RP214 The Art of Optimism

 RP214 The Art of Optimism

In Paris in the 1920s, artists and architects saw the beauty of geometry: straight lines, symmetry, balanced curves, and geometric shapes. This eclectic, elegant, modern style was called Art Deco.

After World War I, people wanted to break with the past. They wanted to forget the horrors of war and embrace a new, modern world. The Art Nouveau style, popular before the war, focused on organic shapes and flowing curves. After the war, however, people wanted stability and modernity. The disorganized, natural curves of the past gave way to the straight, predictable, man-made lines of the future. Art Deco is elegant and controlled rather than fluid and plant-like.

Elegant doesn't have to mean boring or plain. After suffering through years of rationing and poverty, people longed to return to wealth and comfort. Art Deco products, therefore, used shiny, solid, long-lasting materials like aluminum, wood, and chrome. Many Art Deco buildings are highly decorated with sunbursts, fountains, and chevrons: anything that can be made symmetrical and repeating. Art Deco also incorporated styles from past civilizations, like the Aztecs and the Classical Greeks and Romans. Strong. serious Aztec faces decorate doors and windows of Art Deco buildings, as do stylized Greek athletes. It was as though artists wanted to remind the world that human beings could be civilized as well as savage.

Great examples of Art Deco structures can be found around the world, as the 1920s were a period of intense building. New York's Chrysler building is a perfect example. It is tall, streamlined, extremely symmetrical, and decorated with repeating triangles and arches on its top. Miami also has a number of Art Deco buildings in sunny pastel colors that show post-war optimism. The city may have been influenced by Cuban immigrants, whose capital, Havana, is an Art Deco center.

The Great Depression ended the post-war prosperity, but Art Deco survived for another few decades and gave us some of the 20th century's most enduring art.

RP213 The First Lady of Science

 RP213 The First Lady of Science

In 1867, in Warsaw, part of Russian-controlled Poland, Maria Sklodowska was born. We know her by her married name, Marie Curie. As Madame Curie, she rose to the heights of scientific achievement.

Maria's father taught math and physics, and Maria inherited his love of the sciences. She also inherited her parents' patriotism. Her family suffered because of their parents' resistance to Russian rule. They believed education and pride in their culture was the best defense against their occupiers.

Higher education, however, was difficult for women to obtain in Poland. Maria and her sister Bronisława agreed to help fund each other's studies. Bronisława went to Paris to study medicine, supported by Maria. In 1891, it was Maria's turn.

Maria switched to the French "Marie" in Paris, where she studied physics, chemistry, and mathematics, and tutored at night. She met Pierre Curie, a professor of physics and chemistry, around 1894. They married in 1895. Madame Curie, as she became known, now had a lab partner.

Marie and Pierre discovered two new elements: polonium, which Marie named after Poland, and radium. Both of these elements are radioactive, a property which has only been described recently. Marie and her husband, Pierre, were often poor and worked under very basic conditions in their laboratory. They didn't know that exposure to radiation could destroy their health.

In 1903, for their work on radiation and radioactive elements, Marie, Pierre, and another scientist, Henri Becquerel received the Nobel Prize in Physics. Marie would also win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911.

Marie promoted the use of radiation for health, especially during World War I. X-ray machines powered by radiation helped doctors find bullets and shrapnel in soldiers. Ironically, Marie eventually died of the cumulative effects of radiation exposure in 1934. Her sacrifice and her husband's was our gain. They paved the way for great scientific leaps in the 20th century and beyond.

RP212 The Great Wall of the Ocean

 RP212 The Great Wall of the Ocean

Skirting the coast of northeast Australia is the only living thing that can be seen from space. The Great Barrier Reef runs alongside Queensland for 2,600 kilometers, providing food and shelter for a huge variety of plants and animals, many of which are endangered. Only tropical rain forests house as many species as the Reef does.

The Great Barrier Reef is the longest coral reef in the world, but it isn't all one mass. It's made up of 2,900 or more separate reef systems, which combine to make one long, interconnected whole. Four hundred species of hard and soft coral make up the body of the Reef. Bright, living coral grows on top of the skeletons of the old. The current Reef is estimated to be about 20,000 years old. When the Reef began growing, sea levels were much lower. As sea levels rose, new coral climbed higher, but coral underneath died. coral needs sunlight to live, and light can only penetrate water to a certain depth.

Among all this coral are plants, snails, whales, sharks, jellyfish, and other sea creatures. Six endangered species of sea turtle live in the Reef, laying their eggs on nearby sandy shores. Humpback whales migrate there every winter, and since whaling ended in 2008, their numbers are increasing. The dugong, or sea cow, lives there, grazing on fields of sea grass. These mammals are in danger of extinction, and are one of the many protected animals who make the Reef their home.

Despite its huge size, the Reef isn't invulnerable. Rising ocean temperatures are dangerous to coral and some fish. Pollution from farms reduces the water quality and promotes the growth of algae, which blocks the light. Shipping accidents have done major damage. Predators cause trouble. The crown-of-thorns starfish eats coral. Its recent population boom put the entire Reef at risk.

Constantly growing, constantly dying, this great wall relies on a complex ecological balance. We should guard it carefully.

RP211 Darkness on the Sun

 RP211 Darkness on the Sun

The sun isn't a uniform ball of fire. Instead, it bursts with flares and spots, and it has other phenomena, none of which are completely understood.

Sunspots are dark spots that appear on the surface of the sun. They can be specks or areas tens or hundreds of thousands of miles wide. They' re dark because they' re cooler than the surrounding areas. If these spots were seen anywhere other than on the sun, they would be very bright. Sunspots occur in pairs or groups, and can last from hours to several weeks, moving around the sun's surface.

Sunspots are caused when the sun's surface is disrupted. The surface, which contains all the sun's heated energy, breaks. Electrified material then leaks from the crack like a whirlwind, which appears as a spot. These spots release electricity into the air. This adds to the solar wind—a flow of charged particles that comes out of the sun's atmosphere because it contains so much energy. This flow of charged particles can reach the earth's atmosphere.

Solar wind affects power on Earth. It can interfere with satellite transmissions, radio waves, and GPS data. It can knock out power grids. It can also cause beautiful events like the northern lights, which occur when solar wind interacts with gases in our atmosphere.

A recent study confirms that sunspots also affect Earth's weather. Researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research confirmed the theory that sunspots lead to heavier rains on parts of the earth. Energy from sunspots heats parts of the atmosphere, affecting high-altitude winds. This leads to a chain reaction that increases rain in the tropics. Meanwhile, the energy also warms the surface of the Pacific Ocean, starting another chain reaction that leads to more rain elsewhere.

Other theories say that more sunspots would lead to less energy and heat on Earth, causing a "mini ice age." True or not, the earth is strongly connected to its sun, spots and all.

RP210 Talking With Your Hands

 RP210 Talking With Your Hands

Humans are social beings, driven to communicate. When the usual means of communicating—listening and talking—don't work, humans find another way. For deaf people, this is sign language.

Sign languages have been used since ancient times, but the first free school for deaf people wasn't founded until 1775, when one opened in France. Soon after, a public school for the deaf opened in Germany. More popped up, using different signs and philosophies.

In 1815, the American Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet traveled to Europe to learn how to educate deaf people. He studied in France and returned to the United States to found the first school for the deaf in America, the Connecticut Asylum for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons, in 1817. It's now called the American School for the Deaf. It was at this school that American Sign Language (ASL) emerged out of the combination of French Sign Language and signs the students had brought with them (particularly from Martha's Vineyard, a place in Massachusetts with a sign language of its own). Because of the strong French influence, ASL and modern French Sign Language share more than half of their vocabulary.

ASL communicates ideas very differently than spoken languages do. Each sign contains five elements: the shape of the hand, the direction of the palm, the location of the hand, the movement of the hand, and cues like facial expression, posture, or moving one's mouth. All these elements affect signs' meanings. Facial expression is very important, too, as it adds emotion. Making a sign for an emotion without expressing that emotion in your face can be sarcastic in ASL. Movements and expressions affect both grammar and issues like stress, intonation, and the flow of a conversation.

Amazingly, though ASL has existed for about 200 years, ASL's grammar has only been studied since the 1960s. Hearing people still have a lot to learn about this uncommon form of human communication.

RP209 Kidnapping a Computer

 RP209 Kidnapping a Computer

It's Sunday morning. You sit down at your desk, ready to put the finishing touches on a big project. You turn the computer on and wait for your desktop to appear. But instead of that familiar cat picture, you see something else entirely. A screen says your files are encrypted, and you can't access them. You have to pay $500 within four days, or your entire hard drive will be deleted.

You are a victim of ransomware.

Ransomware is a new type of computer virus. It used to be that cyber criminals would create viruses to cause trouble. They just wanted to "watch the world burn. "But somewhere along the line, these people learned that they could actually profit from their criminal behavior. Here's where ransomware comes in. Ransomware locks part of a computer's functions, and asks the victim for payment to open them again. Some ransomware prevents Windows from starting. Other types encrypt important files or stop certain apps from running. But ransomware will always ask for a ransom—there's always a way to "make it stop." That's how it got its name.

Victims of ransomware face a brutal choice: pay up, or kiss their files goodbye. Research from cybersecurity firms found that only around 5% of people actually consider paying. Yet that 5% still adds up to a lot of money. The FBI estimates that cyber criminals raised around $1 billion from ransomware attacks in 2016. The amount that victims are being asked to pay is also going up over time. Ransomware demanded an average payment of $294 in 2015. By 2016, that number had increased to $679.

You're probably thinking "ransomware sounds awful! How can I avoid being infected?" Luckily, there's a way: stop opening all of those emails from Nigerian princes and long-lost relatives! Most ransomware spreads via links or attachments in emails. Just be careful where you click, and you should be fine.

RP208 The Memory Eater

 RP208 The Memory Eater

Alzheimer's is a disease that takes people away before they die. It turns loved ones into strangers, homes into cages, and daily life into a series of unpleasant surprises. Alzheimer's disease is estimated to affect four million people in the U.S. and 26 million people worldwide, and we still don't know exactly what causes it or how to reverse it.

Alzheimer's symptoms are often confused with the normal aging process. Difficulty in forming new memories is usually the first symptom of Alzheimer's. People with Alzheimer's may remember the past clearly, but can't remember where they parked the car, why they drove to the mall, or what they spoke to their neighbors about three hours ago. As scientists continue to study the disease, however, it is becoming more and more clear that serious memory problems have little to do with age and everything to do with this dreadful disease. Recognizing the relation between memory loss and this serious medical issue could lead to detecting Alzheimer's earlier and managing it better.

People with Alzheimer's develop buildups called plaques in the spaces between nerve cells. They also develop twisted tangles of fibers inside brain cells. These plaques and tangles are not well understood yet, but they seem to kill nerve cells in the brain. Nerve cells transmit electrical impulses that control our thoughts, our movements, and our words. As they die, we slowly lose control of these processes. As a consequence, the brain shrinks.

As Alzheimer's progresses, patients lose their memories, their ability to move well, to carry on a conversation, and eventually to speak or take care of themselves at all. It is a long, painful process for patients and their loved ones, who can only watch as the patient retreats into a private, perhaps lonely world.

As populations age, Alzheimer's becomes a bigger problem. Research is ongoing. Perhaps soon doctors will be able to save patients' memories and lives.