Table of contents for March/April 2021 in Discover

Ever since computers took shape — first filling rooms, then office desks, then pockets — they have been designed by human minds. Over the years, plenty of people have asked: What would happen if computers designed themselves Someday soon, an intelligent computer might create a machine far more powerful than itself. That new computer would likely make another, even more powerful, and so on. Machine intelligence would ride an exponential upward curve, attaining heights of cognition inconceivable to humans. This, broadly speaking, is the singularity. The term dates back over 50 years, when scientists were just beginning to tinker with binary code and the circuitry that made basic computing possible. Even then, the singularity was a formidable proposition. Superintelligent computers might leap forward from nanotechnology to immersive virtual reality to…

This purple puff of an E. coli bacterium might appear as if it’s gently resting atop a cradle of gray nails, but look closely and you’ll see the spiked columns, called nanopillars, impaling its sides. These microscopic structures can be found on the wings of insects, including dragonflies and cicadas. Invading bacteria are stopped by the spikes, which cause the microbes to deform and ultimately die. Researchers studying the bacteria-breakdown process say creating artificial nanopillars could help design better surgical implants for humans, keeping bacteria at bay without the need for antibiotics.…

On the Copper River in south-central Alaska, a celebrated chief named? taxda’x (EL-tax-da) once owned a dish hewn from the horn of a giant moose. When? taxda’x died, four brothers fought over this ceremonial platter of the Raven clan. According to some tellings of the ancient story, one brother who lost gathered the people who sided with him and led them away from their ancestral home into the unknown. They journeyed for many years, crossing a glacier and nearly starving. When they followed what lookedlike a rabbit on the snowy horizon, it turned out to be the distant peak of Mount St. Elias. From the top, they could see the deep blue sea, and they built their home on an island. They prospered under the protection of the mountain with…

WHEN MONICA LEWINSKY EMERGED IN 2014 AFTER A DECADE OF QUIET EXISTENCE, SHE HAD A MESSAGE TO SHARE. SHE ALSO HAD A MASTER’S DEGREE IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, EARNED IN LONDON WHERE SHE HUNKERED DOWN FOR GRAD SCHOOL. VANITY FAIR PRINTED HER EXCLUSIVE FIRST-PERSON COMEBACK STORY IN 2014. THEN SHE TOOK the stage to tell of life after becoming “that woman” in one of history’s most widely broadcast sex scandals: “I went from being a completely private figure to a publicly humiliated one, worldwide,” Lewinsky says in her 2015 TED Talk, which now has more than 18 million views. “I was patient zero of losing a personal reputation on the global scale, almost instantaneously.” The infamous 1998 incident with President Bill Clinton occurred at the dawn of the internet age — a…

In the 1930s, the United States Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) established a system to give lenders a way to rank a neighborhood’s risk for investment. Those neighborhoods designated as “minimal risk” were colored green on maps and graded A, while lowest-grade D neighborhoods were shaded red and deemed “hazardous.” The racial and ethnic identity of the people within those neighborhoods was a major factor in those risk calculations. An area with Black, Latino or ethnic minority residents would be shaded red, in effect denying those places access to business and home loans for decades. This practice, later dubbed redlining, was a key drivers of segregation and concentrated poverty in cities. Where there is wealth, there are other resources, particularly more green space from lawns and parks, and wealthy neighborhoods…

St. Matthew Island sits alone in the frigid emptiness of the Bering Sea, like a great, gnarled stone thrown far from Alaska’s western coast. On these shores, the rhythmic lapping of brisk waves and a medley of tinny, chimelike songs are the only sounds rising above the island’s foggy, treeless crown. The songs come from male McKay’s buntings — brilliantly white birds that drift to the earth in graceful, sweeping arcs. The birds’ bewitching mating ritual and nesting occurs only here, in one of the most inaccessible places on the planet. Precious little is known about their world. Researchers are aiming to change that. SECLUDED SNOWFLAKES The ornithological community’s knowledge of McKay’s buntings — the only bird with a range completely contained within Alaska’s borders — dates back to the…

MANGROVE MOVES (“Man vs. Mangroves,” November 2020) Over the last 12,000 years, sea level has risen almost 400 feet. Mangroves have adjusted to that quite well, so I think another foot or two shouldn’t be a problem for mangroves. Steve Allexan Vero Beach, Fla. Author Allison Whitten responds: Great point, but mangroves and their ecosystems have actually been strongly impacted by sea-level rise in the last 12,000 years. That’s why the researchers in the Science study analyzed mangrove survival between 10,000 and 7,000 years ago, when sea levels were rising even faster than today due to melting glaciers. They found that about a quarter of an inch of rise per year was the limit for mangroves before the forests were forced to move inland or risked drowning. And, a big…

IN THE AUSTRALIAN spring of 2005, photographer Jürgen Otto encountered his first peacock spider. “I almost stepped on it,” he recalls. “It leapt off — but not before I snapped a photo.” It was a male Maratus volans, then just one of seven named species of peacock spider. Endemic to Australia, peacock spiders are part of the largest spider family, Salticidae (jumping spiders). And they are active predators — meaning they hunt their prey, rather than ensnaring it in a web. Jumping spiders are instantly recognizable by their quartet of forward-facing eyes, and peacock spiders, specifically, by their dramatic abdomens and courtship displays. What stunned Otto was the “strikingly colorful” abdomen, flattened and spread like a fan, which had been widely assumed — since the species was first described in…

Anne was in the prime of her career — a trial lawyer working as a partner for a major law firm in Cincinnati — when she began to lose her mind. A fitness enthusiast, Anne was only 50 when she realized something was amiss. “The first thing I noticed was that my hands would begin to shake while I was sitting at my desk,” she recalls. Perplexed, she went to see a neurologist at the Cleveland Clinic, who referred her for CT and MRI scans; both came back normal. She was given a diagnosis of essential tremor disorder, a progressive but not life-threatening condition. But within months, new symptoms began to appear: brain fog, memory loss, problems with reading and understanding even the simplest sentences. The work she had excelled…

SOME ARGUE SHAME can be a forceful tool for change when wielded against powerful figures and institutions. But when it’s weaponized against others in shared digital spaces, these same tactics can morph into insidious behaviors, like cyberbullying or online harassment. Getting called out, insulted or bullied isn’t exactly new. But the internet’s ability to amplify and permanently document those messages is. And this tool is now in the hands of most young people: A 2020 report by the Cyberbullying Research Center shows that 95 percent of U.S. teens are online, most tweens (ages 9 through 12) have personal devices and 9 out of 10 of them used social media or gaming apps in the past year. Here’s how experts recommend guiding kids and teens through this digital landscape. 1 Think…

I never wanted to be an astrophysicist. While a lot of my colleagues were looking through amateur telescopes, I was dreaming of decoding hieroglyphics and brushing off hidden artifacts in newly discovered Ancient Egyptian tombs. As is the case with most young Egyptophiles, for me there was one story that captured the excitement of Ancient Egyptian discoveries more than any other: the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun. In November 1922, British archaeologist Howard Carter held up a candle and peered through a small drill hole in the tomb door. His patron, Lord Carnarvon, asked him if he could see anything, to which Carter, struck dumb with amazement, could only reply, “Yes, wonderful things, wonderful things!” He recounted later that, in the dim candlelight, “details of the room emerged slowly…

You’ve likely heard of sea creatures that glow underwater. What about the sea itself appearing to glow in the dark? This fantasy-like spectacle is commonly called bioluminescence. And you can observe the phenomenon in places around the world. Technically, the water itself isn’t glowing, says marine biologist Michael Latz. The sparkle effect comes from a type of tiny algae known as dinoflagellates. These single-celled organisms, often invisible by day, emit light when disturbed by motion — like crashing waves, the swipe of your hand or a paddle gliding through the water. Exceptionally high concentrations are on display nearly year-round in rare areas known as bioluminescent bays, or simply bio bays. Dinoflagellates tend to concentrate in these shallower and semi-enclosed spots, preventing the organisms from getting flushed out into open water.…

AI’S FUTURE • DANCING SPIDERS • MINI RECYCLERS NANO DEFENSE AGAINST BACTERIA • BOOK REVIEWS It’s hard to look at this picture and not melt at these sweet faces. But would these dogs react the same way to a photo of your face? A team of researchers is using a fMRI machine to find out. The group, from Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary, screened 20 dogs and 30 humans. They showed the participants videos of pups and people alike — some faces, some the backs of heads — and scanned their brains to examine how each processed what they saw. Both species displayed similar brain patterns when it came to seeing their own species. But dogs responded the same to a face as they did to a head; only…

NOT ALL WASTE HAS TO GO TO WASTE. Most of the world’s 2.22 billion tons of annual trash ends up in landfills or open dumps. Veena Sahajwalla, a materials scientist and engineer at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, has created a solution to our massive trash problem: waste microfactories. These little trash processors — some as small as 500 square feet — house a series of machines that recycle waste and transform it into new materials with thermal technology. The new all-inone approach could leave our current recycling processes in the dust. Sahajwalla launched the world’s first waste microfactory targeting electronic waste, or e-waste, in 2018 in Sydney. A second one began recycling plastics in 2019. Now, her lab group is working with university and industry…

Science fiction writers have been dreaming of a crewed mission to Mars for over a century. But it wasn’t until Wernher von Braun published the English translation of his book, The Mars Project, in 1953 that the idea was plucked out of the realm of fiction and into reality. The Mars Project makes an impressive case for the technical feasibility of getting to Mars, outlining with extraordinary specificity how 10 space vehicles, each manned with 70 people and using conventional propellant, could achieve a round-trip voyage to the Red Planet. Although science has developed considerably since the book was published, challenges still remain, from designing a breathable habitat to growing nutritious food. But there’s another issue that a NASA research project called the Center for the Utilization of Biological Engineering…

WHAT MAKES THE COUNTRY MOUSE DIFFERENT FROM THE CITY MOUSE? Christopher Schell is a wildlife ecologist who has been curious about this dynamic his entire career. Though he specializes in coyotes instead of mice, the question remains the same. Schell, an assistant professor at the University of Washington Tacoma, is also part of a growing roster of scientists exploring how structural racism, segregation and poverty play a role in shaping the behavior of urban wildlife. Though this aspect of urban ecology is still in its infancy, Schell is taking an interdisciplinary approach to better understand the future of ecosystems in cities — all while encouraging more scientists of color to join the field. Q What got you interested in urban ecology? I’m from Los Angeles, and seeing coyotes in the…

If you were a wealthy and pious noble person living in Europe 1,000 years ago, there would have been no better way to show off your fortune and your devotion to the Catholic Church than to commission the carving of some piece of holy paraphernalia out of walrus tusk ivory. The head of a bishop’s staff, a reliquary, and small sculptures depicting religious figures are among the hundreds of walrus ivory artifacts that have been found at medieval sites across Europe. Their discovery provides evidence of a trade network that once extended from the northern edges of North America to the Mediterranean. The trade was so lucrative that it became the economic mainstay of the Norse colonies in Greenland, which were first established in A.D. 985 and abandoned around 1450.…