James' World 2

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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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Algorithms have become ubiquitous. They optimize our commutes, process payments, and coordinate the flow of internet traffic. It seems that for every problem that can be articulated in precise mathematical terms, there’s an algorithm that can solve it, at least in principle.

But that’s not the case — some seemingly simple problems can never be solved algorithmically. The pioneering computer scientist Alan Turing proved the existence of such “uncomputable” problems nearly a century ago, in the same paper where he formulated the mathematical model of computation that launched modern computer science.

Turing proved this groundbreaking result using a counterintuitive strategy: He defined a problem that simply rejects every attempt to solve it.

“I ask you what you’re doing, and then I say, ‘No, I’m going to do something different,’” said Rahul Ilango, a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology studying theoretical computer science.

Turing’s strategy was based on a mathematical technique called diagonalization that has a distinguished history. Here’s a simplified account of the logic behind his proof.

String Theory     

Diagonalization stems from a clever trick for solving a mundane problem that involves strings of bits, each of which can be either 0 or 1. Given a list of such strings, all equally long, can you generate a new string that isn’t on the list?

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Kristina Armitage/Quanta Magazine

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Secretary of Energy, Jennifer Granholm.Graeme Sloan/Sipa via AP Images

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Imagine it’s a Sunday night, and you have a busy day planned for tomorrow, filled to the brim with non-negotiable errands, meetings, and deadlines. You’re exhausted, and yet, even though you know you should get to sleep, you just can’t seem to turn your brain off. Your mind is going a mile a minute… and before you know it, the clock reads 3:00 a.m. You eventually fall asleep, but the next day, you can tell your brain isn’t operating at full capacity as you struggle to get through your to-do list. That night, you aim to get to bed early and clock a full night’s sleep—but you’re anxious about all the tasks you were supposed to get done that day. Before you know it, it’s 3:00 a.m. again.

If the above scenario sounds familiar, you may have fallen victim to the vicious cycle of sleep loss and procrastination. And you’re not alone: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that roughly one in three adults in this country aren’t getting enough sleep. And without proper sleep, carrying out important projects and tasks can be damn near impossible… which can, in turn, make it even harder to fall asleep on following nights.

How sleep loss can lead to procrastination

According to neuropsychologist Sanam Hafeez, PsyD, sleep is an opportunity for the brain to rejuvenate and repair itself. While you may swear up and down that you can operate with just a few hours of shut-eye and a strong cold brew, the brain needs between 5.5 and 7.5 hours of sleep nightly in order to reap its full cognitive benefits.

“The body still needs sleep, even if you think you don’t need it,” says Dr. Hafeez. “When you sleep, your cells regenerate, and they help the neurons communicate with one another. If that’s not happening, how does your brain know what to do? Different parts of the brain, instead of working in tandem, are now doing their own thing.”

When we don’t get enough sleep, says Dr. Hafeez, our brains can only handle the absolute bare minimum. Executive functions—aka the mental processes that help us make decisions, pay attention, regulate our emotions, and carry out projects requiring concentration—take a serious hit when we get too little sleep.

This lapse in executive function makes it difficult to practice self-control and see tasks through to their completion—a mindset ripe for procrastination. Even when we’re well-rested, it’s natural for our brains to seek out immediate gratification and resist complex, hefty tasks. But studies show that sleep deprivation’s impact on cognitive function can lead to heightened impulsivity, risk-taking, and poor decision-making, such that procrastination (especially on tough or important tasks) becomes the more appealing choice.

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Image: W+G Creative

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