July - Science Mag

SPECIAL
REPORT HOW CITIES CAN SAVE US ALL A vision for a zero-waste, driver-free,
energy-positive urban future
PAGE
44
THE
WEB
OF
MEMORIES A technical revolution reveals
how the brain links memories
and shapes our experience
of the world
S
PLU
IS DARK MATTER
MADE OF
BLACK HOLES?
A cosmic mystery PAGE 38
SURGERY STOPS
DIABETES ...
. . . and leads to a new theory 3`x³î`xß`D³Í`¸
of the disease PAGE 60 © 2017 Scientific American JULY 2017
J U LY 2 0 17
VO LU M E 3 1 7, N U M B E R 1
NEUROSCIENCE MEDICINE
66
30 Memory’s Intricate Web 60 Operation: Diabetes
A technical revolution provides Surgery that shortens intestines
insight into how the brain links gets rid of the illness, and new
memories, a process critical in evidence shows that the gut—
shaping a picture of the world not simply insulin—may be
around us. By Alcino J. Silva responsible. By Francesco Rubino
C O S M O LO G Y B I O LO G Y
38 Black Holes from 66 The Evolution of Dance
the Beginning of Time Is the unique human capacity
A hidden population of black holes for dance a fringe benefit of our
born less than one second after upright posture and large brain,
COVER: GETTY IMAGES ( head and web pattern); THIS PAGE: GETTY IMAGES ( dancers)
the big bang could solve the mys- or did its social benefits help our
tery of dark matter. By Juan ancestors survive thousands
García-Bellido and Sébastien Clesse of years ago? By Thea Singer
SPECIAL REPORT SUSTAINABLE CITIE S
44 How Cities Could Save Us

Urban areas can improve the planet as well as people’s lives if they become much
more resourceful with energy, water, food and minerals. By William McDonough ON THE COVE R
New technologies have begun to reveal
48 Tapping the Trash how one memory links to another—critical
Transforming costly wastes into valuable resources can make cities highly efficient. for integrating sights, sounds and sensations
By Michael E. Webber to form the texture of experience. Disruptions
in weaving together these conscious threads
54 From Parking Lot to Paradise often occur in psychiatric disorders and during
How driverless cars will reshape cities. By Carlo Ratti and Assaf Biderman the cognitive decline of aging.
July 2017, ScientificAmerican.com 1
© 2017 Scientific American

4 From the Editor
5 Letters
9 Science Agenda
Why the U.S. needs an emergency fund for public health.
By the Editors
10 Forum
Raising alcohol taxes can help curtail assaults and suicides.
By Kunmi Sobowale
12 Advances
The Amazon River basin’s wet, salty history. Mouse
parenting skills. The real reason keeping secrets hurts
9 us. What a plant hears. Robots develop social skills.
26 The Science of Health

Don’t believe the hype about probiotics. By Ferris Jabr
28 TechnoFiles
How much should an artist let technology assist creativity?
By David Pogue
72 Recommended
Bugging about insects. Why are we so darn curious?
A history of mass extinctions. By Andrea Gawrylewski
73 Skeptic
Memories cannot erase mortality. By Michael Shermer
14 74 Anti Gravity
Evolution has left its bite mark on our teeth and
underground. By Steve Mirsky
75 50, 100 & 150 Years Ago

76 Graphic Science
On-time baby delivery: guaranteed.
By Mark Fischetti and Zan Armstrong
ON THE WEB
Tuning Up the Immune System

Video of Scientific American’s Immune System Orchestra
shows what happens when an allergen changes the music.
Go to www.ScientificAmerican.com/jul2017/allergies
72
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2 Scientific American, July 2017

FROM
THE EDITOR Mariette DiChristina is editor in chief of IY_[dj_ÒY7c[h_YWd$
Follow her on Twitter @mdichristina
Designing the ning on page 44, this article is part of a special report that takes a
look at sustainable cities. One key, McDonough says, is to think in
terms of living systems: circular systems, rather than linear. As he
City of Tomorrow puts it, “Cities are designed, but they are also organisms.” Follow-
ing the theme, energy researcher Michael E. Webber explores
Today “Tapping the Trash” ( page 48). He describes how urban centers can
help us reduce and reuse waste heat, water
and materials, creating revenue and lowering
As I write this essay, I feel myself being costs. The third part of our report looks at how
drawn inexorably toward one of the world’s we get around: Carlo Ratti and Assaf Bider-
great destinations: New York City. Okay, I’m man, both at the Massachusetts Institute of
actually riding a commuter train. But this dai- Technology, consider a turning point for trans-
ly journey always feels compelling to me. I’m portation enabled by webs of sensor-laden ve-
headed toward a place of great energy, where hicles and smart intersections in their feature,
I work and find collaborative opportunities, “From Parking Lot to Paradise” ( page 54).
meet up with friends, enjoy cultural activities We each carry within ourselves a different
and often find myself spontaneously marvel- kind of city: an inner hub of energetic neural
ing at the surrounding man-made wonders. activity that creates our mind. In the cover
Many other people clearly are equally cap- story, “Memory’s Intricate Web,” starting on
tivated by the opportunities they find in cities. page 30, neuroscientist Alcino J. Silva de-
That is why more than half of humanity lives scribes nothing less than a revolution in
in these centers of enterprise and innovation, memory research wrought by new technolo-
with that number rising quickly. An estimated CURITIBA in Brazil is among the cities gies that can image the activity of individual
five billion will be dwelling in cities by 2030— developing resource-smart programs. neurons—even switching the cells on and off
and half of them will be moving into homes as directed. Learning more about how specif-
and workplaces that do not yet exist. How we create and reshape ic cells store a given memory is giving us insights into how we
our urban landscapes and systems will have a powerful effect on mentally construct the world around us, which for me feels reso-
the future of our world: “As cities go, so goes the planet,” writes ar- nant in an issue in which we are discussing how we are shaping
chitect William McDonough in “How Cities Could Save Us.” Begin- the planet. As ever, we welcome your comments.
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4 Scientific American, July 2017 Illustration by Nick Higgins

LETTERS
editors@sciam.com
in search of one that fit all the experiments.

Although there is in principle a wide
space of inflationary models to examine,
there is a very simple class of inflationary
models (technically, “single-field slow-roll”
models) that all give very similar predic-
tions for most observable quantities—pre-
dictions that were clearly enunciated de-
cades ago. These “standard” inflationary
models form a well-defined class that has
been studied extensively. (IS&L have ex-
pressed strong opinions about what they
consider to be the simplest models within
this class, but simplicity is subjective, and
we see no reason to restrict attention to
such a narrow subclass.) Some of the stan-
dard inflationary models have now been
ruled out by precise empirical data, and
February 2017 this is part of the desirable process of using
observation to thin out the set of viable
A COSMIC CONTROVERSY models. But many models in this class con-
The origins of space and time are among the most mysterious and contentious topics in tinue to be very successful empirically.
science. Our February 2017 article “Pop Goes the Universe” argues against the dominant The standard inflationary models pre-
lxDîDîîxxDß§ā`¸ä¸äø³lxßÿx³îD³xĀîßxx§āßDÇlxĀÇD³ä¸³`D§§xl³Dî¸³Íîä dict that the universe should have a critical
authors instead advocate for another scenario—that our universe began not with a bang
mass density (that is, it should be geometri-
UøîÿîDU¸ø³`xß¸DÇßxþ¸øä§ā`¸³îßD`î³`¸ä¸äÍ³îx§xîîxßUx§¸ÿjDß¸øÇ
¸ððÇāä`äîäÿ¸äîølā³Dî¸³Dßā`¸ä¸§¸āßxäÇ¸³lî¸îDîDßî`§xÍîä¸§§¸ÿxl cally flat), and they also predict the statisti-
by a reply from the authors. cal properties of the faint ripples that we
detect in the cosmic microwave back-
ground (CMB). First, the ripples should be
In “Pop Goes the Universe,” by Anna Ijjas, now more than 14,000 papers in the scien- nearly “scale-invariant,” meaning that they
Paul J. Steinhardt and Abraham Loeb, the tific literature, written by over 9,000 dis- have nearly the same intensity at all angu-
authors (hereafter “IS&L”) make the case tinct scientists, that use the word “inflation” lar scales. Second, the ripples should be
for a bouncing cosmology, as was pro- or “inflationary” in their titles or abstracts. “adiabatic,” meaning that the perturbations
posed by Steinhardt and others in 2001. By claiming that inflationary cosmology are the same in all components: the ordi-
They close by making the extraordinary lies outside the scientific method, IS&L are nary matter, radiation and dark matter all
claim that inflationary cosmology “cannot dismissing the research of not only all the fluctuate together. Third, they should be
be evaluated using the scientific method” authors of this letter but also that of a sub- “Gaussian,” which is a statement about the
and go on to assert that some scientists stantial contingent of the scientific commu- statistical patterns of relatively bright and
who accept inflation have proposed “dis- nity. Moreover, as the work of several major dark regions. Fourth and finally, the models
carding one of [science’s] defining proper- international collaborations has made also make predictions for the patterns of
ties: empirical testability,” thereby “pro- clear, inflation is not only testable, but it polarization in the CMB, which can be di-
moting the idea of some kind of nonem- has been subjected to a significant number vided into two classes, called E-modes and
pirical science.” We have no idea what of tests and so far has passed every one. B-modes. The predictions for the E-modes
scientists they are referring to. We disagree Inflation is not a unique theory but are very similar for all standard inflationary
with a number of statements in their arti- rather a class of models based on similar models, whereas the levels of B-modes,
cle, but in this letter, we will focus on our principles. Of course, nobody believes that which are a measure of gravitational radia-
categorical disagreement with these state- all these models are correct, so the relevant tion in the early universe, vary significantly
ments about the testability of inflation. question is whether there exists at least within the class of standard models.
There is no disputing the fact that infla- one model of inflation that seems well mo- The remarkable fact is that, starting
tion has become the dominant paradigm in tivated, in terms of the underlying particle with the results of the Cosmic Background
cosmology. Many scientists from around physics assumptions, and that correctly de- Explorer (COBE) satellite in 1992, numer-
the world have been hard at work for years scribes the measurable properties of our ous experiments have confirmed that these
investigating models of cosmic inflation universe. This is very similar to the early predictions (along with several others too
and comparing these predictions with em- steps in the development of the Standard technical to discuss here) accurately de-
pirical observations. According to the high- Model of particle physics, when a variety of scribe our universe. The average mass den-
energy physics database INSPIRE, there are quantum field theory models were explored sity of the universe has now been measured

LETTERS
editors@sciam.com
to an accuracy of about half of a percent, rameter independence were required, then veloping a theoretical framework that can
and it agrees perfectly with the prediction we would also have to question the status of predict, without the use of observational
of inflation. (When inflation was first pro- the Standard Model, with its empirically data, the specific models of particle physics
posed, the average mass density was uncer- determined particle content and 19 or more and inflation that should be expected to
tain by at least a factor of three, so this is an empirically determined parameters. describe our visible universe.
impressive success.) The ripples of the CMB An important point is that standard Like any scientific theory, inflation need
have been measured carefully by two more inflationary models could have failed any not address all conceivable questions. Infla-
satellite experiments, the Wilkinson Micro- of the empirical tests described above, but tionary models, like all scientific theories,
wave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) and the they did not. IS&L write about how “a fail- rest on a set of assumptions, and to under-
Planck satellite, as well as many ground- ing theory gets increasingly immunized stand those assumptions we might need to
and balloon-based experiments—all con- against experiment by attempts to patch appeal to some deeper theory. This, howev-
firming that the primordial fluctuations are it,” insinuating that this has something to er, does not undermine the success of infla-
indeed nearly scale-invariant and very ac- do with inflation. But despite IS&L’s rhet- tionary models. The situation is similar to
curately adiabatic and Gaussian, precisely oric, it is standard practice in empirical the standard hot big bang cosmology: the
as predicted (ahead of time) by standard science to modify a theory as new data fact that it left several questions unre-
models of inflation. The B-modes of polar- come to light, as, for example, the Stan- solved, such as the near-critical mass densi-
ization have not yet been seen, which is dard Model has been modified to account ty and the origin of structure (which are
consistent with many, though not all, of the for newly discovered quarks and leptons. solved elegantly by inflation), does not un-
standard models, and the E-modes are For inflationary cosmology, meanwhile, dermine its many successful predictions,
found to agree with the predictions. In 2016 there has so far been no need to go beyond including its prediction of the relative
the Planck satellite team (a collaboration of the class of standard inflationary models. abundances of light chemical elements.
about 260 authors) summarized its conclu- IS&L also assert that inflation is untest- The fact that our knowledge of the universe
sions by saying that “the Planck results of- able because it leads to eternal inflation is still incomplete is absolutely no reason to
fer powerful evidence in favour of simple and a multiverse. Yet although the possibil- ignore the impressive empirical success of
inflationary models.” So if inflation is un- ity of a multiverse is an active area of study, the standard inflationary models.
testable, as IS&L would have us believe, this possibility in no way interferes with During the more than 35 years of its
why have there been so many tests of it and the empirical testability of inflation. If the existence, inflationary theory has gradual-
with such remarkable success? multiverse picture is valid, then the Stan- ly become the main cosmological para-
While the successes of inflationary mod- dard Model would be properly understood digm describing the early stages of the
els are unmistakable, IS&L nonetheless as a description of the physics in our visible evolution of the universe and the forma-
make the claim that inflation is untestable. universe, and similarly the models of inflation of its large-scale structure. No one
(We are bewildered by IS&L’s assertion that tion that are being refined by current ob- claims that inflation has become certain;
the dramatic observational successes of in- servations would describe the ways infla- scientific theories don’t get proved the
flation should be discounted while they action can happen in our particular part of way mathematical theorems do, but as
cuse the advocates of inflation of abandon- the universe. Both theories would remain time passes, the successful ones become
ing empirical science!) They contend, for squarely within the domain of empirical better and better established by improved
example, that inflation is untestable be- science. Scientists would still be able to experimental tests and theoretical ad-
cause its predictions can be changed by compare newly obtained data—from astro- vances. This has happened with inflation.
varying the shape of the inflationary ener- physical observations and particle physics Progress continues, supported by the en-
gy density curve or the initial conditions. experiments—with precise, quantitative thusiastic efforts of many scientists who
But the testability of a theory in no way re- predictions of specific inflationary and have chosen to participate in this vibrant
quires that all its predictions be indepen- particle physics models. Note that this is- branch of cosmology.
dent of the choice of parameters. If such pa- sue is separate from the loftier goal of de- Empirical science is alive and well!
ALAN H. GUTH Canadian Institute for Theoretical EIICHIRO KOMATSU Max Planck Institute
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Astrophysics and Planck collaboration for Astrophysics and WMAP collaboration
DAVID I. KAISER M.I.T. FRANÇOIS BOUCHET Institut d’Astrophysique LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS

de Paris, CNRS and UPMC, Sorbonne Universités, Arizona State University
ANDREI D. LINDE Stanford University Planck satellite, HFI (High Frequency Instrument)
DAVID H. LYTH Lancaster University
YASUNORI NOMURA University consortium and Planck Science Team
of California, Berkeley JUAN MALDACENA Institute for Advanced Study
SEAN CARROLL California Institute
CHARLES L. BENNETT Johns Hopkins of Technology JOHN C. MATHER NASA Goddard Space Flight
University, Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Center and COBE mission
GEORGE EFSTATHIOU University of Cambridge
Probe (WMAP) mission and Cosmic HIRANYA PEIRIS University College London,
and Planck Science Team
Background Explorer (COBE) mission Oskar Klein Center for Cosmoparticle Physics,
STEPHEN HAWKING University of Cambridge WMAP collaboration and Planck collaboration
J. RICHARD BOND University of Toronto,
Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, RENATA KALLOSH Stanford University MALCOLM PERRY University of Cambridge

LETTERS
editors@sciam.com
LISA RANDALL Harvard University ALEXEI STAROBINSKY Landau Institute for RAINER WEISS M.I.T., COBE mission
Theoretical Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences and Laser Interferometer Gravitational-
MARTIN REES University of Cambridge
LEONARD SUSSKIND Stanford University Wave Observatory (LIGO)
MISAO SASAKI Kyoto University
MICHAEL S. TURNER University of Chicago FRANK WILCZEK M.I.T.
LEONARDO SENATORE Stanford University
EVA SILVERSTEIN Stanford University ALEXANDER VILENKIN Tufts University EDWARD WITTEN Institute for Advanced Study
GEORGE F. SMOOT III University of STEVEN WEINBERG University MATIAS ZALDARRIAGA Institute for
California, Berkeley, and COBE mission of Texas at Austin Advanced Study
THE AUTHORS REPLY: We have great re- stood that inflation generically leads to other. This makes inflation immune
spect for the scientists who signed the re- eternal inflation and, consequently, a from any observational test. For more
buttal to our article, but we are disap- multiverse—an infinite diversity of out- details, see our 2014 paper “Inflationary
pointed by their response, which misses comes. Papers claiming that inflation pre- Schism” (preprint available at https://
our key point: the differences between the dicts this or that ignore these problems. arxiv.org/abs/1402.6980).
inflationary theory once thought to be pos- Our point is that we should be talking We are three independent thinkers re-
sible and the theory as understood today. about the contemporary version of infla- presenting different generations of scien-
The claim that inflation has been con- tion, warts and all, not some defunct rel- tists. Our article was not intended to re-
firmed refers to the outdated theory before ic. Logically, if the outcome of inflation is visit old debates but to discuss the impli-
we understood its fundamental problems. highly sensitive to initial conditions that cations of recent observations and to
We firmly believe that in a healthy scien- are not yet understood, as the respon- point out unresolved issues that present
tific community, respectful disagreement dents concede, the outcome cannot be de- opportunities for a new generation of
is possible and hence reject the suggestion termined. And if inflation produces a young cosmologists to make a lasting im-
that by pointing out problems, we are dis- multiverse in which, to quote a previous pact. We hope readers will go back and
carding the work of all of those who devel- statement from one of the responding review our article’s concluding para-
oped the theory of inflation and enabled authors (Guth), “anything that can hap- graphs. We advocated against invoking
precise measurements of the universe. pen will happen”—it makes no sense authority and for open recognition of the
Historically, the thinking about infla- whatsoever to talk about predictions. shortcomings of current concepts, a rein-
tion was based on a series of misunder- Unlike the Standard Model, even after vigorated effort to resolve these problems
standings. It was not understood that the fixing all the parameters, any inflation- and an open-minded exploration of di-
outcome of inflation is highly sensitive to ary model gives an infinite diversity of verse ideas that avoid them altogether.
initial conditions. And it was not under- outcomes with none preferred over any We stand by these principles.
GENE JOB rance.” By applying that insight to the

“Should Babies Be Sequenced?” by Bonnie Washington Beltway, we may well find that
Rochman, discusses how we can now se- the U.S. is governed by robots. And we hu-
quence newborns’ genomes to screen for mans may indeed get “tired of winning.”
genetic risks not included in standard tests JOHN LEYDON Aldie, Va.
and the potential issues with doing so.
Widespread DNA sequencing is incom- I applaud the effort to devise more rigor-
patible with the U.S.’s largely employer- ous tests of human-level artificial intelli-
provided health care system. If a hiring gence, as described by Marcus and by John
manager compares two otherwise equal Pavlus in “The New Turing Tests.” But what
candidates, one of whom has a genetic pre- if someone creates a machine that truly
disposition that doubles the chance of de- passes the old Turing test, not through
veloping a rare disease, that candidate trickery but genuine intelligence? Will we
probably won’t get the job. say to it, “Sorry, because you cannot sum-
JOHN SCHMITT via e-mail marize a video (as in the I-Athlon test) or
build a house out of blocks (as in the Phys-
TURING PLANS ically Embodied Turing Test), we cannot
In discussing the flaws of the Turing test, in recognize your intelligence?” Could Helen
which a machine tries to convince an inter- Keller summarize a video? Can Stephen
rogator it is human, in “Am I Human?” Hawking build a house out of blocks?
Gary Marcus notes that “one can ‘win’ sim- BILL FREESE Department of Education,
March 2017 ply by being deceptive or feigning igno- Montana State University

LETTERS
editors@sciam.com
E35
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EDITOR IN CHIEF AND SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT

Mariette DiChristina
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STARTING STARSHOT
EDITORIAL
In “Near-Light-Speed Mission to Alpha
CHIEF FEATURES EDITOR Seth Fletcher CHIEF NEWS EDITOR Dean Visser CHIEF OPINION EDITOR Michael D. Lemonick
Centauri,” Ann Finkbeiner reports on the FEATURES
Breakthrough Starshot project to use di- SENIOR EDITOR, SUSTAINABILITY Mark Fischetti SENIOR EDITOR, BIOLOGY / MEDICINE Christine Gorman
SENIOR EDITOR, CHEMISTRY / POLICY / BIOLOGY Josh Fischman SENIOR EDITOR, SPACE / PHYSICS Clara Moskowitz
rected energy, in the form of lasers, and SENIOR EDITOR, EVOLUTION / ECOLOGY Kate Wong
wafer-scale spacecraft to enable humani- NEWS

SENIOR EDITOR, MIND / BRAIN Gary Stix ASSOCIATE EDITOR, BIOLOGY / MEDICINE Dina Fine Maron
ty’s first interstellar missions. She also de- ASSOCIATE EDITOR, SPACE / PHYSICS Lee Billings ASSOCIATE EDITOR, SUSTAINABILITY Annie Sneed
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scribes my involvement as a member of
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While the article is excellent, it lacks
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through Starshot: The NASA program now ASSISTANT PHOTO EDITOR Liz Tormes ASSISTANT GRAPHICS EDITOR Amanda Montañez
referred to as Starlight, of which I am the COPY AND PRODUC TION

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ning Starshot. The program started in D I G I TA L

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DIGITAL PRODUCTION MANAGER Kerrissa Lynch WEB PRODUCTION ASSOCIATES Ian Kelly, Eli Rosenberg
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CONTRIBUTOR S
ing in 2013. The 2014 proposal for its first EDITORIAL David Biello, W. Wayt Gibbs, Ferris Jabr, Anna Kuchment,
phase was funded in early 2015. The second Robin Lloyd, George Musser, Christie Nicholson, John Rennie
ART Edward Bell, Bryan Christie, Lawrence R. Gendron, Nick Higgins
phase was funded in 2016 and is still ongo-
EDITORIAL ADMINISTRATOR Ericka Skirpan SENIOR SECRETARY Maya Harty
ing. NASA’s initiative to develop directed-
energy-driven spacecraft for an interstellar
mission was introduced in spring 2016 as PRESIDENT
part of the congressional record for fiscal Dean Sanderson
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year 2017 that called for the agency to study PUBLISHER AND VICE PRESIDENT Jeremy A. Abbate
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uted to NASA’s effort in this area. DIRECTOR, INTEGRATED MEDIA Jay Berfas SENIOR INTEGRATED SALES MANAGER Matt Bondlow
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rized our NASA program and outlined the MARKETING MANAGER Marie Cummings
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SCIENCE AGENDA
O PI NI O N A N D A N A LYS I S FR OM
SC IENTIFIC A MERIC AN ’ S B OA R D O F E D I TO R S
local budgets become overwhelmed by a weather emergency.

Creating a similar “rainy day” fund—and providing the Cen-
ters for Disease Control and Prevention with permission to use it
in advance—could save lives and money, both at home and over-
seas. There have been some moves in this direction. President
Donald Trump’s general budget proposal for 2018 includes such
a fund. But it does not give any dollar figures, and the health care
bill passed by the House of Representatives in May cuts at least
$1 billion from annual public health funding.
The idea behind an emergency fund is not to displace efforts
to combat infectious disease but to ramp them up to meet a
crushing temporary need. During an outbreak the CDC can call on
many doctors and nurses to work without pay, but the costs of
transportation, medical supplies and protective equipment still
have to be covered. The surge in patients typically increases the
need for laboratory testing or surveillance of insects, rodents or
other carriers of illness—extra requirements that can be met by
short-term contracts with commercial companies.
Thomas Frieden, former director of the CDC, estimates that
90 percent of the Ebola deaths that occurred in West Africa in
2014 and 2015 could have been prevented if the agency had been
We Can’t Avoid able to unleash a massive effort right away. In July 2014 he esti-
mates that an additional 300 beds to treat Ebola patients would
have been enough to stop the illness from spreading. But July was
Future Disease also approaching the end of the fiscal year for the U.S. govern-
ment, and there was not enough flexibility in the CDC’s budget to
Outbreaks finance the necessary response. By November, after Congress

made further money available, more than 3,000 beds were need-
ed to treat everyone who had become sick.
But the U.S. can minimize the danger When Zika hit the southern U.S. and Puerto Rico in 2016,
health officials had to go back to Congress to ask for funds for the
with a robust health emergency fund new emergency. Months went by without action as some legisla-
By the Editors tors wrangled over the role Planned Parenthood might play in the
endeavor, among other things. Local health officials reportedly
Public health emergencies are a fact of life in a world as inter- put other critical programs on hold to deal with the new threat.
connected as ours. In just the past five years we have witnessed Legislators from both the Democratic and Republican parties
unexpected outbreaks of devastating diseases—Ebola, chikun- have recognized the problem and are trying to do something
gunya, yellow fever and Zika—each of which has spread far be- about it. Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a Republican, intro-
yond its historical geographical range. No one can say what the duced the Public Health Emergency Response and Accountabil-
next large-scale emergency will be, whom it will affect or when it ity Act last year and again in January 2017 to create a more robust
will strike, but we do know that it is inevitable. Yet the U.S. is national health emergency fund that would tie current funding
woefully unprepared to meet this threat because it does not set to amounts spent on previous public health emergencies. In 2016
aside money to beat back an outbreak before it can spread. Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, a Democrat, called
The U.S. used to have a robust national public health emer- for a one-time appropriation of $5 billion for emergency health
gency fund, first created by Congress in the 1980s, but its balance and is planning to do so again this year. But introducing legisla-
has since dwindled to a paltry $57,000—enough to buy a few tion (or making a vague promise in the president’s budget) does
thousand first aid kits but not much else. What we need is more not help if Congress fails to pass it. Lawmakers need to follow
on the order of several hundred million to $1 billion in new fund- through by approving one or both of the proposed measures for
ing that is always and immediately available and is replenished the president to sign to ensure that the money will be there when
whenever it becomes depleted. the next public health emergency strikes.
A mechanism is already in place to deal with natural disasters
such as earthquakes and floods. The Federal Emergency Manage-
J O I N T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N O N L I N E
ment Agency is preauthorized to disburse hundreds of millions Visit 2_w²í_Ĉ¬wÞ_C² on Facebook and Twitter
of dollars to pay for debris removal, for example, when state or or send a letter to the editor: editors@sciam.com
Illustration by Cat O’Neil July 2017, ScientificAmerican.com 9

FORUM Kunmi Sobowale is a psychiatry resident at the Yale School
C OMM E N TA RY O N S C IE N C E IN
T H E N E W S FR OM T H E E X P E R T S of Medicine. He has explored increasing access to mental
health care in East and Southeast Asia and for low-income
populations in the U.S.
child protective service agencies in the U.S. involves alcohol use.

Violent, drunken men fall victim, too. They are as likely to
die from alcohol-related firearm incidents as drunk-driving
accidents. For all the effort put into preventing drunk driving,
we have utterly failed to appreciate that being intoxicated while
in possession of a firearm is an equally dangerous situation.
Nevertheless, many states permit customers to carry firearms
into establishments that serve alcohol.
As a mental health care provider, I also commonly see pa-
tients under the influence who contemplate or try suicide. Sui-
cide attempts are often impulsive acts. When sober, many pa-
tients regret these efforts to take their own life. Unfortunately,
alcohol intoxication increases the risk that people will attempt
suicide with a firearm, and because guns are the most lethal sui-
cide method in the U.S., it is often too late for regrets.
How do we break this deadly connection? As doctors, we
should always ask about alcohol use, violence and access to fire-
arms, simply to raise awareness among our patients. But there
is another strategy that would be highly effective: raise alcohol
taxes. Yes, alcohol is taxed, but the taxes have not kept up with
Raise inflation, making drinking more affordable than it has been in

decades. Evidence shows that driving the price up would lower
Alcohol Taxes, drinking’s tragic human cost.

An analysis incorporating results from 112 different studies
found that raising the price of alcohol decreases alcohol con-
Reduce Violence sumption. People living in states with higher alcohol taxes are
less likely to binge drink. In 2011 Maryland increased their alco-
îÜäD³xx`îþxÿDāî¸ hol sales tax by 50 percent. The tax was associated with a de-
crease in the purchase of alcohol in the state. Compared with
`øßîD§DääDø§îäD³läø`lxä other U.S. states, there was much less drinking. Further, there
By Kunmi Sobowale were additional benefits, such as fewer cases of gonorrhea in the
state. Similar results were found in Illinois. Indeed, the effect of
The woman disappeared. She had been coming to our group increased alcohol taxes on curtailing violence has been shown
therapy sessions for months, and suddenly she stopped. Other in many studies.
group members told me why: she had been beaten so badly by Compared with other approaches to violence prevention,
her husband that she ended up in the hospital. The assault higher taxes on alcohol seem more politically feasible—certain-
happened while her husband was, to use a too dainty phrase, ly they will get more support than gun-control measures. Taxes
“under the influence” of alcohol. I wish this were an isolated are more effective than most other alcohol-consumption in-
incident, but alcohol is a common instigator of violence against terventions, and they garner revenue for local governments.
others, as well as harm to oneself. States can use that money to support programs that aid victims
This link between alcohol and violence has been shown in of violence. Taxation also drives down youth drinking, which, in
multiple countries. In 1998 the Bureau of Justice Statistics turn, lowers the chance that young people will grow into heavy
reported that in the U.S., two thirds of violent attacks on inti- drinkers. One common argument against taxing alcohol is that
mate partners occurred in the context of alcohol abuse. Drink- it disproportionately affects poor people—but a recent study in
ing increases the perpetration of physical and sexual violence. the journal Preventing Chronic Disease suggests that is not true.
Alcohol use also reportedly increases the severity of violent Moreover, in general, evidence suggests that less alcohol access
assaults. Although drinking alcohol does not always lead to vio- does not lead people to use other drugs.
lence and is not a prerequisite for violence to occur, the link If policy makers are serious about violence prevention—to say
between alcohol and violence is undeniable. nothing of reducing car and other accidents—they need to reduce
The victims are overwhelmingly women. But children are alcohol use. Taxation is a simple and powerful way to do so.
also harmed. Parents who drink heavily are more likely to phys-
ically abuse their child. Youngsters who live in neighborhoods
with more bars or liquor stores are more likely to be maltreated. <äî2_w²í_Ĉ¬wÞ_C²¸³D`xU¸¸¦D³l5ÿîîxß
In fact, one of out every 10 instances of child abuse reported to ¸ßäx³lD§xîîxßî¸îxxlî¸ßieditors@sciam.com
10 Scientific American, July 2017 Illustration by Christina Chung

ADVANCES
The Javari River in Peru and Brazil is one of the

Amazon River’s tributaries. Millions of years ago
îxDą¸³UDä³ÿDä§¦x§ā¸¸lxlUāäxDÿDîxßÍ

D I S PATC H E S FR OM T H E FR O N TIE R S O F S C IE N C E , T E C H N O LO GY A N D M E D I C IN E IN S ID E
• Pinpointing the brain’s dreaming

“hot zone”
• Do plants have a sense of hearing?
• Missing airplane hunt brings
äxD¸¸ß³î¸¸`øä
_2¸U¸îä§xDß³ä¸`D§ä¦§§äî¸x§Ç
`Dßx¸ßîxx§lxß§ā
GEOLOGY
Amazon
Atlantis
Sedimentary evidence
suggests the vast river
basin had a wet, salty past
For decades scientists have grappled with

one of our planet’s greatest biogeographical
mysteries: how the geologic history of the
Dą¸³2þxßUDä³DääDÇxlîäD³-
cent ecosystem. Now new research describes
sedimentary evidence from eastern Colom-
bia and northwestern Brazil that suggests
the enormous basin was covered by ocean
water at least twice in the past. The Amazon
is famous for its river, which only started
¸ÿ³Dß¸ø³l³³x§§¸³āxDßäD¸ÍlxDä
about the structure of the preriver land-
ä`DÇx³`§ølxD¸¸lxlßD³¸ßxäîjDøx
freshwater lake and a fan-shaped, continent-
spanning network of streams. Understand-
ing the shape of this ancient landscape is
crucial to learning what spawned the stag-
gering biodiversity of the Amazon rain forest.
One theory posits that marine waters
inundated western Amazonia during the
$¸`x³xxÇ¸`jöð§§¸³î¸þx§§¸³
years ago, possibly creating an environ-
ment where hosts of new species could
evolve. Scientists agree that sections of the
Amazon have been underwater in the past,
but there is no consensus as to the mecha-
³ä¸ßxĀîx³î¸îx¸¸l³Í
A study published earlier this year in
Science Advances indicates that the Amazon
¸¸lxlløß³îÿ¸äxÇDßDîx³îxßþD§ä³îx
early and mid-Miocene (roughly 18 million
and 14 million years ago, respectively). Study
co-authors Carlos Jaramillo, a pollen expert at
J O I N T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N O N L I N E Visit 2_w²í_Ĉ¬wÞ_C²on Facebook and Twitter

ADVANCES
îx3îä¸³D³5ß¸Ç`D§2xäxDß`³äîîøîx³ 5x³xÿ³l³äDßxxÿîÇßxþ¸øä
Panama, and Jaime Escobar, a paleoclimatol- research led by geologist and pollen expert
ogist at the University of the North in Colom- Carina Hoorn of the University of Amster-
bia, and their colleagues contend that the lDD³lDą¸³2x¸³D§7³þxßäîā!$
Caribbean Sea breached the South American in Ecuador. Hoorn recently determined the
coast by way of Venezuela and Colombia, age of the river but was not involved in the
covering massive tracts of ancient Amazonia Science Advances study. “Taken together, the
with a tongue of saltwater that reached into evidence for marine incursions into Amazo-
the continent. As the water advanced, it lost nia is really overwhelming” and paves the %$ "
< '2
depth and became a marine/brackish ecosys- way for further research on how this marine
tem, then a watery transitional zone, which
³D§§āDþxÿDāî¸lßā§D³lÍäî³`î§Dāxßä
x³þß¸³x³îDāDþx³øx³`xlîxxþ¸§ø-
tion of the region’s biodiversity, she says.
Boogie Bears
in the sediment cores show that in Colom- But others are more cautious. “This paper
Twisting movements
UDjîx¸¸l³xþx³îä§Däîxl¸ß´ććjććć provides important, though not absolutely leave smelly messages
and 3.7 million years, respectively, while in conclusive, evidence of marine incursions,” in the animals’ paw prints
western Amazonia, which is farthest inland, äDāäxþ¸§øî¸³DßāU¸§¸äîßäî¸Çxß`¦
îxāx³løßxl¸ßöććjćććD³lććjćććāxDßäÍ of the University of Michigan, who studies For decades bear biologists have known
The researchers also describe how sedi- Ç§D³îlþxßä`Dî¸³³äxþxßD§ÇDßîä¸îx that bears engage in a delightful ramble
ment cores have yielded fossil evidence Amazon. “But most of the other scenarios variously dubbed “sumo strutting,” “cow-
supporting the occurrence of these marine are still possible, even with these new data.” boy walking” or, simply, the “bear dance.”
inundations. The most interesting macrofos- Jaramillo and his co-authors do not go Many researchers have guessed at the
sils found in the several-centimeter-wide so far as to say that the Miocene saltwater ßxDä¸³jUøîDßx`x³îäîølā³D§§ā¸xßä
core from Colombia’s Saltarin region are incursions alone are the reason for the Ama- solid clues.
a shark tooth, possibly from a blacktip or a zon’s biodiversity, but they think several of As they walk, the bears vigorously
hammerhead, and a mantis shrimp, a marine the existing plant genres in today’s rain for- twist their feet into the ground. Some-
organism that burrows into the sandy and est could trace their lineages to species liv- times they step into footprints left be-
muddy bottom of tropical seas. “Finding a ³³¸ßxäîäîDîÿxßxÇxßD³x³î§ā¸¸l- hind by other bears after giving the
shark tooth in such a narrow core means xlÍ`¦läDßxxäj¸ÿxþxßÍß¸Dîxßßxä- Çß³îäD¸¸lä³Í3¸xDþxßxxßßxl
there have to be many more, and that points trial botanical perspective, he says, it would to these collective tracks as bear high-
to the extent of these saltwater incursions,” be hard to prove that any extant species ways because they become well trav-
Jaramillo says. “The Amazon rain forest is a lþxßäîā`¸ø§lUxDîîßUøîxlî¸îxäx¸¸läÍ eled over time.
very dynamic system and not as old as pre- îDÇÇxDßäîDîîxlxîx`îþxÿ¸ß¦³ “Everyone suspected that there
viously thought. Today it covers an area as this mighty river and the forest it nurtures was something in [the footprints],”
large as the continental U.S., but nearly will stretch well into the future. says Agnieszka Sergiel, a biologist
—Ĉ²w¦C/·ãCkC2þC·Þk
BY CARLOS JARAMILLO ET AL., IN SCIENCE ADVANCES, VOL. 3, NO. 5, ARTICLE NO. E1601693; MAY 3, 2017; ART WOLFE Getty Images (bears)
14 million years ago it was an ocean.” at the Polish Academy of Sciences’
³äîîøîx¸%Dîøßx¸³äxßþDî¸³D³l
PRECEDING PAGES: INGO ARNDT Getty Images; THIS PAGE: SOURCE: “MIOCENE FLOODING EVENTS OF WESTERN AMAZONIA,”
First Flooding Event, about 17.8 Million Years Ago Second Flooding Event, about 13.7 Million Years Ago a co-author of the study, which was
published recently in 2_w²í_1wÆ·ÞíãÌ
Caribbean Sea
“But no one really investigated.” She
and her colleagues wondered whether
the bears deposit their scent through
Dry land glands on their paws as a means
Transitional zone
of communication.
PWY_ÒY
Sergiel’s team examined a pair of
Ocean Marine/brackish
ecosystem brown bears and determined that the
animals’ paws contain sweat glands,
SOUTH suggesting that the prints leave behind
AMERICA Dä`x³îÍ5xßxäxDß`xßäD§ä¸lx³îxl
Southern boundary
of study area öélxßx³îþ¸§Dî§x`¸Ç¸ø³lääĀ
400 kilometers
of them unique to males—in paw
2xäxDß`xßäßx`¸³äîßø`îxlîxäî¸ß`D§Dß³x¸¸l³¸îxDą¸³ßD³¸ßxäîøä³ sweat, indicating that bears may use
äxlx³î`¸ßxäDîxßxlß¸xDäîxß³¸§¸UDD³l³¸ßîÿxäîxß³
ßDą§Í5xäxDÇä aroma to determine the sex of previous
ä¸ÿîxDĀøxĀîx³î¸¸¸läløß³îÿ¸äxÇDßDîxÇxß¸läÍ5xßx¸³ÿDä¸¸lxl ursine travelers.
between 18.1 million and 17.2 million years ago and between 16.1 million and 12.4 million Sergiel says the bear footprints are
āxDßäD¸jßxäÇx`îþx§āÍ³U¸îDÇäjîxßx`¸³äîßø`î¸³Ux§¸ÿîxä¸øîxß³U¸ø³lDßā akin to mailboxes, although the mes-
¸îxäîølāDßxDäUDäxl¸³`¸ßxäDîxßxlløß³D³xDß§xßäîølā³öć¿ćUøîl¸xä³¸î sages they send remain a mystery.
`¸þxßîxx³îßxîxäÇD³³`§ølxl³îx`¸ßxäß¸DU¸þxîxl¸îîxl§³xÍ —Cã·²Ì·¦k¬C²
14 Scientific American, July 2017 Map by Mapping Specialists

ADVANCES
GE N E T I CS
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Parent Trap ÿîîÿ¸xĀÇxßx³îäi³¸³xjîxā³¥x`îxl
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ä³§xx³xDāUx§³¦xl x³îäß¸U¸î¸îxÿ§läÇx`xäjD³l³
î¸³xäîUø§l³³`x îx¸îxßjîxāx³xî`D§§āD³Çø§Dîxl
þDä¸Çßxää³³xøß¸³ä³îxUßD³ä¸¸øäx
Some wild mice Dßxl§x³îÇDßx³îäjUø§l- mice #÷ã¬÷ã_÷¦÷ãÊî¸xĀ`îxîxÍ
¸î
%øßîøß³³xäîxßäi¸§lx§l`xÉPeromyscus
³x§DU¸ßDîxßDääā³xäîäî¸¦xxÇîxß äxîä¸`xUø§î§¸ÿxßÔøD§îā³xäîäjäø-
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Zion
2-Nts Park Lodge
Bryce Monument
Cruise Valley ADVANCES
Jeep
Lake Powell Ride
Las
Vegas Grand Trading Post
PSYCHOLOGY
Canyon
2-Nts Park Lodge
Sedona
Montezuma Castle
Secrets and Lies
Guided Tours Since 1952
welling on clandestine information hurts us
Phoenix
more than the act of concealing it
Daystop Overnight Two Nights
Visit the Greatest National Parks of America’s It is no secret that we all have secrets. Maintaining them can be draining, but not for the
Southwest on a Fully Guided Caravan Tour ßxDä¸³¸äîßxäxDß`xßäDþx§¸³DääøxlÍ³xÿäîølāßxlx³xäÙäx`ßx`āÚîäx§D³l
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Grand Canyon 5xßxäxDß`xßääøxäîîDîäx`ßx`āäÇßDß§āîxintention to conceal information,
8-Days $1495 +tax,fees ßxDßl§xää¸D³āD`îþx`¸³`xD§x³îDß¸ø³l¸îxßäÍ³lîDîøßîäøäUāD¦³øäxx§
Fully Guided Tour with Bryce & Zion. inauthentic, even when we are alone.
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Your Caravan Tour Itinerary: §āßxÇ¸ßîxlîxß³l³ä³DÇDÇxßÇøU§äxl¸³§³x³îxJournal of Personality and Social
Day 1. Welcome! Psychology. ³äĀäîølxäjîxāÔøxßxlDî¸îD§¸¿jöććxß`D³äþDîx³îxß³xîDäÿx§§Dä
Your tour starts in ð¿öÇx¸Ç§xÇ`³`¦³³%xÿ?¸ß¦îāÜäx³îßD§0Dß¦ßxDßl³ð}`Dîx¸ßxä¸UxDþ¸ß
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night stay at Grand ¸ßÿ`îxāDlDäx`ßxîîxāÿxßx¦xxÇ³ß¸xþxßā¸³xÊÍ5x¸äî`¸¸³äx`ßxîä
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Day 3. Explore the D§ßxDlā³Dßx§Dî¸³äÇÊjß¸D³î`lxäßxÉÿ§xUx³ä³§xÊD³läxĀøD§UxDþ¸ßÉ`¸³-
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Grand Canyon
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Stay 2-Nights In Both Day 4. Jeep tour of
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secrets about twice as often as they actively concealed them in conversation. The more
Day 5. Antelope Canyon boat cruise.
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Day 6. Visit Bryce Canyon. Continue Ux³D³lîx§xääxD§îāîxāäDlîxāÿxßxÍ3øßÇßä³§ājD`îþx`¸³`xD§x³îll³¸î
to Zion Lodge for your two night stay. Dx`îÿx§§Ux³DîD§§³`¸³îßDäîî¸Çßxþ¸øäDääøÇî¸³äÍ¸øßDllî¸³D§äîølxäjD§§
Day 7. Explore Zion National Park. ³þ¸§þ³`¸øÇ§xäD³l`¸³lø`îxl¸³§³xjÇß¸lø`xlä§Dß³l³äÍ
Day 8. Return with great memories! ā¸øøäî¦xxÇDäx`ßxîj3§xÇD³äøxäîäDþ¸l³lÿx§§³¸³îUāÇßD`î`³³l-
Detailed Itinerary at Caravan. com ø§³xää¸ßlä`øää³îx¸ßUllx³î¸Ç`³D³¸³ā¸øä¸³§³x¸ßøäÍMatthew Hutson
The Top 10 Categories of Things We Keep Secret
Secret from Secret from Secret once but Never kept

everyone some people not anymore secret
Thoughts of cheating on partner
Sexual behavior
Monument Valley
Join the Smart Shoppers & Experienced Travelers Having lied to someone
Romantic desires about someone
Choose an Affordable Tour +tax,fees while single
IN JOURNAL OF PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY. PUBLISHED ONLINE MAY 8, 2017
Guatemala with Tikal 10 days $1295 Violation of someone’s trust
Costa Rica 8 days $1195
Panama Canal Tour 8 days $1195 Theft
SOURCE: “THE EXPERIENCE OF SECRECY,” BY MICHAEL L. SLEPIAN ET AL.,
Nova Scotia, P.E.I. 10 days $1395 %¹´åyāùD¨´my¨ïĂÊåù`Dåàï´Ë

Canadian Rockies 9 days $1695
Grand Canyon 8 days $1495 Ambition or goal
California Coast 8 days $1595 Family details
Mount Rushmore 8 days $1395
New England, Foliage 8 days $1395 Financial details
Brilliant, Affordable Pricing 0 100 200 300 400 500 600

“—Arthur Frommer, Travel Editor ” Number of Study Participants
Over three studies (a subset of 10), researchers surveyed 600 participants about commonly
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secret behaviors they had experienced and to what degree they had kept each one hidden.
The graph shows data for the 10 behaviors most frequently kept totally secret.
18 Scientific American, July 2017 Graphic by Amanda Montañez

New Version!
SUSTA I N AB I L I T Y
Waning Woods
The planet is losing pristine
land tracts that are key
to healthy ecosystems
We humans have left our mark on the entire
planet; not a single ecosystem remains com-
pletely untouched. But some landscapes have
Uxx³Dx`îxl§xääîD³¸îxßäÍ³lîxxĀîx³î
to which the earth can provide habitats for
plants and animals, sequester atmospheric
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ßx¸³äÍ5xäxîßD`îäjÿxßxøD³³øx³`xä
still too weak to easily detect by satellite, are
prime targets for conservation. Using satellite
imagery, a group of researchers mapped the
global decline between 2000 and 2013 of such
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ested or naturally treeless ecosystems of 500
äÔøDßx¦§¸xîxßä¸ß¸ßxÍß¸ø³lD§¸îx
area of the world’s IFLs are in the tropics, and
a third can be found in the boreal forests of
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îøßxj³³D³lÿ§lßxä`¸³îßUøîxlî¸îx
drop, as reported in January in Science Advances.
The bright side? Landscapes under formal
SOURCE: “THE LAST FRONTIERS OF WILDERNESS: TRACKING LOSS OF INTACT FOREST LANDSCAPES FROM 2000 TO 2013,”
BY PETER POTAPOV, IN SCIENCE ADVANCES, VOL. 3, NO. 1, ARTICLE NO. E1600821; JANUARY 4, 2017; GETTY IMAGES (trees)
protection, such as national parks, were more

likely to remain intact. —Jason G. Goldman
BY THE NUMBER S
12.8 million
square kilometers Global extent of IFLs in 2000, a total area
equivalent to a third of the surface of the moon.
Nearly Over 100 New Features & Apps in Origin 2017!

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1 million
square kilometers Approximate area of IFLs lost
Over 500,000 registered users worldwide in:
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evaluation, go to
OriginLab.Com/demo
between 2000 and 2013, about the size of Egypt. ◾ 6,500+ Colleges & Universities and enter code: 9246
65
Number of countries that were home to at least one IFL in 2000.
◾ 3,000+ Government Agencies & Research Labs
19
Number of countries that will be completely devoid of IFLs
25+ years serving the scientific & engineering community
in 60 years if losses continue at the current rate.

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MAT ER IA LS SC IENC E
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Prachi Patel
Scientific American is a registered trademark of Nature America, Inc.

ADVANCES
B I OLOGY
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øî Dßlx³j`¸³älxßîx§§xäÍ Marta Zaraska
Illustration by Thomas Fuchs köć¿è3`x³î`xß`D³

ADVANCES
CHINA RUSSIA
I N T H E N EWS Some caterpillar pests have grown resistant to genetically A study of animal bones collected from the
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cotton that keeps one species of caterpillar susceptible to the
Sakha indicates that mammoths may have
åùyàymà¹®ù®D´måyDåyåj´`¨ùm´
Hits plant’s deadly proteins. osteoporosis, a possible factor in their
yāï´`ï¹´Î¨D`§¹®ýàD¨å´ïyàmyï
may have made the animals susceptible.
U.S. INDIA
Researchers modeled noise levels Analyses of scat, blood
in nearly 500 wilderness and park and tissue show that
locations and found that more two populations of en-
than half of them were twice as mDýàym
y´D¨ïyàå
loud as the environment would in the Himalaya foothills
be without human-generated are not breeding enough
sounds. This cacophony could to maintain genetic diver-
inhibit animals’ hunting, mating sity. Researchers say that
and other survival behaviors. relocating villages and
SOUTH AFRICA halting mining could
Newly discovered weapon remnants suggest encourage more mingling
humans were using a delicate, skillful stone- between those groups.
åDàÈy´´ïy`´Õùy`D¨ÿmÈàyååùàyD§´ï¹
For more details, visit
ý¨ĂåDÈyÈ¹´ïå¹àåÈyDàåD´m¹ïyàù´ï´
www.ScientificAmerican.com/jul2017/advances tools as early as 77,000 years ago. —Andrea Marks
Wishing can’t keep your kids from using drugs.

But you can. And we can help.
Call our toll-free helpline, 1-855-DRUGFREE. Or visit us at drugfree.org.
© Partnership for a Drug-Free America, Inc. Partnership is a nonprofit, 501(c)(3) charitable organization.

E A RT H SCI E N CE
Uncharted
Territory
The hunt for the missing
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COURTESY OF COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA AND GEOSCIENCE AUSTRALIA, 2017
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ADVANCES
Dive Deep into RO BOT I CS
Special Grandma’s
Robot Helper
Editions Machines that read human
social cues show promise in
Explore over 50 single-topic assisting the elderly
special editions at
å`y´ï`D®yà`D´Î`¹®ë Robots already perform many tradition-
`¹¨ÿ`ï¹´å ally human tasks, from vacuuming to sur-
gery—and they could soon help care for
the sick and elderly. But until they can con-
vincingly discern and mimic emotions,
their caretaker value will be severely
§îxlÍ³D³x¸ßîî¸`ßxDîxÙßx³l§xßÚ
machines, researchers are developing
robotic helpers that can better read and
react to social signals.
In late 2016 IBM and Rice University
unveiled the Multi-Purpose Eldercare
Robot Assistant (MERA), a customized ver-
sion of the Pepper robot developed by Soft-
SoftBank Robotics’ “Pepper” robot (shown
Bank Robotics in Japan. Pepper, an ivory-
here) can read and respond to human
colored android about the height of a sev-
emotions. An adapted version of the bot
en-year-old, can detect and respond to
is designed to aid the elderly.
human emotions via vocal cues and facial
expressions. It has already been deployed
as a friendly assistant in Japanese stores therapy to aiding them in socializing with
D³l¸xäÍ$2jäÇx``D§§ālxä³xl friends and family.
as an at-home companion for the elderly, Matarić and her team recently tested
records and analyzes videos of a person’s Spritebot, a one-foot-tall green owl robot
face and calculates vital signs such as heart that assists seniors in playing games
and breathing rates. with their children or grandchildren. The
MERA’s speech technology, originally researchers found that people talked to
lxþx§¸Çxl¸ß
$Üä=Dîä¸³ÉîxDßî`D§ one another more and played games for
intelligence system that won Jeopardy!), longer when Spritebot was participating in,
allows it to converse with a patient and and moderating, their interactions.
D³äÿxßxD§îÔøxäî¸³äÍÙîDäxþxßāî³ In an upcoming study, Matarić and her
Uø³l§xl³î¸¸³xDl¸ßDU§xäx§jÚäDāä colleagues will pair elderly people with
Susann Keohane, founder of IBM’s Aging- robot companions that encourage them
in-Place Research Lab. to form healthy habits, such as walking
Roboticist Maja Matarić and her col- more. She hopes that monitoring how peo-
leagues at the University of Southern Cali- ple interact with companion robots over
¸ß³DDßxîD¦³Dlxßx³îUøî`¸Ç§x- time will inform her team about both habit
mentary approach to developing social formation and the dynamics of the
machines. They are designing robots that human-robot bond.
tap into human social dynamics to help The need for socially assistive robots
äx³¸ßäx§Çîxäx§þxäÍÙ=Dîÿx¸ø³lä may arise from a shortage of human com-
Çx¸Ç§xßxD§§ā³xxlx§Çÿî¸îþDî¸³Úî¸ panions for the elderly, but Matarić points
COURTESY OF SOFTBANK ROBOTICS
l¸³x`xääDßāîDä¦äjäxäDāäÍÙ3¸ÿx`ßxDî- ¸øîîDîß¸U¸îä`¸ø§lD§ä¸¸xßä¸xUx³x-
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Collections machines that help people through social, Ù$D`³xäDßx³³îx§āÇDîx³îjÚäxxĀ
³¸îÇāä`D§j³îxßD`î¸³ÍÚ¸ßx§lxß§ā³l- Ç§D³äÍÙ5xāDþxZxÿxß[UDäxäî¸Ux³
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viduals, such assistance comes in various ÿîjD³lîxāDþx³¸xĀÇx`îDî¸³äÍÚ
guises—from coaching them in physical —Catherine Caruso

THE SCIENCE
OF HEALTH
Probiotics Are ly nondigestible fibers that favor the development of gut bacte-
ria), more than quadrupled between 2007 and 2012, from 865,000
people to nearly four million. San Francisco–based business con-
No Panacea sulting firm Grand View Research estimates that the global pro-
biotics market exceeded $35 billion in 2015 and predicts that it
will reach $66 billion by 2024.
Although certain bacteria help treat The popular frenzy surrounding probiotics is fueled in large
some gut disorders, they have no part by surging scientific and public interest in the human micro-
¦³¸ÿ³Ux³xîä¸ßxD§îāÇx¸Ç§x biome: the overlapping ecosystems of bacteria and other microor-
ganisms found throughout the body. The human gastrointestinal
By Ferris Jabr system contains about 39 trillion bacteria, according to the latest
estimate, most of which reside in the large intestine. In the past 15
Walk into any grocery store, and you will likely find more than years researchers have established that many of these commensal
a few “probiotic” products brimming with so-called beneficial microbes are essential for health. Collectively, they crowd out
bacteria that are supposed to treat everything from constipation harmful microbial invaders, break down fibrous foods into more
to obesity to depression. In addition to foods traditionally pre- digestible components and produce vitamins such as K and B12.
pared with live bacterial cultures (such as yogurt and other fer- The idea that consuming probiotics can boost the ability
mented dairy products), consumers can now purchase probiotic of already well-functioning native bacteria to promote general
capsules and pills, fruit juices, cereals, sausages, cookies, candy, health is dubious for a couple of reasons. Manufacturers of pro-
granola bars and pet food. Indeed, the popularity of probiotics biotics often select specific bacterial strains for their prod-
has grown so much in recent years that manufacturers have even ucts because they know how to grow them in large numbers,
added the microorganisms to cosmetics and mattresses. not because they are adapted to the human gut or known to im-
A closer look at the science underlying microbe-based treat- prove health. The particular strains of Bifidobacterium or Lac-
ments, however, shows that most of the health claims for probi- tobacillus that are typically found in many yogurts and pills may
otics are pure hype. The majority of studies to date have failed not be the same kind that can survive the highly acidic environ-
to reveal any benefits in individuals who
are already healthy. The bacteria seem to
help only those people suffering from a
few specific intestinal disorders. “There is
no evidence to suggest that people with
normal gastrointestinal tracts can benefit
from taking probiotics,” says Matthew
Ciorba, a gastroenterologist at Washing-
ton University in St. Louis. “If you’re not
in any distress, I would not recommend
them.” Emma Allen-Vercoe, a microbiolo-
gist at the University of Guelph in Ontar-
io, agrees. For the most part, she says,
“the claims that are made are enormous-
ly inflated.”
THE NUMBERS GAME

THIS STORY HAS PLAYED OUT before, most
notably with vitamin supplements, which
decades of research have revealed to be
completely unnecessary for most adults
and, in some cases, dangerous, correlat-
ing with higher rates of lung, breast and
prostate cancers. But that has not
KARI LOUNATMAA Science Source
stopped marketers from pushing anoth-

er nutritional craze. According to a Na-
tional Institutes of Health survey, the
number of adults in the U.S. taking probi- FRIENDLY MICROBES: Bacteria such as these lactobacilli, which are often added to yogurt
otics or their cousins, prebiotics (typical- and probiotic supplements, help to maintain a healthy environment in the intestine.

Ferris Jabr is a contributing writer
for IY_[dj_ÒY7c[h_YWd$
ment of the human stomach and from there colonize the gut. litis and that 30 percent of them will not survive. Standard treat-
Even if some of the bacteria in a probiotic managed to survive ment involves a combination of antibiotics, feeding via intrave-
and propagate in the intestine, there would likely be far too few of nous tubes, and surgery to remove diseased and dead tissue.
them to dramatically alter the overall composition of one’s inter- Probiotics probably prevent the disorder by boosting the numbers
nal ecosystem. Whereas the human gut contains tens of trillions of beneficial bacteria, which may deter the harmful ones.
of bacteria, there are only between 100 million and a few hundred Probiotics also seem to ameliorate irritable bowel syndrome, a
billion bacteria in a typical serving of yogurt or a microbe-filled chronic disease characterized by abdominal pain, bloating, and
pill. Last year a team of scientists at the University of Copenhagen frequent diarrhea or constipation (or a mix of the two). A 2014
published a review of seven randomized, placebo-controlled trials review of more than 30 studies, published in the American Jour-
(the most scientifically rigorous types of studies researchers know nal of Gastroenterology by an international team of researchers,
how to conduct) investigating whether probiotic supplements— determined that in some cases, probiotics help to relieve the
including biscuits, milk-based drinks and capsules—change the symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome for reasons that are not
diversity of bacteria in fecal samples. Only one study—of 34 entirely clear, although it may be that they impede the growth of
healthy volunteers—found a statistically significant change, and harmful microbes. The researchers concluded, however, that they
there was no indication that it provided a clinical benefit. “A pro- did not have enough data to recommend any particular strains of
biotic is still just a drop in a bucket,” says Shira Doron, an infec- bacteria. Microbiologists often caution that a promising study on
tious disease expert at Tufts Medical Center. “The gut always has a single strain of a particular species of bacteria should not be tak-
orders of magnitude more microbes.” en as proof that all probiotics work equally well. “Bacterial strains
are so genetically different from one another, and everybody has
REAL BENEFITS a different gut microbiota,” Allen-Vercoe says. “There will proba-
DESPITE A GROWING SENSE that probiotics do not offer anything of bly never be a one-size-fits-all probiotic.”
substance to individuals who are already healthy, researchers have But what if investigators could design probiotics to treat spe-
documented some benefits for people with certain conditions. cific individuals? Many researchers think personalized probiotics
In the past five years, for example, several combined analy- are the most promising path forward for patients with compro-
ses of dozens of studies have concluded that probiotics may help mised gut microbiomes. Last year Jens Walter of the University of
prevent some common side effects of treatment with antibiot- Alberta and his colleagues published a study that gives a glimpse
ics. Whenever physicians prescribe these medications, they of this potential future. The researchers decided to see what it
know they stand a good chance of annihilating entire commu- would take to get the bacteria in a probiotic to successfully colo-
nities of beneficial bacteria in the intestine, along with whatev- nize the intestines of 23 volunteers. They chose a particular strain
er problem-causing microbes they are trying to dispel. Normal- of Bifidobacterium longum that earlier studies had indicated
ly the body just needs to grab a few bacteria from the environment could survive in the human intestine. In the study, the volunteers
to reestablish a healthy microbiome. But sometimes the emp- consumed either a drink containing 10 billion live B. longum bac-
tied niches get filled up with harmful bacteria that secrete tox- teria or a placebo in the form of a glucose-based food additive
ins, causing inflammation in the intestine and triggering diar- (maltodextrin) each day for two weeks. Periodic fecal samples
rhea. Adding yogurt or other probiotics—especially the kinds revealed higher than typical levels of B. longum in participants
that contain Lactobacillus—during and after a course of antibi- who did not consume the placebo.
otics seems to decrease the chances of subsequently developing In seven people, however, these bacterial levels persisted for
these opportunistic infections. more than five months after the treatment ended. “We never
A 2014 review by Cochrane—an independent network of expected they would survive more than a few weeks,” Walter says.
experts who serve as rigorous arbiters of medical research— A follow-up analysis determined that these seven people had
found that probiotics may be particularly useful in a hospital’s begun the experiment with lower levels of B. longum in the first
neonatal intensive care unit. The addition of beneficial bacteria place. In other words, their gut ecosystems had a vacancy that the
to a nutritional regimen seems to significantly reduce the likeli- probiotic filled. That is exactly the kind of insight that clinicians
hood of developing necrotizing enterocolitis, which is a devastat- need to create and recommend more effective probiotics. If a doc-
ing, poorly understood and often fatal gut disease that primarily tor knows that an individual with severe diarrhea has an under-
afflicts preterm infants—especially the smallest and most prema- sized population of a particular beneficial microbe, for example,
ture among them. Researchers think that many cases of the dis- then prescribing the missing strain should increase the chance of
ease begin with an opportunistic bacterial infection in the not yet a successful treatment.
fully developed intestine of an infant. As the illness progresses, “The key is taking an ecological perspective,” Walter says. “We
gut tissue becomes increasingly inflamed and often starts to die, need to think about which microbes have the right adaptations to
which can, in turn, rupture the intestine and flood the abdomi- survive in a particular gut ecosystem.” Put another way, treat-
nal cavity with pathogenic microbes that proliferate to danger- ments for microbe-related disorders are most successful when
ous levels. Researchers estimate that 12 percent of preterm infants they work in tandem with the human body’s many microscopic
weighing less than 3.3 pounds will develop necrotizing enteroco- citizens, not just against them.

TECHNOFILES David Pogue is the anchor columnist for Yahoo
Tech and host of several NOVA miniseries on PBS.
Computer-Aided I loved Popular Photography magazine—until it shut down in

March, after 80 years. Its aim was to teach readers how to shoot
better pictures. To that end, it published, with each image, the set-
Creativity tings the photographer had used: “1/400 sec at f/5.6, ISO 1000,”
for example. That string of numbers always gave me a sense of
hopelessness. How could an amateur like me ever learn what
How much should an artist reveal about combinations of shutter speed, aperture and sensitivity to light
letting technology make some choices? (ISO) to dial up for a certain picture?
Eventually a professional photographer told me a little
By David Pogue
secret: even the pros often let the camera choose some or all of
Ü§§³xþxß¸ßxîîxßäîîx I saw “piano juggling.” It was those settings. They might use, for example, shutter-priority
December 1989, on Johnny Carson’s The Tonight Show. mode (in which the camera chooses the aperture), aperture-
Carson’s guest played the keys of an oversized piano on the priority mode (the camera chooses the shutter speed) or even
floor—by striking them with bouncing balls. Faster and faster full automatic mode (the camera chooses everything).
he went, juggling downward. Beethoven’s “Für Elise” was amaz- Yet even photographs taken in automatic mode were de-
ing enough—but Liszt’s rapid-fire Hungarian Rhapsody no. 2? scribed in the magazine as, you know, “1/400 sec at f/5.6, ISO
The crowd went crazy. How could anyone nail both the keys and 1000.” Yes, those were the settings—but for all the readers knew,
the rhythms with perfect accuracy? the camera chose them, not the person. Those specs misled
Nobody could. During a close-up, I saw that the “piano” was those of us who aspired to be like the top shooters.
a single, four-foot-wide touch panel. The “keys” appeared to be Apple’s GarageBand program for Mac computers lets you cre-
just painted on. It didn’t matter where the balls hit; each trig- ate fully orchestrated “compositions” just by dragging tiles into
gered the next note in a programmed sequence. He controlled a grid. Everything sounds great, whether or not you know any-
the rhythm, but the rest was automated. Of course, it’s not easy thing about rhythm, pitch or harmony. At the time of Garage-
to toss balls in rhythm, and the act is still loads of fun. But the Band’s introduction, its product manager told me that even if the
audience clearly believed that he was also hitting specific keys. program semiautomates the composition process, it still gives
Seeing that audience hoodwinked set me up for a life of won- people a taste of the real thing. It could inspire a novice to learn
dering: Is an artist obligated to reveal how much of his or her music, maybe take up an instrument.
creativity is being assisted by technology? Agreed. But how can we gauge artists’ talent without know-
ing how much of the work was theirs? Should it affect how much
we pay for their output? And what about when commercial mu-
sicians use GarageBand to produce their tracks—as Oasis and
many indie bands have done?
Everyone knows that technology assists almost every creative
endeavor these days, from the moment a four-year-old drips
paint onto a turntable to make spin art. We also are aware that
Hollywood uses computers for its special effects and that most
pop songs are Auto-Tuned and pitch-corrected. But in those cas-
es, the audience is in on the fact that machinery has helped out.
It’s not the same thing when technology’s assistance is con-
cealed from us and is credited to the human. That’s why lip-
synching at live concerts is still controversial and why athletes
are disqualified for secretly using drugs or other performance
enhancements. Disclosing when our creative works have come
from canned parts isn’t just important for intellectual honesty;
it would also make a better barometer for the rising tide of robots
entering creative fields. (If you hadn’t heard, robots are now
capable of composing chorales and painting portraits.)
These days even professional musicians, artists and per-
formers can substitute an on/off switch for human talent.
Shouldn’t the public know which is which?
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN ONLINE

READ ABOUT THE ETHICS OF LIP-SYNCHING:
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28 Scientific American, July 2017 Illustration by Jay Bendt
NEUROSCIENCE
MEMORY’S
Y’S
INTRICATE
R
WEB A technical revolution provides insight into
how the brain links memories, a process
critical for understanding and
organizing the world around us
By Alcino J. Silva


Alcino J. Silva is a Distinguished Professor and director of the Integra-
a-
tive Center for Learning and Memory at the University of California,
Los Angeles. His laboratory (www.silvalab.org) studies memory mecha- a-
nisms, as well as the causes and treatments for memory disorders.
Our
memories
depend on our ability to recall details about the world—
a child’s face, a goose, a lake. To transform them into actual
experiences, though, the brain must somehow merge these
individual elements into an integrated whole—the look on
that child’s face when she sees a flock of geese suddenly
take flight from a lakeside stand of reeds. linked memories are beginning to
A cohesive sense of memory relies on other factors, too. reveal themselves—after 20 years of
research in my laboratory and others.
Our survival over the millennia has depended on recalling Understanding the physical processes
not only the right information—say, a lion or a snake—but also involved in interweaving individual
the context. Did we encounter the animal during a surprise memories will do more than just pro-
vide insight into how the brain works.
confrontation on an isolated stretch of African savanna or as It may help us to prevent memory dis-
part of an unhurried viewing at the San Diego Zoo? orders that disrupt our ability to create
and tie together memories.
To steer clear of other kinds of predators in our daily lives, A HAPPY ACCIDENT
we also need to be able to link memories over time: Judging WHEN WE BEGAN our studies of memory linking in the late 1990s,
whether a seemingly attractive investment is worth pursuing we lacked the tools and basic knowledge we needed to tackle
depends on the source of a recommendation—the probity, for this subject. A key first step in determining how memories are
instance, of the person who suggested it. Failing to connect the intertwined was our discovery of a concept called memory allo-
two can have disastrous consequences. cation, the realization that the brain uses specific rules to assign
The field of neuroscience is starting to grapple with how the bits of learned information to discrete groups of neurons in
brain links memories across space and time. Until now, the vast regions of the brain involved in forming the memory.
majority of studies have focused on the way we acquire, store, Serendipity played a key role in the discovery of memory
recall and alter individual memories. Most memories, though, allocation. It started with a conversation I had with Michael PRECEDING PAGES: ANDREAS KUEHN Getty Images (head); GETTY IMAGES (web pattern)
do not exist on their own as single, isolated entities. Instead one Davis, a friend and colleague now at Emory University, during
recollection summons the next, establishing intricate sequenc- a visit to Yale University in 1998. Davis shared with me the
es of memories that help us to better predict and comprehend findings of studies in which his lab manipulated a gene known
the world around us. as CREB to enhance emotional memory in rats—the associa-
The fundamental mechanisms the brain uses to create these tion, for example, between a tone and an electric shock. Previ-
IN BRIEF
Memory research has undergone a revolution: new Techniques now available to neuroscientists have The brain’s ability to control which neurons encode
technologies image the activity of individual neurons shown that memories are not randomly assigned to which memories is critical for strengthening memo-
D´myÿy´ïùà´ïy`y¨¨å¹´D´m¹DïÈày`åy®¹®y´ïåj ýùà¹´åÚàD´ày¹´åy´Dym´´¹à®Dï¹´Èà¹- àyåD´m¹à`¹´ý`ï´ïy®jyDïùàyåïDïDàymå-
D¨¨¹ĀÚàD´å`y´ïåïåï¹Èyà¹à®yāÈyà®y´ïåïDï `yåå´D´måï¹àDyÎ´åïyDmåÈy``®y`D´å®åmy- àùÈïym´®D´Ăýùà¹ÈåĂ`Dïà`må¹àmyàåD´mmùà´
Āyàyï¹ùï¹Dåå`y´`y`ï¹´¦ùåïDyĀĂyDàåD¹Î ïyà®ýĀ``y¨¨å¹¹´ï¹åï¹àyDÿy´®y®¹àĂÎ `¹´ïÿymy`¨ý´D´Î

ously, my lab, now at the University of California, Los Angeles, either activate or switch off neurons—in effect, eliciting or
and other researchers had shown that the CREB gene was silencing a memory.
needed to form long-term memories. The CREB gene accom- As one example, Yu Zhou, then in my lab, genetically modi-
plishes this task by encoding a protein that regulates the fied a small set of mouse amygdala neurons so that they had
expression of other genes needed for memory. During learning, higher CREB levels and expressed another protein engineered
some synapses (the cellular structures neurons use to commu- by Edward Callaway’s lab at the Salk Institute for Biological
nicate) are built up, or strengthened, so that they can facilitate Studies in La Jolla, Calif. Callaway’s nifty protein allowed us to
interaction among cells. The CREB protein acts as a molecular silence the CREB neurons at a time of our choosing. When we
architect of this process. Without its help, most experiences shut off the neurons that had high CREB, leaving their counter-
would be forgotten. parts with lower levels of the protein
What surprised me was that Davis’s still active, emotional memory was
group was able to improve memory, suppressed, a result that provides evi-
even though his lab increased CREB dence that neurons with higher levels
levels in only a subset of the overall of CREB are more likely to be involved
population of neurons of the amygda- in memory storage.
la, a brain region critical for emotional We knew that higher levels of CREB
memory. The question that lingered could determine which cells stored a
with me for months after my visit to given memory, but we did not know
Yale was, How did the memory end up how this happened. Robert Malenka
in just the few cells where it could take of Stanford University and his col-
advantage of the higher CREB levels? leagues had discovered that increas-
Could it be that CREB not only orches- ing CREB in certain neurons meant
trated memory formation but also they were more easily activated.
helped to ensure that cells with CREB Could this increase in excitability
were more likely to be involved in be the reason why neurons with high-
memory formation? In our own inves- er CREB levels were picked for memo-
tigations of CREB, we homed in on its MICROSCOPE mounted on the head of a ry storage?
function within specific brain regions live mouse lets researchers inspect the activ- To address that question, Zhou
we knew were involved with memory: ity of brain cells where memories are stored. modified amygdala neurons to pro-
the amygdala and the hippocampus; duce more CREB. Using tiny micro-
the latter stores an internal map of electrodes, she determined how easily
one’s surroundings. these neurons are activated, a measure of excitability. The
Science is just as much about finding questions as it is about results confirmed that the modified neurons were more easily
answering them. What that conversation with Davis helped me switched on, compared with their unaltered counterparts. The
realize is that neuroscientists knew very little about the rules, if, elevated excitability (an enhanced readiness to receive and pass
indeed, there were any, of how a given memory is allocated to on electrical impulses that carry information between neurons)
the neurons in each of the brain regions that process and store suggested that the cells may have been better prepared to initi-
our recollections. So we decided to look more closely. ate the set of processes needed for laying down a memory.
Our first big break came after we recruited neuroscientist To test that idea, Zhou also looked at synaptic connections
Sheena A. Josselyn, who had studied CREB in Davis’s lab. In a involving the neurons with more CREB. A considerable body of
series of animal experiments that she conducted in my lab and evidence has shown that increases in the strength of synaptic
later with colleagues at her own lab at the University of Toron- connections are critical for memory formation. After training the
'7253?'%3 ÎIntegrative Center for Learning and Memory, University of California, Los Angeles
to, Josselyn used a virus to introduce extra copies of CREB into mice on a task that subsequently evoked emotional memories,
specific neurons within the mouse amygdala. She showed that she tested the strength of synaptic connections of the amygdala
those neurons were nearly four times more likely to store a fear- neurons with higher CREB levels to see whether they had stron-
ful memory than neighboring ones. ger connections, compared with cells that had not been altered to
In 2007, after almost a decade of effort, my lab, in collabora- produce more CREB.
tion with Josselyn’s team, finally published evidence that emo- To do this, she stimulated the synapses of these cells with a
tional memories are not randomly assigned to neurons within small electric current and recorded their responses with tiny
the amygdala. Rather the cells tapped to store these memories electrodes embedded within the cells. As expected, the amygdala
are those that have more of the CREB protein. Just as important, neurons with higher CREB had stronger synapses than other
subsequent experiments showed that CREB has a similar func- cells, a result consistent with the idea that they were more likely
tion in other brain regions, including the hippocampus and the to have stored the emotional memory.
cortex, the outermost layer. In still more recent work, Josselyn’s lab demonstrated that a
memory of a fearful experience could be stored in a predeter-
SWITCHING MEMORIES ON AND OFF mined set of amygdala neurons by genetically engineering them
TO CONFIRM CREB’S ROLE in memory allocation, we turned to new- with a specific type of ion channel that increases the excitability of
ly developed methods that have transformed the study of mem- these neurons. Ion channels form pores on the surface of the cells,
ory in recent years. These lab techniques make it possible to and the particular ones that Josselyn chose allowed these cells to

be more easily activated. Similarly, neuroscientist Albert Lee’s lab remembered that they had received a shock there. Mice freeze as
at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Research Cam- a natural reaction to fear because most predators notice prey bet-
pus in Ashburn, Va., reported that artificially increasing the excit- ter when they move.
ability of hippocampal neurons in a specific place while animals The critical result emerged when Cai and Shobe placed the mice
ran around a track made those neurons more likely to respond to in the neutral chamber. We reasoned that if the memories from
that location in the track, a result consistent with our findings both chambers were linked, the mice in the neutral space would
that excitability has a critical role in determining which cells are be reminded of being shocked in the other chamber and thus
engaged in storing a given memory. would freeze in anticipation—and that is exactly what we found.
Finally, our group, as well as Josselyn’s, took advantage of a We also guessed that the two memories would be less likely
groundbreaking technology called optogenetics that uses light to be linked if they were separated by a seven-day interval. And
to either activate or inhibit neurons. We used the technique to indeed, reexposing the animals to the neutral chamber after the
switch on specific neurons that had higher CREB levels. Thomas longer time span did not remind them of the shock chamber,
Rogerson and Balaji Jayaprakash, both then in my lab, began by and they did not freeze. In general, with time intervals much
engineering amygdala neurons to produce more CREB and longer than a day, memories remain unlinked.
channelrhodopsin 2 (ChR2), an ion channel activated by blue These behavioral findings were exciting, but they did not test
light. We then showed that we could artificially trigger recall of a key prediction of the hypothesis—that discrete memories
a fear memory in mice when we used the light to turn
on amygdala neurons with higher CREB but not ones
with lesser levels of the protein, confirming that the
memory was stored in those neurons. A key prediction of our
LINKING UP hypothesis was that
IN 2009 I WAS ASKED to write an article on our memory
research, and I took that opportunity to introduce our discrete memories formed
ideas on how memories are linked over time. CREB’s
ability to regulate which cells form a given memory— at closely spaced intervals
in other words, memory allocation—led me to the hy-
pothesis that this process may be key to the ability to Dàyåï¹àymx´ïyåD®y
connect separate memories, what my lab now calls
the “allocate to link” hypothesis. Because memory al- brain area in overlapping
location occurs in a subset of neurons having higher
CREB that are more easily activated, this process populations of neurons.
primes these neurons to readily store another memo-
ry. When two memories share many of the same neu-
rons, they are formally linked. formed at closely spaced intervals are stored in the same brain
Consequently, activation of those neurons during recall of area in overlapping populations of neurons. This physical over-
one of the two memories triggers recall of the other. Key to this lap links the two memories, so that the recall of one brings to
idea was the prediction that two memories formed closer in mind the other.
time—both within a day—are more likely to be linked than
when they are separated by longer periods. With intervals VISUALIZING MEMORIES
much longer than a day, the second memory no longer benefits TO REALLY TEST the allocate-to-link hypothesis would require
from the excitability triggered by the first memory and so is nothing short of being able to see memories in the brain as they
stored in a different population of neurons. The time-limited were being created. Techniques for imaging neurons in live
nature of memory linking makes sense because events that mice are already in use, but they all required that the heads of
occur within the span of a day are far more likely to be relevant the mice be fixed to large microscopes, a setup not conducive to
to one another than those separated by, say, a week. the behavioral experiments needed to test the hypothesis.
Writing the article and outlining these ideas drew me even I find it amazing, though, how many times in my career the
more to the challenge of how we might test them. The allocate- right technique has come along just when we need it the most.
to-link hypothesis was straightforward, but it was not at all I happened to attend a seminar at U.C.L.A., given by Mark
clear how we would confirm its legitimacy. Testing had to wait Schnitzer of Stanford, that described a tiny microscope his lab
for the right time. had just invented that could visualize the activity of neurons in
The situation changed when Denise J. Cai and Justin Shobe, freely moving mice. This two- to three-gram microscope can be
both then in my lab, joined the project. Cai came up with a clever mounted like a hat on an animal’s head. The instrument was what
idea. Together with Shobe, she exposed mice to two chambers our group needed to track the neurons activated by a given mem-
during the same day within an interval of five hours, hoping that ory. It allowed us to determine if these same neurons become
the memories of the two chambers would be linked. Later she active a few hours later during the creation of another memory,
gave them a mild paw shock in the second chamber. As expected, an essential prediction of the allocate-to-link hypothesis.
when she subsequently placed the mice in the chamber where We were so excited by the promise of this wonderful inven-
they received the shock, they froze, presumably because they tion that we decided to engineer our own version of the micro-

scope. We teamed up with Peyman Golshani’s and Baljit Khakh’s
labs, both at U.C.L.A., and together we hired a talented postdoc-
toral fellow, Daniel Aharoni, who went on to engineer what we
came to call the U.C.L.A. miniscopes. Similar to the Schnitzer
Memory Makers
microscopes, our miniscopes are equipped with a lens that
Key brain regions play a role in forming memories. The amyg-
could be embedded near the brain cells we wanted to record
dala is essential for memories with emotional content, and the
from. The device is snapped onto a base plate secured to the
hippocampus is involved in creating memories of experiences.
animal’s skull, holding it stable during training tasks and mem-
My laboratory performed a mouse experiment that showed
ory testing. Just as we borrowed techniques from other re-
that cells in which my team increased the levels of a protein
searchers, we were also glad to share. We are avid supporters of
called CREB were more likely to encode a memory. —A.J.S.
the open-source movement in science and have made our
designs and software for the U.C.L.A. miniscopes available to
hundreds of other groups worldwide.
To visualize the activity of neurons with the miniscopes, Cai
and her colleague Tristan Shuman took advantage of an imag- Human
ing technique that genetically engineers neurons in an animal brain
so that they fluoresce when calcium levels in the cells rise—it is
known as a genetically encoded calcium indicator.
We decided to focus on the CA1 region of the hippocampus
because of its role in learning and remembering places, such as
the chambers that we had used in our behavioral experiments.
The mice wearing their miniscope hats were placed in the two
chambers. We wanted to know whether the time interval be-
tween exposures to the different chambers affected which neu-
rons were activated. Amygdala
The results were more than we had expected! Essentially our Hippocampus
miniscope and behavioral experiments showed that when the
mice linked the memories of the two chambers, many of the CA1
neurons that became active when the animals visited the first
chamber were also switched on when they explored in the sec-
ond chamber. If the interval between visits was about five
●
1 In a mouse experiment,
a virus was responsible
hours, the mice formed two memories in a similar cluster of for delivering into the cell
neurons. When the time lapse increased to seven days, this extra copies of the gene that
encodes the CREB protein.
overlapping pattern of activation did not appear. CREB gene
We were delighted by this finding because it confirmed a basic
premise of the allocate-to-link hypothesis: memories couple when Virus
they are stored in overlapping populations of neurons. If you lat-
er reactivate an ensemble of neurons formed for either of two
memories, it stimulates the other one and facilitates its recall.
TAGGING MEMORIES
TO FURTHER VALIDATE the miniscope results, Cai turned to anoth-
er method developed by neuroscientist Mark Mayford, now at
DNA
●
2 Added
CREB spurred
the University of California, San Diego. This experiment in-
the making of ion
volved Mayford’s technique, called the TetTag system (for tetra- channels that are
cycline tag). When a memory is formed during a transgenic transported to
mouse’s visit to a chamber, TetTag marks activated neurons the cell surface,
with a fluorescent marker that remains intact for weeks. CREB- Neuron making the cell
encoded more excitable.
Postmortem studies of the animals can then compare the protein Ion
recently activated neurons—tagged by genes that are expressed regulates channel
immediately after memory formation—with those marked by other genes Neighboring
Synapse
the long-lasting tag. This step identifies not only neurons neuron
switched on by one event—in which case a neuron features a
single fluorescing tag—but also those activated by two occur- ●
3 Increased
CREB allows
rences: the glowing of both tags.
a neuron to be
Using the same experimental setup as before, Cai and her activated more readily,
team showed that during a short, five-hour interval, the overlap facilitating formation
between the neurons encoding each of two memories with dou- of a new memory.
ble tags was significantly greater than would be expected by
Illustrations by Tami Tolpa July 2017, ScientificAmerican.com 35

Remembrance of (Linked) Things Past
The “Proustian moment”—when one recollection leads to a mouse does not remember cages A and C together if the time
the next—has now gained a solid footing in the brain sciences. period is separated by seven days. The linked recall of cages B
Experiments have shown that a mouse exposed to two cham- and C takes place because many of the same neurons used to
bers—say, B and C—links the two together in its memory if store the memories of the two cages turn on at the same time,
xĀÇ¸äxlî¸îxîÿ¸x³`§¸äøßxäDîD³³îxßþD§¸þx¸øßäÍ
øî unlike those for cages A and C.
Cage A Cage B Cage C

7 days 5 hours
Neurons lit up as
mice explored the
interior of each
of the three cages.
Neurons that were activated

in both cages B and C
Fewer of the same Neurons that were activated

neurons lit up in both in both cages A and C
cages after a seven-day
interval (cages A and C )
than for the shorter,
ÿy¹ùàï®yDÈ
(cages B and C ).
FROM “A SHARED NEURAL ENSEMBLE LINKS DISTINCT CONTEXTUAL MEMORIES ENCODED CLOSE
chance. For a seven-day interval, the overlap between two expe- of Toyama in Japan took this analysis a step further. They used
riences was not significantly above the level of chance. optogenetics to inactivate the group of cells that was shared by
%5$jÛ
?%3 Î5"Îj%NATURE,<'"Îñè 7%÷j÷ĈÀêÊneuron images)
Other experiments by Josselyn’s Toronto team provided still two different emotional memories while leaving other cells
more evidence of the validity of our memory-linking hypothe- undisturbed, including those that were unique to each of the
sis. Not only did her group carry out a different version of the two memories. The investigators showed that by inactivating
neuronal tagging experiment, the scientists also found inde- the shared cells, they were able to disrupt the linking between
pendent behavioral evidence for memory linking. The Toronto the two memories without affecting recall of each individual
researchers reasoned that if populations of neurons encoding memory. This elegant experiment provided direct evidence that
two memories overlapped, increases in CREB levels triggered the neurons shared by two memories are key for memory link-
by the first memory would also strengthen a second memory. ing. It also added to the number of labs that provided indepen-
But instead of exposing the mice to different places, as in our dent evidence for our fledgling allocate-to-link hypothesis.
work, Josselyn’s team trained the animals to learn to recognize
two different tones. Training on the first tone strengthened the IMPROVING MEMORY IN AGING
memory of a second tone if the two training sessions occurred NEXT, WE DECIDED TO STUDY memory linking in older mice. Com-
within six hours but not from six to 24 hours. pared with young mice, older mice have lower levels of CREB in
Recently Kaoru Inokuchi and his colleagues at the University the brain, including in neurons in the CA1 area of the hippo-

campus, and consequently lower excitability. Knowing that, we these cells may not have been the right ones. What is more, we may
predicted that aging mice should run into difficulties in linking not have triggered the right levels of excitability.
memories. So Cai and her colleagues set about repeating many But the experiment worked. The key for this type of Hail
of the same experiments we had already completed in older ani- Mary trial is to balance investment in time and money with the
mals. The results surprised us. Experienced scientists know that potential payoff that may be forthcoming. Nevertheless, in this
hypotheses are just tools. We do not expect them to be necessar- case, I can safely say that luck was on our side. By restoring
ily right. Inevitable failures help us to reshape our ideas along increases in excitability in a specific subset of CA1 neurons of
the way. But this time, our hunches proved correct. middle-aged mice, we were able to allocate the two memories to
I still remember when Cai burst into my office, slightly out many of the same CA1 neurons and thus restore memory link-
of breath. She told me that the middle-aged mice, despite re- ing in these middle-aged mice.
membering each individual chamber, indeed had problems Research from other labs in both rodents and humans has also
linking the memories, even when they were exposed to them elucidated how one memory can be intertwined with another.
five hours apart, an interval that presented no difficulty for Neuroscientist Howard Eichenbaum of Boston University dem-
younger mice. Compared with the young adult mice, the mini- onstrated that rats are capable of finding connections between
memories that share content. Neuroscientist Ali-
son Preston of the University of Texas at Austin
and her colleagues showed that when memories
Understanding how memories share content, humans can link them more easi-
ly. Recalling one will likely bring back the other.
become intertwined with The growing arsenal of tools at our disposal
one another may help develop to measure and control neural activity is begin-
ning to unravel the mechanisms our brain uses
treatments for memory to organize information. Our team is now trying

to extend this work in new ways. Together with
problems common to many computational neuroscientist Panayiota Poirazi

of the Institute of Molecular Biology and Bio-
psychiatric disorders. technology at the Foundation for Research and
Technology–Hellas in Greece, we are building
computer models to simulate how and when
memories link up. We are also trying to figure
scope imaging of the older animals revealed a lack of overlap out the mechanisms that control the time intervals needed for
between stored memories. memory linking in different brain structures.
We were both excited but also skeptical, so we went right back So far a number of broad-ranging experiments carried out
and repeated the experiments. The second time around, the by multiple labs all strongly support the allocate-to-link hypoth-
results became only more convincing. The neurons in middle- esis. We hope that an understanding of how memories become
aged mice with lower CREB levels did not link memories as eas- entangled may help us to develop treatments for memory prob-
ily as those in young mice. lems that are common across a wide swath of psychiatric condi-
These results emboldened us to broaden the scope of our tions, from age-related cognitive decline to schizophrenia,
investigation. Could we increase artificially the excitability of a depression and bipolar disorder. Beyond clinical implications,
subset of CA1 neurons just when the older mice explored the the studies we have described reflect an exciting new era in
two chambers, ensuring that some of the CA1 neurons activated memory research in which the experiments we do are no longer
in one chamber were also switched on when the animals moved limited by the techniques we have at our disposal but by the
to the second? reaches of our imagination.
To accomplish this, we took advantage of a groundbreaking
technique that genetically engineers receptors onto the surface M O R E TO E X P L O R E
of a cell, which allows control over the cell’s function. The tech-
Synaptic Tagging during Memory Allocation. 5¹®Då2¹yàå¹ýïD¨ÎŃature
nique bears the memorable techie acronym DREADD (for Reviews Neuroscience, <¹¨ÎÀj%¹ÎñjÈDyåÀéÀêµè$Dà`÷ĈÀÎ
designer receptors exclusively activated by designer drugs). Memory Integration: Neural Mechanisms and Implications for Behavior.
Activating the DREADD receptors allowed us to turn on the $DàDàyï"Î3`¨`ï´D´m¨å¹´2Î0àyåï¹´Ćurrent Opinion in Behavioral
same subset of CA1 neurons while the animals explored both Sciences, <¹¨ÎÀjÈDyåÀ~èyUàùDàĂ÷ĈÀÎ
Finding the Engram. 3yy´DÎ ¹ååy¨ĂýïD¨ÎŃature Reviews Neuroscience, <¹¨ÎÀêj
chambers, thereby forging a link between their memories of the
%¹ÎµjÈDyå÷Àñè3yÈïy®Uyà÷ĈÀÎ
two enclosures. A Shared Neural Ensemble Links Distinct Contextual Memories Encoded Close
I must confess that at first the idea for this experiment sounded in Time. y´åy ÎDyïD¨ÎŃature, <¹¨ÎñjÈDyåÀÀÀÀ~è ùý÷j÷ĈÀêÎ
preposterous. There are any number of reasons why it could have ¹®Èyïï¹ÚyïĀyy´´àD®å´ùy´`yåyDà$y®¹àĂ¹à®Dï¹´D´m2y`D¨¨Î
failed. For one thing, memories for places involve many millions of å® Î2DåmyïD¨Î´Science, <¹¨ÎññjÈDyåñ~ññ~éè ù¨Ă÷÷j÷ĈÀêÎ
neurons spread throughout multiple interconnected brain regions, FROM OUR ARCHIVES
not just the CA1 region. Aging could have affected memory-linking
Making Memories Stick. 2Î¹ù¨Dåy¨måèyUàùDàĂ÷ĈĈÎ
processes in many, if not all, of these areas. Thus, even if we were
successful in increasing excitability in a subset of CA1 neurons, s c i e n t i f i c a m e r i c a n . c o m /m a g a z i n e /s a

BLACK
from the

HOLES
Beginning¸5wx
COSMOLOGY
More than a billion
A hidden population of black years ago two black holes
in the distant universe spiraled
holes born less than one second around each other in a deathly
after the big bang could solve dance until they merged. This
spiraling collision was so vio-
the mystery of dark matter lent that it shook the fabric
By Juan García-Bellido and Sébastien Clesse of spacetime, sending perturba-
Illustration by Kenn Brown, Mondolithic Studios tions—gravitational waves—
rippling outward through the
cosmos at the speed of light.
In September 2015, after travel-
ing more than a billion light-
years, those ripples washed
over our planet, registering
as a “chirp” in the sensors
of the Advanced Laser Inter-
ferometer Gravitational-Wave
Observatory (LIGO).
This was the first direct detection of gravi-

tational waves, and the observation con-
firmed Albert Einstein’s century-old predic-
tion of their existence. Yet the chirp revealed
that each of the merger’s progenitor black
IN BRIEF
holes was 30 times heavier than the sun. That
The nature of dark matter—the invisible formed shortly after the big bang are an is, their masses were two to three times larger
material that holds galaxies together by alternative candidate for dark matter. Yet than ordinary black holes born from super-
its gravity—is a deep cosmic enigma. these, too, have so far eluded detection. nova explosions of massive stars. These black
Many researchers suspect dark matter More evidence for primordial black holes holes were so heavy, it is hard to explain how
is made of weakly interacting massive may emerge in new data from gravita-
they formed from stars at all. Furthermore,
particles and have been seeking them tional-wave detectors and other observa-
even if two such black holes did independent-
in experiments. But to date, no such ï¹àyåÎ`¹´à®ymï¹yāåïjïyåy¹U¦y`ïå
“WIMPs” have been found. could solve the mystery of dark matter ly form from the deaths of very massive stars,
“Primordial” black holes that may have and several other cosmic conundrums. they would have then had to find each other
and merge—an event with an exceedingly low

probability of occurring within the current age of the universe. It is
thus reasonable to suspect that these massive black holes formed Juan García-Bellido is a theoretical physicist and professor
at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Madrid. His research
via some other, more exotic pathway that might not involve stars
interests are the early universe, dark energy, black holes and
at all. Beyond its detection of gravitational waves, it may be that quantum gravity. García-Bellido is an active member of the
LIGO has unveiled something even more extraordinary: black Dark Energy Survey and the European Space Agency missions
holes that predate the formation of the stars themselves. Euclid and Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA).
Although such “primordial” black holes have never before
been seen, some theoretical models suggest they could have Sébastien Clesse is a Belgian cosmologist and postdoctoral
formed in astronomical numbers from the hot, dense plasma that researcher at RWTH Aachen University in Germany. His
filled the cosmos less than one second after the big bang. This hid- é«ÍZ«èrÍÒZ«Ò¡Z§DÜ«§d¡«frfÍDèÜëD§fµÍ¡«Íf-
al black holes. Clesse is an active member of the Euclid mis-
den population could solve several outstanding mysteries in mod- sion and of the Square Kilometer Array collaboration.
ern cosmology. In particular, primordial black holes could consti-
tute some, if not all, of dark matter—the invisible 85 percent of the
matter in the universe that acts as gravitational glue to hold galax-
ies and galaxy clusters together. Further studies with LIGO and
other facilities will soon test these ideas, potentially unleashing a Model of particle physics, but they remain at least as elusive as
new revolution in our understanding of the cosmos. MACHOs. To date, no evidence of their existence has been found
despite decades of searches using particle accelerators, under-
THE FALL OF MACHOS, THE RISE OF WIMPS ground detectors and space telescopes. As null results piled up in
BLACK HOLES would initially seem to be ideal candidates for dark the search for WIMPs, some researchers began reconsidering the
matter because they emit no light. Indeed, along with other dark MACHO hypothesis, focusing particularly on primordial black
objects such as planets and brown dwarfs, they make up one long- holes. But what process could have seeded these strange objects
proposed solution to the dark matter problem: MACHOs, short throughout the observable universe, and how could they have
for massive compact halo objects. Found both in spherical halos eluded detection for so long?
surrounding each galaxy and near each galaxy’s luminous center,
MACHOs would create the gravitational pull responsible for the BLACK HOLES FROM THE BIG BANG
otherwise anomalous motions of stars and gas that astronomers PHYSICISTS BERNARD CARR AND STEPHEN HAWKING proposed the idea
observe in the outskirts of galaxies. Simply put, galaxies seem to of primordial black holes in the 1970s, although they considered
be rotating too fast to be held together by the visible mass in stars only black holes with masses smaller than that of a mountain.
that we observe. Dark matter provides the extra pull to prevent Such minuscule black holes would have already evaporated and
spinning galaxies from flinging off their stars. vanished within the age of our nearly 14-billion-year-old universe,
If MACHOs make up most of the universe’s dark matter, they via a quantum-mechanical process discovered by Hawking and
must also account for other observations. Whatever dark matter appropriately called Hawking radiation. Consequently, Carr and
is, it shapes the universe’s largest structures, determining the ori- Hawking’s primordial black holes would have a negligible contri-
gin and growth of galaxies as well as clusters and superclusters of bution to the universe’s current amount of dark matter.
galaxies. These objects coalesce from the gravitational collapse of The possibility that massive primordial black holes could actu-
clumps of gas inside dark matter halos. Cosmologists have pre- ally be most or even all of the dark matter hinges on an idea
cisely mapped the spatial distribution of these clumps through known as cosmic inflation, first proposed by physicist Alan Guth
deep and wide galaxy surveys and correlated them with tiny tem- in the early 1980s. Inflation is a hypothetical phase of prodigious
perature fluctuations present in the cosmic microwave back- expansion immediately after the big bang. In 10–35 second, two
ground (CMB), the big bang’s all-sky afterglow. The diffuse mass points separated by less than an atomic radius would have be-
of dark matter in large galaxies and clusters also bends space to come separated by four light-years, a distance comparable to that
distort the light from far distant background objects—a phenom- of the closest stars. Moreover, during inflation tiny quantum fluc-
enon known as gravitational lensing. tuations are magnified to macroscopic scales by the rapid expan-
The MACHO hypothesis, however, fell from favor a decade ago sion, seeding the growing universe with underdense and over-
when MACHOs did not turn up in tentative, indirect searches for dense regions of matter and energy from which all cosmic struc-
their existence. Most notably, astronomers looked for them via tures subsequently emerge. As bizarre as it may seem, the theory
microlensing, a variety of gravitational lensing in which a black of inflation is strongly supported by observations of such density
hole, a brown dwarf or even a planet passes in front of a back- fluctuations in the CMB.
ground star and temporarily magnifies the star’s light. Several In 1996 one of us (García-Bellido), together with Andrei Linde
multiyear microlensing surveys of millions of stars in the Large of Stanford University and David Wands of the University of
and Small Magellanic Clouds, the main satellite galaxies of the Portsmouth in England, discovered a way for inflation to form
Milky Way, found no evidence that MACHOs made up the entire- sharp peaks in the spectrum of density fluctuations in the early
ty of our galactic halo. These results were conclusive enough to universe [see box on opposite page]. That is, we showed how quan-
rule out MACHOs up to around 10 solar masses as the primary tum fluctuations enormously magnified by inflation would natu-
constituent of dark matter. As these surveys took place, theorists rally produce particularly dense regions that would collapse to
built the case for an alternative hypothesis—WIMPs, or weakly inform a population of black holes less than one second after infla-
teracting massive particles. tion ends. Such black holes would then behave as dark matter and
WIMPs are predicted by certain extensions of the Standard would dominate the matter content of the present-day universe.

Black Holes Birthed by the Big Bang
5xø³þxßäxÜäßäîU§D`¦¸§xä may have been born in the earli- just a second after the big bang, forming so-called primordial
est moments of cosmic time, when all was a seething, thick fog black holes (PBHs) that would then shape the structure of the
of fundamental particles. In the 1970s theorists realized that evolving, expanding universe. Emitting no light, PBHs would be
dense regions of that fog could collapse under their own gravity D³DîøßD§D§Uxîl`ø§îî¸lxîx`î`D³llDîx¸ßlDß¦DîîxßÍ
Primordial Black Holes Form in Clusters

à¹DmàDý¹ù`ïùDï¹´åĆyåàyåù¨ïå
Large
´Dï¹´DÈà¹È¹åymD``yÿàDï¹´ï¹ïyù´ÿyàåyÝåyāÈD´å¹´ÿååïD´ in broad range of PBH masses
High peak
Fluctuation Amplitude
Dåy`¹´mDïyàïyUUD´Ā¹ù¨m¹à®0
åUĂ®D´Ă´ÕùD´ïù®
ù`ïùDï¹´åï¹®®y´åyå`DÿåÎå´Dï¹ý´mymjïyåyù`ïùDï¹´å equates to
Ā¹ù¨m`àyDïymy´åïĂÈyàïùàUDï¹´åïDïïy´¹à®0
åÎ"Dàyàj®¹ày more PBHs
È¹Āyàù¨ù`ïùDï¹´åĀ¹ù¨m`àyDïy®¹ày®DååÿyD´m´ù®yà¹ùå0
åÎ
5yDùï¹àåÝ´Dï¹´DàĂ®¹my¨Èàym`ïåDUà¹DmÈyD§¹®Dým
ù`ïùDï¹´åD´mDàDý¹ my´åïĂÈyàïùàUDï¹´åjÈà¹mù`´0
å´
3ïD´mDàm´Dï¹´®¹my¨
`¨ùåïyàåjĀïyD`0
àD´´à¹®¹ýÀĈĈïï¹ÀĈjĈĈĈï®yåïy®Dåå
Small
¹¹ùàåù´ÎD¨D®¨¨¹´ĂyDàåDïyàïyUUD´jD`¨ùåïyà®ïåÈD´ Authors’ model
ù´màymå¹¨ïĂyDàåD´m`¹´ïD´®¨¨¹´å¹0
åÎåïy0
åĀï´ Small scales Large scales
åù``¨ùåïyàå®yàymï¹yïyàjå`DïïyàymDÈDàïjD´mym¹´¹àm´DàĂDå Fluctuation Size
D´mmùåïjïyĂĀ¹ù¨mùmyïyà¹Āï¹D¨DāyåD´mD¨D`ï``¨ùåïyàåÎ
y´åïĂù`ïùDï¹´å Time
Period
¹´Dï¹´
First stars
(10-35
second) (about 100 million
years after big bang)
Big bang Large density
Primordial ù`ïùDï¹´å`¹¨¨DÈåy
black holes later and form
es
more massive black holes

ag
rk
Expansion accelerates (about 8 billion years

Da
after big bang)
Cosmic microwave
background
(about 380,000 years ´àåï
after big bang) billion years
Seeds of Cosmic Structure

The largest PBHs could be seeds for
supermassive black holes and galaxies
formed a billion years after the big bang.
Today PBH clusters would lurk as unseen Today
dark matter in and around galaxies. (13.7 billion years
Supermassive Remaining PBHs after big bang)
black hole seed orbit massive galaxies
This model generated a population of black holes with the same tions exhibit a broad peak in their energy densities and spatial siz-
mass, determined by the amount of energy within the collapsing es, giving rise to primordial black holes with a wide range of mass-
region. Many other groups then started exploring these ideas es. A key consequence of this scenario is the fact that large density
within different models of inflation. fluctuations collapse in close spatial proximity to one another, gen-
In 2015 the two of us (Clesse and García-Bellido) proposed a erating clusters of black holes of different masses—from one 100th
scenario, similar to that of 1996, in which these primordial fluctua- to 10,000 times the mass of our sun. Within half a million years of
Illustration by Jen Christiansen and George Retseck (density-fluctuation panels) July 2017, ScientificAmerican.com 41

the big bang, each growing, evolving
cluster could contain millions of pri- Is Dark Matter Made of
mordial black holes in a volume just
hundreds of light-years across.
Primordial Black Holes?
Such clusters of primordial black 5xäx¸UäxßþDî¸³äÿ§§D¦xîxlxßx³`xi
holes would be sufficiently dense to
explain LIGO’s mysterious black hole 1. Detecting more gravitational waves
mergers, which one would not other- Gravitational-wave detectors such as the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-
wise expect to occur with regularity. Wave Observatory (LIGO) in the U.S. and Advanced Virgo in Italy should detect more black
From time to time, the trajectories of hole mergers. The detection of an unexpectedly large number of massive black hole mergers
two primordial black holes within a would be a hint for a primordial origin but would not by itself prove that primordial black
cluster can cross, so that both objects holes constitute dark matter. Such proof will have to emerge from corroboration via other
become gravitationally bound to each observations. Ultimately, detecting a black hole with a mass lower than the so-called Chan-
other. They would then spiral closer drasekhar limit (1.45 solar masses), below which stars cannot produce a black hole, would be
together for up to millions of years, the undeniable sign of a primordial origin. Fortunately, LIGO may very soon reach the sensi-
radiating gravitational waves until they tivity to detect such a black hole if its companion is more massive (greater than 10 solar
merge. In January 2015 we actually pre- DääxäÊÍ³D§§āj¸³`¸ä¸§¸`D§ä`D§xäjDUø³lD³îU§D`¦¸§xU³Dßxää¸ø§l³lø`xDløäx
dicted that LIGO would detect gravita- background of gravitational waves, which could be detected by the future space-based Laser
tional waves from such massive merg- Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) and by ground-based pulsar timing arrays.
ers—waves identical to those LIGO then
detected later that year. Our estimates 2. Discovering more ultrafaint dwarf galaxies
for the rate of merger events within In 2015 astronomers using data from the Dark Energy Survey collaboration discovered doz-
primordial black hole clusters fit per- x³ä¸ø§îßDD³îlÿDßD§DĀxä³îxD§D`î`D§¸jD³l³îDîäøxäîäø³lßxlä¸äø`
fectly within the limits set by LIGO. If dark matter–dominated dwarf galaxies could orbit around the Milky Way. If dark matter is
LIGO and other similar facilities detect made of primordial black holes, most of them should reside in such dwarf galaxies, a large
many more mergers within the next few number of which could be detected with future space-based facilities such as the European
years, it may be possible to determine Space Agency’s Euclid mission and NASA’s Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST).
the range of masses and spins for all the 3. Measuring variations in the position of stars
progenitor black holes. Such a statisti- The ESA’s ongoing Gaia mission is measuring the positions and velocities of about one
cal analysis of black hole mergers would billion stars in the Milky Way with unprecedented precision. These measurements may re-
provide crucial information for testing veal the presence of numerous isolated massive black holes via the tiny variations those
their potentially primordial origins. objects have on the motions of neighboring stars.
A key aspect of this scenario is that
it evades the constraints on MACHOs 4. Mapping neutral cosmic hydrogen
previously set by gravitational micro-
x¸ßxD³lløß³îx¸ßDî¸³¸îxßäîäîDßäjîxø³þxßäxÿDä¸äî§ā`¸Ç¸äxl¸
lensing experiments—constraints that neutral hydrogen, which emits characteristic radiation at a radio wavelength of 21 centi-
ruled out black holes of up to about 10 meters. As early as 2020, the Square Kilometer Array (SKA), planned to be the largest
solar masses as the main constituent radio telescope ever built, will begin making an all-sky map of this 21-centimeter signal.
of dark matter. If primordial black The accretion of matter by primordial black holes creates intense x-ray radiation, ionizing
holes exist and possess a wide range of the surrounding neutral hydrogen and imprinting signatures on this 21-centimeter all-sky
masses, only a small fraction would be map. SKA should thus detect the presence of massive primordial black holes if they
visible to these microlensing experi- account for the dark matter.
ments, with the bulk remaining invisi- 5. Probing distortions of the cosmic microwave background
ble. And if primordial black holes are X-rays from primordial black holes gorging on gas and dust in the early universe should
grouped in clusters, this arrangement also induce distortions on the spectrum of the cosmic microwave background. The impor-
suggests a probability of less than one îD³`x¸îäxx`îääî§§`¸³îß¸þxßäD§j³ÇDßî`ø§Dß³¸lx§äÿxßxÇß¸ßlD§U§D`¦¸§xä
in 1,000 that a cluster would happen to are grouped in dense clusters. Nevertheless, NASAÜä0ß¸ßlD§³Dî¸³ĀÇ§¸ßxßÉ0>Ê
be along the line of sight of the stars in mission concept has been proposed to accurately measure such distortions, which should
the nearby satellite galaxies monitored strongly constrain models of primordial black hole dark matter.
for microlensing events.
To avoid this effect, one could
search for microlensing events else-
where in the sky, looking for the magnified light from stars in and a few solar masses could easily account for about 20 percent
the Milky Way’s neighboring Andromeda galaxy or even from of the mass in a typical galactic halo. This value is consistent
quasars in far distant galaxies. In this way, one could probe a with our broad-mass primordial black hole scenario.
much larger volume of galactic halos for signs of MACHOs—that Simply put, we cannot yet rule out the possibility that dark
is, for primordial black holes. Recent observations suggest that matter is mostly made up of primordial black holes. Indeed,
whereas MACHOs of up to 10 solar masses may not make up the this proposed scenario could decipher several other cosmic
entirety of an average galaxy’s halo, MACHOs between one tenth mysteries related to dark matter and galaxy formation.

MANY PROBLEMS, ONE SOLUTION globular clusters of stars. In short, primordial black holes may
CLUSTERS OF PRIMORDIAL BLACK HOLES could clear up the so-called be the missing link between conventional stellar-mass black
missing satellite problem—the apparent lack of “dwarf ” satel- holes and SMBHs. The observational case for this scenario is
lite galaxies that should form around massive galaxies such as building rapidly: recent detections of unexpectedly abundant
our Milky Way. Current simulations modeling the cosmic distri- x-ray sources in the early universe are most easily explained by
bution of dark matter accurately replicate the universe’s large numbers of primordial black holes producing x-rays as
observed large-scale structure, in which halos of dark matter they gorge on gas less than one billion years after the big bang.
pull galaxy clusters into giant filaments and sheets surrounding
great voids of lower density. On smaller scales, however, these SEEING IN THE DARK
simulations predict the existence of numerous subhalos of dark EVEN THOUGH massive primordial black holes could solve the
matter orbiting around massive galaxies. Each of these subha- mystery of dark matter, as well as many other long-standing
los should host a dwarf galaxy, and hundreds should surround problems of cosmology, the game is not yet over. Other models
the Milky Way. Yet astronomers have found far fewer dwarf gal- and explanations are still possible, and future observations
axies than predicted. should allow us to distinguish among the alternatives. Indeed,
Many potential explanations for the missing satellite prob- within the next few years several observations could test the
lem exist, mainly the notion that simulations fail to fully account primordial black hole scenario [see box on opposite page]. They
for the influence of ordinary matter (hydrogen and helium in include the detection of ultrafaint dwarf galaxies, the influence
stars) on the formation and behavior of the predicted dwarf gal- of massive primordial black holes on the positions of stars in
axies. Our scenario suggests that if clustered primordial black the Milky Way, the mapping of neutral hydrogen during the
holes made up most dark matter, they would dominate the sub- first epoch of star formation and the study of distortions in the
halos surrounding the Milky Way, absorbing a fraction of ordi- cosmic microwave background.
nary matter and reducing the rate of star formation in the sub- Beyond these experiments, we also now possess a complete-
halos. Moreover, even if these subhalos vigorously formed stars, ly new tool to unravel the mysteries of the universe in the form
these stars could easily be ejected by close encounters with mas- of Advanced LIGO and other gravitational-wave detectors. If in-
sive primordial black holes. Both effects would greatly reduce deed LIGO has detected merging members of a hidden popula-
the brightness of the satellites, making them very hard to detect tion of massive primordial black holes, we should expect many
without wide-field cameras of exquisite sensitivity. Fortunately, more to be detected in coming years. In June 2016 Advanced
such cameras now exist, and astronomers have already used LIGO scientists presented to the community a second detection
them to discover dozens of ultrafaint dwarf galaxies surround- of gravitational waves, emitted during the merging of two black
ing the Milky Way. These objects appear to host up to hundreds holes, of 14 and eight solar masses, respectively, as well as a ten-
of times more dark matter than luminous stars, and our model tative hint of another merger of black holes of 23 and 13 solar
predicts that thousands more should orbit our galaxy. masses. As we finalized this article, they claimed to have detect-
Simulations also predict a population of galaxies intermedi- ed six additional merging events. These detections suggest that
ate in size between dwarf galaxies and massive galaxies. Such binary black holes are much more frequent than expected and
objects are said to be too big to fail because they would be suffi- that they are broadly distributed in mass, in agreement with
ciently large to readily form stars and be easily seen. Still, they our scenario of massive primordial black holes.
have not turned up in astronomers’ searches of the Milky Way’s Taken together these new experiments and observations
vicinity. This too-big-to-fail problem has a solution similar to could confirm the existence of primordial black holes and their
that of the missing satellite problem: massive primordial black possible linkage to the universe’s missing matter. Soon we may
holes in the cores of intermediate-sized galaxies could eject no longer be in the dark about dark matter.
stars and star-forming gas from these objects, rendering them
effectively invisible to most surveys.
Primordial black holes could also resolve the origin of super- MORE TO EXPLORE
massive black holes (SMBHs). These monsters weigh from mil- y´åïĂ0yàïùàUDï¹´åD´m
¨D`§¹ÿ¹à®Dï¹´´ĂUàm´Dï¹´ÎJuan
lions to billions of solar masses and are observed at the centers García-Bellido, Andrei Linde and David Wands in Physical Review D, Vol. 54, No. 10,
pages 6040–6058; November 15, 1996.
of quasars and massive galaxies very early in the universe’s his-
$Dååÿy0à®¹àmD¨
¨D`§¹ÿåà¹®ĂUàm´Dï¹´DåDà§$DïïyàD´mïy
tory. Yet if these SMBHs formed and grew from the gravitation- 3yymå¹D¨DāyåÎSébastien Clesse and Juan García-Bellido in Physical Review D,
al collapse of the universe’s first stars, they should not have Vol. 92, No. 2, Article No. 023524; July 15, 2015.
acquired such gigantic masses in such a relatively short time— Did LIGO Detect Dark Matter? Simeon Bird et al. in Physical Review Letters,
less than a billion years after the big bang. Vol. 116, No. 20, Article No. 201301; May 20, 2016.
In our scenario, although most primordial black holes have LIGO Gravitational Wave Detection, Primordial Black Holes, and the Near-IR
¹å®`´àDàym
D`§à¹ù´m´å¹ïà¹ÈyåÎA . Kashlinsky in Astrophysical
just tens of solar masses, a very small fraction will be far heavi- Journal Letters, Vol. 823, No. 2, Article No. L25; June 1, 2016.
er, ranging from hundreds to tens of thousands of solar masses. The Clustering of Massive Primordial Black Holes as Dark Matter: Measuring
Born less than a second after the big bang, these monstrous 5yà$DåååïàUùï¹´ĀïmÿD´`ym"'ÎSébastien Clesse and Juan
objects would then act as giant seeds for the formation of the García-Bellido in Physics of the Dark Universe, Vol. 15, pages 142–147; March 2017.
first galaxies and quasars, which would rapidly develop SMBHs FROM OUR ARCHIVES
at their centers. Such seeds could also account for the existence
$ĂåïyàĂ¹ïymmy´¹å®¹åÎBogdan A. Dobrescu and Don Lincoln; July 2015.
of intermediate-mass black holes possessing 1,000 to a million
solar masses observed orbiting SMBHs and at the centers of s c i e n t i f i c a m e r i c a n . c o m /m a g a z i n e /s a

HOW
SUSTAINABLE CITIE S
CITIES
SPECIAL REPORT
COULD SAVE US
Urban areas can improve the planet as well as
people’s lives if we design them to be much more
resourceful with energy, water, food and minerals
By William McDonough
IN BRIEF
To be sustainable, cities should be designed Newly designed facilities are pioneering “Positive cities” allow people to live and
according to the circular principles of nature, these principles, including Park 20|20 in the work in the same neighborhoods, creating
including making maximum use of solar radi- Netherlands and NASA’s Sustainability Base àyDïy`y´`yåD´mÈà¹®¹ï´åDyjm´-
ation and treating waste as a resource. in California. ymD´m`àyDïÿy¨ÿyåÎ
44 Scientific American, July 2017 Illustrations by Harry Campbell


C
ITIES ARE HOME TO MORE THAN HALF THE WORLD’S to grow more food in soils that have lost
those minerals. In the circular city, sew-
population, and they exert increasing stress on
age-treatment plants become fertilizer
the earth. They produce up to 70 percent of glob- factories. The carbon, phosphate and ni-
al carbon dioxide emissions, use up vast quanti- trogen flowing out of the facility are seen
ties of water, degrade water quality and produce as potential assets for soil, not as liabili-
ties for the nearest river. Circular cities
mountains of waste. As cities go, so goes the
mine the wastewater for phosphate and
planet. And cities are growing—fast. By 2030, turn it into fertilizer for parks and vegeta-
according to the latest United Nations estimates, five billion peo- ble gardens on city rooftops and for farms
ple will live in cities, nearly half of them conducting their lives and forests surrounding the city. This
process eliminates the need to buy more
in homes, schools, workplaces and parks that do not yet exist.
phosphate from faraway sources and
The challenges in making These laws can be distilled transport it to the U.S. It also avoids the
cities as sustainable as possi- into three key principles: energy and carbon emissions involved in
ble are enormous. But they are equate waste with food; maxi- mining and transport. Ostara Nutrient
also inspiring because cities mize use of solar income; and Recovery Technologies in Vancouver is
can play an outsized role in celebrate diversity. one of several companies pioneering
creating solutions for a more Waste does not exist in na- the collection of the phosphate mineral
sustainable world. Cities are ture, because each organism struvite for fertilizer from sewage sludge.
engines of innovation and en- William McDonough contributes to the health of Eliminating the concept of waste ex-
is an architect who has
trepreneurial energy. As net- the whole. A fruit tree’s blos- tends to all systems, so circular cities de-
pioneered design for
works of city leaders are show- sustainable develop- soms fall to the ground and sign incoming materials for “next use”
ing, municipalities are also ment. He is founder of decompose into food for other instead of “end of life.” For example, new
SUSTAINABLE CITIE S
powerful actors, pooling their William McDonough + living things. Bacteria and technologies allow cell-phone circuit
strengths, setting environ- Partners and McDon- fungi feed on the organic boards to be profitably processed in a
mental agendas and exercis- ough Innovation and waste of both the tree and the clean facility, where all the rare earth min-
co-founder of the Cradle
ing global leadership. From animals that eat its fruit, de- erals and precious metals are recovered
to Cradle Products
megacities to towns, mayors Innovation Institute. positing nutrients in the soil for reuse in new electronic products.
and city councils, investors, that the tree can take up and A second key principle of nature, and
economists and planners are convert into growth. One or- what we might call positive cities, is that
responding to the urgent need to rede- ganism’s waste becomes food for anoth- everything is powered by the sun—and
SPECIAL REPORT
sign the basic elements of fast-growing er. Nutrients flow perpetually in regen- sometimes, as in the Iceland city of Reyk-
cities from the ground up. How they re- erative, cradle to cradle cycles of birth, javík, by geothermal power. Trees and
imagine the urban landscape and how decay and rebirth. Waste equals food. plants manufacture food from sunlight—
they design growth will profoundly in- an elegant, effective system that uses the
fluence the future of all life on earth. OUR CITIES are currently designed for earth’s only perpetual source of energy in-
Many cities are taking important steps linear flow. Biological nutrients (such as come. Buildings can tap into solar income
to reduce air and water pollution. They are food and wood) and technical nutrients by directly converting the sun to energy
being “less bad.” Efficiency in itself, how- (such as metals and plastics) enter at one and by passively collecting the solar radia-
ever, is insufficient to move us to a positive end and are used, then discarded. After tion for heat and natural lighting. Winds—
future. If cities can also be effective and do waste is sifted for valuable recyclables thermal flows fueled by sunlight—can also
“more good,” for example, by converting such as metals, paper and certain plastics, be harnessed. Together solar, wind and
waste back into nutrients for food produc- it flows out the other end, headed for geothermal energy can generate enough
tion, cities can propel us toward a future landfills or incinerators. The process is power cost-effectively to meet the needs
we want, not just reduce the impacts we “take, make, waste.” But just as we have of entire cities and regions, even nations.
do not want. More good, not just less bad. redesigned certain consumer products to Cities such as San Francisco are already
A clear vision for reimagining the city be disassembled, recycled or reused, we making significant progress toward meet-
and its relationship to its surrounding can design cities in a similar, circular fash- ing their commitments to run 100 percent
countryside can be found in replicating ion: take, make, retake, remake, restore. on renewable energy in the next 15 years.
the operating system of the natural In the circular city, wastes become re- The third key principle—diversity—
world. In essence, natural systems oper- sources. Consider sewage. In a linear city, is found in all healthy ecosystems. Each
ate on the free energy of the sun, which wastewater-treatment plants process organism has a unique response to its
interacts with the geochemistry of the food residues and human waste—includ- surroundings that works in concert with
earth to sustain productive, regenerative ing the valuable minerals they contain, other organisms to sustain the system.
biological systems. Human systems, in- such as phosphate—and release the efflu- Each organism fits in its place, and in
cluding cities, that operate by the same ent into rivers as pollution. Farmers then each system the most fitting thrive.
laws can approach the effectiveness of buy more phosphate from Morocco or Urban designers aiming for what fits
living systems. other distant lands to make new fertilizer attend carefully to local ecologies. They as-

B I G D ATA
World population living in cities: 55% turned to nest a week after construction
was completed.
Another model is Sustainability Base,
NASA’s new center for science and comput-
5 Billion
People living in cities by 2030
ing at its Ames Research Center in Moffett
Field, Calif. The facility has the potential to
provide all its heating, cooling and energy
needs—and even an energy surplus—from
solar and geothermal sources and a fuel
cell with advanced energy-management
U.S. cities Residents who controls. Wastewater is treated on-site.
committed to 100% use the bus in The award-winning Park 20|20 devel-
renewable energy: Curitiba, Brazil: opment in Hoofddorp, the Netherlands,
27 85% is another model. It is a diverse set of

buildings and open spaces now being
completed across 28 acres. People can ac-
cess the park easily by air, rail, bus and bi-
cycle. Green zones, plazas, public gardens
sess the geology, hydrology, vegetation and remains for on-site kitchens and bath- and canal boardwalks provide a connec-
climate. They incorporate natural and cul- rooms. Fresh air, flowering plants and day- tion to the larger community. Each build-
tural history. By combining this rich “essay light are everywhere. Buildings and coming’s size, structure and orientation are
of clues,” designers discover appropriate munities function as life-support systems. optimized to capture the sun’s energy and
patterns for the development of the land- With this vision in mind, we can imag- light. Buildings across the park integrate
scape. By doing so, they create possibilities ine food and materials produced in the energy, water and waste-management
for positive growth that supports life. surrounding countryside, created with systems, acting as a single organism.
Ultimately, what we want is a city de- tools and technology made in the city.
signed to allow people to live and work in The city returns waste as a raw material CAN WE EXPAND these successes
the same neighborhood. If residents can that replenishes the system, putting the to entire cities? Inspiration comes from
decompose cell phones at a clean factory “re” back into resources. Everything some intriguing places. One of them
that fits within a city’s ecosystem, there is moves in regenerative cycles, from city is Curitiba, Brazil.
no need to relegate the factory to special to country, country to city, in natural and Curitiba began transforming in the
zones of bad behavior at the outskirts of cultural networks that circulate biological 1970s, under legendary architect and ur-
town. A positive city eliminates the need and technical nutrition—the hardware ban planner Jaime Lerner, who was mayor
for zoning driven by concern about unsafe and software of the 21st century. The me- three different times from the 1970s to the
or unhealthy activities. Factories can be in tabolism of a living, positive city allows 1990s. During his first term Lerner real-
the middle of clean residential neighbor- human settlements and the natural world ized that the poor town of several hundred
hoods, providing jobs so people can live to flourish together. If we are to make our thousand inhabitants needed better pub-
within walking or biking distance. That cities truly sustaining and beneficial for lic transportation. Because a subway or
CLUB (U.S. cities committed to renewable energy); LOW CARBON GREEN GROWTH ROADMAP FOR ASIA AND THE PACIFIC. UNITED
SOURCES: THE WORLD’S CITIES IN 2016: DATA BOOKLET. UNITED NATIONS, 2016 ( population in cities now and in 2030); SIERRA
opportunity, in turn, greatly reduces the all, we need to take this as a literal, strate- heavy rail system would cost far too much,
need for commuting and transportation— gic truth that informs all our designs. he instead asked Volvo to make 270 Swed-
NATIONS ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COMMISSION FOR ASIA AND THE PACIFIC. U.N., 2012 ( bus use in Curitiba, Brazil )
a huge waste of resources and of people’s It is compelling to lay out principles ish articulated buses, done within the city,
time. And if fresh, healthy food is grown for a utopian future. But can existing which gave residents jobs. The city hired
on rooftops across the city, as Method cities actually put them into practice locals to build aboveground, street-side
Products’ new South Side Soapbox facto- today? Some recent industrial facilities bus shelters, or tubos, from which people
ry in Chicago is doing, not only can local are demonstrating how. could travel anywhere for a flat fare. In-
organic waste be a resource for food- The renovation and expansion of the stead of riders paying with a token as they
growing systems, but people working at Ford Rouge Center in Dearborn, Mich., boarded a bus, a slow process, Lerner had
the rooftop farms can live locally as well. transformed the massive, historic car- them prepay when entering the tubo plat-
Imagine everything we make as a ges- and truck-manufacturing complex into form, so when the bus arrived, they could
ture that supports life, inspires delight a model of industrial sustainability. The get on quickly, reducing loading time and
and finds harmony with nature. Buildings master plan incorporated a 10-acre green making the entire system efficient.
operate like trees; they sequester carbon, roof—the heart of a system of wetland As a result of Curitiba’s rapid popula-
make oxygen, distill water, provide habitat gardens, porous paving, hedgerows and tion growth, garbage was piling up in nar-
for thousands of species, and convert so- bioswales. The project turned a 100-year- row alleyways where trucks could not re-
lar income into all the thermal and electri- old industrial brownfield site into a thriv- trieve it. Lerner created a program to in-
cal energy they need—and sell excess pow- ing storm-water ecosystem that captures, struct children how to separate trash, then
er to the neighbors. Buildings with on-site cleanses and slowly releases water to the sent them home to teach their families.
wetlands and botanical gardens recover adjacent Rouge River in ways that sup- In exchange for the sorted garbage, people
nutrients from wastewater and clean what port watershed health. Native killdeer re- were paid in bus tokens or fresh food;

rency for mobility. Suddenly, everyone
was using mass transit. Today 85 percent
TAPPING
Lerofner paid them
Curitiba in a currency
citizens use the bus, for mobili-
and
ty.90 percent
Suddenly, everyoneparticipate wasin using mass Curi-
recycling.
transit. Today 85 percent
tiba recycles 70 percent of of
Curitiba citi-
its refuse—
zens
oneuse of the
the bus, and rates
highest 90 percent
in therecycle.
world.
CuritibaThisrecycles
innovative70 percent
thinking of its refuse—
went on and
one of the highest rates in the world.
THE
on. Instead of building a big central li-
This innovative thinking went on and
brary downtown, the city built a network
on. Instead of building a big central li-
of 50 small “Lighthouses of Knowledge”
brary downtown, the city created a net-
throughout the neighborhoods so that ev-
work of 50 small “Lighthouses of Knowl-
ery child was within walking distance of
edge” throughout the neighborhoods so
a library. Local builders, of course, con-
that every child was within walking dis-
structed the brightly colored buildings.
tance of a library. Local builders, of
TRASH
The libraries work with municipal
course, constructed the brightly colored
schools and offer thousands of books and
buildings. The libraries work with munic-
free
ipal Internet
schools andfor offcitizens
er thousandsages three
of booksto 80.
These and other steps transformed
and free Internet for citizens ages three to the
80.city to a live-work
These and other steps design.transformed
the city to a live-workManhattan
Now imagine if design. had this
same
Nowkind imagineof vision—with
if Manhattan localhad food
thisgrow-
ing on
same kind theofrooftops
vision—with of hundreds
local food of schools
grow-
ingandonhospitals,
the rooftops providing nutrition
of hundreds as well
of schools
as local jobs. Kids could use
and hospitals, providing nutrition as well their optical
assensors
local jobs. known Kidsascould
eyeballs
use to sortoptical
their trash, Transforming costly wastes into valuable
SUSTAINABLE CITIE S
pull out
sensors
cling
pull outcenters
the plastics,
known
so they
the plastics,
bringtothem
as eyeballs
do not
bring
sort to
them endtoup
recy-
trash,
in the
recy-
resources can make cities highly efficient
ocean,
cling and get
centers paiddo
so they innot
toys.endCleanup infacto-
the
ries would
ocean and then then getreformulate
paid in toys. the plastics
Clean By Michael E. Webber
factories would reformulate
into monomers that can bethe used plastics
again.
into monomers
Everything that can be
is powered by used
the sun, again.
and
Everything
materials is flow powered by the sun,
in continuous andof
cycles
materials flowandintechnical
continuous cycles of N DECEMBER 20, 2015, A MOUNTAIN OF URBAN REFUSE COLLAPSED
O
biological nutrition.
SPECIAL REPORT
biological
Whatand we are technical nutrition.
after, for all people, is in Shenzhen, China, killing at least 69 people and destroy-
What we are
something after,call
I would for the
all people,
“good life”—is ing dozens of buildings. The disaster brought to life the
something
a life thatIiswould call the “good
safe, dignified life”—
and creative. towers of waste depicted in the 2008 dystopian children’s
a life that is
Positive safe,are
cities dignifi ed andwhere
the places creative.that movie WALL-E, which portrayed the horrible yet real
Positive cities are the places
can happen. If they are designed and where that run idea that our trash could pile up uncontrollably, squeez-
canonhappen. If they everything
this principle, are designed getsand run
better. ing us out of our habitat. A powerful way to transform
onWe this principle, everything gets
have to insist on the rights of humani- better. an existing city into a sustainable one—a city that preserves the earth rather
We tyhave to insisttoon
and nature the rights
coexist, of humani-
to bring together than ruining it—is to reduce all the waste streams and then use what remains
ty and nature to coexist, to bring together as a resource. Waste from one process becomes raw material for another.
the city and its surrounding countryside.
the city and its surrounding countryside. Many people continue to migrate to urban centers worldwide, which puts
Cities are designed, but they are also
Cities are designed, but they are also cities in a prime position to
organisms. As the late French anthropol-
organisms. As the late French anthropol- solve global resource prob-
ogist Claude Lévi-Strauss pointed out
ogist Claude Lévi-Strauss pointed out Michael E. Webber is deputy lems. Mayors are taking more
years ago, cities are “something lived director of the Energy Institute,
years ago, cities are “something lived responsibility for designing
and something dreamed.” As makers of co-director of the Clean Energy
and something dreamed.” As makers of solutions simply because they
living places, we cannot help projecting Incubator and a professor of energy
living places, we cannot help projecting have to, especially in coun-
ourselves onto the landscape. But as we resources at the University of Texas
ourselves onto the landscape. But as we at Austin. His latest book is Thirst tries where national enthusi-
dream
dream ofofourour ideal
ideal cities,
cities, as aswewe conjure
conjure asm for tackling environmen-
for Power: Energy, Water, and Human
the human weft on
the human weft on the geologic warpthe geologic warp of of Survival (Yale University Press, 2016). tal issues has cooled off.
thethe land,
land, we can
we can begin
begin to to
seeseemore more clear-
clear- International climate agree-
lyly the
the true
true character
character of of
thethe place
place wewe in-in- ments forged in Paris in
habit, its spirit. Then, as we shape thethe
habit, its spirit. Then, as we shape December 2015 also acknowledged a central role for cities. More than 1,000
nature
nature ofofourour cities,
cities, wewe will
will be be making
making mayors flocked to the French capital during the talks to share their pledges
places that celebrate both human cre-cre-
places that celebrate both human to reduce emissions. Changing building codes and investing in energy effi-
ativity
ativity andand a rich,
a rich, harmonious
harmonious relation-
relation- ciency are just two starting points that many city leaders said they could ini-
ship
ship with
with thethe living
living earth.
earth. WeWe willwill
be be tiate much more quickly than national governments.
forging
forging a new
a new geography
geography of hope.
of hope. It makes sense for cities to step up. Some of them—New York City, Mexico


MACHINES dig through rubble in Shen-
SUSTAINABLE CITIE S
zhen, China, after a mountain of refuse

collapsed, burying dozens of buildings.
City, Beijing—house more people than the actions were deemed too expensive. our bodies, the air, the water. But in the
entire countries do. And urban land- Similar rejection is offered for today’s right place, they are useful. For example,
scapes are where the challenges of man- climate scientists, who tell us that our instead of our sending solid waste to
SPECIAL REPORT
aging our lives come crashing together waste is killing us, though in a much a landfill and paying the bill, it can be
in concentrated form. Cities can lead slower and less direct fashion, and that incinerated to generate electricity. And
because they can quickly scale up solu- fixing the problem will require signifi- the sewage for a million-person commu-
tions and because they are living labo- cant investments in new infrastructure. nity can be mined for millions of dollars
ratories for improving quality of life Snow was later vindicated as a hero (per- of gold and other precious metals annu-
without using up the earth’s resources, haps the same fate awaits our present- ally for use in local manufacturing.
polluting its air and water, and harming day scientists) after new leaders created This idea fits with the larger concept
human health in the process. ambitious public works projects to cram of the so-called circular economy—
Cities are rife with wasted energy, 1,200 miles of sewers into a crowded where society’s different actions and
wasted carbon dioxide, wasted food, city of three million people, ending the processes feed into one another benefi-
wasted water, wasted space and wasted cholera problem. The work also created cially. Simply put, waste is what you
time. Reducing each waste stream and the lovely river embankments that have when you run out of imagination.
managing it as a resource—rather than still stand as a key piece of London’s
a cost—can solve multiple problems urban environs and along which many LESS IS MORE
simultaneously, creating a more sustain- people stroll. ONE OBVIOUS PLACE to start reducing
able future for billions of people. Today just flushing the waste away waste is leaky water pipes. A staggering
is not enough, however. After we reduce 10 to 40 percent of a city’s water is typi-
POLLUTION AS SOLUTION it, we should close the loop and use the cally lost in pipes. And because the
LESSONS ABOUT WASTE abound in history. remainder again. First, limit waste, then municipality has cleaned that water and
John Snow, a London doctor, deduced put it to work. powered pumps to move it, the leaks
that terrible cholera outbreaks struck This new thinking begins by redefin- throw away energy, too.
London in 1848 and 1854 because public ing our concept of pollution. Raj Bhatta- Energy consumption itself is incredi-
water wells were contaminated by sew- rai, a well-known engineer at the munic- bly wasteful. More than half the energy
age. Building sewers was an obvious ipal water utility in Austin, Tex., taught a city consumes is released as waste heat
GETTY IMAGES
solution, but political leaders rejected me a new definition for pollution: re- from smokestacks, tailpipes, and the
Snow’s findings because his ideas did sources out of place. Substances are backs of heaters, air conditioners and
not fit prevailing ideologies and because harmful if they are in the wrong place: appliances. Making all that equipment

more efficient reduces how much generators can convert the collected gas ting some of the cost of treating waste-
energy we need to produce, distribute into electricity. Vancouver’s landfills water. Although composting is a growing
and clean up. extract the methane and burn it to heat and popular trend among residents—
Refuse is another waste stream to nearby greenhouses that grow tomatoes. and one worth pursuing—doing it poorly
consolidate. The U.S. generates more Even then, landfills are still leaky. can actually lead to more methane emis-
than four pounds of solid waste per per- That inspired Vancouver, which has sions. For Austin, it makes more sense
son every day. Despite efforts to com- pledged to become the greenest city on for residents to put food scraps down the
post, recycle or incinerate some of it, earth, to give residents separate bins for drain and through a grinder so that the
a little more than half is still dumped in trash and organic matter (food scraps, city’s industrial-scale harvesters at the
landfills. Reducing packaging is one way yard clippings and tree trimmings). wastewater plant can do the work of the
to lessen this volume while also generat- Officials expect citizens to use them composter but with greater efficiency.
ing other benefits. Big retailers such as properly and deploy city inspectors to Waste heat is another big opportuni-
Walmart, for example, have found that check that waste haulers are dumping ty. Harvesting it is difficult because low
reducing packaging results in fewer refuse that is separated correctly. The temperatures are hard to convert into
trucks needed for shipping and more city produces methane from the organic electricity. NASA developed thermoelec-
shelf space to display goods. tric generators to do this on its space-
Wasted food is its own heart-wrench- craft, but the technology is expensive
ing issue. Despite famine and food scar- and inefficient. Nevertheless, advanced
city in many places globally, Americans materials that can more effectively con-
throw away 25 to 50 percent of their edi- vert heat to electricity are coming. A
ble food. Food requires vast amounts of place to start is the hot wastewater that
energy, land and water to grow, produce, goes down the drain when we wash
store, prepare, cook and dispose—so our clothes, dishes or bodies. Sandvika,
wasted food leaves a significant imprint. a suburb of Oslo, has massive heat
Initiatives that have popped up in the exchangers along city waste pipes that
U.S., such as the I Value Food campaign, extract heat to warm dozens of nearby
and in the U.K. are a start toward solv- buildings or defrost sidewalks and
ing this vital issue. roadways. By turning on heat pumps
in the summer, it can use some of the
PUTTING WASTE TO WORK heat to cool those same buildings. Van-
ONCE CITIES REDUCE waste streams, they couver liked the idea so much that it
should use waste from one urban pro- repeated the concept, using wastewater
cess as a resource for another. This to heat hundreds of buildings and the
arrangement is rare, but compelling Olympic Village.
projects are rising. Modern waste-to- Taking that idea further is the
VANCOUVER burns methane collected
energy systems, such as one in Zurich, Kalundborg Symbiosis in Denmark,
Dî§D³l§§äî¸Çß¸lø`xxDîîDîÿDßä
burn trash cleanly, and some, including a leading example of closed-loop think-
tomato greenhouses run by Village Farms.
one in Palm Beach, Fla., recover more ing. The industrial park has seven com-
than 95 percent of the metals in the grit- panies plus municipal facilities—cen-
ty ash that is left by the combustion. tered on electric, water, wastewater and
Rural villages, such as Jühnde in Germa- solid-waste facilities—that are intercon-
ny, create enough biogas from cattle and waste while generating solids known as nected such that the waste from one is
pig manure to heat or power a large por- amendments that can make soil more an input for another. Pipes, wires and
tion of their homes. My research group fertile. These solutions solve multiple ducts move steam, gas, electricity, water
at the University of Texas at Austin has problems at once—saving money for and wastes back and forth to improve
demonstrated that a cement plant in energy that would otherwise have been overall efficiency and reduce total
New Braunfels, Tex., can burn fuel pel- purchased, reducing the need for expen- wastes, including CO2 emissions. For
lets made of unrecyclable plastics rather sive landfilling and avoiding unneces- example, wastewater from the oil refin-
than coal, avoiding carbon dioxide emis- sary use and damage of land—while ery flows to the power plant, where it is
sions and impacts from coal mining. improving agriculture. used to clean and stabilize fly ash from
Even trash that is put in landfills Austin does something similar with coal combustion. The refinery also sends
can provide some value. Cities can its wastewater sludge, passing it through waste steam to Novo Nordisk, which
collect methane that rises as the waste anaerobic digesters to make biogas it puts the heat to work for growing about
decomposes, which is an obvious im- sells or uses on-site for generating heat. half the world’s supply of insulin with
COURTESY OF VILLAGE FARMS
provement over flaring (burning off ) It converts the remaining solids into a bacteria and yeast [see box on next
the gas or simply letting the methane popular soil amendment known as Dillo page]. The entire park looks like a living,
waft up into the atmosphere, where Dirt (a reference to the armadillo, one industrial organism. And it has demon-
it traps much more heat than the equi- of its local creatures). The city earns strated economic growth with flatlined
valent amount of carbon dioxide. Power money by selling the Dillo Dirt, offset- or reduced emissions.

Lake Tissø
Case Study:
Industrial Used cooling water Nonpotable water Kalundborg
water Deionized water Kara/Noveren Industrial At the Kalundborg Symbiosis industrial
Seawater water Surface water park in Denmark, companies coordinate
Gyproc Cleaned surface water îx¸ÿ¸x³xßājÿDîxßD³lDîxßD§ä
DONG
D¸³îxÍ=Däîxä¸ßUāÇß¸lø`îä
Energy City utility
ß¸¸³x¸ÇxßDî¸³Dßxä¸§lDäßDÿ
DîxßD§äî¸¸îxßäj`ßxDî³ßxþx³øx
Waste
Gypsum D³lßxlø`³läÇ¸äD§¸ßDîxßD§ä`¸äîäj
Däÿx§§Dä§xääx³³x³þß¸³x³îD§
Fly ash ÇD`îäÍU¸øîðćäøUäîD³`xäjß¸
District heating ÿDäîxÿDîxßD³lÿDäîxxDîî¸
Ethanol xîD³¸§jDßxxĀ`D³xlD³l
waste Sand øäxlî¸`ßxDîxx³ąāxäj
Surface water
ter Sludge ³äø§³jU¸DäjÇ§DäîxßU¸Dßl
Water D³l¸îxßÇß¸lø`îäÍ
Sulfur reservoir Steam
Statoil
Drain water Slurry Nov Nordisk

Novo
Bioethanol Novo and Novozymes
SUSTAINABLE CITIE S
Steam Nordisk
Steam
Wastewater S
Surface water
Inbicon Warm condensate Wastewater
Surface water
Wastewater
Cleaned wastewater
Ethanol waste
Sugars City algae plant
Lignin
District heating
Fertilizer
Novozymes Cleaned surface water Energy
SPECIAL REPORT
Power to grid Biomass

Nonpotable water Water
Novozymes wastewater and biogas Wastewater Materials
DATA-DRIVEN DECISIONS alluring objective for planners who want Smart cities rely heavily on big data
CAN THE KALUNDBORG SYMBIOSIS model be to accommodate higher densities of peo- gathered from widespread sensor net-
replicated on a larger scale, for cities ple without diminishing quality of life. works and advanced algorithms to quick-
worldwide? Yes, but only if we make cit- For example, in India, where population ly gain insights, draw conclusions and
ies smart. An industrial park is flexible and public health problems are severe, make decisions on those data. Connected
because it has only a few tenants and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has networks then communicate those anal-
decision makers, but a city has many announced his intention to convert 100 yses to equipment all across the city.
individuals and organizations making small and medium-sized municipalities Smart meters for closely tracking elec-
independent decisions about energy, into smart cities as a possible solution. tricity, natural gas and water use by time
water and waste every day. Integrating The “smart” moniker itself is an accu- of day, household and industrial appli-
SOURCE: SYMBIOSIS CENTER DENMARK www.symbiosecenter.dk
them requires a cultural shift toward sation that most cities are dumb. That ance are an obvious place to start. Real-
cooperation, boosted by advances in accusation sticks because municipalities time traffic sensors, air-quality monitors
smart technologies. “Smart cities” will rife with waste seem to be operating and leak detectors are also at hand. The
depend on ubiquitous sensing and cheap blind. The U.S. National Science Founda- Pecan Street consortium in Austin is col-
computing, compounded by machine tion has just launched a major research lecting data from hundreds of homes
learning and artificial intelligence. This initiative called Smart & Connected to learn how access to such data streams
combination can identify inefficiencies Communities to help cities make better might help consumers change their
and optimize operations, reducing use of data. That name, by the way, indi- behaviors in ways that reduce consump-
wastes and costs while operating all cates that intelligence is not enough— tion while saving costs. Cities such as
kinds of equipment automatically. interconnections among systems and Phoenix and military bases such as Fort
Thankfully, making cities smart is an people matter, too. Carson in Colorado have pledged to
52 Scientific American, July 2017 Illustration by Harry Campbell

become self-sufficient users of energy omy was gutted decades ago. Indianap-
and water and net-zero producers of olis comes to mind, in part because
waste. Achieving those ambitious goals it needs to rebuild water, wastewater
will require a lot of interconnected data. and sewer systems based on bad deci-
Better transportation may give sions a century ago. The city has been
urbanites their first glimpse of a smart investing in its downtown and is on
city’s benefits by cutting wasted time. the rise. Pittsburgh is leveraging its
Reducing the footprint of transportation existing assets—a vibrant urban core,
means cleaning up the fuels, making city pride, forward-looking leadership
the vehicles more efficient, reducing trip from Mayor William Peduto, the strength
distances and duration, increasing vehi- of Carnegie Mellon University and other
cle occupancy and cutting back on the hotbeds of innovation—to go from being
number of trips. If people live close to defined by its smokestacks to being
their work, they can walk or bike or use PIPES³!D§ø³lU¸ßjx³Dß¦j`DßßāÿDäîx defined by its brainpower. Indeed, Uber
mass transit. Studies show that building äîxDß¸îx'%³xßāÇ¸ÿxßÇ§D³î launched its autonomous-vehicle service
protected bicycle lanes leads to dramati- to companies that use it for manufacturing. there. Columbus, Ohio, which is the
cally increased ridership, and because state capital and home to a major uni-
bicycles require so little space, compared versity, is another place to look for cut-
with cars, they can reduce congestion ting-edge experiments in becoming
on the roads. lems such as leaky water pipes. Identify- smart. The U.S. Department of Trans-
A driverless city will also free up ing leaks should be easy if meters are dis- portation recently awarded Columbus
wasted space and time associated with tributed throughout a water system to a $40-million grant to reinvent its
parking. With shared or autonomous track flows and readily pinpoint the approach to mobility.
cars in constant motion instead of pri- amount and location of those leaks.
vate cars that are parked at home and Researchers in Birmingham, England, GETTING FROM HERE TO THERE
work, the number of parking spaces can developed a system with tiny pressure TURNING PROFLIGATE CITIES into places
be restricted dramatically, opening up sensors that use a small amount of power that reduce waste and reuse what is left
wasted space and easing congestion fur- to frequently check for and detect leaks in will not be easy. Integrated R&D invest-
ments from the federal government have
to be combined with practical policies
³äîxDl¸¸øßäx³l³ÿDäîxî¸D§D³l§§j
from all levels of government. Unfortu-
nately, R&D funding is in recent decline,
and in the U.S., it may drop further
it can be incinerated to generate electricity. under the Trump administration.
Investment has to be socially savvy
Sewage can be mined for gold and other as well. Studies show that R&D for smart
cities has focused more on technology
precious metals for local manufacturing. than what the citizenry needs. Done
the wrong way, the benefits of a smart
city might accrue to those who already
have Internet connectivity and access
ther. Researchers at the Center for Trans- water networks, a big improvement over to advanced technologies, which would
portation Research at the University of the old technique of waiting for someone only widen the technology gap on top
Texas at Austin used sophisticated mod- to call and complain that water is shoot- of other socioeconomic divides.
els to determine that shared, autono- ing like a geyser out of the road. And Municipalities also need to help resi-
mous vehicles would lessen the number someday we might send smart robots dents become smarter citizens because
of cars needed in a city by an order of down the pipes to repair the problems. each individual makes resource deci-
magnitude and would cut emissions, High-performance sensors will also sions every time he or she buys a prod-
despite causing a slight increase in total let us find and predict natural gas leaks uct or flips a switch. Access to education
miles traveled because the vehicles would before accidents happen. Gas leaks are and data will be paramount. Connecting
stay in motion. Instead of wasting their not only bad for the environment and those citizens also requires collaboration
time driving, commuters can rest, read a waste of resources but dangerous, as and neighborly interactions: parks, play-
COURTESY OF KALUNDBORG SYMBIOSIS
e-mails, place phone calls or conduct we see in headline-grabbing explosions grounds, shared spaces, schools, and
other business. That work can create in urban areas with aging infrastructure. religious and community centers–all
economic value—and trim a person’s It is hard to know where smart, waste- of which were central tenets of centuries-
office hours so he or she can get home conscious cities may arise. I imagine old designs for thriving cities. The more
earlier for dinner. a likely candidate will be a Midwestern modern and smart our cities become,
Making our infrastructure smarter town with a million people or more that the more we might need these old-world
is certainly the key to solving basic prob- needs to reinvent itself because its econ- elements to keep us together.

FROM
Carlo Ratti is director of the Senseable
City Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and founder of the Carlo Ratti
Associati design studio.
PARKING
Assaf Biderman is an inventor, associate
director of the Senseable City Lab and
founder of Superpedestrian, a company
focused on developing robotic vehicles for
single and double occupancy.
LOT TO
PARADISE
SPECIAL REPORT
SUSTAINABLE CITIE S
C
ARS AND CITIES HAVE A COMPLICATED
A moving web of sensor- relationship. Today, plagued with
swelling road congestion and ris-
laden vehicles and smart ing air pollution, we tend to
intersections will transform think of the two as increasingly
how we get around town incompatible. But during the
20th century the automobile left one of the
By Carlo Ratti and Assaf Biderman most durable marks on city planning. As Swiss-
born architect Le Corbusier declared in his
seminal 1925 book The City of To-morrow and
Its Planning, “The motor-car ... has completely
overturned all our old ideas of town planning.”
Almost 100 years later we are at a similar turning point.

First, demand for urban transportation is expected to more
than double by 2050, which means that we will need to more
than double capacity on the roads just to keep congestion at
the (often unacceptable) levels we experience now. Second,
thanks to the rapid convergence of information and communi-
cation technologies, robotics and artificial intelligence, our
mobility systems—cars, buses and other forms of transporta-
tion—are undergoing massive transformations. Once again,

As each car nears the intersection, it issues an
access-request signal to the intersection manager
via Wi-Fi. The time-stamped signal includes route
●
details. Here the red car 1 enters the signal
Ć¹ýàåïj¹¨¨¹ĀymUĂïy¹àDý`Dà 2 , then
●
● ●
the gold 3 and the green 4 cars.
5àyå¹¨m¹à´ïyàåy`ï¹´
3 access request
Intersection
Fixed
Èàymyým
routes
4
“REVISITING STREET INTERSECTIONS USING SLOT-BASED SYSTEMS,” BY REMI TACHET
SOURCES: SENSEABLE CITY LAB, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY;
Car approaching
ET AL., IN PLOS ONE, VOL. 11, NO. 3, ARTICLE NO. E0149607; MARCH 16, 2016
the signal zone
Tail distance
åy`¹´mUDï`jÿmUĂïyU¨ùy`Dà 5 ,
●
Stop distance approaches the intersection.
¹àåDyïĂjÿy`ÿåUy¨¹´´ï¹ïyåD®y¹Ā
®ùåï®D´ïD´DåÈy`ymïD¨DïymåïD´`yà¹®
¹ýD´¹ïyàÎ<y`ÿå´myày´ï¹ĀåDàyåyÈD
àDïymUĂïymåïD´`yïĀ¹ù¨mïD§yïy®ï¹åï¹ÈÎ
56 Scientific American, July 2017 Illustration by Jen Christiansen

Traffic Control
Self-driving vehicles ÿ¸ø§lx³DU§x`îāÇ§D³³xßäî¸ßxÇ§D`xîßD`§îäÿîä§¸î³îxßäx`î¸³äj³ÿ`xD`þx`§x
DÇÇß¸D`³D³³îxßäx`î¸³äDää³xlDîxÙä§¸îÚÿx³î`D³ÇDääîß¸øÍ2xäxDß`äøxäîäîDîä§¸î³îxßäx`î¸³ä
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Slot intersections are àåïUDï` 3y`¹´mUDï` Vehicle requests

®¹åïy`y´ïĀy´ÿy`ÿå Dàyàyåùym´
are grouped together in this time interval
UDï`yåjD¨¨¹Ā´ïy Request
automated-intersection time 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
®D´Dyàï¹àyåùy`Dà
¹àmyàĀï´¹ýà¹ùÈ
¹ÿy`ÿåDïDï®yÎ5å Access
arrangement prevents time 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Dåïà´¹`Dàå¹´D®¹ày
yDÿ¨ĂïàDÿyÿmà¹Dmà¹®
m¹®´Dï´ïyåĂåïy®Dï Time lapse from signal y¨DĂyāÈyày´`ymUĂ y¨DĂyāÈyày´`ymUĂ
ïyyāÈy´åy¹`DàåyDmym to intersection entry ÿy`ÿÀ´®D´Dym ÿy`ÿ´®D´Dym
in the other direction. ´àyy¹Ā`¹´mï¹´å ´ïyàåy`ï¹´`¹´mï¹´å ´ïyàåy`ï¹´`¹´mï¹´å
SPECIAL REPORT
¨ï¹ùïy¹àDý`DàĀDåïyåy`¹´mï¹
request access to the intersection, and the gold
`DàĀDåïyïàmjïy´ïyàåy`ï¹´®D´Dyà
myïyà®ýmïDïïy¹¨m`DàĀDå`¨¹åyy´¹ù
to the red car to cross the intersection in tandem.
``¹àm´¨Ăjïy¹àDý`DàĀDåmày`ïymï¹å¨¹Ā
SUSTAINABLE CITIE S
m¹Ā´jD´mïmà¹ÈÈym´ï¹ïyïàmÈ¹åï¹´Î
Cars turning right

DàyD¨¨¹Āymï¹¦ù®È
the queue.
2
1
3
4 4
6
2
7

they stand poised to radically reshape Scholars have estimated that every Francisco, Vienna and Singapore could
the urban landscape. shared vehicle removes nine to 13 pri- benefit in similar measure.
Self-driving (or autonomous) vehicles vately owned cars from the streets. Combine car sharing and ride sharing,
are leading the charge. In recent decades The benefits will grow exponentially and a city might get by with just 20 per-
cars have shifted from the kinds of as autonomous vehicles, currently avail- cent the number of cars now in use, with
mechanical systems Henry Ford might able in experimental forms, gain a nota- its residents traveling on-demand. Of
have recognized to veritable computers ble portion of the market, blurring the course, such reductions are theoretical. In
on wheels. The average car is now distinction between private and public real life, they would depend on how will-
equipped with an array of sensors that modes of transportation. “Your” car could ing people are to share rides and adopt
collect internal and external data to help give you a lift to work in the morning and self-driving technology. But any drop in
it run safely and efficiently. Companies then, rather than sitting in a parking lot, the number of vehicles could lower the
such as Waymo (spun out of Google), give a lift to someone else in your fami- costs and energy associated with building
Cruise (acquired by General Motors), ly—or to anyone else in your neighbor- and maintaining our mobility infrastruc-
Otto (acquired by Uber), Zoox and hood or social media community. ture. Fewer cars might also mean shorter
nuTonomy, for example, are experiment- As a result, a single vehicle could go travel times, less congestion and a smaller
ing with additional sensors that can from one to 24 hours of use a day. A environmental impact.
“see” a street much in the way our eyes recent paper by our colleagues at the Mas-
do. Once you feed that information into sachusetts Institute of Technology reports NO PARKING, NO TRAFFIC LIGHTS
an onboard artificial-intelligence system, that, under such conditions, the mobility AUTONOMOUS CARS will not require addi-
you get a fully autonomous vehicle, demand of a city like Singapore—host to tional urban infrastructure—specially
capable of navigating on busy traffic one of the world’s first publicly accessible designed roads, for example—but they will
grids without any human input. fleets of self-driving cars—could be met lead to other significant changes. Consider
Autonomous cars will free up much with only 30 percent of its existing vehi- parking. In the U.S., parking infrastructure
of the time we spend every day driving, cles. In addition to vehicle sharing, auton- covers around 8,000 square miles, an area
SUSTAINABLE CITIE S
and they will make our roads safer. They

are going to be game changers for our
cities—but in ways that are far from
decided. On one hand, we can imagine
Vast areas of urban land could be
that more people will begin to share
these vehicles so that the machines can
redeveloped to support social functions.
give lifts to one passenger after the oth-
er, all day long. In that case, our cities omy could open up a new wave of ride nearly as large as New Jersey. If more vehi-
SPECIAL REPORT
might run using a small fraction of the sharing. Already applications such as Via , cles were shared, we would need dramati-
vehicles currently in service. On the oth- uberPOOL and Lyft Line allow different cally fewer parking spaces. What would
er hand, we might have more dystopian people to share the same ride, cutting the consequences be?
scenarios. Robin Chase, co-founder and operating costs and individual fares. Over time, vast areas of valuable
former CEO of the car-sharing service Autonomy could boost ride sharing even urban land, currently occupied by park-
Zipcar, has written of “zombie cars— more because all trips could be managed ing lots, could be redeveloped to support
those with no one in them — clogging our online. In cities, the potential for ride a whole new spectrum of social func-
cities and our roads.” Her vision foresees sharing is significant, based on analyses tions. Park(ing) Day, an annual event first
unemployment for professional drivers, by our Senseable City Lab at M.I.T. held in San Francisco in 2005, offers some
lost revenue from our transportation New York City, for example, is emi- preliminary ideas. Every year the event
infrastructure, and “a nightmare of pol- nently shareable. Our lab’s HubCab proj- challenges artists, designers and citizens
lution, congestion, and social unrest.” ect gathered data from 170 million taxi to transform metered parking spots into
Technological nirvana or urban dysto- trips involving 13,500 Medallion taxis in temporary public places. In the past, par-
pia? To tackle this question, we need to the city—specifically, the GPS coordinates ticipants have rolled out sod and placed
delve into the ways autonomous vehicles for all pickup and drop-off points and trees and benches along the curbside.
could alter our cityscapes and the ways corresponding times between the two. On a much larger scale and on a per-
we move through them. We then developed a mathematical mod- manent basis, vacant parking lots could
el to determine the potential effect of ride be converted to offer shared public ame-
THE SHARING ECONOMY sharing applied to those journeys. The nities such as playgrounds, cafés, fitness
ON AVERAGE, cars sit idle 96 percent of project introduced the concept of “share- trails and bike lanes.
the time. That makes them ideal candi- ability networks,” making it possible to Other common sights along our city
dates for the sharing economy. The optimize the trip-sharing opportunities. streets might vanish. Take traffic lights,
potential to reduce congestion is enor- Our quantitative results revealed how a 150-year-old technology originally con-
mous. A handful of car-sharing sys- taxi sharing could reduce the aggregate ceived to help horse carriages avoid colli-
tems—such as Zipcar and car2go—are number of cars by 40 percent with only sions. Sensor-laden self-driving vehicles,
already having a major impact on the minimal delays for passengers. Further which can communicate with one anoth-
total number of vehicles in our cities. work showed that places such as San er to maintain safe distances, will need

less assistance at road crossings. As a POTENTIAL PITFALLS tryside.” In the future, what if people,
result, slot-based intersections, modeled VEHICLE AUTONOMY and ride sharing could newly able to commute while sleeping
after air traffic control systems, could create overwhelmingly positive changes or working, decide to relocate out of the
replace traffic lights. On approaching in urban transportation. But if the tran- city, consuming land and expanding
an intersection, a vehicle would automat- sition to the driverless city is not man- unsustainable, sprawling communities?
ically contact a traffic-management sys- aged carefully, it could also lead to nega- A couple of other threats are worth
tem to request access. It would then be tive consequences. mentioning. Fines, parking fees and
assigned an individualized time, or “slot,” The first concern is safety. We all car-associated taxes such as driver
to pass through the intersection. know what it is like for a virus to crash registrations represent a substantial
Slot-based intersections could signifi- a computer. What if a virus crashes a revenue source for all kinds of local
cantly reduce queues and delays, as our car? Malicious hacking is difficult to and national jurisdictions. Widespread
Light Traffic project has demonstrated. combat with traditional government and autonomous vehicles could eliminate
Analyses show that systems assigning industry tools, and it is particularly dan- this crucial flow of money. We can easily
slots in real time could allow twice as gerous in the case of systems, such as imagine what would happen to already
many vehicles to cross an intersection in self-driving cars, that combine the digi- battered American infrastructure if this
the same amount of time as traffic lights tal and the physical. scenario were to come true. Perhaps cit-
usually do. This arrangement could have Additional problems might arise ies could compensate by redeveloping
a major impact on the road network of from what one could call the “unfair unneeded parking lots and building
any given city. Travel and waiting times competitive advantage” of vehicle auton- new, revenue-producing infrastructure.
would drop; fuel consumption would go omy. The cost of traveling a mile might But we must also remember that mil-
down; and less stop-and-go traffic would drop so substantially that people would lions of drivers working today in logis-
mean less air pollution. As an added abandon public transportation in favor tics or urban transport jobs could be left
bonus, slot-based intersections are flexi- of autonomous cars. That, in turn, could unemployed worldwide.
ble enough to accommodate pedestrians lead to an increase in the number of As Robin Chase wrote, “Simply elimi-
and bicycles sharing the road. vehicles in a city—and with that in- nating the drivers from cars, and keep-
It is worth noting that such an entic- crease, surreal gridlock. Additionally, ing everything else about our system the
ing vision depends on more than just keeping cars moving at all hours rather same, will be a disaster.” As a result, it is
autonomous cars and smart traffic-man- than parked 96 percent of the time could imperative that we view these new
agement systems. It also requires much increase pollution. technologies with a critical eye—and
better market coordination. Today’s car- Autonomous cars might generate guide them toward the societal goals
sharing companies have independent another unintended consequence: we desire. Good policy could help pre-
platforms that do not talk to one another. aggravating urban sprawl. This would vent the negative outcomes we have
Customers cannot compare options easily, not be the first time that a technological described. As was the case in the 20th
and drivers cannot benefit from aggregat- innovation in mobility resulted in such century, much will depend on a healthy
ed demand. The situation is similar to an effect. In his 1941 book The Four cycle of trial and error.
how the air travel industry looked before Routes, Le Corbusier described how this Still, if we can manage the transition
the Internet. Passengers can now com- unfolded in the first decades of the 20th in a thoughtful way, self-driving cars
pare many flight alternatives through century: “The railway converted the cit- could help us achieve a safer and more
several global distribution systems that ies into true magnets; they filled and pleasant urban experience. In doing so,
follow standards established by the Open- swelled without control, and the coun- they could ultimately enhance the very
Travel Alliance and thus benefit from tryside was progressively abandoned. It mission of our cities, which dates to the
increased transparency and competition. was a disaster. Luckily the automobile, emergence of the first human settle-
In cities, two approaches could create through the organization of the roads, ments 10,000 years ago—bringing us
a similar mobility architecture. The first will reestablish this broken harmony together, regardless of the kind of vehi-
would be a bottom-up effort in which and start the repopulation of the coun- cles we are moving in.
small players start adopting standards.
This is beginning to happen with a col-
laboration among Lyft, Didi Chuxing in M O R E TO E X P L O R E
China, Ola in India and GrabTaxi in
Trash-to-Treasure: Turning Nonrecycled Waste into Low-Carbon Fuel. ÿāÎ
ày`§y¨j ¹´2ÎĂyD´m
Southeast Asia. The second effort would
$`Dy¨Î=yUUyàÉARTH, <¹¨Îéj%¹Î~jÈDyå÷éèùùåï÷ĈÀ÷Î
be top down, led by a government or a The Upcycle: Beyond Sustainability—Designing for Abundance. =¨¨D®$`¹´¹ùD´m$`Dy¨
àDù´DàïÎ
global organization, such as the World %¹àï0¹´ï0àyååj÷ĈÀñÎ
Wide Web Consortium. Because transpor- ¹àmyïD¨åDU¹ùï0Dà§÷ĈW÷ĈiĀĀĀÎÈDà§÷Ĉ÷ĈÎ`¹®ëy´
tation services are already heavily regu- $DååD`ùåyïïå´åïïùïy¹5y`´¹¨¹ĂÝå3y´åyDUÿïĂ"DUiïïÈiëëåy´åyDUÿÎ®ïÎymù
lated in most countries, this would not be FROM OUR ARCHIVES
too far-fetched. Either approach could
Waste Energy. y¹ày¨¨è$DĂÀ÷jÀ~µÎ
create an incredibly powerful and trans-
5y`y´ïïĂÎ$Dà§å`yïïè3yÈïy®Uyà÷ĈÀÀÎ
parent platform for transportation and
logistical services. s c i e n t i f i c a m e r i c a n . c o m /m a g a z i n e /s a

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MEDICINE
OPERATIO
PER TIO
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IA
A ETES
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Surgery that shortens intestines gets rid of
the illness, and new evidence shows the gut—
not simply insulin—may be responsible
By Francesco Rubino
Illustration by Kotryna Zukauskaite July 2017, ScientificAmerican.com 61

Clinician and scientist àD´`yå`¹2ùU´¹is chair of the department
of metabolic and bariatric surgery at King’s College London and
a surgeon at King’s College Hospital. He is compensated as
D¡r¡OrÍ«{ÒZr§ÜZDfèÒ«ÍëO«DÍfÒ{«Íë§D¡ZÒD§f{«Í
ÍDZÜëdZ«¡µD§rÒfrèr«µ§§ÜrÒÜ§DfDOrÜrÒÜÍrDÜ¡r§ÜÒdD§f
ÒDZ«§ÒæÜD§ÜÜ«¡rfZDfrèZr¡DrÍÒÜZ«§D§f$rfÜÍ«§Z»
W HEN I BEGAN TRAINING AS A SURGEON ABOUT TWO DECADES AGO,

I was eager to treat tumors, gallbladder stones, hernias
and all other conditions within reach of a scalpel. Surgery
seemed like a direct solution to some serious problems.
Type 2 diabetes was not one of them. Operations focus on
single body parts, but doctors knew diabetes damaged multiple
organs at the same time and involved a widespread failure to
make efficient use of a blood glucose–regulating hormone, insu-
lin. Clearly, this was not something that could be easily cut into
or cut out.
make extra insulin. Could the surgical change to the anatomy af-
fect these hormones in some way that restored normal glucose
metabolism? Or could the gut harbor other mechanisms of dis-
ease that surgery was able to correct? If so, surgery could be used
to treat diabetes, and understanding how surgery produced this
effect could also provide a clue to diabetes’ elusive cause.
But then one afternoon in the summer of 1999, my view of At that time, in the late 1990s, we were just realizing the
diabetes, and my career, took a radical turn. world was in the midst of an epidemic of the disease that con-
I had just moved from Italy to New York City to start a fel- tinues today. The most recent estimates by the International
lowship in minimally invasive surgery at what is now called the Diabetes Federation and World Health Organization suggest at
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. I was in the library least 415 million people around the globe have the disorder, and
trying to read about some technical aspects of an operation the number is predicted to climb to about 650 million by 2040.
called biliopancreatic diversion when I stumbled across some- (Ninety percent of these people have type 2 disease; the rest
thing odd. The operation is used on severely obese people. It have another form of the illness, type 1, when the pancreas sim-
makes them lose weight by shortening the route food takes ply does not make enough insulin.) Finding the cause and a cure
through their intestines, bypassing nutrient-absorbing sec- could save millions of lives.
tions. Many of these patients had type 2 diabetes, which accom- After a sleepless night, excited by the possibilities, I went in
panies obesity. What struck me, however, was that as soon as the morning to my supervising surgeon, Michel Gagner, with
one month after the surgery, these people had completely nor- the idea. He thought I was on to something. Together we ap-
mal blood sugar levels. They had not yet lost much weight, they proached our medical school officials to ask them to run a clin-
were eating without calorie or sugar restrictions, and they were ical trial in humans and see if surgery could improve diabetes
not taking any diabetes medication. Still, most of them re- more than conventional therapies, even in people who are not
mained diabetes-free for years after surgery. severely obese. Our proposal was turned down, not just then
I was truly puzzled. How could an operation fix blood sugar but repeatedly in the ensuing months.
problems in a disease that, all the textbooks said, is chronic, The rejection was disappointing, though perhaps not sur-
progressive and ultimately irreversible? Diabetes could be man- prising. Diabetes has been treated for centuries by diet, tablets
aged, but it was not supposed to go away. and shots. Because the cause was presumed to be some dysfunc-
Racking my brain for an explanation, I recalled that the small tion in the insulin-making cells of the pancreas, as well as the
intestine produces hormones that stimulate the pancreas to way the body handles that hormone, slicing into people and
IN BRIEF
¹àïĂÿy®ym`D¨¹àD´ĆDï¹´ånow recommend %ù®yà¹ùå`¨´`D¨ïàD¨åshow that surgery controls 3ùà`D¨åù``yåålinks diabetes to the intestines. Op-
operations originally intended for weight loss as diabetes better, faster and longer than diet changes erating may work because it changes gut hormones,
standard treatment options for type 2 diabetes. and drugs do. bile acids or gut bacteria or removes a disease cause.

Cutting Out Diabetes Neural Circuits
The intestines have branches of nerves,
Weight-loss surgery, such as the vagus nerve, that send signals
Glucose
to and from the brain. These neural
circuits alert the brain when the intestines
Time detect passing nutrients. The brain then
ä³¸ÿßx`¸x³lxlUā¸ßxîD³ćlxßx³î signals the liver to suppress glucose
production. This feedback is enhanced
after GI bypass operations.
Before Gut Microbes

surgery 5yùï®`à¹UD¨`¹®®ù´ïĂ´ùy´`yå
One common operation, called a Roux-en-Y gastric DÈyàå¹´ÝåyýàĂDàÿyåïý`y´`ĂÎ
After
bypass, shortens the length of the upper intestine in By altering the characteristics of intestinal
surgery
which food mixes with digestive juices. Not only does contents, operations cause changes in the
this reduce absorbed calories, it limits the stimulation È¹Èù¨Dï¹´¹®`à¹UyåÎ3ù`®¹m`Dï¹´å
of intestinal cells by passing nutrients. can result in a higher metabolic rate and
better glucose control.
Food pathway
Stomach Bile Acids
partitioned Bile acids from the liver and gallbladder
Liver Before ¹Ā´ï¹ïyï¹È¹ïyå®D¨¨´ïyåïýÎ
New foood- surgery They also circulate in the blood like
carryingg After hormones, regulating cell metabolism.
intestinee surgery Surgery increases circulating bile acids
segmennt Glucose and makes organs more sensitive to insulin.
Bile acid
Gut Hormones
Gallbladder The small intestine contains cells that release
Pancreas hormones into the bloodstream when
Bile pathway
nutrients stimulate them. These hormones
can trigger activity in the liver, pancreas,
Upper small D´m¹ïyà¹àD´åïDïDy`ïåU¨¹¹måùDà
intestine cut and levels. Gastric bypass operations shorten
rearranged, some intestinal segments, thus changing
forming two Chemical the amount of released hormones.
Large
discrete pathways intestine signal
for bile and foood Glucose Transport
During digestion, glucose is taken from
Small intestine food particles in the intestine, moved
through its lining and into the bloodstream.
Glucose
The process relies on special transport
Digested food mixes with bile molecules that need sodium to work
midway down the small intestine properly. In surgery a primary sodium
Sodium
source—bile—is rerouted away. That
Transport hinders transport molecules, lowering
molecule Blood diabetic glucose spikes after a meal.
vessel
cutting out parts of intestines as a remedy must have seemed weeks, long before fat levels or pounds start to melt away. In
like heresy and a foolish risk. general, about 50 percent of patients are diabetes-free after
Two decades later the heresy is starting to become conven- surgery, and some have stayed so for years. The remaining
tional wisdom. people demonstrate major improvement of blood sugar con-
There are now dozens of animal studies and at least 12 trol and can drastically reduce their dependence on insulin or
randomized, controlled clinical trials involving hundreds of other medication.
people that have explored surgery first developed for weight The evidence is so strong that last year 45 medical societies
loss as a treatment for type 2 diabetes. They all show that endorsed GI surgery as a standard diabetes treatment option
reducing the surface of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract exerts even for patients who are mildly obese. Furthermore, knowledge
more powerful effects on diabetes than any other existing about the mechanisms by which surgery on the gut affects
therapy. And it is not simply the result of losing weight. In glucose metabolism is inspiring the development of nonsurgical
many patients, blood sugar levels go back to normal within approaches that target the small intestine.
Illustration by Mesa Schumacher July 2017, ScientificAmerican.com 63

GATHERING EVIDENCE er trial of 96 surgical patients conducted by Philip Schauer and
IN THE WEEKS AFTER my startling library discovery, as our propos- his colleagues at the Cleveland Clinic showed that although
als for testing surgery in humans with diabetes were being de- about 45 percent needed insulin before their operation, an im-
nied, I dug further into the medical literature for evidence that pressive 89 percent were not taking the drug five years after
could bolster my case. I learned that physicians have been observ- their operation. Surgery may also reduce such complications of
ing diabetes improvement after surgery on the GI tract for almost the disease as heart attack, stroke and diabetes-related mortal-
a century. In 1925 an article in the Lancet described the almost ity more than standard treatments, according to the large
overnight disappearance of excess sugar in the urine, a symptom Swedish Obese Subjects study.
of diabetes, after one gastrointestinal operation to treat a peptic The safety of these procedures compares well with that of
ulcer. After GI surgery became a treatment for severe obesity in other commonly performed operations, including gallbladder
the mid-1950s, similar observations became more common. Dur- surgery or hysterectomy, which are generally considered low-
ing the 1980s and 1990s, many reports noted the antidiabetic risk interventions. Several economic analyses suggest that the
effects of this kind of surgery, including a landmark study by sur- cost of surgery (roughly $20,000 to $25,000 for a procedure in
geon Walter Pories of East Carolina University and his colleagues the U.S.) may be balanced within two to three years by reduced
that involved more than 120 patients and was unequivocally enti- spending on diabetes medications and care.
tled “Who Would Have Thought It? An Operation Proves to Be
the Most Effective Therapy for Adult-Onset Diabetes Mellitus.” THE GUT AS A SWEET SPOT
Despite such compelling observations, surgery was not con- WHY DOES SURGERY WORK SO WELL? No one is sure yet, but the GI
sidered as a serious therapy for diabetes itself. One major stum- tract has emerged as a key player both in the normal glucose
bling block was that to many physicians, it seemed more likely metabolism and in the dysfunctions associated with diabetes.
that postoperative weight loss—rather than the operation There are at least five ways the gut exerts such influence:
itself—caused the positive effects. through hormones, bile acids, molecules that move glucose out
of the intestines, microbes that live within the
intestines, and neural circuits.
An impressive 89 percent The lining of the GI tract holds specialized cells

that respond to food nutrients and other stimuli by
of surgery patients releasing hormones. These substances then stimu-

late insulin secretion from the pancreas or affect
with diabetes were not feelings of hunger and fullness. Changes in the
anatomy of the GI tract through surgery curtail the
îD¦³³äø§³þxāxDßä
time that food takes to travel over these cells,
reducing contact and stimulation in some tract
segments. That also means more food is available
after their operation. when it reaches subsequent segments. The overall
result is increased levels of some hormones and
decreased secretion of others.
Resolving that debate one way or another became important Elegant studies in human patients by David Cummings of
after Gagner and I were unable to start clinical studies. I turned the University of Washington showed that gastric bypass opera-
to rats to investigate whether surgically altering the GI tract tions suppress circulating levels of ghrelin, a hunger-inducing
could influence glucose metabolism directly, independent of hormone that also appears to regulate how certain cells take up
weight change. I had moved to the European Institute of Telesur- glucose. Carel W. le Roux, now at University College Dublin, and
gery in Strasbourg, France. There my co-workers and I took lean other researchers have demonstrated that an intestine-shorten-
rats with type 2 diabetes and gave them a duodenal-jejunal ing operation called a Roux-en-Y gastric bypass and some simi-
bypass (DJB), an experimental operation designed to shorten the lar procedures boost levels of other hormones known as incre-
intestinal tract while maintaining the size of the stomach. (The tins that increase insulin production.
idea is to avoid mechanical impediments to the intake of food.) Bile acids, another type of molecule that regulates how the
Postsurgery, our rats showed improved glucose metabolism body uses energy, are also affected by GI operations for weight
whether or not their food intake or body weight had changed. loss. Familiar to many for their role in digesting food, bile acids
Other investigators corroborated this finding using DJB and also enter the bloodstream and signal cell receptors in various
other procedures in different animal models. Then, in the early organs and tissues. The signals cause cells to ramp up their use
part of this century, they demonstrated it in people. During the of lipids and glucose. Gastric surgery can heighten circulating
past decade at least a dozen randomized clinical trials have bile acid levels, which helps cells to get glucose from the blood.
been conducted, and all have shown similar results. In one of Studies also show that bile acids can prevent immune system
these studies, Geltrude Mingrone of the Catholic University of cells called macrophages from accumulating in fat tissue. Few-
Rome, along with myself and other colleagues, showed that five er macrophages reduce inflammation and insulin resistance,
years after surgery in 38 patients, more than 80 percent either which are hallmarks of obesity and type 2 diabetes.
were in complete remission from the disease or were able to Surgery can also affect another mechanism that contributes
maintain good control of blood sugar levels with small amounts to diabetes: glucose transport molecules. During digestion,
of medication or with diet and exercise alone. Data from anoth- food particles are broken down within the intestines and glu-

cose is extracted. The glucose moves through the intestinal lin- tions point to a gastrointestinal origin of diabetes. Dysfunction-
ing and into the bloodstream with the help of these transport al intestinal mechanisms, triggered by food, could also explain
molecules. The molecules need high concentrations of sodium how global increases in fatty and carbohydrate-rich food in
to work properly. But in some types of gastric surgery, food-car- recent years, plus increases in overall food availability in many
rying segments of intestine are rerouted to bypass their prima- countries, could cause a disease epidemic.
ry sodium sources—bile and pancreatic digestive juices. With-
out sodium, the activity of glucose transport molecules is ANTIDIABETIC DEVICES
slowed down significantly, which, in turn, improves blood glu- BUT ALTHOUGH SURGERY may be a powerful remedy, it is never
cose control by reducing glucose spikes after a meal. going to be a mass solution to a widespread problem. It requires
Microbes in the gut may also play a role. The GI tract hosts hospitals, highly trained staff and a degree of risk that comes
trillions of microorganisms. Certain species help the body ex- with using a scalpel on any patient. We need less invasive reme-
tract energy from food and produce chemicals that reduce in- dies. At least one may already be at hand: a small sleeve that can
flammation and insulin resistance. Because GI surgery alters be inserted into the intestines through the throat and stomach.
the acidity of the gut as well as the amount and chemical compo- The idea is to cover up the duodenum, the part of the GI
sition of nutrients within the intestines, it can change the local tract just below the stomach. This is where bile and pancreatic
microbe population. Lee Kaplan of Harvard Medical School and juices first mix with partially digested food, altering the chemi-
his colleagues showed this can affect metabolism. They started cal characteristics of everything that continues down the intes-
by giving a group of mice gastric bypass operations. Several tines. Therefore, this one key spot can influence the GI tract
weeks later the researchers transplanted gut bacteria popula- downstream and most of the mechanisms of glucose control
tions from these mice into nonoperated mice whose native bac- I have described.
teria had been eradicated. This second group of mice was put on In a set of experiments, my co-workers and I “walled off” the
a high-fat diet. They gained little weight and improved their duodenum in diabetic rats by inserting a flexible silicone tube
metabolism greatly when compared with rodents that received that let nutrients flow past this section. The food particles nev-
bacteria transplants from mice that did not get surgery. er touched duodenal lining cells or mixed with bile. Blood glu-
Surgery’s other well-known effect is on neural circuits that in- cose control markedly improved. But then we poked holes in
fluence metabolism. One such circuit, for example, runs between the tube, letting nutrients leak out. This modification sabotaged
the gut and the brain along a nerve called the vagus. It allows the antidiabetic effects.
the small intestine to sense minute amounts of ingested nutrients Flexible plastic sleeves that shield the duodenum in humans
and to inform the brain, which, in turn, suppresses glucose already exist. They were developed to mimic the effects of a gas-
production in the liver and thereby lowers overall blood glucose tric bypass without surgery, and they have been approved for
levels. Experiments in rodents by Tony Lam of the University of clinical use in Europe and South America. Patients who under-
Toronto and his colleagues have shown that GI bypass surgery go the procedure have seen marked improvement in diabetic
increases activity in such nutrient-sensing mechanisms. symptoms. There is also a newer approach, now in human trials,
Finally, it is possible that surgery might remove some active in which doctors slip a balloon-tipped device down the throat
insulin-blocking mechanism within the gut that could cause dia- and into the duodenum. The balloon is then filled with hot
betes. The theory for this starts with the insulin-stimulating hor- water to burn away some of the cells that ordinarily react to
mones, incretins. They need a counterweight. Left unchecked, nutrients. Early tests have shown promising results on type 2
incretins would flood the body with insulin after every meal. All diabetes, and further investigations are under way to confirm
people would suffer from low levels of blood sugar (hypoglyce- long-term durability of the effect.
mia) after eating as the tide of insulin cleared glucose from the This is not the first time in medicine that surgery has paved
bloodstream. Because people do not routinely go into low-glu- the way for other kinds of treatments. It is not even the first time
cose comas after eating, something must block what incretins with diabetes. In 1889 Oskar Minkowski created diabetes in dogs
do. But if that countermechanism got extremely exaggerated, it by removing the pancreas, and this work provided the fundamen-
would actually suppress the body’s response to insulin—in other tal clue that led Frederick Banting and Charles Best to discover
words, it could drive type 2 diabetes. Such substances, which I insulin in 1921. Nearly a century later the success of operations
call “anti-incretins,” have not yet been identified conclusively, highlights the GI tract as a target for other novel approaches to
but suspects are starting to emerge. diabetes therapy, approaches that—I hope—will help patients
Gut hormones such as somatostatin-28 and galanin all as much or even more than injections of insulin.
reduce insulin secretion in rodents. And there are more. In
2013 Mingrone and her co-workers harvested a swath of un- MORE TO EXPLORE
identified proteins from a segment of the GI tract in diabetic
$y`D´å®åù´myà¨Ă´=yï"¹ååDïyà
DàDïà`3ùàyàĂÎAlexander D.
mice. When the proteins were injected into nondiabetic mice, Miras and Carel W. le Roux in Nature Reviews of Gastroenterology and Hepatology,
they triggered severe insulin resistance. (The proteins did the Vol. 10, No. 10, pages 575–584; October 2013.
same thing when injected into normal human muscle cells that 5®yï¹5´§yày´ï¨ĂDU¹ùïDUyïyåÎFrancesco Rubino in Nature, Vol. 533,
were grown in the laboratory.) My belief is that gastric bypass pages 459–461; May 26, 2016.
surgery can reduce the amount or availability of these insulin- FROM THE ARCHIVES
blocking anti-incretins and thus restore a normal metabolic
$D´D´DUyïyåÎ3DàD3§¨Dà¹D´m ¹´2y´ýèy`y®Uyà÷ĈĈéÎ
balance to the body.
Whatever the exact mechanism, these and other observa- s c i e n t i f i c a m e r i c a n . c o m /m a g a z i n e /s a

T H E E V O
BIOLOGY
Do humans dance just for fun,

or did it help our ancestors
survive thousands of years ago?
By Thea Singer

L U T I O N
DA O F
N
C E
Thea Singer is a Boston-based science journalist whose work
has appeared in the Washington Post, MIT Technology Review
and Psychology Today, among others. She is also author of
T
Stress Less (Hudson Street Press, 2010).
THE ARGENTINE TANGO is famous for

being a difficult but electrifying dance.
Just one look at a performance by professional
dancers Mora Godoy and
José Lugones shows why.
Whether dancing chest to 1 2
chest or obliquely angled,
Godoy and Lugones whip
across the floor, legs whir-
ring like blades on a fan.
When she raises a bent leg
forward, he answers with
a quick kick aft. The pair
slip easily between the two-
and four-beat phrasing of
the music, perfectly matching each other’s ed significantly to the success of the human lineage. Perhaps,
every hip swivel and toe tap, leg lick and then, dance is a happy evolutionary accident, a by-product of
natural selection for those other traits that helped our ances-
foot volley. tors thrive. Insights from psychology and archaeology hint at
another intriguing possibility, however: that dancing itself
evolved as an adaptive trait, one that may have strengthened
Not everyone can move with the fiery grace of this expert human social bonds in ways that enhanced survival.
duo, of course. But we have all felt the call to dance, which has
beckoned countless participants across all cultures throughout SENSE THE BEAT
PRECEDING PAGES: JEREMY JACKSON Gallery Stock; THIS PAGE: ARIJIT SEN Getty Images (1); GETTY IMAGES (2)
human history. Yet dance is rare in the animal kingdom. And BROKEN DOWN to its basic elements, dancing is the act of sensing
although a few other species can move their bodies to a beat, and predicting the timing of an external beat and then match-
none of them exhibits anything like the complexity seen in ing that beat with rhythmic movements of the body. These
human dancing. actions require a great deal of coordination among different
Why should dancing be such a common human trait, and parts of the brain.
why are we so good at it? In recent years scientists have begun Over the past decade researchers in Canada, the U.S. and Eng-
to identify features of the brain and body that underpin our land have begun to identify networks of nerve cells deep within
exceptional ability. Some of these features are linked to lan- the human brain that act in concert to isolate the beat from
guage and upright locomotion, two traits that have contribut- external auditory signals. Once these networks recognize the
IN BRIEF
Dance plays an important role in every human soci- cess in which so-called motor neurons that control birds, parrots and a California sea lion have also dem-
ety known to researchers. Does its ubiquity imply a the muscles align, or entrain, with the auditory sig- onstrated this talent.
survival advantage, or is it merely an accidental by- nals detected by sensory neurons. Further investigations in a range of disciplines reveal
product of large brains and upright posture? Until recently, investigators assumed that only hu- that the origins of dance are complex and may never
The ability to dance depends on a neurological pro- mans possessed the ability to entrain. But humming- be fully understood.

underlying pattern, they predict the timing of subsequent beats, cles might have evolved. His work suggests that the same neu-
essentially generating a matching arrangement within the brain. ral innovations that allowed humans to learn and produce spo-
The next step is what makes dancing possible. The parts of the ken language also predisposed us to be dancers.
brain that control the muscles start to fire in conjunction with the In Patel’s view, the ability to mimic sounds paved the way
predicted beats from the auditory networks. (Indeed, these so- for predictive, flexible entrainment. Such mimicry demon-
called motor-planning areas of the brain kick into action even strates what researchers call “vocal learning,” in which an ani-
when we stand still and merely perceive a beat.) This coupling of mal listens carefully to a sound, forms a mental model of it,
auditory processing with rhythmic physical movement lies at the aligns the motor control of its throat, tongue and mouth with
heart of our ability to tap out a beat with our fingers or to waltz that model, and then produces the modeled sound. When the
across the floor. Scientists call it “entrainment.” animal listens to the output, it notes and corrects discrepancies
Barring illness, we humans come by entrainment naturally, between the predicted and the actual sound and tries again.
and we can sustain rhythmic movement across a wide range Patel suggests that the coupling of auditory and motor process-
of tempos for long periods. “Our synchronization abilities ing required to imitate sounds laid the neurological ground-
are incredibly flexible,” asserts Aniruddh D. Patel, a neurosci- work for the later, more complex process of predictive auditory-
entist at Tufts University. “We can stay synchronized to a beat motor entrainment.
whether it slows down or speeds up by plus or minus 30 per- Why might vocal learning have evolved in select animals?
3 4 5
WORLD BEAT: Children perform

cent.” This capacity generally emerges a classical dance in Mumbai, India (1); Some scientists speculate that it might
between three and five years of age. break-dancers in Los Angeles demon- have enabled songbirds to master com-
For years scientists believed that strate moves ( 2); modern ballet danc- plex acoustic displays to advertise for a
only humans had the ability to entrain xßää¸ÿxĀU§îāD³lßD`xÉ3); Bol- mate. In parrots, Patel says, it furnished
their physical behavior with external ä¸UD§§xî§³xäøÇÇxßx`î§āÉ4); street an “acoustic badge—something that marks
sounds. Then, in 2009, studies started to parade and festive dance in Cuba (5). them as a member of a group.”
emerge showing that parrots, humming- If Patel’s hypothesis that vocal mimic-
birds and perhaps songbirds can—to a ry is a necessary precondition for audito-
limited extent—time their movements to music as well. Snow- ry-motor entrainment is right, then the only animals that
ball, a male cockatoo famous for bobbing his head up and down should be able to entrain are those that are already capable of
in time to music from the Backstreet Boys, was among the birds imitating sounds. To date, the only animals that are known to
GETTY IMAGES (3); LINDA VARTOOGIAN Getty Images (4); CHRISTOPHER PILLITZ Getty Images (5)
studied. And in 2013 researchers reported that a California sea imitate external sounds are humans, hummingbirds, parrots,
lion named Ronan could move her head to a range of tempos. songbirds, whales, certain flipper-footed marine mammals
Humans are, however, the only animals that can produce (pinnipeds), elephants and some bats. Meanwhile our nearest
the closely coordinated movements required of partner or living relatives, bonobos and chimpanzees, are not vocal learn-
group dancing. Birds that can entrain move in spurts to music ers, and most evidence to date suggests that they do not entrain.
on their own, Patel says. Even when multiple parrots live to- Although one chimp in a study was apparently able to synchro-
gether in a shelter, he says, they do not coordinate their move- nize her taps with the beat at one tempo, she could not keep the
ments or dance with one another. beat at other tempos. Researchers also found one bonobo that
seemed to be able to drum to a beat, but they caution that she
IMITATION GAME might have been watching the tester for cues rather than just
DANCE IS NOT the only human attribute that depends on entrain- responding to what she was hearing.
ment. Speech and singing also require the ability to match Such observations support the idea that vocal mimicry
sound with physical movement—specifically, of the vocal cords might be a necessary precursor for entrainment. But they are
and muscles in the throat. Tracing the neural pathways involved by no means a slam dunk. Demonstrating entrainment in non-
in vocalization gave Patel an idea about how entrainment human species is not easy. Think of the complicated duets
between nerves that process sound and those that control mus- between some species of songbirds. Do they take turns singing

by keeping time—predicting when the other will finish—or are ties enabled our ancestors—in particular, Homo erectus—to
they merely reacting to their partner’s silence? And how could upgrade their hunting and foraging skills.
you possibly test this? “There are all kinds of fascinating adaptations that we think
The biggest problem for Patel’s vocal-mimicry hypothesis, evolved for running,” Lieberman continues. The toes of modern
however, is Ronan, the head-bobbing sea lion. Sea lions are not humans are much shorter, for example, than those of our fore-
known to be vocal learners, although they are related to walrus- bears. From a biomechanical point of view, this is unnecessary
es and seals, which are. Yet in 2013 researchers at the Universi- for walking, but it makes running more efficient. The three
ty of California, Santa Cruz, demonstrated that Ronan could semicircular canals of the inner ear have grown larger over the
move her head in time with simple beats and, later, more com- course of millennia, allowing us to maintain our balance when-
plex music. Further tests showed that she could correctly keep ever we move our head, so that we can move with greater speed
time with the beat even when it sped up or slowed down. and agility. Such adaptations are also useful for dancing.
There are several ways to explain Ronan’s apparent ability. In Lieberman’s view, dance could be a coincidental out-
Maybe she is just one very gifted sea lion—the exception that growth of the evolution of running that proved so useful it con-
proves the rule. Or perhaps sea lions still possess the neural ferred its own additional selective advantage. “It doesn’t have
machinery for vocal mimicry and just no longer use it. to be an all-or-nothing thing,” he says. “It can be partial. It
It is possible, of course, that Ronan’s feat proves the vocal- could be that dancing was selected for, or it could be that danc-
6 7 8
GLOBAL REACH: Tribal dancers leap

mimicry hypothesis wrong. Patel and in Uganda (6); teenagers strike a pose ing was never selected for, or it could be
others have suggested that one way to in the U.S. (7 ); Jewish dancers cele- that certain elements of dancing were
test this hypothesis would be to deter- brate in London (8Êç3ølD³`xßäÿß§ selected for.” He pauses. “Testing those
mine whether horses—which are neither in Istanbul (9); Geisha performers hypotheses—boy, that is hard.”
vocal learners nor related to them—can läÇ§DāD³ä³ DÇD³É10); dance com-
also be taught to entrain. Horses “should ÇD³āß¸`¦äî¸îxUxDî³øUDÉ11). GROUP EFFORT
not be able to match a specific tempo, but OBSERVATIONS of modern-day dancers
there is widespread anecdotal evidence offer some tantalizing clues to the kinds
that they can,” says Mara Breen, an assistant professor of psy- of advantages dancing might have conferred in our evolution-
chology at Mount Holyoke College, who is testing Patel’s hypoth- ary past. A notable feature of human dance is that we tend to
esis in horses. If it turns out that these animals can entrain, then do it together. As we feel and predict one another’s movements,
GEORGE F. MOBLEY National Geographic (6); GETTY IMAGES (7); DAN KITWOOD Getty Images (8)
perhaps the process is not so hard after all, or it evolved in oth- there is a physical and emotional give-and-take between indi-
er species for different reasons than it did in humans. viduals, whether they are tango partners or throngs of millen-
nials rocking out to Bruno Mars.
A ROLE FOR RUNNING? This group capability represents what can be called social
UNLIKE DANCE in other creatures, human dance goes beyond head entrainment, and it confers what Émile Durkheim, who helped
bobbing to include coordinated movement of the torso and to create the field of sociology in the late 1800s, termed “collec-
limbs. How might the evolution of our unusual upright posture tive effervescence,” or the feeling of being part of something
have affected our capacity for dance? One idea that has gained larger than oneself. That kind of social cohesion could be valu-
attention in recent years is that dance could have grown out of able for life-sustaining activities such as food gathering or pred-
our ability to run—as opposed to just walk—on two legs. “Cer- ator avoidance.
tainly we take advantage of being bipedal to dance,” says Harvard Anthropologist Edward Hagen of Washington State Univer-
University evolutionary biologist Daniel E. Lieberman, who, in sity Vancouver takes that idea a step further. He hypothesizes
2004, co-authored a seminal paper in Nature on the role of that music and dance might have evolved as a way for groups
endurance running in human evolution. But that differs from to appraise one another when seeking to form alliances that
what humans evolved to do. “We evolved to walk and to run, to reached beyond the bonds of kinship. How well a group danced
throw, to dig,” Lieberman says. Natural selection for these abili- together, for instance, might give an indication of how well its

members would perform as part of a larger coalition. having taken place among Upper Paleolithic peoples. Among
Greater social cohesion imparts physiological benefits as them is Isturitz, a cave in the French Pyrenees, where bone
well. A 2010 study by scientists at the University of Oxford pipes dating to 35,000 to 20,000 years ago were found.
shows that synchronized physical activity driven by a unified “It’s clear from the other archaeological evidence that lots of
goal—in this case, rowing in the university’s boat club—signifi- different groups were gathering at these sites at particular
cantly increased participants’ pain thresholds compared with times of the year,” says Oxford paleoanthropologist Iain Morley,
solo training. The authors attributed the increase to the release author of the 2013 book The Prehistory of Music: Human Evo-
of endorphins, natural opioids in areas of the brain associated lution, Archaeology, and the Origins of Musicality. “When we
with mood. Robin I. M. Dunbar, an anthropologist and evolu- see that kind of big group activity in hunter-gatherer societies
tionary psychologist at Oxford, argues that these endorphins today, music and dance occur.” Thus, Morley believes, humani-
strengthen social bonds when people engage in group musical ty’s ancestors were likely making music and dancing for tens
activities as well. of thousands of years—plenty of time for evolution to influence
“You could imagine two societies, one that didn’t dance and the outcome.
one that did, and the one that did would have much stronger There is one absolute about this most elusive of art forms.
social bonds,” says archaeologist Clive Gamble, a professor at Dancing is about communicating, whether it is between the
the University of Southampton in England. In a competitive sit- participants themselves or the participants and the observers.
9 10 11
uation between the two, he says, the society that danced “would Dancers are, in essence, sharing a world of their own invention.
have an evolutionary advantage.” In doing so, they are also changing their brain. Clinicians
Given the dearth of direct evidence for the origins of dance, and researchers alike have acknowledged the benefits of dance
scientists in varying fields have turned to the behavior of for people with movement disorders such as Parkinson’s dis-
today’s few remaining hunter-gatherer societies for clues about ease. Indeed, many who suffer from the tremors, stiffness and
our ancestral past. Their way of life probably offers the closest difficulty initiating movements that characterize Parkinson’s
approximation that anthropologists have of what human soci- can, by taking dance classes, regain some of their ability to
eties were like before the widespread adoption of agriculture entrain. As an added benefit, the classes help to form social
10,000 years ago. bonds that may have been diminished by the disease.
Evolutionary anthropologist Camilla Power of the Universi- Dance classes for people with Parkinson’s do not, of course,
GURCAN OZTURK Getty Images (9); FRANK CARTER Getty Images (10); NIKA KRAMER Gallery Stock (11)
ty of East London studies the Hadza people of northern Tanza- aim to turn out the next Mora Godoy. But they offer their own
nia, who typically live in “camps” of 20 to 30 people, in which transformations. This most ancient of human activities unites
men and women are social equals. Over the generations, dance body and mind in ways we are only beginning to grasp.
has emotionally bound the Hadza and other groups, including
the Bayaka people in central Africa and the San people in the
M O R E TO E X P L O R E
Kalahari Desert, together in “shared fictions.” Participants
enact initiations, healing rituals and gender relationships, Musical Rhythm, Linguistic Rhythm, and Human Evolution. Aniruddh D. Patel
among other things, Power says. Among the Hadza, key dance in Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol. 24, No. 1, pages 99–104;
September 2006.
rituals include feigned “sex wars” in which women taunt men
The Origins of Human and Avian Auditory-Motor Entrainment. Adena Schachner
and the men return the favor. “This dynamic is what underlies in Nova Acta Leopoldina, Vol. 111, No. 380, pages 243–253; 2013.
the egalitarianism,” she says. Women consolidate their power, 2Ăï®`´ïàD´®y´ïi=Ăù®D´å=D´ïï¹jàyyåD´Ýïy¨Èïj0yï
àmå
even playing male roles, goading the men to hunt in return for 5àĂjD´m3yD"¹´åDÿyï¹
y
àUymÎMargaret Wilson and Peter F. Cook in
later “cuddles.” Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, Vol. 23, No. 6, pages 1647–1659; December 2016.
There is indirect evidence that large group dances have tak- FROM OUR ARCHIVES
en place for thousands of years. So-called aggregation sites—
The Neuroscience of Dance. Steven Brown and Lawrence M. Parsons; July 2008.
large, heavily trampled areas where prehistoric musical instru-
ments have been recovered—provide hints of such activities s c i e n t i f i c a m e r i c a n . c o m /m a g a z i n e /s a

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wide and varied interests and hunger to uncover

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Èàyÿ¹ùåÈà¹¹åD´mmy®¹´åïàDï¹´åÎ ´å`y´`y¹àå`y´`yÝååD§yÎ Andrea Marks àyåÿ´ïjUùï´¹ï´´ïy¨Ă å¹ÎÛ

Michael Shermer is publisher of Skeptic magazine
SKEPTIC
V IE W IN G T H E WO R L D
(www.skeptic.com) and a Presidential Fellow at W I T H A R AT I O N A L E Y E
Chapman University. His next book is Heavens on Earth.
Follow him on Twitter @michaelshermer
Who Are You? procedure, a patient’s brain is cooled to as low as 50 degrees
Fahrenheit, which causes electrical activity in neurons to stop—
suggesting that long-term memories are stored statically. But
Memories, points of view and the self that cannot happen if your brain dies. That is why CPR has to
By Michael Shermer be done so soon after a heart attack or drowning—because if the
brain is starved of oxygen-rich blood, the neurons die, along
The Discovery äDöć¿è%xîĀ§ in which Robert Redford with the memories stored therein.
plays a scientist who proves that the afterlife is real. “Once the Second, there is the supposition that copying your brain’s
body dies, some part of our consciousness leaves us and travels connectome—the diagram of its neural connections—uploading
to a new plane,” the scientist explains, evidenced by his ma- it into a computer (as some scientists suggest) or resurrecting
chine that measures, as another character puts it, “brain wave- your physical self in an afterlife (as many religions envision) will
lengths on a subatomic level leaving the body after death.” result in you waking up as if from a long sleep either in a lab or
This idea is not too far afield from a real theory called quan- in heaven. But a copy of your memories, your mind or even your
tum consciousness, proffered by a wide range of people, from soul is not you. It is a copy of you, no different than a twin, and
physicist Roger Penrose to physician Deepak Chopra. Some ver- no twin looks at his or her sibling and thinks, “There I am.” Nei-
sions hold that our mind is not strictly the product of our brain ther duplication nor resurrection can instantiate you in anoth-
and that consciousness exists separately from material sub- er plane of existence.
stance, so the death of your physical body is not the end of your Third, your unique identity is more than just your intact
conscious existence. Because this is the topic of my next book, memories; it is also your personal point of view. Neuroscientist
Heavens on Earth: The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immor- Kenneth Hayworth, a senior scientist at the Howard Hughes
tality, and Utopia (Henry Holt, 2018), the film triggered a num- Medical Institute and president of the Brain Preservation Foun-
ber of problems I have identified with all such concepts, both dation, divided this entity into the MEMself and the POVself. He
scientific and religious. believes that if a complete MEMself is transferred into a comput-
First, there is the assumption that our identity is located in er (or, presumably, resurrected in heaven), the POVself will
awaken. I disagree. If this were done without the death of
the person, there would be two memory selves, each with
its own POVself looking out at the world through its
unique eyes. At that moment, each would take a different
path in life, thereby recording different memories based
on different experiences. “You” would not suddenly have
two POVs. If you died, there is no known mechanism by
which your POVself would be transported from your brain
into a computer (or a resurrected body). A POV depends
entirely on the continuity of self from one moment to the
next, even if that continuity is broken by sleep or anesthe-
sia. Death is a permanent break in continuity, and your
personal POV cannot be moved from your brain into
some other medium, here or in the hereafter.
If this sounds dispiriting, it is just the opposite.
Awareness of our mortality is uplifting because it means
that every moment, every day and every relationship
matters. Engaging deeply with the world and with other
sentient beings brings meaning and purpose. We are
our memories, which are presumed to be permanently record- each of us unique in the world and in history, geographically
ed in the brain: if they could be copied and pasted into a com- and chronologically. Our genomes and connectomes cannot be
puter or duplicated and implanted into a resurrected body or duplicated, so we are individuals vouchsafed with awareness of
soul, we would be restored. But that is not how memory works. our mortality and self-awareness of what that means. What does
Memory is not like a DVR that can play back the past on a it mean? Life is not some temporary staging before the big show
screen in your mind. Memory is a continually edited and fluid hereafter—it is our personal proscenium in the drama of the
process that utterly depends on the neurons in your brain being cosmos here and now.
functional. It is true that when you go to sleep and wake up the
next morning or go under anesthesia for surgery and come back
hours later, your memories return, as they do even after so- Visit 2_w²í_Ĉ¬wÞ_C² on Facebook and Twitter
called profound hypothermia and circulatory arrest. Under this or send a letter to the editor: xlî¸ßäSä`DÍ`¸
Illustration by Izhar Cohen July 2017, ScientificAmerican.com 73
ANTI GRAVITY
T H E O N G O IN G S E A R C H F O R Steve Mirsky has been writing the Anti Gravity column since
F U N DA M E N TA L FA R C E S a typical tectonic plate was about 36 inches from its current location.
He also hosts the IY_[dj_ÒY7c[h_YWdpodcast Science Talk.
enamel that coats ours, for example, is 97% mineral.” Such pre-
fossilization means “there are often hundreds if not thousands
of teeth for every skeleton or complete skull we find. . . . Fortu-
nately for paleontologists, they are also excellent tools for un-
derstanding life in the past.”
Teeth tell such tales because their shapes and the usage
patterns etched on them offer up heaping helpings of informa-
tion about what animals ate and how they lived. “If we can
reconstruct diet from teeth, for example,” Ungar writes, “we can
use them as a bridge to the worlds of our ancestors.” Likewise,
your teeth could one day serve as a bridge. Unless, of course, you
have a bridge.
While reading Ungar, I could not help but think about Don
McLeroy, a man who vexed scientists and educators for the first
decade of this century in his roles as a member and then chair of
the Texas State Board of Education. McLeroy fought against the
inclusion of evolution in curricula. He believed that the earth is
only a few thousands of years old. He was quoted as saying, “Evo-
lution is hooey.” And that “somebody’s got to stand up to experts.”
All those views would be irritating if McLeroy’s day job had been
as a plumber or an architect or an insurance agent. But what
made McLeroy particularly maddening was that he worked on a
daily basis with the most abundantly clear evidence of evolution
that can be found in the fossil record: he is a dentist.
While you’re chewing on that irony, consider that for hun-
dreds of millions of years some animals have avoided the teeth
Drilling for of predators by getting down and dirty. “Imagine yourself the
size of a shrew and living in environments where dinosaurs are
everywhere,” writes Emory University paleontologist Anthony J.
Fossil Gold Martin in his book The Evolution Underground: Burrows, Bun-
kers, and the Marvelous Subterranean World beneath Our Feet.
Yes, that’s a mouthful.
Two new books look at evolution “Some want to eat you, while others will carelessly step on you
and carry your squashed remains like chewing gum on their feet
from head to below your toes for days,” Martin continues. “Oh, you say you live in deep burrows
By Steve Mirsky where no dinosaurs can find you or compress you into two dimen-
sions? Yes, that will do nicely.... Congratulations, shrew-sized
Brush your fossils twice a day. Do it for yourself and for future mammal: You win the survival sweepstakes, and one tiny branch
researchers and museum visitors. Because if any part of you is of your descendants eventually gets to a point where it can dis-
going to get unearthed millions of years from now, it’ll probably cuss how you outlived the dinosaurs.” Plus, when the asteroid bit
be a tooth. “Teeth are stronger than bones, and they are much into a big chunk of what’s now the Yucatán Peninsula 66 million
more likely to survive the ages,” writes University of Arkansas years ago, stuff that lived underground—and far away—clearly
paleoanthropologist Peter S. Ungar in his book Evolution’s Bite: had a significant survival advantage.
A Story of Teeth, Diet and Human Origins. Not to be confused In fact, Martin argues that “the evolutionary paths taken by
with Felix Unger, who once invested in a dental adhesive based most modern animals, whether these are crocodilians, turtles,
on the substance barnacles produce to stick to ships. (Watch birds, lungfish, amphibians, earthworms, insects, crustaceans,
The Odd Couple, season 4, episode 13: “A Barnacle Adventure.” or mammals, are connected to their burrowing ancestors.” That
Spoiler alert: the glue fails when the patient’s mouth gets dry.) passage can be found deep in the book under the subhead “Liv-
In fossil bones, most of the material that existed while the ing on Burrowed Time.” Holy moly.
animal was alive gets slowly replaced over time by minerals. I dug both books. Sink your teeth into them.
The resulting buried treasure is really a natural cast of the bone
with properties more like rock than like what’s inside The Rock
(aka Dwayne Johnson). Teeth start out most of the way there. Visit 2_w²í_Ĉ¬wÞ_C² on Facebook and Twitter
“Teeth are essentially ready-made fossils,” Ungar writes. “The or send a letter to the editor: editors@sciam.com
74 Scientific American, July 2017 Illustration by Matt Collins

SCIENTIFIC AMERIC AN ONLINE
FIND ORIGINAL ARTICLES AND IMAGES IN
50, 100 & 150 YEARS AGO
THE SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN ARCHIVES AT IN N OVATI O N A N D D I S C OV E RY A S C H R O NI C L E D IN SC IENTIFIC A MERIC AN
ä`x³î`Dxß`D³Í`¸êDDą³xêäD ¸Ç§xlTā C³x§Í2_§x³¸
J U LY
End of the
1967 “Monkey Law”
“Tennessee’s ‘monkey law’ pro-
have provided reliable, fast
random-access memories for
practically all computers in use
U-boat to show itself above the
surface during daylight; and
at night large seaplanes equipped
hibiting the teaching of evolution today. At the same time one with searchlights could make
in the state’s public schools has principal goal has been to pro- it almost as dangerous for sub-
been repealed. The law was duce ‘integrated’ memories— marines to rest on the surface
adopted in 1925 and led later that memories in which the active while charging their batteries.”
year to the celebrated test case elements and their connections 1967
involving John T. Scopes, William
Jennings Bryan and Clarence
Darrow. The 11-day trial became
are mechanically fabricated in
a unitary process.” 1867 Sweet Tooth “In 1860, in Great
Britain, the average consumption
a bitter contest between religious
fundamentalism and biological
theory; the judge held, however,
1917 Night Flight
“It has been
suggested to maintain an aerial
of sugar was 34 lbs. for each in-
habitant. In Belgium, though
coffee is usually drunk without
that only evidence on whether or patrol along the routes followed sweetening, 21 pounds of that
not Scopes had taught evolution by shipping, seaplanes and sugar is disposed of yearly for
was admissible, and Scopes was dirigibles taking their supplies 1917 each inhabitant. Among the peas-
convicted. The conviction was of bombs and fuel from mother antry of Russia sugar must be an
reversed on a technicality, but the ships of the class officially known unknown luxury, or at least its
law was permitted to stand. In as ‘seaplane carriers’ [see illus- use by the people must be con-
April of this year the lower house tration for a seaplane night fined to Holy days and Festivals,
of the Tennessee legislature voted landing]. With hundreds of air- for the consumption per head is
to repeal the statute; in May the craft constantly in the air and but 2 pounds a year. Next to the
Senate agreed and the governor covering a wide expanse of water, British, the people of the United
approved the repeal.” it should be possible to make it States use more sugar than any
extremely dangerous for any 1867 other nation in the world; and
Random-Access if the consumption of molasses
Memory and syrup were added—fully
“Since the early 1950s the stan- 2 ½ gallons for every man,
dard random-access memory woman and child—to that of
has been provided by an array sugar, it would be found that the
of tiny ring-shaped cores made free use of saccharine food was
of a ferrite, an easily magnetized far greater among us than with
material. In its simplest form our transatlantic friends.”
the array of cores is threaded
by 2n ‘word’ conductors in one French Laundry
direction and by m ‘digit’ con- “The soiled linen of the Grand
ductors in the other. Each core Hotel, the Hôtel du Louvre, the
can hold one bit of information, Grand Café, and other hotels
which is stored in terms of the and cafés in Paris, is washed at
direction of imposed magne- the rate of 40,000 pieces a day,
tization; in other words, the core at the Blanchisserie de Cour-
‘remembers’ the direction of the celles, three miles or so from
effective magnetizing current the St. Lazare terminus of the
sent through it last. The cores are Western Railway. The linen is
wired into arrays by painstaking boiled with soap and soda and
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, VOL. CXVII, NO. 4; JULY 28, 1917
handwork with only rudimentary then washed in hollow wheels,

mechanical aids. rinsed, partly dried by centrifugal
“The situation is somewhat machines, and for the rest in
ironic: the heart of the computer, hot-air ovens, which carry off
which itself is the symbol of nearly three pounds of moisture
mechanization, is made by the per pound of coal burnt, and is
age-old kind of labor that pro- finally ironed between polished
duced brocades and carpets. =DßDîäxDj¿´¿èi a scout seaplane returning rollers, and then packed ready
Made as they are, the core arrays to its mother ship at night. for return to Paris.”
GRAPHIC
SCIENCE Midni
11 P.M 9 per minute ght 1 A.
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M .
10 2
3
8
4
The Average
7 3 babies born
7.
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5
Babies Born by Minute
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6
More births of all types
occur right after lunch
5
The Baby
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Day Shift
Births peak around 8 A.M.,
then rise again between noon
4
3
M.
9
Spike
and 1 P.M. Hospitals typically 2 P.
have more doctors and nurses p Noon 11
10
Births peak on
on hand during the morning
and fewer later in the day.
Boom weekdays during
The morning
peak is driven by daytime work hours
planned
l d CC-sections
ti
Two generations ago babies were

The Average Monda born pretty much spontaneously,
447 babies born per hour y around the clock. But today in the
500 per hour
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a
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Fewest Births
Su
Tue or deliveries induced by doctors con-

Sunday night 250 s
d ay
cerned about the mother’s or baby’s
between 2 and 3 A.M.
health. These medical procedures
have skewed the days of the week,
Early Riser Babies Born by Hour and hours of the day, during which
Saturday
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are born on weekdays during
daylight hours. Fewer are
The procedures dominate because
W
born on weekends or at night, more than 98 percent of infants are

ednes
primarily because fewer born in a hospital, despite what seems

day
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so women tend not to schedule births. Far more babies now arrive on
their delivery then. Despite ay
Frid weekdays than on weekends, most
¹¨§¨¹àyjDù¨¨®¹¹´Då´¹yy`ïÎ Thur
sday
between 8 A.M. and 6 P.M. “We can’t
Midday Special schedule spontaneous labor, obvious-
On a typical Tuesday, ly,” says Neel Shah, a physician and
770 babies are born professor at Harvard Medical School.
The Average from noon to 1 P.M. “But we can schedule delivery.”
77,000 babies born per week
—Mark Fischetti and Zan Armstrong
SOURCES: FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, FROM DATA SUPPLIED BY U.S. SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION

Januar
No, Thanks y
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Moms do not schedule C-secttions cem
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76 Scientific American, Julyy 2017 Graphic by Nadieh Bremer and Zan Armstrong

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SPECIAL

SPECIAL REPORT SUSTAINABLE CITIE S

44 How Cities Could Save Us

July 2017, ScientiﬁcAmerican.com 1

© 2017 Scientific American

26 The Science of Health

75 50, 100 & 150 Years Ago

Tuning Up the Immune System

2 Scientiﬁc American, July 2017

© 2017 Scientific American

4 Scientiﬁc American, July 2017 Illustration by Nick Higgins

© 2017 Scientific American

in search of one that ﬁt all the experiments.

July 2017, ScientiﬁcAmerican.com 5

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DAVID I. KAISER M.I.T. FRANÇOIS BOUCHET Institut d’Astrophysique LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS

6 Scientiﬁc American, July 2017

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GENE JOB rance.” By applying that insight to the

July 2017, ScientiﬁcAmerican.com 7

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EDITOR IN CHIEF AND SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT

wafer-scale spacecraft to enable humani- NEWS

referred to as Starlight, of which I am the COPY AND PRODUC TION

ning Starshot. The program started in D I G I TA L

Flight,” which Finkbeiner notes started CONSUMER MARKETING

LE T TER S TO THE EDITOR

8 Scientiﬁc American, July 2017

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local budgets become overwhelmed by a weather emergency.

Outbreaks ﬁnance the necessary response. By November, after Congress

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child protective service agencies in the U.S. involves alcohol use.

Raise inﬂation, making drinking more affordable than it has been in

Alcohol Taxes, drinking’s tragic human cost.

10 Scientiﬁc American, July 2017 Illustration by Christina Chung

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The Javari River in Peru and Brazil is one of the

12 Scientiﬁc American, July 2017

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• Pinpointing the brain’s dreaming

For decades scientists have grappled with

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14 Scientiﬁc American, July 2017 Map by Mapping Specialists

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16 Scientiﬁc American, July 2017

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The Top 10 Categories of Things We Keep Secret

Secret from Secret from Secret once but Never kept

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18 Scientiﬁc American, July 2017 Graphic by Amanda Montañez

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protection, such as national parks, were more

Nearly Over 100 New Features & Apps in Origin 2017!

in 60 years if losses continue at the current rate.

July 2017, ScientiﬁcAmerican.com 19

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A New York Times Bestseller Hot Rockets

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Nova Scotia, P.E.I. 10 days $1395 %¹´åyāùD¨´my¨ïĂÊåù`Dåàï´Ë