Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2021 i National Geographic Magazine

IT’S HARD TO IMAGINE places more different from one another than Delhi, India; Mexico City, Mexico; and Gary, Indiana. Yet years after I visited those cities, they’re indelibly linked in my memory for one reason: the foul, polluted air smothering their landscapes. The pollution was so heavy you could see it wafting through the interiors of modern buildings (Delhi, 2016), feel it stinging your eyes (Mexico City, 1972), and smell it through closed car windows (Gary, the 1960s). Despite its ubiquity, or perhaps because of it, air pollution has rarely gotten the sustained attention it deserves. That’s an outrage, given that air pollution is a global killer, causing an astonishing seven million premature deaths every year. But it’s also an opportunity, because this is an environmental problem that we actually…

WHEN AKIKO KAWA I returned to Japan after studying political management in Washington, D.C., she was convinced that the harsh realm of campaigning and lobbying could learn from the world of tea. “The core spirit of Japanese tea culture is harmony,” Kawai says. In 2017 she founded Sakura Cha Meet, a global NGO specializing in “tea diplomacy,” a concept dating to World War II that aims to bridge political divides by the act of sharing a cup of tea. Since then, she’s hosted ceremonies from Texas to Israel—and online, to accommodate social distancing in the time of COVID-19.…

WHEN COVID-19 began tearing around the globe, Francesca Dominici suspected air pollution was increasing the death toll. It was the logical conclusion of everything scientists knew about dirty air and everything they were learning about the novel coronavirus. People in polluted places are more likely to have chronic illnesses, and such patients are the most vulnerable to COVID-19. What’s more, air pollution can weaken the immune system and inflame the airways, leaving the body less able to fight off a respiratory virus. Many experts saw the possible connection, but Dominici, a biostatistics professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, was especially well equipped to test it. She and her colleagues have spent years creating an extraordinary data platform, one that aligns information on the health of tens…

People in some of the world’s most populous countries—China, India, Pakistan—breathe the most polluted air. This map of some of the most affected parts of the globe shows readings of PM2.5, or fine-particulate matter, recorded over several months in 2020, with the highest readings selected for each place. The geographic disparity is clear: Of the world’s 50 most polluted cities, nearly all are in Asia, though the exceptional wildfires in the western U.S. briefly led to similar pollution levels in 2020. WHEN THE U.S. RANKED AMONG THE WORST In September 2020 the West Coast had some of the worst air pollution in the world because of raging wildfires. It saw levels of PM2.5 typically associated with large cities in Asia, such as Delhi, India. †BASED ON ANNUAL MEAN PM2.5 CONCENTRATIONS,…

‘Welcome to panther country,’ Brian Kelly says when I meet him at a busy intersection in East Naples, Florida, a stone’s throw from a gas station and an urgent care center. Kelly, a state panther biologist, points east into the sprawling subdivision where he lives. A panther was caught on camera just a quarter mile away, he says, and another one made it across the six-lane road we’re standing beside. Yet another panther, an eight-year-old female named FP224, lives nearby. She’s been hit by a car twice, breaking a leg each time. She was treated by veterinarians and released after both accidents. To look for signs of her, we drive to Kelly’s house, next to a patch of forest where she recently denned and birthed at least three kittens. It’s the…

I NEVER IMAGINED I would appear in a Mount Everest photo—but here I am (at left) wrapped in a down suit and oxygen mask, 400 feet below the summit. This may sound like an unlikely admission for a professional climber who’s spent the past two decades pursuing summits all over the world. Many consider a selfie from the highest point on the planet to be the ultimate trophy. To get it, more than a few people have risked everything—including life savings and relationships—and, tragically, many have died on the descent, with their precious images still locked in their cameras. But over the years, the idea of an expedition to Everest repelled me. The mountain came to represent the opposite of everything that I loved and respected about climbing. The first…

DRAWING FEWER THAN 10,000 visitors a year—just a fraction of those at other U.S. national parks—this remote landscape lies in the Alaska interior, entirely above the Arctic Circle. Its more than 8.4 million acres give intrepid adventurers plenty of room to roam. GETTING AROUND Established in 1980 to protect undeveloped land—including part of the Brooks Range—and subsistence use by Indigenous people, Gates of the Arctic National Park challenges even the hardiest of travelers. Since there are no roads, most visitors fly from the communities of Bettles, Coldfoot, or Anaktuvuk Pass, then journey on foot or by rivercraft, skis, or dogsled. Those without extensive backcountry experience should consider a guided trip. NATURAL WONDERS The park’s dramatic vistas shelter a wide variety of animals. From May through July, the constant sunlight means…

LONGTIME RESIDENTS of Los Angeles remember the days when the mountains around the city were all but invisible. Today they’re a central part of its craggy beauty. It’s not just Southern California. Thanks to the Clean Air Act of 1970, air across the United States has gotten 77 percent cleaner—even as the population, the economy, and the number of cars on the road have grown. That improvement has lengthened millions of lives, saved trillions of dollars, and made the country a global air pollution success story. The landmark law was a bipartisan achievement, winning unanimous Senate approval and passing the House of Representatives with just one “no” vote. Its success stems from its focus on scientific evidence, accountability, and ambitious, health-based goals. “The Clean Air Act remains the most powerful…

ON A RURAL HIGHWAY in Northern California, a July traveler’s tire went flat. Metal rim scraped against pavement. The sparks ignited a fire that ripped through dry forest, whirled into flame tornadoes, and roared over tens of thousands of acres, making fuel of everything in its path. When it jumped the Sacramento River and headed for the city of Redding, Keith Bein prepped his new rig—a trailer holding two tiny electric cars, a lot of tubes and instrumentation, and a white contraption that looks like a miniature lighthouse. Bein works as an atmospheric scientist at the University of California, Davis campus, about 150 miles south of Redding. By the time he hooked the loaded trailer to his truck and began driving upstate, the 2018 Carr Fire—those sparks ignited near a…

Florida’s panther population is expanding, but struggling, in its human-dominated habitat. Because each cat may need up to 200 square miles of territory, the species must extend its range within the state and beyond to survive. As they push north, the cats face many dangers, from highways to hunters. To help panthers roam, conservationists have created a network of protected habitat on public and private lands throughout the state’s interior, called the Florida Wildlife Corridor. Ranchers own much of this private land and generally support panther conservation.…

Aretha Franklin’s genius redefined music and spanned genres, helping her amass 73 hits—songs ranked in a week’s 100 most popular by Billboard—over her 60-year career. Today her timeless talent still shines bright among the top seven female hitmakers of all time. Taylor Swift 128 hits 124 lead/4 featured First hit “Tim McGraw” (2006) “Closure” (2020) Swift, who started her career in country music before expanding into pop, is the lead performer on almost all her hits. Aretha Franklin 73 hits 73 lead First hit “Won’t Be Long” (1961) “Here We Go Again” (1998) Franklin held the record for the most hits by a female artist for 40 years, 1977 to 2017. Nicki Minaj 114 hits 51 lead/63 featured First hit “Knockout” (2010) “What That Speed Bout!?” (2020) Minaj is featured…

DETRACTORS MAY deride mathematics as difficult, abstract, rigid, boring. But to admirers, mathematics is fascinating, creative, even an art form—and its canvases are chalkboards covered with scribbles, an odd mix of therapy and ingenuity known as board work Photographer Jessica Wynne learned about the beauty of mathematics from her summer neighbors on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Both of them are theoretical mathematicians, and when their friends—also theoretical mathematicians—came over, Wynne noticed that chalkboard ponderings were how they communicated complex ideas and worked out knotty problems. They used chalkboards to collaborate and spar and, most of all, to explore the boundaries of known mathematics. Some described it as meditation. In a world with plenty of paper, whiteboard, and digital screen space, why chalk? “That’s like asking a painter why they paint with…

DISPATCHES FROM THE FRONT LINES OF SCIENCE AND INNOVATION Light-as-air solar collectors In solar cell technology, what does ultralightweight mean? Thin and flexible enough to rest on a soap bubble. The cells can capture energy from indoor or outdoor light, their makers say, and could help power medical skin patches, sensors for drones, and other devices too slight for heavy batteries. —JS IT SEEMS INCONGRUOUS: fluorescent-green tropical birds totally at home in a park in Hesse, Germany (above). Are they fugitives from a tearoom or a pirate ship? No—just opportunistic avians that escaped or were released into the wild and quickly multiplied. Rose-ringed parakeets, native to South Asia, were sold as pets until trade in wild birds was banned in the U.S. and Europe. Now they and monk parakeets have…

IT WAS SPRINGTIME near Dongara, in Western Australia, and biologists Darryl Gwynne and David Rentz were conducting field research on insect species. At one spot by the road was a discarded beer bottle—the squat variety known in Australia as a stubbie, with bands of small bumps adorning its brown glass. And clinging to the empty bottle was an insect: a member of the jewel beetle family bent on copulation, attempting to insert its sexual organ into the bottle. Since Gwynne and Rentz witnessed that in 1981, other observers have documented the behavior on social media. It’s identified as an example of supernormal stimuli, in which a stimulus elicits an exaggerated response. In this case, the provocateur is the stubbie: The male beetle apparently mistakes the bottle for a giant female…

LONG BEFORE SUNRISE Tegh Singh arrives at his flower farm on the banks of the Ganges. He circles the rose shrubs, plucks blossoms at peak bouquet, and tosses the pink petals into a jute sack slung over his shoulder. By the time the first rays of sunlight skim across the river, 35-year-old Singh is on his motorcycle, ferrying his harvest to the small city of Kannauj, known as the perfume capital of India. For more than 400 years, and through time-tested distillation methods, Kannauj has been crafting oil-based botanical perfumes called attar. Sought after by Mughal royals—as well as everyday folk—in ancient India’s fragrance-obsessed culture, attar has recently awakened a new generation to the allure of its sensual scents. Unlike modern perfumes, which have alcohol as a carrier—because it’s inexpensive,…

LEADING POLLUTANTS PM2.5 Factories, vehicle exhaust, waste and wood burning, and wildfires are common sources. These fine particles can travel to the alveoli and reach the bloodstream. PM10 Sources include road dust, wildfires, and vehicle exhaust. Particles can get trapped in the nose and upper airway; our bodies clear them by sneezing or coughing. Nitrogen dioxide NO2 primarily comes from the burning of fossil fuels by vehicles and power plants. It irritates the airways and can lead to the development of asthma. Ozone Ground-level ozone is created when vehicle and industry emissions chemically react in sunlight. Inhaling it can trigger chest pain, coughing, throat irritation, and inflammation. Sulfur dioxide The burning of fossil fuels by power plants and other industrial facilities is the largest source of SO2; natural sources include…

As part of Sinclair’s work against gender-based exploitation and violence, in 2016 she visited a school in Bihar state that aims to break the bonds of caste and inequality for the girls who live and study there. Sinclair bunked in a school office so she could stay for several days. She photographed girls in their daily routines, watching them find their identities and confidence. A few of the school’s graduates have gone on to college, with ambitions of becoming lawyers and doctors. WHO A photographer who covers the exploitation of girls, Sinclair also leads Too Young to Wed, a nonprofit working against gender-based violence. WHERE Kasturba Gandhi Girls School in Bihar, India WHAT A Canon 5DSR camera and 24-105mm lens This page showcases images from National Geographic’s Instagram accounts—the most…