Works in Progress

Most Americans think of mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria, yellow fever, and dengue as problems that affect people in other countries, not their own. Until recently, they would have been largely correct: malaria and yellow fever were eliminated in the United States in the twentieth century, and dengue had become extremely rare, with most cases brought back from abroad.

Over three thousand years ago, on a plain beside the Orontes River in Syria, two great armies clashed in what may at the time have been the most colossal battle ever seen: the Battle of Kadesh. The two combatants, the Egyptians and the Hittites, together put forward tens of thousands of soldiers and over five thousand chariots, making the number of combatants comparable to some smaller First World War battles, and quite likely bigger than Agincourt, Hastings, and Yorktown.

In the early hours of 5th June 1967, Gamal ‘Abd al-Nasser, the revolutionary leader of Egypt, received good news from his commanders. The Egyptian Air Force had destroyed three quarters of the Israeli Air Force and was laying waste to what was left of the enemy’s airbases. This information was immediately telegraphed to Egypt’s allies – Syria, Jordan, and Iraq – who enthusiastically entered the fray, expecting a walkover. Nasser’s commanders hadn’t been entirely honest.

Words by Mins In the twentieth century, a radical change took place in global architecture. The modernist movement emerged in the 1920s, favoring unornamented designs, exposed modern materials like steel and concrete, and the abandonment of the complicated visual patterns of traditional planning and facade design. Modernism came to dominate global architecture by the 1950s, and although it has evolved and fragmented since then, styles of broadly modernist character remain dominant today.

Behind the first massively multiplayer virtual world was a home computer that was comically underpowered by today’s standards. Introduced in November 1982, the Commodore 64 was named for its then-generous 64 kilobytes of memory. In its twelve years on the market, it became the best-selling desktop computer in history. A conservative estimate puts its sales at 12.5 million machines worldwide.

In 1983, a biochemical company called AGS filed an application to release genetically modified organisms into the environment. AGS had deleted a single gene from a common leaf-dwelling microbe that encoded a protein around which ice crystals nucleate. By removing it and spraying the modified microbes onto plants, AGS hoped to prevent ice from forming on crops during cold California mornings.

Every child is taught that landfill is the worst place our trash can end up. It is the sad consequence of a failure to recycle: a mountain of waste leaking chemicals and smells, blighting the land forever. What if that picture is wrong? What if landfill, properly done, is actually one of the cleanest, cheapest, and most environmentally sensible things we can do with our waste? It turns out that for much of what we throw away, the humble landfill beats the recycling bin.

A car is a difficult thing to steal. It is large, cherished by its owner, difficult to hide and required by law to have identifying metal plates that everyone can see. A good thief changes the plates, and an excellent thief steals a common car in a boring color and hopes to blend in among the crowd. But eventually, no matter what techniques they use, they must drive that car on the road, and roads are public places.

We ask public transport to address problems it was never designed to solve. Bikeshare services are charged with reducing emissions and improving local air quality. Subway stations need to beautify the neighborhood. Buses are made to add union jobs. And every new transit project should reflect community input and empower residents. All of this impedes public transport’s ability to do its main job: transporting the public. All these goals have merit. But each costs money and adds delay.

Words by Mins If you want a picture of biomedical research, imagine a boot stamping on a biologist’s face – for decades. The boot is labeled ‘medicinal chemistry’. This should not be taken as an insult to medicinal chemists, who heroically navigate maybe the hardest field in biomedicine. Rather, what I mean is this. A biologist might have a clear hypothesis about how to stop a disease, such as: blocking a particular protein will lower blood cholesterol and reduce the risk of heart disease.