American Scientist - November - December 2017 PDF

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THE WORLD’S NEWSSTAND®
Symposium on
Atmospheric Chemistry,
Climate, and Health
November 10, 2017 t Raleigh Convention Center
Raleigh, North Carolina t #SigmaXimtg
IMAGE BY NASA
Featured Speakers
David Archer, PhD Barbara Finlayson-Pitts,
The University of Chicago PhD
University of California, Irvine
Humanity and Global
Warming: Views from the The Past is Prologue:
Carbon Cycle Lessons Learned for
Science-Based Policies to
Address Air Quality and
Climate
C. Arden Pope III, PhD A. R. Ravishankara, PhD

Brigham Young University Colorado State University
Air Pollution and Health: The Ozone Hole: From

Scientific and Public Policy Discovery to Recovery
Controversies
Jeffrey Shaman, PhD

Columbia University
Simulation and
Forecast of Infectious
Disease: Environmental
Determinants and
Transmission Dynamics
Followed by the Student Research Conference

on November 11 t meeting@sigmaxi.org
_____________________
sigmaxi.org/fallsymposium-src
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AMERICAN
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Departments Feature Articles
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322 From the Editors
323 Letters to the Editors

348 364
326 Spotlight
Proprietary algorithms
328 Infographic
Living with fire
330 First Person: Sally C. Seidel
New insights on particle physics
332 Sightings
Seeing the heart’s power
334 Briefings
335 Computing Science
Bitcoins maybe; blockchains likely
Peter J. Denning and
Ted G. Lewis
340 Engineering 348 Adapting Your Body Clock to a 364 The New Language of
Problematic pedestrian bridges 24-Hour Society Mathematics
Henry Petroski Can new research help address the dis- Is it possible to take all words out of
344 Perspective connect between the body’s sleep-wake mathematical expressions?
cycle and the rhythms of modern life? Daniel S. Silver
The forgotten mystery of inertia
Alexis Webb and Erik Herzog
Tony Rothman
372 The Persistence and Peril of
Scientists’ 356 Cassini and the Rings of Saturn Misinformation
As one of its final scientific feats, Many challenges arise while battling
Nightstand Cassini conducted a detailed tour of the widespread falsehoods.
376 Book Reviews material encircling the giant planet. Brian G. Southwell, Emily A.
Picturing science rBig data in law Matthew S. Tiscareno Thorson, and Laura Sheble
enforcement
From Sigma Xi 356

381 Sigma Xi Today
Q&A with new editor-in-chief of
American Scientist rSymposium
will address climate and health r
Members share solar eclipse stories
rNew quarterly conversations
372
The Cov er
Technology has extended the times of day when people can be active and has allowed for connectivity at any time of day. A growing body
of research shows that the biological clock is affected by light exposure, especially at certain times of day, which in turn can affect all sorts
of biological processes necessary for health, including sleep, focus, and metabolism. More people seem to be experiencing social jet lag,
when our body rhythms are out of sync with the day-night cycle. This lack of synchrony can have serious public health consequences; for
example, it has been linked to sleep disorders, obesity, and mental disorders. In “Adapting Your Body Clock to a 24-Hour Society” (pages
348–355), circadian biologists Alexis Webb and Erik Herzog explain how the biological clock sets and keeps time, and what solutions are
under study to help people sync up with healthy daily routines for sleeping and eating. (Cover illustration by Michael Morgenstern.)
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FROM THE EDITORS
AMERICAN
Modern Challenges
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A decade ago, the robotic spacecraft Cassini had

already become a huge success. It had released
its Huygens probe onto Saturn’s moon Titan, and
it was returning spectacular imagery of the giant VOLUME 105, NUMBER 6
planet itself, as well as its other moons. At that time,
we asked Carolyn Porco, leader of the imaging team Editor-in-Chief Fenella Saunders
for the Cassini-Huygens mission and director of the Senior Consulting Editor Corey S. Powell
Digital Features Editor Katie L. Burke
Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations,
Contributing Editors Sandra J. Ackerman,
to fill in American Scientist readers on the mission
Marla Broadfoot, Catherine Clabby, Brian Hayes,
results so far. Her resulting essay in the July–August Anna Lena Phillips, Diana Robinson, David
2007 issue showcased the early results from the first Schoonmaker, Michael Szpir, Flora Taylor
1,000 days of the mission. Editorial Associate Mia Evans
In this issue, we are returning to Cassini as its mis-
sion recently came to a preplanned end. To preclude Cassini from crashing into Art Director Barbara J. Aulicino
one of Saturn’s moons as it ran out of propellant and potentially spreading ter-
SCIENTISTS’ NIGHTSTAND
restrial contamination there, the spacecraft was instead deliberately plunged into
Editor Dianne Timblin
Saturn. But before its final encounter with the planet, Cassini spent much of the
final year of its mission taking a detailed look at Saturn’s rings. As Matthew S. AMERICAN SCIENTIST ONLINE
Tiscareno explains in “Cassini and the Rings of Saturn” (pages 356–363), this con- Digital Managing Editor Robert Frederick
cluding year has been practically a whole new mission for the spacecraft, with
some spectacular results. Publisher Jamie L. Vernon
Space exploration uses remarkable technology, but the devices we use daily
ADVERTISING SALES
are also pretty amazing, even if we’re not paying attention to how they work.
BEWFSUJTJOH!BNTDJPSHt
___________
This issue tackles from multiple angles topics related to technology and how it af-
fects us. In our cover story, Alexis Webb and Erik Herzog look at the role that late- EDITORIAL AND SUBSCRIPTION
night viewing of backlit devices, such as cell phones and tablets, is having on our CORRESPONDENCE
biological clocks, and our health, as a result. In “Adapting Your Body Clock to a American Scientist
24-Hour Society” (pages 348–355), the authors look at research that might help P.O. Box 13975
reset our biological clocks to be more in tune with our modern style of living. 3FTFBSDI5SJBOHMF1BSL /$
Mobile devices offer us the convenience of information at our fingertips, but tGBY
are they also a conduit for making us more susceptible to falsehoods? In “The FEJUPST!BNTDJPOMJOFPSHtTVCT!BNTDJPSH
____________ ________
Persistence and Peril of Misinformation,” Brian G. Southwell, Emily A. Thorson,

PUBLISHED BY SIGMA XI, THE SCIENTIFIC
and Laura Sheble review what is known about how people evaluate information RESEARCH HONOR SOCIETY
and discuss how knowledge of these processes could be used to battle hoaxes President Stuart L. Cooper
and fake news. Treasurer David Baker
Two articles in this issue discuss machine learning and its supporting algo- President-Elect Joel R. Primack
rithms, which are increasingly framing our lives whether we are aware of it or Immediate Past President Tee Guidotti
not. In the Spotlight section (pages 326–327), Simson L. Garfinkel reports on a Executive Director Jamie L. Vernon
recent panel discussing proprietary algorithms and who should have access to American Scientist gratefully acknowledges
how they work. Garfinkel points out that these types of algorithms not only can support for “Engineering” through the Leroy
control what music you hear or what news you see on social media, but also are Record Fund.
increasingly used to screen which job applicants to interview or determine how
long a jail sentence should be—and there is currently little recourse for those af- Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor
fected to dispute the results from the software. Society is a society of scientists and engineers,
One specific use of machine-learning algorithms is what’s called predictive polic- GPVOEFEJOUPSFDPHOJ[FTDJFOUJmD
ing, where law enforcement agencies use software to help determine everything achievement. A diverse organization of
members and chapters, the Society fosters
from where officers patrol to which members of the public might be more likely
interaction among science, technology, and
to be a victim of a crime. In the Scientists’ Nightstand section (pages 376–380), an
society; encourages appreciation and support
excerpt of Andrew Guthrie Ferguson’s latest book, The Rise of Big Data Policing, of original work in science and technology; and
digs into such programs, and why efforts in New Orleans were successful when QSPNPUFTFUIJDTBOEFYDFMMFODFJOTDJFOUJmDBOE
similar programs in other cities didn’t have such dramatic results. engineering research.
As Garfinkel points out, going back to a world where nothing is filtered isn’t
Printed in USA
really an option; we would all end up buried in spam and cat videos. Science is
helping society find the balance between technology that is useful and applica-
tions that, maybe, step too far for human comfort.
—Fenella Saunders (@FenellaSaunders)
322 American Scientist, Volume 105
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LETTERS
Alone in the Universe? where in the universe lasts long enough in the Drake Equation are the ones
to broadcast its existence for a sufficient estimating the proportion of planets
To the Editors: amount of time to be found by another harboring conscious life, because we
I found Howard A. Smith’s article short-lived technological civilization. know the least about them. Regarding
“Questioning Copernican Mediocrity” I presume that whatever direction the lifetime of civilizations, however,
(July–August) interesting, especially the evolution might take on other planets Stephen Hawking famously echoes
discussion of the radius within which will be governed by the same principles sentiments similar to Dr. Cushing’s
we might reasonably hope to communi- that Charles Darwin discovered here on when he speaks out against contact-
cate with alien life forms. His article also Earth. Like us, such planets’ intelligent ing aliens. He simplistically claims that
reminded me why I’ve long thought species (if any) will find it difficult or because they will be much more ad-
that the last term in the Drake Equation, even impossible to overcome their ten- vanced than we are and presumably
which famously estimates the number dency to overpopulate and overexploit will have also evolved through Dar-
of intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations their ecological niche, ultimately lead- winian processes, they will be, to his
in our galaxy, is the most significant in ing to their rapid extinction or reduc- way of thinking, dangerously violent.
understanding the Fermi Paradox. tion to a pretechnological state of living. I am more hopeful than either Dr.
Among the many factors in the equa- If there is intelligent life on other plan- Cushing or Hawking; after all, evo-
tion that Frank Drake considered in ets, it is most likely to be either prein- lutionary biologists have pointed
1961, the length of time that a techno- dustrial or post-technological. In either out that sentiments such as altruism
logical civilization releases detectable case, we wouldn’t be likely to find it. and gratitude are also the products
signals into space now seems the weak- If my speculations are true, Smith’s of evolution. My opinion is that if an
est link. We have been releasing such plea that we treat our special planet advanced civilization is able to last
radio signals for barely more than 100 with more respect takes on even more than a few millennia without de-
years. It seems possible that within an- greater significance. We may indeed stroying itself or its world, it will have
other 100 years there will be no one left be alone, but in case we are not, per- learned how to master its negative im-
on Earth sending such signals. Our ex- haps we should try harder to last long pulses. Perhaps the biggest benefit we
ploding population, rapid exhaustion enough to be found. can derive from challenging our cos-
of the necessary resources to support a mic mediocrity is the added impetus
John Cushing
technological civilization, already vis- to learn this lesson ourselves.
Evergreen State College (Emeritus)
ible destruction of a climate and envi-
Bend, Oregon
ronment that can sustain life on Earth, To the Editors:
and threats of nuclear annihilation—all Dr. Smith responds: In his recent feature, Howard A. Smith
of these suggest that perhaps no tech- I thank Dr. Cushing for his comments. seems to be asserting that the fact of
nological civilization that evolves any- I think that the most uncertain factors something being rare means that it is
American Scientist (ISSN 0003-0996) is published bimonthly by Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society, P.O. Box 13975, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709 (919-549-0097). Newsstand single copy $5.95.
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www.americanscientist.org 2017 November–December 323
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ONLINE @ _________________________
Wc[h_YWdiY_[dj_ij$eh] nonetheless prefer to believe we are cos-
mically average—or the opposite: that
we are a cosmically amazing species.
But personal beliefs such as these are
What Makes Science Scientific Check out AmSci Blogs
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A degree in science should require http://www.amsci.org/blog/
ourselves what underlies that belief.
students to evaluate their process of
Perhaps some philosophical attachment
producing knowledge.
Find American Scientist or psychological need prompts us to see
http://bit.ly/2wgNtgy on Facebook ourselves as being either insignificant or
Studying the Light of the Eclipse facebook.com/AmericanScientist significant. Still, we must try to ground
Solar eclipses offer rare opportunities our personal beliefs in the scientific
to better understand both the Sun’s Follow us on Twitter
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whether there are aliens, we meanwhile
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ought to recognize that in the volume of
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__________________ ever exert influence, which is perhaps
beyond the visuals in “The Colonial Org/about
_____ thousands of light years in diameter,
Origins of Tropical Field Stations,” we are probably unusual and could be
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american-scientist
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and so of interest or value?” I would say
Podcast: The Moment of Totality so. The Earth is too. The word “special”
For thousands of years, people have Dr. Foster uses is loaded with subjectiv-
been computing the timing of eclips- Read American Scientist ity and I try to avoid it. Both Dr. Foster,
es. We’re really close. But with a little using the iPad app
whom I thank for his question, and I are
more data, we could be closer still. Available through Apple’s App Store probably average examples of Homo sa-
http://bit.ly/2wgO4ii piens, but I daresay we are both special.
It does not follow that if we are special
and intelligence is rare, a theological ex-
necessarily special. This error has been sponds that we are just a collection of planation is required.
decried by numerous scientists, includ- molecules in a universe filled with lots
ing Richard Feynman, who mocked the of planets and molecules, then it is im- Illustr ation
notion in his unique way: “You know, portant to include the “priors” of the
the most amazing thing happened to case before calculating the statistics,
Credits
me tonight.... I saw a car with the license as one would in a detailed Bayesian Infographic
plate ARW 357. Can you imagine? Of all analysis: If one knows ahead of time Pages 328–329 Eleanor Lutz
the millions of license plates in the state, that the very particular license number
what was the chance that I would see “ARW 357” entitles one to win $1 tril- Perspective
that particular one tonight? Amazing!” lion, then one must admit that all other Page 345, 346 Tom Dunne
If the universe averages one planet license plates are worthless. We don’t Adapting Your Body Clock
with intelligent life per galaxy, Earth- know whether the collection of intelli- to a 24-Hour Society
lings would never detect other intelligent molecules here on Earth is so very Pages 350, 352 Barbara Aulicino
gent beings but would nonetheless not particular, but it might be.
The Persistence and Peril of
be special in any way. In other words, We moderns are becoming accus-
Misinformation
one of 100 billion examples of intel- tomed to living with the realization Page 373 Michele Rosenthal
ligent life in the universe is hardly spe- that some things are fundamentally
cial. Frankly, the notion that humans not knowable: quantum mechanical
are special is still theological. predictions, the outcome of determin-
istic but chaotic systems, and events
John Foster
in the universe beyond our (receding)
Columbus, Ohio
cosmic horizon are examples.
My article asks the reader to puzzle
Dr. Smith responds: over three consequences of the limits of
The “ad hoc fallacy” that Feynman il- knowing (and I talk more about these How to Write to American Scientist
lustrates is not applicable to this situa- matters in the 2016 Zygon article I cite). Brief letters commenting on articles
tion. “The state” cited in the example (1) Living with uncertainty: From what appearing in the magazine are wel-
has millions of other license plates, we do know, for hundreds or thousands comed. The editors reserve the right
and each one is indeed equally “amaz- of human generations (maybe even lon- to edit submissions. Please include
ing” a priori. But the universe has no ger) we are likely to be the only intel- an email address if possible. Address:
other intelligent life we have seen (nor ligent beings around, though we prob- Letters to the Editors, P.O. Box 13975,
do we know whether any exists). We ably will not know for sure that we are. Research Triangle Park, NC 27709 or
are an example of one. If a person re- (2) Recognizing beliefs: Yes, we might editors@amscionline.org.
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Spotlight
A Peek at Proprietary Algorithms Computer programs running ad-

vanced machine-learning algorithms are
now everywhere, and are making deci-
Software increasingly determines what people see online or even how long sions about people for which we often
have little or no recourse. Go shopping
they might spend in jail, but few can access how such programs work. online, and algorithms decide which
products you see and what special deals
you might be offered—and which are
Let’s say you start using a music stream- email from spam, or even helping busi- withheld. Apply to a university, and an
ing service online. You pick a few songs nesses sort the flood of résumés received algorithm may determine if a human
you like, and the site creates a playlist in response to an advertisement. even sees your admissions essays. In
of similar music for you based on that To complete such tasks, software fol- New York City and Santa Cruz, Cali-
input, using its huge database of infor- lows algorithms, which have been part of fornia, among other places, predictive
mation classifying songs into different computing since the dawn of computer policing algorithms may determine how
genres, along with data about other us- science: Ada Lovelace wrote the first often the police patrol a neighborhood.
ers’ likes and dislikes. Each time the ser- one back in 1840. More recently, how- And if you commit a crime in Wiscon-
vice plays a song, you rate it, and the ever, the term algorithm has evolved to sin, an algorithm might determine how
service refines its statistical model of mean “a self-contained step-by-step set much time you spend in prison.
your preferences. This is machine learn- of operations that computers and other These uses of algorithms all share
ing at work, and it’s one of computing’s ‘smart’ devices carry out to perform several important characteristics. Like
fundamental tools for helping people calculation, data processing, and auto- the music service scenario, they all ap-
make choices in the face of information mated reasoning tasks,” according to the pear to be based on advanced statistical
overload, no matter whether the task in- public policy council for the Association machine-learning techniques, devel-
volves choosing songs in a catalog, clas- for Computing Machinery (ACM), the oped over the past two decades, which
sifying the overflow of posts and photo- world’s largest educational and scientific use large amounts of training data to
graphs on social media, filtering wanted computing society. create models that can then make pre-
dictions or perform classifications. In
addition, these algorithms are propri-
Principles for Algorithmic Transparency and Accountability etary: So far, the public (or regulatory
1. Awareness: Owners, designers, builders, users, and other stakeholders of officials acting on the public’s behalf)
analytic systems should be aware of the possible biases involved in their design, has no right to inspect algorithmic
implementation, and use and the potential harm that biases can cause to implementations or the training data,
individuals and society. even when the algorithms are used for
2. Access and Redress: Regulators should encourage the adoption of mechanisms public purposes. And finally, in many
that enable questioning and redress for individuals and groups that are cases, the algorithm is being used by an
adversely affected by algorithmically informed decisions. organization with institutional power,
3. Accountability: Institutions should be held responsible for decisions made by to make decisions about people who
the algorithms that they use, even if it is not feasible to explain in detail how frequently have no right to appeal if the
the algorithms produce their results. algorithm makes a mistake.
4. Explanation: Systems and institutions that use algorithmic decision-making are On September 14, the ACM’s U.S.
encouraged to produce explanations regarding both the procedures followed Public Policy Council (USACM) held a
by the algorithm and the specific decisions that are made. This is particularly panel discussion at the National Press
important in public policy contexts. Club in Washington, D.C., to discuss the
5. Data Provenance: A description of the way in which the training data was effect of algorithmic decision-making on
collected should be maintained by the builders of the algorithms, accompanied society and the technical underpinnings
by an exploration of the potential biases induced by the human or algorithmic of algorithmic models. I moderated the
data-gathering process. Public scrutiny of the data provides maximum opportu-
panel, and I cochair the USACM’s work-
nity for corrections. However, concerns over privacy, protecting trade secrets, or
revelation of analytics that might allow malicious actors to game the system ing group on Algorithmic Transparency
can justify restricting access to qualified and authorized individuals. and Accountability (ATA).
6. Auditability: Models, algorithms, data, and decisions should be recorded so that
Jeanna Matthews, an associate pro-
they can be audited in cases where harm is suspected. fessor of computer science at Clarkson
University in New York and also a co-
7. Validation and Testing: Institutions should use rigorous methods to validate
their models and document those methods and results. In particular, they
chair of the USACM group, opened
should routinely perform tests to assess and determine whether the model the panel’s discussion by introducing
generates discriminatory harm. Institutions are encouraged to make the results the “Principles for Algorithmic Trans-
of such tests public. parency and Accountability” (see box)
Source: https://www.acm.org/binaries/content/assets/public-policy/2017_usacm_statement_algorithms.pdf
_____________________________________________ that USACM issued earlier this year.
Modeled on the various principles of
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fair information practice developed Legal Robot’s advantages, he says, is known biases. In other cases, algorithms
by privacy regulators worldwide over the way it has collected and labeled its have been shown to have unintended
the past 40 years, these principles are training data, instead of the actual algo- consequences, such as causing users to
designed to provide a framework for rithms. For example, many programs see on social media only news that con-
thinking about the challenges posed by that were developed to process English forms to their own political leanings, or
the increasing use of algorithms in our fail when presented with legal docu- repeatedly sending police to the same
society. The seven principles address ments, because the vocabulary and style neighborhood because there were no re-
many of the concerns that have been of language usage is so different. ports of crime in others.
voiced about the growing use of algo- There is certainly a growing interest
rithms, without placing limits on the Algorithmic Bias among computer scientists and academ-
possible beneficial uses of algorithms Geoff Cohen, a vice president at Stroz ics in developing approaches for algo-
currently being explored. Friedberg, an Aon company, has per- rithmic transparency and accountability.
Nicholas Diakopoulos, an assistant formed many computer forensic inves- Since 2014, for example, a workshop
professor at Northwestern University, tigations of algorithms used by com- called Fairness, Accuracy, and Transpar-
spoke about his website, Algorithm panies. He said that in recent years, ency in Machine Learning has explored
Tips (http://algorithmtips.org/),
_________________ which U.S. patent law has weakened while this topic with significant mathematical
tracks the growing use of algorithms by legislation regarding trade secrets has rigor. Increasingly, academics are reach-
the U.S. government. The website aims become more powerful, and many ing out to corporations and policy mak-
to promote accountability and transpar- companies have reacted by trying to ers, with the hope of establishing norms
ency, and specifically to assist investiga- keep their algorithms more secret. But so society can benefit from algorithms
tive journalists in writing about these inspection is possible, Cohen said, add- while preventing individuals from being
topics. The database contained more ing that inspection typically happens inappropriately harmed by them.
than 150 algorithms in September. when an algorithmic-based company With the rise of the information
Dan Rubins, one of the two industry is being considered for acquisition or economy, it would be unworkable to
representatives on the panel, is cofound- is the subject of a lawsuit. In the future, go back to a world in which nothing
er of Legal Robot, an artificial intelli- government regulators might instead is filtered. Without algorithmic assis-
gence startup that is using algorithms perform such inspections. tance, social media, Internet search en-
to analyze case law and contracts. Ru- Finally, Ansgar Koene, chair of a Stan- gines, and even email would all be un-
bins said that his company is using the dard for Algorithm Bias Considerations usable. Companies are now exploring
ATA principles as the framework for the working group under the auspices of the ways of using algorithms to filter not
transparency report that Legal Robot is Institute for Electrical and Electronics just spam, but also fake news and even
publishing on its website. It is possible Engineers (IEEE), discussed the efforts hate speech. Just how far such filtering
for companies to be open about how under way to create an international goes, and whether it is possible to turn
their technology works without giving standard that organizations could use it off, needs to be the subject of public
up commercial advantage, Rubins said, to understand and eliminate uninten- debate. —Simson L. Garfinkel
but doing so requires focusing on where tional algorithmic bias in their offerings.
the company’s added value happens to For instance, there has been increased Simson L. Garfinkel is an adjunct faculty member
be. For example, he said, it can be dif- attention to cases in which algorithms at George Mason University, where he teach digi-
ficult to move algorithms from one do- have developed “racist” classifying ten- tal forensics. He is the author of Database Na-
main to another, because the training dencies, some of which could be tied to tion: The Death of Privacy in the 21st Century
data may not be representative. One of underlying data sets that contained un- (O’Reilly, 2000). Internet: https://simson.net/
th International
Conference on
2018 Ethics in Biology,
Engineering &
Medicine
Hosted by:
Miami, Florida, USA
April 14 & 15,
2018
Call For
ABSTRACTS
Endorsed by:
Submission Deadline: November 15th 2017

Information: bioethicsconference.eng.fiu.edu
___________________________
Conference Subrata Saha, PhD Zachary Danziger, PhD

Chairs ϮϬϲ͘ϱϯϱ͘ϲϲϱϯͻ/DΛĮƵ͘ĞĚƵ
_________ ϯϬϱ͘ϯϰϴ͘Ϭϭϴϳͻ/DΛĮƵ͘ĞĚƵ
________ 20% Discount for Sigma Xi Members.
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For an animated version of this infographic, go to at www.amsci.org. 2017 November–December 329
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First Person: Sally C. Seidel

Sally C. Seidel is the faculty member of the University of New Mexico’s Collider Physics
Group and a collaborator on the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider housed
at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, in Switzerland. The ATLAS
experiment focuses on activity involving massive particles and was part of the effort to dis-
cover of the Higgs boson in 2012. Seidel’s research focuses on improving the understanding
of heavy quark bound states, which in turn can help to elucidate the strong force, one of the
four fundamental forces of nature. Her group also works on developing particle-tracking
detectors. Seidel, one of Sigma Xi’s Distinguished Lecturers, spoke with editor-in-chief
Fenella Saunders about her research.
How many particles do physicists What are the strong force and the
think are out there? weak force?
If we are talking about the most funda- The strong force is the strongest of the
mental particles, there are only about fundamental forces, and it’s the one
a dozen, the quarks and the leptons that binds the quarks into a nucleus.
and so forth. Often particle physicists It’s the one that is able to overcome heavier quarks as signatures of those.
speak somewhat casually about par- the repulsion that the quarks that have The bottom quark, in particular, is the
ticles, and we include what we would the same electromagnetic charge oth- second heaviest quark. We typically
think of as bound states, combinations erwise experience and which would look for signatures that involve a bottom
of quarks and so forth. In that case, otherwise cause the nucleus to disin- quark for a number of reasons—for ex-
there are hundreds of them. tegrate. The weak force is something ample, because its coupling to the Higgs
entirely different. It’s one of the forc- boson is the strongest. Typically, it’s one
What is the difference between es that allows quarks and leptons to of the easier signatures to reconstruct.
fundamental particles and something change their identity, and it’s at the
like bound states, or particles that are basis of radioactive decay. What did you find in your study that
made from other particles? combined two quarks?
The fundamental particles, as far as we What do you see as the purpose of a The University of New Mexico group
know, are typically pointlike objects. particle collider? contributed an analysis published by
They might have mass, but sometimes The purpose of a particle collider is to the ATLAS experiment, that involved
they don’t have any physical dimen- collect a lot of energy at a very small the discovery of the first excited state
sion. The particles that are like protons point, and we do that by colliding two of the BC meson, which is a bound
are physically extended, and when we particles that are carrying a lot of en- state of a bottom and a charm quark.
collide them in colliders like the Large ergy. Mostly these particles are carrying
Hadron Collider, we can determine that energy in the form of their momen- This study described the excited state
that they actually have structure. tum, and some of it in the form of their as being almost like one of the quarks
mass. Typically the moment of colli- was orbiting the other, like an elec-
How can a fundamental particle have sion creates a little microscopic fireball, tron in an atom. Is that accurate?
mass, but no volume? Can you explain which evolves according to the laws That’s a reasonable model. One could
how that works? of nature. Then, we look and see what think of the bottom quark as being
I cannot. It’s a mystery. That’s some- nature produces when you give it that so heavy that the motion of the two
thing we’re still working on. much energy. In that sense, we are rep- particles relative to each other in the
licating a tiny Big Bang sort of event. bound state might be approximately
Is there a defining line between a nonrelativistic.
particle and a force? For instance, be- What particles is your group studying?
cause there are certain particles that Members of my group are part of the If you’re talking about an excited
are responsible for forces, where does ATLAS Experiment at the Large Hadron state, is it analogous to the orbitals
that defining line happen? Collider. There are four general-purpose of an electron being moved up to an
It is the case that some of the particles experiments at the LHC, and ATLAS excited state?
seem in nature to be constituents of is one of them. Within the collabora- Yes. Our initial motivating interest was
physical bodies or things, like the pro- tion, there are people who are study- to learn what bound states can be sus-
ton, and some of them seem to have ing the Higgs boson, properties of the tained in nature, which may give us
the role of transmitting forces. We top quark, people who are searching for an opportunity to understand better
are able to relate the photon, which new exotic particles that have properties how the strong force works and what
is the particle of light, as also being that might help us see some unifying the binding principles of the strong
the transmitter of the electromagnetic principle in nature. My group is inter- force are. We’re experimentalists, so
force. There are particles like that for ested in searching for new particles, new we made the measurement. We’re not
the strong force, the weak force, and principles, and new properties, and we, theorists, but in principle theorists
so forth. particularly historically, have used the who build quantum chromodynam-
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ics models might use the information Someone might wake up in the morning together, moving forward together
of the mass of this particle combined ing and connect to a meeting and talk to toward a solution.
with other bound states to infer some 20 people about a technology that’s in
features of the strong interaction. development. Then they might have a What is it like to work with such an
video conference with a different group international team?
Many scientists collaborate on work of 15 or 20 people and talk about an anal- The collaboration draws upon expertise
at the Large Hadron Collider. What are ysis that’s searching for a new particle, almost without consideration of national
the advantages of working in large and then maybe later in the day talk with borders. A typical meeting that I might
collaborations? yet some other small group, maybe 15 or have with collaborators does not require
There are four collaborations on the so people about some other new devel- me usually to travel any place other than
Large Hadron Collider. The ATLAS opment, maybe a new method for data as far as my laptop, where I can run
collaboration, the one that I work on, storage, data reconstruction, electronics, some video conferencing software, and
has 3,000 people. The members of something like that. I may connect and meet with 20 people
the collaboration form subcollabora- In the end, the fact that there are who are in 20 different locations, and
tions so that people who have related 3,000 people is barely visible to a typi- I may not even know where they are,
expertise, people who naturally will cal collaborator. We have very small what their nationality is, or where they’re
support, enhance, and stimulate the and tightly networked communities physically connecting from. We’re just
work of one another, work together. that we work within. That seems to working together on the science.
People who do, for example, particle have evolved naturally. That’s not
tracking, as the University of New imposed by the collaboration. It’s a What advice would you give to stu-
Mexico does, form smaller groups, natural way that scientists work. It’s dents working on a PhD?
and then within particle tracking good for the students, because they I think a student who has decided to
there are people who are interested in find themselves working in a commu- attempt a PhD should select the single
smaller and smaller, more and more nity that is largely without any hierar- topic that they think is most important
specific aspects of that topic, until in chy of age or experience. There could and most interesting to them. If you’re
the end the number of people who be people who are graduate students working every day on something that
were talking to each other about a who are communicating with people is the most important thing to you,
particular question may be only five who are very experienced, distin- it’s the easiest thing in the world to
people or may be only 15 or 30 people, guished members of the community, do. You don’t feel conflicted about it,
despite the fact that there are 3,000 of all talking about the same problem, and you feel encouraged by the worth-
us in the entire collaboration. same questions, and everyone grow- whileness of the topic.
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GREAT MINDS MULTIPLIED
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Sightings
Ao RCL
RV NCL
AVCA
LBB
MA
LV
LPN
Seeing the Heart’s Power

The first 3D imaging of the intricate cardiac conduction system provides
new detail for researchers and surgeons.
E
ven in the fast-paced world of digital imaging, it Replacing thin-slicing and tissue-staining techniques, which
took seven years for researchers to develop the have been in use for more than a century with light micros-
technique to make these three-dimensional (3D) copy, is also not an option, Jarvis says. That’s because 3D
images (above). Manchester University’s Halina Do- imaging of an intact heart provides no interior access to the
brzynski, Liverpool John Moores University’s Jonathan tissue to label particular proteins, which is the key to under-
Jarvis in the United Kingdom, and a team of international standing what each population of heart cells is doing.
researchers undertook the effort because they thought high- But results from the new technique already are improv-
resolution 3D imaging of an intact heart would provide ing upon previous research. For example, tracing the car-
new insights into how the organ works. diac conduction system previously required researchers to
“We also pretty soon realized that in the 3D image,” says follow the route layer-by-layer through perhaps hundreds
Jarvis, “we could tell the difference between the working of thin slices of cardiac tissue from the same heart. With the
myocardium—that’s the cardiomyocytes that produce the team’s 3D images has come the understanding that “com-
pumping action—and the cardiac conduction system, which monly accepted anatomical representations [of the cardiac
is the electrical side of the heart.” The conduction system is conduction system] are oversimplified,” the researchers
made from specialized cardiomyocytes. Segmented conduc- write in the August 2017 issue of Scientific Reports.
tion networks of these cells are represented by different col- Although the imaging technique is new, the technology
ors and overlaid on semitransparent heart images. behind it is not: Microcomputed tomography (micro-CT)
Dobrzynski says the group hopes the technique will also scans have been in use for decades. Initially, micro-CT scan-
help heart surgeons better visualize the locations of different ners could only image the human body’s harder tissues,
components of the heart’s conduction system. The technique such as bone and teeth, because those tissues better absorb
is not intended to replace any tools and imaging guides. the x-rays that give the technology its imaging power.
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RBB
LCL
RVOT
RCL
Ao
NCL
FO
AVCA
RPN
TA RV
CS
Robert S. Stephenson et al.
In each pair of images, colored diagrams represent the segmented blood to the rest of the body. Other parts of the cardiac conduction
network of the cardiac conduction system, displayed both sepa- system and visible anatomy include the aortic root (Ao), atrioven-
rately and overlaying a high-resolution microcomputed tomogra- tricular conduction axis (AVCA), coronary sinus (CS), fossa ovale
phy scan. The intact heart has been sliced virtually in half and is (FO), left/right bundle branch (LBB/RBB), hinge of left/right coro-
presented semitransparently. The right half (above) has the thin- nary leaflet (LCL/RCL), left/right Purkinje network (LPN/RPN),
ner right ventricle (RV) for pumping blood only to the lungs. The mitral annulus (MA), hinge of noncoronary leaflet (NCL), right
left half (far left) has the thicker left ventricle (LV) for pumping ventricular outflow tract (RVOT), and tricuspid annulus (TA).
Imaging softer tissues has been more challenging, also too does the amount of iodine required, because iodine is
though many labs around the world have developed mul- toxic at such levels. Ideally, imaging techniques could guide
tiple techniques for doing so by injecting soft tissue with surgeons performing real-time operations on patients, dur-
contrast agents that better absorb x-rays. That means those ing which the cardiac conduction system is currently in-
labs already have access to everything they need to make visible. “It would be very unwise to say that something is
such 3D images of intact hearts. “I think we were success- impossible,” Jarvis says, “because the progress in medical
ful because we knew how to handle and prepare the tissue imaging has been so spectacular over the last 50 years—
very carefully,” says Jarvis, a muscle physiologist. things which we thought were impossible even 10 years
Still another challenge in this kind of research is obtaining ago are now possible.”
access to normal, intact heart tissue, which is usually reserved With this imaging technique, then, next steps include
for heart-transplant patients. With collaborators at the Univer- imaging older and damaged hearts to address whether,
sity of Minnesota’s Visible Heart Lab, the team gained access for example, the stretching or scarring of the heart muscle
to human hearts that had been intended for use in transplanta- that often occurs in heart-disease patients is associated with
tion, but which had not been transplanted for varying reasons. strains on or interruptions to the cardiac conduction system.
The team’s experimentation with actual human hearts was In the meantime, the detail from these kinds of post-
minimal, though, because they only needed to scale up from mortem scans may be used today for exploring 3D cross-
having perfected the imaging technique using the hearts of sections virtually, as shown above, or for printing 3D
smaller mammals, including rats. “So you do have to modify models, both of which can aid medical professionals in
your technique a little bit,” says Jarvis, such as by allowing a visualizing any cross-section of the heart with the visible
longer period of time for the contrast agent to diffuse into the location of the cardiac conduction system. For the 3D
human heart tissue. Theirs was an iodine-based agent, and models, Jarvis says, “You have to use a transparent ma-
that diffusion took two weeks. terial with some colored material incorporated into the
That lengthy diffusion time, of course, makes this par- print, and that is fairly challenging, but we have done it.”
ticular technique useful only with post-mortem tissue, but —Robert Frederick
For related video and podcast, see the online version of this article at www.amsci.org.
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Briefings
I
n this roundup, digital features microRNAs identified affect plant size and ment for peanut allergies. The study
editor Katie L. Burke summarizes color. When present in bee bread fed to participants were given either a daily
notable recent developments in larvae, the microRNAs affect genes that treatment of a probiotic combined with
scientific research, selected from reports delay reproductive development to keep a peanut protein, or a placebo. The trial
compiled in the free electronic newslet- worker bees sterile. Further study of en- released preliminary results in 2013,
ter Sigma Xi SmartBrief. Online: https://
_____ vironmental changes in plants that could showing that after one month of treat-
www.smartbrief.com/sigmaxi/index.jsp affect microRNAs could help entomolo- ment 82 percent of children receiving
gists understand current problems with the probiotic could eat peanuts. This fol-
honeybee health. low-up study shows that four years later,
The Birth of a Black Hole 70 percent of the participants in the
Astronomers have captured the clearest Zhu, K., et al. Plant microRNAs in larval food treatment group can still ingest peanuts
picture yet of the birth of a new black regulate honeybee caste development. PLOS without an adverse reaction. The probi-
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
hole from a catastrophic stellar explosion. Genetics 13(8):e1006946 (August 31) otic used was a bacterium, Lactobacillus
Gamma ray bursts are one of the most rhamnosus, which is thought to allay
powerful Fish Fossil Doesn’t Fit Family Tree some allergic symptoms. Larger clinical
explosions A fossil dating to about 360 million years studies are now needed to determine
in the uni- ago, when fish evolved into land-dwelling long-term safety outcomes, say the re-
verse and are animals, does not fit clearly in the current searchers at Murdoch Children’s Research
short-lived evolutionary tree, because it possesses Institute in Australia. They are also study-
(sometimes features of two lineages thought to be ing whether the peanut protein is neces-
lasting a few distinct. The new species of lobe-finned sary in conjunction with the probiotic or
seconds). So it is challenging to react to fish, called Hongyu chowi, was found in whether the latter is effective alone.
one in time to study the comprehensive northern China. The shoulder girdle and
event. Using data from several ground- support for the gills of this 1.5-meter- Hsiao, K.-C., et al. Long-term clinical and im-
and space-based telescopes, an interna- long ambush predator, resemble those munological effects of probiotic and peanut
tional team of astronomers assembled of early four-legged animals and their oral immunotherapy after treatment
an unprecedentedly detailed description closest fish relatives, indicating that the cessation: 4-year follow-up of a ran-
of a recent gamma-ray burst (called GRB fossil belongs to an extinct group of fish domised, double-blind, placebo-controlled
160625B) that showed up in the sky in called elpistostegids. But other features trial. The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health
June 2016. They were able to characterize resemble a group of fish called rhizodonts 1:97–105 (August 15)
the emission and jets of the gamma-ray that were thought to have branched off
burst to settle some longstanding ques- from a com- Long-Lasting Structural Colors
tions about how the explosion and black- mon ancestor Inspired by certain vivid colors in nature,
hole formation progress. Immediately before the such as those of some birds and but-
after the explosion, the prompt emission lineage that terflies, polymer scientists have figured
comes from electrons bouncing around in gave rise to how to make long-lasting
a magnetic field. In the following seconds four-legged “structural” colors.
or minutes, powerful magnetic fields sur- animals Such colors are
rounding the black hole organize emerg- emerged. formed through
ing matter and energy into tight jets. Changes in Nature Publishing Group light’s interac-
the shoulder girdle and gill bones are tion with nano-
Troja, E., et al. Significant and variable linear central to the story of the evolution of structures rather
polarization during the prompt optical flash of weight-bearing limbs and jaws charac- than through its
GRB 160625B. Nature 547:425–427 (July 26) teristic of land-dwelling vertebrates. This absorption by a pig-
Ming Xiao, University of Akron
fish’s mix of features means that either ment. Pigments fade

Plants Affect Bee Development different groups of lobe-finned fish, in- when their molecules break down,
A new study clarifies how honeybee lar- cluding the rhizodonts, independently so structural colors can be longer lasting.
vae develop into worker bees or queens, evolved this shoulder girdle and gill struc- Oddly enough, the researchers used a
showing that plants are more important ture, or the rhizodonts are more closely pigment to form the structural color by
for controlling bee development than had related to four-legged animals and elpis- changing the nanostructure of clumps
been recognized. It’s long been known tostegids than was once thought. of its molecules. The pigment melanin
that food influences honeybees’ role in changes skin color in animals and appears
the colony—for example, royal jelly is fed Zhu, M., P. E. Ahlberg, W.-J. Zhao, and L.-T. black in its individual nanoparticles. The
to larvae that develop into queens—but Jia. A Devonian tetrapod-like fish reveals color was changed from olive to orange
it had not been known that worker bees’ substantial parallelism in stem tetrapod evo- to blue by varying the spacing in clusters
development is also influenced by an ac- lution. Nature Ecology & Evolution 1:1470– of the nanoparticles using a silica coating
tive ingredient in bee bread, their pollen- 1476 (September 4) to limit how closely they pack together.
and honey-based food. That ingredient
turns out to be a type of microRNA, a Treatment for Peanut Allergy Xiao, M., et al. Bioinspired bright nonirides-
short noncoding RNA that plays a regula- A clinical trial with 48 children suggests cent photonic melanin supraballs. Science
tory role, derived from plants. The the first successful long-lasting treat- Advances 3(9):e1701151 (September 15)
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Computing
Science
Bitcoins Maybe; Blockchains Likely

The innovative foundations of the cryptocurrency may outlive the currency
itself, as its verification method finds applications everywhere.
Peter J. Denning and Ted G. Lewis
O
n January 3, 2009, Satoshi Na- same coin. This double-spend problem that cannot be hacked by breaking into a
kamoto began selling a new plagues all concepts of virtual money. single database fills this bill.
form of money and operating Nakamoto wanted a system that could Thus, Nakamoto defined bitcoins as
an associated support system ensure that a sum of money can be spent “a chain of digital signatures.” To un-
called the bitcoin cryptocurrency sys- exactly once—no double payments. derstand what he means, consider the
tem. The name bitcoin (BTC)
comes from it being digital
money that can be used like
coinage, and the crypto term
indicates that the bits are
secured by cryptographic
methods. The currency
has secretive roots: It is still
unknown who Nakamoto
was, but it may have been
Harold Thomas Finney II,
a known cryptologist who
created a secured transac-
tion system similar to that
used in BTC exchanges,
and a developer employed
Erik Tham / Alamy Stock Photo

by the PGP (Pretty Good
Privacy) Corporation. (PGP
is a protocol widely used in
personal encoding keys.)
Finney was the first recipi-
ent of BTCs in 2009. But we
may never know for certain
who Nakamoto was, be-
Bitcoin users purchase paper certificates or plastic cards for the convenience of storing their
cause Finney died in 2014.
encryption keys for transactions. Some of the key-storing cards are elaborate and employ
The term bitcoin conjures up an image antitampering technologies such as holograms, as in the close-up image of this card. Storage
of a real coin encoded as a bit pattern. devices in the form of actual coinlike tokens are also available.
The big problem with bit patterns is that
the owner can retain a digital copy and Banks already know how to prevent example of Alice wanting to pay 1 BTC
try to make another payment with the double payments: A digital transaction to Bob. Alice can create a certificate that
is completed by the bank, not the con- says “Alice pays 1 BTC to Bob, signed
sumer. The bank has full control over the Alice.” The certificate is signed by Alice’s
Peter J. Denning is Distinguished Professor of Com- database of all accounts and can safely secret digital key, which is paired with
puter Science and Director of the Cebrowski Institute
transfer an amount from the payer to her public digital key that anyone can
for information innovation at the Naval Postgraduate
School in Monterey, California, and editor of ACM
the payee accounts. Banking is based on use to validate her ownership. The cer-
Ubiquity. The author’s views expressed here are not trust in the banking system. Nakamoto tificate is a record of a transaction stored
necessarily those of his employer or the U.S. Federal rejected the idea of a centralized data- in the ledger of all transactions. Alice’s
Government. Ted G. Lewis is a cofounder of the Cen- base, seeking instead a system without a ability to pay is determined by the en-
ter for Homeland Defense and Security at the Naval trusted intermediary or a single point of tire history of all transactions that flow
Postgraduate School. Email for Denning: pjd@nps.edu
______ failure. A distributed ledger of accounts to or from her. When the transaction is
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5,000 The value of bitcoins in U.S. dollars over the

past year shows extreme volatility.
4,500
4,000 completed, the ledger will show her net

value of bitcoins in US dollars
worth decreasing by 1 BTC and Bob’s in-

3,500
creasing by 1 BTC. In other words, cryp-
3,000 tographic coins are the value generated
by transactions recorded in a ledger. We
2,500 scan the ledger to find out anyone’s net
2,000
worth at any moment of time.
The idea of calculating value based
1,500 on a history of transactions is used in
many places. A familiar example is the
1,000
title to a property. It is a certificate that
500 says, “As of this date, Alice is the sole
owner of the property described here;
0 signed, notary.” When Bob wants to buy
9/19/16 12/28/16 4/17/17 7/16/17 10/24/17 the property, the escrow company hires
date a title search firm to review all the re-
cords of previous sales and liens back to
the beginning to validate that Alice is in-
deed the legitimate sole owner. The trail
Does Majority Consensus Work? of transactions on the property is called
a chain. Although the current title is an
With any distributed ledger, there is a serious problem in deciding which integral part of the chain, the validity of
copies of new blocks are valid and which should be discarded. The problem that title depends on the entire history.
is complicated by the fact that some of the miners may be dishonest and are Nakamoto’s definition of value is paral-
seeking to insert fraudulent blocks that pay them a lot of money. In 2017 lel to this scenario if the title company
there were nearly 5,000 miners in the bitcoin blockchain. Nakamoto’s Point- is replaced by a computer system and
of-Work (POW) is a clever way of using the computing power of the major- the transactions are all electronic fund
ity to overcome a dishonest minority. In addition, mining requires very fast transfers.
computers that consume lots of electricity. Miners only get paid when they The records of all bitcoin transactions
win the POW race. What happens if one miner becomes so powerful that it are compiled into blocks of about 4
starves out all others? The mining community shrinks to a handful that can megabytes in size. The linked list of all
afford very expensive, fast, energy-hungry computing machines. blocks going back to the beginning in
In 1982 Lamport, Shostak, and Pease proposed a solution to a very similar 2009 is called a blockchain. Although the
problem, called the Byzantine Generals Problem. A general in charge of an blockchain could be stored in a central
army wants to distribute attack or retreat orders to N lieutenants. M lieuten- database, Nakamoto wanted to distrib-
ants are disloyal and will not relay the orders properly. The loyal lieutenants ute it among many computing nodes in
can use a majority vote to decide if the messages they received are legitimate. the network to remove the risk of single
Lamport and his colleagues proved that the vote can be trusted only if the point of failure. Thus, there are many
honest majority is at least 2N/3, and N must be at least 3M + 1. Under those copies of the blockchain in a distributed
conditions the minority votes cannot prevail. The figures below illustrate a network of nodes, but the entire chain
simple case. The honest lieutenants (green) relay the order correctly; the dis- is protected from tampering by a com-
honest ones (red) lie. The honest lieutenants go with the majority vote of the plex arrangement of links made from
confirmations. In the left figure, each green node receives votes 2:1 favoring digital signatures and hashes, mathe-
attack, and act as the commander ordered. In the right figure, each green matical functions that scramble all the
node receives votes 1:1 and cannot reach an affirmative decision to attack. bits of a file into a fixed-length code.
A form of majority voting is used to
decide which blocks are valid and can
be added to the chain. Changing the
commander commander contents of a copy in any node without
being detected is next to impossible.
The bitcoin system comes with user
orders orders
lieutenants lieutenants interface software called a wallet. A user
to attack to attack logs into a wallet and specifies transac-
tions. The wallet handles all the details,
such as representing the transactions as
signed certificates, broadcasting them
into the network, and receiving trans-
VOTE VOTE actions from the network that would
2:1 to attack 1:1 to attack (tie) affect the funds in the wallet. The wal-
let converts currencies such as the U.S.
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dollar into bitcoins through a system of recomputing all the block hashes all The number-of-zeroes parameter in
brokers called BTC exchanges. the way to the end of the chain. bitcoin is frequently adjusted so that
POW takes an average of about 10 min-
Signatures and Hashes Proof of Work utes. That means that a hacker expects
In the world of online transactions, two Using an algorithm called a Proof-of- to spend about 10 minutes of comput-
concepts are absolutely fundamental: Work (POW), the time to compute a ing time to find a nonce that generates
the digital signature and the hash. Us- new hash of a block is made to be time- a valid hash for a fraudulent block. In
ing a bitcoin wallet, a user can obtain a consuming and expensive, on purpose turn that means that the hacker has a
matched pair of encryption keys (one and for good reason. If the time need- very small chance of overtaking who-
public and one private, each consist- ed to make a hash is approximately ever is linking a new valid block to the
ing of patterns typically 256 bits long),
the basis of a public key cryptosystem.
In the blockchain, message secrecy is
unimportant, but authenticity is. Al-
The value of cryptographic coins
ice’s transaction “Pay 1 BTC to Bob” is
encoded as “Pay 1 BTC to public-key- is calculated based on a history of
of-Bob,” signed with her private key,
and submitted to the blockchain. Only transactions recorded in a ledger, similar
Bob can “cash” the transaction—in oth-
er words, use his secret key to unlock to verifying the title to a property through
the transaction. The digital signatures
guarantee the validity of the transac- a review of all its previous sales and liens.
tions recorded in the ledger.
But the signatures do not protect
against double spending, which could the same as the time it takes for the chain. Nakamoto set up the system to
happen if Alice inserted two identical network to add a new block to the make POW progressively harder (with
“pay Bob” transactions into the blockchain, it becomes impossible for a more leading zeroes) so that new nonces
chain. The blockchain protocols would hacker to catch up and substitute the are progressively harder to find. Finding
not accept Alice’s duplicate transaction, recomputed chain for the original. new nonces becomes impossible when
but if Bob can cash them before the pro- The nonce plays a pivotal role in the total number of bitcoins is 21 million.
tocols reject the duplicate, Bob gets paid POW. The nonce is not just any num-
twice and Alice pays once. Nakamoto ber, but a random number that causes Miners
solved this problem by a complex se- the hash of the block to begin with a A miner is a special node that com-
ries of cryptographic techniques based certain number of leading zero bits. putes the POW for new blocks pro-
on what are called hashing functions. A For example, if the number-of-zeros posed for the chain and builds the
hash is the output of a special function parameter is 60, the block hash must blockchain by performing POW and
that takes all the bits of a file, scrambles begin with 60 zero bits. The only way adding blocks. It works as follows:
them, and condenses the scramble into this format can be met is to find a
New transactions are broadcast to
a fixed number of bits, typically 256. nonce that, when combined with all
all nodes.
A well-designed hash function will so the other hashes of the block, yields a
completely scramble the original file that block hash beginning with 60 zero bits. Each node collects new transac-
altering a single input bit causes most Because hash functions are not invert- tions into a block.
bits in the output to change. The hash ible, this process can only be done by
function is not invertible: Given the out- repeatedly trying a nonce that is one Each miner node does the POW
put, the only way to find the input that larger than the previous nonce. to find a hash for the new block.
generated it is an exhaustive search of
all possible inputs, which would take block n – 1 block n block n + 1
more time than the remaining life of
the universe. To guarantee that no one block hash < target
can tamper with any transactions in the
blockchain, each is entered into the chain previous Merkle
nonce
hash hash
along with its hash. It is easy to verify
that a transaction is valid simply by
computing its hash and comparing with hash34 hash12
the hash stored with the transaction. hash4 hash3 hash2 hash1
The hash of a block of transactions
in the chain can be computed by com- trans4 trans3 trans2 trans1
bining the hash of the previous block
with the hashes of all transactions in
the current block and a nonce (a ran- A blockchain is a linked list of blocks, each of which contains transactions, a previous block’s
dom number used once). This method hash (a unique string of bits that is generated based on the bits in the file), a Merkle hash of the
of linking blocks is called a ratchet be- transactions (which is a way to repeatedly hash pairs of hashes until only a single, total hash
cause any change to a block requires remains), and a nonce or random number produced as a byproduct of Proof-of-Work (POW).
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end of chain
ed. These issues include performance,
trust, volatility of cryptocurrencies, reli-
ability, and overall world energy cost
from operating blockchains.
Performance
A1 A2 A3 A4 A5 A6 A7 By design, updates in the Nakamoto
blockchain are computationally in-
tensive. The result is that the overall
throughput of the bitcoin network is
about 7 transactions per second, and it
B4 B5 B6 B7
takes about 10 minutes to close a trans-
action after it is submitted. In contrast,
credit card companies and banks to-
A normal blockchain of valid transactions consists of blocks A1 to A7. A hacker tries to insert day can handle thousands of transac-
a fraudulent block B4. Because of the use of a Proof-of-Work (POW) algorithm, the hacker has tions every second, and give almost
to fork the chain by copying all the blocks from A4 to A7, and recomputing their hashes. The instantaneous response times to close
POW makes the time to recompute a block’s hash the same as the time to add the next new
transactions. On August 1, 2017, the
block to the chain. The hacker can never catch up and is unable to force the forked chain to
substitute for the correct chain.
BTC blockchain experienced a hard
fork when the block size was changed
from 1 megabyte to 4 megabytes, and
Different miners working in par- can also be used to populate the chain a lighter version of BTC called bitcoin
allel will find different nonces with fraudulent blocks. cash was created to improve transac-
and hashes. To prevent such fraud, Nakamo- tion processing speed.
When a miner node completes a to’s system depends heavily on self- In addition to massive computational
POW, it broadcasts the block and interest rather than trust. He claims, power, the blockchain requires massive
its hash to all nodes. “If a greedy attacker is able to assem- storage. In 2017, the blockchain occu-
ble more CPU power than all the hon- pied 100 gigabytes, and it took many
A node validates the new block by est nodes, he would have to choose days to download and verify a new
verifying the signatures and hash- between using it to defraud people copy on a personal computer. This
es of all the transactions and then by stealing back his payments, or us- blockchain clearly cannot scale up to the
adds the block to its local copy of ing it to generate new coins. He ought size that would be needed to support a
the blockchain.
After accepting a block, a miner
node begins working on creating Blockchain verification is intended to be
the next block in the chain, using
the hash of the accepted block as computationally expensive, which means
the previous hash. All the other
miners drop their attempts to it is also energy intensive.
validate a block and start over to
mine the next block.
to find it more profitable to play by cryptocurrency with billions of users.
The first miner to find a hash for the rules, such rules that favor him There are at least a dozen alterna-
the new block gets a reward of a with more new coins than everyone tive blockchain architectures that all
few bitcoins. else combined, than to undermine the aim to reduce the computational work
system and the validity of his own to verify a new block and add it to
Miners are constantly looking for wealth.” But Nakamoto overlooked the chain. The most promising is Ethe-
ways to amass so much computing the possibility of a 51-percent cartel. reum, which uses a Proof-of-Stake (POS)
power that they can always win the rather than Proof-of-Work: In POS,
race to add the next block to the chain, Blockchain Spinoffs nodes with larger amounts of currency
and thereby reap the reward. Mining is Although blockchains were invented get greater weight in a vote determin-
such a big business that there are now for the bitcoin currency, many see their ing when a new block will be added
special-purpose chips for computing potential for other purposes, such as to the chain. But these alternative cur-
hashes. This environment encourages dealing with public and organization- rencies appear to be more susceptible
the formation of a cartel of miners, who al records in a decentralized network. than bitcoin to a 51-percent attack. It
together control 51 percent or more of There are proposals to move the Inter- will take some time to test out all these
the computing power in the network, net’s DNS (Domain Name System) to alternatives to find out which ones are
to collaborate on producing new blocks a blockchain, which would be much reliable, scalable, and hackproof.
and share the rewards. With at least 51 faster as well as resilient against out- Another alternative is being ex-
percent of the computing power, the ages. Despite the enthusiasm, there are plored by the Hyperledger.org proj-
group can complete POW faster than also a number of important issues that ect, which aims to produce an open
any nodes in the network. This scenario give pause and will need resolution be- architecture for business blockchains.
is called a 51-percent attack because it fore blockchains will be widely adopt- They have defined a set of layers, each
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2017-11CompSci_Qmags.indd 338 10/2/17
THE WORLD’S4:52 PM
NEWSSTAND ®
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providing a critical function. One of nential increase in bitcoin exchange Coining a New System
the most critical to performance is the rates during the 2016–2017 seasons It seems most likely that bitcoins will
consensus layer, which adds a pro- may be a reaction to political changes remain limited in use until there are
posed new block to the chain once a in Europe and the United States. affirmative answers to questions about
consensus of the nodes is achieved. Economist William Luther of Ken- their security and resilience, but such
They are experimenting with alterna- yon College in Ohio claims that bitcoin solutions are not obvious right now.
tives to POW that are much less com- has failed to catch on because of the On the other hand, the idea of block-
putationally intensive, such as using a steep switching cost in moving away chain ratcheting is already spreading
lottery to select a node that then pro- from government-backed currencies. to related technologies and could grow
vides the proposed new block or ac- Bitcoin adopters need to have their further, assuming some of its issues
cepting the proposed block only if a own copy of the ledger (taking up 100 can be resolved. For example, the Sig-
majority vote for it. These new options megabytes in 2017) and enough com- nal Protocol used by social networks
are possible when assumptions about puting power to do the hashes and such as Instagram and Facebook em-
trust are relaxed. In Nakamoto’s net- signatures rapidly. And even if they do ploys ratchets inspired by blockchain
work, no one trusts anyone; the system make the switch, the volatility could technology. It’s another case where the
is designed to achieve consensus on easily rob them of their wealth. adoption of a technology has taken
additions to the blockchain when each an unexpected turn, and determin-
node is anonymous and considers the Energy Cost ing which new developments will
other nodes as untrustworthy. In the We think the biggest problem of all is in stand the test of time can be difficult
new system, people within an orga- the POW idea itself. It is intended to be to predict.
nization may reveal themselves and computationally expensive, even when
have a greater basic level of trust. the world’s most powerful computers Bibliography
and special chips are deployed. This Cocco, L., and M. Marchesi. Modeling and
Trust computation load means that POW is Simulation of the economics of mining in
the bitcoin market. ___________
https://arxiv.org/
Miners of the blockchain network are be- also energy intensive. Various estimates
pdf/1605.01354v1.pdf.
____________
coming highly specialized professionals are that the current electrical demands Franco, P. 2015. Understanding Bitcoin: Cryptog-
relying on expensive chips specifically of world data centers consume about 7 raphy, Engineering, and Economics. Chichester,
designed for POW. Because many ordi- percent of the world’s electricity. Mas- UK: John Wiley & Sons.
nary users cannot afford to be miners, sive use of blockchains would signifi- Lamport, L., R. Shostak, and M. Pease. 1982. The
much of the computing power is con- cantly boost that total. Do we want a Byzantine Generals Problem. ACM Transac-
centrating in a relatively small minority system of currencies that requires so tions on Programming Languages and Systems
4:382–401. doi:10.1145/357172.357176.
of the network. After a recent $79 million much of the planet’s energy to power?
Luther, W. J. 2013. Cryptocurrencies, network
heist of Ethereum coins, the miners pro- Or that becomes ever more susceptible effects, and switching costs. Mercatus Cen-
posed to collaborate so that they could to total collapse if someone finds a way ter Working Paper No. 13–17. _______
https://ssrn.
go back and revise the blockchain to de- to shut down the power grids? com/abstract=2295134.
lete the transactions performing the heist.
Although this act would deprive the
criminals of their bounty, it also would
undermine trust in the network. What
else might a coalition of miners do?
Volatility
The exchange rates for crypto-
currencies can be quite volatile, which
encourages speculators to buy up
bitcoins and hoard them. The satura-
tion limit of 21 million BTC adds to
the volatility because of the scarcity of
the coins. There is no central govern-
ment bank monitoring the currency
and keeping its value stable. For this
reason, the Chinese government has
banned speculation in ICOs (Initial
Coin Offers) that exchange crypto-
currency for investment in startups.
The volatility of bitcoin values
is likely to be correlated with social
and political uncertainty, especially as
confidence in government declines.
At one point, rumors that China held
most bitcoins in circulation led to price
spikes because of fears that China
might devalue its currency. The expo-
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Engineering
Problematic Pedestrian Bridges

Crowds walking, running, dancing, and even standing still on these spans often
prove to be the ultimate test of a structure’s soundness.
Henry Petroski
P
edestrian bridges are ubiqui- accompanied by friction forces that pre- of countervailing movements) were
tous, but most are unremark- vent a foot from slipping and sliding. added to the bridge in London to keep
able and anonymous. They The component of friction force point- in check any motion that developed.
span interstate highways to ing straight ahead is what propels the For whatever reason, even highly
carry hiking and biking trails over walker forward; the effect of its reaction experienced engineers sometimes fail
heavy traffic, thus keeping walkers, on a bridge deck is usually negligible. to take into account all the possible
runners, and cyclists safely above the The sideways component of the friction dynamic effects of people walking,
fray. Some pedestrian bridges rise to force exerted on the bridge deck, how- running, marching, and dancing on
prominence, however, often because of ever, can move it left and right. bridges. Perhaps pedestrian bridges
controversies or problems associated Engineers generally check the nat- are not considered as seriously as the
with their location, design, construc- ural frequency of a structural design heavier, wider, and usually much lon-
tion, or performance. against the typical frequency of the ger and grander structures that carry
This was the case with the now- vertical tramp of human footsteps, railroad and vehicle traffic.
infamous London Millennium Bridge which can range from one to four cy- Yet even crowds of people stand-
connecting across the River Thames cles per second. Unfortunately, in the ing still have proven time and again to
the tourist areas of St. Paul’s Cathedral case of the London Millennium Bridge, represent the ultimate test of a bridge
and Tate Modern art museum, housed engineers neglected to check the struc- structure. In Missouri, the Kansas City
in the repurposed Bankside Power Sta- ture’s natural frequency against the Hyatt Regency Hotel’s elevated walk-
tion. As originally built and opened in frequency of sidewise motion, which ways, which were essentially bridges
2000, the bridge was the result of an is typically about half that of footfalls, spanning the building’s atrium, col-
imposed collaboration among an engi- because pushing off sideways with the lapsed in 1981 under the sheer weight
neer, an architect, and an artist. Within right (or left) foot occurs only half as of people, some evidently moving to
three days of its opening, the low- frequently as the two feet alternately the music of a band playing for a tea
slung suspension bridge was closed coming down on the pavement. Ig- dance. The tragedy claimed 114 lives
because it swayed too much under the noring this lower-frequency excitation and injured many more. The structural
crowds of people who walked across it of human footsteps set the unusually engineers responsible for the design
in synchrony with its movement. low-slung suspended bridge deck de- were found negligent in approving a
The problem was traced to neglect- sign into a swaying motion and made suggested change in a support detail
ing to consider that as people walk, it unsuitable for its purpose. without giving it sufficient thought.
they naturally exert on the pavement To celebrate the 50th anniversary of
sidewise forces, in addition to the more Elephants and Human Stampedes the opening day of the Golden Gate
commonly recognized vertical ones as- There is indeed a long history of bridg- Bridge in San Francisco in 1987, the
sociated with their feet pushing down- es moving too much beneath the feet structure was closed to vehicle traf-
ward. The downward pushes are re- of pedestrians and marchers. Just the fic, and pedestrians were allowed to
acted to, according to Newton’s Third year before the London Millennium crowd onto virtually every square
Law, by an upward force from the Bridge problem came to light, the foot of the bridge’s roadway and
pavement. And such vertical forces are new passerelle Solférino (now called sidewalks. The resulting shoulder-
passerelle Léopold-Sédar-Senghora) in to-shoulder mass of celebrants rep-
Paris behaved poorly. In each case, the resented the largest load the bridge
Henry Petroski is the Aleksandar S. Vesic Profes-
sor of Civil Engineering and a professor of his- structure had to be modified to alter its had experienced in its half-century of
tory at Duke University. His most recent book is natural frequency that coincided with operation, a condition evidently not
The Road Taken: The History and Future of that of pedestrian footfalls. In addi- anticipated by its design engineers.
America’s Infrastructure (Bloomsbury, 2016). tion, tuned mass dampers (devices that The center of the bridge’s roadway,
Address: Box 90287, Durham, NC 27708. ameliorate vibrations, often by means which under normal circumstances
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has a distinct camber to it, flattened ning leg of the annual New York City adjacent to the famous structure was
out noticeably, and engineers observ- Marathon, whose route crosses sev- dense with piers, to and from which
ing the phenomenon expressed genu- eral bridges to touch each of the city’s goods from all around the world were
ine concern. Thankfully, the Golden five boroughs. loaded onto and off of ships. This
Gate Bridge survived its trial by pe- Pedestrians or runners have never commerce was in part what made
destrian, and subsequent anniversa- caused any of these great suspension the East River, over which the great
ries have not been the free-for-all of bridges to move in an unsafe manner, bridge spans, so busy, and it was pre-
the 50th. It is reasonable to expect that to my knowledge, but an unfortunate cisely to alleviate some of the conges-
limitations on the crowd size will be incident occurred just a week after the tion on the water that the bridge was
imposed when the 100th anniversary Brooklyn Bridge opened in 1883. A ru- supported financially, politically, and
is celebrated. mor that the new bridge was about popularly. The Brooklyn waterfront
The most recent debacle involving a to collapse, with about 20,000 people began to change dramatically in the
bridge and the people designing and crowded onto its walkway, touched 1950s with the introduction of con-
using it occurred in New York City, in off a panic that resulted in a stampede, tainerized shipping, which marked
the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge. leading to the death of a dozen peo- the development of larger ships re-
Ironically, that historic 130-year-old ple and the injury of three times that quiring larger piers. In time, much of
structure carries one of the most cel- many. The bridge was never in any the dockside commerce was driven
ebrated and successful pedestrian danger of collapse, but some people across the harbor into Newark Bay. All
cargo ship op-
erations in the
vicinity of the
Brooklyn Bridge
ended in 1983,
the centennial of
the structure’s
opening.
With the piers
obsolete and
abandoned,
there remained
the question of
what to do with
the properties.
The idea for a
Brooklyn Bridge
Park was pushed
in earnest when
the Port Author-
ity of New York
and New Jersey
announced plans
to sell the piers
for commercial
development, a
Brian Jeffery Beggerly/Wikimedia Commons move that could
The London Millenium Bridge, which opened in 2000, was the first new bridge to cross the Thames River in more than have resulted
a century, and was London’s first dedicated pedestrian bridge. Within a few days, it closed because it swayed too much i n h i g h - r i s e s
from the sideways load of a crowd’s footsteps. After repairs, the bridge no longer wobbled and was reopened in 2002. blocking views
from preexist-
walkways in the world. The walkway remained unconvinced until the cir- ing buildings of the river, its bridges,
of the Brooklyn Bridge was thought- cus came to town the following year and lower Manhattan. Activists pre-
fully designed to rise above the traffic and the great showman P. T. Barnum vailed, and in 2002 an agreement was
on either side, thus giving amblers a led a parade of 21 elephants across the reached to create a Brooklyn Bridge
clear view of the surroundings. De- structure. It had long been believed Park on 85 acres, some reaching out
pending upon which way one transits that by some sixth sense even a single into the East River and incorporating
the bridge, there are spectacular and elephant would balk at setting foot on the remains of the obsolete Brooklyn
virtually unobstructed views of New an unsafe bridge. Indeed, an elephant piers. Parts of the parkland would be
York Harbor, the Statue of Liberty, the or two was often called upon to test a landfill built from soil excavated from
Manhattan skyline, and other mas- new bridge to prove its safety. the construction site of the new One
sive New York City bridges, including World Trade Center, also known as
the Manhattan to the north and the Aesthetics and Views Freedom Tower, located south of the
Verrazano-Narrows to the south. This Even before the Brooklyn Bridge was site of the twin towers that terrorists
latter bridge is the site for the begin- completed and tested, the waterfront destroyed in 2001.
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community when in 2009 he was the

recipient of one of the genius grants
from the John D. and Catherine T.
MacArthur Foundation, which identi-
fies him as “a structural engineer who
is leading the design of elegant and
enduring bridges around the world.”
Besides being a MacArthur Fellow,
Zoli is a visiting lecturer at Princeton
University, his alma mater, and an ad-
junct professor at Columbia Univer-
sity. He was the principal designer of
the Squibb Park Bridge.
Zoli’s vision for the Squibb Park
Bridge was at the same time pedes-
trian and exotic. In plan, it resembles,
depending on your point of view, an
elongated M or W or a distorted Greek
Ȉ. Any way you look from it, the zig-
zag of its walkway gives the person
walking down to Brooklyn Bridge Park
changing views, from lower Manhattan
across the river to the Brooklyn Bridge
just upriver. The feel underfoot of the
@Painet Inc./Alamy Stock Photo 120-meter-long bridge was intended by
During the 50th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge in 1987, the bridge was closed to vehicles, design to evoke the sensation of walk-
and pedestrians were permitted to pack the span, adding far more weight on the bridge than ing across the kind of bouncy bridge
would any vehicle traffic. Engineers expressed concern, but fortunately the structure held. often found in state parks.
But the Squibb Park structure is not
Construction of the park began in waterways in heavily industrialized a conventional suspension bridge. It
2008, and it was opened in stages. As parts of cities. Various types of inten- has no network of vertical suspenders
attractive as the park was to people tionally moveable bridges swing, rise, dropping from curving steel cables to
living in the neighborhood, they were or lift out of the way to allow ships to support its walkway of unconvention-
cut off from easy access to it by the pass along the rivers, canals, and navi- al black-locust wood, a rot-resistant
heavily trafficked Brooklyn-Queens gations they span. Many engineers of hardwood that is expected to last a
Expressway, which separated a land- the late 19th and early 20th centuries long time in the vicinity of the estu-
locked section known as Squibb Park cut their professional teeth designing arial East River.
from Brooklyn Bridge Park proper. The such structures. But it is not only what was above the
original design for a pedestrian bridge In 1941, the firm of Harrington, bridge’s walkway that is remarkable.
connecting the waterfront park with Howard, and Ash changed its name The structure’s concrete piers are not
simple cylinders or prisms, as are those
of so many highway bridges. The piers
The bridge had become so weighed of the Squibb Park structure rise out of
the ground like tree trunks, and branch
out to suggest perennially leafless
down with hundreds of thousands of limbs. And the wooden trusses span-
ning between the arboreal supports are
locks that its fragile-looking ironwork supplemented by steel cables, which
are the mechanism that at the same
was in danger of buckling. time give the bridge both its strength
and its limited stiffness, or bounce.
The bridge opened to critical ac-
the residential area of Brooklyn fell to to Howard, Needles, Tammen, and claim in the spring of 2013. After a
HNTB, a world-class infrastructure Bergendoff, after the surviving little more than a year, however, it was
firm based in Kansas City, Missouri. founding partner and his new part- abruptly closed. The walkway was not
HNTB is an employee-owned corpora- ners. The mouthful corporate name only bouncing more than desired, it
tion that traces its roots to the founding was formally changed to the simpler was also twisting in ways that were
in 1914 of the firm Harrington, How- HNTB in 1993, and in 2000 the firm considered potentially unsafe. Zoli
ard, and Ash, which ironically special- became employee-owned. Today, and other HNTB engineers sought to
ized in the design of moveable bridges. HNTB’s most prominent engineer is fix the structure by “retensioning” it
The movement of those bridges was probably Theodore P. Zoli III, usually to bring it back into alignment, and by
deliberate, however, because they were called simply Ted Zoli. He came to adding cross bracing and otherwise
typically built with low clearances over prominence beyond the engineering retrofitting it to maintain that align-
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ment. An impatient Brooklyn citizenry

was told the bridge would reopen in a
matter of months, which soon dragged
on past a year.
When HNTB did not seem able
to bring the repairs to a satisfactory
conclusion, the Brooklyn Bridge Park
Corporation, the operator of the park,
announced that it was suing the en-
gineering company for the $3 million
cost of the bridge and that a different
firm would take over responsibility for
developing a plan to fix the structure.
The company chosen to do the retrofit-
ting was an international engineering
firm called Arup. Incidentally, this is
the same firm that was embarrassed
to be responsible for the engineering
of the Thames-crossing London Mil-
lenium Bridge, nicknamed “Wobbly”
by the British. But Arup did eventually
fix that structure.
Among the fixes Arup applied to
the Squibb Park Bridge were improve-
ments to the connections between Lee Snider/Alamy Stock Photo
the timber truss and steel cables un- The Squibb Park Bridge in Brooklyn, New York, opened in 2013 but was closed within a year
der the walkway. In addition, tuned because it was deemed to bounce and twist too much for pedestrian comfort. After false starts on
mass dampers, in the form of heavy repairs, the bridge reopened 32 months later with retrofittings to damp out the effects of footsteps.
metal plates attached by springs to the
underside of the main structure, were again began to attract a new collection morous spin on the bridge. They read:
installed to reduce the bounce. Move- of locks, many etched with the names no locks… yes lox, the first phrase
ment of the walkway was not meant to or initials of the lovers. followed by the image of a padlock
be completely absent underfoot, but it In 2015 it was estimated that the in a red circle with a slash through it.
would be more muted and less alarm- Pont des Arts had become so weighed The second was illustrated with a New
ing to walkers with a low tolerance down with hundreds of thousands of York bagel loaded with smoked salm-
for motion of an unexpected kind and locks that its fragile-looking ironwork on and a schmear of cream cheese.
amplitude. The modifications were not was in danger of buckling. By one es- That the offense was no laughing mat-
expected to alter much of the appear- timate, the collection of love tokens ter was emphasized by the punch line:
ance or experience of using the bridge, amounted to an extra 45-ton load on fine $100. Still, padlocks can often be
but it was believed to be much more the structure, about the same weight found hanging from the same light
safe when it reopened in the spring of as the entire amount of black-locust structures that hold the signs. Hu-
this year. wood planking in the Squibb Park mans, after all, aren’t known for con-
Bridge. To keep the Pont des Arts from sidering how their small actions can
Too Much Love being pulled down into the Seine, in affect the greater good or even their
Just as a large assemblage of people the spring of 2015 city workers re- own potential safety.
on a bridge can cause it problems, a moved entire sections of lock-laden
bridge can also receive too much love. bridge grills and replaced them with Selected Bibliography
Around 2010 in Paris, a fad gained side panels decorated with designs Foderaro, L. W. 2016. Repairs coming for
popularity: A pair of lovers would af- too wide to allow a common lock to bridge that bounced too much. New York
fix a metal padlock to the ironwork of be affixed to them. Authorities had no Times (July 14).
a bridge across the Seine and throw plans about what to do with the esti- Foderaro, L. W. 2017. Rhythmically but safely:
the key into the river as a symbol of mated 700,000 keys resting on the bot- That’s the way the bridge bounces. New
their permanent attachment to each tom of the Seine. York Times (April 18).
other. By 2015 the Pont des Arts—the When the French tradition moved Nir, S. M. 2016. Dear John… Token of love
Seine crossing located just downriver across the Atlantic, padlocks began discouraged at landmark. New York Times
(November 15).
from the Pont Neuf at the foot of the to be left along the walkway of the
Île de la Cité—had accumulated so Brooklyn Bridge. But after a wire sup- Rubin, A. J., and A. Breeden. 2015. Showing
love for historic bridge, Paris removes tons
many heavy locks that entire sections porting a light fixture snapped under
of padlocks. New York Times (June 2).
of balustrades and the meshwork be- the weight of too many locks, the city
low had to be replaced lest they be moved quickly. Workers using heavy Webster, N., and D. Shirley. 2016. A History
of Brooklyn Bridge Park: How a Community
pulled by gravity onto the deck of a wire cutters tried removing locks one Reclaimed and Transformed New York City’s
passing tour boat. But as soon as a at a time, but the Sisyphean task soon Waterfront. New York: Columbia Univer-
section of meshwork was replaced, it led to the posting of signs with a hu- sity Press.
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Perspective
The Forgotten Mystery of Inertia

A century after Ernst Mach and Albert Einstein cast doubt on absolute space,
we still don’t know how a gyroscope stays pointed in a fixed direction.
Tony Rothman
I
n days of yore, at a World Science ly honest. Despite a gyroscope’s ut- In his magnum opus, Principia Math-
Fiction Convention in Boston, a ter simplicity—it is, after all, nothing ematica, Newton proposed a thought
Harvard graduate student pol- more than a wheel on an axle—it re- experiment to prove that rotation takes
ished his reputation as a brilliant mains the most fascinating and myste- place with respect to absolute space.
mad scientist by roaming the conven- rious device ever created. Spin up the He imagined a bucket partially filled
tion halls, brandishing what at first wheel, set it on a pedestal, and there it with water and hanging from a rope,
glance appeared to be a rather peculiar stays, pointed at…? which an experimenter has twisted
steel bowling ball. Portholes perfo- That is the question. At what, exact- up. When the experimenter releases
rated its surface, providing a glimpse ly, is the gyroscope pointed? Accord- the bucket, the rope untwists, and the
of electronic hardware inside; tangled ing to the law of inertia, objects tend bucket begins to spin. At first the wa-
wires sprouted from the same holes, to continue doing what they’ve been ter remains flat, but as the pail speeds
and a gear train surrounded the mys- doing: If at rest, they remain at rest; if up and drags along the water, its sur-
terious object’s equator. moving, they continue moving at the face eventually becomes concave due
“What’s that?” I asked him. same speed in the same direction. The to the centrifugal force of the rotation.
“It’s the gyro platform for an inter- gyroscope also bends to inertia’s will, At that stage, the water and vessel are
continental ballistic missile,” he re- but in confounding ways. Touch it, rotating together, and there is no rela-
plied. “If you put it on a Titan rocket, it and the gyro opposes you by veering tive motion between them. Yet some-
will fly to Kiev.” in unexpected directions. If it is spin- how the water “knows” to create a
“How do you know?” ning extremely rapidly, the gyroscope concave surface.
“It’s an inertial guidance system, remains rigidly locked in the direc- Newton insisted that the concavity
stupid. It knows where Kiev is.” tion it has been set, its sights set on... must be due to the water’s rotation with
“I know how inertial guidance sys- Kiev—hence the term inertial guidance respect to something else—absolute
tems work, but how do you know it systems. If a rocket veers off the gyro’s space. Rotation is absolute, not relative.
knows where Kiev is?” fixed course, a sensor detects the error, That answer stood largely unchallenged
“Oh, that. It was stamped on the box.” and a servomechanism realigns the for two centuries, until the Austrian
This sorcerer’s apprentice had dis- missile with the gyroscope axis. physicist Ernst Mach flatly declared
covered that for $900 you could buy a But this is just the explanation Newton to be wrong.
surplus intercontinental ballistic missile, stamped on the box. What tells the
10 years before the electronics were de- gyro it is set on the Great Gate of Kiev? Relative Revolutions
classified. His Titan was delivered on Isaac Newton would argue that the In his 1883 book Science of Mechanics,
two railway cars, “Kiev Titan Missile” gyro is pointed in a fixed direction rel- Mach wrote that Newton’s thought
stamped on the crates. He junked the ative to “absolute space,” what physi- experiment “simply informs us, that
body, donated the engines to an art mu- cists term an inertial reference frame— the relative rotation of the water with
seum, and saved the electronics for his indeed, the ultimate inertial reference respect to the sides of the vessel pro-
research. A tall tale? Sounds like one, but frame. Think of it as an invisible ref- duces no noticeable centrifugal forces,
the gyro platform was there for all to see. erence grid somehow etched into the but that such forces are produced by its
I didn’t understand it, nor did my fabric of the universe. But if absolute relative rotation with respect to the mass
mad interlocutor, and anyone who space is a highly abstract concept, the of the Earth and the other celestial bod-
claims otherwise is not being entire- gyro’s behavior is very tangible. Set ies.” Mach continued, that “no one is
up a gyro on a lecture table at a uni- competent to say how the experiment
Tony Rothman teaches in the applied physics versity (or a coffee table at home), and would turn out if the sides of the vessel
department at New York University. His latest as the day progresses it appears to ro- increased in thickness and mass till they
book is The Course of Fortune (iBooks, 2015), a tate with respect to walls…or is it vice were ultimately several leagues thick.”
historical novel about the Great Siege of Malta in versa? Are the rotations relative, or are He dismissed absolute space as an “arbi-
1565. Email: _____________
tonyrothman@gmail.com they absolute? trary fiction of our imagination.”
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Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, inspired by Ernst Mach’s rejection of absolute than usual, as if the gravitational pull
space, predicted that spinning black holes or other massive objects would drag around the sur- of the Earth has suddenly increased.
rounding reference frame of space; such “frame dragging” should deflect a gyroscope placed With “the happiest thought of his
there. The effect has been verified, but its broader implications for inertia remain unclear.
life,” Einstein realized that within the
elevator’s confines, it is impossible to
Mach never gave a precise formula- questions: Inertia is not a property in- distinguish acceleration from grav-
tion of what became known as Mach’s trinsic to an object but depends upon ity. To explain the origin of accelera-
Principle. Nevertheless, the essential all the mass in the universe. Mach’s tions, then, he would need to create
idea is simple enough. According to suggestion proved heretical, not least a theory of gravitation. Furthermore,
Mach, Newton’s conception of absolute because Newton’s laws, with their because free fall abolishes gravity in an
space lacks all meaning. Inertia—that assumption of absolute space, work elevator, the origin of inertia cannot be
tendency of massive objects to move so exquisitely. It furthermore went found in the interaction with nearby
at constant velocity—must depend against our human intuition that our bodies such as Earth. Inertia’s origin
on other bodies, because motion itself experience of the world is fundamen- must depend on the distant matter in
must be measured relative to other bod- tal, not contingent. the universe, as Mach had insisted.
ies. Rotations and accelerations along Mach’s arguments had a profound Einstein hoped that, within the
straight paths take place with respect to effect on Albert Einstein, who devised framework of general relativity, the
the reference frame of the distant stars the general theory of relativity largely distribution of matter of the universe
and galaxies. The centrifugal forces that to abolish the idea of absolute motion, would fully determine the inertia of
throw you to the side of an automobile and indeed it was Einstein who, in material objects. Most modern discus-
as it rounds a corner arise because you 1918, coined the phrase “Mach’s Prin- sions of Mach’s Principle (when the
are accelerating with respect to the dis- ciple.” The basis of Einstein’s general topic comes up at all) center on wheth-
tant matter in the universe. theory was his observation that the er general relativity succeeded in this
Reframed as a question, no proposi- gravitational force the Earth exerts on goal. As simple as the question sounds,
tion goes straighter to the fundamen- you is canceled out in a freely falling there is as yet no definitive answer.
tals than Mach’s Principle: Would you elevator. When accelerating down- While still formulating general
feel centrifugal forces in an empty uni- ward in an elevator whose cable has relativity, Einstein calculated that the
verse? Does the law of inertia mean snapped, you feel weightless. By the gravitational field of a shell of matter
anything in an empty universe? Mach same token, when accelerating up- rotating around a gyroscope (picture a
would give a resounding “no” to both ward in an elevator, you feel heavier gyro inside a spinning, hollow Earth)
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would displace the gyro’s axis culating the effects of curved

relative to the fixed stars. The space around the Sun, Einstein
gravitational field literally needed to assume that at large
drags around the gyro’s “in- distances from the Sun, space-
ertial compass.” In 1918, Aus- time becomes flat—and abso-
trian physicist Hans Thirring, lute. In other words, he had to
with Einstein’s input, published impose by fiat “boundary con-
a similar calculation based on ditions” at infinity to complete
the completed relativity theory. his solution. General relativity,
Josef Lense, an Austrian math- in and of itself, did not entirely
ematician, later provided rele- determine the precession of
vant astronomical observations. Mercury’s orbit.
Inevitably, this concept of frame Mathematician Kurt Gödel
dragging has come to be known brought the point home in
as the Lense-Thirring effect. 1949 when he published a cos-
In the paltry gravitational mological model designed to
field of the rotating Earth, the show that Mach and Einstein
predicted amount of frame were incompatible. Gödel as-
dragging is enough to dis- sumed the same uniform dis-
place the axis of an orbiting tribution of matter as Einstein
gyro by only 0.042 seconds of did in his first cosmological
arc annually. That is roughly model of 1917, but Gödel’s
the angular size of a quarter solution exhibited fundamen-
held aloft by the Statue of Lib- tally different behavior. That
erty in New York as viewed discrepancy directly contra-
by William Penn atop Phila- dicted Einstein’s premise that
delphia’s city hall. Despite the the universe’s matter distribu-
challenge of measuring such a tion should uniquely deter-
minuscule effect, frame drag- mine gyroscopic behavior.
ging has been detected by The key difference was
the Laser Geometric Environ- that Gödel’s universe rotated,
mental Observation Survey meaning that distant galaxies
(LAGEOS) and Gravity Probe rotate with respect to a gyro-
B satellites, although the re- scope sitting on my desk, and
sults were too uncertain to that anyone, anywhere in the
confirm the exact prediction of universe would observe the
Einstein’s theory. same behavior. (It does not
In 1963, New Zealander mean that the universe is ro-
Roy Kerr, then at the Univer- In Isaac Newton’s thought experiment, water forms a flat surface tating around some central
sity of Texas, discovered the in a still bucket but a concave surface in one that is spinning. He axis.) For true followers of
general-relativistic description asserted that this behavior is determined relative to absolute space. Mach, a gyro should track the
of rotating black holes. Soon bulk matter of the cosmos, and
physicists recognized that so it should remain stationary
frame dragging can become far more orbital precession of Mercury’s peri- with respect to distant galaxies. Since
pronounced around extreme astro- helion: the small but puzzling 43 sec- Gödel, researchers have found other
nomical bodies. Several teams have onds of arc per century by which the rotating models of the universe, all
claimed to find observational evidence point of the planet’s closest approach of which similarly contradict Mach’s
of frame dragging in the disks around to the Sun shifts with time, a move- premise. Such models can be declared
supermassive black holes, although ment that Newton’s laws could not unphysical, however, because they fla-
the results are indirect and imprecise. easily explain. Einstein described the grantly contradict observations of the
gravitational field of the Sun in terms real universe. Nevertheless, as theo-
The Cosmic Connection of curved space and showed that the retical solutions they demonstrate the
There is no longer a question in any curvature caused Mercury’s perihelion difficulties that come with defining in-
physicist’s mind that general relativ- to shift by precisely the right amount. ertia purely in relation to other objects.
ity predicts Machian effects on gyro- As physicist Erwin Schrödinger The litany of counterexamples even-
scopes, and so far, the data seem to wrote, however, in a striking 1925 ar- tually convinced Einstein to abandon
support Einstein’s predictions. The ticle on Mach’s Principle, “…every Mach’s Principle. In 1990, however,
question of how the distant reaches of naïve person has to ask: With respect Harry King, then at the University of
the universe give marching orders to a to what, according to the theory, does Texas, proved that a closed universe—
gyroscope spinning on my desk is an the orbital ellipse perform this pre- one that is destined to stop expanding
altogether trickier issue. cession, which according to experience and eventually recollapse—can exhibit
The first triumph of general rela- takes place with respect to the aver- no rotation. Any rotation of galaxies as
tivity was its exact prediction of the age system of the fixed stars?” In cal- in Gödel’s model is cancelled out by
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gravitational waves moving in the op- are concerned. A nonrotating universe Mach irrelevant for doing science: “Sci-
posite direction. If Gödel’s result was still does not necessarily explain the ence for me was always a bunch of
a setback for Mach, then King’s result forces that push you back into the seat tools, not a branch of philosophy.”
was a definite victory. Unfortunately, of a car when you accelerate along a The greater obstacle is one of fash-
today’s cosmologists believe that the straight line. ion. Today’s cosmologists constantly
real universe is open—destined to ex- To most contemporary physicists, wade into shallow philosophical wa-
pand forever—demonstrating again Mach’s Principle is not merely redun- ters if they align with tastes of the cur-
how difficult it is to connect a theo- dant, it is forgotten entirely—as un- rent scientific Pradas and Versaces.
retical understanding of inertia to the known to them as it may have been to They worry about creating Big Bang
actual cosmos. the madcap graduate student flaunt- models whose input parameters oc-
More recently, Christoph Schmid of ing his missile guidance system. Yet cur “naturally” rather than needing
the Swiss Federal Institute of Technol- the mystery is never far away. To this to be “fine-tuned” by hand. They
ogy claims to have vindicated both day, we do not truly understand how consider the “cosmological constant
Einstein and Mach. Schmid has con- the distant universe gives gyroscopes problem”—why the “dark energy”
cluded that vorticity added to a realis- their marching orders. driving the universe’s expansion is
tic cosmological model would indeed The backwater of Mach’s Principle some 125 orders of magnitude less
drag gyroscope axes. But according to holds many lessons. One is that the than what you’d “expect”—to be the
Schmid’s calculations, the influence of teaching of undergraduate physics has outstanding dilemma of their field.
matter diminishes exponentially be- become divorced from the practice of Physics or philosophy? Each year hun-
yond a critical radius, related to the physics. From arbitrary conventions dreds of papers are published on the
distance that light has traveled since that are presented as natural laws, to string theory landscape and on the
the Big Bang, and the exact shape of the insistence on precise answers to un- universe of universes—the multiverse.
space at much larger distances be- realistic problems, to the banishment Each year dozens of conferences take
comes irrelevant. In this way, he by- of concepts such as centrifugal force, place on particle physics or string the-
passes the necessity to impose bound- university physics has evolved to in- ory. The only conference on Mach’s
ary conditions at infinity, the problem hibit creativity rather than encourage Principle took place in 1993.
that bedeviled Einstein. The matter it. How can one hold high the tenants But replace the quaint-sounding
distribution of the universe in and of of relativity—that physics can be per- words “Mach’s Principle” with “Why
itself determines the behavior of gyro- formed in any reference frame—while does a gyroscope point in a direction
fixed relative to distant quasars?” and
one stands face to face with one of the
Does the law of inertia mean anything in most striking questions nature pres-
ents to us. It is more of a question than
“How does the Higgs boson impart
an empty universe? Would you feel mass to other subatomic particles?” It
is hardly less a question than “Why
centrifugal forces? Mach would say no. does time move forward when the
basic laws of physics do not?” It is
perhaps more fruitful than the vastly
scopes. Schmid claims that general rel- simultaneously declaring that New- more popular question, “What lies
ativity then perfectly embodies Mach’s ton’s laws hold only in inertial frames? behind quantum mechanics?” And
Principle; on the other hand, some of How can one begin to discuss Mach’s Mach’s Principle outshines virtually
his calculations are performed in a Principle if one denies the very exis- all other riddles in one other category:
closed universe, which would seem to tence of centrifugal forces? Aye, centrif- It is pure romance.
run afoul of King’s proof. ugal forces disappear in inertial frames; We have a working theory of grav-
In independent analyses, Cam- gravity disappears in free-falling eleva- ity, one that has been tested more pre-
bridge University’s Donald Lynden- tors. Does that mean that gravity is a cisely than any other theory ever de-
Bell and his collaborators have accept- fictitious force? vised. It accounts for the expansion of
ed certain aspects of Schmid’s results. Part of the difficulty in tackling the universe; it describes the behavior
Modern studies of the cosmic micro- Mach’s Principle lies in its similar- of black holes; and it has successfully
wave background radiation, however, ity to the utterances of the Delphic predicted the existence of gravitation-
largely rule out any large-scale rota- Oracle. Julian Barbour and Herbert al waves. It should tell us why gyro-
tions in the universe. Many cosmolo- Pfister, organizers of a 1993 conference scopes point at the stars.
gists believe that the universe went on Mach’s Principle in Tübingin, listed
through an early inflationary period, no fewer than 21 different interpreta- Bibliography
in which the size of the universe in- tions. An exit poll at the conference’s Barbour, J., and H. Pfister, eds. 1995. Mach’s
creased exponentially. Such inflation end revealed that only three attendees Principle: From Newton’s Bucket to Quantum
would likely have damped out any ro- believed that general relativity perfectly Gravity. Boston, MA: Birkhauser.
tation, leaving a still cosmos in which embodied Mach’s Principle, whereas Bondi, H. 2010. Cosmology. Mineola, NY: Dover
gyroscopes would naturally be at rest 21 did not. Fourteen viewed it as “very Books on Physics.
relative to distant matter, rendering Machian,” and seven did not consider it Sciama, D. W. 1953. On the origin of inertia.
Mach’s Principle redundant—at least Machian at all. An illustrious colleague Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical
as far as rotating objects such as gyros recently remarked to me that he found Society 113:34–42.
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Adapting Your Body Clock to

a 24-Hour Society
Can new research and technology help people address the disconnect between
the body’s sleep-wake cycle and the rhythms of modern life?
Alexis Webb and Erik Herzog
“A
unt Lexie!!!” came the ear- timing of her new environment, and that are at odds with internal rhythms.
piercing squeal from my jet lag will be a thing of the past. But Modern 24-hour lifestyles have similar
niece as she ran toward so far, our access to technology has effects because society no longer relies
my legs. I (Webb) smiled mostly been exacerbating the problem, on the day-night differences in external
weakly, exhausted. My husband and not alleviating it. conditions that human bodies evolved
I had been awake for nearly 20 hours, Having studied biological rhythms to track and set processes to. The ever-
rising at the equivalent of the night and timing for decades, the two of us present access to food, technology,
before, local time, to travel to America (Webb and Herzog) are usually the go- and, most notably, electric light means
from our home in London. How do to people for friends and colleagues that people are regularly exposed to
you explain jet lag to a six-year-old? seeking advice on how to beat the stimuli that are not coordinated with
She was having none of it—our visit transatlantic travel blues. Our basic the body’s internal time. Couple this
should mean that she had two of her tenets include: Spend time outside, development with the constraints of
favorite playmates at her disposal. But preferably in direct sunlight, when the standard working day, which may
after little rest over the course of a day you arrive. Eat a meal on local time. necessitate waking before preferred
spent on planes and sitting in airports, Try to stay awake until your normal morning rise time, and the clash of
my husband and I were desperate for bedtime where you are, not where you body time with environmental time is
some peace and quiet. Convincing a arrived from. For most people, flying continual. Researchers have described
child that your body still thinks it’s on west, which prolongs your wake-sleep this phenomenon as social jet lag—
the other side of the Atlantic is nearly rhythm relative to normal, feels easier going through daily life at odds with
as difficult as convincing your body than flying east. Although you may the circadian rhythm—which can have
that it’s not. Unlike our phones and find yourself unable to sleep in the profound consequences for health.
other wired technologies, our bodies early morning hours and flagging at The good news is that advances in
can’t read the new time off the local the end of the day, flying west tends to research and technology are providing
network tower once we have arrived be kinder to the body. It’s not always better ways to track and train the body
in a new location and adjust instantly. so easy to follow these rules, however, clock to cope with modern living. At
Perhaps when my niece is my age, and it gets harder still as our daily rou- the same time, scientists are improving
her activity tracker or some future de- tines keep changing in ways that can their understanding of possible targets
vice will be able to tell her brain the sacrifice well-being. for drugs, making better use of data
The feeling of jet lag, of being just a from wearable devices, and bringing
bit off and out of sorts, arises because together citizen scientists to examine
Alexis Webb has a PhD in neuroscience and spent
her early career researching the role of biological
of a discrepancy between internal time real-world behavior, which can be vast-
clocks in behavior and development in both the and the environment. In the brain sits ly different from what is observed in
United States and Europe. She is a senior research a biological clock that coordinates the the controlled conditions of the labora-
funding manager for the world’s largest cancer regular daily timing of nearly all of the tory. New technologies that are chang-
research charity and is based in London. Erik Her- body’s processes. This clock is set or ing our lifestyles and challenging our
zog is a chronobiologist studying the molecules, entrained to local time through light clocks will also be able to provide ex-
cells, and circuits that underlie daily rhythms in input from the eyes. The change in quisite details about our biology, lead-
physiology and behavior. He is professor and as- time experienced when people travel ing to solutions never realized before.
sociate chair of biology at Washington University across time zones cannot be processed
in St. Louis, where he is also the codirector of
instantly by the clock in the brain; Entrainment in a Modern World
the Graduate Program in Neuroscience and the
director of the St. Louis Neuroscience Pipeline
there is no watch hand to wind to a The modern world increasingly makes
Program, a National Institutes of Health–funded new time. The internal clocks must re- possible or even demands nighttime
initiative to increase diversity in the neurosci- adjust to the new environment through activity. Thanks to social media and
ences. He serves as the President-elect of the Soci- experience of the new day-night cycle. other modes of connectivity, people
ety for Research on Biological Rhythms. Email for These days, people don’t need to get from anywhere in the world can see
Webb: ____________
lex.b.webb@gmail.com on a plane to experience conditions what our planet looks like from the
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Edwin Eemsberg/Alamy Stock Photo
People around the world, including crowds under ornate lights in Taksim Square in Istanbul, sible for coordinating essential daily
Turkey, are becoming more active at night with the rise of connectivity and technologies that processes, such as metabolism and
began with the electric era nearly 100 years ago. The rhythms of modern life are often out hormone release, has enormous impli-
of sync with the day-night cycle that sets many of our bodily routines, contributing to sleep cations for human health.
problems, obesity, and other disease risks. Alleviating this social jet lag is at the forefront of Nurses working the night shift at
circadian biology research.
a hospital have an 8 percent greater
chance of developing breast cancer,
International Space Station at any time the wee hours. More than 20 percent of and that chance continues to rise for
and see that the surface of the Earth the workforce in industrialized coun- every year that an individual works
looks much different than it did 100 tries has irregular, rotating, or unstable a rotating night shift. Nighttime fast-
years ago. Aside from the changes to shifts. Not only are people working at food employees and their hungry cus-
the landmasses, oceans, and ice sheets, all hours, they have constant access tomers are fighting against the body’s
the area now covered by electric lights, to technology, information, and, well, metabolic rhythms by eating food
which resemble millions of fireflies stuff. Since the advent of Amazon.com around the clock, including at times
shining out into darkness, is immense. in the 1990s e-commerce has boomed; when the body expects to be at rest
Although large parts of Africa, South more than half of all purchases are now and fasting. This kind of metabolic jet
America, and Asia still face night in made online, where we have 24-7 ac- lag is linked to obesity, which brings
relative darkness, North America and cess to shopping. And thanks to this with it a whole host of additional
Europe appear as glowing lattices of change toward a retail-focused econo- health problems. On the whole, soci-
cities and towns. my, more people are working jobs with ety is working more and sleeping less,
In contrast to the circumstances of antisocial hours. Modern society no increasing the risk for depression and
previous generations, the end of the longer requires citizens to rest and reset. anxiety issues. Such disobedience to
day no longer means the end of work The world is nonstop, and the conse- the circadian clock, a behavioral prob-
and activity. Thanks to the inventions of quences are beginning to show. lem arising from changes in modern
Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison, hu- Evolution has not caught up to living, is adding to the growing finan-
mans can remain active at night. One of these changes in day-to-day life. Hu- cial strain on health services world-
those lights below is a hospital in Man- mans, as well as nearly every other wide. In the United States alone, an
chester, where nurses and doctors are organism on the planet, are adapted to estimated $14 billion per year is spent
working their rotating overnight shift. the 24-hour rhythm of light and dark- on health care for sleep disorders, ac-
Another is an all-night fast-food restau- ness that arises from the spinning of cording to the U.S. Institute of Medi-
rant in Atlanta, where employees serve Earth on its axis. Fighting against this cine Committee on Sleep Medicine
burgers and greasy fries to patrons into finely tuned clock, which is respon- and Research.
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master clock
suprachiasmatic
nucleus (SCN)
suprachiasmatic
light
lateral nucleus
geniculate
endocrine clock
nucleus
pineal gland
behavior
right
lungs retina
heart muscle
liver
optic
chiasm left retina
gut
renal
A master clock in the brain, the suprachiasmatic
nucleus (SCN), helps keep the schedule for clocks
in tissues throughout the body (left). The stron-
reproductive gest signal for setting this master clock is light.
Specialized nerve cells for light detection in the
retina connect the eyes to the SCN, which is a pair
of bilateral nuclei sitting on top of the crossing of
the optic nerves at the base of the brain within the
hypothalamus.
The word circadian, from the Lat- nerve cells connect the eyes to an area night cycle. The size of the adjust-
in circa diem, meaning “about a day,” at the base of the brain within the hypo- ment needed is flexible; depending
describes the body’s near 24-hour thalamus called the suprachiasmatic nu- on the latitude and the time of year,
internal clock that is set to the local cleus (SCN). Scientists have studied this humans experience different lengths
environment. This clock is intrinsic; structure for decades—first observing of day and night. Therefore, our in-
it will persist even in constant condi- that animals with lesions in this area ternal clock must change its relation-
tions that do not change, such as in lose all behavioral rhythms. Pioneering ship with the light cycle to be awake
a cave or deep in the ocean. Modern transplantation studies led to the con- and asleep at the optimal times. This
working environments are quite dif- clusion that the SCN structure is both offset is otherwise known as the phase
ferent from conditions in a cave, but necessary for generating daily rhythms relationship between the body clock
in either setting the body must use and sufficient for providing them. and the environment, signifying how
internal time must speed up or slow
down to fall in line with the daily ex-
On the whole, society is working more perience of light and dark. An added
complication for many people is that
the times they need to be awake and
and sleeping less, increasing the risk for asleep change throughout the week
and may be at odds with what is hap-
depression and anxiety issues. pening in the environment.
Changing the body clock to the right
phase relationship underlies the pro-
information from the sensory system The rhythm provided by the SCN cess of entrainment. This process is at
to tune the intrinsic circadian clock to is not exactly 24 hours in length. De- the heart of improving circadian fitness
the environment—put simply, to tell pending on the organism, it can be and is likely the reason that more and
whether it is day or night. slightly longer or slightly shorter more people will struggle with their
Specialized cells in the retina, called than 24 hours, with humans fall- health. Sunlight is the most powerful
intrinsically sensitive retinal ganglion cells, ing into the former category. Light entraining signal for the body clock.
are primarily used for light detection detection through the eyes sets But in the modern era of electricity and
rather than for image formation. These the internal rhythm to the day- nonstop access to information, it’s the
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light received via a computer screen the discrete model and the continu- training signal) given at a certain point
after dinner or a smartphone screen be- ous one. To understand the difference, on the route around the track allows
fore bed that counteracts the day-night imagine two cyclists going around a cyclist 2 to immediately overcome the
cycle provided by the Sun. Too many circular track—they are cycling at the distance and jump to a new point on
constant inputs are in conflict with the same speed, but there is a distance be- the track, the same point as cyclist 1,
daily biological cycle we evolved for. tween them. This distance represents so that the internal clock is in sync
Historically, there have been two the phase difference between cyclist 1 with the actual environment.
conceptual models that explain the en- (the environmental clock) and cyclist Essentially, according to the discrete
trainment that takes place to synchro- 2 (the internal clock). In the discrete model, light can immediately shift
nize the internal and external rhythms: model, a light stimulus (or other en- the internal clock to the phase of the
Biological Clocks: There’s an App for That
A
pps and smartphone settings of Satchidananda Panda’s laboratory, Forger’s laboratory, which is based at
are helping people learn about who are based at University of Califor- University of Michigan, found that bed-
their daily rhythms and how nia, San Diego, and are creators of the time, not wake time, predicts how long
this information can improve their app, found that over the course of 16 people sleep, and that those people who
sleep and entrainment. These technolo- weeks, overweight, healthy adults lost experience outside light during the day
gies also can be used for crowdsourc- weight, improved energy levels, and go to bed earlier and sleep more. Avail-
ing data to study the connections be- slept better when eating in the restrict- able for Android and iOS.
tween daily activities, biological clocks, ed time window prescribed by the http://entrain.math.lsa.umich.edu
and disease risks. Several ground- app. Available for Android and iOS.
breaking examples are detailed here. https://mycircadianclock.org Night Shift and f.lux
[not related to data collection]
My Circadian Clock Entrain The Night Shift setting is part of the
Use this app to track your sleep-wake If you are traveling across the country iPhone operating system, designed to
cycle, exercise, and meals through- or around the world, this app will help minimize the impact of the blue-light-
out the day. Feedogram data help shift your clock to local time faster. En- emitting screens on delaying the circa-
you track when you eat throughout ter information about your trip: where dian clock and making it harder to fall
the day; you may be surprised at how you are traveling from, what’s your asleep at night. Using a set time, your
frequently across the day and night destination, when do you leave. The screen will automatically filter out blue
you are consuming food. Activity data app then collects data on your sleep and light and enhance warmer colored light
can help inform when you should be activity, as well as light exposure, which from your phone in the evenings. Simi-
restricting your meals according to is fed into a mathematical model of the lar modifications are available on some
your circadian cycle. By eating during circadian clock. The model uses phase models of Android phones. A program
a window that corresponds to when response curves based on your circadi- called f.lux will also automatically ad-
your metabolism is ramped up (dur- an rhythm to make predictions on when just the brightness and color of your
ing the day when your clock knows you should see light before and dur- laptop screen based on time of day and
you’re active), you may find it easier to ing your trip to best enhance your en- lighting within the room:
maintain a healthy weight. Members trainment. Creators of the app in Daniel https://justgetflux.com
MY CIRCADIAN CLOCK ENTRAIN
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+4 Bright light exposure after dusk has are particularly sensitive to the blue light
the ability to delay the clock, shifting from these screens.
activity later, as if one were experienc- Avoiding phone use at night to pre-
phase shift (hours)
+2
advance ing a longer day. Light exposure before vent body clocks from shifting is not
zone dawn has the ability to advance the the only option; technology has been
0 clock, shifting activity earlier to start developed that can purposefully block
delay
a new day. Night-shift workers face the blue light from being emitted (see
zone
–2 light exposure that can both advance sidebar on preceding page). On an over-
and delay their clocks; rotating-shift cast day, the eyes still receive around
–4 workers struggle between “regular” 2,000 lux. But the illumination level of
and shifted schedules, never success- indoor lighting is often much lower,
dawn mid-day dusk night dawn fully entraining to either. Models sim- and can be as low as 50 lux. Limited
time of light stimulus ulating phase-response curves based bright light exposure for elderly pa-
on data from the underlying circadian tients in care homes could be one rea-
Bright light exposure after dusk has the abil- rhythm can now help frequent travel- son for the disrupted sleep and activity
ity to delay the internal clock, shifting one’s ers predict when they should be ex- rhythms observed in those populations.
activity later, as if the day were longer. Light posed to light to best
exposure before dawn has the ability to ad- entrain their body illuminance surfaces
vance the clock, shifting activity earlier to clocks to their current (lux) illuminated by
start a new day. This phase-response curve, a local time (see sidebar
plot of the change in the internal clock rela-
on preceding page). colorless 0.0001 moonless, overcast
tive to the external environment based on the night sky (starlight)
Although most of vision
time of light exposure, shows that the biggest
phase shifts occur at two points in the night: the world won’t be 0.001 and 10 moonlight to early
just after dusk and just before dawn. attempting to inten- twilight
tionally shift circadian
0.002 moonless, clear night
environmental light-dark cycle. The rhythms in this way, limited sky with airglow
continuous model argues that an en- it is the transitions in color
training stimulus would cause cyclist 2 light at dawn and dusk vision 0.05 to 0.36 full moon on a clear
to increase or decrease her speed over that help entrain the night
the subsequent cycles until she is at slightly longer internal 3.4 dark limit of civil twilight
the same point on the track as cyclist rhythm to the 24-hour under a clear sky
1. This process happens over multiple day-night cycle of the 10 to 50 public areas with dark
loops as the internal clock is continu- environment. Studies surroundings
ously adjusting to fall in line with the have shown that two
environmental cycle. Although aspects light stimuli, one when 30 tablet/smartphone
screen
of both discrete and continuous en- diurnal activity starts
trainment are still favorably regard- and the other when it 50 family living room lights
ed in the literature today, these two stops, provide enough (Australia, 1998)
models of entrainment have failed to time information to 80 office building
unify the field. Recently, an alternative the circadian system color
hallway/toilet lighting
vision
theory has been proposed, which pos- to set it to the environ-
100 very dark overcast day
tulates that changes in how the circa- mental rhythm.
dian system integrates light signals at How much light is 320 to 500 office lighting
different times of day allows it to tune necessary to shift and sunrise or sunset on a
400
to the environment. set the body clock? Al- clear day
In both the continuous and discrete though bright sunlight
models, depending on what time the with an intensity mea- 500 to 1,000 computer screen
light stimulus arrives, the extent of the sured at 100,000 lux is 1,000 overcast day; typical TV
light shift varies. For example, light ex- most efficient, recent studio lighting
posure during the day has little effect studies by researchers 10,000 therapeutic light box
on the intrinsic clock. This idea seems at Harvard Medical
intuitive—if the purpose of light is to School have shown that pupil 10,000 to 25,000 full daylight (not direct
shift the clock, then either limiting ex- even the light emitted constriction sun)
posure to the light, or in the case of the from the LED (light- and phase
32,000 to 120,000 direct sunlight
circadian system, limiting when light emitting diode) screens shifting
has a shifting effect, would be benefi- of smartphones and tab-
cial. Plotting the change in the phase lets, when seen before Entrainment is stronger when people are exposed to brighter
light. Sunlight is ideal, because it is bright enough to cause pupil
of the internal clock relative to the ex- bed, is enough to de-
constriction and phase shifting. Most office lighting is not bright
ternal environment based on time of lay the circadian clock enough to entrain the body’s clock. Light with a brightness of at
light exposure, otherwise known as and disrupt sleep. In- least 10 lux is detected by both rods and cones in the eye. Light
the phase-response curve, shows that the deed, the light-sensing with an illuminance below 0.0001 lux allows for detection with
biggest shifts occur at two points: just retinal ganglion cells rods only (colorless vision). The rods and some cones can detect
after dusk and just before dawn. that project to the SCN dim light (0.001–10 lux), allowing for limited color vision.
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Can We Entrain Faster? S cones

Being in tune with the environment intrinsically
is a boon for organisms, not only for photosensitive
sensitivity/relative intensity
retinal ganglion cells
“the early bird that gets the worm,”
but also for nocturnal animals who rods
time their activity cycle to minimize M cones
L cones
predation and improve survival. As
mentioned in the previous section, the
strongest entraining signal for the cir- sunlight
cadian clock is light. Unlike the brains
of birds, human brains cannot experi-
ence light directly through the skull fluorescent light
and must rely instead on a specialized
part of the visual system. Indeed, re-
search over the past 20 years in hu- 400 500 600 700 800
mans (and mice) lacking parts of the wavelength (nanometers)
image detection apparatus of the eye—
the rods and cones—showed that they Bluer light has a stronger effect on entrainment than other wavelengths of light. The specialized
still maintain daily rhythms; that re- cells that detect light and send the signal to the SCN, called intrinsically sensitive retinal gangli-
search contributed to the discovery of on cells, contain the photopigment melanospin, which is especially sensitive to the blue part of
those specialized light-detecting gan- the light spectrum peaking around 460 nanometers. Rods and cones, on the other hand, can pick
glion cells crucial for entrainment. up the full color spectrum and play a larger role in image formation, not light detection. People
who have blindness caused by the degradation of rods and cones can still detect enough light
Many people, such as parents of
to have a weakly entrained circadian rhythm. (Figure adapted from Hatori and Panda, 2010.)
young children and business travelers,
would surely benefit from an internal
clock that can be set to local time faster. jet lag is likely years away, but studies tor in the SCN, who then relays this
The nurse and the fast-food worker suggest that certain drugs may be able information to the rest of the neurons,
who are forced to work against their to influence the timing of brain cells or and in turn, to the rest of the body.
daily rhythms would be able to im- their ability to respond to entraining Many studies have tried to identify
prove their health with a clock that signals. Human SCNs are comprised the roles of different areas and cells
was easier to shift and reset. Can cir- of tens of thousands of neurons, elec- types in the SCN and to elucidate how
cadian biology provide any insights? trically active cells that can send tim- the symphony comes together.
Bad news first: There are lots of ing information to the rest of the brain When neurons in the SCN fire, a
gimmicks that are not based on sound and body. These neurons are them- neuropeptide, vasoactive intestinal
science. Probably one of the most in- selves rhythmic; their firing is cyclic polypeptide or VIP, is released. Under
famous published studies in the field over a 24-hour period and it is light in- normal conditions, VIP plays an im-
claimed that light exposure to the back put (and the neurochemicals released portant role in keeping the cells of the
of the knees improved entrainment fol- by those light-receiving cells) that in- SCN synchronized to the same beat.
lowing a long-haul flight—a conclusion fluences the timing of activity. Researchers in one of our (Herzog’s)
based on a faulty correlation. There are
no photoreceptors located behind the
kneecap. Plenty of other proposed time-
shifting quick-fixes exist that haven’t
In addition to light, one of the other
been published in scientific journals,
but they still are sometimes promoted rhythmic signals that may help realign
in the pages of in-flight magazines or
newspapers. Many of these treatments, the clock faster is shifting meals
such as therapy with melatonin or ben-
zodiazapines, are designed to promote to local time at the destination as
sleep, but they won’t necessarily aid in
entraining your circadian rhythm to a soon as possible.
new external time. In addition to expo-
sure to light, one of the other rhythmic
signals that may help realign the clock In addition to maintaining their tim- labs have shown that high concentra-
faster is shifting meals to local time at ing relative to the outside world, SCN tions of VIP, however, can throw the
the destination as soon as possible. neurons are also set in time with one SCN symphony into disarray. This lack
More recent research has examined another. Imagine a symphony of musi- of synchrony in the rhythms may be
the effects of chemicals, such as kinase cians. They may not play all at once, beneficial when it comes to speeding
inhibitors or DNA damage regulators, but an individual section must keep up entrainment.
on the behavior of the SCN, specifi- time relative to the others, with the To explain how this role might work,
cally to find out whether exposure to conductor setting the overall pace of we collaborated with computational
them can speed up the adjustment to the performance. Light input commu- scientists, who built a mathematical
a new time. A pill that could help beat nicates external timing to the conduc- model of the circadian rhythm in an
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16
and heart rates. They could use this
wealth of information to make better
percentage of population
12 and more informed decisions about

their daily behavior. Activity trackers
encourage wearers to think about how
8 much and what they do on a daily
basis—and also about when they are
4 doing each of their routine activities.
Those who want to learn more about
their circadian behavior now have
0 access to apps and websites offering
midnight 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 noon more information. Scientists also are
mid-sleep on free days (local time) utilizing the internet to connect with
other members of the public who
early type normal late type would like to contribute to research.
These citizen scientists can use mobile
extreme moderate slight slight moderate extreme technology to generate and share data
with researchers, essentially turning
the world into a giant laboratory.
The Munich Chronotype Questionnaire places individuals on a frequency distribution based
Developers of research-based apps
on the midpoint at which they prefer to be asleep on an ideal day (when they are not sleep
deprived and wake without an alarm). Most people’s preferred midpoint of sleep is between 5
have empowered people to become
AM and 6 AM. This survey has been important in collecting anecdotal evidence about people’s
part of the scientific process of under-
sleep habits. Now, with activity trackers collecting information through smartphones and standing their biology. Using an app
wearables, the scale of raw data available on people’s daily behaviors is enormous, with the to track behavior can provide a win-
potential to transform what is known about disease risks and solutions related to out-of-sync dow into daily life in the real world,
biological clocks. (Figure adapted from Roenneberg and Merrow, 2007.) without the constraints of a controlled
environment in the lab. These sorts
SCN neuron. Our model predicted how light may help trigger phase tumbling of data are particularly useful to ob-
desynchrony could make entrainment in our SCN and hasten readjustment serve the changes seen in 21st-century
happen faster. In the model, neurons re- to a new time. lifestyles compared with lifestyles of
sponded to high doses of VIP with a be- Researchers have also been examin- 50 or even 100 years ago. Large-scale
havior described as “phase tumbling.” ing whether the introduction of other surveys such as the Munich Chrono-
Essentially, lots of VIP produces a tran- compounds could improve entrain- type Questionnaire, whose questions
sient phase decoupling across the cells, ment. Screens of libraries of small mol- place individuals across a distribution
shifting them in time relative to one ecules, including primarily synthetic based on the midpoint of when they’d
another. This dispersion likely occurs compounds that can bind to genes and prefer to be asleep, have been impor-
due to molecular variability or noise in proteins that could produce or lead to tant in collecting anecdotal evidence
the levels of gene activity and protein enhanced shifts, is a high-throughput about the when, where, and how of
amounts in individual cells—evidence way of identifying candidates. A fu- people’s sleep habits. But with activ-
our lab has also observed. In the model, ture for improving entrainment may ity trackers, the scale of raw data that
the shifted cells are also quicker to re- rely on a combinatorial approach. By we have about people’s daily behavior
adjust and entrain to new times, sug- using light together with drugs, timed from around the world is enormous.
gesting that high VIP levels might help meals, and other stimuli, humans may Apps that track sleep and wake times,
alleviate jet lag. be able to better tune and enhance the food intake, and other aspects of bio-
To test this idea, researchers in our phase relationship between their inter- logical rhythms, such as My Circadian
lab recently measured the rhythmic nal and external timing. Clock and Entrain, have already pro-
activity of mice provided with run- vided new information about obesity
ning wheels. They simulated jet lag for Technology to Improve Entrainment and recovery from jet lag (see sidebar
the mice by shifting the light schedule The past 10 years have seen an explo- on page 349). Now and in the near fu-
to either advance or delay the envi- sion in constant connectivity by way ture, researchers could use such apps
ronmental signal by six hours relative of mobile devices and other technolo- in combination with other personal
to the previous schedule. Researchers gies. In addition to listicles and cat pic- data, such as medical records and ge-
examined when the mice would be ac- tures, the internet now contains vast netic predispositions, to paint a more
tive on their running wheels following amounts of data generated by the pop- detailed picture of how the circadian
the shift. Mice that received injections ulation, including information about clock contributes to overall human
of high concentrations of VIP in the sleep and wake patterns, food intake, health as well as disease risk.
area around their SCN were able to en- and location. This era of quantified The challenge now is figuring out
train faster to the new schedule com- self, collected through activity trackers how to spread the word to people
pared with control mice that received and apps, means that there are more about the effects of a healthy circadian
injections of saline instead. Because data than ever before about people’s rhythm on conditions such as obe-
VIP is released from the neurons that daily lives. Some fast-food workers, sity, cancer, and mental health, and
receive input from light-sensing cells for example, might have a Fitbit that how best to encourage more people
in the eyes, a good dose of bright sun- measures their steps, exercise, sleep, to examine the data they generate to
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feedogram (baseline) 26 caloric containing eating duration p<0.05

5
(2.5–97.5 percentile interval) p<0.05
24
baseline
change in body weight (kilograms)

22
20
0
days
18
time (hours)
16
14
–5
12
10
feedogram (intervention)
8 16-week intervention
6 –10
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 B 16 1Y
subjects B: weight change during 3-week baseline
16: after 16-week intervention
1Y: 1 year after intervention start
Shubhroz Gill and Satchidananda Panda created the app My Circadian Clock to study the
timing of food intake and its effects on weight loss among healthy individuals. They first
monitored the times that study subjects ate food without any intervention and found that
people tended to eat frequently and erratically throughout the day and consumed more daily
calories in the afternoon and evening (top left). When the app coached the same individuals
on the time window in which to eat, so that they stopped any food intake earlier in the eve-
ning after peak circadian activity (bottom left), subjects overall lost weight (above).
days
body clock, aided by wearable technol- Herzog, E. D. 2007. Neurons and networks in
ogy and apps, may someday be possible. daily rhythms. Nature Reviews Neuroscience
8:790–802.
But achieving it will require more re-
Lucas, R. J., et al. 2013. Measuring and using
search to understand the ways in which
light in the melanopsin age. Trends in Neu-
biology and the rhythms of modern life rosciences doi:10.1016/j.tins.2013.10.004.
can work together in harmony. Roenneberg, T. 2017. Internal Time: Chronotypes,
Social Jet Lag, and Why You’re So Tired. Cam-
Bibliography bridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
An, S., et al. 2013. A neuropeptide speeds circa- Roenneberg, T., and M. Merrow. 2007. Entrain-
dian entrainment by reducing intercellular ment of the human circadian clock. Cold
synchrony. Proceedings of the National Acad- Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biol-
emy of Sciences of the U.S.A. 110(46):E4355– ogy 72:293–299.
E4361. doi:10.1073/pnas.1307088110. Schibler, U., et al. 2015. Clock-talk: Interactions
Chang, A.-M., D. Aeschbach, J. F. Duffy, and between central and peripheral circadian
C. A. Czeisler. 2015. Evening use of light- oscillators in mammals. Cold Spring Harbor
0 6 18 24 emitting eReaders negatively affects sleep, Symposia on Quantitative Biology 80:223–232.
time (hours) circadian timing, and next-morning alert- Walch, O. J., A. Cochran, and D. B. Forger.
ness. Proceedings of the National Academy of 2016. A global quantification of “normal”
Sciences of the U.S.A. 112(4):1232–1237. sleep schedules using smartphone data.
discover how their rhythms could be Chen, Z., S.-H. Yoo, and J. S. Takahashi. 2013. Science Advances 2(5):e1501705. doi:10.1126/
Small molecule modifiers of circadian clocks. sciadv.1501705.
improved. Until better solutions for Cell Molecular Life Sciences 70(16):2985–2998.
circadian dysfunction exist, those of us Dunlap, J. C., J. J. Loros, and P. J. DeCoursey.
prone to late-night Netflix streaming or 2009. Chronobiology: Biological Timekeeping.
scrolling through our Instragram feed Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates.
before we turn out the light can take Foster, R., and L. Kreitzman. 2017. Circadian
steps to be healthier by acknowledging Rhythms: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford,
UK: Oxford University Press. For relevant Web links, consult this
our circadian rhythms and trying to
issue of American Scientist Online:
minimize disruption to our clocks. Gill, S., and S. Panda. 2015. A smartphone app
A couple of straightforward changes reveals erratic diurnal eating patterns in www.amsci.org/magazine/issues/2017/
humans that can be modulated for health november-december
can make a marked difference in allevi- benefits. Cell Metabolism 22(5):789–798.
ating entrainment problems: removing
Hatori, M., and S. Panda. 2010. The emerging
all technology from the bedroom and roles of melanopsin in behavioral adapta-
ensuring that some time is spent out- tion to light. Trends in Molecular Medicine
doors every day. An instantly adjusting 16:435–446.
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Cassini and the Rings of Saturn

As one of its final scientific feats, the accomplished robotic spacecraft returned
unprecedentedly detailed data on the material encircling the giant planet.
Matthew S. Tiscareno
T
he rings of Saturn are deli- et Saturn. The chunks range from
cate, enigmatic, beautiful, marble-size to house-size. The ring
and useful. NASA’s Cassini system is confined to the plane of
spacecraft has been study- Saturn’s equator and is arguably the
ing them (and the rest of the Saturn flattest structure known to human-
system) over the course of a spec- ity, with an end-to-end dimension
tacularly successful 13-year mission, equivalent to circling the Earth seven
but its concluding year has been the times, but a vertical height about that
most spectacular of all—practically of a house.
a whole new mission. In December Saturn’s rings are useful to scien-
2016, Cassini commenced weekly tists because they provide physical
plunges through the ring plane just and chemical clues regarding the
off the outer edge of the main rings formation and history of the entire
(activity termed the “Ring-Grazing Saturn system, they serve as detec-
Orbits”), and transitioned in April tors and amplifiers for planetary phe-
2017 to weekly plunges between the nomena around them, and they help
rings and the planet’s cloud-tops (the us understand more generally how
“Grand Finale” orbits). The mission disk systems operate, providing clues
concluded in September 2017 with a about other kinds of disks, such as
final descent into the planet’s atmo- baby solar systems. A few of the most
sphere, to preclude possible terrestrial compelling science questions regard-
contamination of Saturn’s moons. ing Saturn’s rings are: How do ring
The science goals of the Ring-Grazing particles interact with one another,
Orbits and the Grand Finale orbits in- with moons embedded within them,
cluded direct sampling of particles from and with moons farther away? Are
Saturn’s rings and atmosphere, de- ring particles made of ice that is fluffy
tailed measurements of Saturn’s grav- or dense, pristine or sooty? What are
ity and magnetic field to probe the their shapes and sizes? What struc-
planet’s interior, and unprecedentedly tures do we see in the dusty parts of
close-range imaging of Saturn and its the rings, and what can we continue
rings with the spacecraft’s main cam- to learn from them?
era and similar instruments. These ob-
servations followed up on discoveries
made through the prime and extended Matthew S. Tiscareno is a senior research sci-
Cassini missions, continued monitor- entist at the SETI Institute in Mountain View,
California, and a participating scientist and
ing seasonal or evolving phenom-
imaging team associate for the Cassini spacecraft.
ena, and took advantage of Cassini’s He received his PhD in planetary science from
unique proximity to Saturn in these the University of Arizona in 2004. His research
closing stages of the mission. focuses on the orbital and rotational motions of
Saturn’s planetary ring system is rings, satellites, and planets. He is the coeditor of
made up of countless chunks of ice, Planetary Ring Systems (Cambridge University
each in its own orbit around the plan- Press, 2018). Email: matt@seti.org
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An illustration shows the Cassini space-

craft orbiting Saturn, where it operated for
13 years. In September the mission came
to a preplanned end because the spacecraft
was running out of propellant. The craft
was deliberately plunged into Saturn, so
that there could be no risk of it accidental-
ly crashing into one of Saturn’s moons and
potentially contaminating it. (All images
are courtesy of NASA.)
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The structure of Saturn’s ring system is dominated by occur at many locations within the rings, as well as streaky
concentric bands and tightly wound spirals. Very few of texture and other types of texture. Each of these textures
these bands are empty gaps, so it is better to think of the en- likely indicates a different mode of mutual interaction among
tire system as a disk, rather than as “countless rings.” Much the ring particles, and/or different ring particle properties.
of the structure is not well understood by scientists, but the The main rings are largely free of dust (that is, of icy
most common type of understood structure are waves that particles that are smaller than the period at the end of this
propagate through the rings at locations where ring particle sentence), because dust tends to collect as a layer on the sur-
orbits resonate (or essentially “hum in tune”) with the orbit faces of larger ring particles. In the few places where dust
of a moon orbiting beyond the rings. Cassini scientists dis- does coexist with larger particles, it indicates the presence
covered in recent years that a few of these waves are excited of vigorous ongoing activity that is keeping the dust in mo-
by structures within the planet Saturn. tion. In locations that are far from the main rings, only dust
Moons that orbit within the rings deflect nearby ring paris present, and the dust then can be sculpted into shapes
ticles with their gravity and thus create a disturbance around that reflect the forces surrounding it.
themselves. The moons Pan and Daphnis are large enough Perhaps the most fundamental mystery surrounding Sat-
that this disturbance becomes a sharp-edged empty gap ex- urn’s ring system is its age. Certain aspects of the dynami-
tending around the entire circumference of the rings. Extrapo- cal interactions between the rings and moons can only be
lating from this archetype, scientists expected each of the rewound for about 100 million years, indicating either that a
dozen other sharp-edged gaps in the rings to also host a moon significant reworking of the ring system’s structure occurred
apiece; however, careful searches by Cassini have shown that within that time, or that the entire ring system is only that old.
this is not the case, so these gaps must have a more complex An important clue in this mystery is the rate at which the rings
origin. Moons in a smaller size class than Pan and Daphnis cre- are being polluted by “soot” falling in from the Solar System.
ate a propeller-shaped disturbance that is filled back in by the If that infalling rate is low, or if the rings have a relatively
rings before it can extend circumferentially. large mass of water ice with which to mix the pollution, then
The interior and surface properties of ring particles are it would be reasonable to conclude that the rings are as old as
poorly known. Are they more like ice cubes or snowballs? Saturn and still sport the relatively pure water ice we see them
Are their surfaces fluffy or slushy or frosty? The answer may to have. However, if the infalling rate of pollution is high and
be all of the above. Images from the Ring-Grazing Orbits and the mass of the rings is low, then the rings are likely no older
Grand Finale have shed new light on the collective interac- than 100 million years. Cassini’s dust detectors were working
tions of ring particles. A speckled strawlike texture occurs on a definitive measurement of the pollution rate, and the
within waves at locations where the particles had been re- mass of the rings will be measured directly from the gravi-
cently compressed but that pressure has now been released, tational pull of the rings on Cassini during the Grand Finale
perhaps as a result of temporary clumps falling apart. More orbits. After analysis of the final Cassini data has been com-
surprisingly, sharp-edged bands of similarly speckled texture pleted, these questions should find more concrete answers.
The spiral density wave at left occurs at the location where ring par- pull of the moon Janus, but at a location where ring particles orbit
ticles orbit Saturn twice for every time that the moon Janus orbits Saturn four times for every three Janus orbits (a 4-to-3 resonance).
once (called a 2-to-1 resonance). Because Janus trades orbits with its The peaks of the wave are dark, and the broad, bright troughs contain
partner moon Epimetheus every four years, this wave sports several a speckly, strawlike structure, likely due to transient clumps of ring
“glitches” that trace the wave’s history going back several decades. particles that are now falling apart. The corduroy-like structure at
The spiral density wave at right is also caused by the gravitational center and right is a result of a recent pass of the moon Pan.
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The moon Daphnis is seen orbiting within its sharp-edged gap. Ring particles that have recently
passed the moon are perturbed into wavelike structures in the gap edge, but Daphnis’s influence
is waning by the third wavecrest back, which is disintegrating into a collection of small clumps.
The quasi-moon “Peggy” appears at the outer

edge of the main rings, looking as though it
might spiral away from the rings and become
a freely orbiting moon. Subsequent Cassini
images have shown Peggy’s story to be more
complicated, because it has broken into sev-
eral pieces and has remained within the rings.
At left, a sharp-edged bright band (called a plateau) has an

unknown cause. The central strip, from which the first-order
brightness has been removed so that local structure becomes
more visible, shows that the plateau has a streaky texture where-
as the surrounding region has a speckly texture. The different
textures must indicate different modes of particle properties
and/or interactions. Also visible to the right in this image is a
spiral density wave driven by structure inside the planet Saturn.
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The moon Prometheus dips into the

dusty F ring and sculpts its material.
The resulting channels flatten out
as they move downstream from Pro-
metheus. Also visible in this image are
several strands of dust comprising the
F ring, with some bright knots that in-
dicate embedded moons.
Swarms of small propellers of debris (above) surround a den-

sity wave (with a 9-to-8 resonance with the moon Prometheus).
Each propeller contains a 100-meter moonlet at its core, which
creates the disturbance around itself.
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An inner-central part of the planet’s B ring is shown in what is the highest-

resolution true-color image of any part of Saturn’s rings produced to date.
The reason for the tan color is poorly understood, as is the origin of the
sharply defined banded structure.
Close-up views show giant propellers caused by ring-embedded moons. The

figures immediately below and to the right show the lit side of the rings, where
brighter tones indicate more material reflecting light. The figures at far bottom
and on the facing page bottom show the translucent, unlit side of the rings,
where most dark tones indicate more material, such that the ring becomes
opaque. Cassini has tracked the orbits of these individual propellers for more
than a decade and has found subtle changes in the orbits that are likely due
to moon-disk interactions. These individual propellers have been nicknamed
“Santos-Dumont” (below), “Earhart” (right), and “Blériot” (facing).
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Ghostly white markings called spokes ap-

pear in the central region of the main rings,
in a wide-angle image (above) and in a more
detailed image (left). These spokes are com-
posed of dust levitating above the ring plane.
The dust was likely ejected by meteoroid
impacts and then caught up into Saturn’s
magnetic field, although the details are not
well understood.
Dusty lanes occur within the

D ring, the innermost ring of
Saturn. Some of the bands
comprise a spiral that preserves
traces of an inferred meteoroid
impact that took place in the
1980s. The brighter bands at
bottom-left are the innermost
portion of the main rings.
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Earth and
Moon
A panoramic view of Saturn shows both its main rings and its outer, that are more closely aligned with the Sun appear even brighter. The
dusty rings. Because the Sun was behind Saturn when this image bluish E ring is composed of material ejected from the geysers on
was taken (that is, Cassini was inside Saturn’s shadow), the dusty the south pole of the moon Enceladus. The Earth and its Moon are
rings appear nearly as bright as the main rings, and dusty regions visible to the lower-right of Saturn.
An impact ejecta cloud tells

the tale of a meter-sized object
that plowed through the rings
some hours before this image
was taken. The ejecta cloud is
near the center of the image
and is nearly horizontal, canted
at an angle from the concentric
bands of the ring structure.
For relevant Web links, consult this

issue of American Scientist Online:
www.amsci.org/magazine/issues/2017/
november-december
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The New Language of

Mathematics
Is it possible to take all words out of mathematical expressions?
Daniel S. Silver
S
omething strange is happening about replacing mathematics require- and again in red. By arranging all in
in mathematics seminar rooms ments for the bachelor’s degree with rectangular fashion as we have, it is an
Robert Garrigus / Alamy Stock Photo; Wikimedia Commons

around the world. Words and foreign language courses, Gibbs rose easy matter to count the total, which is
phrases such as spider, birdtrack, and forcefully declared: “Gentlemen, 5 t 6 = 30. In order to find our original
amoeba, sandpile, and octopus decomposi- mathematics is a language.” sum, we need only divide by 2, there-
tion are being heard. Drawings that Gibbs wasn’t the first notable scien- by correcting for our double counting.
resemble prehistoric petroglyphs or tist to call mathematics a language. Gal- The novelty of the picture is that we
ancient Chinese calligraphy are being ileo Galilei beat him to it by more than can grasp the idea at a glance. More-
seen, and are being manipulated like 200 years. In Il Saggiator (The Assayer), over, there is nothing special about 5
the traditional numerals and symbols published in Rome in 1623, the Italian columns of dots. We could just as easily
of algebra. It is a language that would astronomer wrote: “[The universe] can- imagine 100. So 1+2+. . .+100 must be
have been alien to mathematicians of not be read until we have learnt the equal to 100×101 divided by 2, which is
past centuries. language and become familiar with the 5,050. Similarly we can find the sum of
The words and symbols of math- characters in which it is written. It is the first N integers, for any N whatso-
ematics are intended to stimulate written in mathematical language.” ever. The answer is N(N+1)/2.
thought, promote curiosity, or simply Galileo wrote in Italian rather than Just as the 19th-century musician
amuse. At times they ignite public scholarly Latin, hoping to reach readers Felix Mendelssohn enjoyed writ-
imagination. Occasionally they inter- who were literate but not necessarily ing Lieder ohne Worte (Songs Without
fere with understanding. Always they scientific. But just as students at Pla- Words), so mathematicians like to craft
are evolving. Today, as the boundaries to’s Academy were reputedly greeted Proofs Without Words. Since 1975 the
of mathematical inquiry expand, their with the warning “Let no one ignorant Mathematical Association of America
evolution seems to be accelerating. of geometry enter here,” so Galileo’s has published a column devoted to
The words and symbols of mathemat- readers were being cautioned that the them in its Mathematics Magazine. Its
ics have helped bring the subject to its book before them had some language examples are intended to leave the
present, bountiful state. But the ques- prerequisites. For Galileo, the letters of reader speechless.
tion remains: Can the symbols of math- mathematics were triangles, circles, and Despite the many proofs without
ematics stand up on their own, without other geometric figures. Gibbs, who is words, mathematical thought ohne
any words to support them? responsible for much of the vector cal- Worte might be impossible. Words
culus that we use, would have added a come to us automatically when we
Is Mathematics a Language? modern symbol or two of his own. view images. Images come to mind
Josiah Willard Gibbs navigated confi- If mathematics is a language, then when we see words. It seems that we
dently in a sea of mathematical words just as any ordinary language, such as need words after all.
and symbols. Gibbs was a founder of French or Russian, does not rely on an- The role that words play in math-
statistical mechanics and a professor of other one to be understood, so mathematics was on the mind of the French
mathematical physics at Yale Univer- ematics should be independent of ordi- mathematician Jacques Hadamard
sity during the latter half of the 19th nary languages. The idea does not seem when, during the 1940s, he asked col-
century. Colleagues knew this out- so far-fetched when we consider musical leagues around the world how they
wardly plain and unassuming scholar notation, which is readable by trained thought about their subject. Did they
as someone who rarely made public musicians everywhere. If mathematics think in images or think in words? He
pronouncements. Imagine their sur- is a language, then we should be able to summarized his findings in The Psy-
prise when, during a faculty meeting understand its ideas without the use of chology of Invention in the Mathematical
words. Let’s see how that might be done. Field. One of the respondents was Al-
Consider the task of adding the bert Einstein, who wrote:
Daniel S. Silver is an emeritus professor
of mathematics at the University of South first few integers, say 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Easy
Alabama. His research explores the relation enough. Their sum is 15. But what The words or the language, as
between knots and dynamical systems, as well about adding the first 100 integers? they are written or spoken, do not
as the history of science and the psychology of The figure on page 366 displays seem to play any role in my mech-
invention. Email: ______________
silver@southalabama.edu 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 dots twice, once in black anism of thought. The psychical
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Symbolic representation of words and ideas has an ancient history, from North American ory, which won him the prestigious
petroglyphs (top) to early Chinese calligraphy (above, left). Modern mathematicians are ex- Fields medal seven years later. Al-
ploring the usefulness of wordless symbols, including the “birdtracks” notation (above, right) though the dot was not entirely gra-
created by mathematician Predrag Cvitanovi°. tuitous—it came about by thinking
of factors in terms of concentric black
entities which seem to serve as posed by the use of images alone. In circles—it was intended as a humor-
elements in thought are certain 1983 the New Zealander and Ameri- ous commentary on the constraints of
signs and more or less clear im- can mathematician Vaughan Jones imagery. “Some people have enjoyed
ages which can be “voluntarily” made the point by reproducing the the joke,” Jones told me.
reproduced and combined. image of a big black dot to illustrate Whether or not mathematics is a
the projection lattice of II1 (read as language, its words share with ordi-
Even those mathematicians who “type two-one”) factors, a sophisti- nary language an important function:
would agree with Einstein recognize cated algebraic object that Jones later They transport essential images from
the severe limitation on thought im- used to create new tools for knot the- one mind to another. For that reason
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notion of entropy, introduced by Ru- Third, the wide popularity of Shan-

dolf Clausius in 1864, was noted with non’s information theory has been
wonder by many, including the math- helped by his use of a word that is rec-
ematician John von Neumann. Shan- ognized, if not truly understood, by
non is said to have told an interviewer everyone. Its associations with disor-
the following anecdote in 1961: der in everyday life evoke a sympa-
thetic response with everyone, much
My greatest concern was what
like another popular mathematical
to call it. I thought of calling it
word, chaos.
“information,” but the word was
overly used, so I decided to call it
What’s in a Name?
“uncertainty.” When I discussed
“Must a name mean something?” asked
it with John von Neumann, he
Alice doubtfully. “Of course it must,”
had a better idea. Von Neumann
was Humpty Dumpty’s emphatic reply
told me, “You should call it en-
to Alice’s question in Lewis Carroll’s
tropy, for two reasons. In the first
Through the Looking-Glass.
place your uncertainty function
Mathematician James Yorke of the
has been used in statistical me-
University of Maryland would have
chanics under that name, so it al-
given Alice the same answer. In a re-
ready has a name. In the second
Wikimedia Commons cent discussion I had with him, Yorke
place, and more important, no
Josiah Willard Gibbs, a 19th-century math- recalled his decision to adopt the word
ematician at Yale University who was known one knows what entropy really
chaos for a mathematical phenomenon
for being reserved, nonetheless expressed is, so in a debate you will always
associated with a type of unpredict-
very strongly his opinion that mathematics have the advantage.”
able behavior found everywhere in
was itself a language.
Although von Neumann’s second rea- the world, from the drip patterns of
son presumably was intended as a joke, water faucets to long-range weather
the choice of words that we make is the exchange highlights the importance behavior. “Your terms should mean
important. of careful language choice in fostering something,” he insisted. He dismissed
Multiple Meanings
In 1948, Claude Shannon, working on
communication theory at Bell Tele-
Mathematical monikers usually slip
phone Laboratories, created a beauti-
ful and useful algebraic expression for through the world quietly. The term
a measure of average uncertainty in
an information source. Its similarity chaos was an exception; it seized the
in form to the statistical mechanics
public imagination.
understanding. Like Shannon, many the advice of colleagues urging him
mathematicians agonize over the words to choose a more dispassionate term.
that they invent, hoping that those they Yorke wished to capture the feelings
choose will survive for decades. Shan- that we all have about the randomness
non’s choice proved to be brilliant for in our lives.
three reasons, two in addition to those Mathematical monikers usually slip
proposed by von Neumann: through the world quietly, recognized
First, mathematicians enjoy the bor- by only the researchers who use them.
rowed authority of words from science, Chaos was an exception. In 1975 Yorke
especially from physics. Von Neumann and his co-author, mathematician Tien-
was correct when he said that the use Yien Li of Michigan State University,
of entropy conferred an advantage on proved a surprising theorem about
the speaker. Audience members either continuous functions on an interval,
know the meaning of the term or else the sort of functions that students
they feel that they should. learn about in calculus. They wrote
Second, Shannon’s appropriation of up their proof in a short paper titled
the term entropy provoked an insight- “Period Three Implies Chaos.”
An array of dots can be used as a nonverbal
ful debate. Did his term in fact have a What did Yorke and Li prove? Think
demonstration that the sum 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 is meaningful connection with statistical of such a function as a machine: Insert
equal to 5 (the number of columns needed to mechanics? The debate has been pro- a number a from the interval and get a
represent all the digits) multiplied by 6 (the ductive. Today Clausius’s entropy is value b. If we put b into our machine,
number of rows needed to represent the larg- regarded by many as a special case of then we get a third number c. Now in-
est digit) and then divided by 2. Shannon’s idea. sert c to get d. If it happens that d is
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equal to a, then we say that a has period had written about it at the turn of the
three. In a similar way, a number might 20th century—it came as a shock to
have period four, five, or any number. many scientists. Storm conditions to-
What Yorke and Li proved, assuming day, Lorenz suggested, might have
continuity, is that if some number has been caused several weeks ago by a
period three, then one can find num- butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil.
bers of any period one chooses. Butterfly effect was the term he coined
Yorke and Li also showed that many to reinforce the metaphor.
numbers have successive outputs that If a mathematical term is to catch
never return to their starting value. fire with general readers, it must
More surprisingly, pairs of such non- spark their imagination. A powerful
periodic numbers can be found as image helps. In the case of chaos, Lo-
close together as desired, yet having renz himself had supplied it. It was
successive outputs that move apart. It a bundle of curves, today called the
is an example of sensitive dependence Lorenz attractor, suggesting the infinite
on initial conditions. The situation is, number of solution curves to a system
well, chaotic. of three differential equations. And it
Had Yorke and Li published their resembled the two wings of a butterfly.
paper in a specialists’ journal in their Start at any point of one of its solu-
field of dynamical systems, it is likely tion curves and follow around, and
that chaos would never have caught the you visit the two wings successively in
public’s imagination. Few people know Claude Shannon of Bell Telephone Laborato- some infinite pattern. Start at a nearby
that the word had already appeared ries in 1948 borrowed the term entropy from point on a different curve and the pat-
with another meaning in the wonder- statistical mechanics to name his algebraic tern might become wildly different
fully oxymoronic title “The Homoge- expression for the amount of uncertainty in after some time. The Lorenz attractor
an information source. His term has attracted
neous Chaos.” The author was Norbert became the emblem of a new and last-
widespread attention. Today some consider the
Weiner, the creator of cybernetics. statistical mechanical notion to be a special case
ing field, chaos theory.
Weiner published his article in the of Shannon’s entropy. (Photograph courtesy of
1938 volume of the research-oriented Tekniska museet/Flickr cc.) Choosing Words, Sometimes with Care
American Journal of Mathematics. Instead Poorly chosen words and phrases can
Yorke and Li published in the American tion? Within 10 years, James Gleick’s interfere with the progress of mathe-
Mathematical Monthly, an expository Chaos: Making a New Science would matics. René Descartes showed us how.
journal published by the Mathematical become a bestseller. The book, which While pondering solutions to alge-
Association of America, intended for a marks its 30th anniversary this year, braic equations, Descartes was com-
broad readership from college students celebrated its subject, beginning with pelled to consider the possibility that
to researchers. When biologist Robert the ideas of mathematician and me- some numbers when multiplied by
May read the article and wrote about teorologist Edward Lorenz. In 1961 themselves could give a negative re-
its implications for population models Lorenz had noticed that over extended sult. Certainly no “real numbers,” that
a year later in the journal Nature, the periods of time, his model of weather is, no numbers on the familiar number
word chaos appeared on top of the first patterns behaved differently when line, behave that way. Descartes called
page. According to Yorke, that is when its initial conditions were varied only the numbers imaginaire (imaginary). In
the term took off. slightly. Although such a phenomenon La Géométrie, his effort in 1637 to unify
How long does it take a mathemati- was not new to mathematicians—the geometry and algebra, he explained
cal word to seize the public imagina- French mathematician Henri Poincaré that “true or false roots can be real or
imaginary.”
Although mathematicians sometimes joke about the terms they try to introduce, some agonize The expression imaginary number
over the words that they invent, and others wonder whether neologisms cause confusion. caught on. Carl Friedrich Gauss, one
calvin and hobbes © 1994 Watterson. Reprinted with permission of andrews mcmeel syndication. All rights reserved.
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The Lorenz attractor is a bundle of curves plotting the solutions to a system of three differential time. During the 1800s rigorous and
equations. It resembles the wings of a butterfly, and became an emblem for the subject of chaos. effective definitions, those of limit
Some of its infinitely many curves are colored to distinguish them. (Image by Paul Bourke.) and derivative, were finally developed
without the mention of time, and
of the greatest mathematicians of all some students that complex numbers mathematicians stopped using New-
time, despised it. In 1831 Gauss wrote: are more than imaginary, having sig- ton’s f-words.
“If this subject... [has been] enveloped nificant applications throughout the British mathematicians of the 19th
in mystery and surrounded by dark- sciences. century loved inventing new words
ness, it is largely an unsuitable termi- In 1670 Isaac Newton contributed and phrases for mathematical con-
nology which should be blamed.” the intensely bothersome words flu- cepts. Unfortunately, they got off to a
Gauss preferred the less censori- ents, fluxions, and even ffluxions. They rather bad start.
ous term complex numbers, which in- were intended to describe the path In 1801 a book by Cambridge pro-
cludes both ordinary (real) numbers and velocity of fluid in motion, but fessor John Colson, who held the Lu-
and imaginary numbers appearing defining them rigorously proved too casian chair of Mathematics (earlier
held by Newton and later by Stephen
Hawking) was published as an English
Leibniz was so smitten with symbols that translation of Instituzioni analitiche ad
uso della gioventú italiana [Foundations
he dreamed of a purely symbolic language, of Analysis for the Use of Italian Youth],
a textbook about calculus written by
one with which nations might someday Maria Agnesi in 1748. It is a pity that
Colson didn’t know much Italian. He
learned just enough to follow the path
settle arguments, using computation rather of translation, dropping a hazardous
rock onto the road along the way.
than swords and cannon. In her book Agnesi had described a
particular curve, referring to it as “la
curva... dicesi la Versiera.” The word
together in a single expression, such difficult even for the Cambridge ge- versiera was an adaptation by another
—
as 2 + √ –3. Regrettably, Descartes’s nius. For more than a century math- Italian author, Guido Grandi, from the
coinage remains in circulation, add- ematicians tried and failed to clarify Latin word versoria, meaning “a rope
ing to the handicap that mathematics the meanings of these words with that turns a sail.” It was a helpful im-
teachers endure as they try to convince their implied metaphysical notions of age. Colson could not find Agnesi’s
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“la versiera,” because it was not in any birth, so to speak, to a square matrix nus sign that we use for subtraction. In
dictionary. He used the closest word by striking out unwanted rows or col- medieval Europe the operation of sub-
that he could find, l’avversiera. umns, matrix, with its suggestion of traction was written out; we find it re-
In Italian l’avversiera means “the fertility, seemed appropriate. corded as minus (Latin), moins (French),
witch” or “the she-devil.” Colson The word matrix lives on in math- or meno (Italian). However, by the 15th
wrote: “...the equation of the curve to ematics at all levels. And like chaos, century, the word had been syncopated,
be described, which is vulgarly called it has captured popular imagination. shortened to m –. The symbol – began
the Witch.” Today’s calculus textbooks Sylvester would have been delighted to replace m – as early as 1489, the year
continue to use the term Witch of Agne- to know that at the end of the 20th cen- that Johannes Widmann published a
si, and students continue to stare at the tury both a Hollywood science-fiction book of commercial arithmetic with the
curve and wonder what demonic forces film and a compact car would carry phrase (in translation): “What – is, that
shaped it. It is ironic that Agnesi was a the name. is less, and the + is more.”
devout woman who spent most of her No matter what their origin, sym-
adult life aiding the poor. A Picture Worth 1,000 Symbols bols have been a source of mystery for
No British mathematician was a The symbols of mathematics appear to mathematicians. They do more than
greater wordsmith than James Joseph be separate from the words alongside merely stand in for words. Gottfried
Sylvester. Born in London in 1814, he them. In fact, they have evolved from Wilhelm Leibniz, who shares with
attended Cambridge University but words. The 19th-century German phi- Newton credit for discovering calcu-
could not be awarded a degree be- lologist and historian Heinrich Nes- lus, believed it. Leibniz was so smitten
cause, as a Jew, he did not subscribe selmann was the first to recognize this by symbols that he dreamed of a pure-
to the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion concept. He identified three stages of ly symbolic language, one with which
of the Anglican Church. He managed their evolution: rhetorical, syncopated, nations might someday settle argu-
to support himself by teaching at the and symbolic. ments, using computation rather than
secular University College London An illustration of Nesselmann’s swords and cannon. He imagined an
and working as an actuary. Finally, in theory is furnished by the humble mi- alphabet of ideas.
1876, Sylvester’s career reached its full
promise when he was appointed to a Maria Gaetana Agnesi (left) authored a
professorship at the new Johns Hop- mathematics textbook in Italian in 1748.
In the volume she describes a particu-
kins University in Baltimore, Mary-
lar curve (below), calling it la versiera,
land. There he began the United States' and adaption from the Latin word ver-
first mathematics research department soria, meaning a rope that turns a sail.
and its first mathematics research jour- But when her textbook was translated
nal, the aforementioned American Jour- into English by Cambridge mathemati-
nal of Mathematics. cian John Colson and published in 1801,
Sylvester loved language almost as he mistook the word for another that
much as mathematics. He composed means “the witch.” The mistranslated
unappreciated poetry, and in 1870 he moniker still sticks with the curve in
proudly self-published a slim vol- modern textbooks, which call it Witch of
Agnesi, to the confusion of students who
ume, The Laws of Verse, in which he
are not told of the reasons for any su-
proposed rules for effective versifica- pernatural connections. The story dem-
tion. Not surprisingly, Sylvester coined onstrates the importance of choosing
many mathematical words. At the potential mathematical terms with care.
end of his article, “On a Theory of the
Syzygetic Relations of Two Rational
Integral Functions,” published in 1853,
he attached a glossary of “New or un-
usual Terms, used in a new or unusual
sense in the preceding Memoir.” It be-
gan with allotrious, apocopated, bezoutic,
sprinkled monotheme, perimetrical, rhi-
zoristic along the way, and finished up
with umbral, weight, and zeta.
Most of Sylvester’s words have been
forgotten, but some have survived.
Perhaps his most notable contribu-
tion to mathematic’s lexicon is matrix,
a square or rectangular arrangement
of terms in rows and columns. It is a
Wikimedia Commons
Latin word that means womb. Sylves-

ter was most interested in the case of a
square matrix, one for which the num-
bers of rows and columns are equal.
Because a rectangular matrix can give
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stretched not only argument. Beginning in the late 19th

across its pages but up century, intuition-defying examples
and down them as well. from the expanding subject of topolo-
Today Frege’s work gy reinforced doubts about our spatial
is regarded by many intuition and proofs that rely on them.
as the most important Giusseppe Peano’s space-filling curve
single work in logic. was one such example: Try to imagine
However, in its day, an unbroken curve inside a square that
the book was derided. does not miss a single point. Few can,
Logician John Venn but Peano could. He constructed such
(remembered today a curve using an infinite recursive pro-
for his eponymous cess. No picture can fully describe it.
diagrams) described (More about Peano can be found in
Begriffsschrift as “cum- “Crinkly Curves,” Computing Science,
bersome and inconve- May–June 2013.)
nient.” Another influ- Mathematicians’ reluctance to ac-
ential logician, Ernst cept images in place of words has
Schröder, called it a softened but not vanished. It is a com-
“monstrous waste of mon and uncomfortable experience
space” and complained for someone presenting a pictorial ar-
that it “indulges in the gument to hear a skeptic ask, “Is that
Japanese custom of really a proof?” Predrag Cvitanovi°
writing vertically.” of Georgia Institute of Technology
Chris Hellier / Science Source
Frege faced resis- knows the experience. He recalls the

tance not just from taunt of a colleague staring at the pic-
readers. His two- tograms that he had left on a black-
dimensional formu- board: “What are these birdtracks?”
las and other exotic Cvitanovi° liked the ornithological
symbols precipitated term so much that he decided to adopt
complaints from his it for the name of his new notation.
typesetter. “After all, So what are these birdtracks? Brief-
James Joseph Sylvester, who taught mathematics at Johns
the convenience of the ly, they are combinations of dots, lines,
Hopkins University in the late 1800s, invented a host of math-
ematical terms, but the most enduring one is matrix. Sylvester typesetter is certainly boxes, arrows, and other symbols, let-
borrowed the term from the Late Latin word for womb, likely not the summum bonum ters of a diagrammatic language for
to imply how a rectangular arrangement of terms in rows and [highest good],” Frege a type of algebra. They were inspired
columns can “give birth” to a square one. argued some years by the famous paper about QED,
later. Costs associated written in 1948 by physicist Richard
Leibniz never found his univer- with typesetting, once a bane for Feynmann, and also later articles by
sal language, but others have had mathematicians, have disappeared mathematical physicist Roger Penrose.
success searching for ideographic today thanks to effective software As Cvitanovi° explained in his 1984
languages with more specialized that enables authors to create cam- book Group Theory: Birdtracks, Lie’s, and
functions. The German mathemati- era-ready manuscripts for journals Exceptional Groups, the diagrams rep-
cian and philosopher Gottlob Frege and periodicals. Nevertheless, the resent an evolution of language. They
thought that he had found a way to mathematical community’s reluc- are not merely mnemonic devices or
an aid for computation. Rather, they
are “everything—unlike Feynman dia-
It is a common and uncomfortable grams, here all calculations are carried
out in terms of birdtracks, from start
experience for someone presenting a to finish.” Could one perform the cal-
culations without them? Yes, but as
Cvitanovi° warns the reader, it would
pictorial argument to hear a skeptic ask, be like speaking Italian without using
your hands.
“Is that really a proof?” Birdtracks are not the only picture-
language game in town. Others have
been, and are being, invented for dif-
communicate with just symbols. tance to adopt pictorial arguments ferent purposes. Louis H. Kauffman,
In 1879 he published Begriffsschrift, has slowed their acceptance. a mathematician at the University of
an 88-page booklet in which the quan- Pictures have accompanied math- Illinois at Chicago and one of the most
tifiers of formal logic first appeared. ematical proofs since the days of Eu- inventive and influential topologists
Frege described his work as “a for- clid. But a picture can mislead us by of our time, uses a variety of new dia-
mula language, modeled on that of suggesting that the special case it il- grammatic languages for the study of
arithmetic, of pure thought.” Diagrams lustrates is sufficiently general for our knots. An algebraist familiar with bird-
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cause mathematics is not just another

= language.” Simply put, mathematics is
more general than any language that
tries to express it.
= Traditional methods of learning
mathematics are discursive, demanding
a sequential, step-by-step understand-
ing. Assuming that a lesson succeeds,
there is a moment of “aha!” when lights
F2 = F2 = turn on and the room is illuminated for
us. One day it might become possible
to flip on the light switch as soon as
we enter the room. Philosopher and
logician Susanne K. Langer once called
= for a revolution in our modes of com-
munication, moving beyond our “tiny,
Wikipedia
grammar-bound island.” Our journey

from words to symbols to picture lan-
guage is bringing Langer’s revolution
Attempts at purely symbolic mathematical languages have taken on a range of formats. One just a bit closer.
diagram from the work of Gottlob Frege in 1879 asserts that: “If b implies a, then the negation
of a implies the negation of b” (top left). Louis Kauffman used picture-language to argue that a References
certain quantity for a knot does not depend on how the knot is drawn (top, middle). The quon
Cvitanovi°, P. 2008. Group Theory: Birdtracks,
language is used at top right to express the properties of a pair of expressions in Frobenius
Lie’s, and Exceptional Groups. Princeton, NJ:
algebra. Disks called planar tangles are used to express properties in planar algebra (bottom). Princeton University Press.
Feynman, R. 1965. The Character of Physical
Law. London: Cox and Wyman Ltd.
tracks would recognize much but not much in common with the languages
all of what she might read in Kauff- of Cvitanovi° and Kauffman. Gleick, J. 1987. Chaos: Making a New Science.
New York: Penguin Books.
man’s book Formal Knot Theory, much According to its inventors, the quon
Hadamard, J. 1945. The Psychology of Inven-
as a traveler might understand spoken language can do more than aid in the
tion in the Mathematical Field. Princeton, NJ:
cognates of a foreign tongue. study of quantum information. It is also Princeton University Press.
Planar algebras are another signifi- a language for algebra and topology, Jones, V. F. R. 1999. Planar algebras, I.
cant picture language. Jones (the one with the ability to prove theorems in arXiv:math/9909027v1.
with the big black dot mentioned ear- both subjects. In an interview with the Kauffman, L. H. 1991. Knots and Physics. Singa-
lier) introduced them in 1999, and they Harvard Gazette, Jaffe remarked, “So this pore: World Scientific Publishing Co.
provide a general setting for important pictorial language for mathematics can Langer, S. K. 1942. Philosophy in a New Key.
quantities in the study of knots. The give you insights and a way of thinking Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
basic pictures of the language are pla- that you don’t see in the usual, algebra- Sylvester, J. J. 1853. On a theory of the syzy-
nar tangles—disks with smaller disks ic way of approaching mathematics.” getic relations of two rational integral func-
inside them—connected by line seg- He added that “It turns out one picture tions. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal
Society of London 143:407–548.
ments and decorated with stars and is worth 1,000 symbols.”
Li, T-Y. L., and J. A. Yorke. 1975. Period three
shading. Planar tangles can be com-
implies chaos. The American Mathematical
bined to form new characters. The Not Just Another Language Monthly 82:985–992.
properties they exhibit mirror those Something strange is indeed happen- Liu, Z., A. Wozniakowski, and A. M. Jaffe.
of different algebraic and topological ing in mathematics seminar rooms 2017. Quon 3D language for quantum in-
structures that are already familiar to today, but it amounts to more than formation. Proceedings of the National Acad-
researchers. Consequently, planar al- amusing sights and sounds. Mathema- emy of Sciences of the U.S.A. 114:2447–2502.
gebras have a variety of applications. ticians are attempting to break through
Birdtracks and planar algebras are the barriers of traditional language
picture-languages that draw their in order to think more deeply about
initial inspiration from physics. Yet fundamental questions. Their strange
another is quon language, first intro- words and images are attracting atten-
duced in December 2016 on arXiv. tion, motivating all of us to learn more
org, a repository of online research- about them. For relevant Web links, consult this
paper preprints that is used by scien- In a series of lectures at Cornell Uni- issue of American Scientist Online:
tists throughout the world. Quon lan- versity in 1965, Richard Feynman con-
guage, created by Harvard University templated the effectiveness of math- www.amsci.org/magazine/issues/2017/
mathematicians Zhengwei Liu, Alex ematics in science. He sympathized november-december
Wozniakowski, and Arthur M. Jaffe, is with the lay reader who asked why
derived from three-dimensional picto- it was not possible to explain math-
rial representations of particlelike exci- ematical ideas with ordinary language.
tations and transformations that act on Correcting Gibbs, who started our dis-
them. An earlier, simpler version has cussion, Feynman replied that it is “be-
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The Persistence and Peril of

Misinformation
Defining what truth means and deciphering how human brains verify
information are some of the challenges to battling widespread falsehoods.
Brian G. Southwell, Emily A. Thorson, and Laura Sheble
M
isinformation—both de- would if they were correctly informed, disinformation is more problematic,
liberately promoted and as suggested by the research teams of as it involves deliberate alienation or
accidentally shared—is Stephan Lewandowsky of the Univer- disempowerment of other people. Le-
perhaps an inevitable sity of Bristol in the United Kingdom wandowsky and his colleagues have
part of the world in which we live, but and Elizabeth Marsh of Duke Univer- carried forward this definition of dis-
it is not a new problem. People likely sity, among others. In other words, we information as intentionally incorrect
have lied to one another for roughly worry that misinformation (or false information.
as long as verbal communication has information) might lead people to hold From a critical theory perspective,
existed. Deceiving others can offer an misperceptions (or false beliefs) and we might worry about the impossibil-
apparent opportunity to gain strategic that these misperceptions, especially ity of proving that any information is
advantage, to motivate others to ac- when they occur among large groups objectively true, a concern that com-
tion, or even to protect interpersonal of people, may have downstream con- plicates any distinction of misinforma-
bonds. Moreover, people inadvertently sequences for health, social harmony, tion from information on the basis of
have been sharing inaccurate informa- and political life. the former being false and the latter
tion with one another for thousands being true. Nonetheless, we respect-
of years. However, we currently live fully reject a worldview in which no
in an era in which technology enables
Concern about degree of consensus among people—
information to reach large audiences proving that any agreement as to what is true—is pos-
distributed across the globe, and thus sible. If we allow that a claim acknowl-
the potential for immediate and wide- information is edged by consensus to be true is valid,
spread effects from misinformation
now looms larger than in the past. Yet
objectively true we then can position misinformation
as a category of claims for which there
the means to correct misinformation can complicate is at least substantial disagreement (or
over time might be found in those same even a consensus for rejection) when
patterns of mass communication and the distinction of their truthfulness is judged by the wid-
of the facilitated spread of information. misinformation est feasible range of observers. That
approach would include disinforma-
Misinformation vs. Disinformation from information. tion as a special type of misinformation
Misinformation is concerning because distinguished by the promoter’s intent.
of its potential to unduly influence at- Does misinformation require inten- From an ethical perspective, many
titudes and behavior, leading people tional deceit on the part of the pre- people worry most about active pro-
to think and act differently than they senter? Philosopher Jürgen Habermas, motion of disinformation. We think
who taught at institutions such as it is best, however, to continue to use
Goethe University Frankfurt and the the word misinformation, because we
Brian G. Southwell is director of the Science in Max Planck Institute in Germany until should acknowledge that false infor-
the Public Sphere Program at RTI International formally retiring in the 1990s, focuses mation can mislead people even if un-
in North Carolina and a faculty member at Duke on a speaker’s intent to deceive to dis- intentionally promoted or mistakenly
University and the University of North Carolina tinguish between misinformation and endorsed as the truth. This approach
at Chapel Hill. Emily A. Thorson is an assistant disinformation. Habermas views truth opens the door for certain claims to
professor of political science at Syracuse Uni- as only possible collectively among evolve from accepted information to
versity. Laura Sheble is an assistant professor of
people as a product of consensus; one’s become misinformation, and vice ver-
information science at Wayne State University in
Michigan. Adapted, with permission, from Mis-
collegial participation in such collective sa, as a function of a society’s chang-
information and Mass Audiences, edited by understanding also matters. Misinfor- ing consensus. (And, of course, such
Brian G. Southwell, Emily A. Thorson, and Laura mation from such a perspective, then, evolution of evidence can be useful.)
Sheble; © 2018 by the University of Texas Press. is contentious information reflecting We can define misinformation as claims
Email for Southwell: __________
bsouthwell@rti.org. disagreement among people, whereas that do not enjoy universal or near-
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Michele Rosenthal
Although the practice of purposeful deception, or unintentional spreading of falsehoods, is teams of Erik Asp of the University of
not new, the recent, rapid growth of mobile devices and social media have greatly expanded Chicago and Daniel Gilbert at Harvard
the conduit for both information and misinformation to rapidly reach a large, global audience. University, among others, has support-
ed Spinoza’s account: People appear
universal consensus as being true at a timating the potential for subsequent to encode all new information as if it
particular moment in time on the basis problems. Although individuals gen- were true, even if only momentarily,
of evidence. erally have considerable routine expe- and later tag the information as be-
rience encountering information now ing either true or false, a pattern that
Why Misinformation is Problematic considered to be false, the question of seems consistent with the observation
At least three observations related to exactly how—and when—we mental- that mental resources for skepticism
misinformation in the contemporary ly label information as true or false has physically reside in a different part of
mass-media environment warrant the garnered philosophical debate. the brain than the resources used in
attention of researchers, policy mak- The dilemma is neatly summarized perceiving and encoding.
ers, and really everyone who watch- by a contrast between how the phi- We also know from work by one of
es television, listens to the radio, or losophers René Descartes and Baruch us (Southwell) and others that people
reads information online. First of all, Spinoza described human information judge source credibility as a cue in de-
people who encounter misinforma- engagement centuries ago, with con- termining message acceptability and
tion tend to believe it, at least initially. flicting predictions that only recently will turn to others for confirmation
Secondly, media systems often do not have been empirically tested in robust of the truth of a claim. If the people
block or censor many types of misin- ways. Descartes argued that a person surrounding someone tend to initially
formation before it appears in content only accepts or rejects information af- believe misinformation, then the spec-
available to large audiences. Thirdly, ter considering its truth or falsehood; ter of network reinforcement is raised,
countering misinformation once it Spinoza argued that people accept all meaning that the false claim becomes
has enjoyed wide exposure can be a encountered information (or misin- more difficult to debunk as it is be-
resource-intensive effort. formation) by default and then sub- lieved by more people.
Knowing what happens when peo- sequently verify or reject it through a What about our claim that misinfor-
ple initially encounter misinformation separate process. In recent decades, mation often can appear in electronic
holds tremendous importance for es- empirical evidence from the research or print media without being preemp-
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The FDA oversees direct-to-consumer

prescription drug advertising, for ex-
ample, and has developed mechanisms
such as the “Bad Ad” program, through
which people can report advertising in
apparent violation of FDA guidelines
on drug risks and benefits presentation.
People appear to
encode all new
information as if it
were true, even if
only momentarily,
and later tag the
photo Gage Skidmore/Flickr cc
information as being
either true or false.
Such programs, although laudable
and useful, do not guarantee that false
advertising never appears on the air-
The phenomenon of fake news has become commonplace on the Internet. Some sites waves and, moreover, do not prevent
disguise themselves as legitimate news outlets and release false stories, such as a 2016 false news stories from appearing. In
hoax about actor Sylvester Stallone’s death. Although other sites, such as the one in the addition, as shown by one of us (Thor-
screen shot here, quickly counter the stories, hoaxes are often shared widely before being son), even misinformation that is suc-
disproven—and, ironically, repeating the falsehood can further engrain belief in it. cessfully corrected can continue to af-
fect attitudes.
tively blocked? One might consider Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Following on this last point, counter-
the nature of regulatory structures in Election Commission, and the Food ing misinformation with new informa-
countries such as the United States: and Drug Administration (FDA) offer tion requires effort not only to develop
Regulatory agencies tend to focus on considerable monitoring and notifica- new content that is understandable but
post hoc detection of broadcast infor- tion functions, but these roles typically also to ensure adequate message ex-
mation. Organizations such as the U.S. do not involve preemptive censoring. posure. As Robert Hornik of the Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania has
argued, a communication
campaign can succeed or fail,
at least in part, as a function of
exposure or lack thereof.
A campaign to correct
misinformation, even if rhe-
torically compelling, requires
resources and planning to
accomplish necessary reach
and frequency. For corrective
information to be persuasive,
audiences need to be able
to comprehend it, which re-
quires either effort to frame
messages in ways that are un-
derstandable or effort to edu-
cate and sensitize audiences
to the possibility of misinfor-
mation. That audiences might
not be aware of the potential
for misinformation also sug-
Wikimedia Commons
gests the potential utility of
How the brain encodes information and when it judges it to be true or false has been a subject of philo- media literacy efforts as early
sophical debate for centuries. René Descartes (left) argued that people would consider the truthfulness as elementary school. Even
or falsity of information before accepting or rejecting it. Baruch Spinoza (right) argued that people accept with journalists, pundits, and
all information by default, then verify or reject it through a separate process. scholars pointing to the phe-
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In Kano, Nigeria, the polio virus thrives in

sewage-contaminated water. Misinforma-
tion, however, caused many residents to re-
fuse the polio vaccine, leading to the dis-
ease’s reemergence a few years ago, after it
was nearly eradicated.
nomenon of “fake news,” people often

do not distinguish between demon-
strably false stories and those based
in fact when scanning and processing
information.
ZUMA Press, Inc./Alamy Stock Photo

We live at a time when widespread
misinformation is common. Yet at this
time many people also are passion-
ately developing potential solutions
and remedies. The journey forward
undoubtedly will be a long one. The
way in which media systems have de-
veloped in many democratic societies
inherently calls for both vulnerability
to occasional misinformation and ro-
bust systems to detect and address it.
Future remedies will require not
only continued theoretical consider-
ation but also the development and
maintenance of consistent monitoring
tools and a willingness among neigh-
bors and fellow members of society
to agree that some claims that find
prominence on shared airwaves and
in widely available media content are
insufficiently based in scientific con-
sensus and social reality and should
be countered. Misinformation arises
as a function of systems structure, hu-
man fallibility, and human informa-
tion needs. To overcome the worst ef-
fects of the phenomenon, we will need
coordinated efforts over time, rather
than any singular, one-time panacea
we could hope to offer.
Bibliography
Aikin, K. J., et al. 2015. Correction of overstate-
ment and omission in direct-to-consumer
prescription drug advertising. Journal of
Communication 65:596–618.
Asp, E. W., and D. Tranel. 2012. False tagging
theory: Toward a unitary account of pre-
frontal cortex function. In D. T. Stuss and
R. T. Knight, eds. Principles of frontal lobe
function. New York, NY: Oxford University
Press, pp. 383–416.
Gilbert, D., R. Tafarodi, and P. Malone. 1993.
You can’t not believe everything you read.
Everett Collection
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

65:221–233.
Lewandowsky, S., U. K. H. Ecker, C. M. Seifert,
N. Schwarz, and J. Cook. 2012. Misinforma-
tion and its correction: Continued influence
and successful debiasing. Psychological Sci-
ence in the Public Interest 13:106–131. In 1938, actor Orson Welles rehearses for a radio broadcast of H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds.
Thorson, E. 2016. Belief echoes: The persistent Some Americans panicked when they believed the radio drama—and then newspapers sensation-
effects of corrected misinformation. Political alized the panic to demonize their radio competitors. Such incidents demonstrate that misinforma-
Communication 33:460–480. tion can be mistakenly spread as fact whether or not the originator had that intention.
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S c i e n t i s t s’
E`^_kjkXe[
egant mechanics of the acoustic era

The Scientists’ Nightstand, Sumptuous to the intricate circuitry threading
through digital devices. (One patent
American Scientist’s books
section, offers reviews, review Science illustration, submitted by the Victor
Talking Machine Company in 1927,
essays, brief excerpts, and more.
N
ot so long ago, when digital depicts an instructional tag that offers
For additional books coverage, books were ascendent, avid a suggestion that remains refreshingly
please see our Science Culture readers would speculate useful: “Read your Instruction Book
blog channel, which explores from time to time about the future of carefully—it will save you expense
how science intersects with other print books. As the number of readers and trouble.”) Each chapter opens
areas of knowledge, entertain- browsing print copies of newspapers with a timeline that anchors its topic
ment, and society: and magazines dwindled, it seemed and is followed by a lucid essay by
plausible that book readers might mi- Burrows, an author who specializes
americanscientist.org/blogs
grate en masse as well. in music history, that discusses the de-
/science-culture.
__________
More recently digital book sales velopments of that era and effectively
have been declining and, for a multi- contextualizes the images to follow.
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE tude of reasons, print books don’t ap- These images—delightful, varied, and
pear to be destined for the endangered attentively captioned—make up the
THE RISE OF BIG DATA POLIC-
species list anytime soon. For this, as a bulk of each chapter, and rightfully so.
ING: Surveillance, Race, and the
reader, reviewer, editor, and certified The real stars are Simon Pask’s copi-
Future of Law Enforcement.
book addict, I am grateful. Although ous photographs, which manage to
By Andrew Guthrie Ferguson.
there’s nothing handier than being be both luscious and crisp, of items
page 378 able to carry the equivalent of a book- from the EMI archives. From a 1902
case full of titles on a device the size of gramophone that played discs made
ONLINE a paperback, it remains true that some of chocolate, to a 1940 U.S. Army–
books are best experienced on paper. issued wind-up record player for use
Upcoming on our And in a few cases, the full wonder of in war zones, to a shiny array of Sony
Science Culture blog: a title may be otherwise lost. Minidisc Walkman devices from the
americanscientist.org/blogs Such is the case for an impres- 1990s through the early 2000s, these
/science-culture
__________ sive clutch of recent releases. Each artifacts transfix. I’d encourage any-
will richly reward readers who leaf one who suspects that technology and
CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE
through their pages, linger over their beauty are antithetical terms to spend
HEALTH OF NATIONS: Famines,
images, and launch into the text. time immersed in these pages.
Fevers, and the Fate of Popula-
Moreover, each demonstrates how Instead of sound, Keely Orgeman
tions. By Anthony J. McMichael.
vibrant and gorgeous science-related lavishes attention on light in Lumia:
We Choose to Go: A Conversa- titles can be. Thomas Wilfred and the Art of Light
tion with Apollo 8 Author Jef- The experience of reading Terry (Yale University Art Gallery and Yale
frey Kluger Burrows’s The Art of Sound: A Visu- University Press, 2017). The book’s re-
al History for Audiophiles (Thames lease coincided with the opening of
and Hudson, 2017) is akin to strolling an exhibition of Wilfred’s work earlier
through a thoughtfully staged mu- this year at the Yale University Art Gal-
seum exhibit on the history of sound lery, where Orgeman curates American
recording and playback—one that artwork. Lumia is the first book devot-
presents technology matter-of-factly ed to Wilfred’s work in 40 years, and it
while also dipping into pop culture. aims to introduce the artist to new gen-
The book is divided into chapters erations. Enthusiasts familiar with con-
representing four eras of audio evolu- temporary artists such as James Turrell
tion: acoustic, electric, magnetic, and (who contributes the book’s foreword),
digital. Sections of patent drawings Jenny Holzer, and Olafur Eliasson,
punctuate the transitions between whose light-based installations are
chapters, and it’s easy to lose your- well-known and widely exhibited,
From Lumia. self in their details as you take in the may never have heard of Thomas Wil-
change over the decades from the el- fred, who pioneered the art form. (His
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Courtesy of the Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University
Rudolf Zallinger’s 1943 tempura study for his masterwork, Age of Reptiles, prepared him for ing group of volumes is Paleoart: Vi-
the daunting task of painting the 110-foot-long mural at Yale’s Peabody Museum of Natural sions of the Prehistoric Past (Taschen,
History. This detail shows a few of the creatures depicted in the mural, specimens spanning 2017), by Zoe Lescaze, a writer whose
from the Devonian to the Cretaceous periods, based on paleontologists’ understanding at the
background includes art history and
time. From Paleoart.
archaeological illustration. Paging
name for the medium, lumia, never of the work, but also its significance through it is like taking a time- and
caught on.) His experiments with main the context of technology and phys- space-bending, multicentury glob-
nipulating light into art began in 1919, ics at the time. “Broadly speaking, al tour of natural history museums
which meant that it was necessary for Wilfred’s precise light-bending tech- and amusement venues and getting
him to invent many of the technologies nique mimicked that of physicists’ to compare what scientists and art-
that made his work possible. Early in laboratory experiments,” Keely notes, ists from era to era believed prehis-
his career, he focused on producing “which often used angled mirrors toric creatures must have looked like.
vibrant, abstract performance artworks to test the velocity of light when its The experience begins before you’ve
comprised of vividly hued, sinuous path was redirected by reflection. The even opened the book. The cover’s
light forms that would flicker, swell, sophistication that the artist demon- pebbly, reptilian surface may take a
and diminish on a projection screen strated in his technical work shows his few minutes to discover, as its jacket
for audiences who would watch the deep understanding of the behaviors has been designed to stop readers in
complex interplay of colors. The effect of light—how it traveled and how it their tracks. There, front and center, is
somewhat resembled the aurora borea- interacted with other elements in its a grotesquely beautiful painting of an
lis, a look that remained his signature environment.” Essays contributed Inostrancevia shown in profile, its hide
style throughout his career. Wilfred by a historian, a curator-conservator flecked with coppery foil that lends
invented a device, which he dubbed pair, and a media studies scholar, fo- its tawny folds dimension. Crimson
a clavilux, for these performances; it cusing, respectively, on Wilfred’s art viscera dangles from its fangs like a
resembles modern soundboards, and in a postwar context, on the process holiday garland. Its amber eye gives
he’d play it somewhat like an organ- of conserving the works’ mechanical the impression of regarding the view-
ist. Although the performances were structures, and on the artist’s legacy, er with cool contemplation. Painter
silent, he thought of them as orches- make for fascinating reading as well. Alexei Petrovich Bystrow has empha-
tral, and he named his work in the The still images of Wilfred’s works sized the mammal-like appearance of
style of symphonic music, a practice do not disappoint, and photos of the the saber-toothed reptile and his cre-
he continued after moving on to cre- equipment he developed and some of ation seems to exist, powerfully and
ate installations that played automati- his conceptual drawings are helpful unnervingly, in an interstitial world.
cally, many of which were designed to and revealing. Incidentally, the Wilfred Its body plan caught between the rep-
project a flow of spontaneously gener- exhibition shown at Yale has traveled tilian and the mammalian, the Bys-
ated light forms (that is, they didn’t to the Smithsonian American Art Mu- trow’s Inostrancevia appears to inhabit
repeat) and a few that were designed seum, where it will be on display until a time that is at once ours and its own.
to be enjoyed in the home. These later January 8, 2018. Seeing these works In fact, that visual collapsing of time—
works, which began appearing around in all their performative glory could whereby ancient creatures appear to
1930, prefigured the television, yet the well be worth a trip to the capital— have traveled forward in time—is a
devices somewhat resemble cabinet there are some things even the most hallmark of Paleoart. Across its pages,
TVs if they’d been made by modern- beautiful book can’t capture. readers may certainly track the ad-
ists. Lumia makes it clear why Wilfred That doesn’t mean that authors vance of paleontological knowledge,
deserves a spot in the 20th-century and publishers won’t try, though, and but they can also take in the effect of
canon, and Keely does a terrific job sometimes the effect is downright different modes and fashions of paint-
discussing not only the artistic merits dazzling. The juggernaut of this fetch- ing. Some of these modes make for
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The 1967 Telefunken Mag- weight, which is nearly 20 pounds. A

netophone CC Alpha (top) strong bookshelf is a must for these
Top: Interfoto/Alamy Stock Photo, Bottom: EMI Archive Trust
was among a crop of battery- volumes, but the yield will be hours of
operated devices that imple- enlightening enjoyment.
mented new compact cassette
technology to make recorded
Dianne Timblin is book review editor for American
music affordably portable.
Scientist.
More than 40 years earlier, de-
sign innovations had enabled
manufacturers to offer smaller
gramophones. A tin chil-
dren’s model made by Nirona #FZPOE%BUB%SJWFO
around 1925 (below) features
a small bell-shaped horn that
could emit sound at a high
1PMJDJOH
volume despite its compact
Andrew Guthrie Ferguson
size. From The Art of Sound.
Big data is undeniably a big deal. The pro-

cess of computationally analyzing huge
stunning paleoart. Works by mid- volumes of data to uncover patterns and
20th-century English artist Maurice associations has become a mainstay in
Wilson, who had an affinity for Jap- fields as diverse as finance and health care.
anese and Chinese painting tech- In his book The Rise of Big Data Polic-
niques, exhibit rare warmth and ing: Surveillance, Race, and the Future
delicacy. Lescaze points out that of Law Enforcement, Andrew Guthrie
Wilson was known for “eschewing Ferguson, a law professor specializing in
three-dimensional illusionism alto- predictive policing, big data surveillance,
gether,” rendering stylized scenes and the Fourth Amendment, examines
that draw and hold the viewer’s the good, the bad, and the ugly of law en-
eye. His watercolor of an archae- forcement’s increasing reliance on big data
opteryx, depicted in russet and analysis and its driving algorithms. Fer-
golden hues, perched on a branch gatefolds!) and in stature. Many books guson provides in-depth discussion of the
with its wings spread wide, is sim- about prehistoric life cross my desk in often troubling ethics involved, particular-
ply breathtaking. Lescaze proves an a given year, but I’ve never seen any- ly injustices stemming from implicit racial
intrepid guide through the scientific thing like this. bias that all too easily becomes encoded in
and artistic eras, and her lovely writ- The measure of a book is usually the algorithms. (For more on ethics and
ing and good humor make the text a tallied by page count, binding style, or algorithms, see “A Peek at Proprietary
pleasure to read. This is a huge book— physical dimensions. For these three Algorithms” on page 326 of this issue.) In
in size (oh, the stunning pullouts and titles, I offer instead their combined this passage, Ferguson takes a step back
to consider how different municipalities
and their police forces intervene to try to
prevent violent crime and protect potential
victims after these individuals have been
flagged as being at risk.
A
knock on an apartment door.
A man gives the prognosis to
a worried mother. Your son
might die. He is at grave risk. Others
he knows have already succumbed.
An algorithm has identified the most
likely to be stricken. He is one of a few
thousand young men who may die. In
Chicago, Illinois, this scene has played
out hundreds of times at hundreds
of doors. The danger, however, is not
some blood-borne pathogen. This is
not a doctor giving a cancer diagno-
sis but a police detective giving a life
diagnosis. Violence is contagious, and
Photo courtesy of Yale University Art Gallery you are exposed. As a young man in
Thomas Wilfred’s 1959 work Study in Depth, Op. 152 was commissioned by Clairol, which Chicago, due to your friends, associ-
displayed the luminous, continually moving artwork on a cinema-size screen in the lobby of ates, and prior connection to violence,
its headquarters building in New York. From Lumia. you have been predicted to be the
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victim or perpetrator of a shooting. greater the risk of being a victim or and potential sentencing outcomes
Your name is on the “Strategic Sus- perpetrator of gun violence. Who gets for future criminal acts.” These cus-
pects List,” also known as the “heat shot? The algorithm knows. And the tom notification letters symbolize for-
list,” and a detective is at your door heat-list algorithm has been tragically mal messages of deterrence written
with a social worker and a community accurate. On a violent Mother’s Day in black and white. Mess up and you
representative to tell you the future is weekend in 2016, 80 percent of the 51 will be prosecuted to the fullest extent
not only dark but deadly. A vaccine people shot over two days had been of the law. The message is also quite
exists, but it means turning your life correctly identified on Chicago’s heat personal. You—the person named in
around now. list. On Memorial Day 2016, 78 percent the letter—are known by police and
of the 64 people shot were on the list. are being watched.
Data and Its Limitations Using the heat list, police have pri- But the hard reality is that violence
Only a tiny percentage of people com- oritized youth violence to intervene in in Chicago has only increased. In fact,
mit violent crime. Police tend to know the lives of the most at-risk men. 2016 has seen a heartbreaking uptick
the people who commit those crimes, The algorithm remains a police se- in violent shootings, leading to pub-
but the difficulty has always been get- cret, but reportedly the factors include lic criticism of the model. Questions
ting “the criminals” to know that the past criminal history, arrests, parole remain about the program’s effective-
police know they are committing the status, and whether the target has ness and in particular whether enough
crimes. Enter “focused deterrence”—a been identified as part of a gang. As has been done to remedy the social
theory that seeks to understand and described by the Chicago Police De- and economic risks identified. For ex-
dismantle the networks of criminal ac- partment, “The software is generated ample, there exists the open question
tors that drive violent crime. Focused based on empirical data that lists at- of whether the algorithm adequately
deterrence involves a targeted and ex- tributes of a person’s criminal record, distinguishes between targets who
plicit message to a narrow slice of the including the record of violence among are “high risk” (those who might get
population that police, prosecutors, criminal associates, the degree to which shot) and those who are “high threat”
and the community know who is en- his criminal activities are on the rise, (those who might shoot). Intensive
gaged in violence and that the killings and the types of intensity of criminal surveillance and police intervention
must end.
Person-based predictive policing
involves the use of data to identify
and investigate potential suspects or Without targeted social service
victims. Part public health approach
to violence and part social network
interventions, the algorithm just became
approach to risk assessment, big data
can visualize how violence spreads
a targeting mechanism for police.
like a virus among communities. The
same data also can predict the most
likely victims of violence. Police data history.” The algorithm ranks these for those who might be victims may
is shaping who gets targeted and fore- variables to come up with a predictive not be as important as targeting those
casting who gets shot. score of how “hot” individuals might who might engage in violence. But if
While these predictive technologies be in terms of their risk of violence. the heat-list formula counts the risk
are excitingly new, the concerns under- Selection to the heat list can be ac- and threat equally, police resources
lying them remain frustratingly old- companied by a “custom notification may be misdirected.
fashioned. Fears of racial bias, a lack of visit.” As described at the beginning of Stepping back, two important in-
transparency, data error, and the distor- this chapter, it involves a home visit, sights arise from the heat-list experi-
tions of constitutional protections offer usually by a senior police officer, a so- ment. First, the public health approach
serious challenges to the development cial worker, and a member of the com- of mapping social networks of vio-
of workable person-based predictive munity (perhaps a football coach or lence may successfully identify those
strategies. Yet person-based policing pastor). During the visit, police hand who might be involved in violence.
systems are being used now, and peo- deliver a “custom notification letter” Second, studying the data to forecast
ple are being targeted detailing what the police know about who might be engaged in violence
the individual’s criminal past, as well does not automatically end the vio-
The Chicago Way as a warning about the future. As de- lence. Custom notifications, while well
In Chicago, 1,400 young men have scribed in another police department meaning, may not have the intended
been identified through big data tech- document, “The Custom Notification effect if not implemented with a fo-
niques as targets for a roster called the Letter will be used to inform individu- cus on addressing underlying social
heat list. Software generates a rank- als of the arrest, prosecution, and sen- needs. The second step of providing
order list of potential victims and sub- tencing consequences they may face if interventions, resources, and redirec-
jects with the greatest risk of violence. they choose to or continue to engage tion must also accompany the risk
Based on an algorithm designed by in public violence. The letter will be identification. Without targeted (and
Miles Wernick of the Illinois Institute specific to the identified individual funded) social service interventions,
of Technology, the heat list uses 11 and incorporate those factors known the algorithm just became a targeting
variables to create risk scores from 1 about the individual inclusive of prior mechanism for police. Plainly stated,
to 500. The higher the score means the arrests, impact of known associates, mapping the social network of vio-
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of these localized interventions came

from the same data set that mapped
crime, governmental services, and pub-
lic infrastructure.
Building from the data, the city
launched a holistic strategy to address
violence reduction focused on those
who were identified as being most at
risk. Some focused-deterrence poli-
cies were implemented with call-ins,
“stop the shooting meetings,” and
police targeting of suspected offend-
ers. Since 2013, a multiagency gang
unit has indicted 110 targeted gang
members. But a host of other, non-law-
enforcement social-services programs
also were enacted (and funded). These
programs included violence-reduction
measures involving mediators, vio-
lence interrupters, community first re-
Fotan/Alamy Stock Photo sponders, and other individuals who
It doesn’t take an algorithm for New Orleans officers to know that the French Quarter regu- worked to defuse conflict and thus
larly requires a police presence. To predict and prevent violence more generally, the city works prevent retaliatory shootings. City of-
with a technology partner to analyze large volumes of data. Crucially, law enforcement, com- ficials also improved social-services
munity organizations, and social service agencies work together on interventions. programs addressing family violence,
mentoring, fatherhood classes, behav-
lence may be easier than ending the including the location of schools, hos- ioral interventions, and other mental
violence. Data identifies the disease pitals, libraries, parks, police districts, and physical health concerns for those
but offers no cure. liquor stores, and even streetlights. who were at risk. Programs focused
Using crime-mapping software, on redirecting tension in public school
Big Data Meets the Big Easy particular violent hot spots were iden- by addressing trauma and on building
An example of a more successful, ho- tified. Using social network analysis, restorative justice principles into disci-
listic approach to reducing violence particular individuals were identified pline systems. All told, New Orleans
can be found in New Orleans, Loui- as being most likely to be victims of adopted 29 different programs focus-
siana, once the murder capital of the violent crime. As in Chicago, New ing on family, school, job training, re-
United States. In 2013, the Big Easy Orleans analysts could identify par- entry, and community and economic
averaged 1.46 shootings a day, and ticular individuals at risk for violence. development. The goal of all of the
Mayor Mitch Landrieu turned to data Analysts predicted they could iden- changes was to target those individu-
to get a handle on the societal prob- tify between 35 percent and 50 percent als most at risk of committing violence
lems driving violence in the city. Pri- of the likely shooting victims from a and then to provide alternatives, sup-
vate technology company Palantir has subpopulation of 3,900 high-risk indi- port, and an opportunity to change.
partnered with the mayor’s office to viduals. In addition, linkages between From 2011 to 2014, New Orleans
identify the 1 percent of violent crime these individuals in terms of rivalries, saw a 21.9 percent reduction in ho-
drivers in the city. The city’s ambitious retaliations, and relationships could micide, a better statistic than could be
public health approach to violence has explain why these men were in dan- found in similar big cities such as Bal-
relied on these insights, as they illumi- ger. Analysts using Palantir systems timore, St. Louis, Newark, or Detroit.
nated largely hidden relationships in identified 2,916 individuals from the More impressively, the city saw a 55
already-existing city databases. general New Orleans population of percent reduction in group or gang-
Mayor Landrieu’s project—NOLA 378,750 (the 2013 city estimate) most involved murders.
for Life—began with data. Because the likely to be the victim of homicide. New Orleans’s holistic approach
data sources included large-scale city The data insights, however, contin- to predictive policing did much more
systems with continuously generat- ued beyond people. On the basis of the than identify the high-risk people in
ing records, Palantir engineers had Palantir analysis, the Fire Department a community. By using public data to
to carefully integrate existing police increased its presence around partic- address factors that created an envi-
and public-safety data into the system. ular schools, and the Department of ronment for crime, the New Orleans
This data included police calls for ser- Public Works repaired missing street- project looked to widen the lens of
vice, electronic police reports, proba- lights. The Health Department targeted big data technologies. Funding public
tion and parole records, sheriff’s office high-risk schools for violence preven- resources to respond to the underly-
arrest and booking records, gang da- tion, and police mapped gang territory ing economic and social problems ap-
tabases, field information cards, bal- to identify areas of tension. Alcoholic- peared to offer more long-term solu-
listics, and the current case-manage- beverage enforcement targeted liquor- tions. Big data alone cannot stop the
ment system. The analysts also added store violations, and neighborhoods shooting without resources to address
community and infrastructure details, were targeted for street cleanup. All the underlying causes of violence.
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Nov.–Dec. 2017
Volume 26
Number 6
Sigma Xi Today A NEWSLETTER OF SIGMA XI, THE SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH HONOR SOCIETY
Q & A with Fenella From the President

Saunders
Fenella Saunders is the new editor- Who is Responsible?
in-chief of American Scientist and
director of science communications and I would like to reflect on some of the core elements of
publications for Sigma Xi. Sigma Xi’s reason for being and what members bring
to the table. The Society was formed more than a
Are there changes to American Scientist century ago as a means to celebrate accomplishments
that readers can expect under your in research as well as to promote collaboration and
leadership? companionship throughout the various disciplines.
American Scientist remains a premier Sigma Xi is an honor society, meaning that peers and
publication for longform narrative sto- mentors nominate members, who must be approved
ries about all areas of science, as told by for induction by a well-defined process at the local
the researchers themselves. We will con- chapter level or by the Committee on Qualifications President Stuart L.
tinue to work with scientists to bring and Membership. It is expected that members will Cooper
their process of discovery to a wider hold to the highest standards of research ethics and
audience. In recent years the magazine promote the public understanding of science and technology.
staff have worked hard to offer our Many of these values are emphasized at Sigma Xi headquarters. An ex-
readers articles that convey researchers’ ample of this involves our leadership giving voice to concerns of the scientific
unique voices, vividly tell their stories, community in terms of the health and funding of science and technology and
and feature dynamic layouts with great the need for research to underpin governmental policy issues. Our involve-
custom graphics. We’ll continue to cus- ment in the March for Science this past April exemplified these goals. Other
tomize our content to bring readers the important goals, such as promoting public understanding of the importance
best experience possible in print, while of research and encouraging youth toward careers in science and engineer-
also expanding online blogs, features, ing, are driven forward by the joint actions of our headquarters and our local
and multimedia. Watch for more pod- chapters. Finally, after all is said and done by our organizational and local
casts, as well as live interviews and oth- chapter leadership, it is incumbent on individual members to have a role in
er opportunities for readers to interact these endeavors.
with scientists. What does this mean? Sigma Xi members have been elected to a scientific
Where do you hope to focus your ef- research honor society and have assumed nontrivial responsibilities of mem-
forts as director of science communica- bership in our Society. It is more than just a line on one’s resume. Foremost
tions and publications? is a requirement that as long as one’s career has a research component that
the member pursue new discoveries with the same drive and enthusiasm
In addition to American Scientist, Sigma Xi
that brought him or her to membership in Sigma Xi. Members should also
publishes Chronicle of The New Researcher
be active in nomination of the next generation of inductees and, if possible,
(CTNR), a pioneering journal that gives
participate in local chapter activities.
budding researchers in high school the
The future workforce needs to be well populated by individuals with
opportunity to publish professionally re-
science and engineering skills that are applied with diligence and integrity.
viewed research. This cause is close to my
Get involved wherever possible in K–12 activities, whether by visiting class-
heart, because I started my own research
rooms, judging at science fairs, mentoring, or supporting excellence and
career in high school. So I hope to expand
innovation in precollege science teaching. Engaging the public about the im-
CTNR’s reach and impact. Sigma Xi has
portance of research is something in which we can all participate and should
a great history of involvement in science
be willing to do.
ethics and nonpartisan policy, and the So-
Sigma Xi will continue to have a meaningful role as long as individual
ciety has vast potential to contribute more
members are active participants in that for which we stand.
to these areas.
Sigma Xi Today is
edited by Heather Thorstensen Stuart L. Cooper
and designed by Justin Storms.
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EVENTS
Symposium Will Address Climate and Health

Symposium on Atmospheric
Chemistry, Climate, and Health
Featuring a Public Town
Hall about Climate Change
November 10, 2017
Student Research Conference
November 11, 2017
Raleigh Convention Center
Raleigh, North Carolina: www.
_____
sigmaxi.org/fallsymposium-src
______________________
High school, undergraduate, and graduate students will compete for poster presentation
awards at the Student Research Conference after Sigma Xi's symposium. (Image courtesy of
Robb Cohen Photography and Video.)
You are invited to Sigma Xi’s 2017 fall How did science-based policies of the Simulation and Forecast of Infec-
symposium, a gathering of climate re- past lead to solutions for air quality tious Disease: Environmental Deter-
searchers, Sigma Xi members, and the and climate? What are some potential minants and Transmission Dynamics
public on November 11 in Raleigh, paths forward for current problems? How do scientists predict the spread,
North Carolina, to discuss critical growth, and timing of disease
issues facing our planet. Join us for The Ozone Hole: From Discovery to outbreaks?
in-depth presentations and thought- Recovery
provoking discussions about the ef- What science, policies, and actions Student Research Conference
fects of climate change on human were successful in putting the ozone Science and engineering students are
health and the environment. layer and ozone hole on the path to invited to the 17th Annual Student Re-
The registration fee is $75 and in- recovery? search Conference on November 11
cludes lunch. Veterans and active mili- for a poster presentation competition,
tary members receive a 50 percent dis- Air Pollution and Health: Scientific professional development workshops,
count in honor of Veterans Day. and Public Policy Controversies networking, and a chance to connect
The symposium will feature the fol- Does a safe threshold of pollution exist? with the world’s largest research hon-
lowing sessions: or society.
Humanity and Global Warming: Get the group discount! Groups of
The Past Is Prologue: Lessons Learned Views from the Carbon Cycle 25 students or more from the same
for Science-Based Policies to Address How will today’s energy decisions im- institution receive a 10 percent regis-
Air Quality and Climate pact the future? tration discount.
Members Share Solar Eclipse Stories

Game Day…for Science! School and professor of physics and as-
The College of Charleston in Charles- tronomy, College of Charleston
ton, South Carolina, threw an eclipse
party for 1,500 students, faculty, and We Drove 700 Miles
staff members, and the party served My wife and I traveled some 700 miles
as a staging area for NASA TV’s na- from Fort Lee, New Jersey, to Madi-
tional total solar eclipse coverage. The sonville, Tennessee, to see the total
excitement led Alicia Caudill, College solar eclipse. We now want to do the
of Charleston executive vice president same thing again in 2024! —Dickson
of student affairs, to say, “It looks like Despommier, emeritus professor of pub-
game day…for science!” Astronomy lic and environmental health, Columbia
faculty and students took the event University
Brian C. Lee watched the total solar eclipse off campus to 16 locations, including
on August 21 from his driveway in Corvallis, parks and retirement homes. —Jon Read more eclipse stories at www.
____
Oregon. Hakkila, associate dean of the Graduate sigmaxi.org/2017-eclipse.
382 Sigma Xi Today
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SUPPORTING STUDENTS
Hiding Where There Is No Place to Hide

Sigma Xi awarded Bagge, a Society
member who recently received her
PhD in biology from Duke Univer-
sity, funding from its Grants-in-Aid
of Research program to support her
study on seven species of trans-
parent crustaceans called hyperiid
amphipods. She published her re-
search in Current Biology in 2016,
and her work has been featured in
the popular press, such as National
Geographic.
She found these crustaceans carry
an antireflective optical coating that
A hyperiid amphipod (Image courtesy of may be made of living bacteria. The
Laura Bagge.) coating reduces surface reflections, Duke University PhD graduate Laura
Bagge in the submersible Alvin.
Most people never see one of Laura similar to the thin-film coatings that
Bagge’s favorite animals, a crusta- can be applied to eyeglasses to re- Department of Chemical Engineering
cean called Phronima that is nearly duce glare. It helps make the clear and Materials Science at University of
transparent to hide itself from pred- crustaceans even harder for preda- California, Irvine, she will continue
ators in the open sea. Bagge finds tors to find. her research on how ocean animals
them by looking for the one part of Learning how organisms make use camouflage.
their body they can’t camouflage— their bodies transparent is interdis- “I am most inspired and motivated
the four tiny black dots of the ani- ciplinary work, requiring expertise by placing myself in the environment
mals’ eyes. in biology, chemistry, physics, and where these animals live,” she said,
“My colleagues often joke that I nanoengineering. Bagge hopes what “because it helps me understand the
can’t be sure if I’ve actually caught she and others learn can be applied to pressures these animals face, such
one of the clear crustaceans in a jar nanomedicine, the physics of imaging as trying to camouflage themselves
because you can’t see anything in systems, and even military defense. in the open water where there is no-
there,” she said. As a postdoctoral associate in the where to hide.”
New Partnership Will Support STEM Professionals and Students

Research Triangle Park (RTP), North from the N.C. Biotechnology Center,
Carolina, and a US2020 city coali- Sigma Xi, and the Research Triangle
tion site. Its mission is to unlock and Park Chapter of Sigma Xi, the Pizza
share STEM knowledge and experi- Lunches are held in RTP.
ences from local STEM companies Additionally, STEM in the Park will
and higher education institutions become a consultant on Sigma Xi’s
to K–12 students and educators in K–12 programming, which currently
the Triangle region of central North includes a scientific journal for high
Carolina. school research, an opportunity to
“We are looking forward to working network with professional researchers
with STEM in the Park to create new as a Sigma Xi Explorer, an in-person
A new partnership between Sigma Xi outreach opportunities for our mem- research presentation competition,
and STEM in the Park will work to- bers and to help increase diversity in and an online research presentation
ward the goal of ensuring that every STEM,” said Jamie L. Vernon, execu- competition.
science, technology, engineering, and tive director and CEO of Sigma Xi. STEM in the Park will also provide
math (STEM) professional has career STEM in the Park will provide Sigma Xi’s members with new op-
support and that every child is given meeting space and consult on pro- portunities to mentor and reach out in
a fair opportunity to pursue a career gramming for American Scientist’s other ways to 5th- through 12th-grade
in STEM. Pizza Lunches, monthly public pre- students, especially minority groups,
STEM in the Park is a program of sentations about cutting-edge scien- girls, and students from low-income
the Research Triangle Foundation in tific research. Made possible by funds backgrounds.
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MEMBER NEWS
New Quarterly Conversations

Last quarter’s conversation was about the reproducible science issue;
this quarter’s topic is open access
Sigma Xi launched an initiative in July r Start a Best Papers Club wherein Meeting. We encourage all members to
to promote and cultivate quarterly membership requires excellence in gather together to discuss this impor-
conversations about critical issues in scientific writing. tant topic.
research. Executive Director and CEO
Jamie L. Vernon prompted members to r 'JOE XBZT UP BEESFTT UIF QSPCMFN Q2 FY2018 Topic: Open Access
discuss how Sigma Xi can contribute to that too many researchers are chas- The process of making scientific
solving the reproducible science crisis, ing too little funding. results freely available to anyone
in light of recent findings about the irre- could improve the dissemination and
producibility of many published studies r Create a website that documents the use of scientific results, especially
that have hurt the public perception of number of times a given result has for students, who often can’t afford
science. been replicated. Provide attribution subscriptions to research publications,
“Not only should Sigma Xi members to the researchers involved and the and for the public, who through
be calling on all of their qualified stu- details of the replication process. taxes pay for much of the research
dents and colleagues to take the Sigma conducted at universities and
Xi pledge, but also we can take mean- r Educate the public about the chal- government laboratories. Publishers,
ingful steps toward addressing the lenges and processes of scientific however, add infrastructure and
problem of reproducibility,” he wrote in reproducibility, including scientific validity to the publishing process,
his monthly Sigma Xi Speaks message. methods and analysis, so they under- which requires a viable business
Members sent in their thoughts and stand why studies sometimes con- model. Should Sigma Xi promote open
contributed in the online community, tradict one another or may fail to be access, and to what extent? What can
The Lab: Members to Members. The reproduced. Sigma Xi do to help improve access
ideas so far include taking the following to scientific results for the public
steps toward a solution: Though some of these ideas draw and students? How should scientific
from existing initiatives, they represent publishers be compensated for their
r Create a certified reviewers group. Sigma Xi’s first foray into this area. We work in an open access system?
As opposed to reviewing submis- will explore ways to put these recom-
sions for publication, this group mendations into action, possibly as a Contribute to quarterly conversations in
would write critiques of published report that could be shared with the Sigma Xi’s community, The Lab: Members
papers, acting as a watchdog for the research community or as a conversa- to Members, at community.sigmaxi.org or
research enterprise. tion during the 2018 Sigma Xi Annual email executiveoffice@sigmaxi.org.
_________________
Vote in the Sigma Xi 2017 Elections

All active Sigma Xi members are en- bers with questions or concerns should gion, Northeast Region, Southwest
couraged to vote in the Society’s 2017 contact the executive office by email- Region
elections. Voting takes place online ing elections@sigmaxi.org
________________ or calling r 3FQSFTFOUBUJWFTGPSUIF$PNNJUUFF
and opens at 8 a.m. EST on Novem- (800) 243-6534. on Nominations: Area Groups, In-
ber 8. Active members will receive an Open positions in this election are dustries, State, and Federal Labora-
email from elections@vote-now.com
_________________ the following: tories Constituency; Baccalaureate
that day with instructions on how to r 1SFTJEFOUFMFDU Colleges Constituency; Compre-
vote. The polls will close at 11:59 p.m. r 5SFBTVSFS hensive Colleges and Universities
EST on December 7. r %JSFDUPST #BDDBMBVSFBUF $PMMFHFT Constituency; Membership-at-
Active members may vote for pres- Constituency, Canadian/Interna- Large Constituency; Mid-Atlantic
ident-elect, treasurer, and other open tional Constituency, Northwest Re- Region; Northeast Region; North-
positions in the region and constituency gion, Southeast Region west Region
assigned to their chapter. Members-at- r "TTPDJBUF %JSFDUPST #BDDBMBVSFBUF
large will vote for open positions in the Colleges Constituency, Member-
Membership-at-Large Constituency. ship-at-Large Constituency, Re- Information about the candidates is
The Society will announce the results search and Doctoral Universities available on the Sigma Xi website at www.
____
on its website, www.sigmaxi.org. Mem- Constituency, North Central Re- sigmaxi.org/about/2017-society-elections.
_________________________
384 Sigma Xi Today
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Your legacy
will benefit
generations.
Remember Sigma Xi
in your will to help
researchers and
engineers solve the
most pressing issues
of our time.
To learn more, contact Sigma Xi at 1-800-243-6534 or

PlannedGiving@SigmaXi.org.
______________________
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WASHINGTON, DC
JOIN US IN INSPIRING THE NEXT GENERATION OF SCIENTISTS & ENGINEERS
AT THE 5th FESTIVAL: APRIL 5 - 8, 2018

350K ATTENDEES 1,000 STEM ORGS AMAZING STAGE SHOWS SCIENCE CELEBS
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C. Arden Pope III, PhD A. R. Ravishankara, PhD

Air Pollution and Health: The Ozone Hole: From

Jeffrey Shaman, PhD

Followed by the Student Research Conference

322 From the Editors

323 Letters to the Editors

From Sigma Xi 356

FROM THE EDITORS

A decade ago, the robotic spacecraft Cassini had

Persistence and Peril of Misinformation,” Brian G. Southwell, Emily A. Thorson,

322 American Scientist, Volume 105

We invite you to travel

TAIWAN! this dramatic island, with spectacular peaks, deep

www.americanscientist.org 2017 November–December 323

324 American Scientist, Volume 105

A Peek at Proprietary Algorithms Computer programs running ad-

326 American Scientist, Volume 105

Submission Deadline: November 15th 2017

Conference Subrata Saha, PhD Zachary Danziger, PhD

www.americanscientist.org 2017 November–December 327

Living with Fire:

328 American Scientist, Volume 105

Ponderosa Pine ɽS«ÃèÜ California Lilac ɽ Knobcone Pine ɽS«ÃèÜ

First Person: Sally C. Seidel

330 American Scientist, Volume 105

www.americanscientist.org 2017 November–December 331

Seeing the Heart’s Power

332 American Scientist, Volume 105

Robert S. Stephenson et al.

fish’s mix of features means that either ment. Pigments fade

334 American Scientist, Volume 105

Bitcoins Maybe; Blockchains Likely

Peter J. Denning and Ted G. Lewis

Erik Tham / Alamy Stock Photo

www.americanscientist.org 2017 November–December 335

5,000 The value of bitcoins in U.S. dollars over the

4,000 completed, the ledger will show her net

worth decreasing by 1 BTC and Bob’s in-

336 American Scientist, Volume 105

www.americanscientist.org 2017 November–December 337

338 American Scientist, Volume 105

www.americanscientist.org 2017 November–December 339

Problematic Pedestrian Bridges

340 American Scientist, Volume 105

www.americanscientist.org 2017 November–December 341

community when in 2009 he was the

342 American Scientist, Volume 105

ment. An impatient Brooklyn citizenry

www.americanscientist.org 2017 November–December 343

The Forgotten Mystery of Inertia

344 American Scientist, Volume 105

www.americanscientist.org 2017 November–December 345

would displace the gyro’s axis culating the effects of curved

346 American Scientist, Volume 105

www.americanscientist.org 2017 November–December 347

Adapting Your Body Clock to

Alexis Webb and Erik Herzog

348 American Scientist, Volume 105

Edwin Eemsberg/Alamy Stock Photo

www.americanscientist.org 2017 November–December 349

350 American Scientist, Volume 105

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