James' World 2

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On an anonymous desk in a spartan classroom of the pioneering Troy Female Seminary, a teenage girl with blue-grey eyes and an oceanic mind is bent over an astronomy book, preparing to revolutionize our understanding of the planet.

The year is 1836.

No university anywhere in the world would admit her.

No scientific society would grant her membership.

Still, Eunice Newton Foote (July 17, 1819–September 30, 1888) would go on to become the first scientist to link atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to rising planetary temperature.

One August day half a lifetime after graduating from Troy and throwing her energies at the suffrage movement — Susan B. Anthony would celebrate her as one of its founders — Eunice folded her hands into her lap in an auditorium full of distinguished scientists and their dressed up wives as she waited to watch someone else present her own work. A decade earlier, astronomer Maria Mitchell had become the first woman admitted into America’s scientific pantheon, the American Association for the Advancement of Science — but on the default certificate of admission, the word Fellow had been crossed out in pencil and Honorary Member handwritten over it. Women were still in the shadows of science. Like Beatrix Potter’s revelatory research into the reproduction of algae, Eunice Foote’s paper was read on her behalf by a man: the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.

That paper — Circumstances Affecting the Heat of the Sun’s Rays, published in 1856 — would remain the only physics paper published by an American woman for three decades, until a year after Eunice’s death.

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The Marginalian

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The ceremony takes place on the night of the full moon in February, which the Tibetans celebrate as the coldest of the year. Buddhist monks clad in light cotton shawls climb to a rocky ledge some 15,000 feet high and go to sleep, in child’s pose, foreheads pressed against cold Himalayan rocks. In the dead of the night, temperatures plummet below freezing, but the monks sleep on peacefully, without shivering.

Footage of the ritual exists from the winter of 1985 when a team of medical researchers led by Herbert Benson, a Harvard cardiologist, were allowed in as observers at a monastery just outside the town of Upper Dharamsala in northern India.¹ Benson had the blessing of the Dalai Lama, with whom he had developed a friendship; the physician was driven to understand the physiological mechanisms that allowed the monks to survive the night. Their bodies had entered a state that required years of meditative and physical practice that the Dalai Lama called miraculous. Had Benson’s research taken place today, it is very likely he would have called it “biostasis.”

Our bodies run a very tight ship. To keep living, we need a constant supply of oxygen, and our temperature is allowed to fluctuate within narrow limits. A fever can turn deadly, as can severe hypothermia. Healthy bodies have a steady heartbeat and a dependable oxygen consumption rate, which physicians use as a measurement of metabolism. If the life burning within us is a symphony, then metabolism is its score—the perfect sum of all the chemical reactions that take place inside our cells, carefully orchestrated.

Until recently, at least from the perspective of Western medicine, life’s tempo was considered non-negotiable. The change in outlook has come from an unusual initiative, a program led by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which supports the United States military. Over the past five years, DARPA has funded research into biostasis, which aims to bring the metabolic symphony to a halt, before resuming the score some indefinite time later, exactly where it left off.

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Inside the “out there” quest for a drug that would help doctors save lives before it’s too late.

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At Future Perfect, we cover some of the greatest threats to life and well-being on Earth. For non-human animals, that usually means factory farming, which kills nearly 10 billion land vertebrates annually in the US alone.

But you might be surprised by another top human-caused killer of land animals, which may be second only to factory farming, although precise estimates are hard to come by: not hunting, or animal testing, or the fur industry. It’s cars.

When I first read about the horrifyingly high numbers of animals killed by cars, in a paper on roadkill by sociologist Dennis Soron, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. A commonly cited statistic says cars kill a million vertebrates in the US every day, and even this is likely to be a significant underestimate, according to environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb, author of the new book Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet. Yet, cars and roads have become so naturalized that they hardly register on the list of priorities for animal welfare groups.

Crossings provides a badly needed corrective. Through the field of road ecology — the science of how roads and cars have reshaped nature — Goldfarb offers a lively account of the automobile’s transformative impacts on our life and culture, and on the non-human animals with whom we share the planet.

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A deer runs across the road in New Hampshire. Jim Cole/AP

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One late summer day, a monarch butterfly crawled from its chrysalis in a suburban Maryland garden, stretched open two orange wings to dry in the sun, and took flight. It tarried in the garden for a while, stopping to bask in the sunlight and slurp nectar from a row of inviting milkweed. Soon it was gone, joining millions of other monarchs on a long, perilous migration southward.

Thrust down the Atlantic coast by warm-air currents, the voyaging monarchs sought plants along the way for nourishment and rest, including nectar-producing perennials such as smooth blue asters or seaside goldenrods. With little refuge to be found among the stretches of seemingly endless suburban grass lawns and paved roads, many died. Survivors pressed on, fluttering over the Deep South and into Texas. By winter, they reached the cool, oyamel fir forests of central Mexico, an incredible transnational journey for a creature the size of a credit card.

The monarch’s sojourn began in the front yard of Janet and Jeff Crouch in the Beech Creek neighborhood of Columbia, Md., a tidy planned community between Washington and Baltimore. It wasn’t an accident that the butterfly began its life there: For more than 20 years, the Crouches have cultivated a garden full of plants native to the Mid-Atlantic that attract wildlife, including the endangered monarchs and other pollinators. Many species of caterpillars exclusively eat milkweed leaves, and butterflies consume nectar from natives, including wild bergamots, yarrows, and joe-pye weed.

The Crouches are part of a growing movement of homeowners who are forsaking traditional turf-grass yards in favor of native plants. Once derisively viewed as weeds deserving of human domination, native plants are now all the rage in gardening circles. Nurseries are stocking up on natives to meet demand, and a new generation of landscapers touts expertise in native plant design.

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A P.J.M. Elite rhododendron at Carolina Native Nursery in Burnsville, N.C. (Travis Dove for The Washington Post)

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She comes winging in from behind us, looming into our field of vision, seeming almost too massive to be airborne. She is a white-tailed eagle, one of a species of sea eagles. Haliaeetus albicilla is a close cousin of the North American bald eagle, with its same dour expression, outsized muppety beak, and slightly ramshackle habit of motion, landing like a winter coat falling off a hook. The wingspan of a big female can reach 2.5 meters. These are mythically big animals. Their size makes them bold. They lack the furtive elegance of so many other wild animals. They look casual like they own the place.

The place owned by this particular eagle is the Isle of Mull, a rugged island off the west coast of Scotland. I am sitting in a truck, parked near a small copse of spruce. Next to me, with a scope mounted on his windowsill, is Dave Sexton from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, who has studied and protected eagles on and off on Mull since the 1980s. As we watch the eagle approach her nest, we see that she carries a twig in her yellow dinosaur talons. Sexton explains that this pair lost their chick a few weeks ago when a spell of cold and wet weather happened to hit the island just after hatching. With their nestling dead, the couple seem lost. Although white-tailed eagles almost never lay a second clutch, the pair add sticks to their already-built nest, perhaps compelled to do so by the stimulus of it being empty.

This pair of eagles have raised several chicks in years past. A local sheep farmer named Jamie Maclean had complained that they were raising their chicks on a steady diet of his newborn lambs, which are born in spring, just as chicks hatch. And so, with Sexton’s help, the Scottish government agreed to pay for some “diversionary feeding.” Maclean would buy fish from a local fishmonger—at retail prices—with government money, and then put them out for the eagles to eat. The idea was that with the free fish rolling in, they’d leave the lambs alone.

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In Scotland, the reintroduction of white-tailed eagles has revealed a fundamental truth about rewilding efforts. Photo by Michael Eaton/Shutterstock

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WOW!

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Trump

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The armed men aren’t supposed to be here. We are several miles inside Buffalo Springs National Reserve in northern Kenya, and the driver I hired for this reporting project and I are checking out a rumor that the reserve’s elephants may have gone missing. Nearly 8,000 elephants have inhabited the broader Samburu-Laikipia ecosystem, which covers around 21,200 square miles. They should be easy to find, but the area is in the grip of drought, which has exacerbated simmering conflict among armed local communities fighting over livestock, grazing lands, and limited water supplies. Some of these armed groups have moved into protected areas like Buffalo Springs, driving the elephants away, sometimes by shooting at them, and sometimes because elephants often flee areas of high human activity. Instead of pachyderms, we find grazing cattle and herders with guns. They stop to watch us as we pass.

Back at the park gate, an itinerant trader warns us to be careful. “Not a week passes without something happening here,” says Daniel Lochilia. “People are being killed. Good luck in finding any elephants.”

With so many armed men and their cattle in the reserve, the elephants have likely fled to face an uncertain future in the human-dominated landscapes that lie beyond. The issue is indicative of the battle to save Kenya’s—and, more broadly, Africa’s—elephants, which has entered a new phase. A pachyderm decline that was once mostly fueled by poaching is now being driven by conflict between humans and elephants.

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Savannah elephants walk through tall grass in Tsavo, a region in south-eastern Kenya. Trouble often begins when elephants stray from a protected area into human-dominated landscapes. © Frank af Petersens / Save the Elephants

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Vibrant Carnival Atmosphere and Deep-Rooted Political Significance

The intriguing exchange occurred on Saturday, August 12th, during Trump’s campaign stop at the iconic Iowa State Fair.

The Iowa State Fair, a classical American event known for its vibrant carnival atmosphere and deep-rooted political significance, served as the backdrop for Trump’s campaign activities.

As the former President engaged with fairgoers and basked in the festivities, a question posed by a reporter drew attention.

The reporter questioned, “President Trump, did you intend to overturn the 2020 election?”

Political Significance

“You know the answer to that,” Trump replied, conveying a sense of confidence.

While the intention behind his response remained veiled, the context in which it unfolded holds significant implications.

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Trump

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Heart in your throat. Butterflies in your stomach. Bad gut feeling. These are all phrases many people use to describe fear and anxiety. You have likely felt anxiety inside your chest or stomach, and your brain usually doesn’t hurt when you’re scared. Many cultures tie cowardice and bravery more to the heart or the guts than to the brain.

But science has traditionally seen the brain as the birthplace and processing site of fear and anxiety. Then why and how do you feel these emotions in other parts of your body?

I am a psychiatrist and neuroscientist who researches and treats fear and anxiety. In my book “Afraid,” I explain how fear works in the brain and the body and what too much anxiety does to the body. Research confirms that while emotions do originate in your brain, it’s your body that carries out the orders.

Fear and the brain

While your brain evolved to save you from a falling rock or speeding predator, the anxieties of modern life are often a lot more abstract. Fifty-thousand years ago, being rejected by your tribe could mean death, but not doing a great job on a public speech at school or at work doesn’t have the same consequences. Your brain, however, might not know the difference.

There are a few key areas of the brain that are heavily involved in processing fear.

When you perceive something as dangerous, whether it’s a gun pointed at you or a group of people looking unhappily at you, these sensory inputs are first relayed to the amygdala. This small, almond-shaped area of the brain located near your ears detects salience, or the emotional relevance of a situation and how to react to it. When you see something, it determines whether you should eat it, attack it, run away from it or have sex with it.

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In the face of a perceived threat, your body often activates a fight-or-flight response. George Peters/DigitalVision Vectors via Getty Images

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