The Amazon is not safe under Brazil’s new president – a roads plan could push it past its breaking point

Fires are often set to clear land near roads in the Amazon. Johannes Myburgh / AFP via Getty Images

Robert T. Walker, University of Florida

Conservationists breathed a sigh of relief when Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won Brazil’s presidential election in the fall of 2022. His predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, had opened large parts of the Amazon region to business by crippling enforcement of environmental laws and turning a blind eye to land grabbing. It should come as no surprise that deforestation showed a sharp uptick.

However, while Lula oversaw a more than 70% drop in deforestation during his first run as president in the early 2000s, the rainforest’s future remains deeply uncertain.

That’s in part because Brazilian administrations, whether of the right or left, have all promoted an ambitious project to boost exports and the economy called the Initiative for the Integration of the Regional Infrastructure of South America, or IIRSA.

The initiative focuses on new roads, dams and industry that can threaten the region’s fragile rainforest ecosystem – and harm the world’s climate in the process.

Trucks along the BR163 highway, a major transport route that has contributed to deforestation. Nelson Almeida / AFP via Getty Images

The problem with infrastructure in the forest

At first glance, IIRSA might sound like progress. Its goal is to improve Amazonia’s economy by developing its resources and establishing better access to global markets. To accomplish this, the initiative plans to rehabilitate and extend the existing highway system and build dams, ports, industrial waterways and railroads.

However, evidence from my research in the Amazon over the past 30 years and by other scientists shows that new roads lead to more deforestation, putting extreme pressure on the rainforest. Outside of protected areas, nearly 95% of all deforestation occurs within 3.4 miles (5.5 kilometers) of a road or less than two-thirds of a mile (1 km) from a river.

Deforestation rates fell during Lula’s first presidency, primarily because Brazil expanded its protected areas program and enforced environmental laws. However, deforestation began to rise again during the administration of his protégé, President Dilma Rousseff.

Both Lula and Rousseff furthered the IIRSA agenda by building dams on the Madeira River and on the Xingu River, where the Belo Monte dam diverted streamflow vital to the survival of Indigenous communities.

They also downsized protected areas to make way for their projects. Rousseff even downsized Amazon National Park, the first such park in Amazonia. In all, 181 square miles (469 square kilometers) were removed, close to 5% of the total area. The most scenic park landscape along the Tapajos River shoreline was taken to make way for dam construction.

Now back in office, Lula has signaled his approval of a key IIRSA project: the revitalization of BR-319, a federal highway between Porto Velho and Manaus.

Satellite images from 2000 to 2019 show how deforestation spread out from Highway BR-163 over 10 years. Lauren Dauphin/NASA Earth Observatory

If this project is completed, it will open the central Amazon basin to even more deforestation.

I believe this should cause alarm. Research shows too much deforestation could push the forest over a tipping point from which it can’t recover. No one knows exactly where the line is, but the vast Amazon that people picture today with its extraordinary biodiversity and dense forests would be no more. Such a catastrophe once seemed the bad dream of doomsayers, but there is mounting evidence that the forest is in trouble.

The Amazonian tipping point

The tropical rainforest sustains itself by recycling rain to the atmosphere through evapotranspiration, which makes more moisture available. Rainfall recycling accounts for about 50% of the basin’s precipitation today.

Too much deforestation could leave too little rainfall recycling to sustain the forest.

Scientists initially estimated the tipping point would occur once about 40% of the Amazon was deforested. That estimate has slipped downward over time given the intensification of fires and the onset of observable climate change in the basin itself. Moreover, the forest shows diminishing resilience, meaning it is less able to recover from climate extremes. Scientists have already observed widespread shifts to more drought-tolerant tree species.

Given the evidence, scientists have revised the tipping point to deforestation as low as 20% to 25%. Even if only a fifth of the forest is lost, the remainder could quickly degrade into an ecosystem of fire-adapted grasses and shrubby trees that look nothing like the massive ones native to the rainforest.

NASA satellite images show the expansion of deforestation as roads are built in the Amazon.

Deforestation across all the Amazonian nations now stands at a little over 16%. In my view, this is far too close for comfort, especially with the momentum of the IIRSA program.

More than one tipping point?

The deforestation problem isn’t the only pressure on the forest – the Amazon is also dealing with the heat and drought of global warming.

Evidence suggests that global climate change may be enough to push large parts of the rainforest to the brink. One concern is that the dry season is getting longer, a shift that appears to be driven by global warming. This affects annual precipitation by reducing the number of rainy days and makes fire more damaging by extending the season when trees can easily burn.

Currently, dry season lengthening is most pronounced in the Southern Basin. However, changes in the southern rainfall pattern can reduce precipitation in the wettest parts of the basin to the west. One estimate suggests dry season lengthening could cause a tipping point transition by 2064.

What can be done?

Averting Amazonia’s looming tipping point catastrophe will require effort by the global community. In the past, Brazil has controlled deforestation through its forest code and by designating protected areas.

To step back from the brink, Lula would have to begin enforcing the forest code again, which limits deforestation on private property. He would also have to persuade the Brazilian Congress to stop creating incentives for land grabs – the taking of public land for private uses.

Although Lula would have a difficult time reclaiming already grabbed land, expanding protected areas could reduce deforestation. Obviously, downsizing Amazonia’s existing protected areas would have to stop.

Finally, Lula would need to revisit the IIRSA program and pursue only those projects that bring economic development without excessive deforestation.

The edge of a soy plantation shows the Amazon before and after deforestation. Ricardo Beliel/Brazil Photos/LightRocket via Getty Images

Research I am currently working on with colleagues in the Ecuadorian Amazon focuses on a particular type of protected area, the Indigenous Territory. We argue that safeguarding Indigenous territorial rights provides Amazonia’s national governments with effective conservation allies. This is because Indigenous peoples want to defend their homelands. Unfortunately, national governments are not always supportive of Indigenous rights, especially when their territories contain mineral wealth.

Slowing global climate change, however, will require international collaboration on an unprecedented scale. Luckily, a forum for this already exists with the Paris Agreement.

Areas with intense deforestation in 2021 largely aligned with major roadways. Finer M, Mamani N, Spore J (2020) Amazon Deforestation Hotspots 2021. MAAP: 147, CC BY

The people of the Amazon

The Amazon Basin is home to 35 million people, many of whom live in poverty. They have every right to desire a better life, and that’s one reason that IIRSA has a great deal of local support.

However, while the initiative might bring short-term benefits, it also risks destroying the very resources it was intended to develop. And that could leave the region in a state of poverty that cannot be alleviated.

Robert T. Walker, Professor of Latin American Studies and Geography, University of Florida

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

40 years ago ‘A Nation at Risk’ warned of a ‘rising tide of mediocrity’ in US schools – has anything changed?

Academic gains made over the past four decades have begun to erode. Troy Aossey/The Image Bank via Getty Images

Morgan Polikoff, University of Southern California

The National Commission on Excellence in Education’s release of a report titled “A Nation at Risk” in 1983 was a pivotal point in the history of American education. The report used dire language, lamenting that “the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.”

Using Cold War language, the report also famously stated: “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.”

The report ushered in four decades of ambitious education reforms at the state and federal levels. Those reforms included landmark policy shifts like George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act, Barack Obama’s Race to the Top program and major state reforms in areas including teacher quality, school choice and test-based accountability for schools and teachers. But what is the legacy of “A Nation at Risk” 40 years after its publication? And what are the implications for school reform in the coming years?

As a scholar of education who specializes in standards-based reform and accountability, I believe important lessons can be learned about American education by examining what has taken place since the release of the report. Here are three:

1. Education reform has improved outcomes, but progress has slowed or reversed in the past decade

The U.S. has had major challenges with educational performance that long predate “A Nation at Risk.” One is that too many students are not mastering grade-level material. Another is that not enough are enrolling in and completing college given the benefits of college to individuals and society. Additionally, large gaps exist in both of those areas based on race and ethnicity and income.

Since the report, students from all racial, ethnic and socioeconomic groups have continuously made achievement gains, and gaps have narrowed considerably since the 1970s – especially in the early grades. Yet low levels of achievement and gaps in achievement remain. For instance, even before the COVID-19 pandemic, 34% of fourth graders scored below the “basic” level on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, meaning they weren’t reading at grade level. Since COVID-19, national assessment results in reading and math indicate the pandemic erased two decades of achievement gains; for instance, in eighth grade math the number of students scoring below basic increased from 31% in 2019 to 38% in 2022.

The nation has also made tremendous progress in outcomes beyond academic tests. For instance, the high school dropout rate has plummeted, dropping from about about 14% around the time of the report to about 6% now. Meanwhile, the proportion of 25-to-29-year-olds with a four-year college degree has doubled to about 38%.

2. The reforms did not address the root causes of the problems

The report spurred four decades of intense reform led by states and the federal government. But these reforms have largely not addressed the major causes of poor educational performance – poverty and other factors outside of school, as well as highly decentralized educational systems that thwart meaningful school improvement.

For example, child poverty is still widespread; many students lack access to quality early childhood education; and many children live in polluted environments that affect their learning.

The result of these factors in the early years is that only about half of children enter kindergarten healthy and ready to learn, and even fewer among children from low-income families.

While schools can help lessen these disparities in school readiness between more and less advantaged children, the report failed to look beyond schools for solutions to problems that stem from social inequality.

Gaps in educational performance persist along racial and socioeconomic lines. Blend Images - JGI/Jamie Grill/Tetra Collection via Getty Images

The narrow view of “A Nation at Risk” is notable because the widely accepted wisdom of the time, especially among Republicans, and going back to the 1966 Coleman Report, was that schools aren’t a primary driver of inequality. After all, the Coleman Report found that differences in school resources, like money and books, didn’t account for differences in student achievement between more and less advantaged children.

Even the education efforts since the report have not been able to address the structural barriers in U.S. education to large-scale improvement. For instance, in a recent book I show that state and federal policies over the past 30 years that focus on improving schools through better and clearer standards have only modestly improved teaching.

A big part of why standards and other education reforms have failed has to do with the fact that school systems in the U.S. are remarkably decentralized. About 13,000 school districts and their individual teachers exercise substantial control over what actually happens in classrooms. The inability of policymakers at higher levels – such as states or the federal government – to meaningfully change school practice partially explains why other major reforms have failed to achieve real results. Examples include the Obama administration’s US$7 billion school turnaround plan and teacher evaluation reforms. In a more centralized system, policies enacted at the state and federal levels could be implemented as intended; that is rarely the case in U.S. education.

3. The political coalitions that brought reform have fallen apart

As on other topics, Americans are highly polarized on education policy. From “A Nation at Risk” through even much of the Obama administration, many aspects of the education reform agenda had bipartisan agreement. Governors of both parties came together to enact standards and testing reforms that set expectations for student learning and measured student progress against those expectations in the 1980s and 1990s. Congress voted overwhelmingly for the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, calling for more rigorous standards and more frequent testing to drive educational improvement.

And some versions of school choice – especially charter schools – were supported by Republican and Democratic administrations in Washington and nationwide. Even the now-controversial Common Core standards, which aimed to create consistent expectations for student learning in math and English nationwide, were originally bipartisan. That is, they were created and endorsed by leaders from both parties.

This broad reform coalition is no more.

Debates over what to teach children in schools are driving a partisan wedge between schools and parents. Republican states are removing racial and LGBT-related topics from the curriculum. Meanwhile, Democratic states mandate their inclusion.

And expanding choice programs continue to drive down public school enrollment in states across the nation. Over a million students have been lost from public schools, and private school enrollment has increased 4% since the onset of COVID-19.

The result of these trends is that the reform consensus that brought about a broadly national approach to education reform is splintering into red state and blue state versions. I expect red state reform will likely emphasize school choice and a back-to-basics curriculum focused on reading, math and the avoidance of controversial topics. I expect blue state reform will likely emphasize whole-child supports like mental health, social-emotional learning and curriculum that is intended to reflect the culture of the nation’s increasingly diverse student body.

The problems raised in “A Nation at Risk” remain as important as they were in 1983. In my view, national leaders need to continue to improve educational opportunity and performance for America’s schoolchildren. Improved education benefits individuals – those with college degrees have longer life expectancies, higher earnings and wealth and even more happiness than those with a high school degree or lower. Education also benefits societies, leading to greater economic growth. But 40 years after the report, policymakers don’t seem to have learned the lesson that schools alone won’t solve the nation’s educational problems. And if that’s true, the nation remains at risk.

Morgan Polikoff, Associate Professor of Education, University of Southern California

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

China’s latest diplomatic move will extend its trade, energy, financial and maritime power

Jose Caballero, International Institute for Management Development (IMD)

China’s billions of dollars in global investments and infrastructure projects seem to be paying off politically and economically.

Just recently, Honduras signalled it is set to cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan, having been one of the few remaining countries to recognise the island as a state. This switch of allegiances would be a coup for China, which sees Taiwan as part of its jurisdiction, but also a sign of diminishing US power in Latin America, since the US is a long-time supporter of Taiwan.

China’s influence seems to be everywhere. Days before Chinese president Xi Jinping flew into Moscow to discuss the Ukraine war with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China had brokered a deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

The high-profile deal sought to re-establish diplomatic, trade and security relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia in an effort to de-escalate tensions and bring more stability to the Middle East. The agreement transforms the nature of China’s involvement in the region from one purely driven by commercial interests into a security-related cooperation that can protect its growing assets and expatriate population in the region.

Commentators see the agreement as a positive step but wonder about the influence that Iran and Saudi Arabia can have in lessening the internal conflicts in several nearby countries. This is particularly where they support rival parties, including in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. What the deal does highlight is the rising influence that China can exert and the waning of the US’s power over the Middle East regional order.

Studies have shown that political instability in neighbouring countries negatively affects the economic performance of a nation by disrupting trade flows and increasing defence expenditures while lessening investment, for example, in education. Under such conditions, economic incentives can drive a peace-building process. Peacefully resolving conflicts benefits countries not directly entangled in the disputes.

Since the 1990s, China has gradually become the largest trade partner of the Arab region overall and the top trade partner of Saudi Arabia. China’s exports to Saudi Arabia have annually increased at 15.3% year on year on average, amounting to US$905 million (£740 million) in 1995 and US$31.8 billion in 2020.

Meanwhile, over the same period, China’s imports from Saudi Arabia rose from US$393 million to US$33.4 billion, an average annual increase of 19.4%. In 2019, China and Saudi Arabia signed 35 trade and investments deals.

Regional power plays

Similarly, China’s exports to Iran have increased at an average 14.7% annual rate from US$276 million in 1995 to US$8.51 billion in 2020. And its imports from Iran have also risen by 14.5% annually between 1995 (US$197 million) and 2020 (US$5.85 billion).

By 2022, exports totalled US$9.44 billion and continued to grow exponentially in early 2023. Russia has recently overtaken China as the largest foreign investor in Iran, but China remains its largest oil customer.

China’s main exports to Saudi Arabia and Iran include broadcasting equipment, motor vehicles and air pumps. Its main imports are crude petroleum, ethylene polymers and acrylic alcohols.

In the context of the Saudi Arabia and Iran reconciliation, trade with China is likely to continue to follow such increasing trends. If benefits from the agreement spread to other countries in the region, China could also gain from economic relations with those countries as regional stability increases.

There is already some evidence of such positive spillover. After the agreement with the Saudis, Iran is ready to expand cooperation, hopes rapprochement with Bahrain will be possible, and is willing to improve relations with Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.

However it’s worth noting some commentators point out that previous efforts at reconciliation between Iran and Saudi Arabia were unsuccessful, while others question whether they will adhere to the terms of the agreement.

Belt and Road

As well as investing in commercial and transport infrastructure to make trade easier, the objectives of China’s Belt and Road Initiative include the strengthening of its economic leadership and the improvement and creation of free trade blocks among countries along the investment route. The Iran-Saudi Arabia agreement will generate further benefits to China by boosting the initiative’s dividends. Saudi Arabia’s strategic location bordering eight countries not only provides an alternative route for energy supply to China but also makes it a vital partner for the initiative’s infrastructure investment, which deepens China’s presence in the Middle East.

Iran’s strategic position provides it with considerable seaport facilities and has the potential for the development of an air transportation hub. China has already invested in the development of a 2,000-mile-long railway from Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi to Tehran.

Shutterstock

The agreement also brings a more subtle benefit to China. With Russia at war, China needs to ensure the continuity of its energy supply to boost economic performance and safeguard socio-political stability at home. Saudi Arabia and Iran provide a strong basis for the diversification of China’s energy options and also to pre-empt any potential move by the United States to constrain its access to the Gulf’s resources.

Iran has the world’s fourth largest oil and second gas reserves. Saudi Arabia has the second largest oil reserves, accounting for 16.2% of the world’s total. Access to such vast resources in the context of a more stable region provide China with further assurances for the future flow of the energy supplies its economic growth needs.

The Iran-Saudi initiative has the potential to address China’s energy security issues and turn China into a global maritime power and a global monetary power. All of these factors will contribute to the sustainability of China’s economic growth, and add to its status as a superpower.

Jose Caballero, Senior Economist, IMD World Competitiveness Center, International Institute for Management Development (IMD)

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The earliest modern humans in Europe mastered bow-and-arrow technology 54,000 years ago

To test the ballistic properties of the stone points found in the Mandrin cave, modern duplicates were created and hafted on to shafts, as they may have been 54,000 years ago. Laure Metz, Ludovic Slimak, CC BY-SA

Laure Metz, Aix-Marseille Université (AMU); Jason E. Lewis, Stony Brook University (The State University of New York), and Ludovic Slimak, Université Toulouse – Jean Jaurès

Based on research in France’s Mandrin cave, in February 2022 we published a study in the journal Science Advances that pushed back the earliest evidence of the arrival of the first Homo sapiens in Europe to 54,000 years ago – 11 millennia earlier than had been previously established.

In the study, we described nine fossil teeth excavated from all the archeological layers in the cave. Eight were determined to be from Neanderthals, but one from one of the middle layers belonged to a paleolithic Homo sapiens. Based on this and other data, we determined that these early Homo sapiens of Europe were later replaced by Neanderthal populations.

The single Homo sapiens tooth was discovered in a remarkable and rich archeological layer that also included approximately 1,500 tiny stone blades or bladelets – some were less than 1 centimeter in length. They were all part of the “Neronian” tradition, named in 2004 by one of us, Ludovic Slimak, after the Néron cave in France’s Ardèche region. Neronian stone tools are distinctive and there were no similar points found in the layers left behind by the Neanderthals who inhabited the rock shelter before and after. They also bear striking parallels with those made by other Homo sapiens along the east Mediterranean coast, as exemplified at the site of Ksar Akil northeast of Beirut.

View of archeological excavations at the entrance of France’s Mandrin cave. Ludovic Slimak, CC BY-ND

This month in the journal Science Advances, we published a study announcing that the humans who arrived in Europe some 54,000 years ago had mastered the use of bows and arrows. This discovery pushes back the origin in Eurasia of these remarkable technologies by approximately 40,000 years.

The emergence in prehistory of mechanically propelled weapons – spears or arrows sent on their way by throwing sticks (atlatl) or bows – is commonly perceived as one of the hallmarks of the advance of modern human populations into the European continent. However, the origin of archery has always been archeologically difficult to trace because the materials used tend to disappear from the fossil record.

Archaeological invisibility

Armatures – hard points made of stone, horn or bone – constitute the main evidence of weapon technologies in the European Paleolithic. Materials associated with archery – wood, fibres, leather, resins, and sinew – are perishable, however, and so are rarely preserved. This makes archaeological recognition of these technologies difficult.

Partially preserved archery equipment was found in Eurasia only in more recent times, between 10 and 12 millennia ago, and in frozen ground or peat bogs, as at the Stellmoor site in Germany. Based on the analysis of armatures, archery is now well documented in Africa approximately 70,000 years ago. While some flint or deer-antler armatures suggest the existence of archery from the early phases of the Upper Paleolithic in Europe more than 35,000 years ago, their shape and how they were hafted – attached to a shaft or handle – do not allow confirmation that they were propelled by a bow.

More recent armatures from the European Upper Paleolithic bear similarities to each other, not allowing us to clearly determine whether they were propelled by a bow or an atlatl. This makes the possible existence of archery during the European Upper Paleolithic archeologically plausible, but difficult to establish.

Experimental replicas

The stone points found in the Mandrin cave are both extremely light (30% weigh hardly more than a few grams) and small (almost 40% of these tiny points present a maximum width of 10mm).

To determine how they could have been propelled, the first step was to make experimental replicas. We then hafted the newly made points into shafts and tested how they behaved when shot with bows and spear-throwers, or by simply thrusting them. This allowed us to test their ballistic characteristics, limits and efficiency.

The tiny experimental points were used as arrowheads and shot by bow or atlatl, and the resulting fractures were compared with the scars found on the archeological material. Laure Metz, Slimak Ludovic, CC BY-ND

After our experimental replicas were shot, we examined the fractures that resulted and compared them with those found on the archeological material. The fractures and scars show that they were distally hafted – attached to the split end of a shaft. Their small size and especially narrow width allow us to conclude how they were fired: only high-speed propulsion by a bow was possible, our analysis determined.

Nanotechnologies of the first Homo sapiens in Europe. More than 1,500 points were found abandoned by these earliest modern humans during their stay in Mandrin cave. This very light point, found in the cave’s Layer E, is dated to 54,000 years old and presents diagnostic microscopic scars of its use as a weapon. Laure Metz, Ludovic Slimak, CC BY-ND

The data from the Mandrin cave and the tests that we performed enrich our knowledge of these technologies in Europe and now allow us to push back the age of archery in Europe by more than 40,000 years.

Our study also sheds light on the weaponry of these Neanderthal populations, who were contemporaries of the Neronian modern humans. Neanderthals did not develop mechanically propelled weapons and continued to use their traditional weapons based on the use of massive stone-tipped spears that were thrust or thrown by hand, and thus requiring close contact with the game they hunted. The traditions and technologies mastered by these two populations were thus distinct, illustrating a remarkable objective technological advantage for modern populations during their expansion into Europe.

Not only do these discoveries profoundly reshape our knowledge of Neanderthals and modern humans in Western Europe, but they also raise many questions about the structure and organization of these different populations on the continent. Technical choices are not solely the result of the cognitive capacities of differing hominin populations, but may also have depended on the weight of traditions within these Neanderthal and modern human populations.

---

To deepen one’s understanding the complex question of the relationship between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals during the first migration to the European continent, the reader can turn to Ludovic Slimak’s book “Néandertal nu” (Odile Jacob 2022), soon available from Penguin books as “The Naked Neanderthal”.

Laure Metz, Archéologue et chercheuse en anthropologie, Aix-Marseille Université (AMU); Jason E. Lewis, Lecturer of Anthropology and Assistant Director of the Turkana Basin Institute, Stony Brook University (The State University of New York), and Ludovic Slimak, CNRS Permanent Member, Université Toulouse – Jean Jaurès

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

How Edgar Allan Poe became the darling of the maligned and misunderstood

Could the pugnacious writer ever have imagined that he would one day become a cult hero? Nick Lehr/The Conversation via DALL-E 2, CC BY-SA

Scott Peeples, College of Charleston

Edgar Allan Poe, who would have turned 214 years old on Jan. 19, 2023, remains one of the world’s most recognizable and popular literary figures.

His face – with its sunken eyes, enormous forehead and disheveled black hair – adorns tote bags, coffee mugs, T-shirts and lunch boxes. He appears as a meme, either sporting a popped collar and aviator shades as Edgar Allan Bro, or riffing on “Bohemian Rhapsody” by muttering, “I’m just Poe boy, nobody loves me” as a raven on his shoulder adds, “He’s just a Poe boy from a Poe family.”

Netflix has sought to capitalize on the writer’s popularity, recently releasing the mystery-thriller “The Pale Blue Eye,” which features Poe as a West Point cadet, where he spent less than a year before being court-martialed. Netflix also has a Poe-inspired miniseries, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” set to be released sometime in 2023.

But as a Poe scholar, I sometimes wonder whether Poe’s appeal is less about the power and complexity of his prose and more about an attraction to the idea of Poe.

After all, Poe’s most famous literary creations tend to be unsympathetic villains. There are psychopaths who perpetuate seemingly motiveless murders in “The Black Cat” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”; protagonists who abuse women in “Ligeia” and “The Fall of the House of Usher”; and characters who exact cruel, fatal revenge on unwitting victims in “The Cask of Amontillado” and “Hop-Frog.”

The degenerate characters whose perspectives Poe invites readers to inhabit don’t exactly align with a cultural moment characterized by the #MeToo movement, safe spaces and trigger warnings.

At the same time, the conception of Poe the writer seems to tap into a cultural affection for outsiders, nonconformists and underdogs who ultimately prove their worth.

A character assassination that misfires

The idea of Poe the underdog began with his death in 1849, which was greeted by a cruel notice in the New York Tribune: “This announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it.”

The obituary writer, who turned out to be Poe’s sometime friend and constant rival Rufus W. Griswold, claimed that the deceased had “few or no friends” and proceeded with a general character assassination built on exaggerations and half-truths.

Strange as it seems, Griswold was also Poe’s literary executor, and he expanded the obituary into a biographical essay that accompanied Poe’s collected works. If this was a marketing ploy, it worked. The friends that Griswold claimed Poe lacked rose to his defense, and journalists spent decades debating who the man really was.

Rufus W. Griswold penned the first draft of Poe’s life and legacy. raveler1116/DigitalVision Vectors via Getty Images

During Poe’s lifetime, most readers encountered his work through magazines, and he was rarely well paid. But Griswold’s edition went through 19 printings in the 15 years after Poe’s death, and his stories and poems have been endlessly reprinted and translated ever since.

Griswold’s defamatory portrait, along with the grim subject matter of Poe’s stories and poems, still influences the way readers perceive him. But it has also produced a sustained reaction or counterimage of Poe as a tragic hero, a tortured, misunderstood artist who was too good – or, at any rate, too cool – for his world.

While translating Poe’s works into French in the 1850s and 1860s, the French poet Charles Baudelaire promoted his hero as a kind of countercultural visionary, out of step with a moralistic, materialistic America. Baudelaire’s Poe valued beauty over truth in his poetry and, in his fiction, saw through the self-improvement pieties that were popular at the time to reveal “the natural wickedness of man.” Poe struck a chord with European writers, and as his international stature rose in the late 19th century, literary critics in the U.S. wrung their hands over his lack of appreciation “at home.”

Poe’s underdog story takes off

By the turn of the 20th century, the stage was set for Poe to be embraced as the perennial underdog. And Poe often did appear on stage around this time, as the subject of several biographical melodramas that depicted him as a tragic figure whose lack of success had more to do with a hostile cultural and publishing environment than his own failings.

That image appeared on the silver screen as early as 1909 in D.W. Griffith’s short film “Edgar Allen Poe.” With Poe’s wife, Virginia, languishing on a sick bed, the poet ventures out to sell “The Raven.” After meeting rejection and scorn, he manages to sell his manuscript and returns home with provisions for his ailing wife, only to find that she has died.

Later films also depict Poe as being misunderstood or underappreciated in his lifetime. A wildly inaccurate biopic, “The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe,” released in 1942, ends with a voice-over commenting, “…little did [the public] know that the manuscript of ‘The Raven,’ which he tried in vain to sell for $25, would years later bring the price of $17,000 from a collector.”

In ‘The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe,’ Poe’s talents are overlooked, as ‘men scoffed at his greatness.’ LMPC/Getty Images

In real life, while an early draft of “The Raven” was declined by one editor, Poe had no trouble selling the poem, and it was an immediate sensation.

But here “The Raven” becomes a stand-in for Poe himself, something dark and mysterious that, according to legend, people in Poe’s time failed to appreciate.

Poe is an obscure writer and amateur detective in the 1951 film “The Man with a Cloak,” which ends with a saloonkeeper allowing the rain to wash away the ink on an IOU that Poe gave him. On the reverse side of the note is a manuscript of the poem “Annabel Lee,” as its bearer declares, “That name’ll never be worth anything. Not in a hundred years.”

Of course, the audience watching this film almost exactly 100 years after Poe’s death knew better.

The most interesting plants grow in the shade

Which brings us to “The Pale Blue Eye,” in which Henry Melling portrays Cadet Poe, an outcast with a keen crime solver’s intellect. In a refreshing change, this younger Poe is not a tortured artist or a haunted, brooding figure. He is, however, picked on by his peers and underestimated by his superiors – yet again, an underdog viewers want to root for.

In that sense, the Poe in “The Pale Blue Eye” fits well with his contemporary image, which also permeates the early episodes of “Wednesday,” Netflix’s Addams Family spinoff set at Nevermore Academy that’s chock full of Poe references.

The headmistress of Nevermore Academy – a Hogwarts-like school for outcasts – refers to Poe as “our most famous alumni,” which explains why the school’s annual boat race is the Poe Cup and why there’s a statue of Poe guarding a secret passage.

The delightfully antisocial protagonist, Wednesday, played by Jenna Ortega, is an outcast among outcasts – the Poe figure at a school whose name evokes Poe. In one scene, a sympathetic teacher urges her not to lose “the ability to not let others define you. It’s a gift.” She adds, “The most interesting plants grow in the shade.”

When John Lennon sang “Man, you should have seen them kicking Edgar Allan Poe” in “I Am the Walrus,” he didn’t have to say who was kicking him or why. The point was, Poe deserved better; the most interesting plants do grow in the shade, unlovely and unloved.

And that’s exactly why so many people – aspiring writers and artists, but also everyone when they’re lonely and misunderstood – see a little bit of themselves in the weary-but-wise image of Poe.

Scott Peeples, Professor of English, College of Charleston

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

3D-printing the brain’s blood vessels with silicone could improve and personalize neurosurgery – new technique shows how

3D printers can lay down more than just layers of melted plastic. Dedraw Studio/iStock via Getty Images Plus

Senthilkumar Duraivel, University of Florida and Thomas Angelini, University of Florida

A new 3D-printing technique using silicone can make accurate models of the blood vessels in your brain, enabling neurosurgeons to train with more realistic simulations before they operate, according to our recently published research.

Many neurosurgeons practice each surgery before they get into the operating room based on models of what they know about the patient’s brain. But the current models neurosurgeons use for training don’t mimic real blood vessels well. They provide unrealistic tactile feedback, lack small but important structural details and often exclude entire anatomical components that determine how each procedure will be performed. Realistic and personalized replicas of patient brains during pre-surgery simulations could reduce error in real surgical procedures.

3D printing, however, could make replicas with the soft feel and the structural accuracy surgeons need.

3D printing is typically thought of as a process that involves laying down layer after layer of melted plastic that solidifies as a self-supporting structure is built. Unfortunately, many soft materials do not melt and re-solidify the way the plastic filament that 3D printers typically employ do. Users only get one shot with soft materials like silicone – they have to be printed while in a liquid state and then irreversibly solidified.

Researchers are exploring 3D-printing organs using living cells.

Shaping liquids in 3D

How do you make a complex 3D shape out of a liquid without ending up with a puddle or a slumping blob?

Researchers developed a broad approach called embedded 3D printing for this purpose. With this technique, the “ink” is deposited inside a bath of a second supporting material designed to flow around the printing nozzle and trap the ink in the place right after the nozzle moves away. This allows users to create complex shapes out of liquids by holding them trapped in three-dimensional space until the time comes to solidify the printed structure. Embedded 3D printing has been effective for structuring a variety of soft materials like hydrogels, microparticles and even living cells.

However, printing with silicone has remained challenging. Liquid silicone is an oil, while most support materials are water-based. Oil and water have a high interfacial tension, which is the driving force behind why oil droplets take on circular shapes in water. This force also causes 3D-printed silicone structures to deform, even in a support medium.

Interfacial tension is what causes oil droplets to form on water and silicone to deform. Baac3nes/Moment via Getty Images

Even worse, these interfacial forces drive small-diameter silicone features to break into droplets as they are being printed. A lot of research has gone into making silicone materials that can be printed without a support, but these heavy modifications also modify the properties that users care about, like how soft and stretchy the silicone is.

3D-printing silicone with AMULIT

As researchers working at the interface of soft matter physics, mechanical engineering and materials science, we decided to tackle the problem of interfacial tension by developing a support material made from silicone oil.

We reasoned that most silicone inks would be chemically similar to our silicone support material, thus dramatically reducing interfacial tension, but also different enough to remain separated when put together for 3D printing. We created many candidate support materials but found that the best approach was to make a dense emulsion of silicone oil and water. One can think about it like crystal clear mayonnaise, made from packed microdroplets of water in a continuum of silicone oil. We call this method additive manufacturing at ultra-low interfacial tension, or AMULIT.

This diagram shows the AMULIT technique printing the bronchi of a lung model within a bath of supporting material. At right is a close-up of the needle depositing layers of silicone to make the tissue. Senthilkumar Duraivel/Angelini Lab, CC BY-ND

With our AMULIT support medium, we were able to print off-the-shelf silicone at high resolution, creating features as small as 8 micrometers (around 0.0003 inches) in diameter. The printed structures are as stretchy and durable as their traditionally molded counterparts.

These capabilities enabled us to 3D-print accurate models of a patient’s brain blood vessels based on a 3D scan as well as a functioning heart valve model based on average human anatomy.

3D silicone printing in health care

Silicone is a critical component of innumerable products, from everyday consumer goods like cookware and toys to advanced technologies in the electronics, aerospace and health care industries.

Silicone products are typically made by pouring or injecting liquid silicone into a mold and removing the cast after solidification. The expense and difficulty of manufacturing high-precision molds limits manufacturers to products with only a few predetermined sizes, shapes and designs. Removing delicate silicone structures from molds without damage is an additional barrier, and manufacturing defects increase when molding highly intricate structures.

Overcoming these challenges could allow for the development of advanced silicone-based technologies in the health care industry, where personalized implants or patient-specific mimics of physiological structures could transform care.

Senthilkumar Duraivel, Ph.D. Candidate in Materials Science and Engineering, University of Florida and Thomas Angelini, Associate Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of Florida

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Israel’s military reservists are joining protests – potentially transforming a political crisis into a security crisis

A member of Israel’s military reserves takes part in a protest on March 16, 2023 in Bnei Brak, a city east of Tel Aviv. Photo by Eyal Warshavsky/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Dan Arbell, American University

The judicial overhaul plan of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, introduced in January, has thrown the country into its most severe domestic crisis since 1973.

The plan has incited an unprecedented wave of controversy among Israelis, as hundreds of thousands of protestors have gathered for a 12th straight week across the country in opposition to the plan. Yet it’s not simply the persistence and size of the protest that is evidence of the crisis. It’s who is protesting.

The demonstrations have brought together groups representing almost all sectors of Israeli society. But among protesters is a group of individuals rarely seen at anti-government protests over the country’s almost 75-year history: Israeli Defense Forces reservists. They include former combat pilots, members of elite units and special forces, cyber-security forces and military intelligence, who announced they will not volunteer for reserve duty service if the legislation passes in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.

Further demonstrating the unprecedented aspect of the response by reservists: Among those protesting are members of Israeli Air Force Squadron 69. All but three of the 40 reservist pilots in the squadron announced that they would not conduct training exercises and would instead join anti-government protests, claiming they are not prepared to serve in what they say would be a “dictatorial regime.”

“We have no contract with a dictator. We would be happy to volunteer when the democracy is safeguarded,” an open letter from the reservists said.

The highly controversial judicial reform plan would significantly weaken the Israeli judiciary’s oversight over the legislative and executive branches.

The plan calls for near total control over future laws, constitutional amendments and judicial appointments to be concentrated in the hands of the governing coalition in the Knesset. Critics and protesters say the plan undermines the 75-year delicate balance between the three government branches, ends liberal democracy as they know it and pushes Israel towards autocratic rule.

Despite the growing protests, Netanyahu has defiantly promised to push the reforms through the Knesset. As the country inches closer towards a constitutional showdown between the executive and legislative branches and the judicial branch, the presence of former members of elite military units in these protests is evidence that the crisis’ implications extend far beyond the domestic political arena.

Besides threatening to undermine the economy and deepen societal divides, it threatens to erode Israeli national security and provoke a constitutional crisis that could ensnare the military as well.

Israel Defense Minister Yoav Gallant called for an immediate halt in the judicial overhaul legislation process. Gil Cohen-MAGEN/AFP via Getty Images)

‘The people’s army’

Israel’s military, known as the “IDF,” has been described for decades as the “people’s army.” That’s because young Israeli men and women, when they turn 18, are mandated by law to serve in the military. Men serve for two years and eight months and women for two years.

Upon completion of their regular military service, men and women are assigned to the reserve forces. The reserves are designed to provide reinforcements during emergencies and maintain preparedness through routine training and security assignments. While the number of Israelis serving as reservists has decreased over the years due to cutbacks and people finding ways to be exempted, reserve military service has been an integral part of the national ethos and folklore.

The threat to the government articulated by the protesting reservists is unprecedented. It represents a powerful step by former military and intelligence officials who pride themselves on their independence from politics and commitment to protocol.

Nevertheless, the reservists’ view is that there is an unwritten contract between those who serve and the state: they are willing to risk their lives to defend a liberal democratic Israel. But if Israel becomes a dictatorship, this contract is null and void.

It is possible that other security services like the police or Shin Bet, the internal security service, will take similar actions to protest the reforms. Depending on how long these protests last, the situation could unfold into an uncharted security crisis with high risks of domestic instability and, as Israeli President Isaac Herzog warned, civil strife.

Israelis protest the proposed judicial reform, in Tel Aviv on March 25, 2023. Gitai Palti/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Defense of democracy - or insubordination?

Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant, addressing the situation on March 25, 2023, expressed deep concern that the heated political debate is infiltrating the rank and file of the IDF. And that, Gallant said, may undermine and jeopardize Israel’s security at a time when the country faces external threats from Iran, Palestinian terrorism and Lebanese Hezbollah.

“The events taking place in Israeli society do not spare the Israel Defense Forces — from all sides, feelings of anger, pain and disappointment arise, with an intensity I have never encountered before,” Gallant said.

Gallant called for an immediate halt in the judicial overhaul legislation process. Instead, he proposed a dialogue between the two sides in order to reach a broadly agreed reform.

As a veteran of the IDF, a former Israeli diplomat and a longtime analyst of Israel’s security situation, I believe the crisis poses a profound question of where the line is between legal political activism in defense of democracy and insubordination.

The bigger question is what will happen with the military if the legislation passes in the Knesset, but is then struck down by Israel’s supreme court, the High Court of Justice. Should Netanyahu’s government request that institutions like the IDF act in contradiction to decisions made by the High Court, it is unclear to which authority these institutions would adhere.

For example: if the High Court rules that a Jewish outpost in the West Bank was built illegally and needs to be dismantled, yet the government orders the IDF not to do it, what will the IDF commanders on the ground do?

This tension is starkly displayed by the reservists who are refusing to partake in their usual duties.

In light of Gallant’s call to halt the legislation process, it is unclear whether the voting on the changes in the makeup of the Judges Selection Committee, scheduled for the week of March 26, 2023, will take place as planned.

The reservists’ active participation in the protests and their vocal opposition to the government’s plan have clearly made an impact on the defense minister. But at the same time, Gallant came out strongly against insubordination. Undoubtedly, the coming days will be critical in determining the direction of Israeli democracy.

Dan Arbell, Scholar-in-residence at the Center for Israeli Studies, American University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.