Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2017 i National Geographic Magazine

nat geo wild WALK ON CHINA’S WILD SIDE Very different wildlife ecosystems exist in two regions of China. The high-altitude Tibet Autonomous Region is populated by animals that can tolerate thin air, like the wild yak. The Yunnan region is a subtropical paradise, home to the only elephants in the nation, including this baby Asian elephant in Xishuangbanna Wild Elephant Valley (left). Explore both regions in the two-part series China’s Wild Side, airing September 1 and September 8 at 9/8c on Nat Geo WILD. television SEE CASSINI’S FINAL VIEW OF SATURN When NASA’s Cassini spacecraft plunges into Saturn this month, it will be the final act in an unprecedented 20-year mission of discovery. Trace the probe’s epic journey in Mission Saturn, airing September 15 at 9/8c on National Geographic. books…

Mexico Dead monarch butterflies carpet a snowy forest floor in Michoacán state. At least nine million, over 40 percent of this colony, died after an unusually intense spring storm—possibly due to climate change—hit their mountain sanctuary. Order prints of select National Geographic photos online at NationalGeographicArt.com. #NATGEOHEALTH CHALLENGE We asked the Your Shot community to show what it means to be healthy—physically, mentally, spiritually, or all of the above. Lance McMillan Toronto, Ontario McMillan went to Cuba to gauge the country’s economic change. In Havana he visited the Rafael Trejo boxing gym. When he saw this man run up bleachers, he set up his camera. “I waited for the moment when he would appear between the seats,” McMillan says.…

Fingerprints are so last century. The new frontier? Lip prints. Like the grooves on human fingertips, the grooves on human lips are formed at the embryonic stage and are thought to remain fixed throughout life. While lip prints aren’t typically used in forensics to nail criminals, they can offer clues to a person’s health—particularly his or her genetic predisposition to cleft lip or palate, some of the most common birth defects. At University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Craniofacial and Dental Genetics, director Mary Marazita and geneticist Katherine Neiswanger have been studying the genetic underpinnings of cleft lip and cleft palate for more than 20 years. Recently they turned their attention to facial features, including lip patterns, to determine if certain physical traits might in some way be connected. No single…

Patrick Perotti scoffed when his mother told him about a doctor who uses electromagnetic waves to treat drug addiction. “I thought he was a swindler,” Perotti says. Perotti, who is 38 and lives in Genoa, Italy, began snorting cocaine at 17, a rich kid who loved to party. His indulgence gradually turned into a daily habit and then an all-consuming compulsion. He fell in love, had a son, and opened a restaurant. Under the weight of his addiction, his family and business eventually collapsed. He did a three-month stint in rehab and relapsed 36 hours after he left. He spent eight months in another program, but the day he returned home, he saw his dealer and got high. “I began to use cocaine with rage,” he says. “I became paranoid,…

It’s a half hour before sunrise, and the ocean appears inky black as it slaps against the sand. A dozen fishermen are lounging in the boat master’s office in Punta Abreojos, laughing and talking about the party they’ll have that night. The mood is festive in this hamlet at the midpoint of Mexico’s Baja California peninsula because today is a day the town looks forward to all year long—the opening of abalone season. Actually the season opened four months earlier, but Punta Abreojos observes an unusual self-imposed ban. Rather than fish for abalone as soon as the government allows, in January, the community waits until April, when the shellfish have put on more weight. I head out into the Pacific Ocean with three fishermen in their 50s who have been…

Before, it was inconceivable: risk-free biomedical testing on living human organs. But new “organs-on-chips” technology is emulating the liver, brain, lungs, intestines, and more on a chip the size of a USB stick. Until now scientists conducted most biomedical research through animal testing—which often doesn’t translate to humans—or in a petri dish, a static environment that doesn’t let cells behave as if they are in the human body. The organ-chip (above) consists of transparent channels lined with thousands of living cells and pumped with liquid containing nutrients, or blood, all interacting just as they would in the body. It’s a “home away from home, a window into human biology,” says Geraldine A. Hamilton, chief scientific officer of organ-chip developer Emulate, Inc. The chips have been used to test drugs’ impact…

If only it were as simple as “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” Nutrition scientists are in fact constantly scrutinizing the health properties of foods. Everything on this page, along with olive oil and tea, has been the subject of more than 20 studies in the past 25 years, says physician Michael Roizen, chief wellness officer at the Cleveland Clinic. Why? “They either have unexpected benefits,” he says, “or are commonly consumed but may have risks.” Some foods—like pomegranates and pistachios in the U.S.—rise to nutrition fame because a large company that dominates the production and sales pays for much of the research. But sponsored studies can shade the science, says Roizen. The National Dairy Council, for instance, “has a huge marketing arm,” allowing it to widely promote…

One day in the not-too-distant future, the nervous parents of a premature baby might find themselves peering into something a bit like an aquarium. Inside an artificial womb, a preemie would be submerged in simulated amniotic fluid, which would fill the lungs and give them time to develop the ability to breathe air. A typical human pregnancy lasts about 40 weeks, and babies are considered premature at 37 weeks. Each year about 15 million babies worldwide are born prematurely—more than onetenth of all births. The very youngest considered viable—just 22 to 23 weeks old—typically weigh only about a pound and have less than a 50 percent chance of survival. One of the main reasons they die is that their lungs are too fragile to breathe air. In April researchers at…

On Easter Sunday morning, in the small town of San Antonio Aguas Calientes in central Guatemala, Elbia Pérez and her sister, daughters, and 18-month-old grandson are crowded around their kitchen table. On the table, a large pot of tamales, handfuls of spicy meat and corn dough wrapped in plantain leaves, is waiting to be steamed. The room is filled with talk, laughter, and smoke—gritty, eye-watering smoke that provokes deep, scratchy coughs. The problem isn’t that the family lacks a functioning stove. In fact the aluminum-sided kitchen—part of a compound that shelters 45 extended-family members— contains three. But the two-burner gas stove is out of fuel, and the Pérez family can’t afford to refill it. Their efficient woodstove, a knee-high concrete cylinder donated by an international aid group, is too small…

WATCH ON NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC Dian Fossey: Secrets in the Mist, a three-hour series, tells the story of the life, work, murder, and legacy of the gorilla researcher. Premieres later this year. Shortly after dawn two mountain gorillas swing gracefully over the shoulder-high stone wall that borders Volcanoes National Park in northwestern Rwanda. Landing lightly on cropped grass, the silverbacks stroll downhill through cultivated fields—knuckle-walking at first, then upright on two legs. The adult males belly up to eucalyptus trees and score the bark with their incisors. Then, joined by females and juveniles from their group, which researchers call Titus, they advance on a spindly stand of bamboo. Later that morning Veronica Vecellio, the gorilla program manager for the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International, settles onto a log inside the park,…

In a small town in Switzerland in 1917, psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach began carefully splattering paint on cards to study how the mind works. Asking people what they saw, he observed a correlation in responses from patients with schizophrenia and theorized that mental health could be assessed by how someone processes visual information. Rorschach’s original 10 images were published in 1921, the year before his death. After being brought to Chicago, they spread quickly across the United States as a popular personality test. In the second half of the century, trends like Freudian analysis fell out of favor, and the test became a synonym for pseudoscience. Critics called for a moratorium on its use. But a major 2013 study published by the American Psychological Association found it more effective than previously…

In a potato field near the Netherlands’ border with Belgium, Dutch farmer Jacob van den Borne is seated in the cabin of an immense harvester before an instrument panel worthy of the starship Enterprise. From his perch 10 feet above the ground, he’s monitoring two drones—a driverless tractor roaming the fields and a quadcopter in the air—that provide detailed readings on soil chemistry, water content, nutrients, and growth, measuring the progress of every plant down to the individual potato. Van den Borne’s production numbers testify to the power of this “precision farming,” as it’s known. The global average yield of potatoes per acre is about nine tons. Van den Borne’s fields reliably produce more than 20. That copious output is made all the more remarkable by the other side of…

Then and now Researchers identify gorillas by their distinctive noseprints. Digit (above), an intimidating silverback and a Fossey favorite, became the namesake of her campaign to raise money after he was killed. In April trackers with the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International found Fasha (below), a juvenile, entangled in a snare. Veterinarians with Gorilla Doctors removed the trap, likely saving his life. New challenges Farmers from Bisate village near Volcanoes National Park have become inured to mountain gorillas leaving the forest to feed on bamboo, planted as building material. Sometimes gorillas from the Titus group even sleep outside the park, increasing their risk of contracting a deadly disease from humans or livestock.…

I have been working in the American Southwest for nearly 40 years. In 2004 I came across something I hadn’t seen before: a blue barrel with a plain blue flag on a pole, with “agua” written on the side and several gallons of water inside. I photographed it because it was so unexpected, and it haunted me. In 2009—as I became aware of an increase in the building of walls and surveillance towers and other government activities along the 1,954-mile-long U.S. border with Mexico—I began photographing in earnest. That’s also when I discovered that the original barrel was a water station placed by a humanitarian group to help prevent the dehydration and death of migrants crossing the border. The way I have always worked is by focusing on the landscape.…