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What is Space Exploration Doing for You?

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What is Space Exploration Doing for You?

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What Is Space Exploration Doing For You?

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History for kids - Free history network for kids

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Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Atomic Bomb

Background

Before the war, many scientists had been investigating the possibility of generating energy and even weapons from the atom, the building block of the universe and everything that surrounds us.

The famous scientist Albert Einstein represented these leading thinkers by writing to the American president Franklin Roosevelt in August 1939.

He told him about their ideas and the danger of the Nazis in Germany developing such a bomb for military use.

Roosevelt responded by setting up a group of experts to develop the idea in the United States.

The idea only really got going after the Japanese bombed the American Naval Base at Pearl Harbour in December 1941.

Other countries also saw the appeal in having a very powerful weapon that would prevent their soldiers being killed in large numbers, as well as being able to stop enemies from making possible attacks on them.

These countries included Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union. However, none of them were able to make the bomb before the Americans.

Between 1941 and 1945, the scientist, Robert Oppenheimer, led a group of experts on the Manhattan Project with the aim of making the world's first atomic bomb.

Many of the people on Oppenheimer's team were scientists who had escaped Nazi Germany.

They all worked at a special research site at Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

The decision to use the bomb

Throughout the war, Allied forces heavily bombed Japan killing hundreds of thousands of people. But the Japanese survived these attacks and were still very strong.

They refused to surrender and so President Harry Truman thought about a possible invasion of the country.

The Japanese army was huge and the President knew that he would lose hundreds of thousands of men, if he embarked on such a plan.

So, in July 1945, Truman offered the Japanese the chance to surrender.

He knew that the bomb had now been completed and effectively tested in the New Mexico desert and was ready for use.

The Japanese wanted to negotiate the conditions of surrender and refused to give in to the demands of the Allies.

Hiroshima

The Americans targeted Hiroshima because it had not yet been hit by their air raids.

This meant that it would be a better testing ground to examine the effects of the atomic bomb over a particular area. Hiroshima also had an important military base.

On the morning of the 6th of August 1945, Paul Tibbets flew an American B29 bomber plane, called 'Enola Gay', over the Japanese city of Hiroshima and dropped the bomb named 'Little Boy' at 08:16 am local time.

The explosion was devastating and instantly wiped out the entire city. 140,000 people were killed at the time of the explosion and by the end of 1945.

The intense heat of the blast led to fires throughout the city which continued for three days, making survival more difficult for those who were not killed in the initial explosion.

Nagasaki

On the 9th of August, Charles Sweeney piloted a second mission on another B29 called Bockscar with the 'Fat Man' bomb, as it was known.

The main target of the bomb was in fact another Japanese city, Kokura. Due to cloud and smoke over Kokura, visibility was poor and Japanese fighter planes were drawing near.

So the pilot decided to target the city of Nagasaki as an alternative.

Nagasaki was picked due to the fact that it was an important port.

The bomb was dropped.

It was not as devastating as the Hiroshima bomb, but thousands of people died with the total reaching around 70,000 by the end of the year.

Several days later, on the 14th of August 1945, Japan gave its unconditional surrender to the Allies.

At noon the next day, Emperor Hirohito told the Japanese people of the decision.

Consequences

The atomic bomb changed the world forever after the end of the war.

As well as the high number of people who lost their lives, those who survived the blast suffered from terrible illness.

Several years after the war, the Americans and Soviets had created even more powerful hydrogen bombs which could now be fired at long-range targets all over the world, using missiles.

These new bombs made ordinary people fearful that one day there might be an all out war causing mass destruction.

Many people fought against nuclear weapons and still do. But they were unable to stop leaders developing more and more weapons.

Despite the fears, the two main powers after the war, America and the Soviet Union, never used the weapons even though there were many close calls.

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Hiroshima and Nagasaki - History for kids

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Atomic Bomb Background Before the war, many scientists had been investigating the possibility of generating energy and even weapons from the atom, the building block of the universe and everything that surrounds us. The famous scientist Albert Einstein represented these leading thinkers by writing to the American president Franklin Roosevelt in August 1939.

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Greta Thunberg’s speech at UN climate change conference

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What your food would look like if it weren't genetically modified

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What your food would look like if it weren't genetically modified

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Next time you bite into a slice of watermelon or a cob of corn, consider this: These familiar fruits and veggies didn't always look and taste this way.

Genetically modified foods, or GMOs, inspire strong reactions nowadays, but humans have been tweaking the genetics of our favorite produce for millennia.

While GMOs may involve splicing genes from other organisms (such as bacteria) to give plants desired traits - like resistance to pests, selective breeding is a slower process whereby farmers select and grow crops with those traits over time.

From bananas to eggplant, here are some of the foods that looked totally different before humans first started growing them for food.

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Here's what your food would look like if it weren't genetically modified over millennia

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Bet you've never seen fruits and veggies that look like these before.

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The Unknown About the Unsinkable Titanic

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The Unknown About the Unsinkable Titanic

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The Unknown About The Unsinkable Titanic

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Did more than just the iceberg lead the "unsinkable" Titanic to sink?

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For more than 50 years, NASA's Human Research Program (HRP) has studied what happens to the human body in space. Researchers are using what they learn to design procedures, devices, and strategies to keep astronauts safe and healthy throughout their missions.

NASA engineers use the lessons learned to better design spacecraft and improve the fit and functions of spacesuits. The research also aids in the development and assessment of medical standards, physical fitness programs and standards, physiological and psychological adaptation training, sensorimotor training, and nutritional health protocols.

Understanding the effects of spaceflight on humans is essential as astronauts move from the International Space Station in low-Earth orbit to deep space destinations on and around the Moon, and beyond. With the Artemis program, NASA will land the first woman and next man on the Moon using innovative technologies to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before, gathering new data while keeping astronauts healthy and safe.

NASA is particularly interested in investigating how the body reacts to long-duration spaceflight as the agency plans for extended missions on the Moon and Mars. Scott Kelly and Christina Koch were the first American astronauts to spend nearly one year in space onboard the space station, twice the previous average. Scott, Christina, and seven other astronauts have spent more than 200 days in space during a single spaceflight.

In addition to spending almost a year in space, Scott was involved in the unique Twins Study. Scott participated in several biomedical studies onboard the space station while his identical twin brother, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, stayed on Earth as a control subject, someone who provides a basis of comparison.

The study provided valuable data about what happened to Scott, physiologically and psychologically, as compared to his brother Mark. Their contribution to science helped generate data that researchers will use for decades to come.

NASA is planning more dedicated extended-duration research on the space station. The studies are expected to shed light on how the body adapts to living in the spaceflight environment for various longer time periods, which will be pivotal for future deep space missions.

What exactly happens to the body in space and what are the risks? Are the risks the same for astronauts who spend six months on the space station versus those who may be away on a Mars mission for years?

The simple answer is: No. NASA is researching risks for Mars missions which are grouped into five human spaceflight hazards related to the stressors they place on the body. These can be summarized with the acronym " RIDGE," short for Space Radiation, Isolation and Confinement, Distance from Earth, Gravity fields, and Hostile/Closed Environments.

Space Radiation

On Earth, we are shielded by the planet's magnetic field and atmosphere from the majority of particles that make up the space radiation environment. Even so, everyone on Earth is exposed to low levels of radiation every day, from the food we eat to the air we breathe.

In space, astronauts are exposed to varied and increased levels of radiation that are different from those on Earth. Three major sources contribute to the space radiation environment: particles trapped in Earth's magnetic field, solar energetic particles from the Sun, and galactic cosmic rays.

A big challenge in reducing the risks of radiation exposure is that some space radiation particles (especially galactic cosmic rays) are difficult to shield against. Exposure to increased radiation can be associated with both short- and long-term health consequences, depending on how much total radiation astronauts experience and the time frame in which they experience that exposure.

Increased risk of cancer and degenerative diseases, such as heart disease and cataracts, have been observed in human populations exposed to radiation on Earth. Health risks for astronauts from radiation exposure in space are mainly driven by long-term impacts.

Additionally, animal and cellular research indicate that the type of radiation in the space environment has a larger impact on health outcomes compared to the radiation experienced on Earth. Not only will astronauts be exposed to more radiation in space than on Earth, but the radiation they are exposed to could pose increased risks.

The Key: The current strategy to reduce the health risks of space radiation exposure is to implement shielding, radiation monitoring, and specific operational procedures. Compared to typical six-month space station missions, later Moon and Mars missions will be much longer on average. Consequently, the total amount of radiation experienced and associated health risks may increase.

NASA is developing new radiation detectors to monitor and characterize the radiation environment, which will provide better estimates of the dose and type of radiation to which the crews are exposed. Scientists and engineers are optimizing and implementing operational procedures that use available vehicle stowage and materials to reduce radiation exposure effectively.

To investigate the health risks of space radiation exposure beyond low-Earth orbit, NASA supports research that analyzes the biological effects of simulated cosmic rays at ground-based research facilities. Research at these facilities helps NASA understand and reduce the risk of space radiation, ensure proper measurement of the doses that astronauts receive on the space station and in future spacecraft, and develop advanced materials that improve radiation shielding for future missions.

Studies of radiation-exposed human cohorts are also being conducted to estimate the health risks in populations relevant to astronauts.

Isolation and Confinement

Expedition crews selected for a stay onboard the space station are carefully chosen, trained, and supported to ensure they will be able to work effectively as a team for the duration of their six to 12-month missions. Crews for a Moon or Mars mission will undergo even more careful assessment, selection, and preparation since they will travel farther and potentially for longer than previous humans in an isolated and confined environment, with only a few other people. Additionally, crews will likely be international and multi-cultural, making cross-cultural sensitivity and team dynamics paramount to mission success.

Ensuring astronauts get quality sleep is also important; otherwise, their internal biological clocks, or circadian rhythm, might be altered by factors like different dark and light cycles, a small and noisy environment, the stress of prolonged isolation and confinement, and a 37-minute extended day on Mars.

It is important to prepare for the fatigue astronauts may experience during spaceflight, given that there will be times with heavy workloads and shifting schedules. To prevent crew boredom, NASA considers the kinds of activities in which the astronauts will participate during a multi-year round trip to Mars.

Communication and understanding among crew members are vital to the success of the mission, and changes in morale and motivation are possible as the mission unfolds. This may relate to reduced stimulation, the longing for loved ones, or feeling unable to assist with family emergencies back on Earth, regardless of how long the mission lasts.

Using spaceflight analogs on Earth, NASA's research has revealed that both the duration and type of confined and isolated experience are important to consider. The more restricted the space, and the less contact with people outside the environment, the more likely humans are to develop behavioral or cognitive conditions or psychiatric disorders.

The Key: NASA has been studying people in isolated and confined environments for years, and has developed methods and technologies to counteract possible problems.

NASA scientists are using devices, such as actigraphy, that help assess and improve sleep and alertness by recording how much people move and how much ambient light is around them. New lighting, spurred by the development of Light-Emitting Diode (LED) technology, is used on the space station to help align astronaut's circadian rhythms and to improve sleep, alertness, and performance.

A 10-minute self-test of vigilance and attention assesses the effect of fatigue on performance. Astronauts write in journals as a safe place to vent frustrations and provide researchers a tool to study behavioral issues that are on the minds of crew members who are living and working in isolation and confinement.

Researchers are also looking into using virtual reality to simulate relaxing environments to help improve the mood of crews in isolation. Engaging in relevant, meaningful activities, including learning a language or learning new medical skills, could help ward off depression and boost morale. Crews may even tend to a space garden, which could have positive behavioral health benefits in addition to providing a fresh source of food and helping to purify the air.

Researchers are using Earth-based analogs to investigate how muchprivacy and living space will be needed on longer missions where crew members will be restricted in a relatively small spacecraft together. NASA is also determining strategies to formulate the best crew by studying individual and team attributes, composition, and dynamics.

Distance from Earth

The space station orbits 240 miles above Earth. The Moon is 1,000 times farther from Earth than the space station. In contrast, Mars is on average 140 million miles from Earth. With a communication delay of up to 20 minutes one-way while on Mars, astronauts must be able to solve problems and identify solutions as a team without help from NASA's mission control.

The types of food and medicine to be packed for a multi-year trip without access to a grocery store or pharmacy are also important to consider. Unlike space station crews, which regularly receive supplies from cargo flights from Earth, astronauts going to Mars will have to bring all of the food, equipment, and medical supplies they need.

The Key: NASA is using its human spaceflight experience on the space station to figure out what types of medical events happen in space over time and what types of skills, procedures, equipment, and supplies are needed so that they will have a good idea of what to pack for future missions to the Moon and Mars.

Space station astronauts already receive medical training before and during space missions that teach them how to respond to health problems as they arise. For example, astronauts learn how to use onboard space station equipment to produce an intravenous (IV) solution from purified water, which can be used for medical administration.

Crew members also perform ultrasound scans on each other to monitor organ health. If one crew member becomes sick during the mission, crews are ready to perform laboratory testing to help make the right diagnosis and guide treatment.

NASA is working on developing a medical data architecture for spacecraft that enables the capabilities of clinical decision support tools, which could use artificial intelligence and machine learning to further help diagnose and treat various illnesses. Researchers are also looking into the role that virtual assistants could play to help crews identify and respond to spaceflight anomalies quickly for more distant missions.

Additionally, the agency is studying and improving food formulation, processing, packaging, and preservation systems to ensure the nutrients remain stable and the food remains acceptable for years. Space-resilient medications and packaging systems that preserve the integrity of pharmaceuticals for long-duration missions are another significant part of NASA's research.

Gravity Fields

Astronauts will encounter three different gravity fields on a Mars mission. On the six-month trek between the planets, crews will be weightless. While living and working on Mars, crews will be in approximately one-third of Earth's gravity. Finally upon returning home, crews will have to readapt to Earth's gravity.

Transitioning from one gravity field to another is trickier than it sounds. It affects spatial orientation, head-eye and hand-eye coordination, balance, and locomotion, with some crew members experiencing space motion sickness.

Landing a spacecraft on Mars could be challenging as astronauts adjust to the gravity field of another celestial body. When shifting from weightlessness to gravity, astronauts may experience post-flight orthostatic intolerance where they are unable to maintain their blood pressure when standing up, which can lead to lightheadedness and fainting.

NASA has learned that without Earth's gravity affecting the human body, weight-bearing bones lose on average 1% to 1.5% of mineral density per month during spaceflight. After returning to Earth, bone loss might not be completely corrected by rehabilitation; however, their risk for fracture is not higher. Without the proper diet and exercise routine, astronauts also lose muscle mass in microgravity faster than they would on Earth.

Moreover, the fluids in the body shift upward to the head in microgravity, which may put pressure on the eyes and cause vision problems. If preventive or countermeasures are not implemented, crews may experience an increased risk of developing kidney stones due to dehydration and increased excretion of calcium from their bones.

The Key: By analyzing how the body changes in weightlessness and after returning to Earth's gravity, NASA is developing protective measures against these changes for a Mars mission.

Functional task testing is in place to help detect and improve balance control after landing on a gravitational surface. Fine motor skill testing is done to detect any changes in the ability of astronauts to interact with computer-based devices.

Distribution of the fluids in the body is closely monitored to help evaluate any connection to changes in vision. Compression cuffs worn on the thighs help keep the blood in the lower extremities to counteract those fluid shifts. A lower-body negative pressure device could help draw fluids from the head into the legs as well.

Back pain, which some astronauts have reported experiencing during spaceflight, is monitored by obtaining spinal ultrasounds. Muscle size and bone density are assessed for deterioration using MRI and high-resolution imaging techniques, before and after flight. Crew members perform periodic fitness self-evaluations to help researchers better understand the decline in heart function that can occur during spaceflight.

Medicines that NASA is studying, such as potassium citrate, may help combat the physiological change that could increase the risk of developing kidney stones. Bisphosphonate medications have been shown in NASA studies to be effective in preventing bone loss.

NASA has also designed an efficient way to collect and measure how much urine a crew member produces in space, which is essential to human research since it reveals key information about a person's health. For example, researchers can analyze different levels of certain substances in an astronaut's urine to determine whether they are at risk of developing a kidney stone in space, and make modifications to the diet, exercise routine, and water intake as preventive measures.

Aerobic and resistive exercise has been shown to keep the heart healthy, bones and muscles strong, the mind alert, as well as maintain a more positive outlook, and may even help with balance and coordination. Software-generated workout partners could be used to help motivate astronauts to exercise regularly for longer space missions. NASA has even completed a joint Earth-based bed rest study to determine whether centrifuge artificial gravity may be an effective way to counter the physiological effects of weightlessness.

Hostile/Closed Environments

NASA has learned that the ecosystem inside the spacecraft plays a big role in everyday astronaut life in space. Microbes can change characteristics in space, and micro-organisms that naturally live on the human body are transferred more easily from person to person in closed habitats, such as the space station. Stress hormone levels are elevated and the immune system is altered, which could lead to increased susceptibility to allergies or other illnesses.

Earth-based analogs do not perfectly simulate the spaceflight environment, making them insufficient for studying on the ground how human immune systems react in space. However, NASA-funded Antarctic analog studies could provide insight into how certain spaceflight stressors may affect the human immune system. What is known is that spaceflight changes the immune system, although crews do not tend to get sick upon returning to Earth. Even though astronauts' acquired immunity is intact, more research is needed into whether spaceflight induced altered immunity may lead to autoimmune issues, in which the immune system mistakenly attacks the healthy cells, organs, and tissues present in the body.

Beyond the effects of the environment on the immune system, every inch and detail of living and working quarters must be carefully thought-out and designed. No one wants their house to be too hot, too cold, cramped, crowded, loud, or not well lit, and no one would enjoy working and living in such a habitat in space either.

The Key: NASA is using technology to monitor the air quality of the space station to ensure the atmosphere is safe to breathe and not contaminated with gases, such as formaldehyde, ammonia, and carbon monoxide. Thermal Control Systems function to maintain temperatures of the space station and keep astronauts comfortable.

Blood and saliva samples are analyzed to identify changes in the immune system and the reactivation of latent viruses during spaceflight. NASA uses advanced molecular techniques to evaluate the risk of microbes that may cause illness for crew members. Various parts of the body and the space station are swabbed regularly for analysis of the microbial population that inhabits the environment. Crews change out air filters, clean surfaces, and treat the water to prevent illnesses that may result from the accumulation of contaminants.

Astronauts are advised to get a flu shot to boost their immunity and are quarantined before their missions to avoid catching any sort of illness before launch. During the Twins Study and One-Year Mission, Scott Kelly administered a flu vaccine to himself while his brother received his on Earth. The immunization proved to work as well in space as it does on Earth, which is a good finding for longer missions to the Moon and Mars.

Living quarters and work environments are carefully planned and evaluated to ensure that designs balance comfort and efficiency. Lighting onboard the space station is similar to what would be experienced naturally on Earth, thanks to the new LED lighting system.

NASA is taking action on all of these risks and working to solve the challenges of human spaceflight with some of the most brilliant minds in their fields. The results garnered from laboratories, ground analogs, and space station missions will provide more insight into these adaptations and present a stepping stone for longer missions.

On upcoming Artemis missions to lunar orbit and the surface of the Moon, even more data will be collected as this work continues. On future longer duration missions to the Moon and Mars, astronauts will benefit from years of research that will ensure they will be able not just to survive, but thrive on their spacefaring missions.

Click here for an infographic summarizing the risks of human spaceflight and the safeguards against them.
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NASA's Human Research Program, or HRP, pursues the best methods and technologies to support safe, productive human space travel. Through science conducted in laboratories, ground-based analogs, and the International Space Station, HRP scrutinizes how spaceflight affects human bodies and behaviors. Such research drives HRP's quest to innovate ways that keep astronauts healthy and mission-ready as space travel expands to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
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For more than 50 years, NASA's Human Research Program has studied what happens to the human body in space.

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Physics for Kids: Nuclear Energy and Fission

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Physics for Kids: Nuclear Energy and Fission

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Kids learn about nuclear energy and fission in the science of physics including E=mc2, power plants, uses of nuclear power, and fusion.

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Greta Thunberg: Who is the climate activist and what has she achieved?

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The climate activist has been arrested in Sweden and the UK as a result of her protests.

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Unrecognizable girl playing game on tablet computer
Getty

It's perhaps one of the biggest parenting faux pas of the 21st century: letting any of our ubiquitous screens act as babysitter. But new research out of Oxford, Cardiff and Cambridge Universities finds that screen time in moderation actually seems to have a positive effect on kids.

The researchers found that children who spend one to two hours daily watching television or using digital devices had higher levels of social and emotional well-being versus those who reported no screen time.

"In light of our findings, calls for blanket technology bans and age restrictions on technology access do not constitute evidence-based or indeed ethical advice, particularly as screen usage in some cases has a net positive impact," said Professor Andrew Przybylski, Director of Research at the Oxford Internet Institute, in a release.

Przybylski is lead author of the new study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.

The research is based on survey data from questionnaires filled out by the caregivers of over 35,000 American children about their screen time and observable psychosocial functioning.

Some interesting data points include:

On average children spend one hour and 41 minutes engaged in television-based activities such as gaming and viewing films;

On average, children spend one hour and 53 minutes engaged in device-based activities using tablets and smartphones;

Children could watch over four hours of television-based activities before showing any signs of functioning difficulties;

Children could engage in over five hours of device-based activities before exhibiting significant functioning difficulties.

It's worth noting here that all this data is based on the subjective reporting of the caregivers that were surveyed, which could be prone to considerable biases given the close relationships between caregiver and child.

"We urge others to build on our findings which show the possible influence of digital screen engagement is likely to be smaller and more nuanced that many might first expect," said Dr. Amy Orben, a college research fellow at the University of Cambridge.

Still, this surprising finding, even if preliminary, challenges the popular narrative that screen time is zombie-fying our kids. Could it be the case that society has shifted in recent decades enough that functioning in society may actually require a certain amount of screen time? Or was it just never really a big problem in the first place?

"Very few children, if any, routinely use television and device-based screens enough, on average, to show significantly lower levels of psychological functioning," Przybylski says. "Instead these findings indicate that other aspects of digital engagement, including what is on screens and how caregivers moderate their use, are far more important."

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website.

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Screen Time May Actually Be Good For Kids, New Oxford Study Finds

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New research out of Oxford, Cardiff and Cambridge Universities finds that screen time in moderation actually seems to have a positive effect on kids.

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NASA is Hoping for Potatoes to Take Root on Mars

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NASA is Hoping for Potatoes to Take Root on Mars

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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New CGI of How Titanic Sank | Titanic 100

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How big is space? Interactive infographic

Our top 12 stories of 2014 - #3: Fancy riding a rocket through our Solar System?

Then check out our amazing interactive infographic.

To celebrate our second anniversary, we've created an interactive version of a previous infographic, which is so big, it's too big for this page.

This time round you get to pilot a rocket through the Solar System. There's even more information packed into this graphic: you'll see how close comets have come to our planet; what is the farthest travelled by a human being; how long the trip will take if you were on the Starship Enterprise... as well as a few surprises too.

So buckle up and scroll (and scroll... and scroll) through our interactive infographic of space to explore our cosmic neighbourhood.

If you would like to comment on this, or anything else you have seen on Future, head over to our Facebook or Google+ page, or message us on Twitter.

Copyright 2023 BBC. All rights reserved. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.

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In case of conflict between these Beta Terms and the BBC Terms of Use these Beta Terms shall prevail.

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Buckle up and ride a rocket through the Solar System to explore our cosmic neighbourhood.

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The Hiroshima bombing: What you need to know about the nuclear attack

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The Hiroshima bombing: What you need to know about the nuclear attack

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What you need to know about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima

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On Friday, President Obama will visit Hiroshima, Japan, becoming the only sitting U.S. president ever to visit the first city targeted in a nuclear attack. More than 70 years have passed since a U.S. B29 dropped the atomic bomb known as “Little Boy” on the city. Here is some background o…

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What's the Difference Between Weather and Climate?

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What's the Difference Between Weather and Climate?

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What's the difference between weather and climate?

Watch this video to find out--and to learn about how NASA satellites are keeping an eye on conditions on Earth!

Download a poster of this animation!

Download the poster! (Printable as 8.5 x 11 inches or 11 x 17 inches)

Video transcript:

Take a look outside your window.

Is it hot and sunny?

Is it cloudy and rainy?

Is there snow on the ground?

When you look out the window, you're seeing what the weather is like today.

Weather is only temporary. For example, a blizzard can turn into a flood after just a few warm spring days.

Climate, on the other hand, is more than just a few warm or cool days.

Climate describes the typical weather conditions in an entire region for a very long time-30 years or more.

Keeping an eye on changing weather can help us plan ahead.

We know that if thunderclouds are forming overhead, it's probably a good idea to stay inside.

But it's important to keep an eye on changes in Earth's climate, too. And NASA has observed that Earth is getting warmer.

Keeping track of Earth's sea level is one way that we can know how quickly the climate is changing.

As Earth's climate warms, ice in Antarctica and Greenland is melting. This causes the level of the oceans to rise.

NASA satellites can measure sea level rise from space.

They can also track changes in the climate by measuring the clouds.

We know that changes in the number, size or location of clouds could be caused by a change in Earth's climate.

NASA satellites are always orbiting Earth, looking down at our oceans and clouds. And they monitor Earth's climate in other ways, too.

It's important to keep an eye on our planet and all the ways that it's changing. Right now, it's the only one we've got!

Find out more about our Earth at NASA Climate Kids!

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What's the Difference Between Weather and Climate?

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Watch this video to find out--and to learn about how NASA satellites are keeping an eye on conditions on Earth!

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Andrew Przybylski of the Oxford Internet Institute thinks that's way off base. In a controversial new study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, he and colleagues don't just swipe at the predominant thinking that kids should be exposed to as little screen time as possible-they argue that moderate screen time is actually good for kids.

The study set out to test two ideas. "The first was to test if there were 'optimal' levels of screen time in young people," Przybylski said via email. "The second was to look for a critical value, or tipping point, at which screen engagement was significantly related to well-being outcomes."

Przybylski, along with his colleagues, found "modest positive relations" when kids used devices and/or watched television for up to two hours a day. Contrary to medical recommendations, the team reported that kids would need to be using screens "for more than five hours a day" before parents would notice any differences.

The study's findings are based on data from more than 35,000 American children and caregivers and reported by the National Survey of Children's Health via the US Census Bureau between June 2016 and February 2017. Przybylski says his analysis suggests that children who are using a digital device-a television, video game console, tablet, laptop, smartphone, or any other gadget with a screen-have better social and emotional skills than kids who don't use this technology.

The research overturns dominant thinking about screen time, which has overwhelmingly pointed to worrisome increases in rates of depression, anxiety, and suicidal tendencies.

Jean Twenge is one of the most prominent critics of letting children have screen time and the author of the book , which argues that technology is making kids less happy. She said in an email she found the study "very strange," particularly because she and her colleagues used the same census data as Przybylski in a paper last year and found the opposite results: heavy screen use led to almost three times the rate of psychosocial issues in kids. Przybylski's interpretation of the same data was that the differences between heavy and light use were small, a discrepancy Twenge said was puzzling.

Przybylski stood firmly by his team's results despite the criticism, even going so far as to suggest that previous research in the area has been statistically suspect. "Nearly all the studies on this topic are very poorly done; most don't share their data, code, or conform to best research practices," he said. "More than results, what sets our research ... apart is an emphasis on empirical rigor."

Twenge conceded that her statistical methods were up for debate, but she stood by her overall conclusion that screen time was unhealthy for children. The data "do not show benefits for moderate use," she said. "Instead, the best outcomes appear at light use for teens. For younger children, the best outcomes are at no use or very light use."

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Here's what the American Academy of Pediatrics says about screen time for kids: children between 2 and 5 should be limited to "one hour a day of high-quality programming" infants between 18 and 24 months can have screen time so long as it's high quality and with a caregiver babies shouldn't be exposed to screens...

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In the 1990s, a bunch of gene jockeys brought the first genetically engineered food to market.  The business crashed but biotech science has flourished far beyond the produce aisle.

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Life aboard the Titanic - source 5 - The National Archives

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Telegram received by the Russian liner Birma (MT 9/920c)

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20 Inventions We Wouldn't Have Without Space Travel

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20 Inventions We Wouldn't Have Without Space Travel

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Space travel has given us a wealth of knowledge which has in turn helped us create inventions and technologies that have made human life easier and helped us learn more and explore further into the universe.

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20 Inventions We Wouldn't Have Without Space Travel

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Space travel has given us a wealth of knowledge which has in turn helped us create inventions and technologies that have made human life easier and helped us learn more and explore further into the universe.

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Kids learn about the history of the Atomic Bomb during World War II. Dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki of Japan to end WW2.

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Climate change describes a change in the average conditions in a region over a long period of time.

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Screen Time and Parents: Quality over Hours Logged

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Screen Time and Parents: Quality over Hours Logged

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Screen time and kids: Parents need to worry less about hours logged | CNN

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When it comes to screen time, parents should start worrying less about the amount of time their teenagers are online and instead focus on the quality of the content.

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wheat photograph ©h. david sewell/corbis
new content copyright ©2001 pbs online and wgbh/frontline/nova

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Why and How the Titanic Sank (Infographic)

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A remarkable variety of elements came together to sink the famed steamship Titanic.

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What are the Benefits of Space Exploration?

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What are the Benefits of Space Exploration?

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What Are The Benefits Of Space Exploration?

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Why explore space? It’s an expensive arena to play in, between the fuel costs and the technological challenge of operating in a hostile environment. For humans, a small mistake can quickly become fatal — something that we have seen several times in space history. And for NASA’s budget, there are pro…

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While Germany had surrendered, the continued. One of the most significant events of World War Two happened in 1945. This was the dropping of on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by American forces.

The decision to drop the atom bomb was taken by President Harry S. Truman, who had replaced Franklin Roosevelt following his death in April 1945. On 6 August 1945, Truman ordered an atom bomb to be dropped on the city of Hiroshima. It was dropped by a bomber plane named the Enola Gay. It is thought that at least 140,000 people were killed, of a total population of around 350,000.

When the atom bomb was dropped:

The temperature at the centre of the explosion reached 3000ºC - 4000ºC - three times hotter than volcanic lava.

Everything within a mile of the centre of the blast was flattened.

Fires spread and around 67 per cent of Hiroshima's buildings were destroyed.

Three days after the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a second one was dropped on the city of Nagasaki by a bomber plane called Bockscar. A further 74,000 people, at least, were killed. The Japanese Emperor, Hirohito, announced that Japan would surrender on 15 August. They formally signed a surrender agreement on 2 September.

This brought World War Two to an end.

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Find out about World War Two with BBC Bitesize History. For students between the ages of 11 and 14.

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This page will help you understand the science behind climate change, the impacts of a changing climate, and how you can help slow climate change and prepare for it. We've also created a list of resources and activities for educators and students of all ages.

The Science

Science paints a clear picture: Climate change is happening; it is caused mostly by humans; and it creates many serious and damaging effects. The primary cause of climate change is human activities - like driving cars, creating electricity, and cutting down forests - not natural changes in the climate. These human activities release gases into the atmosphere called greenhouse gases, which slowly warm the planet, creating climate change.

The climate is very complex, and there are still some things we don't know about it. But through centuries of studies and experiments, we've been able to create a strong understanding of how the system works, and how humans are changing it.

The Greenhouse Effect

Imagine a greenhouse made of glass used to grow plants, like flowers and vegetables. The greenhouse keeps the plants inside warm even when it's cold outside because it traps heat from the sun. The earth's atmosphere acts like a greenhouse: When light from the sun passes through the atmosphere, some of it is absorbed by the Earth's surface to heat it, but some heat is also trapped in our atmosphere by certain gases. These heat-trapping gases are called greenhouse gases, and they act like a blanket, keeping the earth warm. This greenhouse effect is a natural process that makes the planet comfortable to live.

But human activities are increasing the amount of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. One type of greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, has reached a level in our atmosphere that the Earth hasn't seen for more than 400,000 years! Plants, soils, and the ocean can absorb carbon dioxide, but they can't keep up with all the extra greenhouse gases that we have been releasing. And some greenhouse gases stay in the atmosphere for a long time, from hundreds to even thousands of years. All these gases are making things hotter than natural, so we need to stop producing them to avoid climate change.

Weather vs. Climate

Weather refers to the state of the atmosphere in a short period of time, like minutes or days. It includes lots of things we are familiar with, like temperature, humidity, precipitation, and wind speeds. The weather changes every day, but the climate is much more consistent because it measures the patterns of weather over long periods of time (at least several decades). Let's say you were going to visit Florida for a few days in June. You would expect it to be hot and humid, because that's what the climate of Florida is usually like in June. It might turn out to be hot during your trip, or it could rain or be cloudy. All of those are examples of possible weather during those days.

The Greenhouse Effect Explained

Where do greenhouse gases come from?

Up until about 150 years ago, humans did not produce many greenhouse gases. That changed as the human population grew, we cut down forests to make way for cities and farms, and important inventions and technology, like in-home electricity and cars, transformed the way we live.

These inventions and technologies need energy. Some types of energy called fossil fuels - like coal, oil, and natural gas - have become important sources of that energy. Burning fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. We call the release of these gases emissions.

Today in the United States, electricity and transportation (cars, trucks, and planes) are responsible for almost 60 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. The rest comes from agriculture, industry - such as factories that make products we use - and from energy we use in our homes and businesses.
Learn more about U.S. greenhouse gas emissions here.
Greenhouse Gases

The most common types of greenhouse gases are:

Carbon Dioxide (CO ₂): Carbon dioxide is the most common greenhouse gas created by human activities. It makes up 80 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Most carbon dioxide enters the atmosphere when fossil fuels (oil, natural gas, and coal) are burned for electricity and transportation, and because of other processes like making cement. Carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere and stored when it is absorbed by plants, soils, animals, and the ocean as part of the carbon cycle.
Learn more about how energy emissions are controlled in the United States.

Methane (CH ₄): Methane is the next most common greenhouse gas emitted by human activities. It makes up 10 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Most methane emissions come from raising livestock (like cows), but methane is also released when coal, natural gas, and oil are produced and transported, and when organic waste (like food) decays in landfills. Methane is a stronger gas than carbon dioxide, meaning it creates more warming, but it stays in the atmosphere for a shorter time.
Learn more about how industrial greenhouse gases like methane are controlled in the United States.

Nitrous Oxide (N ₂ O): Most nitrous oxide is emitted by agricultural activities, like applying fertilizer, but it also comes from industrial activities, burning fossil fuels, and other sources. It makes up 6 percent of U.S. greenhouse emissions. Nitrous oxide is even more powerful than methane and carbon dioxide at warming the atmosphere.

Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), Perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and Sulfur Hexafluoride (SF6): Try saying these gases three times fast! They're called "fluorinated gases" for short. These gases combined make up only 3 percent of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. That may sound small, but they are very important to solving climate change because they stay in the atmosphere for a very long time (sometimes for thousands of years!) and are much more powerful warmers than all other gases. These gases are made by humans and are used to cool our refrigerators, freezers, buildings and cars.

U.S. Greenhouse Gases by Gas Type and Sector, 2021

Impacts of a Changing Climate

Because of increases in greenhouse gas emissions, global temperatures are rising. Each of the past four decades has been warmer than the previous one. 2016 and 2020 were the warmest years on record, and the six warmest years have all been since 2010.
Learn more about the relationship between extreme weather and climate change.
The following charts show how emissions and temperatures have gone up since 1900, and how they could continue to change in the future. If we continue to emit more and more greenhouse gases, the temperature of the Earth will rise a lot - maybe as much as 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100. Even if we reduce our emissions right now, the temperature of the Earth will still rise slightly, but we might be able to keep the rise below 2 degrees Celsius (or about 4.8 degrees Fahrenheit). Two degrees might not sound like much, but scientists agree that even that small amount of warming can have large impacts on humans and the environment.

Past and Projected Changes in Carbon Emissions and Temperature

Rising global temperatures affect many things, like extreme weather, human health, food supply, and ecosystems. These impacts are already being felt today, and groups like the poor, elderly, and others are especially vulnerable.
Impacts of climate change include:

Heat waves. Heat waves are long periods of time with temperatures that are hotter than normal. As the Earth warms, more areas will be at risk for hotter and more common extreme heat waves. Learn more about the link between climate change and extreme heat.

Heavy precipitation and storms. Heavy precipitation - like rain or snow - is becoming more common in many locations, which can lead to flooding and other dangerous weather. As seas warm, coastal storms like hurricanes are also becoming more frequent and damaging. Learn more about the link between climate change and heavy precipitation and hurricanes.

Sea level rise. Sea levels have risen about 8 inches since 1880 because glaciers and ice sheets are melting and seas are warming. Scientists predict that, with 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming, sea levels could rise by as much as 1.8 feet this century, which would harm communities living on islands and near coasts. These rises could be even higher if glaciers in Greenland or Antarctica melt very quickly.

Threats to habitats and animals. Warming temperatures, rising seas, melting ice, and other impacts of climate change can threaten the habitat of many plants and animals. Some species are moving to new habitats, but others may struggle to adapt and become endangered or extinct.

Ocean acidification. Extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is absorbed by the oceans, making them more acidic. This can make it difficult for corals and organisms that form shells to survive, which can create problems in the food chain for other sea animals.

Wildfires. These are fires that burn large amounts of forests and brush. When they are not controlled, wildfires can destroy homes and be deadly. The number of large wildfires and the length of the season when they're most likely and threatening have been increasing in recent years. Find out how climate change will worsen wildfire conditions.

Drought. A drought is a period with little rain and not enough water. Global warming will increase the risk of drought in some places and make it harder to grow food. Learn about the links between climate change and drought.

How can you help?

Even though climate change sounds scary, we still have time to avoid some of the worst impacts. Everyone can play a part, including government, businesses, and you.

There are two main things we need to do:

The first is to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions responsible for climate change. By choosing cleaner ways to power our homes, offices, and cars, and being more efficient and less wasteful, we can produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions.

There are lot of things you can do to help, like turning off the lights when you leave a room to reduce the electricity you use, walking or biking where you can, or planting trees to absorb carbon dioxide. If you do any of these things, make sure you communicate with other people (like your family, teachers, and friends) about why you're doing them! Communication can inspire more people to change their habits and help save the climate.

Look for more ideas on what we can do together and individually.

The second is to prepare for life in a changing climate. Even if we could stop creating greenhouse gases tomorrow, the climate would still change some because of our past emissions. So we need to make sure our buildings, roads, businesses, and communities are ready for the climate changes that we can't avoid. This includes things like helping cities on the coast prepare for floods, preventing wildfires in our forests, and more.

Learn how communities and companies are preparing.

The power of YOUth

Around the world, young people are learning about climate change and taking action. In fact, young people are some of the most important voices in the climate movement because you can inspire powerful people to create a better future for you.

You don't have to be a rocket scientist or a politician to make a difference in the fight against climate change. Whatever your talents are, there's a role for you to play. Some young people, like Greta Thunberg, Vanessa Nakate, and others, are leading the Fridays for Future movement to tell their governments to create strong policies to fight climate change. Other students are inventing new technologies to cut emissions and reduce waste. And others are using their creativity to bring awareness to climate change by writing music and creating art.

You can also look for ways to get involved in your community - maybe you can help your school set up a composting program to keep food waste out of the landfill. Maybe your synagogue or mosque needs help switching to energy efficient lights. Maybe you can write a letter to your local government to encourage your community to prepare for extreme weather or wildfires. Everyone can do something to fight climate change.

Check out our Educator Resources page for activities you can do to learn more about how climate change works and how you can be a part of the solution.
C2ES thanks the Alcoa Foundation for its support, which allowed us to develop our Climate Classroom content. As a fully independent organization, C2ES is solely responsible for its positions, programs, and publications.

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This page will help you understand the science behind climate change, the impacts of a changing climate, and how you can help slow climate change and prepare for it. We've also created a list of resources and activities for educators and students of all ages.

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Screen Time Guidelines for Babies and Toddlers

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Screen Time Guidelines for Babies and Toddlers

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Most of a baby's brain development happens in the first 2 years of life. That's why it's so important for babies and toddlers to explore their environment and experience many sights, sounds, tastes, and textures. Interacting and playing with others helps children learn about the world around them.

So experts recommend limiting the amount of time that babies and toddlers spend in front of a screen. That's good advice - but in today's world, it can be tough to keep babies and toddlers away from all the TVs, tablets, computers, smartphones, and gaming systems they'll see.

How Much Is Too Much?

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that babies younger than 18 months get no screen time at all. The exception to this rule is video chatting with grandparents or other family members or friends, which is considered quality time interacting with others.

Toddlers 18 months to 24 months old can start to enjoy some screen time with a parent or caregiver. Children this age can learn when an adult is there to reinforce lessons.

By ages 2 and 3, it's OK for kids to watch up to 1 hour a day of high-quality educational programming.

Media Use Tips

When introducing media to toddlers:

Be with young kids when they use electronic devices. That can mean playing an educational game or talking about something you see together in an age-appropriate TV show or video.

Research games and apps before getting them for your child. Thousands of apps and games claim to be educational, but not all of them are. Search online to see which ones educators and doctors consider the best. Common Sense Media has information about age and content appropriateness of video games and other media. When possible, preview the media before sharing with your child.

Schedule plenty of non-screen time into your child's day. Playtime is important for learning and building creativity. Schedule lots of time for hands-on learning and interacting with caregivers and friends. Also, encourage your child to be physically active every day.

Turn off devices during meals and at least 1 hour before bed. Keep TVs and other electronics out of the bedroom.

Set a good example. Turn off TVs and other devices when not in use. Don't leave screens on in the background and turn off your phone when you are with your child. This can distract from your interactions and your child's play.

Talk to your doctor if you have any questions or concerns about managing your child's media use.

Date reviewed: August 2022

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Not sure how much screen time is appropriate for your baby or toddler? Get advice here.

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There's No Getting Around It - the New Chipotle Ad is Amazing

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There's No Getting Around It - the New Chipotle Ad is Amazing

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There's No Getting Around It: The New Chipotle Ad Is Amazing

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It's being called "the most beautiful, haunting infomercial you'll ever see."

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Titanic, the so-called "unsinkable ship," struck an iceberg on April 15, 1912, and sunk to the bottom of the ocean, claiming the lives of more than 1,500 of the 2,220 people onboard.
The ship's designers, paid well by the White Star Line, went out of their way to tell the world that the construction was safe and sound for the voyage across the northern Atlantic Ocean, from Southampton, England, to New York. The designers were so convinced of the infallibility of their design that they included only 20 lifeboats, enough for one-third of the people onboard to vacate the ship if necessary.

On April 10, the giant ship left port. After four days, the unthinkable happened and the unsinkable ship sank, having struck a large iceberg that ripped large enough holes in the lower decks to split the ship in half.

The collision occurred 375 miles south of Newfoundland and caused several of the ship's watertight compartments to open, allowing water to rush in and trapping many people on the lower decks.

Only 18 of the 20 lifeboats were launched, and none of them were filled to capacity. Some had only 20 or 30 people onboard, and the population of lifeboats was top-heavy in terms of class, with many more first-class passengers than anyone else. (This eyewitness account from a survivor says that only 36 people were in her lifeboat.)

In many ways, the Titanic passenger list reflected the wide class divide of the times. Of the 1,296 total passengers onboard the massive ocean liner, 319 were labeled as first class, 269 were termed second class, and 699 were called third class, or steerage.

A closer look at the casualty figures reveals that of the 319 first-class passengers, 200 survived and of the 269 second-class passengers, 117 survived. Only 172 of 699 third-class passengers survived. A similar percentage can be found among crew and staff: 215 of 918 survived.

This happened for a few reasons, most notably that the first-class passengers were, by and large, the first ones into the lifeboats. Of the 20 lifeboats onboard, 18 were set afloat. All but three of the lifeboats had a capacity of 65 (the others could carry 40), but very few lifeboats began their journeys away from the sinking ship with 65 people aboard.

First-class passengers only were allowed on the first several lifeboats. Second-class passengers were on the eighth lifeboat to launch, and third-class passengers were not on a lifeboat until the 12th one to go.

Another contributing factor to the death of so many third-class passengers was the public health law that required the locking of gates that separate these lower-deck passengers from the "higher" classes.
More in-depth statistics
The Titanic had struck the iceberg at 11.40 p.m. on the night of April 14. About 2:20 a.m. the next morning, the boat broke apart and sank, bow-first, with more than 1,000 people still onboard. The water was freezing, and hundreds of people died quickly from hypothermia.

Survivors were eventually rescued by crew aboard another large ship, the Carpathia.

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The Titanic, the so-called 'unsinkable ship,' struck an iceberg on April 15, 1912, and sunk to the bottom of the ocean, claiming the lives of more than 1,500 of the 2,220 people onboard.

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For as long as we've had TVs, videogames, smartphones, and tablets, there have been scientists, politicians, and parents worrying about whether too much screen time will make kids less healthy (maybe), more violent (debatable), and hopelessly distracted (Sorry, can you repeat that?). Here's a short history of people fearing the worst.

Anthropologist Earnest A. Hooton describes TV as "a visual education in how to do wrong."

Fredric Wertham writes, "I have found that children from 3 to 4 have learned from television that killing, especially shooting, is one of the established procedures for coping with a problem."

Following the release of a videogame called Death Race, Gerald Driessen, a behavioral scientist, describes gaming consoles as "definitely negative ... The person no longer is just a spectator, but now an actor in the process of creating violence."

"Children with higher weight status played moderate amounts of electronic games," a study in The Journal of Adolescence read, "while children with lower weight status played either very little or a lot."

"Social media has been described as more addictive than cigarettes and alcohol," says Shirley Cramer, chief executive of the UK-based Royal Society for Public Health. "It is no longer possible to ignore it when talking about young people's mental health issues."

How to Reverse Infertility * Tools for Fetal Surgery * Save the Preemies * The Year's Best Tech Playthings * Cashing in on Kiddie YouTube * The #MiniMilah Effect * Rethinking Screen Time * A Brief History of Digital Worries * Solving Health Issues at All Stages
This article appears in the April issue. Subscribe now.

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A Brief History of Screen Panic, From TVs to Today

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For as long as we've had screens, people have worried whether too much screen time would make kids less healthy, more violent, and hopelessly distracted.

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Since its inception in 1958, NASA has accomplished some pretty spectacular feats of science. Our country has landed humans on the Moon six times. We've successfully put laboratories onto the surface of Mars, and we've flown by every single planet in our solar system, including the recently promoted asteroid-turned-dwarf planet, Ceres.

Despite decades of scientific and technological achievements, some people still think that funding NASA is a waste of money. However, when you do the calculations, it turns out we are actually getting a great value from this government-run agency.

What NASA Gives Us

We can thank the Cold War for NASA's existence in the first place. After the launch of Sputnik in 1957, President Eisenhower realized we were losing the space race. So, on July 29th, 1958, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was born. Upon signing the Space Act, Eisenhower said this about the new program: "There are many aspects of space and space technology which can be helpful to all people as the United States proceeds with its peaceful program of space and exploration. Every person has the opportunity to share through understanding in the adventures which lie ahead."

For 57 years NASA has provided the world with new perspectives on our species and our place in the cosmos. After the Apollo 8 mission sent back the famous "Earthrise" image, we were able to see ourselves for the first time. There we were, a beautiful blue ball, where everyone lives. Then on Valentine's day in 1990, the Voyager 1 spacecraft turned around on its way out of our solar system, and took the ultimate family portrait. This time, from a distance of 3.7 billion miles away, we were tiny, just a speck among the stars. It was because of moments like these that for decades when children were asked what they wanted to be when they grew up, they answered, "an astronaut!" This dream only existed because of NASA.

Gorgeous, super hi-res image of Pluto

The colors have been enhanced to highlight Pluto's variety of compositions.

Recently, the world was united once again in the spirit of space exploration as the New Horizons spacecraft flew by Pluto. Always the underdog of the solar system, and discovered only in 1930, we never really knew what Pluto looked like; it is 3 billion miles away, after all. On July 14th it seemed as though the world stopped; people tweeted, Facebooked, and cheered on the streets while humankind accomplished something great. And while no one could see the spacecraft, we all watched in awe as the nine-year journey came to a close and we flew past Pluto, only to find out it was more interesting than anyone could have ever imagined.

The Price Of Awe And Amazement

Getting inspired by science and discovery is one of the most rewarding parts of being a human. But exploring isn't free, especially not in the space case. What is the price of awe and amazement?

Since the end of the Apollo program in 1972 NASA has operated with an average 0.5 percent of the total US budget. That's not even a percent of the total 3 trillion dollars allocated to the U.S. in 2014. Although that may still seem like a lot of money, let's compare it to the beginning of the Apollo program.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy decided that NASA would send humans to the Moon before the end of the decade. At that time, each U.S. citizen was paying $20 per year to NASA. JFK needed that number to go up to $26 a year to help get our astronauts to the Moon. In 2015 dollars, the Apollo era budget would have been equivalent to each American paying over $200 a year to the space administration. If NASA still had that sort of funding in 2015, that would make its budget a whopping $65 billion dollars per year, compared to its actual budget of $17.5 billion. Instead, in 2014 each American paid an average of $54 per year to NASA.

That money gets spread out over many different projects. So even though the Curiosity rover had an astounding $2.6 billion price tag, each citizen only paid about about $0.41 per year to put the SUV-sized robot on Mars.

The Real Cost Of NASA Missions

Since 1972, NASA's budget hasn't increased, but has been cut by roughly 75 percent, and it's stayed that way for 42 years. While the Apollo era budget was arguably not sustainable, it raises questions as to what might be possible if NASA once again had access to more financial support.

NASA has made a little bit of money go a long way. In addition to organizing science missions, the space agency employs over 60,000 people including private organizations. But NASA can't do it all. Budget cuts are delaying the development of the Commercial Crew program, which would get astronauts launching from American soil again. In the meantime, we'll be forced to continue buying tickets on the Russian Soyuz.

NASA's budget has flatlined in recent decades

What Lies Ahead

Despite its ongoing budgetary battles, NASA continues to do good science.

Next on the horizon for NASA's space exploration agenda is a flyby of Europa. The mission to Jupiter's icy moon has created a lot of excitement for astrobiologists. Because Europa has more water in its oceans than all of the water combined on Earth, it has the potential to harbor life.

There won't be another "Apollo moment" for our space program.

The quest to land humans on Mars in the 2030's is also something scientists at NASA are trying to plan for.

It's widely accepted that there won't be another "Apollo moment" for our space program. NASA will probably never receive the amount of funding it did when JFK set his sights on the Moon. There also probably won't be another Cold War, but there will always be this question: What else is out there?

We've barely scratched the surface of the solar system-there are so many more questions, and many more questions we don't even know we have. The price of understanding is small, and for people around the globe to feel connected over a rocket launch, a rover landing, a photo, or a spacewalk is priceless. Let's not stop. Let's keep pushing forward and as NASA says, let's continue to "dare mighty things."

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Primary Sources: Einstein Urges FDR to Build Nuclear Weapons in WWII

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Primary Sources: Einstein Urges FDR to Build Nuclear Weapons in WWII

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Newsela | Primary Sources: Einstein Urges FDR to Build Nuclear Weapons in WWII

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Einstein asks FDR to create nuclear weapons

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Climate Change Disproportionately Affects Poor Countries

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Climate Change Disproportionately Affects Poor Countries

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And it's large countries, like the United States, contributing the most to climate pollution.

Before the humanitarian workers came to his village just outside of Maseru, Lesotho, 24-year-old Makalo Makara and his neighbors mistook climate change for divine punishment.

"We thought what was happening here was a calamity of God," he tells Teen Vogue, poking a wooden staff at a hard patch of dirt. "I have been a herder almost my whole life. I started when I was 8. I would go after school." Like many other young men his age in Lesotho, to step into the profession of herding is considered a rite of passage into manhood.

In the morning, Makalo gets up before the sun with his seven cows and walks until dark while they graze. He does this in every type of weather: rain, sun, or, in recent years, occasionally abrupt snow.

It was only a few years ago that he started to see a marked difference in the soil and grass in his village because of the erratic change in weather. The rainfall, which for most of his life ushered in the planting season in September, has become unpredictable. "The rains are late this year," he says, pointing at a barren patch of dirt that in years past has been speckled with green buds by now. "It affects the way we till the land and my herd doesn't have enough to eat now. Because they don't have enough to eat, [the cattle] are getting thinner and it's harder to use them for plowing." He gestures at a bull standing feet away, whose ribs are showing through a mat of bristled hair.

Lesotho is a country where more than 70% of people are dependent on just 10% of arable land, whether for commerce or to feed their families. Countries with large economies have long been the largest contributors to climate change that threatens the livelihoods of those everywhere, but a broader awareness about the issue within developing countries and their ability to act against it has been a more recent development.

Makalo's testimony is one of many, another page in the endless story of climate change and the impact caused by neglect of the world's second-largest climate polluter: the United States. In November 2017, Syria became the latest country to sign the Paris climate accord, leaving the United States as the only country to proclaim it will not align with the landmark deal. The Trump administration's decision to pull out of the agreement in June of 2017 has been felt worldwide, causing a ripple effect in countries like Lesotho, where the effects of climate change are felt the hardest. "This has been very disappointing for us for several reasons," said Moeketsi Majoro, minister of finance to Lesotho. "It sends a damaging message that the U.S. cannot be counted upon to deliver leadership in matters of global importance. So we are wondering and other countries are asking, can we still count on the U.S. at all?"

Lesotho isn't a country popularly known to the West. Nicknamed "the Kingdom in the Sky" and surrounded by South Africa on all sides, its mountainous landscape covers a space slightly larger than the state of Vermont. Farmers and herders here, similar to many other African countries, are waging war against the elements. When the delayed rains do come, they appear with increasing force that often wash away the nutrient-rich topsoil necessary for most plants to grow.

At the current rate, Lesotho is losing 3-5% of its topsoil every year. "It looks minuscule, but it's actually a huge amount and it's expected to get worse," Eshan Rizvi, who runs the Natural Resource Management Program for Catholic Relief Services (CRS) in country, tells Teen Vogue. He's worked in the field for 12 years to help communities become more resilient in the face of climate change. Citing findings from a recent CRS study on soil degradation, Ehsan says, "soil-loss rates are going to increase because of high temperature, less vegetation cover, and more intense rainfall."

While Lesotho battles a slow crawl to the death of its land, its figurative big brother, South Africa, fights a much more urgent war. Day Zero is tentatively scheduled for July 9 in the port city of Cape Town, South Africa's second-most populous area. It's the moment when city officials will cut off the water to businesses and homes in an effort to save what little is left. Roughly 4 million residents will have to go to one of around 200 water collection points where they will be rationed just 25 liters (about 6.6 gallons) a day. Now in the third year of the worst drought in a century, Cape Town has a water system that has long relied on rain water, rendering locals helpless.

"What is happening in Cape Town is just one example of how climate change is affecting the continent," Dan Shepard, an information officer who works on climate change for the United Nations, tells Teen Vogue. "We are also seeing coastal erosion in Western Africa and changing currents in the water off South Africa, which affects everything from fishing patterns to penguin populations. Climate change exacerbates things, so as temperatures are rising across the continent, it causes more extreme weather, intense droughts, the list goes on."

CRS says it runs climate and agricultural programs in 43 countries reaching over 9 million people. In Lesotho, they are possibly the only organization in-country that is focusing efforts on the youngest generation of agricultural workers to change their behavior to adapt to the changing ecosystem. They start by teaching farmers what climate change is, enlightening communities on how pollution that occurs thousands of miles away is linked to the increasingly erratic and extreme weather patterns at home. Experts also ensure that locals understand not only the global impact of human behavior on their land locally, but also new farming techniques that are more resilient to global climate trends.

For the rising generation of farmers, that means learning how to plant smart crops and use the land as wisely as possible. "As crop production declines with the change in rainfall, people make up for losses by cutting down more trees to expand their land. But that just makes things worse because it releases more carbon into the atmosphere," Ehsan says. "Those trees also prevent water-run off which keeps the soil moist, so they are taking away an important preventative mechanism that they might not know they need."

CRS also trains farmers on how to diversify crops. Corn is often a staple crop because it is hearty and cheap to plant, but farmers are now learning that it isn't good for the soil, Ehsan says. Environmental experts are promoting climate-smart agriculture by recommending intercropping, planting things like beans alongside other crops to put more nitrogen in the soil. Experts also show farmers how to rotate their crops, making them more resistant to pests. "All of this is good insurance against [the changing] weather, and people get excited about it. They see the economic returns," Ehsan says.

CRS is also arming Makalo and his fellow herd boys with an unlikely tool that both helps them economically and works to reduce the impact of climate change on the land: seeds for trees. Using apple, peach, and acacia seedlings, herder communities are trained to create nurseries that grow the trees, which they sell to the government. The Ministry of Forestry, Range and Conservation (MFRC) then plants the trees in local areas as part of an effort to restore the degraded ecosystems.

The success of the new agriculture practices is clear. "It's a win-win with long lasting impact," Ehsan says. "Farmers get another way to make money, they learn importance of trees in fighting climate change, while helping to restore and protect their land in the process."

Makalo says after all he's learned about why the land is changing, it's a small relief to know there is something he can do. "For me this is a difficult situation, because those polluters are far away," he says, frustration in his voice. "We have no way to contact them to tell them or speak with them about it. So what we have to do is focus on planting trees, to absorb the carbon emissions. We have to focus on how to be part of the solution here."

To do your part to help counter climate change, address your congressional representative here.

Related: How Climate Change Is Impacting Animals in the Canadian Arctic
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Poor Countries Are Suffering the Most From Climate Change

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Climate-change effects are mainly felt by small, poor countries that rely on a farming economy, such as Lesotho in Africa. It is large countries, like the United States, that are contributing to these negative effects the most.

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What do we really know about kids and screen time?

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What do we really know about kids and screen time?

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By the time research on screen time reaches the public, it's often framed in black-and-white terms: guidelines setting out strict time limits, or news reports with titles like "Are Screens Bad for Kids?"

In reality, though, screen time research has been less than definitive, mainly owing to a lack of strong longitudinal studies to date. That's now beginning to change as psychologists and other child development experts take a deeper and increasingly nuanced look at children's and teens' use of tablets, phones and other screens. Researchers are now paying close attention to the kinds of content kids are consuming via digital devices. They're looking at the environment that surrounds screen time, including parenting and socioeconomic status. And they're buckling down for the long haul, building new longitudinal studies that will help answer complex questions about kids, teens and screens.

In particular, they're studying both the potential benefits of screens-if they can be used as teaching tools-and the potential physical and mental health drawbacks.

The picture that has emerged suggests that the youngest children don't learn well from screens. As kids get older, they can learn meaningful information from screens, but the ubiquity of digital devices also means that children can easily spend far too much time being sedentary. Nevertheless, total abstinence from recreational screen time may backfire for older kids and teens.

Meanwhile, many questions remain about how much screen time is too much and about the effects of different types of activities that involve screens.

"As psychologists, it's really important for us to have scientific-based evidence behind what we're recommending. We're not there yet," says Jerri Lynn Hogg, PhD, a media psychologist at Fielding Graduate University. "We have ideas, but the problem is that the technology is getting more and more sophisticated and more ubiquitous."

The challenges of screen time

In all the popular-media hubbub and scientific debate over screen time, it's easy to forget how quickly these issues have evolved: The first-generation iPhone was introduced only 13 years ago, in 2007, the same year Netflix introduced streaming services. The iPad just saw its 10th birthday. Television and video games have been around for decades, of course, but never so portably and easily accessed.

Amid this rapid change, professional organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) have stepped in with recommendations. AAP calls for no screen time at all for children until 18 to 24 months, except for video chatting, and says kids ages 2 to 5 should get an hour or less of screen time per day. It has also developed the Family Media Use Plan for older kids, in which parents and children negotiate limits and boundaries around screen usage. In its guidelines on physical activity, sedentary behavior and sleep for young children, WHO similarly recommends no screens for kids under 2, and less than an hour a day for kids 2 to 5.

However, some critics charge that much of the research backing up the guidelines is correlational, cross-sectional or based upon self-report-though there are longitudinal studies in the mix, too. And not all research effectively differentiates between different types of screen time. Many studies lump all screen time together into one category, though it seems unlikely that video chatting with Grandma, for example, would have much in common with playing "Grand Theft Auto V."

Isolating the effects of screens from all the other experiences kids are exposed to is a challenge as well. It would be difficult indeed to run a long-term, randomized study in which children were assigned to different amounts of screen time each day and then tracked over their life spans to measure well-being outcomes. Imagine the look on a parent's face when told their child would be required to watch six hours of television every day-or that they could never watch a screen at all.

What is clear is that many parents often don't enforce the screen time limits suggested by the guidelines. For example, a study led by economist Weiwei Chen, PhD, of Florida International University, found that, as of 2014, children age 2 and under in the United States averaged 3 hours, 3 minutes a day of screen time, up from 1 hour, 19 minutes a day in 1997. Three- to 5-year-olds got 2 hours, 28 minutes a day of screen time, on average, during that time period (JAMA Pediatrics , Vol. 173, No. 4, 2019).

Qualitative studies suggest several reasons for the widespread screen use. One survey of 133 parents of preschool-age kids led by Rutgers University professor of nutritional sciences Carol Byrd-Bredbenner, PhD, for example, found that many parents reported lacking affordable alternative entertainment for their kids. Others cited factors such as their own exhaustion, the need to get things done around the house and bad weather for excess screen time (Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior , Vol. 47, No. 4, 2015).

Babies, toddlers, preschoolers and screens

Research has, however, turned up evidence to support limiting screen time for babies and young children. One longitudinal study of 2,441 mothers and children, led by University of Calgary psychologist Sheri Madigan, PhD, found that more time per week spent on screens at ages 24 months and 36 months was linked with poorer performance on screening tests for behavioral, cognitive and social development at 36 months (JAMA Pediatrics , Vol. 173, No. 3, 2019 ). The opposite association (poorer development leading to more screen time) was not seen, suggesting that the linkage wasn't a matter of parents leaning on screen time to handle a challenging child. Instead, the excessive screen time seemed to precede the developmental difficulties.

Despite experts' concerns, media for babies and toddlers has been on the market for years, often with promises of stimulation and education-the "Baby Einstein" videos are one prominent example. But the evidence is strong that screens aren't an effective teaching tool for the baby and toddler set, and they could displace the kinds of face-to-face interactions that actually help young kids learn. A 2005 review led by developmental psychologist Daniel Anderson, PhD, now a professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, found that television viewing consistently failed to teach kids age 2 and younger as much as live interaction (American Behavioral Scientist , Vol. 48, No. 5, 2005 ). This "video deficit" was seen in simple imitation tasks, in language learning and in emotional learning.

"The basic pattern that has been found in dozens of studies is that children learn better from a person who is with them face-to-face than from a person on a screen, even if it's the exact same person doing the exact same thing," says Georgene Troseth, PhD, a psychologist at Vanderbilt University.

More recently, researchers like Troseth are trying to understand why this screen learning gap occurs in toddlers. That toddlers struggle to learn from videos does not seem to be perceptual, Troseth says, but conceptual: Until they're around age 3, kids seem to view video as irrelevant to real life. In numerous studies, toddlers shown video of an experimenter hiding a toy in the room next door are terrible at finding that toy in the real room immediately afterward. In one study co-authored by Troseth, however, toddlers who watched a toy being hidden on a screen disguised to look like a window were much better at finding the toy than toddlers who saw the toy hidden on a regular screen (Child Development , Vol. 69, No. 4, 1998 ). "When they were told they were watching through a window, they were willing to take in the information," Troseth says. "The idea when they're watching on TV seems to be, 'You're not going to fool me, I know that's not real.'"

Though screen time recommendations for the youngest kids now make exceptions for video chatting, the evidence also suggests that toddlers find this medium confusing and that they struggle to make sense of video chat unless they have help from an adult who is physically present. In one study by Troseth and her colleagues, for example, 2-year-olds were assigned to either watch a prerecorded video intended to teach them new words or to engage in a word-learning video chat session with an experimenter. In half of the cases, the child's parent simply sat with the child. In the other half, the parent followed the experimenter's directions, modeling interactions with the video screen. A live video chat kept the kids' attention better than a prerecorded video, but only kids whose parents participated alongside them were able to learn new words from the screen (Journal of Experimental Child Psychology , Vol. 166, 2018 ).

Three- to 5-year-olds, on the other hand, are a bit more savvy. Since the early days of "Sesame Street," research has found that this age group can learn from slow-paced, thoughtfully designed children's media. For example, in tests of prereading skills such as alphabet recognition and letter sounds, kids who were randomly assigned to watch a 20-episode run of the literacy show "Super Why!" outperformed kids who were assigned to watch an educational science series, according to a study of 171 preschoolers conducted by Deborah Nichols, PhD, the director of the Children's Media Lab at Purdue University ( International Journal for Cross-Disciplinary Subjects in Education , Vol. 6, No. 1, 2015 ). Children from low socioeconomic backgrounds generally saw greater gains than children in the wealthiest families, possibly because the more privileged children were already exposed to more literacy enrichment than the less-advantaged group.

Television's educational potential isn't limited to academic skills: A study of the PBS show "Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood" led by Texas Tech University media researcher Eric Rasmussen, PhD, found that kids who were randomly assigned to watch the program showed greater emotion recognition, empathy and self-efficacy-if those children also came from homes where parents consistently talked to their children about their TV viewing ( Journal of Children and Media , Vol. 10, No. 4, 2016 ). As with toddlers, preschoolers seem to benefit from adults co-viewing their media.

Co-viewing may seem a steep price to pay for parents who are desperate to use their child's screen time to make dinner or pack tomorrow's lunch, but it doesn't have to be a full-time job, Hogg says. Rather, she recommends parents should aim to scaffold their child's screen time, first watching a few episodes with them and talking about the content, then stepping back and checking in as the child becomes familiar with how media works.

Growing up digital

As children mature, they're exposed to more screens, with more diverse content via television, video games and social media. A report released in October 2019 by the nonprofit organization Common Sense Media found that 8- to 12-year-olds in the United States now use screens for entertainment for an average of 4 hours, 44 minutes a day, and 13- to 18-year-olds are on screens for an average of 7 hours, 22 minutes each day (The Common Sense Census: Media Use by Tweens and Teens , 2019). These numbers don't count time using screens for schoolwork or homework.

Common Sense Media's data also reveal a substantial disparity in media use based on socioeconomic status, with 8- to 12-year-olds from high income families using 1 hour, 50 minutes less of media each day than kids of the same age from low income families. Teens show a similar gap. Previous research has suggested that increased screen time in poorer families may be an attempt by parents to protect their children; studies in multiple countries have found that parent anxiety about neighborhood safety and actual neighborhood safety are linked to more screen time and less physical activity. For example, health researchers Valerie Carson, PhD, of the University of Alberta, and Ian Janssen, PhD, of Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, found that kids who lived in neighborhoods with the highest social and physical disorder (such as crime, graffiti and gang activity) had a 40% to 60% higher likelihood of high screen use (International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity , Vol. 9, No. 66, 2012). Higher-income families may also have more alternatives to screen time available, in the form of extracurricular activities and safe recreation areas.

As with young children, there are reasons for concern over large amounts of screen time in tweens and teens. Correlational studies have shown that 8- to 11-year-olds who exceed screen time recommendations scored lower on cognitive assessments, with compliance with recommendations explaining about a fifth of the overall variance in cognitive scores (The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health , Vol. 2, No. 11, 2018). A combination of screen time and too little sleep has also been associated with heightened impulsivity in the same age group (Pediatrics , Vol. 144, No. 3, 2019).

These studies weren't designed to show causal relationships, though, says Gary Goldfield, PhD, a psychologist at the University of Ottawa who coauthored both studies. It could be that increased impulsivity or struggles with cognition drive the excess screen time. Nevertheless, in numerous studies, Goldfield and his team have consistently found the best mental health and cognitive outcomes in teens who do one hour of physical activity each day, sleep eight to 10 hours a day and use screens recreationally less than two hours a day.

Researchers have also found links between screen time and various health outcomes in teens, though again, establishing definitive causal relationships is difficult. The firmest associations are between screen time and obesity and screen time and depressive symptoms, according to a systematic review of reviews published by University College London (UCL) psychologist Neza Stiglic, PhD, and Russell Viner, PhD, a professor of adolescent health at UCL (BMJ Open , Vol. 9, No. 1, 2019). Most research on obesity focused on television viewing and found that more time spent watching TV was associated with a higher body mass index or body fat composition. Multiple studies also found that screen use of more than two hours a day was correlated with depressive symptoms. The reviewers found moderate evidence linking screen time to poorer quality of life, higher caloric intake and less-healthy diets. Evidence linking screen time to other problems, such as behavior issues, anxiety, and low feelings of well-being and self-esteem, was weak, with studies on these outcomes returning mixed results.

A study led by psychologists Amy Orben, PhD, of the University of Cambridge, and Andrew Przybylski, PhD, of the University of Oxford, found that screen time as measured by time-use diaries (as opposed to retrospective self-reports, which many studies use) in large did not have noticeable effects on teen psychological well-being, according to nationally representative data sets in the United States, United Kingdom and Ireland (Psychological Science , Vol. 30, No. 5, 2019). But other research points to complicated relationships between screen time and well-being. For example, a study led by physician Pierre-André Michaud, MD, of the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine in Lausanne, Switzerland, found a U-shaped relationship between internet use and adolescent mental and physical heath, such that moderate users were the best off (Pediatrics , Vol. 127, No. 2, 2011).

"A lot depends on how kids are using media, how much their parents are monitoring their use, how much time they're spending and what exactly they're watching and using," says Victor Strasburger, MD, a pediatrician and professor emeritus at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine.

Future research and recommendations

Fortunately, a new longitudinal data set may help illuminate some of the outstanding questions about adolescents and screen time. In 2015, the National Institutes of Health began funding the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, the largest ever longitudinal study on teen brain and behavioral development in the United States. More than 10,000 9- to 10-year-olds have been recruited and are being followed to young adulthood. Screen time data are among the information being collected, and researchers are already using the first wave: Goldfield's cognition and impulsivity studies drew from ABCD data. "We're pretty excited about this database," he says.

In the meantime, some experts recommend a mindful approach to media. Simply banning screens may backfire, says Jon Lasser, PhD, a psychologist at Texas State University and co-author, with Mike Brooks, PhD, of the 2018 book "Tech Generation: Raising Balanced Kids in a Hyper-Connected World."

"It's important for kids to develop the capacity to self-regulate," Lasser says, "and parents who try to micromanage screen time may inadvertently interfere with that self-regulatory development."

Lasser and Brooks include a tool in their book called the Family Assessment of Screen Time, or FAST, which family members can use to gauge their feelings about screen time-their own and each other's. The tool is similar to AAP's Family Media Use Plan, in which parents and children, 5 years and older, negotiate limits and boundaries around screen usage.

Finally, parents should keep co-viewing media with their kids. Keeping an open line of communication around media helps protect kids when they inevitably run into content they aren't ready to see, Strasburger says. A healthy, nonrancorous relationship around media also makes it easier to enforce boundaries when required.

"The number one recommendation that we give to parents is [to] spend time engaged with their kids," Lasser says. "It's simple, it's good parenting and it promotes a healthy relationship."

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What do we really know about kids and screens?

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Researchers are now paying close attention to the kinds of content kids are consuming via digital devices as well as the environment that surrounds screen time, including parenting and socioeconomic status.

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Fruits and Vegetables Used to Look so Different

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Fruits and Vegetables Used to Look so Different

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Explore the collections of National Museums NI.

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Ingeniously Charting the Horrifying Power of Today's Nuclear Bombs

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Ingeniously Charting the Horrifying Power of Today's Nuclear Bombs

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Climate Change 101 with Bill Nye | National Geographic

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Mandatory labels for genetically modified foods are a bad idea

By The Editors

This past June, Connecticut and Maine became the first states to pass bills requiring labels on all foods made from genetically modified organisms (GMOs). In November 2012 California voters rejected the similar Proposition 37 by a narrow majority of 51.4 percent. "All we want is a simple label/For the food that's on our table," chanted marchers before the elections. The issue, however, is in no way simple.

We have been tinkering with our food's DNA since the dawn of agriculture. By selectively breeding plants and animals with the most desirable traits, our predecessors transformed organisms' genomes, turning a scraggly grass into plump-kerneled corn, for example. For the past 20 years Americans have been eating plants in which scientists have used modern tools to insert a gene here or tweak a gene there, helping the crops tolerate drought and resist herbicides. Around 70 percent of processed foods in the U.S. contain genetically modified ingredients.

Instead of providing people with useful information, mandatory GMO labels would only intensify the misconception that so-called Frankenfoods endanger people's health [see " The Truth about Genetically Modified Food "]. The American Association for the Advancement of Science, the World Health Organization and the exceptionally vigilant European Union agree that GMOs are just as safe as other foods. Compared with conventional breeding techniques-which swap giant chunks of DNA between one plant and another-genetic engineering is far more precise and, in most cases, is less likely to produce an unexpected result. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has tested all the GMOs on the market to determine whether they are toxic or allergenic. They are not. (The GMO-fearing can seek out "100 Percent Organic" products, indicating that a food contains no genetically modified ingredients, among other requirements.)

Many people argue for GMO labels in the name of increased consumer choice. On the contrary, such labels have limited people's options. In 1997, a time of growing opposition to GMOs in Europe, the E.U. began to require them. By 1999, to avoid labels that might drive customers away, most major European retailers had removed genetically modified ingredients from products bearing their brand. Major food producers such as Nestlé followed suit. Today it is virtually impossible to find GMOs in European supermarkets.

Americans who oppose genetically modified foods would celebrate a similar exclusion. Everyone else would pay a price. Because conventional crops often require more water and pesticides than GMOs do, the former are usually more expensive. Consequently, we would all have to pay a premium on non-GMO foods-and for a questionable return. Private research firm Northbridge Environmental Management Consultants estimated that Prop 37 would have raised an average California family's yearly food bill by as much as $400. The measure would also have required farmers, manufacturers and retailers to keep a whole new set of detailed records and to prepare for lawsuits challenging the "naturalness" of their products.

Antagonism toward GMO foods also strengthens the stigma against a technology that has delivered enormous benefits to people in developing countries and promises far more. Recently published data from a seven-year study of Indian farmers show that those growing a genetically modified crop increased their yield per acre by 24 percent and boosted profits by 50 percent. These farmers were able to buy more food-and food of greater nutritional value-for their families.

To curb vitamin A deficiency-which blinds as many as 500,000 children worldwide every year and kills half of them-researchers have engineered Golden Rice, which produces beta-carotene, a precursor of vitamin A. Approximately three quarters of a cup of Golden Rice provides the recommended daily amount of vitamin A; several tests have concluded that the product is safe. Yet Greenpeace and other anti-GMO organizations have used misinformation and hysteria to delay the introduction of Golden Rice to the Philippines, India and China.

More such products are in the works, but only with public support and funding will they make their way to people's plates. An international team of researchers has engineered a variety of cassava-a staple food for 600 million people-with 30 times the usual amount of beta-carotene and four times as much iron, as well as higher levels of protein and zinc. Another group of scientists has created corn with 169-fold the typical amount of beta-carotene, six times as much vitamin C and double the folate.

At press time, GMO-label legislation is pending in at least 20 states. Such debates are about so much more than slapping ostensibly simple labels on our food to satisfy a segment of American consumers. Ultimately, we are deciding whether we will continue to develop an immensely beneficial technology or shun it based on unfounded fears.

This article was originally published with the title "Fight the GM Food Scare" in Scientific American Magazine Vol. 309 No. 3 (), p. 10
doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0913-10

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Mandatory labels for genetically modified foods are a bad idea

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Could We Survive Prolonged Space Travel?

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Could We Survive Prolonged Space Travel?

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Could we survive prolonged space travel? - Lisa Nip

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Prolonged space travel plays a severe toll on the human body: microgravity impairs muscle and bone growth, and high doses of radiation cause irreversible mutations. As we seriously consider the human species becoming space-faring, a big question stands: even if we do break free f…

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Revealed: The Most Powerful Nuclear Bomb Ever

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Revealed: The Most Powerful Nuclear Bomb Ever

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Maj. Andrei Durnovtsev, a Soviet air force pilot and commander of a Tu-95 Bear bomber, holds a dubious honor in the history of the Cold War.

Durnovtsev flew the aircraft that dropped the most powerful nuclear bomb ever. It had an explosive force of 50 megatons, or more than 3,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima weapon.

Over the years, historians identified many names for the test bomb.

Andrei Sakharov, one of the physicists who helped design it, simply called it "the Big Bomb." Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev called it "Kuzka's mother," a reference to an old Russian saying that means you are about to teach someone a harsh, unforgettable lesson.

The Central Intelligence Agency blandly dubbed the test "Joe 111." But a more popular name born out of Russian pride and a sheer awe sums it all up -the Tsar Bomba, or "the King of Bombs."

"As far as I can tell the term did not surface until after the end of the Cold War," Alex Wellerstein, a historian at the Stevens Institute of Technology and blogger, told War Is Boring. "Before that it was just called the 50 megaton or 100 megaton bomb."

"I think we make a lot more of the Tsar Bomba today than anytime other than the immediate period in which it was tested."

"Americans like to point to it as an example of how crazy the Cold War was, and how crazy the Russians are and were," Wellerstein added. "Russians seem to take pride in it."

***

On Oct. 30, 1961, Durnovtsev and his crew took off from an airfield on the Kola Peninsula and headed to the Soviet nuclear test area above the Arctic Circle at Mityushikha Bay, located in the Novaya Zemlya archipelago.

The test project's scientists painted the Bear bomber and its Tu-16 Badger chase plane white to limit heat damage from the bomb's thermal pulse. That's at least what the scientists hoped the paint would do.

The bomb also had a parachute to slow its drop, giving both planes time to fly about 30 miles from ground zero before the nuke detonated. This gave Durnovtsev and his comrades a chance to escape.

When the planes reached their destination at the predetermined altitude of 34,000 feet, he ordered the bomb dropped. The chute opened, and the bomb started its three-minute descent to its detonation altitude two-and-a-half miles above the earth.

Durnovtsev pushed the throttles to the max.

Then the bomb exploded.

The five-mile wide fireball reached as high in the sky as the Bear bomber. The shock wave caused the Bear to drop more than half a mile in altitude before Durnovtsev regained control of his aircraft.

The blast broke windows more than 500 miles away. Witnesses saw the flash through heavy cloud cover more than 600 miles from the blast site.

Its mushroom cloud boiled up into the atmosphere until it was 45 miles above ground zero - essentially, on the lower boundaries of space. The top of the mushroom cloud spread out until it was 60 miles wide. The nuke's thermal pulse burned the paint off of both planes.

And that was small compared to the Soviets' original plan.

The designers originally intended the bomb to have a 100-megaton yield. They used a three-stage Teller-Ulam lithium dry-fuel configuration - similar to the thermonuclear device first demonstrated by the United States during the Castle Bravo shot.

Concerns about fallout prompted Russian scientists to use lead tampers that dialed down the yield to half of the bomb's capabilities. Interestingly enough, Tsar Bomba was one of the "cleanest" nuclear weapons ever detonated, because the bomb's design eliminated 97 percent of the possible fallout.

Even its size was monstrous. It was 26 feet long, about seven feet in diameter and weighed more than 60,000 pounds - so large it couldn't even fit inside of the bomb bay of the modified Bear bomber used to drop it.

The Tsar Bomba was so big, it's doubtful whether it could ever have been a practical weapon delivered by a Soviet bomber.

Because of the distance from the Soviet Union to America, removal of the fuselage fuel tanks to accommodate the bomb - combined with its sheer weight - meant that a Bear bomber wouldn't have sufficient fuel for the mission even with aerial refueling.

However, the CIA investigated whether the Soviets planned to place similar warheads on super-powerful intercontinental ballistic missiles that would target American cities.

The reason was accuracy. Or rather, the lack thereof. Because of the NATO alliance's nuclear advantages, the U.S. could place bombers and intermediate range ballistic missiles fairly close to Soviet targets in Eastern Europe.

By the late 1950s and early 1960s, the U.S. placed intermediate-range ballistic missiles such as the Thor in the United Kingdom and Turkey, and Honest John and Matador missiles in West Germany.

The shorter flight distance for those missiles meant they had a better chance of delivering their nuclear warheads effectively on target.

Russian nuclear weapons had further to travel, so there was more chance of missing the mark. But for a 100-megaton warhead ... close enough will do.

Consider the damage a 100-megaton version of the Tsar Bomba could inflict on Los Angeles - say, if detonated directly above the U.S. Bank Tower, the tallest building west of the Mississippi River.

On a clear day, an airburst at 14,000 feet above ground level would produce a nuclear fireball two miles wide that would be hotter than the surface of the sun, reducing concrete and steel skyscrapers to ashes.

Within five miles of ground zero, everyone not killed by the blast and heat would receive a lethal dose of 500 rems of high-energy radiation. Up to 20 miles away from the detonation, the blast wave would gut every building - even concrete and steel reinforced buildings.

Up to 50 miles away, anyone exposed to the flash of the weapon would receive third-degree burns. In short, a Tsar Bomba warhead would completely devastate the entire Los Angeles metropolitan area.

In 1963, Khrushchev said the Soviet Union possessed a 100-megaton bomb that it deployed to East Germany. But the premier's claim has divided historians on whether it was true, or was just boasting.

As for Sakharov, his experience building and testing Tsar Bomba changed his life, prompting him to abandon weapons research.

He became an outspoken critic of Soviet efforts to create an anti-ballistic missile defense system, an advocate for civil rights in the Soviet Union and much-persecuted political dissident who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975.

And Durnovtsev? Immediately after successfully dropping Tsar Bomba, the Soviet air force promoted him to the rank of lieutenant colonel. In addition, he received the Hero of the Soviet Union award, the highest honor bestowed for service to the Soviet state.
This piece first appeared in War Is Boring here.

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Revealed: The Most Powerful Nuclear Bomb Ever

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It had an explosive force of 50 megatons, or more than 3,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima weapon.

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The Crew of the Enola Gay on Dropping the Atomic Bomb

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The Crew of the Enola Gay on Dropping the Atomic Bomb

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On August 6, 1945, the B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. Twelve men were on that flight. Some chose to keep a low profile and others spoke out about their place in history. Almost all had something to say after the war.

The 509th Composite Group was formed by the U.S. Army Air Force to deliver and deploy the first atomic bombs during World War II. The group was segregated from the rest of the military and trained in secret. Even those in the group only knew as much as they needed to know in order to perform their duties. The group deployed to Tinian in 1945 with 15 B-29 bombers, flight crews, ground crews, and other personnel, a total of about 1770 men. The mission to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan (special mission 13) involved seven planes, but the one we remember was the Enola Gay.

Air Force captain Theodore "Dutch" Van Kirk did not know the destructive force of the nuclear bomb before Hiroshima. He was 24 years old at that time, a veteran of 58 missions in North Africa. Paul Tibbets told him this mission would shorten or end the war, but Van Kirk had heard that line before. Hiroshima made him a believer. Van Kirk felt the bombing of Hiroshima was worth the price in that it ended the war before the invasion of Japan, which promised to be devastating to both sides.

I honestly believe the use of the atomic bomb saved lives in the long run. There were a lot of lives saved. Most of the lives saved were Japanese.

In 2005, Van Kirk came as close as he ever got to regret.

I pray no man will have to witness that sight again. Such a terrible waste, such a loss of life. We unleashed the first atomic bomb, and I hope there will never be another. I pray that we have learned a lesson for all time. But I'm not sure that we have.

After the war, Van Kirk got a masters degree in chemical engineering and worked for DuPont until his retirement. Van Kirk passed away in 2014.

Thomas Ferebee pushed the button that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. He slept in the plane both before and after he did his part. After the war, Ferebee stayed with the Air Force, serving in the Strategic Air Command and in Vietnam. He retired as a full Colonel.

Colonel Ferebee, who retired from the Air Force in 1970, always argued that the Hiroshima bomb was necessary. "I'm convinced that the bombing saved many lives by ending the war," he told Newsweek magazine in 1970.

That doesn't mean he had no opinion on the further use of such weapons.

"Now we should look back and remember what just one bomb did, or two bombs," he told The Charlotte Observer in 1995, the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. "Then I think we should realize that this can't happen again."

Colonel Ferebee died in Florida in 2000, at the age of 81.

Army Air Force radar specialist Jacob Beser was the only man who served on both the Enola Gay in the Hiroshima bombing mission and the Bock's Car three days later when its crew bombed Nagasaki. He couldn't look at the detonation of the bombs because he was charged with monitoring for outside signals that could have detonated the bomb early and monitoring for signals of the proper detonation. This is addition for keeping an eye on radar for any enemy planes.

In this 1985 interview for the Washington Post, Beser was asked if he would do it again.

Given the same circumstances in the same kind of context, the answer is yes. However, you have to admit that the circumstances don't exist now. They probably never will again. I have no regrets, no remorse about it. As far as our country was concerned, we were three years downstream in a war, going on four. The world had been at war, really, from the '30s in China, continuously, and millions and millions of people had been killed. Add to that the deliberate killing that went on in Europe, [and] it's kind of ludicrous to say well, geez, look at all those people that were instantly murdered. In November of 1945 there was an invasion of Japan planned. Three million men were gonna be thrown against Japan. There were about three million Japanese digging in for the defense of their homeland, and there was a casualty potential of over a million people. That's what was avoided. If you take the highest figures of casualties of both cities, say, 300,000 combined casualties in Hiroshima [and] Nagasaki, versus a million, I'm sorry to say, it's a good tradeoff. It's a very cold way to look at it, but it's the only way to look at it. Now looking into tomorrow, that's something else again. I don't have any pat answers for that.

After the war, Beser was an engineer at Sandia Laboratories where nuclear research continued and at Westinghouse where he worked on classified projects for the military. He retired in 1985. In 1988, Beser wrote a book called Hiroshima and Nagasaki Revisited. He died of cancer in 1992 at age 71.

There isn't a lot of biographical information available on radar operator Joe Stiborik, except for some of his reminiscences of the mission.

Joe Stiborik remembered the crew sitting in stunned silence on the return flight. The only words he recollected hearing were Lewis's "My God, what have we done." He explained, "I was dumbfounded. Remember, nobody had ever seen what an A-bomb could do before. Here was a whole damn town nearly as big as Dallas, one minute all in good shape and the next minute disappeared and covered with fires and smoke...There was almost no talk I can remember on our trip back to the base. It was just too much to express in words, I guess. We were all in a kind of state of shock. I think the foremost thing in all our minds was that this thing was going to bring an end to the war and we tried to look at it that way."

Stiborik died of a heart attack in 1984 at age 69.

Morris Jeppson was only 23 years old when he was assigned to accompany the atomic bomb on the Enola Gay. It was his duty to arm the bomb and make sure it would work. Jeppson had the power to abort the mission if it didn't. It was his first and last mission of the war. Jeppson had worked in developing the mechanics of the bomb, and after the war he continued on the nuclear path. He studied physics at Berkeley and worked in the radiation laboratory there. Then he worked on developing hydrogen thermonuclear weapons at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. Jeppson went on to invent and market hi-tech machinery for medical and industrial uses.

In 1995, Jeppson looked back at the Hiroshima mission.

Until the 509th reunion that year Jeppson hadn't given the mission much thought. "Those bomb plugs were just kicking around in a drawer" for years, he says. Still, he maintains that dropping the bomb on Hiroshima was a necessary means to help end the war. He points to wartime concerns that Germany was developing nuclear bomb technology. "If that had happened, the world would be an entirely different place (today)," he says.

Jeppson passed away in 2010.

Richard Nelson was the youngest of the Enola Gay crew. He was 20 years old in August of 1945. He relayed the news of the atomic bomb to his superiors in code, who forwarded it to President Truman: "Results excellent." After the war, Nelson got a degree in business administration and made a career as a salesman. Fifty years later, he had no regrets about his part in the mission.

"War is a terrible thing," he told The Riverside Press-Enterprise on the 50th anniversary of the bombing. "It takes and it destroys. Anyone feels sorry for people who are killed. We are all human beings. But I don't feel sorry I participated in it. If I had known the results of the mission beforehand, I would have flown it anyway."

Nelson died from emphysema in 2003 at age 77.

Enola Gay tail gunner Bob Caron wrote a book about the mission called Fire of a Thousand Suns. Despite his description of the bomb's effects, he never regretted being part of the mission.

In an interview with the Rocky Mountain News published two weeks before he died, Mr. Caron said he had no regrets about his role in the World War II bombing. "No remorse, no bad dreams," he said. "We accomplished our mission."

Caron died of pneumonia in 1995. He was 75 years old.

Wyatt Duzenbury kept tabs on the Enola Gay's engines and other systems while others tended the bomb and the mission itself. He considered it an honor to be chosen for the secret bombing mission that was to shorten the war. After 1945, he stayed with the Air Force. In his retirement, he looked back at the mission.

...he told the Lansing State Journal in 1985, "We were told to go, cranked up, dropped it, and came home." He told the newspaper that he didn't feel guilty about his mission, but did "not feel good about the 100,000 people who died." In an earlier interview, he said, "Personally, I feel that if we hadn't dropped that bomb, and the other crew hadn't dropped its bomb on Nagasaki, it would have cost thousand of US soldiers' lives establishing a beach head for the invasion of Japan."

Duzenbury died in 1992 at age 71.

Robert Shumard assisted flight engineer Wyatt Duzenbury in keeping the Enola Gay running. In a 1960 interview, Shumard said he didn't feel honored to do what they did, but he felt honored to be selected for the mission. And given the circumstances, he would do it again.

"Nobody actually wants to cause the destruction we caused," he said. "But it was through a necessity rather than a wanton type of destruction. It was something that had to be done. As much as a man has gangrene in his leg, and they have to cut it off. It's something that has to be done. It was a cancer in the world situation that had to be removed, that's all."

Naval gunnery officer William "Deke" Parsons was pulled from sea duty to work on the Manhattan Project in 1943. He helped turn the nuclear bomb into a weapon of war, from development to assembly to delivery. He armed the first atomic bomb while the Enola Gay was airborne. After the war, Parsons continued in nuclear weapons development, rising to the rank of Rear Admiral. He oversaw the Operation Crossroads nuclear testing project and also served on the Atomic Energy Commission. Parsons witnessed seven of the first eight nuclear explosions. There are no quotes available from Parsons as he was still serving in the Navy when he died of a sudden heart attack in 1953. He was 52 years old.

Air Force flier Robert Lewis was a pilot first and foremost. He was upset that commander Paul Tibbets had named his plane the Enola Gay. But he was also dedicated to the mission, and earned Tibbets' respect despite the animosity between the two. Lewis wrote a diary of the mission in a notebook during the flight to Hiroshima, against orders. He later sold it for $37,000. It was resold in 2002 for almost ten times that much. He is often quoted:

"As the bomb fell over Hiroshima and exploded, we saw an entire city disappear. I wrote in my log the words: 'My God, what have we done?'"

Some sources say that quote was a revision after the fact. Later in life, Lewis defended the mission.

Over the past half century, some of the crew have returned to the city to take part in the annual commemoration celebrations. Lewis never did. For him "it was just a job of work. I helped make the world a safer place. Nobody has dared launch an atomic bomb since then. That is how I want to be remembered. The man who helped to do that."

Lewis died of a heart attack at age 65 in 1983.

Lieutenant Colonel Paul Tibbets was chosen to head the bomb delivery mission in September of 1944, and he selected the rest of the crew. At that time, the Manhattan Project was preparing to drop a bomb on Europe as well as Asia. After the mission, Tibbets remained in the Air Force until 1966, achieving the rank of Brigadier General. He worked as an aviation executive until his retirement in 1970.

In a 2002 interview with Studs Terkel, Tibbets said he never had second thoughts about the mission:

Number one, I got into the air corps to defend the United States to the best of my ability. That's what I believe in and that's what I work for. Number two, I'd had so much experience with airplanes... I'd had jobs where there was no particular direction about how you do it and then of course I put this thing together with my own thoughts on how it should be because when I got the directive I was to be self-supporting at all times. On the way to the target I was thinking: I can't think of any mistakes I've made. Maybe I did make a mistake: maybe I was too damned assured. At 29 years of age I was so shot in the ass with confidence I didn't think there was anything I couldn't do. Of course, that applied to airplanes and people. So, no, I had no problem with it. I knew we did the right thing because when I knew we'd be doing that I thought, yes, we're going to kill a lot of people, but by God we're going to save a lot of lives. We won't have to invade [Japan].

Tibbets died in 2007 at age 92. He had requested cremation and no physical memorial, because it would become a pilgrimage site for nuclear protesters.
This post originally appeared in 2010.

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The Crew of the Enola Gay on Dropping the Atomic Bomb

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Testimony of Hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors)

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Testimony of Hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors)

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Testimony of Hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors)

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Top > Foreign Policy > Japan's Security / Peace & Stability of the International Community > Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Technology > Nuclear Disarmament and Non-Proliferation > Testimony of Hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors)

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The major explosive energy forms that dominate research and reports on the atomic bombings are three:

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What makes you human or me a penguin? Genes. These are the instructions for how to build a body which all living things have.

Tiny creatures like snails have them just as big animals like whales do. So do all plants and other living things. Genes are very tiny clumps of information about how to make parts of living bodies ... a little like a recipe for a cake or a music track on an old-fashioned cassette tape or CD. But they don't just exist on their own. They are packaged up in long strings called chromosomes like a whole music album on tape.

All these genes - that's all the instructions needed to make you or me - are stuffed in the middle of tiny blobby packets called cells. Cells themselves are very tiny but as millions and millions of them stick together, what we call a body begins to form. That could be a snail, a whale; you or me. (How this 'sticking together' happens is very complicated and no-one yet understands it fully.)

When you grow, some of your millions of cells split into pairs of identical new ones. Start with one million and, whooo! - you've got two million - twice as big! Now this is the clever bit: all the gene instructions get copied exactly just before the cells split. This is like copying your music album onto another blank CD to give to your friend. So every cell of every body of every living thing on the planet always has this gene body-building information - the genetic code - inside it.

Our home planet is very old. Do you know how old? Well it's four thousand six hundred million years old. That's 4,600,000,000 years! And simple life has been around for most of that period - at least 3,500,000 years. That's plenty of time to try out a system for making new life to replace old, and this works just about perfectly. What's more, very simple life forms - just single cells - long ago began to join together to make more with thousands or millions of cells. All these new types of life were natural experiments to see what worked and what didn't. Many didn't work and died out - they became extinct. Some worked for hundreds of millions of years like the dinosaurs, but still ended up extinct. have been around for just a few hundred thousand years at the most, and have only begun to mess up our planet in the last hundred or so.

Did you know penguins have been around for over 40 million years and haven't messed anything up?

New types of bodies - - generally work when they happen to be in a part of the planet where there's plenty of food and few enemies. Too little food, nasty climate or vicious enemies spells disaster and means extinction unless an organism can adapt in some way. This is where genes come in.

The nineteenth century naturalist was the first to realise that all life is governed by this rule. He found that creatures did indeed adapt though he didn't know how because, in his time, people didn't know about genes. It turns out that genes can change. They don't always make perfect copies when a cell divides. Sometimes a mistake is made. This is called a mutation. Most mistakes are disasters - the organism dies. Some are useful and give the creature an advantage which allows it to have babies which are more likely to be successful. But this process is entirely accidental. This slow business of trying new body shapes and styles, some of which work and some of which don't, has been going on for as long as life. Perhaps you know about it. It's called - the survival of the fittest.

Two scientists, Francis Crick and James Watson, finally began to find out the basics of how genes worked and how they copied themselves. This was back in 1953 when they discovered what the stuff that makes all genes everywhere really looked like. This stuff is called (that stands for deoxyribonucleic acid - got that?) and it looks like a double corkscrew. It seems that DNA stores all the information about how to make a new cell - or person or penguin. It all coils up very small to pack away into the tiny space in the centre of cells.

Copycat

How does the DNA copy itself? Because it's made of two corkscrews - called a double helix - hooked together, it can unwind. As it does this, it attracts the right new bits to join the hooks which run down its middle - a bit like the legs on a millipede. And so one strand rebuilds a new mirror-image of itself, just as its mirror-image partner is doing nearby. So one DNA molecule becomes two perfect copies. Clever stuff, eh?

How the DNA itself then organises all the stuff inside a cell to make whatever it needs - like proteins - is complicated. Scientists still don't understand all the things that have to happen to make what starts as just one cell into a human being or a whale. It's taken billions of years for nature to develop all this wonderfully clever yet tiny machinery to build bodies. So it's not surprising that scientists don't understand everything yet... which makes the next bit rather worrying.

Welcome to gene tinkering

Genes are long bits of DNA which code the instructions to build bodies in certain ways. Scientists know a lot about how genes work. They know how to 'snip' genes out of one place and 'stick' them into another. This is the hi-tech world of genetic engineering. We'll look at this in a moment. But first, let's ask a question or two. Why do it? What's the point of tinkering with genes - genetic engineering?

Evolution on fast forward

People are impatient. They want to move fast, not just in cars, planes and spaceships. They want to make new types of life which will do new things. The best example is plants for food. About 10,000 years ago, people found a new way to make sure they got enough food: they invented agriculture - farming. The first farmers simply collected seeds of food plants people liked to eat and sowed them in the ground. Each harvest, they gathered in their seed crops and selected the best and fattest seeds to sow in the ground next year. All organisms - plants, penguins or people - have in their genes a certain amount of variation, so gradually this year-by-year selection of the best quality seeds meant that the crops gave better yields of more food which tasted nicer.

This is called breeding. And believe it or not, all dogs from huge St Bernards to tiny Chihuahuas have been selectively bred by humans from one type of wild dog - probably a wolf. Big dog, little dogA St Bernard and a Chihuahua are the same species even though a St Bernard could gobble up a Chihuahua in one gulp. Being the same species means you can breed with any other member of your species. So you, a human, can breed - or mate - with any other human of the opposite sex to make a baby.

But breeding is rather slow. Scientists have discovered that they can speed things up greatly by using the new science of genetic engineering, part of what is called biotechnology - using life to make things.

'Engineering' is a fancy word for building something. So genetic engineering (often just called GE) is building something with genes. Clever scientists have learned to spot which gene does what in making a new organism. They've found out that simple organisms like bacteria or viruses often have genes which are useful because they can be snipped out and put - spliced - into plant genes. Doing this could give the plant special new abilities like resisting disease. But this can be rather like grabbing a large scorpion so it can't nip you with its claws. You know it's safe to handle since its claws can't reach you but - ow! - it's got a sting in its tail you didn't know about. There may be a 'sting in the tail' which comes from splicing strange genes into other organisms - from viruses to plants, for example. No-one can be quite certain what will happen. It is unpredictable.

Genes can do unexpected and unintended things and nobody can ever be quite sure what. So it is wise to be very careful.

What can genetic engineering do?

Genetically modified organism, GMOs, (which are mostly plants) are mostly transgenic which means they contain genes pinched from something else like bacteria, viruses, other plants or even animals. By snipping a gene which does something useful from one organism and splicing it into another, say a crop plant, scientists can get the plant to grow bigger or faster or make more for people to eat. Or the plant could be made to be more nutritious with more protein or minerals or vitamins. Some crop plants can be made to grow in salty water or very little water - good for very dry countries. Others could be engineered to resist disease which could protect kids against nasty illnesses like polio or measles.

And there's more! Plants have been engineered which use up nitrogen fertilisers more effectively. This not only means that farmers need less expensive fertiliser but also helps slow climate change. Why? Because nitrogen fertilisers produce a lot of nitrous oxide gas which is 300 times more damaging than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. Around 6 percent of warming is due to this gas.

Some plants - like peas and beans - can 'fix' the nitrogen they need directly from the air. If all plants could do that, there'd be no need for nitrogen fertilisers at all, so no nitrous oxide pollution.

Energy boost for plants

Most plants, including most food plants, use a process called C3 photosynthesis to get their energy from the sun. But some plants have evolved a better way to do this called photosynthesis. In the future, it may be possible to engineer C3 food plants so that they can use the C4 process too.

It's back to speed again. People want results fast. Big companies want to make lots of money out of GE.

Penguins have no use for money but I understand why people need it since few people can find their own food any more. And I don't see anything wrong with making money either... unless making it means damage or death to other people and wildlife.

Most companies like to make lots of money and they like to make it fast. This is what companies are for but some don't care much who or what gets trampled on in the process. The GE companies would really like to have everyone everywhere eating food made from their genetically modified plants. These seeds are mine!Then they'd make huge amounts of money because they own the technology needed to produce the seeds. Once they have changed plants by GE, companies can patent them. This means that any farmer who wants to sow that seed must pay money to the company which owns the patent. It means that the farmer has to buy new seeds every year. She can't save her (many small farmers are women) own seeds any more as farmers have done since the start of farming. The company, not the farmer, then has control over who grows what food. Many poor farmers won't be able to afford to buy the seed. Patents on living things has also linked in with a new sort of piracy: biopiracy.

- the opposite of patents
The biotech companies want to control genetic technologies because they can make big money from charging for their use - if they own the patents. But, as in the world of computer programs, more and more genetic information is becoming freely available for anyone to use. That's because much of the science is done by government institutes (especially in countries like Africa, China and India) funded by public money or big charitable foundations in the rich world. The aim is to increase food production by making useful GM seeds available to poor farmers.

But GE is a potentially risky business. How safe will it be if most people end up eating GE food most of the time? What effect will growing all these plants with funny genes have on other plants or animals over time? Maybe nothing will happen - or nothing much. Nobody knows for sure but... fingers crossed!... so far, so good. People have been eating GM foods since the early 1990s and there have been no calamities.

The GE companies say they want to feed all the world's starving people. Excellent! But few companies want to give money away - which is what they'd have to do to feed the starving. Hungry people have no money to buy food or land to grow it on. That is why they're hungry. Not because there isn't enough food. I think the companies are in a hurry because they want to make money fast. Many people think this is risky. They think that the genetically modified organisms (GMOs) the companies are already growing - and you are eating - have not been tested very well.

It's the same stuff!

Or is it? The big seed companies claim that their GM seeds and foods are ' substantially equivalent ' - meaning more or less the same as ordinary seeds. A soy bean seed or tomato looks the same whether it's genetically modified or it isn't. Same or different?They taste the same. They smell the same. So they are the same (almost), say the companies. So there's no need to test them. Critics say this is wrong. If a plant's genes have been altered by GE, the plant then makes or does something different. So it is different, and it may have effects that no-one can know about.

These were genuine worries back in the early days of genetic engineering. GE foods were beginning to be eaten by people (and farm animals) in America and many other parts of the world by the early 1990s. But people in Europe protested in a big way, so big that European governments were forced to ban all GE foods and crops. Protesters had several good reasons for taking action. One main objection was that nobody wanted to be a guinea pig. People didn't want to eat food that hadn't been properly tested and wasn't labelled. They mostly still don't and big protests regularly take place.

So the great world 'experiment' to discover whether these new foods were safe, as the companies that made them claimed, went ahead without Europe. Nothing has gone wrong so far, so it looks like GE foods are not the nightmare 'Frankenfoods' which many protesters called them. From a food safety viewpoint, they seem to be okay.

One of most important GE crops is soybeans"I don't eat those. Yuk!" you probably think. But you'd be surprised because you find them - or stuff made from them - in most foods from bread to hamburgers. Maize or corn is the other most important crop. And there are , mostly not important yet. But what's different about these GE crops if they don't taste different or look different? For the moment, there are two main differences: many of these GMOs are made to be resistant to the weedkilling chemicals. That means farmers can spray their GE crops with weedkillers (herbicides) which will kill every single plant except the crop. The other GMO crops have been engineered to make a poison which kills insect pests. These sound like a good idea - but are they?

Problems with weedkiller-safe crops

Farmers like tidy fields and weeds compete with crop plants meaning that the farmer gets less crop and less money.Tractor spraying weedkiller So making sure no weeds grow by spraying herbicide seems to make sense ... but not for the other creatures and plants that live in the area. By killing everything but his crop, the farmer is making the landscape into a desert for other life. No birds will be there because there are no weed seeds or insects to eat. There will be no flowers. Just miles of identical GE plants.

Insects are very successful creatures. They are very adaptable and, Ha ha! Eat me - I'm a killer!because of their own variable genes and because they breed so fast, can quickly overcome chemical poisons used by humans. Every time a new poison - - is made, within a few years, pesky insects become immune to it. The same is already happening with the new transgenic plants which make their own insect poisons. Unfortunately, these same poisons are very important in as a weapon of last resort. Organic farmers use it only occasionally and it's very effective because the pests have no chance to get used to it. Some transgenic crops make this poison - called Bt toxin - all the time in every part of the plant: roots, stems and leaves. So insects are developing resistance to the poison which will soon make Bt useless.

But what about the people or animals which eat these plants? Fortunately, Bt toxin is poisonous only to insects and appears to have no effect on other animals. But not everybody agrees that this is the case. Who and what do you believe?

What happens when GE plants grow where they're not supposed to? Or when their genes get scattered around by accident? When plants flower, they do it for one reason only: to make new plants. The which collect pollen from the male part of the flower. The bees visit hundreds of similar flowers, some of which may be miles away, and leave some pollen from their earlier visits on the female parts of later flowers. The male pollen connects with the female part of the flower and combines its genes with the female's genes to make a new seed. This is called 'pollination' or 'fertilisation', long words for plant sex. Some other plants (like maize, a member of the family of grasses) use the wind rather than insects to carry their pollen around. This pollen can travel a .

flowersIf pollen from a GM plant happens to land on a plant of the same species which has not been genetically modified, it fertilises the unmodified plant just the same. But the GM genes will become part of the new seed. When the seed grows into a new plant, it may grow up to be just like its engineered parent. It will be contaminated. This is one of the main reasons many people object to GE plants because there is no way to stop this contamination - called gene flow - if the GMOs grow in open fields on a large scale (as they do).

Genetic engineering is just one powerful tool in the kit of tools which farmers and food producers can use to feed the world. It could also help wipe out some diseases.

The Catholic church - which has over 1 billion followers - has had a change of heart over genetic engineering. They formerly condemned it as "playing God" but in late 2010, Vatican scientists claimed that scientists have both the right and a moral duty to be "stewards of God" by genetically modifying crops to help the world's poor.
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But it does need to be very carefully watched and regulated - something the companies don't much like. Wisely and cautiously used, GE has a big role to play. In their scramble for profits, will the big companies bring about the world's end? The GE companies are driven by their need to make big profits for their shareholders. They have been very secretive about what they are doing and, of course, protect everything they do by patenting. If they own the seeds and techniques for making them, they call the shots. It is no coincidence that the makers of herbicide-tolerant crop seeds are also the manufacturers of the herbicides. They cleverly make sure that farmers who buy their seed must also use their brand of herbicide to kill all the weeds. The companies are, first and foremost and like all companies, out to make money, not save the planet or feed the poor. They can help, of course, and some do - but that's not their main aim. Much GE is now done in universities and institutes and is increasingly open source. This means that farmers - even poor farmers - can get involved in creating new crops by telling scientists what traits (like drought resistance, salt tolerance, the ability to withstand flooding and so on) in crop plants they actually need. The seeds are sold at low cost or even given to farmers who can then save some of them, if they wish, for the next crop. By engineering special traits into food crops, they could be very useful in organic farming. But the organisations that licence organic growers, are strongly opposed to all forms of GE, despite the fact that some GE plant varieties could be very useful in organic growing systems. Some people believe that organic farming needs to get together with genetic engineers and not miss a wonderful opportunity for big advances in, to take just one example, disease-resistant crops.

The future is CRISPR

Everyone's talking about CRISPR. This is the latest thing in GE and is a fast and precise technique which is bringing a revolution in biology and medicine. It is a gene-editing tool based on a bacteria's anti-virus immune system and 'hijacked' by a team of scientists led by Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier back in 2012. This tool includes CRISPR, a protein called Cas9, and hybrid RNA that can be programmed to find, cut, and even replace any gene sequence. CRISPR is easy to use compared to older gene-editing methods, and works for any type of cell. This makes it very powerful and, in the wrong hands, very dangerous. It needs to be carefuly regulated but this could be difficult to organise since it is already being used in several different countries. So keep your eyes on this CRISPR ball!

People who are against GE think it's unwise to be running GE 'experiments' in the open air on a huge scale. But the experiments have been happening for years in the US, Argentina, Brazil, India, Canada, Australia and China and other countries. Only Europe opted out because of mass protests which began in the 1990s. They didn't wish to be used like guinea pigs for testing new food crops which offered them no obvious benefits. They wanted GM food to be labelled so they could choose whether or not to eat them.

Only time will tell if GE is perfectly safe or whether it is really as dangerous as many of those who are against it believe.

In the longer term, it looks like many types of GE could be useful. Quite apart from food, itDNA, the code for life might mean new ways to cure diseases or to prevent them in the first place. But - and this is a very big BUT indeed! - people need to know what's happening and why. You need to get involved in thinking about whether GE (and other new human technologies) are good or bad... or if bits of them are good and other bits bad and dangerous. You also need to have a choice, to have a say in what is done or not done. You need to have proper labelling on the stuff you eat and drink so you know how it's made. Governments and companies tend to keep rather quiet about GE. After all, people can't object to things they don't know about. Secrecy worries people and as they come to realise just what's been going on, they want more openness. Don't you want to be involved in deciding the future of life on our planet? GE could affect natural life in all kinds of ways nobody yet knows. If companies release lots of GMOs and something goes terribly wrong, who pays for the Tired Tiki the eco-warriordamage? Can the damage be repaired? Please think carefully about

what
           kind of a
                 future
                      you really want.

Genetic engineering is a powerful tool. But like all technology , people can choose to use it for good or bad reasons. Used wisely, it could be vital in helping people produce more food without doing so much damage to to the planet's other life. So far, it has mostly been used to make money for companies and farmers without much thought about anything else.

You will, as you grow up to become an adult, be inheriting this world of clever technologies like genetic engineering. To help make sure it is a better world for you, your friends and family, you have to know what's going on. You have to know what the scientists, the companies and governments they work for are doing - and why. If you don't do this, who knows what they might get up to. You have to be always vigilant.

Here's what you can do:

Ask questions

Don't let others do your thinking for you!

Don't leave it to the 'experts'. Become an expert yourself! A good start would be the Royal Society's Genetically modified (GM) plants: questions and answers (May 2016)

I've written this guide just because I love all life on Earth and I want you and your friends to think for yourselves and help persuade your human companies and industries do things which are useful, sensible and not damaging to the rest of life. It won't be easy, but there's one thing I'm sure of:
You can do it!

Check out my links section to find out more about groups concerned about genetic engineering and who are trying to change its direction for the common good of all. I've also added some sites which will tell you GE is a great idea. See what you think.
Good luck kids. It's your world...!
Did you find my genetic engineering guide useful? If you did, please tell your friends about it. Thank you!

Discover as much as you can about GE. Why are some people so against it? Why do others think it's great? What do you think? Should the companies be better regulated and monitored?

Find others who feel the same way as you do. There are many groups in many countries all working to wake up other people to the possible risks of GE. You can join and I've listed some on my links section. It's ever more easy to network with Facebook and Twitter!

Ask questions. Don't accept answers you don't think are honest. Question where the information comes from. Is it biased? Be sceptical.

If you think and ownership of genes is unfair, help campaign for GE to be so that everyone can benefit.

You can send emails or write letters to your local or national government in your country - that would really surprise them.

Call or write to the GE companies. Tell them what you think and why. Are they open about what they are doing? Some of them might be pleased to know you're interested in their work. They all have very good websites. See my links section for some of them

Get your mum or dad to help you (and them) find out more. Do they know about GE? What do they think about it?

Write to your local newspaper.

Join your local radio phone-in or ask questions on a TV chat show (if you can).

Talk about GE to your friends or your teachers at school. Get your teachers to run some kind of science project where you all help each other to find out more.

Genetic engineering: My links to other sites

There are loads of places to visit so I've just selected a few which I like the best. And please avoid disappointment and don't send me more links, no matter how useful you think they are. Lots of people do but I simply don't have time to deal with them. Sorry!
Genetically modified (GM) plants: questions and answers Explore 18 questions about genetically modified (GM) plants. Britain's Royal Society conducted a poll to find out what people want to know about GM plants, and then drew on a panel of expert, independent scientists to answer your questions. "We hope that these answers explain the science behind GM and help you form your own view," says the word's oldest and most respected scientific society. You can also download all this as a PDF.

Genetic Technology Here, BEEP looks at both sides of every aspects of genetic engineering. Great site.

Alliance for Science Excellent up-to-date site
Union of Concerned Scientists

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Genetic EngineeringA guide for kids by Tiki the PenguinGenetic engineering (GE for short) is about scientists altering the 'recipes' for making life - the genes which you find in all living things. Doing this is very clever and seems to be very useful.