Photo: Samuel Bloch. Saimaa ringed seals are very sensitive to disturbance, and it is forbidden to deliberately approach them without a permit.
I once wrote here about one of John’s a Ukrainian employees who told me that in Soviet days it was dangerous to read certain books. People read The Master and Margarita, for example, under the library table with a flashlight if no one was around.
I don’t think we are there yet, but I do have a sense that a whole segment of our society will be living an alternate life and trying not to draw attention. That might include people who care about wildlife and global warming, like the Finns in today’s story.
Phoebe Weston writes at the Guardian, “Eight hours shoveling snow in -20C [-4 F] might not sound like the ideal day out, but a committed team of volunteers in Finland are working dawn to dusk building enormous snow drifts for one of the world’s most endangered seals.
“The Saimaa ringed seal was once common around Lake Saimaa in the south-east of the country, but only 495 of them remain.
“The seals make ‘snow caves’ inside snow drifts where they raise their young and protect them from the elements and predators such as red foxes – but as the climate warms, the snow is disappearing. To save these rare seals, 300 volunteers spend days shoveling snow into piles [23 feet long] around the edge of the frozen lake. Last winter they made 200, and the seal population is growing as a result. …
Volunteers meet at first light and work until dusk. [Vincent Biard, a PhD student and volunteer from the University of Eastern Finland] describes the day as ‘kind of fun,’ and adds, ‘you actually have an impact, which is nice. If we don’t do it, then they would just go extinct quite quickly.’ …
“Saimaa seals are less than 1.5 metres long and each one has a unique fur pattern – individual to each animal, like human fingerprints. In the late 1980s their population dwindled to its lowest point, with fewer than 200 left, driven by hunting and deaths caused by fish traps. Accidental deaths in fishing nets remain a challenge.
“Now, the seals are fully protected but the threat of the climate emergency looms large. Between 1925 and 2002, the maximum thickness of the ice decreased by 1.5cm [~i/2 inch] a decade. In mild winters the ice caves can collapse, leaving the pups exposed, with up to 30% of them dying.
“Human-made snow drifts are larger and ‘more durable than natural snow drifts,’ says [Jari Ilmonen, coordinator of Our Saimaa Seal Life, which is an EU-funded program]. …
In the future, ice cover is expected to disappear before the pupping season has ended.
“There have already been some winters where there has not been enough snow to create an artificial drift. In some cases the seals have been known to breed elsewhere, but with no snow ‘just a few would hang on,’ says Ilmonen.
“However, scientists from the University of Eastern Finland are working on plan B. They are creating artificial dens, or nest boxes, that mimic the real thing, with preliminary research showing the seals use them for resting, giving birth and nursing their young. The nest boxes could be used in ice-free winters, researchers say. …
“There are about 40 dens on the lake, where three pups have already been born, but Ilmonen wants to get more out there. ‘If you think that there are maybe 500 seals and maybe 100 pups born each year, you’d need a lot of the boxes,’ he says.
Photo: Mark Viales/Al Jazeera. Luis May Ku, 49, poses with his hands painted in Maya blue outside his home in Dzan, Yucatan, Mexico, on September 9, 2024.
Today’s article is about how the preparation of an ancient paint color was lost to history — and about how a contemporary Mayan’s persistence brought it back.
Mark Viales has the story at Al Jazeera.
“Surrounded by dense jungle and beneath intertwining canopies of towering trees, Luis May Ku, 49, trudges ahead through shoulder-height bushes searching for a rare plant. The oppressive 40-degree Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) heat dulls the senses, and the air, thick with humidity, clings to our skin, causing beads of sweat to form and trickle down.
“After scouring the thickets, May, an Indigenous Maya ceramicist, stumbles upon a shrub similar in shape and texture to others around him, but insists this one is special. He touches the soft, sprawling leaves and tells me it is wild ch’oj (‘indigo plant’ in Mayan, anil in Spanish) – or Indigofera suffruticosa – which is a key ingredient to create the revered Maya blue pigment.
“ ‘It took years before I found it – indigo – and most people from Yucatan believed it to be extinct on the peninsula,’ May says with a pensive look, lifting his sombrero made from interwoven huano palm leaves to wipe his brow with the back of his hand. …
“ ‘The Yucatan Peninsula is going through its worst drought in decades,’ he says. ‘Let’s rest, and I’ll tell you how I recreated Maya blue.’ …
“The bright azure color can still be seen among the ruins at the world-famous archaeological site of Chichen Itza in Yucatan on murals more than 800 years old.
“Only a handful of blue pigments, such as lapis lazuli or Egyptian blue, were created by ancient civilizations. Still, these were predominantly dyes or minerals, while Maya blue required a chemical combination of organic and inorganic substances. Before synthetic versions of blue pigment arrived during the Industrial Revolution, the color was exceedingly rare and often more expensive than gold in Europe. The semiprecious lapis lazuli stone originated in the mountains of Afghanistan and was only accessible to the wealthy. Yet, in the New World, blue pigment was plentiful and thrived.
“When the Spanish arrived in the 15th century, they exploited Maya blue, along with all the treasures they stole from Mesoamerican civilizations. The Spanish controlled the prized colorant until the late 17th to early 18th centuries when synthetic substitutes began to arrive. Common knowledge of Maya blue then disappeared until its rediscovery in the 20th century.
“In 1931, American archaeologist H.E. Merwin first found ‘a new pigment’ on murals within the Temple of The Warriors at Chichen Itza. It was given the name ‘Maya blue’ a few years later (1942) by American archaeologists R.J. Gettens and G.L. Stout. Research paused during World War II, and it was not until the 1950s that powder diffraction analysis revealed the Maya blue pigment had been made by mixing clay, palygorskite (a rare fibrous clay) and indigo. In 1993, Mexican historian and chemist Constantino Reyes-Valerio published a recipe to recreate the color using palygorskite, montmorillonite (a soft clay) and indigo leaves.
“Modern-day scientists value the mysterious paint because its unique resilience to the elements has kept it in near-perfect condition on pre-Columbian murals, artifacts and codices, even a millennium later. …
“It took scientists a long time to understand the formula, and studies are continuing. …
“May was born in Dzan, a village of 6,000 people in the western part of Yucatan about 100 kilometres (62 miles) south of the state capital city, Merida. Most of the peninsula is flat and pocketed with cenotes formed in the aftermath of the cataclysmic meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs. Yet in the municipality of Ticul, which includes Dzan, the land rises somewhat, giving way to the Puuc (‘hills’ in Maya) region, which has been inhabited since around the 7th century BC.
“Several important pre-Columbian Maya cities dot the area, such as the World Heritage Site of Uxmal, an ancient Mayan city with beautiful Puuc-style architecture. The buildings in the ruins have smooth, vertical walls with features such as columns, elaborate friezes, decorated masks and curved snakes, mostly representing the rain god, Chaak, and the feathered serpent deity, Kukulkan, respectively.
“The region remains famous today because of its high-quality pottery and clay sculptures, especially the town of Ticul, nicknamed ‘The Pearl of the South’ [3.1 miles] from Dzan. The area is also a source of palygorskite – found in caves – which some potters use to grind and mix with other clays to make pottery more durable. Here, May cut his teeth in ceramics as a student among some of the most renowned artisans in Mexico and eventually began his journey to recreate Maya blue.
“ ‘I dreamt of working as my ancestors did with clay and natural pigments,’ he says, tapping a finger on his temple. He reminds me that, like most people in his village, his mother tongue is Maya, and emphasizes that he is proud to work like his forefathers in creating Maya blue.
“May was 17 years old when he started sculpting wood while studying Maya Culture at the Autonomous University of Yucatan, taking inspiration from Maya architecture around his region. One of his passions was capturing faces with distinct Maya features. About 20 years later, he followed in the footsteps of ceramicists from Ticul and began sculpting with clay and learned from other ceramicists about adorning pottery with organic pigments such as red and white.
“However, he was also fascinated to learn that they also used synthetic pigments – like blue. On a visit to the Maya ruins in Bonampak, Chiapas, he was captivated by murals painted with a beautiful turquoise colour. May discovered that the sky-blue pigment was held sacred by his ancestors and used during rituals. After questioning his colleagues further, he learned that the knowledge needed to create this color in its traditional form had been lost in Yucatan, leading him towards a path of rediscovery of ancient techniques. …
“On January 9, 2023, May announced on social media that researchers in Italy and Mexico had validated his formula. It was the first time the world had seen Maya blue made with traditional methods in Yucatan for almost two centuries.
“David Buti, a researcher at the Institute of Heritage Science of the National Research Council in Perugia, Italy, and Rodolfo Palomino Merino, a professor of physics and mathematics at the Autonomous University of Puebla, Mexico, sent him PDFs with scientific breakdowns of their analyses. Merino’s work came through first in August 2022, with a 95 percent probability that May’s formula was genuine. In 2023, Buti’s analysis verified that it was 100 percent Maya blue. Both academic institutions confirmed that his samples, which contained palygorskite, calcium carbonate and indigo, caused an ‘intercalation between the indigo molecules’ – a chemical reaction – resulting in an authentic Maya blue.
“ ‘I was ecstatic,’ May says. ‘My ancestors used Maya blue exclusively in ceremonial practices, and even then, it was in limited supply. It was the color of the gods, and only the elite were permitted to use it.’
“ ‘As a child, my father and grandfather taught me that consistent hard work pays off. Never giving up and trying your best, even if you do not succeed, are typical Mayan values.’ “
Photo: Jackie Molloy for KFF Health News. Hilda Jaffe, 102, in her apartment in New York. Jaffe enjoys doing puzzles, reading, volunteering, and attending cultural events.
I have always thought that a city like New York, with many kinds of public transportation and easy walking to whatever you need, is the best kind of place to grow old. The problem for most of us is that we may still need a car to do the simplest things long after we can’t drive.
Here’s a story about a thriving 102-year-old doing her errands without assistance in New York. I’m convinced that part of her good fortune is not having to drive.
Judith Graham writes at the Washington Post, ” ‘The future is here,’ the email announced. Hilda Jaffe, then 88, was letting her children know that she planned to sell the family home in Verona, New Jersey. She’d decided to begin life anew on her own in a one-bedroom apartment in Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan.
“Fourteen years later, Jaffe, now 102, still lives alone — just a few blocks from the frenetic lights and crowds that course through Times Square.
“She’s the rarest of seniors: a centenarian who is as sharp as a tack, who carries grocery bags in each hand when she walks back from her local market, and who takes city buses to see her physicians or attend a matinee at the Metropolitan Opera.
“Jaffe is an extraordinary example of an older adult living by herself and thriving. She cleans her own house, does her own laundry, manages her own finances, and stays in touch with a far-flung network of family and friends via email, WhatsApp and Zoom. Her 78-year-old son lives in San Jose. Her 75-year-old daughter lives in Tel Aviv.
“I’ve spoken with dozens of seniors this past year for a series of columns on older Americans living alone. Many struggle with health issues. Many are isolated and vulnerable. But a noteworthy slice of this growing group of seniors maintains a high degree of well-being. …
“Sofiya Milman is the director of human longevity studies at the Institute for Aging Research at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She studies people known as ‘superagers’ age 95 and older. ‘As a group, they have a very positive outlook on life’ and are notably resilient, like Jaffe, she told me.
“Qualities associated with resilience in older adults include optimism, hopefulness, an ability to adapt to changing circumstances, meaningful relationships, community connections and physical activity, according to a growing body of research on this topic.
“Jaffe has those qualities in spades, along with a ‘can-do’ attitude. ‘I never expected to be 102. I’m as surprised as everybody else that I am here.’ …
“She credits her genetic heritage, luck and her commitment to ‘keep moving,’ in that order. … Asked to describe herself, she quickly responded with ‘pragmatic.’ That means having a clear-eyed view of what she can and can’t do and making adjustments as necessary.
“Living alone suits her, she added, because she likes being independent and doing things her way. ‘If a problem comes up, I work it out,’ Jaffe said. …
“There are only some 101,000 centenarians in the United States, according to the most recent Census Bureau data. Of this small group, 15 percent live independently or conduct their lives independently while living with someone, according to Thomas Perls, the founder and director of the New England Centenarian Study, the largest study of centenarians in the world. …
“About 20 percent of centenarians are, like Jaffe, free of physical or cognitive impairments, Perls said. An additional 15 percent have no age-related illnesses, such as arthritis or heart disease. …
“Every day, Jaffe tries to walk 3,000 steps — outside if the weather is good, or inside, making laps in her hallway, if the weather is bad. Her diet is simple: bread, cheese and decaffeinated coffee for breakfast; a sandwich or eggs for lunch; often chicken and a vegetable or restaurant leftovers for dinner. She never smoked, doesn’t drink alcohol and sleeps an average of eight hours each night.
“Even more important, Jaffe remains engaged with other people. She has subscriptions to the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic and a chamber music series. She participates in online events and regularly sees new exhibits at four of New York’s premier museums, where she has memberships. She’s in regular contact with family members and friends.
“Jaffe also belongs to a book club at her synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and serves on the synagogue’s adult education committee. For more than a decade, she has volunteered several times a week as a docent at the New York Public Library’s main branch on Fifth Avenue. …
“When I asked about the future, Jaffe said she doesn’t worry about what comes next. She just lives day to day.
“That change in perspective is common in later life. ‘Focusing on the present and experiencing the here and now becomes more important to older adults,’ said Laura Carstensen, founding director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, who has studied emotional changes that accompany aging for decades. …
“Jaffe certainly understands the value of facing forward and letting go of the past. Losing her husband, Gerald Jaffe, in 2005 after 63 years of marriage was hard, she admitted, but relinquishing her life and most of her belongings in New Jersey five years later was easy. …
“ ‘It was so exciting for me, being in New York,’ she continued. ‘Every day you could do something — or nothing. … In a house in New Jersey, I would be isolated. Here, I look out the window and I see people.’ ”
Photo: Odelyn Joseph/AP. A woman runs to take cover from gunfire during clashes between police and gangs in Port-au-Prince, a city where a theater company perseveres.
There’s something about theater people and defiance. Something that keeps them from giving in to the ways things are when things are bad. I’ve blogged here about the anti-government theater of Belarus and here about Ukrainians offering theater in the subway, away from Russian bombs.
In today’s post, Tom Phillipsand Etienne Côté-Paluck report at the Guardian about Haiti.
“In a dimly lit rehearsal room in a city under attack, Jenny Cadet raised an imaginary pistol and fired a single make-believe bullet at her director.
“ ‘Life is a theatre. I am a theatre. We are a theatre. The world is a theatre,’ proclaimed the 31-year-old Haitian actor, turning to the audience as she uttered the tragicomedy’s final lines.
“Moments later, real-life shots rang out outside the stage school in Port-au-Prince – the latest act of violence in an increasingly terrifying drama that has forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes here in the past fortnight alone.
“ ‘Every day [there’s shooting],’ sighed the play’s director, Eliezer Guérismé, as his company took a break from their read-through to the all-too familiar sound of gunfire. ‘But even with the shooting, we keep on working because that’s our mission. We don’t want to stop.’
As gangs tighten their grip over a city now almost entirely outside of government control, Guérismé, 39, said he saw drama as a key way of interrogating and denouncing the social and political crisis. …
“Theatre was also ‘an act of rebellion and resistance’ and a way of fostering renewal, given the politically charged violence into which Port-au-Prince has been plunged since the 2021 assassination of Haiti’s president Jovenel Moïse.
“ ‘People need to see the reality that they are living up on stage … theatre is the mirror of society … Everything we hear in this city – the sound of the bullets that are very, very present – we try to put on stage,’ the director said. …
“A US-backed policing mission has so far failed to restore order and in recent days the violence has intensified further with gangsters even attacking Pétion-Ville, one of the last supposedly safe enclaves in the hills over Port-au-Prince. … Foreign diplomats and aid workers are fleeing by helicopter amid calls for a UN peacekeeping mission to be deployed.
“ ‘It feels like the end of Port-au-Prince,’ Guérismé admitted this week. “Every day people are leaving their neighborhoods.’
“The Haitian director recognized that continuing to rehearse his latest production was a perilous business in a city where residents’ movements grow more restricted by the day.
“One of his troupe’s actors commutes to the drama school each day from Carrefour, a gang-run area to the city’s south which is effectively off-limits to outsiders. ‘I know he’s taking a risk to come. He’s taking a huge risk… Living in Port-au-Prince today requires a superhuman effort,’ Guérismé said. …
“But Guérismé was determined to fight on. … ‘It’s my country. It’s my homeland. It’s my city’ … and I have responsibilities,’ the director said as his group prepared for Port-au-Prince’s annual ‘En Lisant’ theatre and performing arts event. ….
“Six of the seven foreign artists invited to the festival – from Guadalupe, French Guiana, France, Belgium and the US – have pulled out. Performances for primary and secondary school children have been dropped from the program. Some rehearsals are being held online.
“Guérismé said the mood was grim, but he believed it was essential Haiti’s acting community did not throw in the towel.
“ ‘The festival will not be postponed. We will go ahead,’ he vowed. ‘This is the time to make a gesture of hope – to affirm that life is here.’ ”
Photo: Melanie Stetson Freeman/CSM. The friendship between Bella, a stray dog, and Tarra, a resident of the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee, exemplifies feelings that are not unusual in the animal kingdom.
If you have ever heard Sy Montgomery on Boston Public Radio or read any of her wonderful books about animals, you will know that there is at least one scientist who believes critters have feelings. (FYI: with the exception of the Bobbitt worm, Sy Montgomery loves them all.)
Other scientists also have noticed that animals have feelings. At the Christian Science Monitor, Stephanie Hanes reports on research showing that many “animals exhibit signs of experiencing emotions and being self-aware.”
“This past April,” she writes, “a group of biologists and philosophers unveiled the New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness at a conference at New York University in Manhattan. The statement declared that there is ‘strong scientific support for attributions of conscious experience to other mammals and to birds.’ It also said that empirical evidence points to ‘at least a realistic possibility of conscious experience’ in all vertebrates and many invertebrates, including crustaceans and insects.
“Researchers have found myriads of indications of perception, emotion, and self-awareness in animals. The bumblebee plays. Cuttlefish remember how they experienced past events. Crows can be trained to report what they see.
“Given these findings, many believe there should be a fundamental shift in the way that humans interact with other species. Rather than people assuming that animals lack consciousness until evidence proves otherwise, researchers say, isn’t it far more ethical to make decisions with the assumption that they are sentient beings with feelings?
“ ‘All of these animals have a realistic chance of being conscious, so we should aspire to treat them compassionately,’ says Jeff Sebo, director of the Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy at New York University. ‘But you can accept that much and then disagree about how to flesh that out and how to translate it into policies.’
“Sasha Prasad-Shreckengast is trying to get into the mind of a chicken. This is not the easiest of feats, even here at Farm Sanctuary in Watkins Glen, a scenic hamlet in the rolling Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. For decades the sanctuary has housed, and observed the behavior of, farm animals – like the laying hens Ms. Prasad-Shreckengast is hoping to tempt into her study.
“Chickens, it turns out, have moods. Some might be eager and willing to waddle into a puzzle box to demonstrate innovative problem-solving abilities. But other chickens might just not feel like it.
“Ms. Prasad-Shreckengast also knows from her research, published this fall in the Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, that some chickens are just more optimistic than others – although pessimistic birds seem to become more upbeat the more they learn tasks.
“ ‘We just really want to know what chickens are capable of and what chickens are motivated by when they are outside of an industrial setting,’ Ms. Prasad-Shreckengast says. ‘They have a lot more agency and autonomy.’ …
“In other words, how do chickens really think? And how do they feel? And, to get big picture about it, what does all of that say about chicken consciousness?
“In some ways, these are questions that are impossible to answer. There is no way for humans, with their own specific ways of perceiving and being in the world, to fully understand the perspective of a chicken – a dinosaur descendant that can see ultraviolet light and has a 300-degree field of vision.
“Yet increasingly, scientists like Ms. Prasad-Shreckengast are trying to find answers. What they are discovering, whether in farm animals, bumblebees, dogs, or octopuses, is a complexity beyond anything acknowledged in the past. …
“Researchers have found myriads of indications of perception, emotion, and self-awareness in animals. The bumblebee plays. Cuttlefish remember how they experienced past events. Crows can be trained to report what they see. …
“Ms. Prasad-Shreckengast’s study takes place in the wide hallway of Farm Sanctuary’s breezy chicken house. Unlike in pretty much any other chicken facility, the birds here come and go as they please from spacious pens.
“Following up on her previous research, she has designed a challenge that she hopes will appeal to most of her moody chickens. It is a ground-level puzzle box, with a push option, a pull option, and a swipe option. Birds are rewarded with a blueberry when they solve a challenge. …
“The idea of consent – which is a basic, foundational principle in the study of human behavior – is also a hallmark of animal studies here at Farm Sanctuary. To the uninitiated, this might sound absurd, with images of chickens signing above the dotted line. But it is not actually all that rare. Studies of dogs, dolphins, and primates all depend on the animals agreeing, in their own way, to participate. …
“Spearheaded by Kristin Andrews, professor of philosophy and the research chair in animal minds at York University in Canada, the idea emerged from conversations she had with two colleagues, Jonathan Birch, a philosopher at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Jeff Sebo, director of the Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy at New York University. …
“ ‘People were dimly aware that new studies were identifying new evidence for consciousness – not only in birds, but also reptiles, amphibians, fishes, and then a lot of invertebrates, too,’ says Dr. Sebo. ‘But there was no central, authoritative place people could look for evidence that the views of mainstream scientists were shifting.’ …
“For instance, trees communicate, and fungal networks send messages throughout a forest. Species such as sea turtles and bats use electromagnetic fields, a force we cannot even perceive, to guide their movements and migrations. Snakes see infrared light, birds and reindeer see ultraviolet light, and dolphins use sound waves to navigate underwater. …
“For generations, the dominant perspective has been that the human perspective is the best view in the house, with the most complex and complete picture of reality.
“But there hasn’t been a species studied over the past 20 years that hasn’t turned out to exhibit pain. There hasn’t been a species that hasn’t turned out to be more internally complicated than people expected, Dr. Andrews says. …
“ ‘That word, “consciousness,” is the problem,’ Dr. Andrews says. ‘The thing that everybody in the field agrees on is that consciousness refers to feeling – ability to feel things. … But then if you start asking people to give a real, concrete definition of consciousness, they’re not able to do it.’ …
“For the purposes of the declaration, researchers said, they focused on what is called ‘phenomenal consciousness.’ This is the idea that ‘There is something that it’s like to be a particular organism,’ explains Christopher Krupenye, professor of psychological and brain sciences at Johns Hopkins University. … Basically means that an animal experiences the world not as a machine, but as a being. Phenomenal consciousness is what you are experiencing right now in your body with the sight of words on a page as you read this article.”
There are numerous species described in the article at the Monitor, here. Don’t miss the playful bees.
Photo: Jacob Posner/Christian Science Monitor. Felipe Polido, co-founder and head of technology at Reframe Systems, explains how the company uses robots and simplified processes in construction.
Innovations of the kind we continue to need in areas such as medicine, housing, and carbon reduction will probably rely more on entrepreneurs and businesses than on government for years to come.
I won’t be the one to begrudge any visionary a reasonable profit. In fact, the only thing that worries me about today’s story is the reduced need for human workers. See what you think.
Jacob Posner writes at the Christian Science Monitor about one company aiming to do so by benefiting others.
“A growing number of startups are trying to reinvent the U.S. homebuilding industry, with big goals of making it both more efficient and more climate-friendly. It is a disruption that many say is past due. The construction industry is not only struggling to meet housing needs but also is one of the country’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases. …
“Massachusetts-based Reframe Systems is among the new companies hoping to change one of the nation’s largest industries. Reframe is developing a ‘next generation’ modular construction method to build high-efficiency housing. Employees follow instructions on iPads to install plumbing and electrical components into robot-made walls, then transport these modules to construction sites, where they are stacked into multifloor units.
“But the challenges are myriad. Despite a huge influx of investor funding, the share of housing stock built through high-tech modular construction remains small. …
“[Recently a crowd] gathered to see a robot build a house. In a concrete-and-steel factory in Andover, Massachusetts, yellow-vested consultants, sustainable builders, and possible investors strain to see past a clear fence. Behind the barrier, a giant blue arm jutting from the floor comes to life.
“Its sensor-covered hand analyzes a pile of wood before emitting a loud hiss, then carefully suctions a two-by-four. Rotating at the shoulder and extending its elbow, the robot methodically delivers the plank to a partially completed wall.
“On the other side of the factory – about the size of a hangar for small planes – a few human workers are on their lunch break. They are employees of a three-year-old company called Reframe Systems, which is one of a growing number of startups across the United States scrambling to reinvent the homebuilding industry. …
“More than 100 startups have entered the industry in the past two decades, according to estimates by Tyler Pullen, a senior technical adviser at the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California Berkeley. He says there are likely more than 200 construction innovation companies currently doing business in the U.S.
“Like many of these, Reframe is focused on a new form of modular construction to upend one of the county’s largest industries. The company aims to create affordable, net-zero houses, which generate the same or more energy than they consume. Reframe CEO Vikas Enti says he can deliver a hefty return to investors – all while making a significant dent in the housing and climate crises. The next step, he says, is to build a factory that can produce 500 apartment units per year using lessons learned from his small, pilot factory in Andover. Then, he hopes to build a network of facilities across the country, varying their sizes to meet the demands and needs of their region. …
“So far, Reframe has completed one two-bedroom house. …
“The current model for modular construction – using assembly-line technologies to build homes – has its origin in the period after World War II. … But federal support for the movement dwindled, and in recent years, modular construction companies have mostly focused on the luxury housing market and sustainability-focused buyers. …
“The need for companies like Reframe is clear, modular boosters say.
“Energy consumed by residential buildings is responsible for around 15% of all U.S. emissions. Fossil fuels warm most of the country’s roughly 145 million apartment units and houses, in addition to keeping their stoves running and heating water. …
“Reframe was founded by roboticists who used to work at Amazon. Following instructions on iPads, its human employees insert plumbing and electrical wiring into the robot-made walls, turn them into ‘modules,’ and bring them to construction sites, where they are stacked into multifloor, highly energy-efficient homes. Because the iPad instructions are akin to a Lego or Ikea manual, Reframe can employ fewer high-cost, high-skill laborers.
“Having most of the needed professionals – electricians, plumbers, architects, engineers – under the same roof solves a problem of communication Mr. Pullen sees as endemic to the traditional construction industry. Every different professional involved must work together, but they are all ‘masters of their own kingdom,’ he says.
“While not all companies offer net-zero buildings like Reframe, Mr. Pullen says building in a factory setting lends itself to tighter structures that hold their temperature better. Plus, factory construction results in less waste. Companies know what they need to order for hundreds of projects at once; in traditional building, ad hoc orders require far more trucks and often leave behind excess material like piping and drywall.”
For Valentine’s Day this year I thought I would post about the love people have for pets. The article I found at Yale University’s human relations website is a little research-y, but it shows just how far back in history humans have felt that kind of love.
“The human love of pets is a powerful and global phenomenon. For many pet owners, their furry (or scaly) domestic companions transcend any simple categorization of non-human animal. Indeed, research shows that it is a growing global trend for pet owners to consider their animals to be full members of their families; to dote upon them as they would children or romantic partners, both emotionally and financially; and to thereby develop strong bonds of dependency, love, and support.
“Gray and Young (2011) conducted a broad cross-cultural study of human–pet dynamics around the world utilizing … a stratified random sample of 60 culturally, linguistically, and geographically diverse societies represented in eHRAF [Human Relations Area Files] World Cultures. Their study revealed that ‘dogs, birds, and cats were the most common pets, followed by horses, other hoofed mammals such as water buffalo, rodents, nonhuman primates, and pigs.’ … Attitudes and sentiments towards the domesticated animals vary, with many societies attaching spiritual meaning to their birds, cats, or dogs. …
“The emotional connection between pets and their owners is worthy of cross-cultural attention. For example, it has been discovered that dogs are able to read emotional cues from the faces of their owners and to respond accordingly. Other recent studies have shown that people tend to have more compassion for animals who are suffering than for adult humans in similar circumstances, treating the hurt dogs akin to helpless infants who need protection. Based on global data, researchers in this telling social experiment concluded that, by and large, subjects ‘did not view their dogs as animals, but rather as “fur babies” or family members alongside human children.’
“As to the origins of human-pet relationships, anthropologists suggest that our propensity for keeping pets, as well as our finely honed empathy for their emotional state, stems from the process of animal domestication in early human history, beginning with dogs and continuing to horses, sheep, goats, and others:
” ‘In each case, humans had to learn to put themselves in the minds of these creatures in order to get them to do our bidding. In this way our senses of empathy and understanding, both with animals and with members of own species, were enhanced. Our special relationship with animals is revealed today through our desire to have pets (McKie 2011).’ …
“Evidence of ancient burials from eHRAF Archaeology supports recognition of a longstanding bond between humans and animals far back into prehistory. For example, in ancient Egypt (5000-2000 BCE), Rice finds that, ‘amongst the graves at Helwan are examples of the burials of dogs and donkeys; as these do not seem to be the subject of cult or religious observance, it may be that they were family pets, since the Egyptians always kept animals about them, as members of their households’ (1990: 131). Similarly, on the other side of the world, the purposeful interment of animals in prehistoric settlements is known throughout the American Southwest and northern Mexico. According to Woosley and McIntyre, at the Wind Mountain site in New Mexico dating back to 2000-600 BP, the animals buried included dogs, bears, turkey, golden eagles, hawks, mourning doves, and scarlet macaws (1996: 281).
“Edmund Leach’s seminal work, Animal Categories and Verbal Abuse (1964), presents the human relationship to animals in terms of social distance. Attitudes towards different animals reflect our familiarity with them, so that the most familiar or ‘closest’ to ourselves are subject to ritual provisions or prohibitions because they are considered ‘taboo.’ They are also most worthy of human-like care and devotion. This is why people generally avoid eating the animals that they might also keep in their homes as pets. …
“The dynamic of intimacy in the human relationship to animals recurs in the ethnographic literature. The closeness of human-animal relationships is evident around the world with instances of beloved species being cared for as fondly and tenderly as human babies.”
Check out more at Yale’s Human Relations Area Files, here. No paywall.
I read a lot of murder mysteries. They are not the only type of book I like, but I like the puzzles and sometimes even the writing. So I was drawn to today’s article on the emergence of an unlikely crew that has gotten involved in solving tough cases.
“On the evening of October 16, 1984, the body of four-year-old Grégory Villemin was pulled out of the Vologne river in Eastern France. The little boy had disappeared from the front garden of his home in Lépanges-sur-Vologne earlier that afternoon. His mother had searched desperately all over the small village, but nobody had seen him.
“It quickly became clear that his death wasn’t a tragic accident. The boy’s hands and feet had been tied with string, and the family had received several threatening letters and voicemails before he disappeared. The following day, another letter was sent to the boy’s father, Jean-Marie Villemin. ‘I hope you will die of grief, boss,’ it read in messy, joined-up handwriting. ‘Your money will not bring your son back. This is my revenge, you bastard.’
“It was the beginning of what would become France’s best-known unsolved murder case. The case has been reopened several times, and multiple suspects have been arrested. Grégory’s mother, Christine, was charged with the crime and briefly jailed but later acquitted. Jean-Marie also served prison time after he shot dead his cousin Bernard Laroche, who had emerged as a prime suspect. …
“More than three decades after Grégory’s murder, police brought in a team of Swiss linguists from a company called OrphAnalytics to examine the letters and their use of vocabulary, spelling and sentence structure. Their report, submitted in 2020, and part of which was leaked to the press, pointed to Grégory’s great-aunt, Jacqueline Jacob. The results echoed earlier handwriting and linguistic analysis that had led to Jacob and her husband’s arrest in 2017. (The couple was freed later that yearover procedural issues.)
“While the new evidence has not yet been presented in court, some believe it could help to solve the case that has haunted an entire generation. It has also shone a spotlight on the little-known field of forensic linguistics. In France, the use of stylometry — the study of variations in literary styles — has largely been confined to academic circles. The Grégory case is the first time it has been applied in a major criminal investigation.
“The use of forensic linguistics in the case was initially treated with skepticism. … The general prosecutor at the Court of Appeal of Dijon, Philippe Astruc … cautioned: ‘To imagine that it will suddenly be settled with a single report is an illusion.’
“ ‘The press didn’t understand it, and the lawyers are saying it can’t work,’ Claude-Alain Roten, CEO of Orphanalytics, told me over the phone from his office in Vevey, a Swiss town on Lac Léman. But he assured me his results are reliable. ‘We came to similar conclusions to the conclusions they had already reached by other means,’ he said, adding that OrphAnalytics last year completed another report commissioned by the general prosecutor of Dijon, who oversees the Villemin investigation, analyzing an additional anonymous letter. ‘It gives us a very precise idea of who the person who wrote the letter is.’
“According to forensic linguists, we all use language in a uniquely identifiable way that can be as incriminating as a fingerprint. … The term ‘forensic linguistics’ was likely coined in the 1960s by Jan Svartvik, a Swedish linguist who re-examined the controversial case of Timothy John Evans, a Welshman who was wrongfully accused of murdering his wife and daughter and was convicted and hanged in 1950. Svartvik found that it was unlikely that Evans, who was illiterate, had written the most damning parts of his confession, which had been transcribed by police and likely tampered with. The real murderer was the Evans’ downstairs neighbor, who turned out to be a serial killer.
“Today, the field is perhaps still best known for its role in solving the ‘Unabomber’ case in the United States. Between 1978 and 1995, a mysterious figure sent letter bombs to academics, businessmen and random civilians, killing three people and injuring at least 24. The lone bomber was careful not to leave any fingerprints or DNA traces, evading the authorities for 17 years and triggering one of the longest and most expensive criminal investigations in U.S. history. But in 1995, he made a crucial mistake. He told the police he would pause his attacks on the condition that a newspaper publish his 35,000-word anti-technology manifesto.
“When the document appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times and Penthouse magazine, several people — including the perpetrator’s brother— reached out to say they recognized the writing style. Meanwhile, FBI linguist James Fitzgerald and sociolinguist Roger Shuy, who had been studying the bomber’s letters, had identified patterns in his language that helped narrow the list of suspects: Spellings such as ‘wilfully for ‘willfully’ and ‘clew’ for ‘clue’ pointed to someone from the Chicago area, for example. Eventually, the linguistic evidence was strong enough to issue a search warrant for the home of a reclusive mathematician named Theodore Kaczynski, raised in Chicago but living in rural Montana, where investigators found copies of the manifesto and homemade bombs. …
“At OrphAnalytics, Roten, who has a PhD in microbiology, explains that algorithms identify patterns in syntax much like in a DNA sequence. The difference, he tells me, is ‘there are very few errors in genome sequences, which is not the case when we compare texts,’ he said. Unlike with DNA, which a perpetrator can’t control, the author of a poison-pen letter is likely to try to obscure his writing style, for example by trying to sound less educated or to seem foreign.
“Still,linguists argue that style is almost impossible to hide because many of the choices we make are unconscious. Someone may decide to spell a word wrong, but forget to modify less noticeable details, such as their use of punctuation. ‘People say a lot about themselves when they’re trying to hide their writing,’ said Roten.”
Photo: Jules Struck. Jim Borrowman was part of a successful lobby to create an ecological reserve in western Canada’s Johnstone Strait in the 1980s.
Today’s story is about a few people whose determination helped to reverse the decline of a group of Orca whales — people who just don’t give up.
At the Christian Science Monitor, Jules Struck wrote recently about their work.
“Jim Borrowman cut the engine of the Nisku in the gray water of the Johnstone Strait, relinquishing his boat to an eastbound tide. He unraveled the line of a hydrophone – a cylindrical, underwater microphone – and dropped it portside.
“On the other end of the cord a pint-size Honeytone speaker in the cabin broadcast a conversation from the deep: the ethereal, two-toned call of an orca whale to her clan.
“ ‘I think they’re what we call “A1s,” ‘ said Mr. Borrowman, browsing a database of local orcas on his phone.
“Mr. Borrowman has been watching, and watching over, these whales for decades. He was one in a band of Vancouver Islanders who successfully lobbied in the early 1980s to set aside a protected area for Northern resident orcas, which lost a third of their population to hunting and capture in the 1950s and ’60s.
“This early act of ocean preservation laid a foundation from which decades of important research – and a deep local allegiance to the whales – have flourished. Galvanized by this data, environmentalists and First Nations just won a battle to evict commercial open-net fish farms from the area, which compete with the orcas’ food supply.
“With early signs of abundant salmon, and a small but decades-long uptick in Northern resident population numbers, it feels to some like nature rallying.
“ ‘You can see the whales coming back,’ says Alexandra Morton, an author and marine biologist who has studied salmon in the Johnstone Strait since the 1980s. She was part of a group that occupied a Vancouver Island fish farm in 2017 in protest of the industry.
“The A1s spotted by Mr. Borrowman from the bow of the Nisku are one pod of one type of orca, called Northern resident killer whales, which number some 400 and live along the coast of British Columbia.
“They’re doing particularly well, and have been growing by a handful of members each year since the ’70s. Northern residents are the most reliable visitors to the Robson Bight (Michael Bigg) Ecological Reserve, where Mr. Borrowman has served as a warden and run a whale-watching tour business with his wife, Mary, for decades until recently retiring.
“ ‘This is a beautiful, sensitive estuary at the terminus of a 100,000-acre watershed, the last untouched one on the east coast of Vancouver Island at the time,’ he says.
“It’s unique for another reason. At two known beaches at the mouth of the Tsitika River, Northern resident orcas rub gracefully along the seafloor pebbles in what scientists have dubbed a unique ‘cultural behavior.’
“It was this behavior, first captured in underwater footage by Robin Morton, Alexandra Morton’s late husband, that convinced the public, the press, and finally the federal government to set aside about 3,000 acres of water plus shore buffer as a protected area closed to boat traffic.
“Today, volunteer wardens with the Cetus Research & Conservation Society Straitwatch program monitor the reserve and gather population data on the whales and their pods. …
“Today, the whales’ major issues are food scarcity, noise, and chemicals in the water. But if the threats to orcas have become more complex, the responses have grown increasingly well-informed by a bedrock of research, much of which has come out of the ecological reserve and its orbit. …
“Decades of research have since shown that major pathogens and lice leak from [salmon] farms’ huge, suspended net pens straight into the paths of migrating salmon, ravaging their thin-skinned young and immobilizing the adults.
“Pacific salmon are also an important food source and cultural pillar for First Nations. They are intricately linked to the ecosystem, and scientists have even tracked nutrients from decomposed salmon high into the mountains.
“Ms. Morton campaigned for decades to close the fish farms. Nothing changed until she and Hereditary Chief Ernest Alexander Alfred, with a group of other First Nations people, peacefully occupied a Vancouver Island salmon farm owned by Marine Harvest.
“That protest led to a 2018 agreement with the British Columbia government requiring the consent of three First Nations – ‘Namgis, Kwikwasut’inuxw Haxwa’mis, and Mamalilikulla – for fish farms to operate around Vancouver Island.
“First Nations closed more than a dozen salmon farms in and near the strait. Then, the federal government announced it would ban all open-net farms in British Columbia by 2029.
“The decision is not universally supported by First Nations along the coast: 17 have agreements with salmon farming companies, which collectively employ around 270 Indigenous people, according to the Coalition of First Nations for Finfish Stewardship. Overall, open-net salmon farming accounts for 4,690 jobs and $447 million in gross domestic product across Canada, according to the BC Salmon Farmers Association.
“But for many, it was a turning point. Coho and especially Chinook salmon stocks spiked this year in Vancouver Island and its inlets, according to the Pacific Salmon Foundation, after years of downturn.”
Photo: Charles Krupa/AP. Workers harvest cranberries at the Rocky Meadow bog in Middleborough, Massachusetts, ahead of Thanksgiving.
Recently, I read about a federal program paying “farmers to convert the land of bogs that is not efficient for growing” into wetlands that can alleviate climate change consequences. Whether or not the federal program will continue, Massachusetts is on the case, helping its own farmers with restoration.
Gloria Oladipo wrote at the Guardian last November, “As millions of cranberries were being harvested for Thursday’s US Thanksgiving holiday, Massachusetts farmers were working to convert defunct cranberry bogs back to wild wetlands, amid climate crisis woes. Several restoration projects were awarded $6m in grants to carry out such initiatives, state officials announced this week.
“The grants, provided by the New England state’s department of fish and game division of ecological restoration (DER), will ‘increase resilience to climate change for people and nature, restore crucial wildlife habitat, and improve water quality’ in 12 communities, said the Massachusetts governor, Maura Healey, in a statement. …
“ ‘These initiatives will enhance our ability to store and sequester carbon with nature and help us meet our net zero goals,’ said Rebecca Tepper, secretary of the state’s office of energy and environmental affairs. …
“The grants are being awarded through two state programs: the DER’s wetland restoration program and the DER’s cranberry bog restoration program, which converts defunct cranberry bogs into wetlands and streams.
“To date, scientists and government officials have converted 400 acres of retired cranberry bogs into wetlands, the Washington Postreported. State officials have said they hope to restore an additional 1,000 acres of bogs within the next decade. …
“As sea levels rise in Massachusetts because of the climate crisis caused by humans burning fossil fuels, scientists are looking to develop bogs into wetlands to improve coastal resilience and slow down erosion.
“Wetlands can hold more water and filter out pollutants amid increased storms that bring potential flooding. They also have other environmental benefits, acting as wildlife habitats and storing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in their soil.
“More farmers have been drawn to the prospect of transitioning their former cranberry bogs into wetlands. The climate crisis and economic factors, including the high cost of modernizing bogs, can make cranberry farming more difficult. …
“ ‘We are in an upward trend in terms of interest in retiring cranberry bogs,’ said Brian Wick, executive director of the Cape Cod Cranberry Growers Association, to the Post. … But getting land for restoration remains a competitive process, as other businesses – such as housing developers – vie for undeveloped coastal land.
“ ‘This opportunity won’t be here in 25 years,’ said Christopher Neill, a senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center and an expert in restored bogs, to the Post. ‘These growers are not going to hang on, they’re going to make decisions and the land won’t be available forever.’
“While conservation projects have steadily increased in southeastern Massachusetts, restoration initiatives are still relatively new. The majority of finished projects are only a few years old, with 14 restoration initiatives still being designed and implemented, the Post reported.”
In addition to benefits like carbon storage and habitat for wildlife, converted cranberry bogs can be lovely for walkers.
More at the Guardian, here. Nice photos. No firewall.
Photo: Lee Hedgepeth, Inside Climate News via Living on Earth. These highway drainage pipes send water directly toward homes in Shiloh, Alabama — homes that Black landowners have maintained since the Reconstruction era.Other neighborhoods benefit from drainage that runs parallel to roadways.
“Climate injustice” is not a term favored by the billionaire class, but removing out-of-favor words doesn’t make the realities they represent go away. Whether injustices occur on purpose or by accident, they happen. But around the world, ordinary people do what they can to fight back.
Paloma Beltran, associate producer of environmental radio show Living on Earth, has written that recent government decisions “will have a ripple effect across communities that have been pushing back against the impacts of industrial pollution for years. On this week’s show, we spoke with Patrice Simms, the Vice President of Litigation for Healthy Communities at Earthjustice, about the federal government’s role in protecting people from environmental discrimination. … Here’s some of what he said:
“ ‘Really significantly for me, what continues to motivate me is my tremendous respect and appreciation for the people on the front lines of pollution and exposures. I work really closely with communities across the country who are in very real ways, fighting for their lives, fighting for their families, fighting for their well-being, and fighting for their communities. And these aren’t people who are getting paid to do this. These are people who are doing this because they have to. They’re doing this because they’re watching their children get sick. They’re doing this because they’re watching their communities die. And there’s nothing more motivating than understanding and knowing the members of these communities. … It’s an honor and a privilege to get to work with them and beside them and for them, and that keeps me going every day.’
“So it feels like an opportune time to highlight a few environmental justice leaders who have shared their stories with us:
“Sharon Lavigne is a former school teacher who has become a fierce environmental defender out of love for her community. She’s from Cancer Alley, an eighty-five-mile stretch of the Mississippi River, from Baton Rouge to New Orleans. Slave plantations once lined this part of the river, and many descendants of former slaves still reside in that area. In the 1960s, petrochemical plants began flooding the area, in part due to the river allowing trade, transportation and the disposal of waste in an unseen and cheap way. Most of these plants are in close proximity to predominantly Black communities, exposing them to toxic emissions. According to a 2023 study published in Environmental Challenges, toxic emissions in Louisiana are 7 to 21 times higher in communities of color compared to white communities, and chemical manufacturing is the largest contributor to this disparity. Sharon Lavigne … co-founded Rise St. James, a faith-based grassroots organization fighting against the proliferation of chemical industries in St. James Parish, Louisiana. In 2021, Sharon won the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize for her activism. For more, take a listen to our conversation. ….
“Nalleli Cobo grew up within 30 feet of an oil well — one of more than 5,000 oil and gas wells across Los Angeles, California, 700 of which are currently active. Like much of her community, Nalleli suffered from chronic headaches, nosebleeds, stomach pain, and asthma, and at the age of 19, she was diagnosed with cancer. Following treatment, Nalleli is now cancer free, but unable to have children. In March 2020, she joined a coalition of environmental justice organizations and successfully sued the city of Los Angeles for environmental racism and violation of CEQA, which is the California Environmental Quality Act. AllenCo Energy was forced to close down its well located near Nalleli’s home. … Tune into my interview with her here.
“Andrea Viduarre is another environmental justice advocate who organized her community and convinced the California Air Resources Board to adopt transportation regulations that limit trucking and rail emissions. (However, the state withdrew these rules [after the 2024 presidential election.] Southern California’s Inland Empire serves as a the hub for logistical infrastructure and is home to a predominantly Latino population. A staggering 40% of all US goods move through the area, a lot of which is transported through diesel trucks which emit toxic pollutants linked to cancer, asthma and premature death. Andrea Viduarre’s work has made huge strides in getting pollution out of her community. … You can learn more about in our discussion here.
“Robert Bullard is known to many as the father of environmental justice. He ran the first study on eco racism in 1979, and found that toxic facilities in Texas were disproportionately located in Black communities. His research was used in the Bean v. Southwestern Waste Management Corporation lawsuit, the first case to use civil rights law to challenge environmental racism. He’s the founding director of the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice, as well as Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning and Environmental Policy at Texas Southern University. He’s been advocating on behalf of the predominantly Black community of Shiloh, Alabama, whose homes have been repeatedly flooded since a nearby highway was widened in 2018. Dr. Bullard joined us back in 2024 to talk about this case.”
It has always lifted my spirits to see everyday people doing what they can where they are. Public radio’s environmental show Living on Earth will lift your spirits.
Photo: Kelly Sikkema via Unsplash. It’s amazing how many cultures use lemon and ginger tea to treat colds.
I have volunteered as an English as a Second Language (ESL) assistant for about eight years. Recently Teacher Allissa’s assignment for her students was to write about the home remedies their families use. These are adult students from countries as diverse as Turkey, the Dominican Republic, Afghanistan, Peru, China, Haiti, Cambodia, Guatemala …
Note the cold remedy mentioned most.
“When my children have a fever, I put them in the bathtub with warm water, salt and vinegar. It’s so good to lower the fever.”
“When someone is sick, I boil chamomile tea for them. I also make lentil soup or chicken soup.”
“In my country, when a person is sick, l give them some tea, some vegetable oil, soup and cinnamon tea.”
“I treated the children’s colds with tea with raspberry and lemon, and also tea with ginger, honey and lemon. For colds and viruses, the best noodle soup in chicken broth is served with a garlic yogurt mixture. Tasty and healthy for cough. In my country, Azerbaijan, many herbs grow in the mountains for various diseases.”
“Lemon tea is good for cough.”
“In China, we always think ginger tea can help people keep away colds.”
“Lemon tea is helpful to keep your immune system strong. Lemon contains vitamin C. Make sure to wear a hat, gloves, and a scarf if you’re going outside to stay comfortable.”
“I remember when I was in Haiti and had a sore throat, my mother used to boil ginger and lemon tea. Then when it was ready, she put honey in it. Then she gave me the tea to drink, and after a while I felt better.”
“Lemon is good for the people who are sick. For example, if they have a sore throat or are losing their voice. I make a lemon syrup with hot water and salt and keep it for one year. If you keep it more then a year, it’s no good. When you are sick, boil it with the water and drink it. The next day you will feel better.”
“When I have a cold, I prefer to drink lemon tea with honey. It is very useful for sore throat and runny nose. I also take anise tea for any stomach disorders.”
“I remember when I was a little girl and my mother would put limes with salt on my wrists and feet to help lower down my body temperature when I was sick. I’m really grateful that she taught me this because I now use this method to help cure my kids when they’re sick.”
“Lemon tea is very good for your body, especially when you have a fever and sore throat. When I have a fever, I drink it and it helps me. I advise you always to drink lemon tea.”
“Mint is a relaxing plant. When I have a stomach ache, I make mint with lemon tea. Oregano is the best herb with a roast chicken. Lavender is a miracle plant for me. It’s for detoxing, good sleep and headaches.”
“We treat colds with hot tea with ginger, lemon and honey. Prepare hot chicken broth soup with noodles and add garlic.”
“In Peru when we are sick with cough and fever, we drink hot water, a fresh eucalyptus leaf and also chamomile and a small piece of ginger, and we sweeten it with honey. We also rub our chest and back with Vicks VapoRub, and at night before sleeping, we place a slice of onion under the soles of our feet and put on our socks. The next day we take out the slice of onion, and the onion is all black and it is thrown in the trash, because it has already absorbed part of the cold. The onion strengthens our immune system. You can also place half an onion on top of the nightstand. The smell of the onion absorbs the flu viruses that are in our bedroom; it also serves to relieve asthma and helps the respiratory tract.”
I shared the onion idea with my 12-year-old granddaughter when she had flu last week. She didn’t try it.
Photo: Zihui Zhou/University of California, Berkeley. A carbon-capturing powder, pictured on Berkeley’s campus.
Somehow or other scientific research about global warming will continue. Today’s example comes from Berkeley in California.
At the Guardian, Katharine Gammon reports, “An innocuous yellow powder, created in a lab, could be a new way to combat the climate crisis by absorbing carbon from the air.
“Just half a pound of the stuff may remove as much carbon dioxide as a tree can, according to early tests. Once the carbon is absorbed by the powder, it can be released into safe storage or be used in industrial processes, like carbonizing drinks.
“ ‘This really addresses a major problem in the tech field, and it gives an opportunity now for us to scale it up and start using it,’ says Omar Yaghi, a chemist at the University of California, Berkeley. It’s not the first material to absorb carbon, but ‘it’s a quantum leap ahead [of other compounds] in terms of the durability of the material.’
“The powder is known as a covalent organic framework, with strong chemical bonds that pull gases out of the air. The material is both durable and porous, and can be used hundreds of times, making it superior to other materials used for carbon capture.
“Yaghi has been working on similar materials for decades. It’s part of a broader push to collect tiny amounts of carbon from the air – either from power plants or from air around cities. Yaghi’s research with Zihui Zhou, a graduate student in his lab, and others was published in the journal Nature. …
“Yaghi’s team tested the new powder and found that it could successfully absorb and release carbon more than 100 times. It fills up with carbon in about two hours, and then must be heated to release the gas before starting the process over again. It only requires a temperature of about 120F to release the carbon; that makes it an improvement over other methods, which require a much higher temperature.
“That feature means places that already produce extra heat – such as factories or power plants – could use it to release the gas and start the cycle again. The material could be incorporated into existing carbon capture systems or future technology.
“Yaghi … plans to scale the use of this type of carbon capture with his Irvine, California-based company, Atoco, and believes the powder can be manufactured in multi-ton quantities in less than a year.
“Shengqian Ma, a chemist at the University of North Texas who was not involved in the new work, says this technology could be gamechanging. ‘One longstanding challenge for direct air capture lies in the high regeneration temperatures,’ he says, adding that the new material can substantially reduce the energy needed to use direct air capture. …
“Says Farzan Kazemifar, a associate professor in the department of mechanical engineering at San Jose State University who was not involved in the new study, ‘In the short term, replacing large emitters of carbon dioxide – like coal power plants – with renewable electricity offers the fastest reduction in emissions. However, in the long term, in case the emissions don’t go down at the desired pace, or if global warming effects intensify, we may need to rely on technologies that can remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and direct air capture is one of those technologies.’
“Still, removing carbon from the air remains difficult, and as with all early-stage lab-scale studies, the challenge is scaling up the system for pilot studies. … Any technology to capture the gas from the air requires moving huge volumes of air – and that requires large electricity consumption for running fans, says Kazemifar. …
“Some scientists worry that the expectations of direct air capture systems has been overly rosy. A group of scientists from MIT recently wrote a paper analyzing the assumptions of many climate stabilization plans, and pointing to ways that direct air capture may be overly optimistic.
“Ma also points out that a major challenge to using this approach to combat climate change lies in the high cost of materials for creating substances that capture carbon.
“Still, Yaghi says this material can change the way we address carbon removal. ‘This is something we’ve been working on for 15 years, that basically addresses some of the lingering problems,’ he says.”
Photo: Riley Robinson/CSM. Above, Lucy Lujana, a carpenter with United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners Local 54 in Chicago. As of 2023, only 3.1% of carpenters were women. Sometimes they call themselves the “Sisters of the Brotherhood.”
In the US, some women have moved into jobs traditionally held by men, but progress seems slow to me. In countries including India, Australia, Finland, England, and Israel, women have served at the very top, same as being president in the US. America’s oddly progressive and backward character is something to ponder.
Today we consider women in unions.
Richard Mertens writes at the Christian Science Monitor, “Last year, Lisa Lujano, a longtime member of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners Local 54, found herself in very unfamiliar company. She had been tasked to build stairs in one section of the Obama Presidential Center on Chicago’s South Side. When she showed up for work, she discovered she would be part of a crew of five, all women.
“ ‘I don’t know how it came about,’ Ms. Lujano says. … Most of the time, when she shows up for work, she’s the only woman on the crew. And she and her fellow tradeswomen know as well as anyone an inescapable truth: The American construction site is still a man’s world. Until that moment, at least, when suddenly it wasn’t.
“ ‘It was a good experience,’ Ms. Lujano says, looking back on the 11 months working alongside other women carpenters. ‘We were able to relate, be more comfortable with each other. Then she adds, almost exultingly, ‘We’re sisters in the brotherhood!’ …
“Ms. Lujano has been a member of her union for almost 25 years. The journeyman carpenter loves her work, the daily routine. But she still puts up with unpleasant conversations. At lunch she’ll sometimes sit by herself, or take a nap in her car. …
“On a recent Friday, she was … on a team of about 60 workers rebuilding a train station at the edge of the University of Illinois Chicago campus. She’s one of only five women at the site today, the only one on her crew of 10. …
“Over the past decade, the number of women in the construction sector of the U.S. economy has risen steadily, from about 800,000 in 2012 to about 1.3 million in 2023, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“Only 11% of jobs in construction industries are held by women, and the majority of these jobs are in office work, sales, or other support services. A growing number are even becoming managers. But on construction sites themselves, the vast majority of construction workers remain men. …
“ ‘The whole process of diversifying the construction trades has been an incredible slog,’ says Jayne Vellinga, executive director of Chicago Women in Trades, an organization that has worked for decades to help women find jobs in the skilled trades.
“[Yet] there’s been a surge in demand for construction workers. … About 94% of construction firms report being unable to hire the skilled workers they need, according to the Associated General Contractors, a trade group in Arlington, Virginia. Experts estimate this shortage numbers more than a half-million workers.
“Given these shortages, the contractors trade group also found last year that 77% of construction companies report that ‘diversifying the current workforce at our firm is critical to strengthening our future business.’
“This doesn’t mean companies will be hiring more women. There remains a significant cultural obstacle to bringing more women into and training them for the skilled trades: Construction is still widely believed to be the domain of men. …
“Like many women, Ms. Lujano followed an unconventional path into the trades. She had no family connections, no uncle or father to bring her into the business, as young men often had. She had dropped out of high school to care for a son who was just a year old. ‘I couldn’t support him,’ she says. …
“In 1998, she saw a flyer from Job Corps, a federal program that offers young people preapprenticeship training and a chance to finish high school. The flyer listed different jobs: plumber, electrician, carpenter, secretary, and more.
“She enrolled in a program in Golconda, a small Illinois town on the banks of the Ohio River. There, over 13 months, she earned a GED certificate and received hands-on training in how to build things. She and other students built ladders, bunk beds, and even frame houses. ‘It was just so cool,’ she says. ‘I ended up loving it.’
“But it wasn’t easy. In her first job she spent four months demolishing and rebuilding porches for a nonunion contractor. Then she got her first union job, working on a bridge in Skokie, just north of Chicago. She was the only woman in a crew of young men in their early 20s. The men would make vulgar comments to her, or about her, even in her presence. …
“Ms. Lujano is no longer a rookie apprentice, but a journeyman carpenter making the full journeyman’s wage: $55 an hour, plus health benefits and a pension. She’s also a union steward, responsible for making sure the workers are properly credentialed and helping them deal with complaints or problems on the job. …
“Looking out over the worksite at the train station in Chicago’s Near North Side, Ms. Lujano sees both good and bad, both progress and the limitations of that progress. Including her with the carpenters, there is one woman among the electricians, one among the ironworkers, one among the bricklayers, and one among the painters. Tradeswomen often feel they are only tokens of diversity on the job site. But to Ms. Lujano, one woman is better than none. …
“Now in her third decade as a union carpenter, she feels keenly the need to help younger women as they face the challenge of working in a world that has, for so long, been dominated by men.”
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Photo: ItalianNotes. Prickly pear, or cactus pear. When Italy suffers from drought, some people turn to an edible cactus.
A while ago I posted photos I’d taken in New England and was surprised to see a cactus this far north. Hannah called it “prickly pear” and told me it was known for its versatility. It’s apparently the same cactus that Italy is looking to as a reliable food source.
Stefano Bernabei and Gavin Jones write at Reuters, “Global warming, drought and plant disease pose a growing threat to agriculture in Italy’s arid south, but a startup founded by a former telecoms manager believes it has found a solution: Opuntia Ficus, better known as the cactus pear.
“Andrea Ortenzi saw the plant’s potential 20 years ago when working for Telecom Italia in Brazil, where it is widely used as animal feed. On returning to Italy he began looking at ways to turn his intuition into a business opportunity.
“He and four friends founded their company, called Wakonda, in 2021, and began buying land to plant the crop in the southern Puglia region where the traditionally dominant olive trees had been ravaged by an insect-borne disease called Xylella.
“The damage from the plant disease has been compounded by recurring droughts and extreme weather in the last few years all over Italy’s southern mainland and islands, hitting crops from grapes to citrus fruits.
“Ortenzi is convinced the hardy and versatile cactus pear, otherwise called the prickly pear or, in Italy, the Indian fig, can be a highly profitable solution yielding a raft of products such as soft drinks, flour, animal feed and biofuel. …
” ‘As an industry, cactus pear production is growing rather quickly, especially for fodder use and as a source of biofuel,’ said Makiko Taguchi, agricultural officer at the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization headquartered in Rome.
“The cactus produces a tasty fruit eaten in much of Latin America and the Mediterranean, while in Mexico the flat green pads that form the arms of the cactus, are used in cooking. In Tunisia, where it covers around 12% of cultivated land, second only to olive trees, the cactus pear is a major source of income for thousands, particularly women who harvest and sell the fruit.
“In Brazil, which has the world’s largest production, it is mainly cultivated in the north-east for fodder, while Peru and Chile use it to extract a red dye known as Cochineal, used in food and cosmetic production.
Sportswear group Adidas and carmaker Toyota have recently shown interest in using the cactus to produce plant-based leather sourced mainly from Mexico.
“The cactus pear is not yet included in the FAO’s agricultural output statistics, but Taguchi cited the rapid expansion of CactusNet, a contact network of cactus researchers and businesses worldwide which she coordinates. …
“The plant, native to desert areas of south and north America, thrives in the increasingly arid conditions of Italy’s south, and needs ten times less water than maize, a comparable crop whose byproducts also include animal feed and methane. …
“Of the roughly 100,000 hectares of olive trees destroyed by Xylella in southern Puglia, only 30,000 will be replanted in the same way, [Ortenzi] told Reuters in an interview. ‘Potentially 70,000 could be planted with prickly pears,’ he said. …
“Wakonda’s business model discards the fruit and focuses instead on the prickly pads, which are pressed to yield a juice used for a highly nutritious, low-calorie energy drink. The dried out pads are then processed to produce a light flour for the food industry or a high-protein animal feed.
“Wakonda’s circular, ecological production system also includes ‘biodigester’ tanks in which the waste from the output cycle is transformed into methane gas used as a bio-fuel either on site or sold. …
“Under Ortenzi’s business plan, rather than buying up land to plant the cactus, Wakonda aims to persuade farmers of its potential and then license out to them, in return for royalties, all the equipment and know-how required to exploit it.
” ‘The land remains yours, you convert it to prickly pears and I guarantee to buy all your output for at least 15 years,’ Ortenzi said.”
Hmmm. I have two issues. Throwing out the fruit seems super wasteful. And methane may be a biofuel, but it’s no better for the environment than fossil fuel. What do you think?
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