of distribution and that the formulary medication is cal Innovation, Annals of Internal Medicine
of health services to be more cost- “just as good” as the one they’ve been 151:662–667.
Come meet your group’s newest member,

the GEICO Gecko. Sigma Xi members could get
an additional discount on car insurance. ______________
Call or click for your FREE quote. 1-800-368-2734

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features are not available in all states or companies. Government Employees Insurance Co. • GEICO General Insurance Co. • GEICO Indemnity Co. • GEICO Casualty Co. These companies are subsidiaries of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. GEICO: Washington, DC 20076.
GEICO Gecko image © 1999-2010. © 2010 GEICO
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Computing Science
Avoiding a Digital Dark Age

Kurt D. Bollacker
W hen I was a boy, I discovered

a magnetic reel-to-reel audio
tape recorder that my father had used
to create “audio letters” to my mother
Data longevity
Save Our Bits!
The general problem of data preserva-
tion is twofold. The first matter is pres-
ervation of the data itself: The physical
while he was serving in the Vietnam
depends on both the media on which data are written must
War. To my delight (and his horror), I be preserved, and this media must
could listen to many of the old tapes he storage medium and continue to accurately hold the data
had made a decade before. Even better, that are entrusted to it. This problem is
I could make recordings myself and lis- the ability to decipher the same for analog and digital media,
ten to them. However, all of my father’s but unless we are careful, digital media
tapes were decaying to some degree— the information can be more fragile.
flaking, stretching and breaking when The second part of the equation
played. It was clear that these tapes is the comprehensibility of the data.
would not last forever, so I copied a few may have survived, my disks were use- Even if the storage medium survives
of them to new cassette tapes. While less because of the proprietary encoding perfectly, it will be of no use unless
playing back the cassettes, I noticed that scheme used by my backup program. we can read and understand the data
some of the sound quality was lost in The Dead Sea scrolls, made out of on it. With most analog technologies
the copying process. I wondered how still-readable parchment and papyrus, such as photographic prints and paper
many times I could make a copy before are believed to have been created more text documents, one can look directly
there was nothing left but a murky hiss. than 2,000 years ago. Yet my barely 10- at the medium to access the informa-
A decade later in the 1980s I was in year-old digital floppy disks were essen- tion. With all digital media, a machine
high school making backups of the hard tially lost. I was furious! How had the and software are required to read and
drive of my PC onto 5-¼-inch floppy shiny new world of digital data, which translate the data into a human-ob-
disks. I thought that because digital cop- I had been taught was so superior to the servable and comprehensible form.
ies were “perfect,” and I could make per- old “analog” world, failed me? I won- If the machine or software is lost, the
fect copies of perfect copies, I couldn’t dered: Had I had simply misplaced my data are likely to be unavailable or, ef-
lose my data, except by accident. I contin- faith, or was I missing something? fectively, lost as well.
ued to believe that until years later in col- Over the course of the 20th century
lege, when I tried to restore my backup and into the 21st, an increasing propor- Preservation
of 70 floppy disks onto a new PC. To my tion of the information we create and Unlike the many venerable institu-
dismay, I discovered that I had lost the use has been in the form of digital data. tions that have for centuries refined
floppy disk containing the backup pro- Many (most?) of us have given up writ- their techniques for preserving analog
gram itself, and thus could not restore my ing messages on paper, instead adopting data on clay, stone, ceramic or paper,
data. Some investigation revealed that electronic formats, and have exchanged we have no corresponding reservoir
the company that made the software had film-based photographic cameras for dig- of historical wisdom to teach us how
long since gone out of business. Requests ital ones. Will those precious family pho- to save our digital data. That does not
on electronic bulletin board systems and tographs and letters—that is, email mes- mean there is nothing to learn from
searches on Usenet turned up nothing sages—created today survive for future the past, only that we must work a
useful. Although all of the data on them generations, or will they suffer a sad fate little harder to find it. We can start by
like my backup floppy disks? It seems briefly looking at the historical trends
unavoidable that most of the data in our and advances in data representation
Over the past two decades, Kurt D. Bollacker has future will be digital, so it behooves us to in human history. We can also turn to
romped through the fields of artificial intelligence, understand how to manage and preserve nature for a few important lessons.
digital libraries, linguistics, databases and electro-
digital data so we can avoid what some The earliest known human records
cardiology. He currently is the digital research di-
rector of the Long Now Foundation and gets his
have called the “digital dark age.” This are millennia-old physical scrapings on
hands dirty as a freelance data miner and builder is the idea—or fear!—that if we cannot whatever hard materials were available.
of collaborative knowledge-creation tools. He also learn to explicitly save our digital data, This medium was often stone, dried
works on the Rosetta Project. He received his Ph.D. we will lose that data and, with it, the clay, bone, bamboo strips or even tor-
in computer engineering from the University of record that future generations might use toise shells. These substances were very
Texas at Austin in 1998. Email: __________
kurt@longnow.org to remember and understand us. durable—indeed, some specimens have
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survived for more than 5,000 years. approximate ideal expected

However, stone tablets were heavy and type of medium data medium
year of invention lifetime of medium
bulky, and thus not very practical.
Possibly the first big advance in data analog clay/stone tablet 8000 BC >4,000 years
representation was the invention of pa-
pyrus in Egypt about 5,500 years ago. analog pigment on paper 3500 BC >2,000 years
Paper was lighter and easier to make,
and it took up considerably less space. analog oil painting 600 centuries
It worked so well that paper and its
variants, such as parchment and vel- silver halide
analog black and white 1820 >100 years
lum, served as the primary repositories
photographic film
for most of the world’s information
until the advent of the technological modern color
analog 1860 decades
revolution of the 20th century. photographic film
Technology brought us photographic
film, analog phonographic records, mag- analog phonograph record 1877 >120 years
netic tapes and disks, optical recording,
analog/digital magnetic tape 1928 decades
and a myriad of exotic, experimental
and often short-lived data media. These analog/digital magnetic disk 1950 3–20 years
technologies were able to represent data
for which paper cannot easily be used polycarbonate optical
analog/digital 1990 5–20 years
(video, for example). The successful ones WORM disk
were also usually smaller, faster, cheaper
and easier to use for their intended ap- When we compare the different data-storage media that have appeared over the course of human
plications. In the last half of the 20th cen- history, a trend emerges: Digital data types are expected to have shorter lifetimes than analog ones.
tury, a large part of this advancement in-
cluded a transition from analog to digital ilar quality (such as 16 bit, 44.1 kilohertz However, enhanced recording den-
representations of data. for digital, or 47.6 millimeters per sec- sity is a double-edged sword. Assume
Even a brief investigation into a ond for analog), the DAT can record 500 that for each medium a square milli-
small sampling of information-storage minutes of stereo audio data per square meter of surface is completely corrupt-
media technologies throughout history meter of recordable surface, whereas the ed. Common sense tells us that media
quickly uncovers much dispute regard- analog cassette can record 184 minutes that hold more data in this square mil-
ing how long a single piece of each type per square meter. This means the DAT limeter would experience more actual
of media might survive. Such uncer- holds data about 2.7 times more densely data loss; thus for a given amount of
tainty cannot be settled without a time than the cassette. The second table (be- lost physical medium, more data will
machine, but we can make reasonable low) gives this comparison for several be lost from digital formats. There is
guesses based on several sources of common consumer audio-recording me- a way to design digital encoding with
varying reliability. If we look at the time dia types. Furthermore, disk technolo- a lower data density so as to avoid
of invention, the estimated lifespan of a gies tend to hold data more densely than this problem, but it is not often used.
single piece of each type of media and tapes, so it is no surprise that magnetic Why? Cost and efficiency: It is usually
the encoding method (analog or digital) tape has all but disappeared from the cheaper to store data on digital media
for each type of data storage (see the consumer marketplace. because of the increased density.
table, above right), we can see that new
media types tend to have shorter lifes-
pans than older ones, and digital types recording capacity
have shorter lifespans than analog ones. type of medium audio data medium (minutes per
Why are these new media types less du- square meter)
rable? Shouldn’t technology be getting 6.35 millimeter wide
better rather than worse? This mystery analog 190.5 millimeters per second 13.8
clamors for a little investigation. reel-to-reel magnetic tape
To better understand the nature of and
analog 33-1/3 RPM vinyl album 411
differences between analog and digital
data encoding, let us use the example analog 90-minute audio cassette 184
of magnetic tape, because it is one of
the oldest media that has been used in digital compact disk (CD) 8,060
both analog and digital domains. First,
let’s look at the relationship between in- digital 60-meter digital audio tape (DAT) 500
formation density and data-loss risk. A
standard 90-minute analog compact cas- digital 2 terabyte 89-millimeter hard drive 4,680,000
sette is 0.00381 meters wide by about 129
meters long, and a typical digital audio As technology has advanced, the density of data storage on analog and, subsequently, digital
tape (DAT) is 0.004 meters wide by 60 recording media has tended to increase. The downside of packing in data, however, is that
meters long. For audio encodings of sim- more of the information will be lost if a portion of the recording medium becomes damaged.
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PSJHJOBM BOBMPH
TJHOBM PSJHJOBM BOBMPH
TJHOBM
EJHJUBMTJHOBM BOBMPHTJHOBMXJUIEBNBHF
EJHJUBMTJHOBMXJUIEBNBHF
A simple audio tone is represented as a sine wave in an analog signal, and as a similar wave but with an approximated stepped shape in a digital signal
(left). If the data receive simulated damage, the analog signal output is more resistant to damage than the digital one, which has wilder swings and high-
er error peaks (right). This result is largely because in a digital recording, all bits do not have the same worth, so damage causes random output error.
A possibly more important difference and PCM encoding responses to ran- showing what is known as quantiza-
between digital and analog media comes dom damage to a theoretically perfect tion error, which results from turning a
from the intrinsic techniques that com- audiotape and playback system. The continuous analog signal into a discrete
prise their data representations. Analog first graph in the third figure (above) digital signal. This class of error is usu-
is simply that—a physical analog of the shows analog and PCM representations ally imperceptible in a well-designed
data recorded. In the case of analog au- of a single audio tone, represented as system, so we will ignore it for now.
dio recordings on tape, the amplitude of a simple sine wave. In our perfect sys- For our comparison, we then ran-
the audio signal is represented as an am- tem, the original audio source signal is domly damage one-eighth of the simu-
plitude in the magnetization of a point identical to the analog encoding. The lated perfect tape so that the damaged
on the tape. If the tape is damaged, we PCM encoding has a stepped shape parts have a random amplitude re-
hear a distortion, or “noise,” in the signal
as it is played back. In general, the worse
the damage, the worse the noise, but it ZIP code POSTNET code with
POSTNET code
is a smooth transition known as graceful digit value missing middle digit
degradation. This is a common property
of a system that exhibits fault tolerance, so
0
that partial failure of a system does not
mean total failure.
Unlike in the analog world, digital 1
data representations do not inherent-
ly degrade gracefully, because digital
encoding methods represent data as a 2
string of binary digits (“bits”). In all digi-
tal symbol number systems, some digits 3
are worth more than others. A common
digital encoding mechanism, pulse code
modulation (PCM), represents the total 4
amplitude value of an audio signal as a
binary number, so damage to a random
5
bit causes an unpredictable amount of
actual damage to the signal.
Let’s use software to concoct a sim- 6
ulated experiment that demonstrates
this difference. We will compare analog
7
The U.S. Postal Service uses an encoding

scheme for ZIP code numbers called POST- 8
NET that uses an error-correcting code. Each
decimal digit is represented as five bars. If,
say, the middle bar disappears, each number 9
is still distinguishable from all the others.
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that of any other digit. For example, in tape perishes silently, likely to the future
the rightmost column of the table, the disappointment of the user.
middle bar for each number has been
erased, yet none of the numbers is mis- Comprehensibility
takable for any of the others. In the 1960s, NASA launched Lunar Or-
Although there are limits to any biter 1, which took breathtaking, famous
specific ECC, in general, any digital- photographs of the Earth juxtaposed
encoding scheme can be made as robust with the Moon. In their rush to get as-
as desired against random errors by tronauts to the Moon, NASA engineers
choosing an appropriate ECC. This is a created a mountain of magnetic tapes
basic result from the field of information containing these important digital imag-
theory, pioneered by Claude Shannon es and other space-mission-related data.
in the middle of the 20th century. How- However, only a specific, rare model of
ever, whichever ECC we choose, there is tape drive made for the U.S. military
The Phaistos Disk, housed at the Heraklion an economic tradeoff: More redundancy could read these tapes, and at the time
Archaeological Museum in Crete, is well pre- usually means less efficiency. (the 1970s to 1980s), NASA had no inter-
served and all its data are visible, but the infor- Nature can also serve as a guide to the est in keeping even one compatible drive
mation is essentially lost because the language preservation of digital data. The digital in good repair. A heroic NASA archivist
in which it is written has been forgotten. (Pho- data represented in the DNA of living kept several donated broken tape drives
tograph courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.) creatures is copied into descendents, with in her garage for two decades until she
only very rare errors when they repro- was able to gain enough public interest
sponse. The second graph in the third duce. Bad copies (with destructive muta- to find experts to repair the drives and
figure (facing page, top) shows the effect tions) do not tend to survive. Similarly, help her recover these images.
of the damage on the analog and digi- we can copy digital data from medium Contrast this with the opposite
tal encoding schemes. We use a com- to medium with very little or no error problem of the analog Phaistos Disk
mon device called a low-pass filter to over a large number of generations. We (above left), which was created some
help minimize the effect of the damage can use easy and effective techniques to 3,500 years ago and is still in excel-
on our simulated output. Comparing see whether a copy has errors, and if so, lent physical condition. All of the data
the original undamaged audio signal we can make another copy. For instance, it stores (about 1,300 bits) have been
to the reconstructions of the damaged a common error-catching program is preserved and are easily visible to the
analog and digital signals shows that, called a checksum function: The algorithm human eye. However, this disk shares
although both the analog and digital breaks the data into binary numbers of one unfortunate characteristic with my
recordings are distorted, the digital re- arbitrary length and then adds them in set of 20-year-old floppy disks: No one
cording has wilder swings and higher some fashion to create a total, which can can decipher the data on either one.
error peaks than the analog one. be compared to the total in the copied The language in which the Phaistos
But digital media are supposed to be data. If the totals don’t match, there was disk was written has long since been
better, so what’s wrong here? The answer likely an accidental error in copying. forgotten, just like the software to read
is that analog data-encoding techniques Error-free copying is not possible with my floppies is equally irretrievable.
are intrinsically more robust in cases of analog data: Each generation of copies These two examples demonstrate dig-
media damage than are naive digital- is worse than the one before, as I learned ital data preservation’s other challenge—
encoding schemes because of their inher- from my father’s reel-to-reel audiotapes. comprehensibility. In order to survive,
ent redundancy—there’s more to them, Because any single piece of digital digital data must be understandable
because they’re continuous signals. That media tends to have a relatively short by both the machine reading them and
does not mean digital encodings are lifetime, we will have to make copies the software interpreting them. Luck-
worse; rather, it’s just that we have to far more often than has been historically ily, the short lifetime of digital media
do more work to build a better system. required of analog media. Like species has forced us to gain some experience in
Luckily, that is not too hard. A very com- in nature, a copy of data that is more solving this problem—the silver lining
mon way to do this is to use a binary- easily “reproduced” before it dies makes of the dark clouds of a looming poten-
number representation that does not the data more likely to survive. This no- tial digital dark age. There are at least
mind if a few bits are missing or broken. tion of data promiscuousness is helpful in two effective approaches: choosing data
One important example where this thinking about preserving our own data. representation technologies wisely and
technique is used is known as an error As an example, compare storage on a creating mechanisms to reach backward
correcting code (ECC). A commonly typical PC hard drive to that of a mag- in time from the future.
used ECC is the U.S. Postal Service’s netic tape. Typically, hard drives are in-
POSTNET (Postal Numeric Encoding stalled in a PC and used frequently until Make Good Choices …
Technique), which represents ZIP codes they die or are replaced. Tapes are usu- In order to make sure digital data can
on the front of posted envelopes. In this ally written to only a few times (often as be understood in the future, ideally
scheme, each decimal digit is represent- a backup, ironically) and then placed on we should choose representations for
ed as five binary digits, shown as long or a shelf. If a hard drive starts to fail, the our data for which compatible hard-
short printed bars (facing page, bottom). user is likely to notice and can quickly ware and software are likely to survive
If any single bar for any decimal digit make a copy. If a tape on a shelf starts as well. Like species in nature, digital
were missing or incorrect, the represen- to die, there is no easy way for the user formats that are able to adapt to new
tation would still not be confused with to know, so very often the data on the environments and threats will tend to
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survive. Nature cannot predict the fu-

ture, but the mechanism of mutation
creates different species with different
traits, and the fittest prevail.
Because we also can’t predict the fu-
ture to know the best data-representation
choices, we try to do as nature does. We
can copy our digital data into as many
different media, formats and encodings
as possible and hope that some survive.
Another way to make good choices is
to simply follow the pack. A famous ex-
ample comes from the 1970s, when two
competing standards for home video
recording existed: Betamax and VHS.
Although Betamax, by many technical The Rosetta Project aims to preserve all of the world’s written languages with a metal disk that
measures, was a superior standard and could last up to 2,000 years. The disk records miniaturized versions of more than 13,000 pages of
was introduced first, the companies text and images, etched onto the surface using techniques similar to computer-chip lithography.
supporting VHS had better business (Photograph by Spencer Lowell, courtesy of the Long Now Foundation, ______________
http://www.longnow.org.)
and marketing strategies and eventu-
ally won the standards war. Betamax technique used to run old software on ized versions of more than 13,000 pages
mostly fell into disuse by the late 1980s; new hardware. It does, however, have of text and images have been etched
VHS survived until the mid-2000s. Thus a problem of recursion—what happens using techniques similar to computer-
if a format or media standard is in more when there is no longer compatible chip lithography. It is expected that this
common use, it may be a better choice hardware to run the emulator itself? disk could last up to 2,000 years because,
than one that is rare. Emulators can by layered like Matry- physically, the disk has more in common
oshka dolls, one running inside another with a stone tablet than a modern hard
… Or Fake It! running inside another. drive. Although this approach should
Once we’ve thrown the dice on our data- work for some important data, it is much
representation choices, is there anything Being Practical more expensive to use in the short term
else we can do? We can hope we will Given all of this varied advice, what than almost any practical digital solu-
not be stuck for decades, like our NASA can we do to save our personal digital tion and is less capable in some cases
archivist, or left with a perfectly readable data? First and foremost, make regular (for example, it’s not good for audio or
but incomprehensible Phaistos disk. But backup copies onto easily copied media video). Perhaps it is better thought of as
what if our scattershot strategy of data (such as hard drives) and place these a cautionary example of what our fu-
representation fails, and we can’t read copies in different locations. Try read- ture might look like if we are not able to
or understand our data with modern ing documents, photos and other media make the digital world in which we find
hardware and software? A very com- whenever upgrading software or hard- ourselves remain successful over time.
mon approach is to fake it! ware, and convert them to new formats
If we have old digital media for as needed. Lastly, if possible, print out Bibliography
which no compatible hardware still highly important items and store them Balistier, Thomas. 2000. The Phaistos Disc: An
exists, modern devices sometimes can safely—there seems to be no getting Account of Its Unsolved Mystery. New York:
be substituted. For example, cheap and away from occasionally reverting to this Springer-Verlag.
ubiquitous optical scanners have been “outdated” media type. None of these Besen, Stanley M., and Joseph Farrell. 1994.
Choosing how to compete: Strategies and
commonly used to read old 80-column steps will guarantee the data’s survival, tactics in standardization. Journal of Eco-
IBM punchcards. This output solves but not taking them almost guarantees nomic Perspectives 8:117–131.
half of the problem, leaving us with that the data will be lost, sooner or later. Camras, Marvin. 1988. Magnetic Recording Hand-
the task of finding hardware to run the This process does seem to involve a lot book. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Co.
software and interpret the data that we more effort than my grandparents went The IBM 709 Data-Processing System. ____ http://
are again able to read. to when shoving photos into a shoebox www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/
In the late 1950s IBM introduced the in the attic decades ago, but perhaps mainframe/mainframe_PP709.html
_____________________
IBM 709 computer as a replacement for this is one of the costs for the miracles Koops, Matthias. 1800. Historical Account of
the Substances Which Have Been Used to De-
the older model IBM 704. The many of our digital age. scribe Events, and to Convey Ideas, from the
technical improvements in the 709 If all this seems like too much work, Earliest Date, to the Invention of Paper. Lon-
made it unable to directly run software there is one last possibility. We could re- don: T. Burton.
written for the 704. Because customers vert our digital data back to an analog Pohlmann, Ken C. 1985. Principles of Digital
did not want either to lose their invest- form and use traditional media-preser- Audio, 2nd ed. Carmel, Indiana: Sams/
Prentice-Hall Computer Publishing.
ment in the old software or to forgo new vation techniques. An extreme example
technological advances, IBM sold what of this is demonstrated by the Rosetta The Rosetta Project. _______________
http://www.rosettapro-
ject.org
_____
they called an emulator module for the Project, a scholarly endeavor to preserve
United States Postal Service, Domestic Mail
709, which allowed it to pretend to be a parallel texts of all of the world’s writ- Manual 708.4—Special Standards, Techni-
704 for the purposes of running the old ten languages. The project has created cal Specifications, Barcoding Standards for
software. Emulation is now a common a metal disk (above) on which miniatur- Letters and Flats.
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Engineering
Challenges and Prizes

Henry Petroski
T here is no shortage of chal-

lenging engineering problems,
and many of the more pressing of
them these days have to do with the
Incentives help
assemblage of artillery pieces—truly
perfecting the technology has proved
elusive. The heavy and bulky lead-
acid batteries in conventional automo-
development of new and renewable
motivate solutions biles need replacing every five years
energy sources or with the more ef- or so, when they can no longer hold a
ficient and environmentally friendly to humanity’s needs charge. The lithium-ion batteries that
use of old ones. But solving these and power so many laptop computers are
related problems can be maddeningly and wants more compact, but they are still rela-
difficult, for the world of energy pro- tively heavy and expensive, and some
duction, transmission, storage and con- have been known to burst into flame.
sumption is complex, and its compo- Still, lithium-ion batteries seem to
nent parts are systemically interrelated. steady output of power. Thus, a means be the devices of choice for powering
This is also the case with non-energy of storing excess electricity when the all-electric cars. Unfortunately, it takes
related problems ranging from provid- wind howls and of releasing it during a goodly number of cells to pack suf-
ing clean drinking water worldwide to calms is very desirable. Batteries are a ficient energy to drive an automobile a
carrying out efficient space exploration. familiar technology for performing this reasonable distance before recharging.
In order to encourage research and de- task, but installing dedicated banks of (Gasoline has a much higher energy
velopment work on tough problems batteries would be an expensive and far- density than a storage battery.) Tesla
of all kinds, an increasing variety of from-elegant solution. Thus, some more Motors has been making and selling in
incentives has come to be employed, creative proposals exploit the growing limited quantities its all-electric Road-
including formal challenges and lucra- interest in plug-in electric vehicles. ster, but the $109,000 price tag keeps
tive prizes. But meeting a challenge and Although the battery packs of such it out of reach of virtually all but the
walking away with a prize can be only vehicles draw power from the grid rich and famous. Tesla’s forthcoming
the beginning of what might prove to when they are being recharged, great Model S luxury sedan is expected to
be a long and convoluted engineering numbers of them plugged in can also be priced at about $60,000, which is
development project. provide a means of stabilizing the grid, still quite a premium to pay for a si-
by drawing from it when power pro- lent ride. Among the principal reasons
Energy Innovations duction surges and releasing to it when for such prices is that the electric car’s
Large-scale wind power may appear production dips. Millions of plug-ins one-ton battery pack itself will cost
to be promising, but it presents some connected to the grid could thus play about $10,000.
persistent difficulties. Perhaps first and the role of a flywheel, alternately stor- The fuel cell, the basic scientific
foremost is the need to provide trans- ing and releasing energy as needed. A principles of which have been known
mission lines from remote areas where fully effective symbiotic relationship for well over a century and which has
the wind blows strongly—and where between power production, consump- been used in space vehicles for some
neighbors do not object to the location tion and storage is still years in the time, promises to be an alternative to
of massive wind farms—to urban areas future, however, because electric vehi- the automobile battery—when its price
where vast amounts of electricity are cles still have developmental problems drops and when problems relating to
consumed. But long transmission lines of their own. In addition, car owners the production, availability and distri-
equal energy losses that in effect lower might have to adapt to a charging regi- bution of its fuel (typically, hydrogen)
the efficiency of the wind turbines. Also, men compatible with other demands are resolved. It has become somewhat
since the wind is notoriously fickle, on the electric grid, which at the mo- of a standard joke among technolo-
it cannot be counted on to produce a ment at least may not be smart enough gy reporters that each year a practi-
to cope with millions of electric cars cal fuel-cell technology is still only 10
Henry Petroski is the Aleksandar S. Vesic Professor
being plugged into it simultaneously. years away.
of Civil Engineering and a professor of history at Even though battery technology is
Duke University. His latest book, The Essential centuries old—the word “battery” for a Seeing the Light
Engineer: Why Science Alone Will Not Solve series of electrical storage devices was The incandescent light bulb, which has
Our Global Problems, was published in February. coined in the 18th century by Benjamin been around for well over a century, is
Address: Box 90287, Durham, NC 27708–0287. Franklin, who saw the analogy with an not significantly different from Thom-
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as Edison’s invention. But this virtual for the corkscrew-shaped fluorescents. it to be for engineers to solve more
symbol of inspiration and creativity is Furthermore, it became widely known complex problems relating to energy
notoriously inefficient when it comes that the bulbs presented an environ- production, storage, distribution, con-
to converting electricity to illumina- mental hazard, as they contained mer- servation and use. And what of prob-
tion. In 2007, Australia instituted a ban cury in vapor form that escaped when lems not related directly to energy? In
on the so-called filament bulbs, and the the glass envelope was broken. This order to identify the most challenging
ban goes into effect this year. The Eu- made disposing of the bulbs problem- and consequential of those problems, a
ropean Union, also seeking to conserve atic, and to ameliorate the negative few years ago the National Academy
energy and thereby reduce the amount publicity retail outlets that sold them of Engineering appointed a committee
of carbon dioxide released to the atmo- instituted special programs to collect of engineers, scientists and inventors
sphere, has established a similar ban. spent bulbs for safe disposal. to compile a list of “opportunities that
The United States will begin to phase In the meantime, the light-emitting were both achievable and sustainable
in a ban on filament bulbs in 2012. diode (LED), hailed as “the most effi- to help people and the planet thrive.”
A ban on incandescent light bulbs cient lighting source available” began to These opportunities have come to be
would not be practical without alterna- be employed increasingly in commercial known as engineering’s grand chal-
tive lighting technology, of course, and lighting applications, where the high lenges of the 21st century, and meeting
it was the compact fluorescent bulb capital investment could be most easily the challenges is not expected to be
that was expected to be the standard justified. With incandescent bulbs being either quick or easy. The 14 challenges
replacement. The compact fluorescent outlawed and compact fluorescents pos- identified fall into “four themes that
was developed at General Electric during a hazard, the stage was set for the are essential for humanity to flour-
ing the energy crisis of the 1970s, but LED to become the replacement tech- ish—sustainability, health, reducing
manufacturing difficulties kept GE nology of choice. Philips Lighting, one vulnerability, and joy of living.”
from pursuing commercialization at of the leading manufacturers of compact Though the list is unranked, the first
the time. Other companies did even- fluorescent bulbs, redirected its research challenge mentioned is to “make solar
tually pursue the new bulb, however, and development programs from them energy affordable.” The sun is being
and before long it was commonly en- to LEDs, which had some problems of harnessed to generate electricity to-
countered in hotel rooms. At first, the their own to overcome. In particular, day, but generally at a high cost per
unfamiliar bulb that did not light up they produced more concentrated heat kilowatt-hour. Solar cells are expen-
immediately the way its predecessor than compact fluorescents, and so the sive to manufacture, and mirror con-
did was confusing to use. Also, the newer bulbs had to be designed with figurations that focus the sun’s rays
color of the light it threw off was cool, fins to radiate heat away from their to concentrate their heat on pipes or
unconventional and unflattering, and base. This led to bulb designs that pre- boilers generally require a lot of land
therefore was criticized. However, im- sented problems for interior decoration. and water resources for their effective
provements in the technology and the Finally, the bulbs are even more costly operation. One solar farm proposed
promise of energy savings enabled the that compact fluorescents; this will no for Amargosa Valley, Nevada, report-
compact fluorescent gradually to gain doubt eventually lead to cheaper imita- edly would consume 20 percent of the
a foothold in the marketplace, espe- tors—and to inferior products. available water in that desert location.
cially as its price began to drop. Where water is not used to generate
Many of the cheaper compact flu- Grand Challenges steam, it is used to wash dust and dirt
orescents have been manufactured If such familiar and seemingly simple off solar panels and mirrors in order
abroad, and their quality control can technologies as storage batteries and to maintain efficiency. Furthermore,
be poor. Bulbs burned out well before light bulbs can present such convolut- solar, like wind energy, also needs to
consumers could recoup in lower elec- ed engineering challenges, then how be paired with a backup or an ener-
tricity costs the higher prices they paid much more difficult must we expect gy storage system, such as batteries,
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An electromagnetic pulse remains a

threat to information networks world-
wide, but there are increasingly also
the threats from less dramatic means,
such as destructive worms and viruses
in the World Wide Web, the Internet
and cyberspace generally, upon which
we have come to rely so much.
Food and shelter, health, and secu-
rity constitute basic human needs, but
humans also need and desire more out
of life. This more the grand challenges
committee categorized under the joy
of living, which includes playfulness,
lifelong learning, and other intellectual
and creative pursuits. Engineers have
A large number of lithium-ion cells are undoubtedly part of the reason the Tesla Roadster a role to play in this area, too, and they
electric car has a sticker price of $109,000. At the same time, these cells are in part responsible have been challenged to “enhance vir-
for its supercar level of performance. The upcoming Model S luxury sedan will be somewhat tual reality,” to “advance personalized
less expensive. (Image courtesy of Tesla Motors Inc.) learning” and to “engineer the tools for
scientific discovery.” As in other theme
which we have seen present their own an aging infrastructure alone is enor- areas, there can be a considerable over-
developmental challenges. mous in magnitude. But keeping wa- lap in the challenges, with enhanced
Other sustainability grand chal- ter supplies clean and sewers flowing virtual reality providing the technology
lenges are to “provide energy from fu- does not remove the need for efficient to advance personalized learning. It has
sion,” to “develop carbon sequestration and effective health care. Informatics long been recognized that the tools for
methods” and to “manage the nitro- of all kinds, from medical monitoring scientific discovery are technological as
gen cycle.” Fusion energy has been a devices to record keeping, must be kept much as psychological. From Galileo’s
holy grail for the past half century or up to the task. The engineering of better telescope to the Hubble Space Tele-
so, and it promises to remain elusive for medicines will be necessary to combat scope, it is advancements in technology
the foreseeable future. The capture and persistent diseases and conditions. It is that enable new scientific discoveries
sequestration of carbon produced by a little-acknowledged fact that a lot of and hence new theories about every-
coal-burning power plants is possible in engineering lies behind the targeted de- thing in and including the universe. En-
scientific principle but undemonstrated livery of effective drugs, such as those gineering is not simply applied science,
in full-scale engineering reality. Even that maintain their potency while they and science can benefit greatly from ap-
if the unproven technology can store zero in on a tumor. The use of engi- plied engineering.
carbon in deep underground rock for- neered materials and nanotechnology
mations, it may pollute groundwater is making such achievements possible, Incentives
supplies as a byproduct. Some scientists but like most problems in medicine and The list of grand challenges alone may
deem nitrogen to be as threatening, if health care, their full realization will or may not motivate a given engineer,
not more so, as carbon dioxide to the at- take time. Likewise, what may be the team or company to work on any one
mosphere and the planet’s climate, but supreme challenge—reverse engineer- of them, but there is a kind of chal-
controlling nitrogen gases without having the brain—cannot be expected to be lenge that does motivate engineers and
ing adverse impacts on the food supply accomplished easily or quickly, but its groups alike. This is the competition
involves many unknowns. These are achievement will provide tremendous or prize. Generally speaking, a design
clearly complex problems. insight into learning processes and arti- competition has a specific structure or
The grand challenges relating to hu- ficial intelligence and how to treat con- device as its objective. This might be a
man health include to “provide access ditions ranging from the psychiatric to bridge for a specific location, and the
to clean water,” to “restore and improve the neurological. competition guidelines would typi-
urban infrastructure,” to “advance Advanced health informatics are cally spell out specific requirements
health informatics,” to “engineer bet- also essential for responding to world- that a successful design must meet.
ter medicines” and to “reverse-engi- population threatening conditions. The Thus, the winning bridge design may
neer the brain.” Clean drinking water grand challenges relating to reducing have to have a minimum clearance
is essential to good health, but world- vulnerability are to “prevent nuclear above mean high water, and it might
wide there are problems with aquifers terrorism” and “secure cyberspace.” have to open to let ships pass. Com-
contaminated with arsenic and other Nuclear terror is especially world petition announcements and guide-
naturally occurring poisons, as well as threatening, of course, and seeking lines also can require that engineers
by manmade pollution. Urban areas ways to reduce the planet’s vulnerabil- work with architects or artists, and the
may not depend on water wells, but the ity is clearly important. Solving this teams may have to prequalify by es-
lead pipes and aging cast-iron mains problem naturally must involve a good tablishing their credentials in bridge
that constitute the distribution network deal of political effort, but engineering design. The winner and runner-up in
can be the source of contaminants and better detection, monitoring and veri- a design competition may receive a
failures. The problem of modernizing fication devices must also play a part. cash award, but generally it will not be
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nearly enough to cover the team’s time

or expenses incurred in preparing its
entry. Engineers and architects enter
competitions because they provide cre-
ative challenges and practice in solving
real-world problems, and can result in
beneficial exposure to the design and
client community.
Prizes, on the other hand, tend to
be for invention and innovation, and
can be associated with very lucrative
cash awards. Indeed, offering prizes to
promote change has recently been de-
scribed as “one of the most intriguing
trends in philanthropy.” The Nobels are,
of course, the most well-known science
prizes and ones that come with a size-
able honorarium. The will of chemical
engineer Alfred Nobel that established
the eponymous awards stated that they
should go “to those who, during the
preceding year, shall have conferred the
greatest benefit on mankind.” However,
as instituted they have favored scien-
tific advances in the specified fields of
physics, chemistry and physiology or
medicine, often for achievements that
are decades old. It can be argued that
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London

Nobel had much more immediate rec-
ognition of engineering achievements
in mind. Today, the National Academy
of Engineering’s annual Draper Prize
does recognize Nobel-class engineering
achievements, and often in advance of
their recognition by the Nobel Founda-
tion. The first Draper Prize, which was
awarded in 1989, went to Jack S. Kilby
and Robert N. Noyce for independently
inventing and developing the mono-
lithic integrated circuit in the late 1950s.
Kilby was awarded the Nobel Prize in Among the best known of prizes was the Longitude Prize, awarded to John Harrison for the
physics in 2000 for the same accom- development of a chronometer that remained accurate in the roughest of seas. The difference
plishment; Noyce would no doubt have between local solar noon and the time in London correlates to longitude.
shared in the prize had he not died 10
years earlier. Charles K. Kao, who last was to encourage the development exact time in London when the sun was
year was awarded a Nobel prize in of a means of determining accurately directly overhead at sea. This correlated
physics for his work in fiber optics, in a ship’s longitude at sea. A Board of with longitude, which is essentially the
1999 shared the Draper Prize with Rob- Longitude was set up to administer the distance from London. However, the
ert D. Maurer and John B. MacChesney prize and judge entries, and it received Board awarded the full prize money to
for the same achievement. “more than a few weird and wonderful Harrison only after he had petitioned
suggestions,” some of which involved Parliament.
Find the Longitude squaring the circle and perpetual mo- Another historic prize for achieve-
The more common form of scientific tion machines. In fact, because so many ment was the Orteig Prize, with a
or engineering prize is one that states people doubted that there was a solu- purse of $25,000 offered by a French-
a technological goal in prospect, rath- tion to the problem, the phrase “finding born hotel owner “for the first nonstop
er than singling one out in retrospect. the longitude” came to be identified aircraft flight between New York and
Among the most widely known of with “the pursuits of fools and luna- Paris.” Many a life was lost in pursuit
historical prizes with a specific practi- tics.” Neither fool nor lunatic, the clock- of the Orteig before Charles Lindbergh
cal goal is the Longitude Prize, which maker John Harrison devoted much achieved the feat in 1927 in his single-
was established in 1714 by the British of his professional life to pursuing the engined Spirit of St. Louis. Today, there
government. The £20,000 prize, which prize. His product was a chronometer is a growing number of prizes—with
would amount to the equivalent of that remained accurate in the roughest growing purses—for meeting stated
about $5 million in today’s money, of seas, thus telling a ship’s captain the challenges ranging from more efficient
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The current incandescent light bulb differs little from those developed by Thomas Edison (left). One candidate for an energy-efficient replace-
ment comes from Philips Lighting (right). If accepted by the U.S. Department of Energy, it could win the $10 million L Prize. (Photograph at
right courtesty of Rick Friedman, copyright 2009.)
batteries and light bulbs to moon land- and amount of light given off by a 60- Other X PRIZES include the Google
ings and reusable space ships. watt conventional incandescent. Fur- Lunar X PRIZE, for landing “a rover on
thermore, in doing so the winning bulb the moon that will be able to travel at
Modern Prizes must consume only 10 watts of power least 500 meters and send high resolu-
When John McCain was running for and last more than 25,000 hours. In ad- tion video, still images and other data
president in 2008, gasoline was ap- dition, at least three-quarters of the bulb back home.” The winner of the prize
proaching $5 a gallon in California, so must be manufactured in America. Last will receive $20 million, and there is
he proposed to “inspire the ingenuity September, the first bulb to be entered the possibility of a $5 million bonus for
and resolve of the American people by into the contest was one made by the traveling 10 times as far or for transmit-
offering a $300 million prize for the de- Philips Lighting company, which is ting images of an artifact left behind
velopment of a battery package that headquartered in the Netherlands. The from the Apollo program. Perhaps
has the size, capacity, cost and power Department of Energy was expected to more down to earth, the Progressive
to leapfrog the commercially available take as much as a year to fully test the Automotive X PRIZE is defined as an
plug-in hybrids or electric cars.” The entrant bulb (in spite of the fact that a “international competition designed
amount of the award might appear to year contains only about a third of the to inspire a new generation of viable,
be enormous, but McCain reminded 25,000 hours that the bulb is supposed super fuel-efficient vehicles.” The $10
his audience that it represented only to work). Even though $10 million in million purse is held out to promote
one dollar per capita, which he consid- prize money cannot be expected to cover “revolution through competition.”
ered to be “a small price to pay for help- R&D expenses, winning a contest like Recent years have seen a prolif-
ing to break the back of our oil depen- the L Prize can be a boon to a manufac- eration of challenges and prizes de-
dency.” The candidate’s idea may have turer because the achievement can be signed to address global problems
been suggested by the Wearable Battery expected to give the winner a marked and improve the quality of life, and
Prize sponsored by the Pentagon for a advantage in receiving government con- these challenges and prizes promise
device that would weigh less than nine tracts for vast quantities of the product. to inspire, prod and reward those en-
pounds and provide at least 96 hours of In addition, the bulb would have a dis- gineers, inventors and entrepreneurs
uninterrupted power for soldiers in the tinct advantage in the retail market. who choose to pursue them.
field, who had to carry around as much Among the most publicized of recent
as 20 pounds of conventional batteries prizes have been a series of X PRIZEs. Bibliography
to run such things as their radios, com- The original X competition was the An- Belfiore, Michael. 2009. The Department of Mad
puters and night-vision goggles. The sari X PRIZE, which was for launching Scientists: How DARPA Is Remaking Our
Pentagon was offering a $1 million first the first privately financed reusable World, from the Internet to Artificial Limbs.
New York: HarperCollins.
prize, with lesser amounts for second spacecraft that would carry “three
National Academy of Engineering. 2008. Grand
and third prize, but these amounts are adults to an altitude of 100 kilometers, Challenges for Engineering. Washington, D.C.:
not likely to cover anywhere near the twice within two weeks.” The prize National Academy of Sciences.
cost of a successful research and devel- was won in 2004 by SpaceShipOne, Petroski, Henry. 2010. The Essential Engineer:
opment program. which was designed by a team headed Why Science Alone Will Not Solve Our Global
The energy-inefficient incandescent by the aerospace engineer Burt Ru- Problems. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
light bulb is the motivation behind the tan. The second-generation “reusable Sobel, Dava. 1996. Longitude: The True Story of
L Prize, which is sponsored by the De- spaceliner” SpaceShipTwo is part of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scien-
tific Problem of His Time. New York: Penguin
partment of Energy. Among the crite- the business plan of the space tour- Books.
ria a challenger must meet to win up ism firm Virgin Galactic, which has Taub, Eric A. 2009. A bright idea: build a bet-
to $10 million is to come up with a new proposed to offer to carry civilians into ter bulb, win $10 million. New York Times,
kind of bulb that must match the color space for $200,000 a ticket. September 25, pp. B1, B4.
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Marginalia
Two Lives
Roald Hoffmann
I meet Ansgar Bach first through

his writing. He sends me an en-
dearing account, in German (which I
can read, because I was once a refugee
Scientists do any
done a postdoctoral year in the United
States. The center shifts; there was once
a time when every U.S. chemist went
to Germany; now they come here.
in post-World War II Germany), of a
number of things, Twenty-two German postdoctoral as-
trip he took to New York. In the middle sociates—or postdocs—have spent a
of the 47th Street Diamond District, besides science year or more in my group.
Ansgar spots an oasis (sadly gone to- Ansgar gives a lecture about his
day): The Gotham Bookmart. In it he work. The talk is not about what he
finds my second poetry collection, Gaps did his doctoral research on, but what
and Verges, signed. The bookstore sign Crossovers he does now, crystallography. I know
says “Wise men fish here.” Ansgar fish- Ansgar and I continue to correspond. about crystallography by “osmosis”
es, writes about it, sends me what he He sends me a detective story he has because I got my Ph.D. in the lab of a
writes and catches a new friend. published, Ukrainische Verbindung (The great crystallographer, William N. Lip-
Books mean much to Ansgar. I dis- Ukrainian Connection). In German such scomb. I did not do crystallography; I
cover that when I do what can only stories are called Krimis, for Kriminalro- was simply in daily contact with clever
be done today, an Internet search on mane. The story, quite an exciting one, people who were learning and prac-
his name. From the many sons of Bach begins in a German paint factory, and ticing the technique. I also knew of it
and still more Bach festivals, I excavate part of the action takes place in the out of necessity, because in my work
an interesting fact: He is an unusual Ukrainian city of L’viv. Another connec- as a theoretician explaining molecular
chemist. For although he does at this tion, for I was born in Złoczów, some 60 shape, I have had to make judgments
time have an institutional affiliation— kilometers from L’viv! My father had
the Department of Chemistry at the gone to the Lwów Polytechnic Uni-
Free University of Berlin—he also runs versity, as it was called in Polish days.
a small business: Literarisch Reisen. Earlier, during the Austro-Hungarian
The phrase is resonant; in one sense days, L’viv was Lemberg. A crossroads
it means “Travel in Literary Fashion.” of the world it was, our historic region
And indeed Bach’s firm organizes ex- of Galicia. And it was also a place for
cursions in his region of Germany that waves of ethnic cleansing.
follow the footsteps of Thomas Mann One day in 2002 Ansgar comes to
or visit the sites of a series of stories by visit. He is spending a month in a lab
E.T.A. Hoffmann or Heinrich Heine. at the State University of New York
Very German. Very literary. And most at Buffalo, practically next door. Only
unlike what chemists do. snow divides us. He is a young man
Ansgar is on a path quite different in his mid-30s, with what I might call
from that of most academic scientists. a Ringo Starr haircut. He has an easy
Like him, like many other scientists, I smile, a gentle voice, and is unneces-
have wide-ranging interests that include sarily timid about his more-than-ad-
literature and art. But can one profession- equate English. True, he is in a minor-
ally embrace those multiple interests? ity of German scientists who have not
Can one successfully pursue scientific re-
search only on a part-time basis, with the The logo of Literarisch Reisen, a German com-
rest of one’s attention focused elsewhere, pany that organizes tours to places associated
with literary figures, shows Friedrich Schil-
no matter how gripping or worthwhile
ler, a German writer and philosopher, riding a
the other pursuits might be?
donkey. The engraving is by Johan Christian
Reinhardt from about 1787. The portrayal is
Roald Hoffmann is Frank H. T. Rhodes Professor of not without chemical interest, because in some
Humane Letters, Emeritus, at Cornell University. drawings the figure is mirrored. Which one is
Address: Baker Laboratory, Cornell University, the real writer, and which is the reflection? The
Ithaca, NY 14853-1301 same question also arises often for molecules.
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and thought, hey, why not an infinite

chain of face-sharing tetrahedrals? Da-
vid Nelson, a physicist at Harvard who
once had been a student of mine, came
up with the same structure in a differ-
ent context, and Chong Zheng, a bril-
liant student fresh out of China, set to
work figuring out for which elements
A chain of face-sharing tetrahedra forms a gently curving triple helix. This pleasing structure might such a structure be stable.
was given the name “tetrahelix” by R. Buckminster Fuller. The structure appeared in his book We thought we were original—until
Synergetics, and has inspired several artistic sculptural pieces around the world. Chemical one of us saw a sculpture by Ted Bieler in
compounds that take on this structure can also be made.
front of the Marathon Realty Building in
Toronto, with three such helices passing
as to which seeming structural anoma- As crystallography became easier, an by each other. And then we saw Arata
lies are worth pursuing, and which are almost routine technique, the field Isozaki’s 100-meter tower in Mito, Japan.
to be disbelieved. went in search of a raison d’être. Some It looked like we weren’t that origi-
What I will say next about crystal- practitioners took on complexity—pro- nal. Actually, neither were the archi-
lography is not anything a crystallog- teins, for instance. Others looked at tects and sculptors (but they didn’t
rapher would say. When the exper- large groups of molecules for trends need to write footnotes, as we did),
imental technique was difficult and and regularities (these researchers I because this “tetrahelix” was the cen-
a crystal structure took a year to do, especially value; I have written previ- terpiece of a chapter in Buckminster
there was no problem; everyone want- ously about them (“Crystal Cloudy,
__________ Fuller’s Synergetics!
ed to have a crystallographer friend. Crystal
__________ Clear,” American Scientist In time, Hartl and his coworkers
86[1]:15–18, January–February 1998). made the molecule, a copper iodide
Such crystallographers do just what I compound. It was as we had predicted;
did in my theoretical work. Still others 12 orders of magnitude smaller than
got the technique better and better, so Isozaki’s tower, there it was.
that they could see not just where are
the atomic nuclei and electrons near Goethe and Zinc Iodide
them, but also where in space reside But I have been mixing my story with
the chemically important electrons in- Ansgar’s. On finishing his Ph.D. on
volved in bonding and reactivity. Such zinc and cadmium halides (making
a direction brings this subset of crys- them and using crystallography to de-
tallographers in contact with theoreti- termine their structures), Ansgar went
cians, who compute such things. to work for a couple of years in a paint
This is exactly the research being done and coatings company, which he didn’t
both in Ansgar’s group in Berlin and like. At least the company, which will
in the one he is visiting in Buffalo. For remain nameless, provided the setting
my own prejudiced reasons I’m not too for one of his detective stories. I hope
crazy about the work, but I won’t bore there were no bodies in industrial paint
you with my prejudices. Suffice to say mixers in real German companies.
that when Ansgar visits Cornell, I give Meanwhile, Ansgar’s literary-tour
my guest a politely hard time during his business grew into a moderately suc-
seminar. He handles it well, as he does a cessful enterprise. For a time after I
pretty disconnected set of questions from met him, he was a part-time research-
the only two professors who find time to er—a different path indeed in a profes-
come to his talk, one of two that day, six sion addicted to a permanent search
that week. The rest of the audience is for the new, and that is a time-consum-
students who, as usual, sit quietly. ing, addictive search. To remain part-
time in research Ansgar had to find a
A Molecular Tetrahelix sympathetic group leader—a professor
At dinner that evening, over a bottle who would recognize that another ob-
of Corbières, Ansgar tells me part of session shared the mind of the talented
his story. He always loved chemistry. young scientist and give Ansgar half of
And he always read; German litera- his time for his literary activities. Peter
ture was close to him. Originally from Luger in Berlin did it. However, today
Cologne, Ansgar did his Ph.D. at the (in 2010) Ansgar devotes all his time to
Free University of Berlin in the group Literarisch Reisen.
of Hans Hartl. Now that was a name I But back to our first meeting, at Cor-
knew well. Hartl and his students had nell in 2002. At dinner, we talk of why
This tetrahelix structure was designed by Arata made some copper compounds whose he doesn’t “do” Goethe (as everyone
Isozaki and built in 1990 in Mito, Japan. (Pho- shapes had two, three or four tetrahe- else does), and we talk of Caro, Kleist,
tograph courtesy of Art Tower Mito, Japan.) dra that shared faces. I saw these once Borodin and von Arnim. In the mid-
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words falling in place after the seventh Ansgar thought that the plausible
draft of a poem; an inkling of an orbital C=N–N=C linkage could come from
explanation. It’s not a gift, it’s a portal we the reaction of acetone with hydrazine
open ourselves. It opens to the one poet (H2N–NH2). But where did the hydra-
in us all, as Reiner Maria Rilke wrote zine come from? That remains a mys-
to Marina Tsvetaeva. Or to the one sci- tery. One day someone will reinvesti-
entist who understands. And then the gate the reaction, and we will learn.
universe takes a jog, our attention snaps,
we’re out of the flow. It shuts down. Angels in Germany
Hans Hartl, Ansgar’s mentor, gives We go back to my office after dinner.
Hans Hartl and Ansgar Bach made a myste- us more detail: There is an angel to be found, a sick
rious compound, whose crystal structure is student to worry about, and a lecture
Waiting for ZnI2 that we had or-
shown above. In this segment of a continuing to write.
dered, we used some available ZnI2
polymeric chain, oxygen is red, hydrogen is The angel: Carl Djerassi and I have
light gray, zinc is green and iodine is purple. from our own chemical inventory.
written a play, Oxygen, which had its
Note the HOOH hydrogen-peroxide groups. The compound had been bottled
German premiere the previous year in
in a small glass flask and stored
Würzburg. Ansgar describes his visit
many years before. This ZnI2 suf-
dle of such literary talk, Ansgar says: to the play:
ficed only for the first experiments,
“You know, what I’d really like to do
which produced some crystals of I arrived there just after you left,
is to go back to something strange we
the mysterious compounds. How- on Tuesday. The officials told me
found for zinc iodide.” He tells me a
ever, it was not possible to synthe- tickets were gone—no chance to
reaction he once ran in Hartl’s labora-
size these compounds with ZnI2 get one. So I went to the box office
tory, with zinc iodide (ZnI2) and water.
bought or produced in our lab. in the theatre and got the same
Out of the yellow solution came one
We tried all sorts of experiments, answer: no chance—sold out.
crystal, a long, colorless needle. They
for example storing the ZnI2 in the But I stayed there, maybe about
“stuck it in a diffractometer,” and
dark, or placing it on a window ten minutes, and a blond-haired
what emerged was a structure of an
with sunshine, UV irradiation and angel appeared. She asked, “Do
inorganic polymer (above).
so on. For many years we regu- you want a ticket?” I said, “Thank
The ZnI2 in the structure is unex-
larly repeated our attempts, but you, you’re an angel.” She then
ceptional; it came into the mixture as
all were in vain. Thus we cannot said with a smile that I would
a reagent. But where did the HOOH,
publish these compounds. meet her that night—and she was
hydrogen peroxide, a potent bleaching
a quite attractive person. At night,
agent, come from? From the water, to be Has Ansgar made a species that im-
shortly before the performance
sure. But what oxidizing agent, puller mediately went extinct? An instant fos-
started, I looked around in the
of electrons, could be there, to take elec- sil? Maybe. Days later I ask a talented
– auditorium for the angel. I saw
trons out of the OH part of water and German postdoctoral associate in my
Carl Djerassi (my first impression
make the OH in HOOH? We were both group, Beate Flemmig, to do a calcula-
of him: a Hemingway of science)
chemists; the same question occurred to tion (that’s our métier) on Ansgar’s
who was some seats behind me.
us, as it would have to Primo Levi, or as molecule. No matter what Beate does,
The performance began and I rec-
it will to every future chemist. the strangeness of the acetone cou-
ognized my angel: She was play-
Ansgar doesn’t know. He has also run pling does not go away. She then has
ing Madame Lavoisier.
a similar reaction in acetone, the com- the bright idea of trying, instead of a
mon solvent we see as nail-polish re- C–O–O–C linkage in the polymer, a I must say that when I first came
mover. Acetone is CH3COCH3. They got C=N–N=C. The bonding is now nor- across the word angel in his email, I
a linkage of the acetone units through mal, and the geometrical parameters thought of another angel, one in Ber-
the oxygens, and a polymeric structure fit Ansgar’s compound. lin: The angel who becomes a man in
through bridging with Zn2I4 (right).
This result is still more remarkable.
“I’ve never seen anything like that cou-
pling,” I say. The central coupled acetone
unit, (CH3)2C–O–O–C(CH3)2, should be
a very reactive species. I begin to write
mechanisms and orbitals on the paper
tablecloth conveniently supplied at this
favorite restaurant. Chemists cover nap-
kins with drawings of molecules; you
can always tell where they’ve sat.
Now comes the tragedy. Ansgar says
one student was able to repeat the syn-
thesis. “But then it shut down,” he says
plaintively. I am not an experimental- An unusual compound, whose apparent crystal structure is shown here, arises in the reaction of ac-
ist, but I know exactly what he meant. I etone (CH3COCH3.) with zinc iodide (ZnI2). Carbon is shown in dark gray, oxygen is red, hydrogen
know the feeling in another context—the is light gray, zinc is green and iodine is purple. Note the oxygen-linked acetone (CH3)2CO units.
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for a while. Troubled communications

from him had crossed a line the day be-
fore; a threat was made. The police of-
ficer is there to talk about it. This also is a
part of my life. Maybe it will find its way
into Ansgar’s next Krimi.
We talk into the night, of Hans Bethe
and his father-in-law P. P. Ewald, one
of the great figures in crystallography.
Also of Hans Hellmann, perhaps the
first German theoretical chemist, who
was executed in the Soviet Union in
1938 (that’s another story). And of that
strange structure again.
But I have to send Ansgar home to
his hotel. For the next morning, there
is a class to be taught—a “World of
Everett Collection
Chemistry” general-education course,

science for the citizen. The class tells
young people about chemistry, its
connections to culture, how chemists
think. I should have told them Ans-
Bruno Ganz plays Damiel the angel, who becomes human, in Wim Wenders’s classic dramatic gar’s story. But I didn’t have the cour-
film Wings of Desire (titled Der Himmel über Berlin in Germany). In the film, angels only see
age; I spoke of water instead.
in black and white, so only scenes shot from a human’s perspective are in color.
Acknowledgement
Wim Wenders’s classic dramatic film tion would be able to put the young I am grateful to Ansgar Bach for telling me his sto-
Wings of Desire, in order to experience people in touch. How could an angel ry, to him and Hans Hartl for allowing me to quote
human love and emotion. not be in favor of love? from their correspondence, and to Beate Flemmig
for the calculations mentioned in the text.
Ansgar’s angel was female. I knew When Ansgar comes into my office
her, but I did not know her address or before dinner, a Cornell police officer is
contact information. But I was sure that there talking to me. A former student of Bibliography
the director of the Würzburg produc- mine has had psychological problems Literarisch Reisen. www.literarisch-reisen.de
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Science Observer
Science Observer
Amplifying with Acid sium ion and the sulfate ion are attracted
to each other—in human terms it’s like
they’re dating—and in their normal state
More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere means a noisier ocean they exist with a single water molecule
between them, like a courting couple
would have a chaperone. When a sound
Carbon dioxide has gained notoriety erate” scenario, in which CO2 emissions wave comes through, it tends to squeeze
as a “greenhouse gas”; it’s one of the remain at a constant level, pH drops by that group together and the water mol-
major waste products from human about 0.6 units at the ocean’s surface, ecule pops out, so our attracted couple
industrial activities that contribute to and by about 0.2 to 0.4 units at depth. just touches, ever so briefly. When the
climate change. However, the gas that The corresponding lowering of sound sound wave passes by, the water mol-
we release into the atmosphere is also absorption depends on location and ecule jumps back in and separates the
absorbed into the oceans at a rate of frequency. At a frequency of about 200 pair. And the work done to do that robs
about a million tons per hour. Seawa- hertz, the drop ranges from about 10 to the sound wave of some energy.” The
ter reacts with carbon dioxide to form about 50 percent. Across all frequencies, problem is that as the ocean becomes
carbonic acid, decreasing the pH of the the change is largest in the polar regions, more acidic, the ionized form of borate
oceans. This outcome has its own envi- because the colder water absorbs more decreases, so there is less of the salt form
ronmental impacts, such as damage to CO2 and thus has a greater pH change. to resonate and absorb sound.
coral reefs and aquatic-animal respira- Changes in pH can impact the deep Brewer emphasizes that this de-
tion, but it also has a secondary conse- ocean because at about 1 kilometer creased-absorption effect is confined
quence: It decreases the ocean’s ability down, the properties of temperature and to a relatively small range of frequen-
to absorb low-frequency sound. pressure combine to produce a “chan- cies, between about 100 hertz and 10
Oceanographers Tatiana Ilyina and nel” of water in which sound can propa- kilohertz. He estimates that the effect
Richard Zeebe of the University of gate for many thousands of kilometers. will be most strongly felt around 200
Hawaii, along with geochemist Peter Whales and other marine life make use to 600 hertz, over distances of roughly
Brewer of the Monterey Bay Aquarium of this channel for long-range communi- 100 miles. “We’re talking 40 percent of
Research Institute in California, report cation. Most human-made ocean noise a small effect, so it isn’t a lot,” he says.
in the December 20 issue of Nature Geo- forms at the surface, but it can reflect and “On the other hand, 40 percent is a big
science that lowering the pH of the ocean refract down into this channel as well. number in itself; if any species is sen-
by 0.6 units could decrease underwater Although the vast majority of sound sitive in that range, they would notice
low-frequency sound absorption by loss in the ocean is due to distance, the change in that scale.”
more than 60 percent. “Ocean acidifica- reflections and turbulence, the pH- The affected range includes a large
tion is not only affecting the chemistry dependent component of the ocean’s proportion of the frequencies used by
of the ocean, but it also affects the basic sound absorbance comes from reso- marine organisms. Also, most human-
physical properties,” says Ilyina. nance reactions in natural salts, namely generated ocean noise is in the range
The ocean surface’s average pH is boric-acid compounds and magnesium of 10 hertz to 1 kilohertz, and the vol-
currently estimated to be around 8.1, sulfate. The reaction is similar for both, ume is rising: The biggest component
and to have dropped from about 8.2 but it’s more straightforward in magne- is shipping, and the number of ships
since around 1800, before the industrial sium sulfate, says Brewer: “The magne- worldwide has approximately doubled
revolution took off, says Zeebe. A re-
duction of 0.1 units does not sound like –0.5
–50
much, but pH units are on a logarithmic –0.4
scale, so a drop of one unit corresponds –40
–0.3 –30
to a tenfold increase in acidity.
Using projections of fossil-fuel CO2 –0.2 –20
emissions over the next century from –0.1 –10
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC), the researchers calcu-
Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is absorbed into the ocean, where it reacts with seawater
lated changes for seawater pH at the to form carbonic acid and lower pH levels. The projected difference in ocean surface pH
surface and at a depth of 1 kilometer, between 1800 and 2100, based on static carbon-dioxide emission levels, ranges up to a drop
along with the corresponding changes in by 0.6 units (left). The corresponding decrease in the deep ocean’s sound absorption at a
sound absorption at several frequencies frequency of 200 hertz ranges up to 60 percent, depending on latitude (right). (Images cour-
below 10 kilohertz. In the IPCC’s “mod- tesy of Tatiana Ilyina, Richard Zeebe, Peter Brewer and Nature Geoscience.)
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over the past 40 years. The researchers “This effect has been off the radar things that are going to change. We’re
calculate that there could be “acous- screen, so to come along and say ‘hey, fairly far down this greenhouse-gas
tic hotspots” that are most sensitive to what about this’ is important,” says road, and we’re nowhere near to
changes in sound propagation, such as Brewer. “It means there are new ways knowing what’s going to happen to
areas at the more extreme latitudes that of looking at the Earth, it means we us. It’s a strange new world we’re get-
also experience a lot of shipping. are nowhere near to running out of ting into.”—Fenella Saunders
Sunburned Ferns?
Optical physics provides the antidote to a gardening myth
The following question appeared on an medium) than glass. Water droplets are
exam for Hungarian students in 2006: not perfectly spherical in shape; an el-
lipsoid shape has less refractive power
In summer, at midday sunshine,
and, therefore, a longer focal length,
it is inadvisable to water in the
than does a sphere. And water drops
garden, because the plant leaves
come into contact with the leaf and cool
burn. Which is the only correct
it as they evaporate.
explanation for this?
The team also created a computer
It would be hard to provide a correct simulation of how water drops focus
answer—the question itself is incor- sunlight. Using measurements of drop
rect. But it reflects a widely held hor- shape and the elevation angle of the
ticultural belief: that watering plants in sun, they determined the light-collecting
the middle of the day causes sunburn. efficiency of the drops. This allowed
“This is an old environmental optical them to estimate the focal region of a
problem,” says Gábor Horváth of the given drop and thus determine whether
environmental optics laboratory at Eöt- refracted sunlight would focus on the
vös Loránd University in Budapest. leaf surface and heat it. As it happens,
And no one had tried to solve it. for water drops resting on a horizontal
Horváth and his colleagues decided leaf surface, the focal region falls on the
to do so. They describe their results in a leaf surface only at about 23 degrees A leaf with a smooth, water-repellant sur-
face (Ginkgo biloba, left) and a leaf with
paper published online in New Phytolo- solar elevation—in the early morning
a smooth but not water-repellant surface
gist on January 8. To test what happens and late afternoon, when the sun is not (Acer platanoides, right) are covered with
when rays of sunlight pass through intense enough to cause burn. small water droplets to determine whether
droplets on leaves, they covered maple In a final experiment, they tested exposure to the sun will burn them. The
(Acer platanoides) leaves with small clear whether water drops can cause sun- drops on the ginkgo leaves are more spheri-
glass beads and exposed them to direct burn on leaves whose surfaces are cov- cal because the leaf surfaces are more water
sun. When they scanned the leaves, sun- ered with small hairs. The group used repellant. (Photographs courtesy of Gábor
burned spots were clearly visible, their floating fern (Salvinia natans) leaves Horváth and New Phytologist.)
severity increasing with the amount of for this experiment; they placed water
time the leaves had been exposed. drops on the leaves and exposed them at noon; doing so can introduce other
As is often the case with persistent to two hours of midday sunlight. Many kinds of physiological stress.
myths, the idea of plants getting sun- of these leaves were clearly burned. Humans may have something in
burn “made sense.” The glass beads “Leaf hairs can hold a water drop- common with hairy-leaved plants: Wa-
supported that. To find whether wa- let at an appropriate height above the ter droplets held by the tiny hairs on our
ter would do the same, the researchers leaf so that the droplet’s focal region skin might focus sunlight to cause sun-
placed water drops on maple leaves, can fall just onto the leaf surface” and burn. Horváth hopes someone will in-
which have a smooth, non-water- at the same time prevent the drop vestigate. In the meantime, he is happy
repellant surface, and ginkgo (Ginkgo from providing evaporative cooling, to have thrown some light on the subject
biloba) leaves, whose smooth surfaces Horváth explains. Fortunately for the of leaf burn. “Misbeliefs and myths rule
repel water. The sets of leaves were ex- floating fern, its leaf hairs are water the online literature,” he says. Raymond
posed to sun at varying times and left repellant; it is likely that drops would Lee, a meteorologist at the United States
until the drops had evaporated. Scans roll off of the leaf before they could Naval Academy, agrees: “Atmospheric
revealed no visible leaf burn. cause much burn. optical phenomena such as this pres-
Several factors account for this. Wa- Still, Horváth advises, it’s probably ent many opportunities for confusion
ter has a smaller refractive index (a best not to water hairy-leaved plants and myth-making among generalist
measure of the decrease in the speed in the middle of the day—and it’s not a readers—and even a surprising number
of a wave when it passes into a new bad idea to avoiding watering all plants of scientists.”—Anna Lena Phillips
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In the News
This roundup summarizes common finish. The violins chimps during two savannah Diagnosing Devils
some notable recent items bear a simple base coat of fires in Senegal and found A deadly contagious cancer
about scientific research, oil, perhaps linseed. Atop that the apes didn’t flee as could drive wild Tasmanian
selected from news reports that is an oil-resin blend, other animals did. Rather, devils (Sarcophilus harrissi) to
compiled in Sigma Xi’s free tinted with ordinary red pig- the chimps waited until the extinction within decades.
electronic newsletters Sci- ments of the day: iron oxide flames drew near, sometimes The cancer cells spread from
ence in the News Daily and and cochineal. If Stradivari within 15 meters, then casu- one individual to another
Science in the News Weekly. used a rare key ingredient, ally moved on. One male during physical contact. But
Online: http://sitn.sigmaxi. his instruments have kept displayed toward the blaze where did the original con-
org and _____________
___ http://www.ameri- the secret. and uttered what might be a tagious tumor come from?
canscientist.org/sitnweekly
___________________ unique fire-related bark. The To find out, researchers
Echard, J.-P., et al. The nature apes’ ability to predict and compared gene expression
of the extraordinary finish of avoid the bushfire is proba- in tumors and in several
An Unlikely Pollinator bly a prerequisite to control-
Stradivari’s instruments. Ange- healthy tissues. The closest
Normally, crickets would wandte Chemie International ling and building fires—steps match was in the Schwann
just as soon chew on plants Edition 49:197–201 (January 4) that eventually happened in cells—cells that normally
as pollinate them. But on the human lineage. protect the peripheral ner-
a small island in the Indian The Sudden Sea vous system. Biologists hope
Ocean, researchers have Pruetz, J. D. and T. C. LaDuke. that knowing which genes
The Mediterranean basin was
found a plain-looking orchid Reaction to fire by savanna are active in the tumors will
practically a desert 5.6 million
(Angraecum cadetii) that chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes help them develop tests and
years ago. Then, abruptly, it
depends entirely on a wing- verus) at Fongoli, Senegal: Con- vaccines to protect the ailing
became a sea. It filled with
less cricket to help it mate. ceptualization of “fire behavior” marsupials.
water in less than two years,
Most of the orchid’s main- and the case for a chimpanzee
when the Atlantic Ocean
land relatives are pollinated model. American Journal of
gushed through the Strait of Murchison, E. P., et al. The
by hawk moths, but no such Physical Anthropology (published
Gibraltar with 1,000 times the Tasmanian devil transcriptome
moths live on the island. Dur- online December 21)
flow of the Amazon River. reveals Schwann cell origins of
ing 48 days and 14 nights of
The Mediterranean sea level a clonally transmissible cancer.
observation, researchers saw Stop That Ringing!
rose some 30 feet per day. Science 327:84–87 (January 1)
birds, cockroaches, and even
Although this deluge was pre- Personalized music therapy
a gecko visit the flowers—but
ceded by thousands of years could soothe millions of peo- Like-Minded
only raspy crickets (Glomere-
of relatively slow trickling,
mus sp.) removed the pollen. ple with chronic tinnitus, or (Planetary) Neighbors
90 percent of the filling hap- ringing in the ears. Research-
Whether the phenomenon
pened during those last sev- ers custom-edited musical The hunt for Earth-like plan-
is a quirk of island ecology
eral months. Geologists knew recordings so that eight vol- ets is heating up. Astrono-
or whether it’s just been
that the Mediterranean had unteers could listen to their mers have spotted a watery
overlooked on the mainland
gone from desert to sea, but favorite songs—minus the planet that is 2.7 times larger
remains to be seen.
until now, they weren’t sure notes with the same pitch as than Earth and only 42 light-
how fast. New samples drilled their tinnitus. After one year years away. It even orbits its
Micheneau, C., et al. Orthop- from the seafloor at Gibraltar star at a nearly-habitable
tera, a new order of pollinator. of listening to the modified
revealed the size and shape of tunes, participants’ ringing distance. Nearly, but proba-
Annals of Botany (published the old flood channel, inform- bly not quite: The newfound
online January 11) ears were quieter, and over-
ing a more vivid reconstruc- active regions of their brains planet heats up to 400 de-
tion of the event. were more normal. It appears grees Fahrenheit during the
No Secret Ingredient day. It also doesn’t have any
that, when deprived of real
Stradivarius violins, legend- Garcia-Castellanos, D., et al. sounds at the problem pitch, land. Astronomers found this
ary for their rich and ex- Catastrophic flood of the Medi- the brain learns not to “hear” steamy world by monitoring
pressive tones, remain the terranean after the Messinian the tinnitus either. Control 2,000 nearby stars for recur-
standard by which newer salinity crisis. Nature 462:778– participants listened to music ring faint eclipses caused by
instruments are judged. 781 (December 10) that lacked randomly selected orbiting planets. This and
Their uniformly dense wood, placebo frequencies, and did other recently discovered
or the chemical treatments Pyro-Chimps not benefit. small planets show that the
it received, might contribute Wielding fire is a quintes- technique is working and
to the violins’ unique acous- sentially human pursuit. But Okamoto, H., et al. Listening may soon reveal even more
tics—but their varnish most chimpanzees are pretty fire- to tailor-made notched music familiar-looking worlds.
likely does not. A new chem- savvy too, a discovery that reduces tinnitus loudness and
ical analysis of minute sam- hints at how our ancestors tinnitus-related auditory cortex Charbonneau, D., et al. A super-
ples from five Stradivarius may have first come to tin- activity. Proceedings of the Earth transiting a nearby low-
instruments, built between ker with flames. An anthro- National Academy of Sciences mass star. Nature 462:891–894
1692 and 1720, reveals a very pologist followed a troop of 107:1207–1210 (January 19) (December 17)
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Feature Articles
The Ultimate Mouthful: Lunge Feeding in

Rorqual Whales
The ocean’s depths have long shrouded the biomechanics behind the largest
marine mammals’ eating methods, but new devices have brought them to light
Jeremy A. Goldbogen
A hungry fin whale dives deep into

the ocean to perform a series of
rapid accelerations with mouth agape
clusively by rorquals, a family of ba-
leen whales that includes species such
as humpback, fin and blue whales.
made by early investigators that were
based only on anatomical knowledge
and sea-surface observations. More-
into a dense prey patch. On each of Like all baleen whales, rorquals are over, our analyses have uncovered new
these bouts, or lunges, the whale en- suspension filter feeders that sepa- engulfment mechanisms, which, in
gulfs about ten kilograms of krill con- rate small crustaceans and fish from turn, have led us back to studying the
tained within some 70,000 liters of engulfed water using plates of kera- remarkable morphological adaptations
water—a volume heavier than its own tin—the same protein that forms hair, that drive the lunge-feeding process.
weight—in a few seconds. During a fingernails and turtle shells—that hang
lunge, the whale oscillates its tail and down from the top of their mouths. By Big Heads and Inverting Tongues
fluke to accelerate the body to high feeding in bulk on dense aggregations Our first insight into how lunge feeding
speed and opens its mouth to about 90 of prey, baleen whales can support works came in large part from the pio-
degrees. The drag that is generated forc- huge body sizes—they count among neering studies of August Pivorunas,
es the water into its oral cavity, which their numbers some of the largest Richard Lambertsen and Paul Brodie
has pleats that expand up to four times animals that have ever lived. Rorqual over the past several decades. Their in-
their resting size. After the whale’s jaws lunge feeding is especially unusual not vestigations focused on the anatomical
close, the sheer size of the engulfed wa- only with respect to the tremendous machinery that makes lunge feeding
ter mass is evident as the body takes on size of the engulfed water mass, but possible. Rorquals exhibit a complex
a “bloated tadpole” shape. In less than also in the underlying morphological suite of bizarre morphological adapta-
a minute, all of the engulfed water is fil- and physical mechanisms that make tions in the head, mouth and throat.
tered out of the distended throat pouch this extraordinary behavior possible. The head looks more reptilian than
as it slowly deflates, leaving the prey Because of the logistical difficulties mammalian; its shape is a key charac-
inside the mouth. Over several hours of in studying rorqual lunge feeding deep teristic required to meet the conflict-
continuous foraging, a whale can ingest in the ocean, our knowledge of this in- ing demands of engulfment and loco-
more than a ton of krill, enough to give gestion process, until recently, has been motion. A rorqual must have a large,
it sufficient energy for an entire day. limited to observations made at the sea distensible mouth in order to engulf a
Years ago, Paul Brodie of the Bedford surface. Over the past several years, my large volume of water—but it also has
Institute of Oceanography described colleagues and I have made significant to be able to contract and tighten back
the feeding method of fin whales as advances in understanding how lunge into the body to maintain a streamlined
the “greatest biomechanical action in feeding works. Our collective effort has shape for low drag and efficient steady
the animal kingdom.” This extreme been motivated by unique data gen- swimming, particularly during long
lunge-feeding strategy is exhibited ex- erated by digital tags attached to the dives or long-distance migration.
backs of lunge-feeding rorquals. These In the larger rorqual species, the skull
tags have enabled us to quantify the and mandibles are truly massive, mak-
Jeremy A. Goldbogen earned his Ph.D. in zoology particular body movements that ror- ing up nearly 25 percent of the body. The
in 2009 from the University of British Columbia.
quals undergo during a lunge-feeding mandibles are connected to the base of
He is now a postdoctoral research fellow at the
Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the Uni-
event. With these data we have been the skull through giant pads of a dense,
versity of California, San Diego. Address: Scripps able to determine the physical forces elastic matrix of fibers and cartilage that
Institution of Oceanography, University of Cali- at play during engulfment and also to are infused with oil. This type of jaw
fornia at San Diego, Marine Physical Laboratory estimate the magnitude of the water joint is unique to rorquals, and possibly
(Whale Acoustics), 9500 Gilman Dr., La Jolla, CA mass taken in. In doing so, we have also to the closely related gray whale.
92093-0205. Email:_________
jergold@ucsd.edu confirmed many predictions previously These specialized jaw joints are flexible
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Randy Morse, ___________

GoldenStateImages.com
Figure 1. Normally streamlined and efficient swimmers, rorqual whales (such as the blue whale, above) become hugely inflated during feed-
ing. These whales fill their expandable oral cavities with tons of seawater and prey, then filter out the water through the baleen that lines their
jaws. After diving deep into the ocean, the whales rapidly lunge through dense patches of prey to engulf mass quantities of food. The biome-
chanics of this process has been obscured by the ocean depths, but electronic tags have elucidated the whales’ feeding mechanism.
linkages between the skull and man- cles that hold the mandibles in place of the tongue and the walls of the buc-
dibles, which permits the jaws to open release and allow them to sag open. cal cavity, which extends all the way
to nearly 90 degrees. Such a feature is By having a kinetic skull with spe- down to the whale’s belly button. Dur-
required so the whales can engulf as cialized jaw joints, rorquals enhance ing engulfment the tongue inverts into
much water as possible during a lunge: mouth area and increase the rate of the cavum, retreating through the floor
Although the mouth area is very large, water flow into the oral cavity. This of the mouth and back towards the
the proportion of that area directed to- rapid influx of water is facilitated by belly button, forming the large oral sac
ward the prey is determined by the gape a most unusual mechanism: a tongue that holds the incoming seawater.
angle between the skull and jaws. that can invert and form a capacious The extreme distension of the buccal
The rorqual skull also possesses a oral sac that accommodates the en- cavity during engulfment presents a
third jaw joint, the mandibular symphy- gulfed seawater on the ventral side problem for the walls of the body, which
sis, which connects the mandibles at the of the body. The rorqual tongue is ex- in cetaceans is composed of stiff blubber
center of the lower jaw. In some mam- tremely flaccid and deformable. Al- and firm connective tissue. All rorquals
mals this linkage is fused, but in ror- though it has some distinct structure have a distinct series of longitudinal
quals it also has a fibrocartilage compo- reminiscent of a typical mammalian furrows in the ventral blubber that span
sition that enhances its flexibility. With tongue, it is weakly muscularized and nearly half of the whale’s body length,
this third, very flexible jaw joint, the composed largely of elastic fatty tissue. from the snout to the belly button. In
strongly curved mandibles are able to A floppy, loose tongue can be easily fact, the name “rorqual” comes from
rotate outward and increase the area inverted when water rushes into the the Norwegian word röyrkval, meaning
of the mouth. Mandibular rotation is oral cavity (also called the buccal cav- “furrow whale.” This ventral groove
consistently observed in lunge-feeding ity). Moreover, there is a specialized blubber (VGB) consists of tough ridges
rorquals at the sea surface, and also in intramuscular space, called the cavum separated by deep channels of delicate
post-mortem specimens when the mus- ventrale, located between the bottom elastic tissue; when viewed in cross-
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lunge-feeding in the natural environ-

ment. Bill Burgess of Greeneridge
Sciences developed a high-resolution
digital tag that could be temporarily
attached to the backs of whales as they
surface to breathe. The tags, equipped
with suction cups for attachment and a
flotation device for retrieval, contained
a variety of sensors, including a hy-
drophone, a pressure transducer and
an accelerometer. The data from these
tags provided a short glimpse into the
underwater behavior of rorquals, in-
cluding body orientation, the times
when the whale was swimming versus
when it was gliding, and dive depth.
The application of these tags, using
a long fiberglass pole, is not a trivial
task—it requires many years of experi-
ence at sea and typically a coordinated
effort between a large support vessel
Figure 2. A historical whaling photo shows a blue whale’s oral cavity sagging after death, and a smaller tagging boat.
when the whale’s muscles no longer hold it rigid. The whale’s floppy tongue and hairlike fil- The tagging operations were led by
tering baleen can also be seen. (Photograph courtesy of the Shetland Museum and Archives.) John Calambokidis and Greg Schorr
from the Cascadia Research Collective
section, the VGB has an accordion-like the tissue provided an important clue in Olympia, Washington, and Erin Ole-
architecture that could easily unfurl if as to how fast a fin whale must swim to son of the Scripps Institution of Ocean-
the underlying muscle became relaxed. successfully execute a lunge. As a ror- ography. For the past seven to eight
The tremendous engulfment capacity qual accelerates and lowers its jaws, dy- years, tagging studies were conducted
of rorquals is clearly dependent on this namic pressure is generated inside the every summer at various locations off
unique morphological design, and it oral cavity and applied against the floor the coast of California and Mexico. The
turns out that the VGB is remarkable of the mouth. In theory, the dynamic tag data showed that many rorquals
not only in its structure but also in its pressure alone could generate enough
mechanical behavior. force to completely extend the VGB and
inflate the buccal cavity, but only if the
Super-stretchy Blubber and Muscle swimming speed is high enough. By
The first major breakthrough in under- approximating the inflated buccal cav-
standing the biomechanics of lunge ity as a thin-walled cylinder, Orton and
feeding came in the late 1980s from Brodie predicted that a lunge speed of 3
some simple, yet elegant, experiments meters per second would be sufficient
by Lisa Orton and Paul Brodie. The to maximally fill a fin whale’s buccal
researchers obtained fresh samples of cavity. This prediction seemed consis-
fin whale VGB from a whaling station tent with sea-surface observations, but
in Hvalfjördur, Iceland and performed there was really no way to accurately
mechanical tests on the tissue to deter- measure swim speed during a lunge
mine how much strain it could with- until very recently.
stand for a given amount of stress. They
found that the VGB and associated Lunges in the Deep
muscle layers could reversibly extend Nearly two decades after Orton and
up to several times their resting length. Brodie’s study, the opportunity came
This extraordinary extensibility was at- to test their predictions by examining
tributed to the vast amounts of elas- the motion, or kinematics, of rorqual
tin, a specialized elastic protein, found
throughout the tissue, and the fact that Figure 3. When a whale is not feeding, its
the VGB unfolds like a parachute cano- tongue (red, top) is furled up along the floor of
py in the absence of muscle tone. its mouth (blue) and the cavum ventrale (green
The extensibility of the VGB is a dotted line) is collapsed. As the whale engulfs
water and prey, the deformable tongue push-
key component of the engulfment ap-
es through the cavum ventrale and the oral
paratus because it provides the great sac starts to expand (green, middle). At full
capacity that is needed for a whale to expansion, the tongue is inverted and flattens
envelop large amounts of water and out completely to form a large part of the wall
prey. In addition, the amount of force of the oral sac; the floor of the mouth also
that is required to sufficiently stretch stretches to form part of the cavity (bottom).
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made consecutive deep dives, in some

cases up to 300 meters in depth. At the
bottom of these deep dives, the data
showed a series of wiggles or undula-
tions. Each wiggle was accompanied
by an intense bout of active swimming
strokes and a concomitant decrease in
water flow noise, which indicated a
rapid decrease in speed that is typically
seen during lunges at the sea surface.
Although these data were sugges-
tive of lunges at depth, direct evidence
came from another type of suction-
cup tag: National Geographic’s Crit-
tercam, conceived and developed
by Greg Marshall. The video camera
within Crittercam was equipped with
an infrared light, for the dark condi-
tions during deep dives, and also a
time-depth recorder. The video footage
shows the whale swimming through
dense fields of krill at the bottom of
deep dives. The images from one Crit-
tercam deployment shows the whale’s
lower jaws dropping, followed by a
decrease in flow noise, and then an ex-
pansion of the ventral groove blubber.
This provided visual confirmation of
the behavior that we had interpreted
from the data recorded by our digital
tags: several consecutive lunges at the Figure 4. A rorqual whale’s ventral groove blubber (VGB) allows its oral cavity to expand enor-
bottom of deep foraging dives. mously. The firm ridges of the accordionlike VGB are connected by deep furrows of delicate
After more analyses, we realized that elastic tissue (top). In cross-section the VGB is made up of layers of muscle, elastin, fatty blub-
we could use the level of flow noise ber and epidermis (bottom left). Mechanical tests have shown that VGB can expand to more
than twice its original length (bottom right). (Top photograph courtesy of Nick Pyenson.)
recorded by the digital tag’s hydro-
phone to calculate the whale’s swim-
ming speed throughout each foraging sleek, well-streamlined body profile. rate of approximately 20 cubic me-
dive. This “flow-noise speedometer” The result is predictably high drag as ters per second. At the end of a lunge
revealed just how rapid the changes in flow is directed around the mandibles that lasted six seconds, the accumu-
speed were during a lunge. Amazingly, and distended buccal cavity, which robs lated engulfed water mass was about
the maximum lunge speed recorded momentum from the whale and causes 60 tonnes, which again supported
for fin whales was 3 meters per second, the body to decelerate rapidly. The size the prediction made by Paul Brodie
precisely the flow speed that Orton and and shape of the mandibles, therefore, in 1993. The engulfed water mass is
Brodie had predicted to be enough to has a great influence on how much drag about the size of a school bus, a truly
passively inflate the buccal cavity. Fur- is experienced during a lunge. Because enormous amount. The magnitude
thermore, the speed data revealed a the mandibles determine the size of the of the engulfed water is also colossal
rapid deceleration of the body even mouth, they also largely determine how relative to the whale, whose own body
while the whale continued to swim much water is engulfed. mass weighs in at around 45 tonnes.
actively, an indication that the whale Recognizing the effects of skull and By engulfing a volume of water that
was experiencing very high drag as it mandible shape on the mechanics is greater than its own body mass, the
opened its mouth wide. The kinematic of engulfment, Nick Pyenson of the whale necessarily incurs tremendous
data from the tags, it turns out, held the Smithsonian Institution, Bob Shadwick amounts of drag. The whale must do
key to determining not only how much of the University of British Colum- work against this drag, and this repre-
drag is incurred, but also how much bia and I set out to measure as many sents a major source of energy expendi-
water the whale engulfs. museum specimens as possible. By ture during a lunge. The work required
integrating our morphological mea- for engulfment triples over the course
Big Gulps and High Drag surements with the kinematic data ob- of a lunge, whereas the drag increases
As a rorqual lowers its jaws and presents tained from the tags, we were able to approximately five-fold. One other im-
the inside of its mouth to oncoming flow, estimate how much water is engulfed portant metric in the field of hydrody-
water that is rushing into the mouth will during a fin whale lunge. When the namics, called the drag coefficient, is a
expand and distend the throat pouch. jaws were open to maximum gape, for measure of how streamlined an object
Such a reconfiguration represents a ma- example, our calculations suggested is and how effective it is at decreasing
jor departure from the whale’s normal that the buccal cavity was filling at a drag. High drag coefficients are typical
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a passively engulfing whale as it experi-

ences drag. By comparing the model out-
put to the empirical tag data, we could
explicitly test particular engulfment
mechanisms. The first question we asked
was: Is a lunge-feeding whale just like an
inflating parachute? If this were the case,
a rorqual would inflate passively, and the
flow-induced pressure that expands the
buccal cavity would be met with little
resistance because of the extremely com-
pliant properties of the VGB.
Our simulation of passive engulf-
ment in fin whales resulted in a poor
match with the tag data because the
body was simply not slowing down
rapidly enough. In other words, there
wasn’t enough drag to account for the
Figure 5. Attaching an electronic tag to a moving blue whale is no easy task. Here, a Cascadia rapid deceleration that we had observed
Research team places a tag via a long fiberglass pole, under a research permit from the Na- in the tagged whales. This also meant
tional Marine Fisheries Service. The red flotation device on the tag facilitates its recovery once that water was going into the mouth
the tag’s suction cups fall off the whale. (Photograph by Sherwin Cotler, Cascadia Research.) far too rapidly and, as a consequence,
the buccal cavity reached maximum ca-
of poorly streamlined shapes, whereas parachutes need drag to inflate and slow pacity halfway through the lunge (at
low values indicate a highly streamlined down their cargo, whereas rorquals re- about the point when the mouth was
shape. Our simple calculations suggest- quire drag to inflate the buccal cavity. open to maximum gape). Maximum
ed that, over the course of a lunge, the filling of the buccal cavity would occur
drag coefficient increases by more than Of Whales and Parachutes because at some point the VGB cannot
an order of magnitude. Thus, a lunge- The realization that rorqual lunge feed- extend anymore. At that point in time,
feeding rorqual undergoes an extreme ing involves incredibly high amounts of the entire engulfed mass would have
transformation from a very well-stream- drag led us to a most unlikely collabora- to be immediately accelerated up to the
lined body to one that is highly suscep- tion with Jean Potvin, a parachute physi- instantaneous speed of the whale (2 me-
tible to drag. Interestingly, the maximum cist at Saint Louis University in Missouri. ters per second), which would impose
drag coefficients were very similar to Together we developed a new, more de- unrealistic forces on the walls of the
those for parachutes, another inflating tailed model of rorqual lunge feeding in- buccal cavity. If the VGB was not strong
system. The analogy between inflating spired by decades of parachute-inflation enough to accommodate these exces-
parachutes and lunge feeding is logi- studies. For a given morphology and sively large forces, passive engulfment
cal: Both systems must reconfigure in initial lunge speed, the model predicted would cause catastrophic blow-out of
order to generate drag. In other words, what decrease in velocity to expect for the buccal cavity. If the VGB was strong
enough to withstand these forces, the
engulfed mass would rebound off the
buccal-cavity wall and eject back out
of the mouth before the jaws closed.
In either scenario passive engulfment
does not seem to be a feasible mecha-
4.0 10 80 nism for fin whales. However, such a
speed (meters per second)
mechanism might still be possible for

engulfed volume (cubic meters)
3.5
8 lunges involving lower gape angles and
3.0 60
mouth area (square meters)
smaller engulfed volumes.

2.5 6 If passive engulfment is not pos-
2.0 40 sible, how do rorquals execute a lunge
1.5 4 successfully? There are two key ana-
1.0 20
tomical characteristics of the VGB that
2 suggested a very different engulf-
0.5 ment mechanism. First, we realized
0 0 0 that there were several layers of well-
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 developed muscle that adjoin tightly to
time (seconds)
the grooved blubber. Second, a study
Figure 6. Data from electronic tags on rorqual whales has allowed researchers to break down by Merijn de Bakker and his colleagues
the mechanics of lunge feeding. After diving to a depth of several hundred meters and accel- at Leiden University revealed that
erating (purple line) into a school of krill, a whale opens its mouth (green line), causing massive there were specialized nerves sensitive
drag and deceleration. The oral cavity fills with water (orange line) and the whale closes its to mechanical stress, called mechano-
mouth, then begins filtering out the water and preparing for the next lunge. receptors, embedded within both the
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If such a mechanism exists in rorquals,

as opposed to dead-end filtration where
the filtrate gets stuck in the filter itself, it
could be very effective at keeping small
zooplankton from embedding in the ba-
leen fringes. And further, if krill were to
cake the baleen, how would a rorqual
scrape it off with such a floppy, weakly
muscularized tongue? Maybe one day
technology will enable us to visualize
the flow inside the mouth of a filtering
rorqual and resolve the debate.
Figure 7. Data from an electronic tag on a feeding humpback whale show that the whale dove to 50 Paying the Price to Lunge
to 140 meters (yellow lines) to feed on patches of krill (medium density in blue, high density in red). The high drag that is required for en-
The whale performed a series of lunges (green dots) before returning to the surface to breathe. The gulfment has major consequences for
green line is the seafloor, and each black gridline is 10 meters in depth, with the top starting at five rorqual foraging ecology and evolution-
meters below the surface. Each dive lasted several minutes. (Image courtesy of the author.) ary morphology. Not only must rorquals
expend significant amounts of energy
muscle and blubber layers of the VGB. over lengthier time scales, the peak drag to accelerate the engulfed water mass,
These receptors were concentrated forces experienced by the engulfment ap- but the high drag also robs the whale
within each groove, which is precise- paratus are effectively lower. of its kinetic energy, bringing the body
ly the region of the tissue that would Another benefit associated with ac- to a near halt. As a consequence, the
stretch during engulfment. These two tive engulfment is that it may increase body must be reaccelerated from rest in
lines of evidence suggested that ror- the energetic and mechanical efficiency order to execute the subsequent lunge.
quals may be able to gauge the magni- of filtration by the baleen. If the water is While holding its breath at the bottom of
tude of the engulfed water mass from slowly pushed forward, the entirety of a dive, the whale must lunge over and
the amount of stretch sensed by the tis- the engulfed water mass no longer has over again, and this represents a high
sue and then generate enough force to to be accelerated from rest. Moreover, energetic cost. Thus, rorquals rapidly
slowly push the water forward. Such a because the trajectory of the engulfed deplete their oxygen stores when forag-
mechanism is possible if the VGB mus- water mass inside the buccal cavity is ing at depth and must quickly return to
cles actively resist lengthening as they largely parallel to the filter surface of the the surface to recover. The feeding costs
are stretched by the incoming flow. By baleen, rorquals could employ cross-flow related to high drag during lunge feed-
virtue of Newton’s third law of mo- filtration; this highly efficient filtration ing effectively limit the amount of time
tion, demanding equal action and reac- mechanism washes material perpendic- a large rorqual can spend foraging at
tion, the whale imparts its momentum ularly across the filter surface to prevent depth to about 15 minutes or so per dive.
to the engulfed water during this “col- clogging. It is used on an industrial scale This short timeframe is unexpected be-
lision”; the whale slows down as the (for example, in water purification, beer cause rorquals are so large, and in nearly
engulfed water, which was initially at and wine production, and biotechnol- all other air-breathing vertebrates, diving
rest, speeds up, and eventually both of ogy processes) and has also been ob- time usually scales up with increased
their speeds become more similar. served in suspension-filter-feeding fish. size, due to a more efficient metabolism.
When we simulated this type of
active engulfment, we found a good
match to the velocity profile generated
by the digital-tag data. The model out-
put supported our hypothesis of active
inflation in rorquals, a very different
mechanism than what is observed in
parachutes. But why would rorquals
push water forward, out of the mouth,
when they are trying to engulf it? In-
deed, this shove from inside the buccal
cavity generates even more drag com-
pared to the case where water is just
going around the body and the mouth,
which is why the active engulfment
simulation better matched the tag data.
Although it seems counterintuitive,
pushing water forward during a lunge
has some advantages. Gradually pushing Figure 8. Specimens at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History
water forward over the course of a lunge include the mandibles of a blue whale (gray) and a sperm whale (yellow). The author (shown
distributes the drag forces over a longer twice in this composite photograph) used measurements of such museum specimens to estimate
period. By smoothing out these forces the amount of water engulfed during a whale’s lunge. (Photograph courtesy of Nick Pyenson.)
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passive engulfment
4 50,000

passive engulfment fails
engulfed water behind the

jaw joint (kilograms)
40,000
3
°°
°
°
°
°
30,000
2
°°
20,000
°°
parcels of
1 engulfed water
volume
°
°
°° 10,000
engulfed water
0 0
4 50,000
engulfed water behind the

active engulfment active engulfment succeeds
jaw joint (kilograms)

40,000
3
°°
°
°
°
°
30,000
2
°°
20,000
°°
1 engulfed water
volume engulfed water
°
°
°° 10,000
speed
0 0
10 11 12 13 14 15 16
time (seconds)
Figure 9. Is a whale like a parachute, expanding its oral cavity passively (top left), or does it actively control the process, using its muscles to
slowly push the water forward during a lunge (bottom left)? Trajectory simulations, which predict the speed of the whale over time, for passive
engulfment (blue line, top graph) fail to reproduce the data recorded by electronic tags (white dots with error bars). However, trajectory simula-
tions of active engulfment (red line, bottom graph) produce a close match.
The severely limited diving perfor- face recovery time after each dive. Us- predicted that a rorqual is morphologi-
mance of rorquals was first documenting these data, Croll’s research group cally designed to engulf as much water
ed nearly a decade ago by Donald Croll was the first to hypothesize that, due to as possible per lunge, which may be
and colleagues at the University of Cali- drag, there was a high energetic cost for why the buccal cavity extends halfway
fornia, Santa Cruz. By attaching simple each lunge. This hypothesis has been down the body to the belly button and
time-depth recorders to the backs of supported by several studies since then, why the jaws make up nearly a quarter
surfacing blue and fin whales, the re- not only for fin and blue whales, but for of the body length. But why isn’t the en-
searchers discovered that the whales’ humpback whales as well. gulfment apparatus even larger? What
foraging dives were much shorter than Because maximum dive time is limit- are the limits to engulfment capac-
expected for their size. Furthermore, ed by these high foraging costs, rorquals ity and how does it change with body
foraging dives that involved more are particularly dependent on dense size? These questions led me to a long-
lunges at depth resulted in more sur- aggregations of prey. In addition, it is forgotten morphometric data set from
tail length skull length tail length skull length tail length skull length
28% 22% 25% 25% 22% 28%
engulfment
capacity
engulfment
75% capacity 104%
mouth area mouth area engulfment capacity 133%
mouth area
50% 50%
58% 55% 67%
buccal cavity 60%
length buccal cavity length buccal cavity length
12 meters 18 meters 24 meters
Figure 10. As a fin whale grows, its oral (or buccal) cavity does not scale linearly but takes up a larger percentage of its body size. The buccal
cavity length increases from 50 percent to 60 percent, and skull length increases from 22 percent to 28 percent, of body length, whereas tail
length decreases from 28 percent to 22 percent of body length. The mouth area increases from 50 percent to 67 percent of total projected body
area, and engulfment capacity rises from 75 percent to 133 percent of body mass.
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the whaling literature, which allowed greater. In addition, the length of the References
me to examine the consequences ventral groove blubber system is also Alexander, R. M. 1998. All-time giants: The
of scale and morphology on lunge- relatively longer in bigger whales, and largest animals and their problems. Palaeon-
tology 41:1231–1245.
feeding performance. this effectively increases the relative ca-
Acevedo-Gutierrez, A., D. A. Croll and B. R.
pacity of the buccal cavity. Given that
Tershy. 2002. High feeding costs limit dive
A Matter of Scale many other large rorquals also exhibit time in the largest whales. Journal of Experi-
In an attempt to manage the whaling the same patterns of relative growth, mental Biology 205:1747–1753.
industry in the 1920s, the British govern- these allometric patterns may represent Brodie, P. F. 1993. Noise generated by the jaw
ment launched a series of expeditions an adaptation (or exaptation) related to actions of feeding fin whales. Canadian Jour-
called the Discovery Investigations in or- lunge-feeding performance. nal of Zoology 71:2546–2550.
der to learn more about the natural his- The relatively smaller tail should not Calambokidis, J., et al. 2007. Insights into the
underwater diving, feeding and calling be-
tory and biology of large whales in the negatively affect swimming performance havior of blue whales from a suction-cup-
Southern Ocean. One particular study in larger rorquals because the actual attached video-imaging tag (CRITTERCAM).
focused on the body proportions of the fluke—the propulsion surface that gener- Marine Technology Society Journal 41:19–29.
two largest rorqual species, fin and blue ates the lift used for thrust—is generally Croll, D. A., A. Acevedo-Gutiérrez, B. Tershy
whales. These species are not only some proportional to body size. However, the and J. Urbán-Ramírez. 2001. The diving
behavior of blue and fin whales: Is dive
of the largest animals of all time, but enhanced engulfment capacity in larger
duration shorter than expected based on
what is often underappreciated is that whales does not come without a cost. oxygen stores? Comparative Biochemistry and
they also exhibit a wide range in body The active nature of engulfment means Physiology Part A: Molecular and Integrative
size. For example, the length at weaning that relatively larger water masses must Physiology 129A: 797–809.
for fin and blue whales is approximately be accelerated forward. Thus, larger ror- de Bakker, M. A. G., R. A. Kastelein and J. L.
12 meters and 16 meters, respectively, quals will have to expend relatively more Dubbeldam. 1997. Histology of the grooved
ventral pouch of the minke whale, Balae-
whereas the maximum size recorded for energy to successfully execute a lunge. noptera acutorostrata, with special reference
each species is 24 meters and 28 meters. Considering that high feeding costs limit to the occurrence of lamellated corpuscles.
These expeditions recorded morphomet- dive time relative to other diving ani- Canadian Journal of Zoology 75:563–567.
ric data, some of which was related to mals, such rapidly increasing costs for a Goldbogen, J. A., et al. 2008. Foraging behavior
the engulfment apparatus, for hundreds lunge may limit diving capacity in larger of humpback whales: Kinematic and respira-
tory patterns suggest a high cost for a lunge.
of fin and blue whales over this entire rorquals even more. Such a consequence
Journal of Experimental Biology 211:3712–3719.
body-size range. could be detrimental because sufficiently
Goldbogen, J. A., et al. 2006. Kinematics of forag-
The authors of this study discovered dense prey patches tend to be very deep. ing dives and lunge feeding in fin whales.
a peculiar pattern related to body size: Theoretically, the rate of energy expen- Journal of Experimental Biology 209:1231–1244.
Larger whales had larger jaws and buc- diture to feed will increase more rapidly Goldbogen, J. A., J. Potvin and R. E. Shadwick.
cal cavities relative to body size. At the with body size than the rate of energy 2009. Skull and buccal cavity allometry in-
same time, the size of the posterior part gained from lunge feeding. crease mass-specific engulfment capacity in
fin whales. Proceedings of the Royal Society B,
of the body (the region from the dorsal If this scenario is extrapolated to a published online November 25.
fin back towards the tail fluke, or caudal hypothetical megarorqual that is much Goldbogen, J. A., N. D. Pyenson and R. E.
peduncle) became relatively smaller. The larger than a blue whale, we find that Shadwick. 2007. Big gulps require high drag
researchers gave no possible explana- the whale would not be able to sup- for fin whale lunge feeding. Marine Ecology
tions for these bizarre patterns of relative port its metabolism by lunge feeding. Progress Series 349:289–301.
growth (also called allometry), probably Similar problems associated with large Lambertsen, R. H. 1983. Internal mechanism
of rorqual feeding. Journal of Mammalogy
because the data were collected before body size were predicted by R. McNeil
64:76–88.
we knew how important morphology Alexander for baleen whales that were
Oleson, E. M., et al. 2007. Behavioral context
is in determining lunge-feeding perfor- geometrically similar to one another (all of call production by eastern North Pacific
mance. My colleagues and I amassed body lengths being proportional to body blue whales. Marine Ecological Progress Series
their complete data set for fin whales in size). Although rorqual allometry en- 330:269–284.
order to estimate engulfment capacity as hances engulfment capacity for a single Orton, L. S., and P. F. Brodie. 1987. Engulfing
a function of body size. As we expected, lunge, the cost associated with it could mechanics of fin whales. Canadian Journal of
Zoology 65:2898–2907.
the relative size of the engulfed water limit access to food in the deep ocean.
Pivorunas, A. 1977. Fibro-cartilage skeleton
mass increased with body size, and this From this line of reasoning, we have and related structures of ventral pouch of
was directly due to the allometry of the speculated that the allometric scaling of balaenopterid whales. Journal of Morphology
engulfment apparatus. lunge-feeding energetics has imposed 151:299–313.
But why did larger whales have rela- an upper limit on body size in rorquals. Potvin, J., J. A. Goldbogen and R. E. Shadwick.
tively smaller caudal peduncles? We It is interesting to think about why an 2009. Passive versus active engulfment: ver-
dict from trajectory simulations of lunge-
hypothesized that this relative shrink- animal isn’t, or wasn’t, larger than a
feeding fin whales Balaenoptera physalus. Jour-
ing of the tail could represent the cost of blue whale, and clearly more studies nal of the Royal Society Interface 6, 1005–1025.
devoting all growth-related resources to are needed to explore this hypothesis
the anterior region of the body. As ror- and others related to limits on big body
quals grow, they become morphologi- size. Evolution may have driven the size For relevant Web links, consult this
cally optimized to increase engulfment of these largest of marine mammals to issue of American Scientist Online:
capacity. The skull becomes relatively their current scale, but physiological
longer and wider with body size, and constraints related to filter feeding may http://www.americanscientist.org/
therefore the area of the mouth that is issues/id.83/past.aspx
also have imposed an upper bound past
devoted to engulfment is also relatively which they can grow no farther.
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The Race for Real-time Photorealism

The coevolution of algorithms and hardware is bringing us closer to interactive
computer graphics indistinguishable from reality
Henrik Wann Jensen and Tomas Akenine-Möller
E ver since the emergence of three-

dimensional computer graphics
in the early 1960s, graphics specialists
advanced 3D applications, churning
through the calculations required to
produce a scene using the latest algo-
ment of greedier algorithms for more
convincing realism. This cycle has
gone on for decades, blossoming into
have dreamed of creating photoreal- rithms, including the tracking of bil- multi-billion-dollar video card and
istic virtual worlds indistinguishable lions of simulated photons through game software industries.
from the real world. Product designers, a scene, and even the tracking of the
architects, lighting planners, gamers simulated light penetrating the scene’s Making the Scene
and scientific visualization pioneers surfaces to achieve the perfectly con- Current real-time graphics applica-
have craved real-time reality on a chip; vincing photorealistic image. tions, such as games, represent the
hardware designers and algorithm Such renderings can take today’s complexity of virtual environments by
writers have made spectacular prog- fast machines hours to produce a sin- converting scene descriptions into mil-
ress, as one can see by looking over gle frame. lions of geometric primitives—points,
the shoulder of teenagers playing the Elite gamers clamor for no less than lines, and polygons, usually triangles,
latest games (facing page). But as we 60 frames per second. Why so many? connected to form polygonal surfaces.
will see, the computational challenges Because the pursuit of real-time graph- Early games represented 3D scenes us-
that remain are immense. Implacable ics is driven by the desire for not just ing a few hundred triangles; in histori-
evolutionary progress has been made visual accuracy but also interactivity. cal context, the experience of interact-
by software engineers in devising in- Real-time scenes are created to be in- ing with these 3D environments could
genious algorithms, and generations of teracted with. The television standard be quite compelling, but the appeal
hardware have been invented to traffic of 29.97 frames per second is comfort- had little to do with realism.
and execute the calculations, yet the ably convincing for passive viewers;
sheer scale of the computational task real-time applications, such as gam-
keeps the goal of real-time photoreal- ing and military cockpit simulations,
ism at some distance over the hori- must operate at the speed of human
zon. Most office computers consume reflexes.
a small sliver above zero percent of As participants in the enterprise of
their available computational cycles creating photorealistic graphics (one
for routine work; the billions of calcu- of us having a research emphasis on
lations per second that are available greater speed, the other on greater
on a modern multi-processor desktop realism), we’ll review the kinds of
computer are simply not required to computations required, the schemes
process spreadsheets. Compare that that have been invented to moderate
to the overwhelming task of the most the heavy computational chores, and
the parallel world of hardware devel- 3D graphics circa 1981: 3D Monster Maze on
Henrik Wann Jensen is an associate professor opment to support the calculations. the Sinclair ZX81 with 16-kilobyte memory
at the University of California, San Diego, The hardware and software of pho- expansion.
where he specializes in realistic image synthe- torealistic graphics have coevolved
sis and the rendering of natural phenomena. for several decades. The economics More triangles made for more con-
He received his Ph.D. in computer science at of hardware development, driven vincing scenes. An obvious first step
the Technical University of Denmark. Tomas mainly by gamers’ unquenchable lust in accelerating the rendering of a scene
Akenine-Möller is a professor of computer sci- for speed, has resulted in affordable was to optimize the number of tri-
ence at Lund University who works part-time
graphics cards of awesome power. angles required. Scene designers are
with Intel, specializing in computer graphics
and image processing. He received his Ph.D.
Computations have been moved from obliged to make judicious decisions
in computer graphics at Chalmers University the central processing unit (CPU) of about the balance between polygon
of Technology. Address for Jensen: Computer computers to the specialized graphics count and realism. How much detail
Science and Engineering, 4116, University of processing units (GPU) of consumer is enough? Current GPU hardware can
California, San Diego, CA 92093-0404. Email: video cards. The leap in computation- process scenes composed of several
henrik@graphics.ucsd.edu
_______________ al prowess then drives the develop- million triangles while still reaching
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Figure 1. Consumer demand combined with algorithmic artistry and muscled-up hardware have driven computer graphics far toward
the long-imagined goal of photorealistic animation. The state-of-the-art animated feature movie Ratatouille, released by Pixar Anima-
tion Studios in 2007, was produced by an arsenal of about 850 computers hosting nearly 3,200 processors. The average rendering time
for each frame of animation was about 23,000 seconds per frame. Today’s video gamers want the same visual quality—at 60 frames per
second. And they are on the road to getting it, as can be seen in the Electronic Arts 2008 action and adventure game Mirror’s Edge, which
delivers dazzling interactive play at more than 60 frames per second on personal computers. (The image above from that game was ren-
dered offline with additional resolution to achieve print quality.) The authors review the roadmap to a future in which advances in
speed and photorealism finally achieve the goal of perfectly convincing interactive computer graphics in real time. (Image courtesy of
EA Digital Illusions Creative Entertainment.)
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made many milestone contributions in

the field of deriving convincing images
from 3D data.) Bump maps convey de-
tails of microfine surface structure with-
out adding to the overall geometry load
by telling the renderer to handle local
lighting as if the surface were bumpy,
with the bumps defined by light and
dark areas on the texture map.
Let There Be Lighting. And Shadows.

The critical element of lighting in a 3D
Figure 2. Optimization and approximation are keys to graphics rendering speed. Algorithms
environment comes from virtual light
optimize how many calculations must be made, and scene elements such as shadows, reflec- sources placed in the scene. In raster-
tions and even geometry may be approximated, with accuracy surrendered for speed. Above, the ization schemes, a few simple equa-
polygon count of a 3D model is progressively reduced. For a rendering scheme such as rasteriza- tions are used to compute how much
tion, which renders individual polygons, the middle models would render much faster than the light emanating from a light source ar-
one on the left. As the distance from the viewer to the cat increases, fewer and fewer polygons rives at a given point on each triangle,
can be used with little loss in quality. (Adapted from Daniels, J., C. T. Silva, J. Shepherd and and how much of this light is reflected
E. Cohen. 2008. “Quadrilateral mesh simplification.” Proceedings of SIGGRAPH Asia 27(5):1–9.) towards the observer.
The earliest 3D renderings had a sig-
the gamer’s benchmark of 60 frames on) are assigned by software instruc- nature, otherworldly look because they
per second. If current trends continue, tions called shaders. Most commonly, lacked shadows, a critical aspect of vi-
we can expect hardware in the near the surface information is assigned sual realism. Rendering shadows with
future that handles hundreds of mil- using texture maps, which are digital rasterization is straightforward using
lions or even billions of triangles with images “glued” onto the 3D object. a technique that employs multiple ren-
sufficient speed. The question is: how Texture mapping is an art in itself. In dering passes. For example, one can use
many triangles are required to achieve the production pipeline of 3D studios, a shadow-mapping algorithm, where
a photorealistic rendering of a given artists specialize in the creation of tex- the scene is rendered from the light
scene? One of the founders of Pixar ture maps to convey, for example, not source into a shadow map in a first pass.
Animation Studios, maker of 3D block- just the color of an orange, but also the The shadow map contains information
busters from Toy Story to Ratatouille, knobbly surface and the waxy shine. about all the triangles visible from the
concluded that 80 million triangles An early breakthrough on the road to point of view of a particular light. In a
would be required. It seems that the photorealism was bump mapping, con- second pass, from the “camera” point
hardware will soon be up to the job ceived by the computer graphics pio- of view, which is different from the light
of handling the geometry in real time. neer James F. Blinn. (It was said of him source, the color calculation for each tri-
However, there is much more to pho- quite a few years ago, by the graphics angle queries the shadow map to see
torealism than polygon count. hardware innovator Ivan Sutherland, if the triangle is visible from the light
that “there have been about a dozen source or is in shadow. Adjustments are
Faster with Rasterization great computer graphics people and then made to the color of the triangle to
With contemporary hardware and soft- Jim Blinn is six of them.” Blinn has account for the shadow.
ware, the fastest way to render a scene
(convert the 3D data to a visual image)
is rasterization, the technique used by
today’s computer games. An algorithm
processes the scene detecting what ge-
ometry is visible and what is screened
from view (including the back faces of
3D objects facing the viewer). Nonvis-
ible geometry is discarded to speed the
calculation, and then the scanner deter-
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scene. The angles where triangles abut
are made to vanish in the image by the Figure 3. Rasterization algorithms render scenes by projecting rays to the vertices of geom-
neat trick of averaging the color values etry in the scene, thus defining polygons that are then mapped on pixels. Surface properties
of adjacent triangles. Color and surface assigned to the polygons of the model are then computed and mapped to the pixel screen to
properties (ruggedness, sheen, and so create an image.
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A decided weakness of rasterization the material’s surface, it is scattered,

is the rendering of reflections and re- some inward, some back out. The dis-
fractions. Refractions in the real world tinctive visual quality of subsurface
can be seen as the bending of light when scattering accounts for the appear-
it passes through a transparent medium ance of, among many other things,
such as a glass of water. Like shadows, human skin, and the difficulty of ac-
they contribute greatly to realism. For curately reproducing it accounts for
a variety of reasons, reflections and the notoriously unconvincing appear-
refractions cannot be computed using ance of many 3D renderings of faces.
the triangle-painting technique that is At present, rasterization is the main
the core strategy of rasterization. Work- player in real-time graphics, but in
arounds have been devised to create
illusions of reflection and refraction, but
the opinion of many, for reasons that
include its limitations at handling ad-

the basic problem these lighting effects vanced lighting effects like those just
present has proved intractable for ras- mentioned, it will not be the road to
terization schemes. real-time photorealism.
There are other lighting effects that
rasterization fails to capture. In real Racier Hardware
scenes, color bleeding occurs when dif- Hardware is part of the answer. Better
fuse surfaces are illuminated by indi- graphics is the main reason why aver-
rect lighting. For example, in a white age consumers want faster computers,
room with a red carpet, the carpet CVNQNBQJNBHF
and one of the key technologies driv-
casts a subtle red glow onto the white ing real-time graphics is the use of spe-
walls. Another elusive phenomenon cialized graphics processing units that
is caustics; when real light is refract- can process and display vast amounts
ed or reflected through a transparent of geometry rapidly. GPUs achieve MJHIUBOEEBSLBSFBTPGCVNQNBQBSF
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medium, focusing effects can produce their performance by using a high de-
blooms of intense brightness. An ex- gree of parallel processing, in which
ample of caustics is the shimmering the task of rendering a scene is divided
waves of brightness seen on the bot-
tom of a swimming pool. Subsurface
Figure 4. Bump mapping is an extremely effi-
scattering is a particularly notable
cient scheme for conjuring fine surface detail
recent development on the road to at render time. A texture map assigned to a
photorealism that is confounded by 3D model gives shading instructions to the
the limitations of rasterization. Real renderer in the form of light and dark regions,
materials often have a degree of trans- which indicate whether regions should cast
lucency on their surface. Think of how shadows as if they were slightly raised or low-
light penetrates jade. As light crosses ered from the actual surface of the geometry.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York/The Bridgeman Art Library Int.
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Figure 5. Visual subtleties can be costly in terms of calculation yet necessary for realism. Light hitting a surface such as skin penetrates and scat-
ters, illuminating the surface from within. Subsurface scattering is an algorithm that captures that effect by propagating light rays and tracking
their effects, based on material properties assigned to the 3D object. Renaissance painters, such as Vermeer in his Portrait of a Young Woman, met
the realism challenge with the analogous technique of glazing, applying layers of translucent pigments to capture and scatter light.
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into smaller tasks that can be processed

in parallel by specialized computing
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units within the GPU. Graphics can be
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seen as a black hole of computational
power—the more power you throw at
the problem, the more consumers and
developers demand in order to render
ever more complex images. Hardware SFGMFDUJPO
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are being designed with these market JMMVNJOBUJPOTIBEPX
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A recent development in GPU tech-
nology is programmability. Ten years
ago, GPUs were essentially fixed-
function units with some tweakable
parameters to accommodate a few dif- SFGSBDUJPO
ferent types of calculations. The rigid-
ity of GPUs greatly limited the types of
graphic effects that could be rendered.
With the newfound flexibility of pro-
grammable GPUs, a programmer can
specify advanced lighting models cho-
sen to maximize the potential of the
hardware. Programmable hardware
has also opened the door to conjuring
tricks that overcome the inherent limi-
tations of the rasterization approach.
For example, researchers and game
developers around the world, in pur- Figure 6. In ray tracing, a ray is shot through each pixel of a virtual screen. Intersection test-
suit of ever more realistic game sce- ing between the ray and the geometric primitives in the scene solves for whether the ray hits
narios, have developed approximative geometry. An important advantage of ray tracing over rasterization is the ability to represent
multi-pass algorithms that can imitate reflection and refraction, which is done by propagating rays from the points of intersection
color bleeding, caustics, and subsur- and tracking their journey through the rest of the 3D scene. In a highly detailed scene, mil-
face scattering using rasterization on lions of individual rays may be required.
GPUs. However, this development is
starting to hit a wall. The results may ally does. By tracing individual light around. In ray-tracing algorithms, it is
be attractive, even entrancing, but by rays back to a light source, it is pos- necessary to process all of the triangles
the standards of photorealism they are sible to account in a reasonably natural in the scene and then convert the data
not convincing. Achieving true pho- way for the actual physics of light, not into an acceleration structure, a configu-
torealism will require a fundamental just reflection and refraction but also ration of the data that optimizes the
change in the way real-time graphics specialized effects like color bleeding ability to determine if a given light ray
deals with geometry and lighting. and caustics. hits a triangle. Different lighting effects
Ray tracing is an elegant algorithm, may benefit from different acceleration
Realism with Ray Tracing quite simple to specify in code—Paul structures. At every step in graphics
Whoever solves the riddle of moving Heckbert, now a 3D graphics archi- rendering, researchers are exploring
beyond rasterization will likely hold the tect at the video card vendor NVIDIA, ways to optimize the calculations.
key to the future of real-time graphics. coded instructions for a functional Ray tracing is unavoidably a highly
A race is on to develop new hardware ray tracer that can be printed, just leg- computation-intensive algorithm. Be-
capable of supporting new algorithms ibly, on a business card. (The feat was cause it tracks the path of every individ-
that can simulate the lighting effects stimulated by a contest in which, it is ual ray of light that illuminates a scene,
that rasterization cannot handle. One of gleefully reported, “repulsive C code it may be necessary to trace several
these algorithms is ray tracing. tricks” were unveiled.) The natural million rays for a single image. If more
Conceptually, ray tracing and ras- way in which ray tracing deals with advanced effects are incorporated, the
terization are not that different: Both lighting makes it an obvious candidate number of rays can multiply substan-
solve for visibility along a ray. Ray to replace rasterization, but a simple tially. The benefit that seduces research-
tracing differs in simulating individ- algorithm does not necessarily cor- ers is the beauty of the images that re-
ual light rays that shoot through a 3D relate with rapid production of a fin- sult. For example, the imperfect lighting
environment, including the simulated ished image. The speed of rasterization of lesser schemes can be replaced by the
propagation of new rays when light derives from capturing the visible fea- breathtaking realism of global illumina-
bounces off scene geometry—multiple tures of a triangle, then forgetting the tion, in which environments are lit, as in
new rays, in fact, if the light bounces triangle as it moves on to the next one. reality, not by one or a few light sources,
off diffusely, reflectively, refractively, Ray tracing must take account of an but by all the surfaces that reflect diffuse
or in combination as real light gener- entire scene in which light rays bounce light back into the scene.
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Given the speed advantages of near- of the Larrabee can be used to carry out now to architectures with minimal fixed-
ly-good-enough rasterization and the tasks such as ray tracing and advanced function hardware, is a sign of the wheel
computational challenges of better- physics calculations. (A pleasing side of reincarnation, in which functionality is
than-good-enough ray tracing, the next effect of the thriving consumer market, transferred from the CPU to special-pur-
generation GPUs are likely to support in which competition for the millions pose hardware for performance reasons,
both algorithms. The current market for of graphics cards purchased each year followed by power-craving expansion of
GPUs is thoroughly dominated by three drives down prices, is the availability the subsidiary unit. The process was first
vendors, Intel, NVIDIA and AMD/ATI, of inexpensive, high-performance com- described and named by Todd Myer and
which in 2008 represented 97.8 percent puting power for other purposes, such Ivan Sutherland as early as 1968:
of market share. These companies are as scientific computing.) In December
We approached the task [of creat-
known to be betting on an evolutionary 2009, Intel announced that the first
ing a graphics processor] by start-
approach to existing architectures, in graphics product based on the Larra-
ing with a simple scheme and
which increased programmability will bee architecture will not be a consumer
adding commands and features
allow ray tracing to be implemented product as originally planned. Instead,
that we felt would enhance the
as a complement to rasterization. The the hardware will be released as a soft-
power of the machine. Gradually
world’s largest chipmaker, Intel, em- ware development platform that will
the processor became more com-
barked on the development of a com- be used by Intel and others to explore
plex. We were not disturbed by
pletely new architecture codenamed the potential of many-core applications.
this because computer graphics,
Larrabee, a “many-core compute en- This is a familiar stage in the develop-
after all, are complex. Finally the
gine” based on Intel’s highly success- ment of computer graphics over the
display processor came to resem-
ful x86 CPU architecture, the proces- years, as consumer desires drive the de-
ble a full-fledged computer . . .
sor family used in both PC and Mac velopment of more muscular hardware,
computers. The Larrabee architecture and hardware developments drive the To escape the wheel of reincarnation,
has been called a general-purpose GPU, advance of software applications like Myer and Sutherland suggested that if
indicative of the blurring boundary be- real-time ray tracing that come into an architecture needs more computa-
tween GPUs and CPUs. While support- reach on the new architectures. tional power, it should be added to the
ing traditional GPU functions like ras- The progression from fixed-function core of the system, rather than spur-
terized graphics, hybrid CPU features to highly programmable GPUs, and ring the creation of special-purpose
Figure 7. Many rendering effects depend on multipass rendering, with information from each pass combined in a final image. The top left
image gives a striking view of depths in the scene using a specialized algorithm to capture shadow information. Upper right shows diffuse
color without shadows. The two images are combined at bottom left, and at bottom right additional lighting information such as specularity
(shininess) dramatically improves the realism of the image. (Images courtesy of Crytek GmbH.)
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train of thought that the future may be

a hybrid approach that combines both
rasterization and ray tracing.
Combining rasterization and ray
tracing is an old idea in computer
graphics. The basic approach uses ras-
terization to decide which triangles can
be seen on the screen and then uses ray
tracing to perform the shading calcula-
tions. This method can be used with
current GPU hardware, employing ray
tracing selectively to add reflections
and refractions in strategic places.
There is little doubt that future genera-
tions of real-time graphics for games
will use this approach for as long as
the pure ray-tracing approach is unat-
tainable on available hardware.
Pixar uses a hybrid rendering tech-
nique to create its movies based on the
Figure 8. Computer graphics researchers probe reality for the delicate effects that make or Reyes algorithm, an advanced form of
break the realism of an image. Caustics appear when light that is reflected (left) or refracted rasterization. (Reyes is an acronym for
(right) accumulates or cancels, generating exotic shapes and hues that the observer may not “renders everything you ever saw.”)
recognize, but expects. (Photograph courtesy of Tomas Akenine-Möller.) Reyes generates micropolygons—scene
geometry is tessellated at render time
hardware units. We may be seeing that in which multiple x86-derived proces- into pixel-sized triangles or quadrilat-
in the emergence of multiple processors use specialized vector processing erals. The use of micropolygons makes
sors, multiple cores within processors, to trace batches of rays simultaneously. it possible to create complex geomet-
and enabling architectures that increas- This approach is quite challenging to ric effects through the use of displace-
ingly support parallel processing. program and it is still unknown if ray ment mapping—similar to the bump
tracing can utilize the hardware to its mapping described earlier except that
When? full potential, but promising work has it actually displaces the geometry, on
Current graphics hardware is capable been done on current CPUs. Yet the a tiny scale, rather than just giving the
of processing several tens of millions of challenge is not to be underestimated. appearance of displacement. This is a
rays per second. Although this sounds Moore’s law, which has predicted the powerful way of creating details such
impressive, it is still far from the re- progress in computer power over the as the pores on human skin, although
quired number of rays for a modern past 40 years, says that transistor den- it can generate significantly more
game setup. Modern games rendering sity will double every two years. Due complex geometry than current ray-
at 60 frames per second in high-defi- to performance increases in transis- tracing algorithms can deal with. Mi-
nition resolution, 1920 x 1080 pixels, tors, this can be translated to a dou- cropolygon rendering can be practical
with, let us say, 16 rays per pixel for bling in computer performance every on GPUs, and if future games were to
all lighting effects, require 60 x 1920 x 18 months. If Moore’s law holds, then, use micropolygon rendering, the visual
1080 x 16 = 2 billion rays per second, it will take roughly 10 years before quality of a game could be similar to
which is approximately two orders of consumer machines are capable of that of the movie Toy Story. However,
magnitude more than current hard- tracing the few billion rays required micropolygon rendering fails at sim-
ware can deliver. One obvious strategy to render the game setups that are cur- ulating the same lighting effects that
to overcome this challenge is to in- rently available. And in 10 years, the limit rasterization. Pixar’s response has
crease the capability of the hardware. requirements for games and real-time been to use ray tracing coupled with
A great advantage of ray tracing is that graphics in general might be different, micropolygon rendering in a hybrid
it is a highly parallel algorithm—it has perhaps calling for higher resolutions setup. But when making its movies,
been called “embarrassingly parallel.” or yet-to-be-thought-of algorithms. Pixar doesn’t have to worry about how
Each ray can be traced independently. long it takes to render a frame.
This is significant since it allows ray Hybrid Future There is another alternative to ray
tracing to exploit the parallel nature of Skeptics may claim, with some justifi- tracing—trick the human observer.
GPUs; if 100 processors in parallel can- cation, that real-time ray tracing is a Perhaps it is not necessary to have
not complete the job quickly enough, pipe dream that will never be realized; fully accurate lighting and reflections
perhaps 1,000 can. the hardware will always be too slow. in the next generation of games. This is
NVIDIA, AMD/ATI and Intel are Even if the hardware becomes fast the approach that current games use.
all betting on parallel computing. The enough to handle 16 rays per pixel in The real-time graphics community has
latest GPUs contain hundreds of indi- a full-resolution scene, that may not be developed many tricks that deliver
vidual compute units, each capable of enough to achieve all the lighting effects great-looking graphic images in real
tracing individual rays. Intel’s Larra- that photorealistic ray tracing may call time. For example, NVIDIA has shown
bee architecture uses a hybrid strategy for. With this in mind there is a growing a demo of human skin rendered with
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subsurface scattering running in real in which developers demonstrated Jensen, Henrik Wann. 2001. Realistic Image Syn-
time on a GPU. Clever filtering tech- their most advanced real-time games thesis Using Photon Mapping, A. K. Peters.
Myer, T. H., and I. E. Sutherland. 1968. On the
niques generated rendered images that and other applications alongside the Design of Display Processors. Communica-
looked very convincing; few people ground-breaking prerendered works tions of the ACM 11:410–414.
could see the difference between their that are the staple of the conference. Pharr, Matt, and Greg Humphreys. 2004. Phys-
result and a ray-traced image. How- NVIDIA and Intel both demonstrated ically Based Rendering: From Theory to Imple-
ever, an approach based on tricks has real-time ray tracing on their hardware. mentation. Morgan Kaufmann.
limitations. Each trick is usually highly Intel, using their current-generation Seiler, Larry, Doug Carmean, Eric Sprangle,
specialized and often does not mix CPU architecture, code-named Ne- Tom Forsyth, Michael Abrash, Pradeep
Dubey, Stephen Junkins, Adam Lake, Jere-
well with other tricks. For example, halem and released in late 2008, dem- my Sugerman, Robert Cavin, Roger Espasa,
it would likely require acrobatic cod- onstrated a ray-traced game scenario Ed Grochowski, Toni Juan, and Pat Han-
ing to simulate indirect lighting on a running at approximately 15 frames rahan. 2008. Larrabee: A Many-Core x86
human face with simulated subsur- per second, featuring a sea bottom vis- Architecture for Visual Computing, ACM
Transactions on Graphics 27:18.1–18.15.
face scattering. This ultimately is what ible through the shimmering surface of
Whitted, Turner. 1980. An Improved Illumina-
makes ray tracing attractive. It scales a lagoon. Progress is being made. tion Model for Shaded Display. Communica-
very well with the addition of process- Some years ago, veteran game de- tions of the ACM 23:343–349.
ing power, and it is trivial to account veloper Billy Zelsnack said, with hope-
for advanced lighting effects by simply ful irony, “Pretty soon, computers will
tracing more rays. be fast.” Those words remain as true
The annual SIGGRAPH confer- today as the day they were spoken. We
ence (Special Interest Group, Graph- add this, with less ambiguity: “Pretty For relevant Web links, consult this
ics) is the premier venue for computer soon, photorealism will be real-time.” issue of American Scientist Online:
graphics research. At the August 2009 http://www.americanscientist.org/
SIGGRAPH, the crowd-pleasing Com- References issues/id.83/past.aspx
puter Animation Festival component Akenine-Möller, Tomas, Eric Haines and Naty
of the program presented the debut of Hoffman. 2008. Real-Time Rendering, 3d
a new session, Real-Time Rendering, ed., A. K. Peters Ltd.
“We request low bail as my client is not a flight risk.”
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Gene-Culture Coevolution and Human Diet

Rather than acting in isolation, biology and culture have interacted
to develop the diet we have today
Olli Arjamaa and Timo Vuorisalo
F ew would argue against the propo-

sition that in the animal kingdom
adaptations related to food choice and
The traditional view holds that our
ancestors gradually evolved from
South and East African fruit-eaters to
diet. Richard Wrangham’s recent book,
Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us
Human, focused on impacts of taming
foraging behavior have a great impact scavengers or meat-eaters by means of fire and its consequences on the qual-
on individuals’ survival and reproduc- purely biological adaptation to chang- ity of our food. Some scholars favor
tion—and, ultimately, on their evolu- ing environmental conditions. Since a memetic approach to this and other
tionary success. In our own species, the 1970s, however, it has become in- steps in the evolution of human diet.
however, we are more inclined to view creasingly clear that this picture is too Memetics studies the rate of spread
food choice as a cultural trait not direct- simple. In fact, biological and cultural of the units of cultural information
ly related to our biological background. evolution are not separate phenomena, called memes. This term was coined by
This is probably true for variations in but instead interact with each other Dawkins as an analogy to the more fa-
human diets on small scales, manifested in a complicated manner. As Richard miliar concept of the gene. A meme can
both geographically and among ethnic Dawkins put it in The Selfish Gene, be, for instance, a particular method of
groups. Some things really are a matter what is unusual about our species can making fire that makes its users better
of taste rather than survival. be summed up in one word: culture. adapted to utilize certain food sources.
On the other hand, some basic A branch of theoretical population As a rule, such a meme spreads in the
patterns of our nutrition clearly are genetics called gene-culture coevolu- population if it is advantageous to its
evolved characters, based on between- tionary theory studies the evolution- carriers. Memes are transmitted be-
generation changes in gene frequen- ary phenomena that arise from the tween individuals by social learning,
cies. As Charles Darwin cautiously interactions between genetic and cul- which, as we all know, has certainly
forecast in the last chapter of On the tural transmission systems. Some part been (and still is) very important in the
Origin of Species, his theory of natural of this work relies on the sociobiologi- evolution of human diet.
selection has indeed shed “some light” cally based theoretical work of Charles In the following paragraphs, we will
on the evolution of humans, includ- J. Lumsden and E. O. Wilson, sum- review the biological and cultural evo-
ing the evolution of human diet. The marized in Genes, Mind, and Culture. lution of hominid diets, concluding
long transition from archaic hunter- Another branch of research focuses on with three examples of cultural evo-
gatherers to post-industrial societies the quantitative study of gene-culture lution that led to genetic changes in
has included major changes in forag- coevolution, originated among others Homo sapiens.
ing behavior and human diet. by L. L. Cavalli-Sforza and M. W. Feld-
man. Mathematical models of gene- The First Steps in the Savanna
culture coevolution have shown that The first hominid species arose 10 to 7
Olli Arjamaa received his Ph.D. in animal
cultural transmission can indeed mod- million years ago in late Miocene Afri-
physiology at the University of Turku in 1983,
and his M.D. at the University of Oulu in 1989
ify selection pressures, and culture can ca. In particular, Sahelanthropus tchaden-
(both in Finland). He is adjunct professor at the even create new evolutionary mecha- sis, so far the oldest described homi-
Center of Excellence of Evolutionary Genetics nisms, some of them related to human nid, has been dated to between 7.2 and
and Physiology, Department of Biology, Univer- cooperation. Sometimes culture may 6.8 million years. Hominids probably
sity of Turku. His main research interest is the generate very strong selection pres- evolved from an ape-like tree-climbing
evolutionary physiology of natriuretic peptides. sures, partly due to its homogenizing ancestor, whose descendants gradually
Timo Vuorisalo received his Ph.D. in ecological influence on human behavior. became terrestrial bipeds with a sub-
zoology at the University of Turku in 1989. In A gene-culture coevolutionary per- stantially enlarged brain. The overall
1989–1990 he was a visiting postdoctoral fellow spective helps us to understand the picture of human evolution has chan-
at the Indiana University, Bloomington. He is
process in which culture is shaped by ged rather dramatically in recent years,
senior lecturer of Environmental Science and
adjunct professor in the Department of Biology,
biological imperatives while biological and several alternative family trees for
University of Turku. His research interests in- properties are simultaneously altered human origins have been proposed.
clude evolutionary ecology, environmental his- by genetic evolution in response to The major ecological setting for
tory and urban ecology. Address: Department of cultural history. Fascinating examples human evolution was the gradually
Biology, 20014 Turun yliopisto, Finland. Email: of such gene-culture coevolution can drying climate of late-Miocene and
olli.arjamaa@utu.fi
___________ be found in the evolution of human Pliocene Africa. Early hominids re-
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Donald Nausbaum/Corbis
Jeremy Homer/Corbis
Figure 1. Genetic and cultural evolution are often thought of as operating independently of each other’s influence. Recent investigations, how-
ever, show that this is far too simple a picture. Cultural preferences for certain foods, for example, may favor genetic changes that help people
utilize them. One example is the practice of animal husbandry for milk production, which can cause the frequency of lactose tolerance—the
ability to process this milk sugar as an adult—to vary geographically even within continents. Although only about 3 percent of people in Thai-
land (top) have lactose tolerance, the proportion in northern India, where dairy activity is common (above), is about 70 percent.
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UDIBEFOTJT

Figure 2. Major events in hominid evolution can be viewed from a gene-culture coevolution perspective. (Note the logarithmic scales at both ends
of the time line, brown dashes.) Contrary to popular belief, bipedality did not evolve to free hands for manufacturing and use of tools (an example
of old teleological thinking not accepted by scientists). In fact, upright posture preceded tool-making by at least 2 million years. Indeed, Ardi, the
celebrated and well-preserved specimen of Ardipithicus ramidus, seems to have moved upright already 4.4 million years ago, and the same may
have been true for the much older Sahelanthropus tchadensis. Bipedality, increasingly complex social behavior, tool-making, increased body size
and dietary changes formed an adaptive complex that enhanced survival and reproduction in the changing African environment. Controlled use
of fire had a great impact on the diet of our ancestors and helped colonization of all main continents by our species. More recently, the dietary
shifts following the Neolithic Revolution provide fascinating examples of the interplay of cultural change and biological evolution.
sponded to the change with a com- ingly sophisticated bipedality, com- wear analyses is that they indicate the
bination of biological and cultural plex social behavior, making of tools, predominant type of diet rather than
adaptations that together enhanced increased body size and a gradual its diversity. Thus, it is always useful
their survival and reproduction in the change in diet. In part, the change in to combine paleodietary information
changing environment. This adaptive diet was made possible by stone tools from many sources. Archaeological
complex probably included increas- used to manipulate food items. The sites may provide valuable informa-
oldest known stone tools date back to tion on refuse fauna, tools and home-
2.6 million years. Stone tool technolo- range areas of hominids, all of which
gies were certainly maintained and have implications for diet.
spread by social learning, and very Much recent attention has been
likely the same was true for changes in focused on stable isotope analysis of
foraging tactics and choice of food. bone and collagen. These techniques
The main data sources on homi- allow comparisons of animals con-
nid paleodiets are fossil hominid suming different types of plant diets.
remains and archaeological sites. This is important, as plant remains
Well-preserved fossils allow detailed seldom fossilize, so the proportion
analyses on dental morphology and of animals in the diets of early homi-
Museum of Anthropology, University of Missouri
microwear, as well as the use of paleo- nids is easily exaggerated. In stable
dietary techniques that include stable isotope analysis it may be possible to
Figure 3. The use of stone tools contributed isotope analysis of bone and dentine distinguish between diets based on C3
to the dietary change in our ancestors. Sharp-
collagen, as well as enamel apatite. plants and those based predominantly
edged stone tools could slice through the
hides of hunted or scavenged animals, thus
Other useful and widely applied meth- on C4 plants. C3 and C4 are two differ-
allowing access to meat. Skulls and bones ods include comparisons of fossils ent biochemical pathways for carbon
could be smashed by stone tools, which pro- with extant species with known den- fixation in photosynthesis. Plants that
vided access to nutritious tissues such as tal morphology and diets. The main utilize the C3 photosynthetic pathway
bone marrow or brain. problem with dental morphology and discriminate against 13C, and as a re-
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sult C3 plants have clearly depleted small mammal. Moreover, increased any living nonhuman primate species
13
C/12C ratios. In contrast, plants that body size enhances mobility and heat today. Increased brain size, in turn, was
utilize the C4 photosynthetic pathway retention, and may thus promote the associated with a change in diet. The
discriminate less against 13C and are, ability to adapt to cooler climates. All increase in brain size probably started
therefore, in relative terms, enriched in these possibilities were realized in the about 2.5 million years ago, with grad-
13
C. C4 plants are physiologically bet- hominid lineage. ual transition from Australopithecus to
ter adapted to conditions of drought In particular, the origin of H. erectus Homo. Because of the proportionately
and high temperatures, as well as ni- about 1.8 million years ago appears high energy requirements of brain
trogen limitation, than are C3 plants. to have been a major adaptive shift in tissue, the evolution of large human
Thus it is very likely that the drying human evolution. H. erectus was larger brain size has had important implica-
climate of Africa increased the abun- than its predecessors and was appar- tions for the nutritional requirements
dance and diversity of C4 plants in ently the first hominid species to mi- of the hominid species. According
relation to C3 plants. grate out of Africa. It also showed a to the Expensive-Tissue Hypothesis,
The traditional view on early homi- higher level of encephalization (skull proposed in 1995 by Leslie Aiello with
nids separated them into australopith- size relative to body size) than seen in University College London and Peter
ecines that were considered predomi-
nantly fruit eaters, and species of the
genus Homo—that is, H. habilis and H.
erectus—who were either scavengers
or hunters. This traditional separation
has been challenged by paleodietary
techniques that have highlighted the
importance of changes in the makeup
of plant diet outlined above. While the
ancestral apes apparently continued
to exploit the C3 plants abundant in
forest environments, the australopith-
ecines broadened their diet to include
C4 foods, which together with bipedal-
ism allowed them to colonize the in-
creasingly open and seasonal African
environment.
This emerging difference in diet
very likely contributed to the ecologi-
Clockwise: Lucille Reyboz, Ann Johansson, Wolfgang Kaehler, Frans Lanting/Corbis
cal diversification between apes and

hominids, and was an important step
in human evolution. The C4 plants for-
aged by australopithecines may have
included grasses and sedges, although
the topic is rather controversial. In-
terestingly, the use of animals as food
sources may also result in a C4-type
isotopic signature, if the prey animals
have consumed C4 plants. Many re-
searchers believe that a considerable
proportion of the diet of australopith-
ecines and early Homo consisted of ar-
thropods (perhaps largely termites),
bird eggs, lizards, rodents and young
antelope, especially in the dry season.
Brain Size, Food and Fire

Progressive changes in diet were as-
sociated with changes in body size
and anatomy. As Robert Foley at the Figure 4. Stable carbon isotope analyses show that
University of Cambridge has pointed early African hominids had a significant C4 com-
ponent in their diet. This may have come either
out, increased body size may broaden
from eating C4 plant foods or from eating animals
the dietary niche by increasing home-
(for example, termites) that consumed C4 plants.
range area (thus providing a higher Common C3 plants include (clockwise from top
diversity of possible food sources) left) rice and cassava root. A well-known C4 plant
and enhanced tolerance of low-quality is the giant sedge Cyperus papyrus, which was
foods. A large mammal can afford to used as a food source by ancient Egyptians. Teff
subsist off lower-quality foods than a is a common C4 plant in Africa today.
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provided the increased levels of fatty

acids that were necessary for support-
ing the rapid hominid brain evolution.
As Richard Wrangham has persua-
sively argued, domestication of fire
had a great influence on the diet of
our ancestors. Fire could be used in
cooperative hunting, and to cook meat
Kyle S. Brown, Institute for Human Origins (IHO)
and plants. According to hominid fos-

sil records, cooked food may have ap-
peared already as early as 1.9 million
years ago, although reliable evidence
of the controlled use of fire does not
appear in the archaeological record
until after 400,000 years ago. The rou-
tine use of fire probably began around
50,000 to 100,000 years ago. Regular
use of fire had a great impact on the
diet of H. erectus and later species, in-
cluding H. sapiens. For instance, the
Figure 5. Controlled use of fire was key to changes in hominid diet. Although examples may cooking of savanna tubers and other
date back as far as 400,000 years ago, it probably was not common until roughly 50,000 to plant foods softens them and increases
100,000 years ago, as shown in these examples of heat-treated silcrete blade tools from the circa their energy and nutrient bioavail-
65,000–60,000-year-old layers at Pinnacle Point Site 5-6(PP5-6) in Africa. ability. In their raw form, the starch
in roots and tubers is not absorbed in
Wheeler with Liverpool John Moores erectus this offered more hunting and the intestine and passes through the
University, the high costs of large hu- scavenging possibilities. The diet of H. body as nondigestible carbohydrate.
man brains are in part supported by erectus appears to have included more Cooking increases the nutritional qual-
energy- and nutrient-rich diets that in meat than that of australopithecines, ity of tubers by making more of the
most cases include meat. and early Homo. H. erectus probably ac- carbohydrate energy available for bio-
Increased use of C4 plants was in- quired mammalian carcasses by both logical processes. It also decreases the
deed gradually followed by increased hunting and scavenging. Archaeologi- risk of microbial infections. Thus, the
consumption of meat, either scavenged cal evidence shows that H. erectus used use of fire considerably expanded the
or hunted. Several factors contributed stone tools and probably had a rudi- range of possible foods for early hu-
to increased meat availability. First, sa- mentary hunting and gathering econ- mans. Not surprisingly, the spread of
vanna ecosystems with several mod- omy. Sharp-edged stone tools were our own species to all main continents
ern characteristics started to spread important as they could slice through coincides with the beginning of the
about 1.8 million years ago. This bene- hide and thus allowed access to meat. routine use of fire.
fited East African ungulates, which in- These tools also made available tissues In relative terms, consumption of
creased both in abundance and species such as bone marrow or brain. Greater meat seems to have peaked with our
diversity. For top predators such as H. access to animal foods seems to have sister species H. neanderthalensis. As
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Figure 6. The carbohydrate revolution began

Richard Wareham Fotografie/Alamy
with the domestication of plants and animals

about 12,000 years ago. Diets prior to the Neo-
lithic differed considerably from what most
people eat today. The contribution of pro-
tein to caloric intake (for example, salmon as
shown in the Finnish spread at right) declined
significantly. In place of the missing protein
came carbohydrates such as potatoes. This
may have driven an increase in the copies of
the human amylase salivary enzyme gene.
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Matt Sponheimer and Julia A. Lee- sumption of a starch-rich diet, the role B /
Thorp with Rutgers University and of the amylase enzyme in the digestive 8 &
the University of Cape Town have tract became even more important in
4
pointed out, on the basis of extensive breaking down starch.
evidence, “there can be little doubt Salivary amylase is a relatively re-
that Neanderthals consumed large cent development that first originated
quantities of animal foods.” Remains from a pre-existing pancreatic amylase
of large to medium-sized mammals gene. A duplication of the ancestral
dominate Neanderthal sites. Neander- pancreatic amylase gene developed
thals probably both hunted and for- salivary specificity independently both
aged for mammal carcasses. Perhaps, in rodents and in primates, emphasiz-
unromantically, they had a preference ing its importance in digestion. Ad-
for small prey animals when hunting. ditionally, its molecular biology gives
And in northern areas colonized by us a new insight into how evolution
the Neanderthals, there was probably has made use of copy number varia-
no competition for frozen carcasses. tions (CNVs, which include deletions,
C
The control of fire by the Neanderthals insertions, duplications and complex
(and archaic modern humans), how- multisite variants) as sources of ge-
ever, allowed them to defrost and use netic and phenotypic variation; single-
such carcasses. nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs)
were once thought to have this role
The Carbohydrate Revolution alone. CNVs may also involve com-
The Neolithic or Agricultural Revolu- plex gains or losses of homologous
tion, a gradual shift to plant and animal sequences at multiple sites in the
domestication, started around 12,000 genome, and structural variants can
years ago. For our species this cultural comprise millions of nucleotides with
innovation meant, among many other heterogeneity ranging from kilobases
things, that the proportion of carbohy- to megabases in size.
drates in our diet increased consider- Analyses of copy number variation
ably. Cereal grains have accounted for in the human salivary amylase gene
about 35 percent of the energy intake (Amy1) found that the copy number
of hunter-gatherer societies, whereas correlated with the protein level and LJMPNFUFST
it makes up one-half of energy intake that isolated human populations with
Figure 7. Albano Beja-Pereira and colleagues
in modern agricultural societies—for a high-starch diet had more copies of
have done geographic matching between milk
example, in Finnish young adults (see Amy1. Furthermore, the copy number gene diversity in cattle, lactose tolerance in
Figure 6). The Neolithic Revolution and diet did not share a common an- contemporary humans and locations of Neo-
also included domestication of mam- cestry; local diets created a strong posi- lithic cattle farming sites. The dark orange
mals, which in favorable conditions tive selection on the copy number vari- color in a shows where the greatest milk
guaranteed a constant supply of meat ation of amylase, and this evolutionary gene uniqueness and allelic diversity occur
and other sources of animal protein. sweep may have been coincident with in cattle. In b lactase persistence is plotted
Although fire likely played a role in the dietary change during early stages in contemporary Europeans. The darker the
the early utilization of carbohydrates, of agriculture in our species. It is in- color, the higher the frequency of the lactase
the big shift in diet brought about by teresting to note that the copy number persistence allele. The dashed line in b shows
the geographic area in which the early Neo-
plant domestication has its roots in the variation appears to have increased in
lithic cattle pastoralist culture emerged. (Im-
interplay of cultural change and bio- the evolution of human lineage: The age adapted from Beja-Pereira et al. 2003.)
logical evolution. Sweet-tasting carbo- salivary protein levels are about six to
hydrates are energy rich and therefore eight times higher in humans than in
vital for humans. In the environment chimpanzees and in bonobos, which and dark winters, whereas in southern
of Paleolithic hunter-gatherer popula- are mostly frugivorous and ingest little Europe and much of Asia, drinking
tions, carbohydrates were scarce, and starch compared to humans. milk after childhood often results in
therefore it was important to effective- gastrointestinal problems. If the intes-
ly find and taste sweet foods. When Transition to Dairy Foods tine is unable to break down lactose to
eaten, large polymers such as starch are A classic example of gene-culture co- glucose and galactose—due to lack of
partly hydrolyzed by the enzyme amy- evolution is lactase persistence (LP) in lactase or lactase-phlorizin hydrolase
lase in the mouth and further cleaved human adults. Milk contains a sugar (LPH) enzyme, normally located in the
into sugars, the sweet taste of which named lactose, which must be digested villi of enterocytes of the small intes-
might have functioned as a signal for by the enzyme lactase before it can be tine—bacterial procession of lactose
identifying nutritious food sources. absorbed in the intestine. The ability to causes diarrhea, bloating and flatu-
(It is interesting to note that the fruit digest milk as adults (lactose tolerance) lence that can lead to fatal dehydra-
fly Drosophila melanogaster perceives is common in inhabitants of Northern tion in infants. On the other hand, milk
the same compounds as sweet that we Europe where ancient populations are provides adults with a fluid and rich
do.) Later, in the Neolithic agriculture, assumed to have used milk products source of energy without bacterial con-
during which humans shifted to con- as an energy source to survive the cold tamination, enhancing their survival
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"GSJDBO"NFSJDBOT
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Figure 8. Lactose intolerance in adult human beings is, in fact, the rule rather than the exception, although its prevalence may well be declin-
ing as the single nucleotide polymorphism that causes lactase persistence spreads. Note the wide variation in lactose intolerance over short
geographic distances. Particularly in African cultures, the prevalence of dairy farming is strongly correlated to lactose tolerance. Gray areas
indicate areas where no data are available. (Map adapted from Wikimedia Commons.)
and fitness. Therefore, in the past the associated perfectly with lactose intol- lithic period, the frequency of lactase
phenotype of lactase persistence un- erance and, because it was observed persistence alleles rose rapidly under
doubtedly increased the relative repro- in distantly related populations, sug- intense natural selection. The cultural
ductive success of its carriers. gested that this variant was very old. shift towards dairy farming apparently
Recent findings of molecular biology Later it was shown that this allele had drove the rapid evolution of lactose
show that a single-nucleotide polymor- emerged independently in two geo- tolerance, making it one of the strong-
phism that makes isolated populations graphically restricted populations in est pieces of evidence for gene-culture
lactase persistent has been “among the the Urals and in the Caucasus, the first coevolution in modern humans. In
strongest signals of selection yet found time between 12,000 and 5,000 years other words, the meme for milking
for any gene in the genome.” Lactase ago and the second time 3,000 to 1,400 had local variants, which spread rap-
persistence emerged independently years ago. Yet Saudi Arabian popula- idly due to the positive effects they
about 10,000 to 6,000 years ago in Eu- tions that have a high prevalence of LP had on their carriers.
rope and in the Middle East, two areas have two different variants introduced We must bear in mind, however, that
with a different history of adaptation in association with the domestication the transcription of a gene is under
to the utilization of milk. The earliest of the Arabian camel about 6,000 years complex regulation, as is the C/T -13910
historical evidence for the use of cat- ago. In Africa, a strong selective sweep variant: It contains an enhancer ele-
tle as providers of milk comes from in lactase persistence produced three ment through which several transcrip-
ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia and new SNPs about 7,000 years ago in tion factors probably contribute to the
dates from the 4th millennium b.c. Still Tanzanians, Kenyans and Sudanese, regulation of the lactase gene in the
today there are large areas of central reflecting convergent evolution during intestine. In addition, lactose toler-
Africa and eastern Asia without any a similar type of animal domestication ance in humans and the frequencies
tradition of milking, and many adults and adult milk consumption. of milk protein genes in cattle appear
in these countries are physiologically All these facts indicate that there has to have also coevolved. When the geo-
unable to absorb lactose. The ancient been a strong positive selection pres- graphical variation in genes encoding
Romans did not drink milk, and this sure in isolated populations at different the most important milk proteins in
is reflected in the physiology of their times to introduce lactose tolerance, a number of European cattle breeds
Mediterranean descendants today. and this has taken place through sev- and the prevalence of lactose tolerance
The first evidence for a SNP as a eral independent mutations, implying in Europe were studied, the high di-
causative factor in LP came from a adaptation to different types of milk- versity of milk genes correlated geo-
group of Finnish families. A haplo- ing culture. Lactase persistence was graphically with the lactose tolerance
type analysis of nine extended Finnish practically nonexistent in early Euro- in modern Europeans and with the
families revealed that a DNA variant pean farmers, based on the analysis of locations of Neolithic cattle farming
(C/T-13910) located in the enhancer el- Neolithic human skeletons, but when sites in Europe (see Figure 7). This cor-
ement upstream of the lactase gene dairy farming started in the early Neo- relation suggests that there has been a
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gene-culture coevolution between cat- human physiological adaptation, the Foley, R. 1987. Another Unique Species: Patterns
tle and human culture leading towards analysis of worldwide samples of hu- in Human Evolutionary Ecology. Hong Kong:
Longman Group.
larger herds with a wider distribution man populations showed that the loci Helgason, A., S. Pálsson, G. Thorleifsson et al.
of gene frequencies, resulting in the associated with the risk of T2D have 2007. Refining the impact of TCF7L2 gene
selection of increased milk production experienced a recent positive selection, variants on type 2 diabetes and adaptive
and changed composition of milk pro- whereas susceptibility to Type I dia- evolution. Nature Genetics 39:218–25.
teins more suitable for human nutri- betes showed little evidence of being Laland, K. N., J. Odling-Smee and S. Myles.
tion. In the future, we will know even under natural selection. 2010. How culture shaped the human ge-
nome: Bringing genetics and the human
more about the geographical evolu- In the near future, genome-wide sciences together. Nature Reviews Genetics
tion of LP, as it has become possible to scans for recent positive selections will 11:137–48.
rapidly genotype large numbers of in- increase our understanding of the co- Leonard, W. R., J. J. Snodgrass and M. L. Rob-
dividuals harboring lactose tolerance- evolution between the ancient genome ertson. 2007. Effects of brain evolution on
linked polymorphisms producing var- and diet in different populations, pro- human nutrition and metabolism. Annual
Review of Nutrition 27:311–27.
ious gastrointestinal symptoms after jecting to problems in modern nutrition-
Perry, G. H., N. J. Dominy, K. G. Claw et al.
lactose ingestion. al qualities. As has been suggested here, 2007. Diet and the evolution of human
that understanding is likely to be con- amylase gene copy number variation. Na-
We Are Still Evolving siderably more nuanced than the simple ture Genetics 39:1188–90.
As shown above, culture-based chang- “hunter-gatherer-genes-meet-fast-food” Pickrell, J. K., G. Coop, J. Novembre et al. 2009.
es in diet (which can be called memes) approach so often put forward. Signals of recent positive selection in a
have repeatedly generated selective worldwide sample of human populations.
Genome Research 19:826–37.
pressures in human biological evo- References
Sponheimer, M., and J. Lee-Thorp. 2007. Ho-
lution, demonstrated for instance by Beja-Pereira, A., G. Luikart, P. R. England et minin paleodiets: the contribution of stable
the single nucleotide polymorphism al. 2003. Gene-culture coevolution between isotopes. In Handbook of Paleoanthropology,
cattle milk protein genes and human lactase
of lactase persistence and the copy Vol. I: Principles, Methods and Approaches,
genes. Nature Genetics 35:311–13. eds. W. Henke and I. Tattersall. Berlin:
number variation of amylase. These
Bowman, D. M. J. S., J. K. Balch, P. Artaxo et Springer, pp. 555–85.
selective sweeps took place 10,000 al. 2009. Fire in the Earth system. Science Wrangham, R. 2009. Catching Fire: How Cooking
to 6,000 years ago when animal and 324:481–84. Made Us Human. New York: Basic Books.
plant domestication started, marking Eaton, S. B. 2006. The ancestral human diet:
the transition from the Paleolithic to What was it and should it be a paradigm
the Neolithic era. Much earlier, genet- for contemporary nutrition? Proceedings of
the Nutritional Society 65:1–6. For relevant Web links, consult this
ic changes were certainly associated
with the dietary changes of australop-
Enattah, N. S., T. G. K. Jensen, M. Nielsen et issue of American Scientist Online:
al. 2008. Independent introduction of two
ithecines and H. erectus. lactase-persistence alleles into human pop- http://www.americanscientist.org/
What about the future? Can we, for ulations reflects different history of adap- issues/id.83/past.aspx
instance, see any selection pressure tation to milk culture. American Journal of
Human Genetics 82:57–72.
in the loci of susceptibility to diet-
associated diseases? The answer seems
to be yes. The risk of Type II diabetes
(T2D) has been suggested to be a tar-
get of natural selection in humans as it
has strong impacts on metabolism and
energy production, and therefore on
human survival and fitness. Genome-
wide and hypothesis-free association
studies have revealed a variant of the
transcription factor 7–like (TCF7L2)
gene conferring the risk of T2D. Later,
in Finns, a similar genome-wide T2D
study increased the number of vari-
ants near the TCF7L2 to 10. When re-
fining the effects of TCF7L2 gene vari-
ants on T2D, a new variant of the same
gene that has been selected for in East
Asian, European and West African
populations was identified. Interest-
ingly, this variant suggested an asso-
ciation both with body mass index and
with the concentrations of leptin and
ghrelin, the hunger-satiety hormones
that originated approximately during
the transition from Paleolithic to Neo-
lithic culture. In support of the notion
that selection is an on-going process in
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Finding Alzheimer’s Disease

How interest in one patient’s suffering and confidence in the physical basis of
mental illness led a German doctor to discover the devastating disorder
Ralf Dahm
I have, so to speak, lost myself ... D.’s personality had begun to change. countered patients with similar symp-
—Auguste D. At first only her memory had occasion- toms and had even published an article
ally failed her, but as time passed, her on senile dementia in 1898. But these
F ew illnesses are as devastating as

Alzheimer’s disease. Memory pro-
gressively fails, complex tasks become
behavior changed too. She neglected
household chores and, when trying to
cook, blundered and ruined food. She
patients had been much older than Au-
guste D., whose case seemed unique.
Brief as it was, this encounter would go
ever more difficult, and once-familiar was restless, striding around her apart- down in history. It marks the beginning
situations and people suddenly ap- ment without direction or purpose, and of scientific investigation into what we
pear strange, even threatening. Over hiding objects for no apparent reason. now know as Alzheimer’s disease.
years, afflicted patients lose virtually all Increasingly, she became confused and Intrigued by Auguste D.’s unusual
abilities and succumb to the disease. Al- paranoid, afraid of people she knew behavior, Alzheimer observed her fur-
though there is no cure for Alzheimer’s well. In the fall of 1901, her husband, a ther. She appeared anxious and very
disease yet, scientists have made sig- clerk with the railroad authority, could confused. At lunch she ate pork with
nificant progress toward understand- not cope any longer and brought her to cauliflower. When asked what she was
ing what goes awry in the brain when Frankfurt’s mental institution. eating, however, she replied that it was
neurons die on a massive scale. Recent On November 26, 1901, one day after spinach, potatoes and horseradish. Lat-
years have seen a number of promis- her admission, Alzheimer encountered er that day, Alzheimer noticed that she
ing insights that could lead to effective Auguste D. for the first time. When he made unusual errors when writing. She
therapies. But it’s been a long journey to entered the room, she sat on her bed would omit or repeat syllables in words,
this point, one that reaches back more with what Alzheimer described in his sometimes several times, or abruptly
than a century. notes as a “helpless” expression. To stop in the middle of a phrase or word.
The story starts in the autumn of get to know her and to find out more For instance, when Alzheimer asked her
1901 in the German city of Frankfurt, about her affliction, Alzheimer asked to note down her name on a little piece
and centers on two people. The first her questions, writing down their ex- of paper, she did not write the full name
is Alois Alzheimer, then a 37-year-old change in his file: Frau Auguste D., but broke off after Frau.
doctor at the city’s institution for the Only when asked to write down every
What is your name?
mentally ill. The second is Auguste D., word individually was she able to com-
Auguste.
a woman just over 50 years of age who plete the task. These symptoms were so
Surname?
recently had been admitted to the clinic. unusual that Alzheimer decided to fol-
Auguste.
At the beginning of that year, Auguste low her case more closely.
What is your husband’s name?”
On November 29, 1901, he inter-
I believe Auguste.
viewed Auguste D. again, diligently
Ralf Dahm is director of scientific management Your husband?
recording her replies:
at the Spanish National Cancer Research Cen- I see, my husband…
tre (CNIO) in Madrid and honorary professor Are you married?
at the University of Padua, Italy. Since visit- How are you?
To Auguste.
ing Tübingen’s medieval castle where DNA It is always one as the other. Who
Mrs. D.?
was discovered, he has been fascinated by the carried me here?
Yes, to Auguste D.
history of the life sciences. He has published on Where are you?
How long have you been here?
early DNA research, Darwin’s theory of evolu- At the moment; I have temporarily,
tion and the discovery of Alzheimer’s disease. Three weeks.
as I said, I have no means. One
Dahm received his Ph.D. from the Department Alzheimer showed Auguste D. simply has to … I don’t know my-
of Biochemistry at the University of Dundee. multiple objects, including a pencil, a self … I really don’t know … dear
He was a postdoctoral scientist at the Max
pen, a key and a cigar, all of which she me, what then is to?
Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in
Tübingen and a group leader at the Medical
could name. When asked after a while What is your name?
University of Vienna. Address: Department what she had been shown, however, Frau Auguste D.
of Biology, University of Padova, Via U. Bassi she could not remember, a clear sign of When were you born?
58/B, I-35121 Padova, Italy. Internet: __ralf. trouble forming short-term memories. Eighteen hundred and…
dahm@bio.unipd.it
___________ Several years earlier, Alzheimer had en- In which year were you born?
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This year, no, last year.

When were you born?
Eighteen hundred—I don’t know ...
What did I ask you?
Ach, D. Auguste.
Clearly Auguste D. had great difficul-

ty communicating. Alzheimer continued
to test her other cognitive abilities. She
performed simple calculations mostly
well. But time and again she got lost or
stopped speaking right in the middle of
a sentence or even a word. Auguste D.’s
behavior was also strange. Often she
was disoriented, apparently not com-
prehending situations she was in. She
would sometimes touch the faces of her
fellow patients or pour water over them,
prompting them to strike at her. When
asked why, she was apologetic and re-
plied that she was trying to “tidy up.”
Taking Pains to Understand

Alzheimer’s approach to examining
Auguste D. was not standard during
his day. At a time when mentally ill pa-
tients were often just locked away, Al-
zheimer and his colleagues in Frankfurt
tried to understand their afflictions and
help them. They carefully observed and
talked to the patients, and tried to allevi-
ate their symptoms as best they could.
Instead of restraining restless patients,
they encouraged them to exercise in the
open air and calmed them down with
warm baths or massages. Only when
these measures failed did they resort to
drugs. In keeping with this approach,
Alzheimer early on visited Auguste D.
frequently to observe her.
Over time, Auguste D.’s speech
became unintelligible. She eventu-
ally stopped talking completely, only
humming or shouting wildly, often
for hours on end. In her final year, her
body weakened. She ate only at irregu-
lar intervals, often having to be fed. She
spent most of her time in bed, hunched
up and apathetic. Finally, early in 1906,
Auguste D. contracted pneumonia. On
April 8 that year, just short of her 56th
birthday, she died.
The case of Auguste D., as described
by Alzheimer, accurately summarizes
the range of progressive changes ob-
served in many Alzheimer’s patients
today: her deteriorating memory, espe-
cially her inability to remember recent
Figure 1. The research that led Dr. Alois Alzheimer to discover what we now call
events; her disorientation; her decreased Alzheimer’s disease started with his careful observation of a woman named Auguste D.
ability to speak coherently; her problems The photograph above is dated 1902, one year after she was admitted to the mental asy-
understanding and judging situations; lum in Frankfurt, Germany, where Alzheimer worked. Auguste D.’s photograph, along
and her restless and erratic behavior. with Alzheimer’s notes regarding his observations of her, was rediscovered in Germany
Once, when trying and failing to write in the mid-1990s. (Images courtesy of Eli Lilly and Company.)
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her name, Auguste D. remarked, “I trists of his time. Among other impor- so successful that today’s classification
have, so to say, lost myself.” This simple tant contributions, he was among those of psychiatric disorders remains large-
statement is a fitting description of the promoting the idea that psychiatric ly based on it. Alzheimer knew that
way many Alzheimer’s disease patients diseases have a biological basis, some- working with Kraepelin would open
experience the disease. thing acknowledged for many diseases up possibilities he could only dream of
in his day but not yet widely accepted in Frankfurt. Moreover, Franz Nissl, a
The Right Place, the Right Time for mental illness. By introducing ex- close friend and colleague of Alzheim-
By the time Auguste D. died, Alzheimer perimental approaches to understand- er’s in Frankfurt, had also moved to
was no longer working in Frankfurt. In ing mental afflictions, Kraepelin helped Heidelberg. Alzheimer hoped that to-
1903, after 14 years at the institution transform psychiatry into an empirical gether they could substantially advance
for the mentally ill, he had accepted a science. He developed an innovative their studies into the anatomical causes
position as a scientific assistant to Emil system to classify mental disorders, of mental disorders.
Kraepelin in Heidelberg. This was a which took into account not only symp- It’s difficult to pinpoint precisely
phenomenal opportunity. Kraepelin toms at any given stage but also chang- when Alzheimer became so driven to
was one of the most eminent psychia- es over time. Kraepelin’s system proved expand the scientific understanding of
neurological maladies. He was an en-
thusiastic student of the natural sciences
throughout his secondary-school days in
Franconia. After that, he studied medi-
cine in Berlin, Würzburg and Tübingen,
important centers for the medical and
biological sciences at that time. During
his studies, he had two experiences that
must have influenced his later career
in psychiatry. While studying in Ber-
lin, Alzheimer came in contact with the
new ideas about how mental disorders
can correlate to physical changes in the
brain. Also, in Würzburg, Alzheimer
studied with Albert von Kölliker. A dis-
tinguished histologist and pioneer of
microscopic anatomy, von Kölliker in-
troduced Alzheimer to microscopy. The
solid training in microscopic anatomy
he received from von Kölliker equipped
Alzheimer with the expertise he would
need later to analyze the brains of pa-
tients such as Auguste D. Still, his medi-
cal thesis focused not on a brain disease
Max-Planck-Institute of Psychiatry Munich, Historic Archives, Portrait collection
but on the histology of the glands that

secrete cerumen, or earwax.
After finishing his medical studies
with top grades and receiving his license
as a medical doctor in 1888, Alzheimer
took a position as the private doctor of
a mentally ill woman with whom he
traveled for five months. Shortly after
finishing that assignment, he answered
an advertisement seeking an assistant
physician at the Frankfurt mental insti-
tution, an opening he had seen before
taking his first position but had not re-
sponded to. The institution’s director,
Emil Sioli, by then was desperate to re-
cruit someone to help him care for the
clinic’s 254 patients. Only one day after
receiving Alzheimer’s application, Sioli
sent him a telegram offering him the
Figure 2. Two things especially equipped Alzheimer, pictured here in an undated portrait,
job. Alzheimer began work in Decem-
to discover the progressive and devastating disease that still bears his name. For one, he em- ber of 1888. A few months later, Franz
braced a school of thought that argued that many mental ailments could be traced to anoma- Nissl joined him and Sioli as a senior
lies in the brain. He also had been trained in microscopy and histology, key skills that would physician. Nissl remains famous today
allow him to analyze anatomical abnormalities in diseased brains. for his discovery of histological stain-
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© Historisches Museum Frankfurt/Main Photograph: Horst Ziegenfusz

Figure 3. As a young doctor, Alzheimer treated patients and conducted research at the mental hospital in Frankfurt, shown above. The institu-
tion was known at the turn of the last century for the humane treatment of its patients. The German neo-Gothic facility was constructed in 1864
under the auspices of the famous German psychiatrist Heinrich Hoffmann. The institution had several courtyards, gardens and even a grand
ballroom. Some Frankfurt citizens called it the “palace of the mad.”
ing techniques that improved scientists’ bears their names: Creutzfeld-Jakob staining methods at his service, includ-
ability to see structures in neurons and disease. Alzheimer’s laboratory was ing silver stains, which were useful
tissue of the human brain. He is also fitted with multiple instruments, infor detecting subcellular structures in
famous for his discovery of the neuronal cluding microscopes and a camera luci- neurons due to their high contrast and
organelles—called Nissl substance— da, which allowed Alzheimer to make sensitivity. For that point in history, Al-
that are sites of protein synthesis. drawings of his histological sections, zheimer was in an ideal situation to
The three men were highly compat- as well as a room for microphotogra- examine Auguste D.’s brain.
ible. Sioli was a progressive and open- phy, which allowed him to take photo- Alzheimer’s initial inspection con-
minded director who allowed his two graphs. He also had several histological firmed his suspicion that hers was an
doctors ample time to follow their re-
search interests. Nissl and Alzheimer
shared a passion for histopathology
and neuropathology. They used micro-
scopes to closely examine tissue to bet-
Meta Warrick Fuller/Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture/NYPL

ter understand which changes related
to a particular brain disease. Encour-
aged by their environment, the men be-
came close collaborators and friends.
Applying the Best Tools

After Alzheimer left Frankfurt to work
with Kraepelin, Sioli kept Alzheimer in-
formed about changes in Auguste D.’s
health. When she died, Sioli shipped
her brain to Alzheimer, who by then
had relocated to Munich, where Krae-
pelin had been selected to run the Roy-
al Psychiatric Clinic. Alzheimer ran
the clinic’s large anatomical laboratory
and had set up a state-of-the-art facility
for histopathological analyses, which
rapidly attracted a number of gifted
students and guest scientists. Among Figure 4. Alzheimer, seated to the left of U.S.-based psychiatrist Solomon C. Fuller, was working
them were Hans-Gerhard Creutzfeld in Munich by the time Auguste D. died. He had accepted a position with eminent psychiatrist
and Alfons Maria Jakob. In the 1920s, Emil Kraepelin, the person who coined the term “Alzheimer’s disease.” Alzheimer and Fuller
they would be the first to describe the are pictured with other psychiatrists at the University of Munich in 1904 or 1905. Only some of
degenerative neurological disease that the other doctors’ names are legible. They include Baroncini, von Nobert and Ranke.
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Figure 5. In a 1911 publication, Alzheimer included multiple im-

ages of what he and collaborators observed in brain sections of
patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. The panels on the
left show stages in the formation of neurofibrillary tangles in
the brain of Auguste D. The top panel depicts the beginnings of
the process. The middle and bottom panels show intermediate
and late stages, respectively. At top right is a photograph of part
of a section taken from the brain of patient Johann F. The dark
areas represent plaques. Below that are renderings of sections
taken from different depths of Auguste D.’s cortex. Numerous
plaques are depicted as are cells with strongly staining neurofi-
brils. In this figure, P1 refers to the central plaque and P2 refers
to peripheral plaque regions; glz refers to glia cells and gaz
refers to ganglion cells.
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extraordinary case. Huge areas of her peculiar disease of the cerebral cortex,”
brain showed a pronounced atrophy. Alzheimer publicly described Auguste
To study the changes in more detail, D.’s case for the first time. He began by
Alzheimer sectioned parts of the brain relating her unusual psychiatric symp-
and stained them to better reveal the toms, noting that they were so unlike
morphology of the tissue under a any described previously that her case
microscope. Helped by two visiting did not fit any known affliction.
Italian physicians, Gaetano Perusini He then described the dramatical-
and Francesco Bonfiglio, Alzheimer ly changed histology of Auguste D.’s
confirmed the atrophy that he had ob- brain. By showing images prepared in
served in the intact brain. In many re- his laboratory of the widespread cell
gions of the brain, enormous numbers death, the strange, thick bundles of
of neurons had died. tangled neurofibrils, and the abundant
In addition to the atrophy, the scien- plaques, Alzheimer hoped to convince
tists noticed more subtle changes. Many the audience of the novelty and impor-
of the remaining neurons contained tance of his findings. He concluded his
peculiar, thick and strongly staining talk by repeating his conviction that
fibrils, or fibers. Throughout the cere- this case was a new pathology and that
bral cortex, they also found deposits histopathological analyses such as he
of an unknown, gummy substance in described would allow both a more
the form of plaques. Auguste D.’s brain precise classification and a better un-
thus showed what today are generally derstanding of all mental disorders.
seen as hallmarks of Alzheimer’s dis- Instead of responding enthusiasti-
ease. First, there was the massive death cally to his groundbreaking discovery,
of neurons, and, second, the presence however, the 87 scientists and doctors
of neurofibrillary tangles, insoluble ag- in the audience barely reacted. No one
gregates of a protein called tau that take asked questions. There was no discus-
the shape of thick, tangled fibers and fill sion. The meeting’s organizers, failing
the neuronal cell body. Third were the to grasp the significance of the findings,
Gino Domenico/Associated Press
amyloid plaques, deposits of small pep- noted the talk’s title in its proceedings
tides called beta-amyloid that form in but stated, without explanation, that it Figure 6. Dr. Konrad Maurer of the Johann
Wolfgang Goethe University holds samples
the spaces between neurons. Although “was not appropriate for a short pub-
of the medical file of Auguste D. Rediscov-
these changes are familiar to any sci- lication.” At least the local newspaper, ered in Frankfurt in 1995, the file shed light
entist studying the disease today, they the Tübinger Chronik, which published on Alzheimer’s observations about the first
were new and exciting to Alzheimer a report of the meeting two days after patient he diagnosed with what is now called
and his colleagues. Alzheimer’s lecture, mentioned his talk, Alzheimer’s disease.
The abnormalities were, to some ex- but only in one short sentence: “Dr.
tent, similar to the degenerative chang- Alzheimer from Munich reported of a in Auguste D. Together with Perusini
es seen in senile dementia, a pathol- peculiar, severe disease process which, he sectioned the organs and searched
ogy observed in elderly patients. But within a period of 4 and a half years, for the telltale changes they had seen
there were two important differences. causes a substantial loss of neurons.” in Auguste D.’s brain. Once again they
For one, the changes in Auguste D. had In the following year, though, the meet- found abundant neurofibrillary tangles
occurred in a woman who was only 51 ing organizers reversed their initial deci- and amyloid plaques throughout the
when she showed the first signs of the sion and a two-page transcript of Al- cerebral cortex. Perusini published the
disease and who was 55 when she died. zheimer’s talk, without his figures, was results of their analyses, including the
Patients with senile dementia generally included in the Allgemeine Zeitschrift für first images illustrating the changes seen
were in their 70s or 80s. Furthermore, Psychiatrie und psychiatrisch-gerichtliche in Auguste D.’s brain, in 1909. They ap-
the pathological changes in Auguste Medizin (General Journal of Psychiatry peared in a scientific journal edited by
D.’s brain were much more dramatic and Psychiatric-Forensic Medicine). This Nissl and Alzheimer himself.
than those Alzheimer had seen in pa- report—considered a historic paper to- By that time, Kraepelin had started
tients suffering from senile dementia. day—did not stir much interest in the revising his very influential textbook
Alzheimer was thus convinced that he scientific community either. on psychiatry for its eighth edition. In
had discovered something new. the chapter on senile and presenile de-
On November 3, 1906, Alzheimer The Psychiatrist Persists mentias, Kraepelin decided to include
was ready to present his finding to the Alzheimer was not discouraged. He re- Alzheimer’s new findings. He began
scientific community. He was invited mained convinced of the importance of his description by noting that “a pe-
to give a lecture at the 37th meeting of his discovery. To gather further data in culiar group of cases with severe cel-
the South-West German Psychiatrists in support of his views and to understand lular changes has been described by
the small university town of Tübingen. the disease better, he looked for addition- Alzheimer,” and continued to relate,
What might have been a provincial affair al cases of younger dementia patients. in some detail, the clinical symptoms
long lost in obscurity was in fact to be- In 1907 and 1908, Alzheimer obtained Alzheimer had observed. Then he ex-
come a defining moment in the history the brains of three patients with symp- plained the histological abnormalities
of neurology. In his talk entitled “On a toms much like those he had observed of the new disease: “The [plaques] were
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Thomas Deerinck, NCMIR/Photo Researchers

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Figure 7. A century after Alzheimer’s disease was discovered,
the brain damage caused by the affliction can be imaged more
precisely. Above is a colored transmission electron micrograph
of a neurofibrillary tangle (red structure) in the cytoplasm of a
neuron. Despite such progress, it’s not yet clear how to prevent
or cure this disease, whose incidence is expected to balloon as
the world’s population expands and people live longer. At left
are worldwide projections for Alzheimer’s prevalence devel-
oped by Ron Brookmeyer of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg
"GSJDB "TJB &VSPQF -BUJO /PSUI 0DFBOJB 5PUBM School of Public Health and colleagues. They were published
"NFSJDB "NFSJDB in Alzheimer’s and Dementia in 2007.
extraordinarily numerous, and nearly this, Alzheimer’s name would forever Fischer in Prague, and showed very
a third of the cortical cells [neurons] be associated with his discovery. similar histological changes.
appeared to have died. In their place Alzheimer published the first com- Over two decades, Alzheimer poured
were strangely tangled, strongly stain- prehensive account of Auguste D.’s most of his life into his medical and re-
ing bundles of fibrils, apparently the case in 1911. In this manuscript he also search pursuits. Working long hours
last remnants of the perished cell body.” described another patient, Johann F., caring for his patients and trying to
To illustrate these points, Kraepelin in- who had been admitted to the Mu- uncover the causes of their mental af-
cluded figures showing these degenera- nich clinic at the age of 56 with clini- flictions, Alzheimer rarely took time
tive changes. cal symptoms very similar to those off. During the early years in Munich,
Kraepelin concluded his description Alzheimer had observed in Auguste when Kraepelin didn’t have a funded
by speculating about where in the range D. Interestingly, Johann F.’s brain dif- position for him, Alzheimer labored
of known dementias this new disease fered from Auguste D.’s in one im- without a salary and paid substantial
might fit in: “The clinical interpretation portant aspect. While it displayed the parts of the expenses associated with
of this Alzheimer’s disease is currently typical amyloid plaques, there were his research from his personal funds.
unclear. While the anatomical findings no signs of changes in the neurofibrils. In 1906, his devotion began to pay off.
seem to suggest that we are dealing with From today’s point of view, Johann F. Kraepelin appointed Alzheimer a senior
a particularly severe form of senile de- would be diagnosed with a less com- physician, and only three years later he
mentia, the fact that the disease occa- mon form, the so-called “plaque-only” was appointed assistant professor at the
sionally already begins in the [patient’s] Alzheimer’s disease. Thus, already at University of Munich. In 1910, he was
late 40s seems to somewhat contradict this early stage and after examining selected as editor of a newly established
this. One would have to presume a ‘Se- only a handful of patients, Alzheimer psychiatric journal. At the same time,
nium praecox’ [premature aging], if it is had a glimpse of the range of histo- psychiatrists worldwide were increas-
maybe not indeed a peculiar disease pro- pathological symptoms which remain ingly recognizing his seminal contribu-
cess, which is more or less independent associated with the disease today. tions to neuropathology.
of age.” With these conjectures, Kraepe- In his second publication on the In 1912, the Silesian Friedrich-
lin appears to have foreseen that, apart disease, Alzheimer made clear that he Wilhelm-University in Breslau offered
from old age, other factors can cause the accepted that the brain histology in Alzheimer the position of full profes-
onset of Alzheimer’s disease––genetic Alzheimer’s disease can vary between sor and director of its Psychiatric and
factors, for instance, as we know today. individuals. Moreover, he also began Neurological Clinic. After more than
This endorsement by Kraepelin finally working toward describing a disease two decades working in the shadows
gave Alzheimer’s findings recognition spectrum that, in addition to the early- of others, Alzheimer finally had the
from the scientific community. Impor- onset (presenile) cases, included cases opportunity to put his own ideas into
tantly, Kraepelin not only described the of senile dementia. Those cases had practice on an institutional level. The
new disease, he also first used the term been observed by Alzheimer himself Breslau clinic had prestige. Alzheimer
Alzheimer’s disease in his textbook. With and by other scientists, such as Oskar succeeded renowned scientists, such
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as Heinrich Neumann, Carl Wernicke with today’s deeper understanding of further analyses of Auguste D.’s and
and most recently Karl Bonhoeffer who Alzheimer’s disease. They saw a wide- Johann F.’s DNA. With whole-genome
had just moved to the Charité Hospital spread, massive loss of neurons; numer- amplification techniques and sequenc-
in Berlin. Alzheimer accepted the offer ous neurofibrillary tangles; and abun- ing of entire genomes becoming routine,
and was appointed on July 16, 1912, dant amyloid plaques in the cerebral maybe the time has come to look at their
certified by the signature of German cortex, exactly as described by Alzheim- molecular makeup again. As doctors
emperor Wilhelm II himself. er nearly a century earlier. Together with and scientists prepare for the growth in
Over time, though, the strain of work the clinical symptoms Alzheimer had Alzheimer’s disease diagnoses expected
began to wear out Alzheimer. During his described, these results confirmed that in coming years, the first patients diag-
move to Breslau, he contracted a serious Auguste D. had the dreaded disease. nosed with the disease may have more
infection and after that endured breath- Given the early onset of the symp- to teach us yet.
lessness and heart trouble for the rest of toms in Auguste D., it seems likely that
his life. Despite failing health, Alzheimer she had a genetic predisposition for the References
strived to keep up. In addition to run- disease. And there is even stronger evi- Alzheimer, A. 1907 Über eine eigenartige
ning the clinic, he continued publishing dence for a genetic contribution in the Erkrankung der Hirnrinde. Allgemeine
Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie und psychiatrisch-
research articles and spent a consider- case of Johann F., whose brain tissue
gerichtliche Medizin 64:146–148.
able amount of time teaching. In the fall slides were also recovered. An analysis
Alzheimer, A., H. Forstl and R. Levy. 1991. On
of 1913, he organized the annual meeting of his family’s medical history revealed certain peculiar diseases of old age (transla-
of the Society of German Psychiatrists in that several of his close relatives had also tion). History of Psychiatry 2:71–101.
Breslau. With the outbreak of the First suffered from presenile dementia. These Alzheimer, A. 1911. Über eigenartige Krank-
World War, however, psychiatric clin- include his mother and maternal grand- heitsfälle des späteren Alters. Zeitschrift
ics faced the challenge of treating large father, a great-aunt and a great-grandfa- für die Gesamte Neurologie und Psychiatrie
4:356–385.
numbers of new patients traumatized by ther, three of his eight siblings and five
Dahm, R. 2006. Alzheimer’s discovery. Current
the terror of war. For Alzheimer, already children of two of his affected siblings. Biology. 16:906–910.
weakened by ill health, this came as a These observations suggested to sci- Dahm, R. 2006. Alois Alzheimer and the be-
heavy blow. He worked hard to cope entists that in this case, Alzheimer’s dis- ginnings of research into Alzheimer’s dis-
with a chaotic situation but ultimately ease had a genetic basis. So did the fact ease. In Alzheimer: 100 Years and Beyond, eds.
it became too much. In October 1915 he that the illness often developed early M. Jucker, K. Beyreuther, C. Haass, R. M.
Nitsch and Y. Christen. Berlin and Heidel-
was confined to bed and in December, at (as early as a patient’s thirties in some
berg: Springer-Verlag, pp.37–49.
age 51, he died. cases). Also, variability in the severity
Graeber, M., and P. Mehraein. 1999. Reanaly-
of dementia among people with the ill- sis of the first case of Alzheimer’s disease.
A Broader Legacy ness indicates that multiple genes may European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical
Today Alzheimer is remembered almost be involved and that environmental Neuroscience. 249:10–13.
exclusively for his discovery of the dis- factors may influence those genes. Maurer, K., and U. Maurer. 2003. Alzheimer: The
ease bearing his name. Clearly this was The scientists in Munich extracted Life of a Physician and the Career of a Disease.
Translated by N. Levi with A. Burns. New
an epochal contribution to neurology, DNA from the recovered brain tissue York: Columbia University Press.
but he also made seminal contributions sections, hoping to identify the muta-
to understanding a number of other tions that led to the disease in Johann
neurological disorders and diseases. F. and Auguste D. Unfortunately they For relevant Web links, consult this
He extensively studied other forms did not detect any mutations that could issue of American Scientist Online:
of dementia and produced important have explained the disease. Due to the
papers on cerebral atherosclerosis, epi- scarcity of DNA that can be purified http://www.americanscientist.org/is-
lepsy, and psychoses. He worked on from the original sections, the authors sues/id.83/past.aspx
brain damage resulting from chronic decided 10 years ago to postpone any
alcohol abuse and acute syphilis infec-
tions, which were very common at the
time, and on forensic psychiatry. Be-
sides these achievements, perhaps his
most important influence was his in-
strumental contribution to introducing
microscopy techniques into the disci-
pline of psychiatry. That was an essen-
tial prerequisite for uncovering the cel-
lular and molecular changes involved
in mental disorders.
Over the years, Alzheimer’s diagno-
ses have been questioned and reevalu-
ated. In the 1990s, a team led by Manuel
Graeber, then at the Max Planck Institute
for Neurobiology near Munich, found
about 250 slides of sections of Auguste
D.’s brain in a basement at the Univer-
sity of Munich. They examined them
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Sightings
Tracking the Karakoram Glaciers

In 2009, Italian outdoor photographer Fabiano Ventura began “On the Trails of the Glaciers,” a project duplicating early 20th-century
expeditions to remote mountain glaciers. Ventura’s first stop was the Karakoram range, 16,500 square kilometers of glaciers and peaks that
include K2, Earth’s second-highest mountain. Spanning parts of China, India and Pakistan, the Karakoram range is the most heavily glaci-
ated area outside this planet’s polar regions. During a 1909 Italian expedition, photographer Vittorio Sella took numerous much-admired
photographs there. Ventura’s new images were taken from the same point of view as the historical images to enable direct comparisons for
research purposes. The photographs could help scientists observe developments in glaciers related to global climate change. American Sci-
entist associate editor Catherine Clabby discussed the scientific value of the first stage of Ventura’s project with Kenneth Hewitt of Wilfrid
Laurier University in Canada. An expert on Karakoram glaciers, Hewitt is a member of the project’s scientific committee.
A.S. Have glaciers in the Karakoram range been well studied? duce melting. If the apparent anomalies result from a warm-
ing globe, it suggests more moisture is transported from
K.H. The glaciers have been studied mainly in a few rela- warmer oceans to the highest mountains. Once there, it either
tively extensive expeditions. The earliest were over 150 years nourishes the glaciers with increased precipitation or protects
ago and provide some basis for comparison. The 1909 Ital- them from some melting with more frequent cloudiness.
ian expedition brought a huge leap forward with mapping,
observations along many of the high-altitude source areas of A.S. Do these glacier advances and surges pose dangers to
Baltoro glacier, and the outstanding photographs of Vittorio. people dwelling closest to the Karakoram?
A.S. The Karakoram glaciers display changes since 1909 K.H. Given the loss of glaciers elsewhere, sustained glacier
that you and other scientists associate with climate change. mass in the Karakoram may seem good news, and in certain
Yet the differences are not the dramatic shrinking and melt- respects it is. But advancing glaciers also bring dangers. They
ing observed elsewhere. Can you explain that? brought hazards and disasters during the Little Ice Age, that
period of global cooling that persisted in this region until the
K.H. Glaciers are diminishing in most parts of the world, and early 20th century. Hazards back then included glacial lake
reports of “disappearing glaciers” have come from much of outburst floods that reached the heavily populated lowlands.
the Himalaya region, but not the Karakoram. Total glacier Ice dams from advancing glaciers off the northern flanks of
cover there diminished by about 10 percent during the 20th K2 remain a threat on the upper Yarkand River. Surges and
century, but since the late 1960s there has been little change. terminus advances are confined to the higher parts of the
Recently, many glaciers in the higher parts of the range have range where they can block paths but rarely reach inhabited
thickened and advanced. There have been exceptional num- areas. The greater danger comes from ponds of water cre-
bers of glacier surges—sudden, rapid advances of some ated during glacier advances or within stagnant ice after the
kilometers in a few months. The responses certainly reflect surges end. Outburst floods from these ponds are especially
climate change, but they are regionally distinctive responses. destructive where they entrain sediment and become de-
The advances appear to relate to negative feedbacks in the bris flows. Because the mountains straddle three countries,
glacier environment involving increased snowfall or reduced transnational as well as local and national issues arise. About
melting or both. The evidence is largely indirect or model- one million people live along the upper Indus streams in the
driven, but several research efforts using satellite imagery Karakoram and nearby ranges. Tens of millions live down-
suggest both increased snowfall at higher elevations and stream in the Indus and Yarkand River lowlands, where
more storminess and cloud cover in summer, which may re- snow- and ice- melt waters dominate river flows.
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Fabiano Ventura 2009/www.fabianoventura.it

Above is the gathering of the Baltoro glacier’s great ice streams into a single tongue. The tongue extends beyond the center of this vista by more
than 30 kilometers. Fabiano Ventura used film rather than digital cameras to create images such as this in the Karakoram range. That allowed
him to match the magnification ratio obtained by Vittorio Sella in 1909 and to achieve greater resolution than would be possible using digital
equipment. After scanning 4 x 5-inch photographic plates, Ventura produced digital files containing 320 million pixels, roughly 30 times the
resolution of a consumer digital camera, for each image. Multiple images were used to produce panoramic views such as this one.
A.S. How are Fabiano Ventura’s photographs of these gla- conservative response to climate change—and these effects
ciers useful to scientists? apply to all glaciers advancing at present. High-resolution
photography can also extend analysis of glacier changes to
K.H. Observations of changes in glaciers over a century or otherwise inaccessible areas. It supplements satellite imagery,
more are an invaluable first indicator of what has happened some of which is amazing, but which is restricted to the re-
and what needs to be explained. We can see detailed varia- cent past and not so good for observing vertical changes. The
tions in the margins and surface features of glaciers in these higher the resolution of images taken now, the greater the
photographs. The Baltoro glacier is barely 300 meters shorter usefulness of photography for tracking future changes.
than in 1909, but the Biafo glacier is 3,500 meters shorter. The
two glaciers are in the same part of the range, of similar size For more information about “On the Trails of the Glaciers,”
and length. However, Biafo is fed mainly by direct snowfall including updates regarding a documentary and a photography
in the huge open basins at its head, while Baltoro is largely exhibit, visit: http:// www.sulletraccedeighiacciai.it
avalanche fed and has a much higher, more rugged water-
shed. There are indications that a higher watershed, ava- In Sightings, American Scientist publishes examples of innovative scientific
lanche nourishment and heavy debris cover produce a more imaging from diverse research fields.
Vittorio Sella 1909/© Fondazione Sella Fabiano Ventura 2009/www.fabianoventura.it

At left is a Vittorio Sella photograph of the terminus of the huge Biafo glacier in 1909. At right is a Fabiano Ventura photograph taken 100 years
later. In 1909, the ice reached across the valley, and the Braldu River, carrying the waters of the Baltoro and Panmah glaciers, flowed in tunnels
through the ice or was forced against the mountain wall. The contrast between past and present gives a good idea of dramatic changes in the
glacier since the Little Ice Age, several centuries of cooling and glacier advances that lasted in the Karakoram until early in the 20th century.
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Scientists’ Bookshelf
Fellow Feeling
Joan B. Silk
THE AGE OF EMPATHY: Nature’s Lessons for a Kinder Society. Frans de Waal. x + 291 pp. Harmony
Books, 2009. $25.99.
T
he thesis of Frans de Waal’s new book, might have had greater reproductive success
The Age of Empathy, is that empathy comes than those who lacked this capacity. Neverthe-
“naturally” to humans, by which he less, except under rare specific conditions, mam-
means that it is a biologically grounded capacity malian males do not lactate.
that all people share. According to de Waal, Even though de Waal is firmly convinced
empathy has deep evolutionary roots, having that empathy is old and is widespread among
originated before the order Primates came into mammals, not everyone agrees; there is a lively
existence. The antiquity of empathy firmly fixes debate about these matters in the literature.
its place in human nature, he believes, making Part of the controversy stems from the fact that
it a robust trait that develops in all societies. the term empathy is used to describe a range
De Waal makes an impassioned and eloquent of phenomena, from emotional contagion (in
case that understanding the role of empathy which one individual “catches” the emotions
in nature can help us build a kinder and more of another) to what Stephanie D. Preston and
compassionate society. His message will have de Waal were the first to refer to as cognitive
considerable resonance for many readers. empathy—the ability to understand the feel-
De Waal has long been a critic of the notion ings of others and to appreciate the distinction
that evolution drives us (and our primate rela- between their feelings and our own. Emotional
tives) to express the darker sides of our natures. contagion is a primitive form of true empathy,
He has been impatient with colleagues who de Waal says; when one baby’s cry sets off a
are fixated on the struggle for existence and chorus of cries from the other babies in the
give short shrift to the need for cooperation nursery, that’s emotional contagion. Cognitive
and accommodation among interdependent empathy is what allows us to understand the
animals that live in groups. Thus, while many anguish of a mother whose child is diagnosed
primatologists have focused on evolutionary with a terminal illness.
pressures that generate high levels of competi- The practical problem is that in any particu-
tion and conflicts within a group, de Waal has lar case it can be difficult to distinguish between
emphasized the importance of the mechanisms emotional contagion and more elaborate forms
that primates use to defuse tension, resolve con- of empathy. After all, how do we know what
flicts and repair the damage caused by them. is actually going on in one baby’s head when
De Waal’s argument in this book hinges on his she hears another baby cry? Nevertheless, the
claim that empathy is an ancient trait. Emphasiz- distinction is crucial, because an understand-
ing the continuity in empathic concern across ing of others’ needs is a prerequisite for the
species, he speculates that empathy may be as transformation of empathy into compassionate
old as maternal care itself. His reasoning is partly action. The contagion metaphor can be used
based on the selective advantages that he thinks to illustrate this point: If you catch a cold from
empathy would have provided for mothers. Fe- your partner, you’ll share your partner’s symp-
males who were sensitive to, and able to an- toms. But feeling the same way as someone
ticipate, the needs of their developing offspring else is not the same thing as knowing how that
would have been more successful mothers than person will want to be treated. To take care of
those who were less responsive, he argues. But your partner, you need to know whether he
even if that’s the case, it does not necessarily or she likes to be coddled when sick or prefers
mean that mammals actually evolved the capac- being left alone with a good book. If you have
ity for empathy. After all, it might also have been that information, you can be helpful even if you
useful for mammalian males to have the capacity don’t have a cold yourself.
to lactate, because in some circumstances males This means that if we want to understand
who could provide nourishment for their young the capacity that other animals have for com-
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passion, we have to figure out what is going Also Reviewed in This Issue
on in their heads. Carefully designed experi-
ments have given us some insight into what
animals know about the minds of others. For 160 PREDICTING THE UNPREDICTABLE: The Tumultuous Science of
example, Robert Seyfarth and Dorothy Cheney Earthquake Prediction. By Susan Hough. Reviewed by Cosma
conducted an experiment in which female ma- Shalizi. As recently as the 1970s, it seemed feasible that scientists
caques learned that a box in their enclosure would soon be able to say precisely when and where earthquakes would
contained a frightening stimulus (a fake snake). strike and what their impact would be, but most geologists now believe
Although the mothers were frightened when that that goal is almost certainly unattainable. Perhaps we should focus
they came upon the snake and avoided the box instead on organizing society so that when the earth shakes, it’s not a
afterward, they did not react when their infants catastrophe, says Shalizi
approached the box, and they did not warn the
infants of the danger the snake presumably rep- 162 STEPHEN JAY GOULD: Reflections on His View of Life. Edited
resented. Based on these findings, Cheney and by Warren D. Allmon, Patricia H. Kelley and Robert M. Ross. Re-
Seyfarth concluded that the mothers were un- viewed by Kim Sterelny. Because Stephen Jay Gould was ambivalent
aware that their own knowledge differed from about or perhaps even hostile toward cladistics, population genetics and
the knowledge of their offspring. The findings ecology, he was only partially connected to the mainstream of develop-
of a substantial body of cleverly designed ex- ing evolutionary thought, says Sterelny, who wishes these essays had
periments have resulted in a general consensus more to say about the connections that Gould made or failed to make
that monkeys have a less-well-developed un- between his own ideas and the rest of his discipline
derstanding of others’ minds than do apes.
The ability of apes to understand others’ 164 NURTURESHOCK: New Thinking about Children. By Po Bronson
minds might allow them to understand others’ and Ashley Merryman. Reviewed by Ethan Remmel. Bronson and
specific needs and to act compassionately. De Merryman point to scientific findings that challenge some common as-
Waal believes that apes do understand others’ sumptions about young people and parenting
needs and that they act compassionately based
on that understanding, a conclusion he bases 166 BOYLE: Between God and Science. By Michael Hunter.
in part on a number of one-time observations, Reviewed by Jan Golinski. Hunter places Boyle’s scientific accom-
several of which he describes here. For exam- plishments in a context of lifelong piety and serious moral concerns,
ple, he recounts what happened when a female says Golinski. Dense with factual detail, the book covers every aspect of
bonobo found a stunned bird in her enclosure. Boyle’s life and work
She carried it to the top of a tree, and then “she
spread its wings as if it were a little airplane, 168 MAPPING THE WORLD: Stories of Geography. By Caroline and
and sent it out into the air, thus showing a help- Martine Laffon. Reviewed by Brian Hayes. • STRANGE MAPS: An
ing action geared to the needs of a bird.” Atlas of Cartographic Curiosities. By Frank Jacobs. Reviewed by
Although some scientists are dismissive of Anna Lena Phillips. Quick glimpses into two new map books
anecdotal accounts like this one, de Waal argues
that they are valuable sources of information, 169 SEASICK: Ocean Change and the Extinction of Life on Earth.
particularly for events that are relatively uncom- By Alanna Mitchell. Reviewed by Rick MacPherson. Mitchell sets
mon in nature. I have no quarrel with this. Rich- out on a personal voyage of discovery, accompanying top ocean scien-
ard W. Byrne and Andrew Whiten’s compilation tists on expeditions that reveal the toll various assaults are taking on the
of anecdotal observations of tactical deception in global ocean
primates in the 1980s had a major impact on our
understanding of primate cognitive complexity. I 170 NOT BY DESIGN: Retiring Darwin’s Watchmaker. By John O. Reiss.
am more concerned about the way we make use Reviewed by John Dupré. Reiss aims to reassert a thoroughgoing
of these one-time observations. De Waal argues materialism and remove teleology from our vision of nature, says Du-
that “If you have seen something yourself, and pré. Part of the problem, Reiss believes, is the gap that many biologists
followed the entire dynamic, there is usually no have assumed between existence and adaptedness
doubt in your mind of what to make of it.” But
doubt is a healthy part of science. Doubt leads 172 BIRDSCAPES: Birds in Our Imagination and Experience. By Jeremy
us to construct alternative hypotheses and to de- Mynott. • THE BIRD: A Natural History of Who Birds Are, Where
sign experiments that will allow us to determine They Came From, and How They Live. By Colin Tudge. Reviewed
which hypotheses are correct. by Aaron French. In addition to covering such topics as the behavior,
Consider, for example, one of the best-known morphology and conservation of birds, both of these books explore what
instances of animal altruism, which de Waal birds mean to us and what we can learn from living with them
mentions in the endnotes for chapter 4. A young
child tumbled into the gorilla enclosure at the 174 NANOVIEWS. Short takes on two books: Fordlandia: The Rise and
Brookfield Zoo in Chicago and lay unconscious Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City • Crow Planet: Essen-
on the ground. A female gorilla named Binti Jua tial Wisdom from the Urban Wilderness
picked up the child, cradled him in her arms
and brought him to the back of the enclosure,
where anxious zoo staff were waiting. The event
was videotaped by a visitor to the zoo, and Binti
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sets of experiments in which chimpan- tive empathy and compassion in hu-

zees failed to be helpful, I may not be mans. Important traits are transformed
entirely objective about the value of that over the course of evolutionary time.
work. However, I am convinced that if Monkeys and apes have lost function in
we really want to understand the nature about one-third of their olfactory recep-
of empathic concern and compassion in tor genes, greatly reducing the sensitiv-
other apes, we need to figure out why ity of their sense of smell; the apes have
chimpanzees respond helpfully in some lost their tails; brachiating gibbons have
circumstances and unhelpfully in others. greatly shortened thumbs in their hook-
De Waal himself made this argument in like hands; and we humans have lost
his 1996 book, Good Natured: The Origins the ability to grasp things with our feet.
of Right and Wrong in Humans and Oth- At the same time, fundamental traits
er Animals, saying that “for a research such as bipedal locomotion, spoken lan-
program into animal empathy, it is not guage and cumulative cultural change
enough to review the highlights of suc- were all greatly elaborated after the hu-
A capuchin monkey reaches through an corant behavior, it is equally important man lineage diverged from the lineage
armhole to choose between two differently to consider the absence of such behavior of modern apes. All of these traits, de-
marked pieces of pipe that can be exchanged
when it might have been expected.” spite their relatively recent origins, have
for food. One of these tokens gets a reward
only for the chooser, but the other token is
For de Waal, the debate about wheth- left an indelible mark on our species.
prosocial—it “buys” food for both the chooser apes are motivated to help others Here de Waal misses the opportu-
er and the monkey who is looking on. Ca- matters because of its implications for nity to explore what makes us differ-
puchins usually select the prosocial token. humans. The continuities in empathy ent from other apes. We cooperate in
From The Age of Empathy. between humans and other creatures larger groups, solve collective action
give him confidence about the prospects problems, adhere to social norms and
Jua became famous. De Waal describes for creating a kinder human society: possess moral sentiments. Whether or
this as an “act of sympathy” prompted not we inherited the capacity for em-
I derive great optimism from em-
by Binti Jua’s concern for the welfare pathy from our primate ancestors, we
pathy’s evolutionary antiquity. It
of the child. But there is more to the have developed these capacities much
makes it a robust trait that will
story. Binti Jua had been neglected by further than other apes have. Recently,
develop in virtually every human
her own mother, and as a result she was a number of scholars have given a great
being so that society can count on
hand-reared by humans. In an effort deal of thought to how and why human
it and try to foster and grow it.
to improve the chance that she would societies have become more cooperative
be a better mother herself, her keepers If empathy were limited to humans, than the societies of other primates, but
gave her operant training with a doll; de Waal says, that would mean that it de Waal does not discuss their ideas
zoo staff rewarded her for holding the was a trait that evolved only recently. here. That is a pity, because we need to
doll correctly and bringing it to them This concerns him: “If empathy were know the answers to those questions if
for inspection. All of this helped Binti truly like a toupee put on our head yes- we want to create kinder societies.
Jua become a competent mother when terday, my greatest fear would be that
she had her own infant. However, this it might blow off tomorrow.” Joan B. Silk is professor and chair of the department
piece of her history also raises the pos- But the existence of emotional conta- of anthropology at the University of California, Los
sibility that Binti Jua’s behavior during gion in rodents and cognitive empathy Angeles. She is coauthor with Robert Boyd of How
this incident reflected the training she in apes is neither a necessary nor a suf- Humans Evolved, which is now in its fifth edition
had received rather than her sympa- ficient condition for there to be cogni- (W. W. Norton, 2009).
thy for the child’s plight. I don’t know
which interpretation is correct, but it is
important to acknowledge that there GEOLOGY
are alternative explanations for Binti
Jua’s behavior. Ready or Not
More systematic efforts to assess
chimpanzees’ concern for the welfare of Cosma Shalizi
others have had mixed results. In some
experimental settings, chimpanzees
do provide appropriate instrumental PREDICTING THE UNPREDICTABLE: The Tumultuous Science of Earthquake Prediction.
help to their fellow chimpanzees, but Susan Hough. viii + 261 pp. Princeton University Press, 2010. $24.95.
in others they do not—for example, in
E
one experiment chimpanzees failed to arthquake prediction is, in an in those parts of the world where the
deliver food rewards to familiar group important sense, a solved prob- tectonic plates run up against each
members even when they could have lem. Earthquakes are vastly more other and try to move past each other.
done so at no cost to themselves. De common in certain parts of the world Where the plates meet, we get fault
Waal endorses the experiments in which than others, and they occur at a rea- lines. When the material on one side
the chimpanzees were helpful and dis- sonably steady statistical frequency in of the fault sticks to that on the other,
misses the others as examples of “false a given location. We even know why strain builds up and gets released in
negatives.” As the author of one of the this is so. Earthquakes are most frequent sudden movements: earthquakes. So the
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baseline prediction is that earthquakes been really successful, although Hough

occur near faults, with frequencies about is careful to say that some of them are
equal to their historical frequencies, only ambiguously failures. Evaluating
because the mechanics of tension and the success of the predictors is harder
relaxation change very slowly. than it first seems, because earthquakes
This lets us say things like “Once in are not just concentrated around plate
about every 140 years, the Hayward boundaries at characteristic, though ir-
fault in northern California has a quake regular, intervals; they are also clustered
of magnitude 7.0 or greater.” But some in space and especially in time. Earth-
people, including some seismolo- quakes tend to happen near where other
gists, are not content with this level earthquakes have happened recently.
of understanding and these actuarial This clustering invalidates what has
“forecasts”; they want to be able make been a common method of evaluating
highly accurate predictions—to be able earthquake predictions, which is to as-
to say precisely when and where an sess how well the predictions match
earthquake will occur and what its im- the actual record of quakes and then
pact will be (“magnitude 7.1, directly compare that with how well the same
beneath the stadium at the University predictions match a simulated record in
of California, Berkeley, the day after the which earthquakes occur at random on
Big Game with Stanford in 2010”). As each fault at the historical rate (techni-
recently as the 1970s, this goal seemed cally, according to a homogeneous Pois-
feasible to professionals and the U.S. son process). Matching the real data bet-
government, but now most geologists ter than the simulated data is supposed
believe that it is extremely unlikely to be evidence of predictive ability.
ever to be accomplished. In Predicting To see the flaw here, think of trying to
the Unpredictable, Susan Hough tries to predict where and when lightning will In the wall to the right of this archway in
explain both the initial enthusiasm for strike. We know that lightning strikes, Memorial Stadium at the University of Cali-
precise predictions and how and why like earthquakes, are clustered in both fornia, Berkeley, is an open crack caused by
that enthusiasm dissipated. space and time, because they occur dur- steady creep in the Hayward Fault, which
The enthusiasm came at the end of ing thunderstorms. So a basic prediction runs directly beneath the stadium. From Pre-
dicting the Unpredictable.
the plate tectonics revolution, which rule might state that “within 10 minutes
gave us our current understanding of, of the last lightning strike, there will
among many other things, earthquakes. be another strike within 5 kilometers that are, as the saying goes, patiently
After millennia of speculation and su- of it.” If we used this rule to make pre- waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
perstition, we finally knew why the dictions and then were evaluated by But it’s equally possible that any pre-
earth shakes and why earthquakes hap- the method described in the preceding dictive pattern specific enough to be
pen where they do. It really didn’t seem paragraph, we would look like wiz- useful would involve so many high-
too much to hope that this triumph of ards. If we made predictions only after precision measurements of so much of
science would soon extend to know- the lightning had already begun, we’d the Earth’s crust that it could never be
ing when they would happen. Moreover, look even better. This is not just an idle used in practice.
the authorities in the People’s Republic analogy; the statisticians Brad Luen and Suppose, however, that that’s not
of China had apparently been able to P. B. Stark have recently shown that, ac- true; suppose we are someday able to
predict the magnitude 7.3 earthquake cording to such tests, the following rule make predictions like the one above
that occurred in Haicheng in northwest seems to have astonishing predictive about Berkeley’s stadium. We could
China in 1975. (The real story of the Hai- power: “When an earthquake of magni- perhaps evacuate Berkeley and its en-
cheng prediction, as Hough explains in tude 5.5 or greater occurs anywhere in virons, but every building, power line
chapter 6, is far murkier; as one of her the world, predict that an earthquake at and sewer pipe there would still go
sources puts it, “the prediction . . . was least as large will occur within 21 days through the quake. It would be a major
a blend of confusion, empirical analysis, and within an epicentral distance of 50 catastrophe if they all went to pieces,
intuitive judgment, and good luck.” But km.” Earthquake prediction schemes even if no loss of life occurred. If we
the details were deliberately kept from that do no better than this baseline pre- insist on living in places like Berke-
the rest of the world for many years.) dictor have little value, they observe. ley, where we know there will continue
Eminent geologists saw earthquake pre- And no prediction method yet devised to be earthquakes, why not work on
diction as a reasonable scientific aim, does do any better than that. hazard reduction—on building cities
and by the end of the 1970s, they man- Of course it’s possible that there is that can survive quakes and protect us
aged to get it inscribed into U.S. policy, some good way of making detailed pre- during them—rather than on quake
along with hazard reduction. They also dictions, which we just haven’t found prediction? As Hough puts it:
established an official body for evaluat- yet. To continue the lightning-strike
ing earthquake predictions. analogy, we’ve learned a lot about how If earthquake science could perfect
Chapters 9 through 13 are mostly thunderstorms form and move; we can the art of forecasts on a fifty-year
about various prediction efforts since track them and extrapolate where they scale, we would know what struc-
that time, ranging from the serious to will go. Perhaps earthquakes are pre- tures and infrastructure would
the crackpot. None of these efforts has ceded by similar signals and patterns be up against. For the purposes of
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building a resilient society, earth- earth will shake, it’s organizing soci- intersection of an extremely hard prob-
quake prediction is largely beside ety so that it’s not a catastrophe when lem with legitimate public demands
the point. Whether the next Big One that happens. for results. Those of us in other fields
strikes next Tuesday at 4:00 p.m. or In the end, whether through hope, who read it may find ourselves profit-
fifty years from now, the houses we caution or diplomacy, Hough declines ing from the example someday.
live in, the buildings we work in, to dismiss the prospect of prediction al-
the freeways we drive on—all of together. The current state of a lot of the
Cosma Shalizi is an assistant professor in the statis-
these will be safe when the earth science she reports on is frustratingly tics department at Carnegie Mellon University and
starts to shake, or they won’t be. inconclusive. Hough’s book, howev- an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute. He is
er, is not frustrating at all; it offers an writing a book on the statistical analysis of complex
One might almost say that the real enlightening, fair and insightful look systems models. His blog, Three-Toed Sloth, can be
problem isn’t predicting when the at how one science has dealt with the found at _____________
http://bactra.org/weblog/.
BIOLOGY to Wilson. Gould’s work is appealing to
Explicating Gould philosophers like me because it trades

in big, but difficult and theoretically
contested, ideas: the role of accident and
Kim Sterelny the contingency of history; the relation
between large-scale pattern and local
process in the history of life; the role of
STEPHEN JAY GOULD: Reflections on His View of Life. Warren D. Allmon, Patricia social forces in the life of science.
H. Kelley and Robert M. Ross, editors. xiv + 400 pp. Oxford University Press, 2009. Within the life sciences, Gould is re-
$34.95. garded with more ambivalence. He gets
credit (with others) for having made
S
tephen Jay Gould was an im- that he claimed neither too much nor paleobiology again central to evolution-
mensely charismatic, insightful too little for his discipline. In his books, ary biology. He did so by challenging
and influential, but ultimately evolutionary biology speaks to great theorists with patterns in the histori-
ambiguous, figure in American aca- issues concerning the universe and cal record that were at first appearance
demic life. To Americans outside our place in it, but not so loudly as to puzzling; if received views of evolu-
the life sciences proper, he was evo- drown out other voices. He had none tionary mechanism were correct, Gould
lutionary biology. His wonderful essay of the apparently imperialist ambitions argued, those patterns should not be
collections articulated a vision of that of that talented and equally passionate there. The first and most famous such
discipline—its history, its importance spokesman of biology Edward O. challenge grew from his work with
and also its limits. One of the traits that Wilson. It is no coincidence that the Niles Eldredge on punctuated equilib-
made Gould so appealing to many in humanist intelligentsia have given a rium, but there were more to come.
the humanities and social sciences is much friendlier reception to Gould than Despite this important legacy,
Gould’s own place in the history of
evolutionary biology is not secure.
In late 2009, I attended an important
celebration of Darwin’s legacy at the
University of Chicago, in which par-
ticipants reviewed the current state of
evolutionary biology and anticipated
its future. Gould and his agenda were
almost invisible. No doubt this was in
part an accident of the choice of speak-
ers. But it is in part a consequence of
Gould’s ambivalence regarding, or per-
haps even hostility toward, core growth
points in biology: cladistics, population
genetics, ecology.
Gould was an early force in one of
the major recent developments in biol-
ogy: the growth of evolutionary devel-
opmental biology, and the idea that the
variation on which selection works is
channeled by deeply conserved and
widely shared developmental mecha-
nisms. Gould’s first book, Ontogeny and
This cartoon by Tony Auth is reproduced in Stephen Jay Gould: Reflections on His View of Phylogeny (1977), was about the ante-
Life, where it is captioned “The (punctuated) Ascent of Stephen Jay Gould, or Portrait of the cedents of this movement, and in his
Evolutionist as a Provocateur.” essays and monographs he regularly
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returned to this developing set of ideas. local significance. For example, the
He did so to articulate his vision of nat-
ural selection as an important but con-
chapters on Gould’s status as an edu-
cator, his role as an iconic left-liberal
THE NATURAL
strained force in evolution. But in the
past 20 years, evolutionary biology has
American intellectual, and his relations
with those of his students who were
WORLD
been transformed in other ways too. religious will likely be of interest to no FROM CHICAGO
Perhaps the most important is that cla- one outside the U.S. milieu and I would
distics—systematic, methodologically guess to very few people within it. The
self-conscious, formally sophisticated collection is not a Festschrift, but it does
phylogenetic inference—has become show an occasional tendency to decay
the dominant method of classification. in that direction.
This phylogenetic inference engine has One of the strongest chapters in
made it possible to identify trees of life the collection, to my mind, is “A Tree
with much greater reliability and to test Grows in Queens: Stephen Jay Gould
adaptationist hypotheses and their ri- and Ecology,” by Allmon, Paul D. Mor-
vals far more rigorously. Even though ris and Linda C. Ivany. Allmon, Morris
Gould had been early to see the prob- and Ivany try to explain the lack of an
lems of impressionistic adaptationist ecological footprint in Gould’s work.
theorizing, his own work responded In their view, this is best explained by
very little to these changes in evolu- his skepticism about natural selection.
tionary biology. It is true that the more strongly one
Likewise, Gould showed very lit- believes that the tree of life is basical-
tle interest in the evolving state of ly shaped by mass extinction (while
population genetics; his last book, The thinking that the extinction in mass
Structure of Evolutionary Theory, barely extinction does not depend on ad- The Passage to Cosmos
mentions it (W. D. Hamilton, for exaptation), the less important ecology Alexander von Humboldt and the Shaping
ample, is not even in the index). This is. The theory of punctuated equilib- of America
is surprising, because one recent de- rium, too, plays down the importance Laura Dassow Walls
velopment in population genetics had of ecology through most of the life “Laura Dassow Walls leads the reader
been the growth of multilevel models of a species. Although I am sure this on a fascinating, breathless chase after
of selection. In The Structure of Evolu- must be part of the story, something the explorer-naturalist who anticipated
tionary Theory, Gould does nod to these is missing. Gould remained commit- planetary ecology and inspired both
models, but he does little to connect ted to the truth and importance of the Darwin and Thoreau. Alexander von
them to his own ideas on hierarchical punctuated equilibrium model of the Humboldt was a pioneer environmental-
models of selection, which get very life history of the typical species. He ist whose sympathies crossed nations,
little formal development of any kind, developed that model in partnership races, and cultures; his friendships
let alone the kind of development that with Eldredge and (later) Elizabeth included Jefferson and Goethe, Simón
would connect them to the extending Vrba. But ecological disturbance re- Bolívar, Moses Mendelssohn, and John
mainstream of evolutionary theory. Fi- mains central to Eldredge’s and Vrba’s C. Frémont.”Daniel Walker Howe,
nally, Gould showed extraordinarily conception of punctuated equilibrium Pulitzer Prize–winning author of What
little interest in ecology and the pro- and, more generally, to evolutionary Hath God Wrought
cesses that link population-level events change. Equilibrium is not forever. So CLOTH $35.00
to patterns in the history of life. for example, in contrast to Gould, El-

In short, although Gould was clearly dredge has written extensively on eco- The Dawn of Green
an immensely fertile thinker whose logical organization and its relation to Manchester, Thirlmere, and Modern
ideas were deeply informed both by evolutionary hierarchy. Allmon, Mor- Environmentalism
contemporary paleobiology and by the ris and Ivany have put their finger on a Harriet Ritvo
history of biology, in other respects his crucial problem in interpreting Gould, “The tensions between the needs of cit-
work is only partially connected to the but the problem remains unsolved. ies and the protection of rural landscape
mainstream of developing evolutionary Allmon is also the author of the were defined in the late Victorian strug-
thought. There is, therefore, room for a fine chapter that opens the collec- gle between the Manchester City Coun-
work that explores and reflects on the tion—“The Structure of Gould: Hap- cil and defenders of the English Lake
explicit connections that Gould made penstance, Humanism, History, and District. . . . Harriet Ritvo has beauti-
between his own ideas and the rest of the Unity of His View of Life.” Long fully analyzed this classic confrontation,
his discipline, and that makes some im- and insightful, this essay is one of in- setting it in context, but also showing
plicit connections more explicit. Stephen terpretation rather than assessment. It its importance for continuing debates
Jay Gould: Reflections on His View of Life, explores the relation between content around the use of the earth.”John V.
edited by Warren D. Allmon, Patricia and form in Gould’s work. The cur- Pickstone, University of Manchester
H. Kelley and Robert M. Ross, is an rent norm of science is that research CLOTH $26.00
interesting collection of essays, but it consists in the publication of peer-re-
does not quite do that, in part because viewed papers in specialist journals. The University of Chicago Press
it is an insider’s perspective and in part As one nears retirement, it may be www.press.uchicago.edu
because some of the essays are of only acceptable to switch to writing reflec-
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tive what-does-it-all-mean review pa- not convinced that Gould has been so sity in Canberra, where he is a professor of phi-
pers, and even a book or two: This is much misunderstood, and I would losophy. He is the author of Thought in a Hostile
World: The Evolution of Human Cognition
known as going through philosopause. have preferred more assessment and
(Blackwell, 2003), The Evolution of Agency and
Gould went through philosopause less exposition. That said, I did enjoy Other Essays (Cambridge University Press, 2001),
early, and Allmon attempts to explain reading the book. Dawkins vs. Gould: The Survival of the Fittest
why, connecting the form of Gould’s (Totem Books, 2001) and The Representational
work as an essayist and book author Kim Sterelny divides his time between Victoria Uni- Theory of Mind (Blackwell, 1991). He is also coau-
with his humanism, his liberalism and versity of Wellington, where he holds a Personal thor of several books, including What Is Biodiver-
his interest in exploring murky, large- Chair in Philosophy, and the Research School of sity?, with James Maclaurin (University of Chicago
scale questions. He broke with con- Social Sciences at Australian National Univer- Press, 2008).
ventional norms of science writing not
just because he wanted to reach more
people, but because of what he wanted
to say. The essay is interesting, but I D E V E L O P M E N TA L P S Y C H O L O G Y
think Allmon lets Gould off too lightly,
especially in his discussion of the sup- The Science of Parenting
posed early misreading of punctuated
equilibrium. Gould’s early rhetoric on Ethan Remmel
the revolutionary impact of that idea
and his repeated flirtations with Rich-
ard Goldschmidt’s metaphors made it NURTURESHOCK: New Thinking about Children. Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman.
easy to read Gould as rejecting stan- xiv + 336 pp. Twelve, 2009. $24.99.
dard neo-Darwinian gradualism; at the
D
time, I read him that way myself. And oes praise undermine a child’s information in the book will deliver a
the discipline of peer review would confidence? Can gifted chil- shock, by revealing that “our bedrock
certainly have improved The Structure dren be reliably identified in assumptions about kids can no longer
of Evolutionary Theory. preschool? Why do siblings fight, and be counted on.” Somewhat confus-
Richard Bambach’s essay, “Diversity how can they be discouraged from ingly, the authors also assert that what
in the Fossil Record and Stephen Jay doing so? Are popular children more the subtitle calls “new thinking about
Gould’s Evolving View of the History aggressive? Do videos like those in the children” is actually a “restoration of
of Life,” is also rewarding, although it Baby Einstein series help infants learn common sense.”
is less ambitious than Allmon’s. Bam- language? Each of the 10 chapters focuses on a
bach offers a chronological overview of NurtureShock: New Thinking about different topic: praise, sleep, racial atti-
the most important feature of Gould’s Children addresses such questions, ex- tudes, lying, intelligence testing, sibling
purely scientific ideas: his emerging amining how recent research in devel- conflict, teen rebellion, self-control, ag-
view of the basic patterns of life’s his- opmental psychology challenges con- gression and language development.
tory. It is good to have this material as- ventional wisdom about parenting and Bronson and Merryman did their home-
sembled and presented so coherently. schooling. Aimed at laypeople rather work, talking to many researchers and
I would, however, have liked to see than academics, the book made the New attending academic conferences. The
a rather franker assessment of these York Times nonfiction bestseller list last book’s endnotes include citations for
ideas. In Wonderful Life: The Burgess year and was listed as one of the year’s many of the empirical statements in the
Shale and the Nature of History (1989), best by Barnes and Noble, Discover text, and the list of selected sources and
Gould argues that if “the tape of life” Magazine, Library Journal and others. references is extensive. The coverage is
were replayed from very slightly dif- The authors, Po Bronson and Ashley somewhat skewed toward the work of
ferent initial conditions, the resulting Merryman, are not researchers them- the researchers who were interviewed,
tree of life would probably in no way selves. Bronson has written several but Bronson and Merryman talked to
resemble our actual biota. This was books on other topics, including the leading experts on every topic.
surely one of the most provocative of bestselling What Should I Do with My In some places additional information
his ideas, and Simon Conway Mor- Life?, about career choices. Together, could have been helpful. For example, in
ris replied at length in Life’s Solution, Bronson and Merryman have written the chapter on self-control, the authors
reaching utterly the opposite conclu- about parenting and social science in focus on a preschool program called
sion. At the end of the chapter, Bam- online columns for Time and Newsweek “Tools of the Mind,” which successfully
bach touches on this debate but says and in articles for New York magazine. teaches self-regulation. However, they
almost nothing to assess it. Three chapters in NurtureShock are don’t explain the theoretical work that
In general, the other essays in this adapted from their New York articles. inspired the program, that of the Rus-
book have the same virtues as Bam- The title evokes Alvin Toffler’s 1970 sian psychologist Lev Vygotsky. Nor do
bach’s chapter. The editors, I suspect, book Future Shock. But Bronson and the authors mention research by Angela
think that Gould has been much mis- Merryman explain in the introduction Duckworth and Martin Seligman show-
read and misunderstood, so most of that they are using the term nurture ing that self-discipline predicts academ-
the essays seek to state his views sim- shock to refer to “the panic—common ic achievement better than IQ does. As
ply and without distracting polemic. among new parents—that the mythical far as I know, though, nowhere in the
As a result the collection is stronger fountain of knowledge is not magically book have they neglected evidence that
on description than evaluation. I am kicking in.” And they warn that the would undermine their arguments.
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Bronson and Merryman make child

development research accessible and
even exciting; NurtureShock is an easy
and enjoyable read. By academic stan-
dards, the writing style may be a bit
AMAZING NATURE
melodramatic in some places, but I
would recommend the book to any par-
ent. All of the advice has empirical sup-
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field. At the risk of nitpicking, how- "EWFOUVSFT PG8FBUIFSBOE
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color groups to label children (e.g., ²*UµTFYDJUJOHUPTFFTPNVDISFBMJOGPSNB JTUTBOETVHHFTUTUIBUUIFSFJTTUJMMNVDI
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perimental classrooms decorated
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Although children in both the ex- $POTFSWBODZ IBSEDPWFS
perimental and control conditions
developed some bias for their own "UCPPLTUPSFTPSXXXVDQSFTTFEV
___________
group, children in the experimental
group showed greater in-group bias.
So Bronson and Merryman are cor-
rect that young children can form
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prejudices without adult labeling, but nize that even a correlation of 0.40 has The few things that Bronson and
their text gives the impression that some predictive value. Merryman get wrong, however, are
adult labeling was not a factor, where- Bronson and Merryman also don’t far outweighed by the things they
as this study and others by Bigler and seem to understand effect sizes. For get right. They have done a service to
colleagues demonstrate that labeling example, they write that developmental science by making its
does matter. findings accessible to a wider audi-
Among scholars, interventions con-
More worrisome are some signs ence, and to parents by providing in-
sidered to be really great often have
that the authors misunderstand sta- sight into children as well as practical
an effect size of something like 15%,
tistics. For instance, they convert all suggestions for child rearing. For those
which means that 15% of children
correlation coefficients to percentages, achievements, the book deserves the
altered their targeted behavior, and
an error that will annoy readers who accolades it is receiving.
therefore 85% did not alter it.
are knowledgeable about statistics and
could potentially mislead those who But that’s not what it means. It could Ethan Remmel is a cognitive developmental psycholo-
aren’t. A naive reader, seeing a cor- mean that all the children altered their gist at Western Washington University in Belling-
relation expressed as 40 percent, may behavior a little bit, which moved their ham. His research focus is the relationship between
focus on how far that number falls average by 15 percent of a standard language experience and children’s understanding
short of 100 percent and fail to recog- deviation. of the mind.
HISTORY mental philosopher” and a “Christian
The Godly Scientist virtuoso.” Three elements—experimen-

tal science, moral philosophy and Chris-
tian devotion—were essential to his self-
Jan Golinski formation. Hunter gives all of them their
due weight, placing Boyle’s scientific
accomplishments in a context of lifelong
BOYLE: Between God and Science. Michael Hunter. xiv + 366 pp. Yale University piety and serious moral concerns.
Press, 2009. $55. These aspects of Boyle’s identity have
emerged more clearly in recent years as
A
short entry in a single-volume of the crucial interpretation—was per- the result of a huge scholarly enterprise
encyclopedia will tell you the formed by Robert Hooke and others, in which Hunter has been the driving
achievements for which Robert whom Boyle employed as his assis- force. Previously unpublished writings
Boyle (1627–1691) is most commonly tants. And although Boyle was pres- of Boyle have been rescued from the
remembered. He discovered air present at the first meeting of what became archives and put into print, multivol-
sure and formulated Boyle’s law, which the Royal Society and had previously ume editions of his works and corre-
shows that the pressure and volume associated with some of its members spondence have been compiled, and an
of a gas are inversely related to one in Oxford in the late 1650s, he did not extensive Web site (http://www.bbk.
another. He studied the workings of the attend with consistent regularity in the ac.uk/boyle/) reports the progress of
_________
barometer and designed an air pump following years. He was more impor- Boyle studies. When the whole body
to investigate the effects of a vacuum. tant as an inspiration for the leading of Boyle’s writings and the whole doc-
He was a founding member of a ideas and values of the society than as umentary record surrounding him is
group organized in 1660 to encourage an institutional organizer, which was taken into account, it becomes impos-
and communicate scientific research; a role he never assumed. And, despite sible to fit him into the role of scientist
in 1662 it became the Royal Society of his criticisms of alchemy in The Scepti- as this would now be understood.
London. His most famous book, The cal Chymist, Boyle was never disillu- Consider, for example, his enthusi-
Sceptical Chymist (1661), challenged sioned with the subject. In fact, it was asm for what in the 17th century was
the prevailing theories about chemical the first experimental field to draw his called “chymistry.” Boyle first glimpsed
composition held by the alchemists attention, and he never ceased to be the potential benefits to be derived
of the time and by the followers of fascinated by the alchemists’ vision of from chemical investigations in the
Aristotle’s natural philosophy. transmuting base metals into gold and late 1640s, after he had completed his
Michael Hunter’s new biography producing wonderful new medicines. formal schooling and settled in Dorset
will add greatly to readers’ knowledge Hunter’s goal is to explain the com- on an estate acquired by his father, the
of Boyle and may correct some mis- plexities surrounding Boyle’s life and Earl of Cork. Boyle arranged for chemi-
impressions. It turns out, for example, work, and thereby to tell the story of cal furnaces and vessels to be shipped
that although Boyle developed the con- how he became the person he was. In to him there, inspired by the idea that
cept of what he called the “spring of the first paragraph of the book, Hunter medicines could be prepared in the
the air,” he never wrote down his law notes that Boyle was the most eminent laboratory to alleviate human suffer-
in the algebraic form that is now famil- “scientist” of his day but explains that ing. A particularly important influence
iar: pV = k, where p is the pressure of this word was not one Boyle could have was exerted by the American chemist
the system, V is the volume of the gas, applied to himself, because it was not George Starkey, whom Boyle supported
and k is a constant. Much of the hands- coined until the 19th century. Boyle in his research into the possibility of
on work with the air pump—and some called himself a “naturalist,” an “experi- metallic transmutation. For Boyle, the
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quest was justified in terms science on subtle moral ques-

of a moral obligation to ex- tions, and for his reluctance
ploit the resources of nature to endorse theoretical specu-
for human benefit, but it led lation that went beyond the
him far afield from topics rec- certified facts. Hunter writes
ognized today as scientific. intriguingly about these
In the late 1670s, he again en- personal qualities, which he
gaged in intense experimen- clearly admires, but which
tal work, leading to what he he acknowledges had ad-
thought was success in mak- verse effects on Boyle’s prose
ing gold on at least one oc- style. That style, Hunter de-
casion. After Boyle’s death, clares, reflects the author’s
Isaac Newton, who had his sense of “the complexity of
own obsessive interest in the issues and a concomitant de-
subject, thought that Boyle sire to multiply testimony in
might have left information order to reinforce his case.”
among his papers about the Stylistically, Hunter follows a
secrets of transmutation. He similar path, citing evidence
was to be disappointed. abundantly for the verifiable
It is not possible, therefore, facts but scrupulously avoid-
to understand all of Boyle’s ing going beyond them into
activities in terms of the ideas what he sees as the realm
that prevail in modern sci- of speculation. The choice
ence. Hunter makes the case is responsible both for the
that a more fundamental strengths of this book and for
theme in Boyle’s life was his its limitations.
personal piety and the as- There is little reason to
sociated preoccupation with doubt that Hunter has writ-
leading a moral life. This con- ten what will be the first
cern preceded Boyle’s scien- point of reference for future
tific work and it survived into inquiries concerning Boyle.
his last days, when he was It covers every aspect of his
anticipating his own death life and work, with compre-
and consulting with leading hensive citations of primary
churchmen about matters and secondary sources in the
that weighed on his con- endnotes and in an extensive
science. In the course of his bibliographical essay. The
life, he studied scripture and very thorough index and
Boyle’s air pump, which was constructed for his use by Robert Hooke
religious doctrine intensely, in 1659, was a key piece of equipment in the experiments Boyle the table of Boyle’s where-
and he supported the work describes in his 1660 book New Experiments, Physico-Mechanical, abouts at each stage of his
of Protestant missionaries in Touching the Spring of the Air and its Effects. These experiments strik- life will increase the book’s
America, Asia and his na- ingly demonstrated the physical properties of air, showing that it value for specialists, who
tive Ireland. He justified his had the capacity to exert pressure and to expand. This drawing of the will surely come to regard it
scientific interests by refer- pump was used to illustrate the book. From Boyle. as indispensable. Some read-
ence to this religious outlook, ers, however, may find them-
sometimes in a rather tortuous manner to make larger interpretive claims at all, selves overwhelmed by the density of
when it came to arcane matters like al- sticking rigorously to the documented factual detail and will long for a few
chemy. In general at that time the study facts of Boyle’s life and to the texts of more interpretive—even speculative—
of nature was defended as the study of his writings. Hunter’s basic argument remarks that would help make sense
God’s works. Boyle was a pioneer in al- is that Boyle was a more complicated of Boyle’s career as a whole. It would
lying natural theology—the belief that individual than has been realized hith- be unfortunate if this led nonspecialist
God’s attributes could be discerned in erto, which is no doubt true but scarce- readers to overlook the merits of this
the natural world—with empirical sci- ly distinguishes him from many other authoritative study of a very significant
entific inquiry. The marriage of Chris- people. It is unfortunate that the book figure in the history of science.
tian faith with experimental science was does not make a strong case for Boyle’s
to hold firm long after Boyle’s time and importance to readers who are not al-
was seriously challenged only in the ready convinced of it. Jan Golinski is professor of history and humanities
at the University of New Hampshire, where he cur-
19th century. One reason for this is that Hunter
rently serves as chair of the Department of History.
This biography shows the centrality seems to share one of his subject’s abid- His books include Making Natural Knowledge:
of Boyle’s religious faith to his work, ing characteristics, what Hunter calls Constructivism and the History of Science (2nd
but Hunter makes no grand claims for his “scrupulosity.” Boyle was notorious edition, 2005) and British Weather and the Cli-
an underlying unity in his subject’s for the convolutions and hesitations of mate of Enlightenment (2007), both published by
worldview. In fact, he rarely steps back his writings, for torturing his own con- University of Chicago Press.
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Land Portraits
Modern practice in cartography favors

the plan view—the landscape seen as
if from an infinite height—but ear-
lier mapmakers were more flexible
about perspective. In this map of the
Portuguese colony of Macao, drawn
in 1646 by Pedro Barreto de Resende,
an oblique view conveys information
about both the horizontal layout of
the town and the vertical scale of the
terrain. This technique of land portrai-
ture was known at the time as cho-
rography. The view of Macao is one of
about 90 maps reproduced in Mapping
the World: Stories of Geography, by
Caroline and Martine Laffon (Firefly
Books, $39.95). The Laffons emphasize
that maps bring us more than the geo-
graphic coordinates of a place; they
tell us stories about the landscape. For
example, in the Barreto map of Macao,
the most conspicuous features are for-
tifications, churches and houses built
by the Portuguese. “As for the local
population,” the Laffons write, “as
on many colonial maps, they seem to
be overshadowed by the new ruling
class.”—Brian Hayes
Heading South
It’s refreshing to see an S above the compass arrow on
a map—and a little disconcerting. This map of South
Asia, made by the editors of Himal magazine, places
south at the top and north at the bottom, giving visual
importance to features and countries that don’t always
receive it. India, dwarfed by China on conventional
maps, is prominent here, and Sri Lanka takes center
stage. The map appears in the collection Strange Maps:
An Atlas of Cartographic Curiosities (Viking Studio,
$30). Frank Jacobs, the author of the book and of a blog
with the same name, reminds us that the convention
of placing north at the top of a map is just that—a
convention. He also notes that maps made in the Middle
Ages often place east at the top, which is why we speak
of orientation. Reversed maps such as this one are good
reminders of how the representations of the world that
we create shape our perceptions of place. Strange Maps
contains many more thought-provoking maps, with
engaging commentary. While we are turning southward,
it’s worth noting another example: a map of the varieties
of barbecue sauce favored across the American state of
South Carolina.—Anna Lena Phillips
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MARINE BIOLOGY
Cruising for a Bruising EFJD8CCD8KK<I

JZ`\eZ\fek_\EXefjZXc\
Rick MacPherson =\c`Z\:%=iXeb\c
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SEASICK: Ocean Change and the Extinction of Life on Earth. Alanna Mitchell. x + 161
pp. University of Chicago Press, 2009. $25. È@kËj
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t the conclusion of his Darwin Faced with the myriad ways humans k`feXccp
Medal Lecture at the 11th In- are changing the ocean, Mitchell admits iXi\k_Xk
ternational Coral Reef Sym- that giving in to despair would be easy.
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posium in 2008, Terry Hughes, who Instead, she chooses a personal voyage
is director of the Australian Research of discovery in an effort to get to the bot- i\e[\i\[
Council’s Centre of Excellence for Coral tom of things—in some instances literal- èjlZ_
Reef Studies at James Cook University, ly (more on that later). Immersing herself clZ`[#
projected two side-by-side images onto in what Richard Feynman called “the k_fl^_k$
massive screens in the darkened hall. pleasure of finding things out,” she goes
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On the left was an image of a canoe in straight to the primary sources, travel-
which two passengers sat, comfortably ing with top scientists and taking part @Ëm\\m\i\eZflek\i\[XY\Xlk`]lcYffbXj
dry and smiling. On the right was the in their fieldwork. Nancy Rabalais, Ken `dgfikXekXjk_`jfe\%ÉÇBlik8e[\ij\e#
same canoe, only upside down, with Caldera, Joanie Kleypas, Nancy Knowl- Xlk_fif]?\p[Xp#_fjkf]glYc`ZiX[`fËj
the passengers in the water. Hughes ton, Boris Worm, Jerry Blackford—her Jkl[`f*-'
explained that these are the two list of mentors and guides reads like a 9\cbeXgGi\jj&e\nèZcfk_&*,%''
equilibrium states for a canoe: upright fantasy lineup of ocean-science all-stars.
and capsized. At equilibrium, the Mitchell’s quest for reasons to be hope-
canoe resists shifting from one state to ful is daunting. At one point, on a gruel-
!!!!!!
the other. But with enough forcing, a
tipping point is reached at which the
ing 11-day oceanographic cruise near
New Orleans, she works to sample and
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canoe can shift rapidly into the opposite map a small portion of the dead zone, DPJ<C=:C<8I6
state of equilibrium, sometimes to the a 17,000-square-kilometer area of wa- 8JZ`\ek`jkËj>l`[\kf
dismay of the passengers. ter south of Texas and Louisiana, where KXcbè^kfk_\GlYc`Z
Hughes’s apt metaphor underscored the Mississippi River discharges into the
a key message of his lecture: that coral Gulf of Mexico. Heavy agrochemical :fie\c`X;\Xe
reefs have tipping points as well. And runoff into the Mississippi eventually
although they may resist change at spills into the Gulf, where it acts as fertil- È?`^_cpi\^Xi[\[
first, showing few outward signs of izer for phytoplankton, creating massive E\nPfibK`d\j
stress, when shifts do take place, they algal blooms. The blooms eventually die jZ`\eZ\i\gfik\i
can occur more rapidly than anyone and sink, and bacterial decomposition
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had previously predicted and are tre- effectively depletes any available oxygen
mendously difficult to reverse. from the surrounding water. Over time, gi\j\ekjX
This warning forms the backbone of layer by layer, dead zones stack up atop _Xe[Yffb]fi
Seasick: Ocean Change and the Extinction the continental shelf. Mitchell notes that XepjZ`\ek`jk
of Life on Earth, by veteran science jour- as a result of climate change, dead zones ZXcc\[lgfe
nalist Alanna Mitchell. Mitchell trawls are both increasing in number (there are
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the oxygen-depleted oceanic dead now more than 400 of them globally)
zones in the Gulf of Mexico, counts the and thickening, as the top of the stack i\gfik\i#^ffe
days after the full moon in Panama to moves closer to the surface. k\c\m`j`fe#cfYYpc\^`jcXkfijfiè^\e\iXc
figure out when to search for signs of Mitchell finds connections between Xejn\ik_XkX^\$fc[hl\jk`fe#N_Xk
coral spawn, questions what a souring ocean distress and climate change \oXZkcp`j`kpfl[f6ÉÇGlYc`j_\ijN\\bcp
ocean chemistry holds for the future nearly everywhere she goes. Look-
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of marine plankton communities, and ing for spawning coral in Panama, she
recounts the actions that have deplet- discovers that its reproductive cycle
ed global fisheries, documenting the has been weakened as a consequence
toll that one frightening assault after of coral bleaching caused by increased
another has taken on our ocean. Their sea-surface temperatures. She climbs
cumulative effect has pushed us across the Pyrenees in Spain with geologists
a threshold. It appears that global sys- who are searching for evidence of cli-
tems may already be unable to return mate disruptions during the Paleocene- ?8IM8I;LE@M<IJ@KPGI<JJ
the ocean to its former state and are Eocene Thermal Maximum, a dramatic NNN%?LG%?8IM8I;%<;L
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beginning instead to interact to create a warming of the Earth’s atmosphere 9CF>1?8IM8I;GI<JJ%KPG<G8;%:FD
__________________
new, far less hospitable state. that took place 55 million years ago.
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But perhaps of greatest concern to her BIOLOGY

is the insidious threat to oceans posed
by high levels of carbon dioxide in our The Conditions for Existence
atmosphere. When atmospheric carbon
dioxide dissolves in seawater, it forms John Dupré
carbonic acid. The more CO2 there is
in the atmosphere, the more acidic sea-
water becomes; ultimately this reduces NOT BY DESIGN: Retiring Darwin’s Watchmaker. John O. Reiss. xviii + 422 pp.
the amount of carbonate that is available University of California Press, 2009. $49.95.
in the water. Carbonate is critical for the
F
formation and maintenance of calcium ollowers of the debate between
carbonate, which makes up the shells of evolutionists and various waves
mollusks and planktonic foraminiferans of creationists, most recently
as well as the limestone that coral polyps the advocates of “intelligent design,”
produce to create reef architecture. will have been struck by one curious
Here Mitchell’s scientist guides can convergence between the views of the
offer little comfort. No one has come opposing parties. Both sides agree that
up with a way to mitigate the threat life, whether or not literally designed
posed by ocean acidification. Mitchell by an intelligent agent, seems just as if
writes hopefully of the possibility that it had been designed. Richard Dawkins
the nations of the world will set targets intentionally picks up William Paley’s
that maintain atmospheric CO2 levels famous example of the watch that could
near 380 parts per million. But news only have come about through deliberate
from the recent Copenhagen Climate design, adding to it the suggestion that
Summit makes that seem unlikely. the designer—for Dawkins, natural
Yet despite the book’s barrage of selection—is a blind watchmaker.
grim realities, and setting aside for the Daniel Dennett, another prominent
moment the fact that Mitchell overesti- scourge of the creationists, is equally
mates the effectiveness of both the In- sure that design is a fundamental and
ternational Convention for the Regula- inescapable concept for analyzing life.
tion of Whaling and the Convention on It has always seemed to me that this
International Trade in Endangered Spe- notion is a mistaken one, but it is far
cies, I found the argument for hope and from easy to explain exactly why. John
change that she presents compelling. Reiss’s Not by Design: Retiring Darwin’s
At the start of the final chapter, over- Watchmaker provides the best-worked-
whelmed by the thought that the ocean out explanation I’ve encountered. Georges Cuvier (1769–1832) was a self-taught
may be terminally ill, Mitchell finds The book opens with an extended naturalist whose interest in comparative anatomy
herself on the verge of despair. Nev- journey through the history of biology. and fossil bones led him to try to reconstruct the
ertheless, she resolves to go through The specific focus of this journey is the history of life on Earth, focusing on the extinction
with a trip to a depth of 3,000 feet in a dialectic between those who see the of species by catastrophes. His legacy became
one of orthodoxy, but his conservatism was that
submersible. There she experiences a world and the living things within it
of any good scientist, says John O. Reiss. This
resurgence of hope: as saturated with design and purpose, portrait, painted by Mathieu-Ignace van Breé,
and the truly committed naturalists and shows Cuvier at about age 29, a few years after
Shivering in my undersea womb,
materialists who have no truck with his rapid rise to fame. From Not by Design.
peering at these wondrous, ancient
any of this. The former group includes
life forms, it occurs to me that we
the majority of the leading luminaries in the forms, which it produces?
are in an era that holds out the po-
in standard accounts of biology, start- There certainly is such an oecon-
tential of magnificent regeneration.
ing with Plato and Aristotle and con- omy: For this is actually the case
We could, if enough of us wanted
cluding with no less a personage than with the present world. The con-
to, form a new relationship with
Darwin. On the other side of the debate tinual motion of matter, therefore,
our planet. We could become the
are the Epicureans in antiquity and the in less than infinite transpositions,
gentle symbionts we were meant
18th-century French philosophes, among must produce this oeconomy or
to be instead of the planetary para-
others. Reiss quotes what is probably order; and by its very nature, that
sites we have unwittingly become.
the most widely cited version of the order, when once established, sup-
As Mitchell emphasizes in the epi- Epicurean view, that given by Philo in ports itself, for many ages, if not to
logue, the future is in our hands. David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning eternity. But wherever matter is so
Natural Religion, part 8: poised, arranged, and adjusted as
to continue in perpetual motion,
Rick MacPherson is a marine ecologist and is Conser-
vation Programs Director for the Coral Reef Alliance,
Is there a system, an order, an and yet preserve a constancy in the
an international biodiversity conservation organiza- oeconomy of things, by which forms, its situation, must, of neces-
tion working exclusively to protect coral reefs. His matter can preserve that perpetual sity, have all the same appearance
interests include the history and philosophy of science agitation, which seems essential of art and contrivance which we
and evolutionary theory. to it, and yet maintain a constancy observe at present.
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Reiss’s goal is to reassert such a thor- tably Darwin, have assumed between satisfy those conditions do not survive.
oughgoing materialism and remove te- existence and adaptedness. For Reiss, Medium-sense selection is the average dif-
leology from our vision of nature. an organism cannot exist—by defini- ferential survival and reproduction of
The somewhat surprising hero of tion—unless it fully satisfies its condi- genotypic or phenotypic classes of or-
this historical narrative is the early tions for existence. The only sense in ganisms within a population and can be
19th-century naturalist Georges Cuvier. which a kind of organism may be said measured by the rate of increase of the
Cuvier’s particular importance is in his to increase in adaptedness is that its class. And narrow-sense selection is differ-
development of the idea of the “condi- population may be growing. It may, for ential survival and reproduction among
tions of existence”—or, as Reiss prefers example, increase the size of its funda- classes to the extent that this is caused
to translate this, the conditions for exis- mental niche (the set of conditions in by the distinguishing characteristics
tence. These must not be confused with which it could in principle exist)—by of these classes. According to Reiss, it
the concept familiar to modern readers displacing a competitor, say. One must is narrow-sense selection that was the
of Darwin as the conditions of life, the not, however, suppose that the niche (necessary) contribution made by Dar-
external circumstances to which an or- exists externally to the organism, as win and Alfred Russel Wallace to our
ganism must be adapted if it is to sur- something that somehow creates a tar- understanding of evolution. Narrow-
vive. The conditions for existence are, get to which an organism is attracted sense selection is essential to explain-
rather, those features of a living thing as an end. This is the kind of teleology ing some changes in populations that
without which it could not survive. In that Reiss is consistently attacking. One track changes in the environment, but
Philo’s words, they are the ways that source of it is the misleading analogy of course it does not imply a constant
matter is “poised, arranged, and ad- Darwin draws between natural selec- move toward some externally given op-
justed . . . to . . . preserve a constancy in tion and artificial selection. In the lat- timum or state of better design.
the forms.” The central idea of Not by ter, there is indeed a goal, the inten- An especially interesting conse-
Design is that the demonstration that tion of the breeder. (Reiss identifies quence of the rejection of the distinc-
some feature is part of the conditions the shifting-balance theory of Sewall tion between existence and adapted-
for existence of an organism, together Wright as another perspective on evo- ness is that it puts the topic of genetic
with the observation that the organism lution led astray by the same analogy.) drift in quite a different light. To sum-
does indeed exist, is in general as much Where does this leave natural selec- marize very crudely Reiss’s detailed
explanation of the presence of this fea- tion? Reiss distinguishes several modes discussion, the way drift can be dis-
ture as we can expect. of selection. Broad-sense selection is that tinguished from the effects of selection
The book begins, appropriately, with which maintains the satisfaction of the is that the latter involves a move to a
an examination of the scope and lim- conditions for existence by individuals; more adapted state. But this, of course,
its of teleology—the explanation of the tautologically, individuals that fail to assumes that there is a distinction
existence of a thing (or of a property or
behavior of a thing) in terms of a future Science is Based on Evidence!
state toward which it conduces. The up-
shot of this is that teleology is acceptable
Shouldn’t Science Heroes Be?!
:KR6DYHGWKH0RVW/LYHV
under only three conditions: first, when 122 Million
there are deterministic laws that bring LQ+LVWRU\" Lives Saved
about the end in question, as when the 80 Million

Lives Saved
temperature of a house changes after 1.038 Billion
114 Million
the thermostat is adjusted; second, Lives Saved
Lives Saved
when the connection to the future state 50 Million 16 Million
is mediated by the intention of an agent; Lives Saved Lives Saved
or third, in instances of what Reiss calls 21 Million 245 Million
Lives Saved Lives Saved
conditional/functional explanation, the va-
riety of explanation illustrated by the 6 Million 5 Million
Lives Saved Lives Saved
conditions for existence: Given that
there is a system that does X (survives, How Many Do You Know?
for example) and has such and such a
feature that enables it to do X, then the What is more important than saving a life?
system must have this feature (or some Scientists Greater Than Einstein makes an evidence based
argument that the greatest scientists of the twentieth century
functionally equivalent feature) if it is were health scientists. The evidence – over 1.6 billion lives saved!
to exist at all. In this last case, of course, Coming from the fields of agronomy, chemistry, epidemiology,
the end (survival) is an observation that medicine, microbiology, and ophthalmology, these individuals
had more impact upon humanity over the past 150 years than
explains the current state of things; there any other scientists. See the results of the first extensive survey
is no question of a future state figuring undertaken to discover who saved the most lives in history. At
ScienceHeroes.com over 100 lifesaving scientists are profiled,
into the explanation. and 10 are featured in the book where each chapter illuminates
Where is the objectionable teleology their formidable research in rich detail.
to be found in the history and current How many on the Top 10 lists do you know? Scrutinize the lists
practice of biology? Reiss’s most illumi- of medical scientists, living scientists, women scientists, and
more at
nating formulation of an answer to this %LRVWDWLVWLFVE\ _______________________
question is found in his objection to the $P\53HDUFH3K'
3XEOLVKHGE\4XLOO'ULYHU%RRNV
gap that so many biologists, most no-
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between existence and adaptedness, conditions for the existence of the lin- unresolved. On the contrary, however,
whereas Reiss regards that distinction eage would seem, therefore, to be the the decisive point that needs to be made
as illegitimate. Conceptually, selection most fundamental concept. again and again in these debates is that
and drift are quite different processes, This is a difficult, sometimes dense the openness to advance, the progres-
but in practice they can be extremely and sometimes frustrating book—and siveness, of scientific thought is precisely
difficult to separate. Once we see that my attempt to summarize its main what distinguishes it most significantly
the trajectory of a population through theses probably shares those character- from creationist dogma. Reiss’s book
time is one in which adaptedness is istics. Anyone interested in evolutionary contributes much to this goal.
always maintained—the conditions for biology is likely to disagree with some of It is a great pity that a book such as
existence are continuously met—it is the claims that Reiss makes. It is, how- this cannot be written at the same lev-
very difficult to distinguish among the ever, an important book that should be el of accessibility as the popular neo-
causes of this maintenance. widely read and discussed. As we grad- Darwinist works that it explicitly or
What is most fundamental—and ually recover from the orgy of Darwin implicitly opposes. It may be that an
encompasses selective processes, drift adulation that has marked the year of his anthropomorphic understanding of na-
and much else besides—is the meeting anniversaries, nothing is more needed ture by analogy to design is difficult for
over time of the conditions for exis- than a reminder that evolution remains a the human mind to avoid. But this book
tence of a lineage. (This, incidentally, topic about which we are far from know- is a good illustration that the effort is
is a concept that appears several times ing all the answers. The Darwinolatry of worth making.
in the book, but it seemed to me that it some popularizers has suggested that
might helpfully have been separated the discovery of natural selection—per- John Dupré is professor of philosophy of science and
more sharply from the parallel concept director of the ESRC Centre for Genomics in Society
haps with a subsequent assist from
(Egenis) at the University of Exeter. He is the author
for an organism.) The existence of an Gregor Mendel—left little more to be
of, among other books, Darwin’s Legacy: What
organism requires that it be part of a done than a tedious filling in of details. Evolution Means Today (Oxford University Press,
lineage that meets the conditions for The enduring debates with creation- 2003) and The Constituents of Life (Van Gorcum,
the existence of the lineage of which it ists have also undoubtedly tended to 2008). He is also coauthor, with Barry Barnes, of Ge-
is a part—the survival and reproduc- discourage admission that major con- nomes and What to Make of Them (University of
tion of its sequence of members. The ceptual issues about evolution remain Chicago Press, 2007).
ORNITHOLOGY
Avian Appreciation
Aaron French
BIRDSCAPES: Birds in Our Imagination and Experience. Jeremy Mynott. xiv + 367 pp.
Princeton University Press, 2009. $29.95.
THE BIRD: A Natural History of Who Birds Are, Where They Came From, and How
They Live. Colin Tudge. xvi + 462 pp. Crown Publishers, 2008. $30.
Jeremy Mynott says that when visiting the
village of Obzhorovo in the Volga Delta of
T
he beauty and mystery of birds Tudge’s chapter describing the orders
southern Russia, he saw a hoopoe outside
have inspired thousands of books and families of all the world’s birds will
his front door, “strutting around busily like
about all aspects of their diversity, be of great interest to the casual bird- a huge pink starling, flirting that outrageous
behavior, morphology, conservation and watcher or wildlife enthusiast—it reads crest and floating a few yards away on black-
identification. Yet as two recent arrivals, more like a catalog of wonders than an and-white butterfly wings when I get too
The Bird and Birdscapes, demonstrate, ornithological manual. However, by near.” He wonders whether brilliantly colored
those topics have not yet been exhausted. necessity each entry is extremely brief, birds like the hoopoe might come to seem un-
The Bird, by science writer Colin and to knowledgeable readers some of pleasantly garish if he were surrounded by
Tudge, is the more typical book by far. his omissions are glaring. When dis- them all the time. From Birdscapes.
A full 20 percent of the text is devot- cussing the Hawaiian honeycreepers,
ed to chapter 4, “All the Birds in the for example, Tudge fails to mention that tion for me, a journey whose sights and
World: An Annotated Cast List.” Other they are among the most critically en- sounds I did not fully foresee when
sections describe what makes a bird a dangered birds in the world. I started and whose destination was
bird, how birds live and how we live Despite this lack of comprehensive- unclear.” And a strange journey it is.
with birds. Fortunately, the writing is ness, The Bird will be a welcome ad- Mynott discusses not just species dif-
lively and appealing, and the text is dition to the library of any bird lover ferences, birdsong, conservation and
filled with interesting tidbits of infor- because it is so enjoyable to read. nomenclature, but such matters as how
mation. Readers learn, for example, Jeremy Mynott’s Birdscapes is much humans have used images and meta-
that modern broiler chickens, “raced less conventional. Mynott, a lifelong phors of birds to piece together ideas,
from egg to puffed-up oven weight in birder and former publishing execu- which birds people profess to like the
six weeks,” don’t live long enough to tive, writes in the preface that the book most, and how our interest in birds is
grow a sturdy wishbone. “has been in the nature of an explora- affected by conceptions of rarity and
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beauty. The book’s recurring themes,

he says, are “the snares of sentimental-
ity, the pros and cons of anthropomor-
phism, the interplay between what we
perceive in birds and what we project
onto them, and the power of meta-
phors, names, and symbols to express
or distort our vision.” The tone varies,
ranging from playful, conspiratorial
and poetic to dryly academic, thought-
ful and poignant. Mynott is erudite
and insightful, but his meandering was
not always to my taste. The text some-
times struck me as self-indulgent and
strangely lacking in focus.
Opening the book at random, you
might find a passage from Romeo and
Juliet (was it a lark that Romeo heard,
or a nightingale?), an exploration of
how to see nature properly (with an
allusion to Oscar Wilde’s suggestion
that nature is just an unsatisfactory im-
itation of art), or a discussion of how
French bird names differ from Eng-
lish ones. You could also come across
something that seems at first glance
to have nothing whatever to do with
birds—illustration 24, for example,
which consists of photographs of four
nude actresses on stage at the Windmill
Some bird names “are little more than vague expressions of admiration,” notes Jeremy
Theatre in London. Mynott explains
Mynott; the Australian fairy wren on the lower left is known as the splendid fairy wren, and
that British authorities decreed in 1940 the one at lower right is the superb fairy wren. More commonly, names describe the bird’s
that onstage nudity was acceptable as physical appearance in some way, noting colors, patterns or features; the bird at top left is a
long as actresses were in poses that red-backed fairy wren, for example, and the one at top right is a variegated fairy wren. Size,
were “motionless and expressionless.” activity, voice, preferred food, favored habitat and the name of the person who discovered the
His point is that animation has a key species are other factors often used as the basis for bird names. From Birdscapes.
effect on the observer and is funda-
mental to our reactions to birds. This What follows is a fairly standard files. He squeezes in just three lines from
may well be, but for me he has strayed 30-page overview of taxonomy and Darwin’s On the Origin of Species but ex-
too far off topic here. systematics, progressing in a predict- pounds for pages on Sherlock Holmes,
Who is the intended audience for ably breezy fashion from Linnaeus to master observer and perceiver. Mynott
Birdscapes? Mynott certainly has enthu- Darwin and beyond, ending with the brings the discussion back around to
siasm to spare, but his style is too pe- revolutionary DNA-DNA hybridiza- birds by proposing that the three most
dantic for a popular audience. The book tion studies of Charles Sibley and Jon important attributes of birdwatchers are
appears to be aimed at intellectual bird- Edward Ahlquist. Tudge stays within “1) active attention, 2) informed expec-
ers who love literature. They are likely the traditional boundaries of the topic tation, and 3) ambition of imagination.”
to delight in Mynott’s erudition and find and provides a discussion that new- It is clear that attribute number three is
the book’s idiosyncrasies charming. comers will welcome. where his interest lies.
To illustrate the differences in ap- Mynott is more circuitous. He opens Neither of these books gives a full
proach between The Bird and Bird- his chapter on nomenclature and clas- picture of birds and birding, but both
scapes, let’s examine the way Tudge sification, “Seeing a Difference,” with are entertaining and contain much
and Mynott cover similar ground. In an anecdote about a birding trip to the that’s worth knowing. Choose The
chapter 3 of The Bird, “Keeping Track: Isles of Scilly, where he sees but fails to Bird if you like to devour a book in one
The Absolute Need to Classify,” Tudge recognize a semi-palmated sandpiper, or two sittings. Birdscapes is best read
jumps right into the fray, asserting, “a five-star rarity.” He misidentifies it piecemeal—you’ll want to consume it
as a stint and is then corrected by orni- in small bites, in birdlike fashion.
It’s a simple question of the kind thologist Peter Grant. “What had Peter
six-year-olds ask: How many noticed that I had missed?,” he won-
Aaron French, who has a master’s degree in ecol-
kinds of birds are there? But as ders. He then goes off on one tangent ogy, spent two years living with the Baka pygmies
with most of the questions that six- after another as he discusses distinctions in Cameroon, studying birds and monkeys. He is
year-olds ask, the answer is that and differences, species and individuals, now the chef of the Sunny Side Café in Albany,
nobody knows, and nobody can observing and perceiving, illusion and California. His Web site can be found at http://www.
ever know—at least not exactly. self-deception, and patterns and pro- eco-chef.com/.
_______
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Nanoviews
FORDLANDIA: The Rise and Fall of
Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City.
Greg Grandin. Metropolitan Books,
$27.50.
In 1927, Henry Ford bought a Con-

necticut-sized piece of the Amazon
and built an authentic American town
in the Brazilian jungle, complete with
electric lights and indoor plumbing.
In Ford’s conception, Fordlandia
would be an independent source of
raw materials for his burgeoning auto
empire, and a way to preserve the
vanishing America of his Michigan
childhood. His enormous wealth
and willpower enabled him briefly
to establish a utopia in the jungle,
complete with golf courses, ice cream
parlors, movie theaters and Victrolas.
But these were succeeded by brothels,
bars and disease. Like the Lincoln Brazil, trying to explain why Ford was real, complex endeavor, and Gran-
Zephyr in the photograph at right, committed to a venture unlikely to be din refuses to simplify its lessons.
stuck in Fordlandia mud, Ford’s profitable, wrote to his superiors in For him, ultimately, it’s a window
experiment finally foundered in the the State Department that “Mr. Ford into the curious character of Henry
wilderness, and in 1945 he sold the considers the project as a ‘work of civi- Ford, a self-made titan whose own
whole property back to Brazil. lization.’ . . . Nothing else will explain factories had begun to cast a shadow
In Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of the lavish expenditure of money.” across the America that had pro-
Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City, The story of the jungle suburb duced him. That his Amazon adven-
New York University historian Greg is so outlandish that many writers ture failed shows the limits of what
Grandin recounts the whole tale, from would be tempted to reduce it to his hubris could accomplish, but that
Ford’s first searches for an indepen- a fable—an ecological parable or a he embarked on the adventure at all
dent source of rubber to his culminat- screed against imperialism—or to reveals his tortured idealism, and
ing dream of a civilizing engine in draw analogies to Joseph Conrad that elevates Fordlandia to a quixotic
the Amazon. One U.S. diplomat in or El Dorado. But Fordlandia was a tragedy.—Greg Ross
CROW PLANET: Essential Wisdom David Budbill’s poetry and Jennifer

from the Urban Wilderness. Lyanda Price’s environmental history along
Lynn Haupt. Little, Brown, $23.99. with plenty of corvid science, as well
as the requisite (and still relevant)
“How, exactly, are we connected to the quotes from Rachel Carson. All this is
earth, the more-than-human world, in woven in with Haupt’s own mus-
our lives and in our actions? And in ings as she hangs clothes on the line,
light of this connection, how are we talks with her young daughter, fights
to carry out our lives on a changing depression, and works to learn more
earth?” These are the hard questions about crows and urban ecosystems.
that Lyanda Lynn Haupt sets out to For the most part she succeeds in
explore in the memoir Crow Planet. pulling together the narrative threads
Crows, for Haupt, represent both the of her personal life, specific ecological
continued presence of the wild in plac- communities and humans’ impact on
es dominated by humans, and the nar- ecosystems as a whole. Some sections
rowing down of ecological diversity as fly by; others, such as her hours-long
those changes to the landscape make it observation of a dead crow in the
harder for some species to exist. tradition of Louis Agassiz, allow the
One crow she watches collects reader to luxuriate in the writer’s deep Haupt’s approach is that of the
shells, dried berries and shiny bits contemplation of the natural world. flaneur, so it’s fitting that the answers
of trash; in a similar fashion, Haupt Throughout, her descriptions of how she comes to, if not always conclusive,
gathers the work of many fine writers crows communicate, nest, mate and feel useful and encouraging of more
around her. There are references to live are fascinating. exploration.—Anna Lena Phillips
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March-April 2010 · Volume 19, Number 2
2010 Sigma Xi From the President

Awards Announced
ichael J. Spivey,
In Support of Sigma Xi
M a professor of
cognitive science at
the University of California,
Giving back has been a recurrent theme and even the title of
my last installment of “From the President.” I suppose the value
Merced, known for his I see in supporting the scientific enterprise is derived from my own gratitude to all of
innovative studies of language those who have helped me and shared in the joys of my own experience as a teacher,
and visual perception, will mentor and researcher.
receive Sigma Xi’s 2010 William Procter Sigma Xi has always stood for values that I respect and has provided me with a
Prize for Scientific Achievement, the Society’s means to give back. I now wish to encourage you to give back and to support Sigma
highest honor.
The Procter Prize and other top annual Xi in its mission to enhance and promote the scientific enterprise.
awards will be presented at the Sigma Xi A common complaint about our annual meeting has been the level of political
Annual Meeting and International Research wrangling that may seem to dominate the meeting. Therefore, it was very heartening
Conference next November in Raleigh, to me to have so many of the delegates at this year's annual meeting approach me
North Carolina. about taking a more active role in Sigma Xi.
The 2010 John P. I believe this likely occurs at each annual meeting; however, because I presided
McGovern Science and as president at this meeting I became more aware of this response. There are in fact
Society Award will go to
Barbara Gastel at Texas
many ways to serve Sigma Xi and at many different levels of commitment.
A&M University. A The easiest way to start is at the chapter level. Is your chapter as active as you
professor of veterinary would like? Are the current programs of your chapter in line with your interests
integrative biosciences and and commitments? Is your chapter not serving you well, or do you just want to
of humanities in medicine, she has devoted get more involved?
much of her career to improving scientific You can support the activities of your chapter or serve as an agent for change. Most
communication. of us started our service to Sigma Xi in just that way. We stepped up, took on the
Howard R. Moskowitz, an
expert on sensory psychology responsibility for programs we wanted to make happen and evolved as leaders of our
and its commercial local chapters. Yes, it was work, but clearly to many of us the rewards were significant
application, will receive the enough to cause us to seek greater involvement in a Society whose value we hold dear.
Walston Chubb Award for Sigma Xi, at the international level, operates through a committee system where
Innovation. He is president our members bring knowledge, experience and chapter-wide perspectives of the many
and CEO of Moskowitz issues that the Society must deal with. Membership on one of our committees is
Jacobs Inc. in White Plains, New York. often the starting point for many in the governance of the Society.
And Kevin R. Gurney will
be honored with Sigma Xi’s Our Web site, www.sigmaxi.org
__________, lists the committees of Sigma Xi and provides an
Young Investigator Award. e-mail link to volunteer for service on a specific committee or on any committee in
He is an associate professor general. You should know that to maintain continuity on committees the turn over of
of earth and atmospheric membership is cyclical, so please be patient and your opportunity will come.
science at Purdue University Finally, those who wish to dedicate themselves to the future of the Society can
whose work on tracking become directly involved in its governance. Serving on the nominations committee for
CO2 emissions has been groundbreaking. your region or constituency group is often an introduction to this level of commitment.
Proctor Prize winner Michael Spivey
has a long history of studying language Taking on the directorship of a region or constituency group places you on the
and visual perception. He was the driving Board of Directors. This is a significant commitment that requires your time to work
force in creating a new line of research in in your region or constituency to support chapters and promote Sigma Xi. It also
psycholinguistics. brings with it the fiduciary responsibilities of serving on the board.
He uses eye-tracking and computer Most importantly it brings you the satisfaction of taking a stand for what you
mouse-tracking equipment to study how believe in and the friendship that grows out of working closely with like-minded
humans perceive and respond to what they individuals who share a common cause. I highly recommend that you become
hear and see.
Motion-tracking software and hardware involved; it will be a rewarding experience both for you and the Society.
document not only the subjects’ final Howard Ceri
(continued on next page)
www.sigmaxi.org 2010 March-April 175
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Thirty-Five Students Receive Medals at Sigma Xi Conference

Environmental Science
T
hirty-five student researchers received Engineering
medals and cash awards for their poster David Kvale—University of Toledo Chang Woo Lee—University of Texas at
presentations at the 2009 Sigma Xi M.D. Anderson Cancer Center
International Research Conference in Texas. Undergraduate Students Geo-Sciences
More than 200 students presented their James Burnes—Lamar University
Biochemistry
research at this year's conference, representing
Valeria Gonzalez—University of Interdisciplinary Research
nearly 100 academic institutions.
The winners of a special Student Choice California, Irvine Patricia Troy—Ohio Wesleyan University;
Award were Aditya Kaddu, Zhao Kong Behavioral Sciences Michael Chien—University of
and Daniel Rist of Rice University. The Jamar Whaley—Queens College; Michael Pennsylvania; Wee Leow—Texas A&M
award was sponsored by the Washington, Gonzalez—University of California, Irvine University
D.C., Chapter of Sigma Xi and carried Math & Computer Science
a $250 cash prize. Medalists for superior Cellular & Molecular Biology
Jing Han—Northwestern University; Franklin Kyle Pounder—Saint Mary's College of
presentations were as follows: California
Garcia and Mayra Carrillo—University of
Doctoral Candidates California, Irvine; Vineet Singal—Stanford Physics & Astronomy
University; Hatim Thaker and Danny Jake Connors—The Ohio State University
Interdisciplinary Research Jandali—Northwestern University
Pearce Creasman—Texas A&M University Physiology & Immunology
Chemistry Erick Maravill—University of California,
Physics & Astronomy Derek Rhoades—Ohio Northern Irvine
Derek Nowak—Portland State University University; Abdul Jangda—University of
Math & Computer Science Houston, Downtown High School Students
Faisal Reza—Duke University
Ecology & Evolutionary Biology Cellular & Molecular Biology
Elizabeth Lavoie—State University of New Mirza Shabbir—Harlem Children Society
Graduate Students York, Plattsburgh; Krystle Minear—Weber
Ecology & Evolutionary Biology State University Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
Anna Coleman-Hulbert—Portland State Gabriel Joachim—Cibola High School
Engineering
University Chemistry
David Garland and Kenneth Davis—Rice
Geo-Sciences University; Maha Haji—University of Rodney Agnant—Harlem Children Society •
Ruth Mullins—Texas A&M University California, Berkeley
2010 Sigma Xi Awards The technology creates and links scientific

Sigma Xi Leaders in (continued from previous page)
based databases into a system called Rule
Developing Experimentation (RDE). RDE
Washington, D.C. answers but also the answers they considered helps companies worldwide to optimize
along the way. The end result is a more products, messaging and graphic design.
accurate representation of how the human Young Investigator Award winner
brain processes information. Kevin Gurney focuses his research on the
McGovern Award winner Barbara Gastel is global carbon cycle, understanding sinks
Knowledge Community Editor for AuthorAID, for atmospheric CO2, how CO2 changes
a major project of the International Network for connect to climate change and how to
the Availability of Scientific Publications. She co- connect good climate science to development
authored the sixth edition of Robert Day’s How of sound public policy.
to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper and is now He was the lead author on a 2002 paper
co-authoring the seventh edition. addressing CO2 inversions that is listed
These new editions speak to globalization in the top 1 percent of Nature papers. He
and digitizing of publishing. Gastel wrote received a grant from NASA to build a CO2
the Health Writer’s Handbook. She is chief emissions inventory for the U.S. and led a
In Washington, D.C., recently,
Sigma Xi President-elect Joseph
editor of Science Editor, the periodical of The project to create a high-resolution, interactive
Whittaker (left) and Executive Director Council of Science Editors. map of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from
Jerome Baker flank Sigma Xi member Chubb Award winner Howard Moskowitz fossil fuels.
and U.S. Congressman Rush Holt after created a new technology, called Mind The 2010 Sigma Xi Honorary Members
discussing increasing budgets for Genomics, to better understand the way will be announced at a later time. Profiles
federal science agencies.
consumers think about products and about of Sigma Xi award winners will appear in
social issues. upcoming issues of American Scientist. •
176
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© 2008 JupiterImages Corporation.

How Has Christianity Changed over 2,000 Years?
In the first centuries after Christ, there was no “official” New Tes- Lost Christianities: Christian Scriptures
tament. Instead, early Christians read and fervently followed a
wide variety of scriptures—many more than we have today.
and the Battles over Authentication
Taught by Professor Bart D. Ehrman,
Relying on these writings, Christians held beliefs that today would The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
be considered bizarre. Some believed that there were 2, 12, or as Lecture Titles
many as 30 gods. Some thought that a malicious deity, rather than 1. The Diversity of Early Christianity 13. The Acts of John
the true God, created the world. Some maintained that Christ’s 2. Christians Who Would Be Jews 14. The Acts of Thomas
3. Christians Who Refuse To Be Jews 15. The Acts of Paul and Thecla
death and resurrection had nothing to do with salvation while oth- 4. Early Gnostic Christianity— 16. Forgeries in the Name of Paul
ers insisted that Christ never really died at all. Our Sources 17. The Epistle of Barnabas
5. Early Christian Gnosticism— 18. The Apocalypse of Peter
What did these “other” scriptures say? Do they exist today? How An Overview 19. The Rise of Early
could such outlandish ideas ever be considered Christian? If such 6. The Gnostic Gospel of Truth Christian Orthodoxy
7. Gnostics Explain Themselves 20. Beginnings of the Canon
beliefs were once common, why do they no longer exist? These 8. The Coptic Gospel of Thomas 21. Formation of the New
are just a few of the many provocative questions that arise from 9. Thomas’ Gnostic Teachings Testament Canon
10. Infancy Gospels 22. Interpretation of Scripture
Lost Christianities: Christian Scriptures and the Battles over
11. The Gospel of Peter 23. Orthodox Corruption of Scripture
Authentication, an insightful 24-lecture course taught by Pro- 12. The Secret Gospel of Mark 24. Early Christian Creeds
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Within 72 hours of the earthquake, PIH had deployed several teams of

medical personnel and several tons of supplies to people desperate for
food, water, and medications. Within a week, we had treated thousands
of patients in twenty operating rooms run by PIH staff, partners,
and volunteers. Additional volunteers and supplies are being
sent every day as we continue to provide care and comfort to patients who have lost everything.
Donate now www.pih.org _______________________________
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Contents | Zoom in | Zoom out For navigation instructions please click here Search Issue | Next Page

3D DIGITAL REALITY • GENES GET CULTURE • ALZHEIMER'S DISCOVERY

Walston Chubb Award

Young Investigator Award

98 From the Editor 140 Gene-Culture Coevolution and

106 Computing Science 8 &

Avoiding a digital dark age 4

From the Editor

Methodology in Our Madness

man eye yet remain computationally practical. To be

98 American Scientist, Volume 98

Letters to the Editors

100 American Scientist, Volume 98

The Ultimate Mouthful:

The Race for Real-time Photorealism FDA Commissioner’s Fellowship Program

Who Should Apply?

www.americanscientist.org 2010 March–April 101

T he rabbi’s eulogy for Sheldon

102 American Scientist, Volume 98

the principal reasons that health-care

www.americanscientist.org 2010 March–April 103

have to admire. our Byzantine for-profit insurance

 That decrementally cost-effective in- system), ultimately we simply do not

novations are so rarely described in have the resources to give away an

markets, in which cost-decreasing, to no budgetary constraints.

104 American Scientist, Volume 98

Come meet your group’s newest member,

Call or click for your FREE quote. 1-800-368-2734

www.americanscientist.org 2010 March–April 105

Avoiding a Digital Dark Age

W hen I was a boy, I discovered

106 American Scientist, Volume 98

survived for more than 5,000 years. approximate ideal expected

www.americanscientist.org 2010 March–April 107

The U.S. Postal Service uses an encoding

108 American Scientist, Volume 98

www.americanscientist.org 2010 March–April 109

survive. Nature cannot predict the fu-

110 American Scientist, Volume 98

NO ANNUAL FEE SECURITY PROTECTION ONLINE ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT

To apply, call toll-free 1.866.438.6262

www.americanscientist.org 2010 March–April 111

Challenges and Prizes

T here is no shortage of chal-

112 American Scientist, Volume 98

www.americanscientist.org 2010 March–April 113

An electromagnetic pulse remains a

114 American Scientist, Volume 98

nearly enough to cover the team’s time

National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London

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I meet Ansgar Bach first through

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and thought, hey, why not an infinite

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for a while. Troubled communications

Chemistry” general-education course,

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That decrementally cost-effective in- system), ultimately we simply do not

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