Scientific American - USA (2020-08)

Illustration by Nick Higgins August 2020, ScientificAmerican.com 5

FROM

THE EDITOR

BOARD OF ADVISERS

Leslie C. Aiello

President, Wenner-Gren Foundation

for Anthropological Research

Robin E. Bell

Research Professor, Lamont-Doherty

Earth Observatory, Columbia University

Emery N. Brown

Edward Hood Taplin Professor

of Medical Engineering and of

Computational Neuro science, M.I.T.,

and Warren M. Zapol Prof essor of

Anesthesia, Harvard Medical School

Vinton G. Cerf

Chief Internet Evangelist, Google

Emmanuelle Charpentier

Scientific Director, Max Planck Institute

for Infection Biology, and Founding

and Acting Director, Max Planck Unit

for the Science of Pathogens

George M. Church

Director, Center for Computational

Genetics, Harvard Medical School

Rita Colwell

Distinguished University Professor,

University of Maryland College Park

and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School

of Public Health

Kate Crawford

Director of Research and Co-founder,

AI Now Institute, and Distinguished

Research Professor, New York University,

and Principal Researcher,

Microsoft Research New York City

Drew Endy

Professor of Bioengineering,

Stanford University

Nita A. Farahany

Professor of Law and Philosophy,

Director, Duke Initiative for

Science & Society, Duke University

Edward W. Felten

Director, Center for Information

Technology Policy, Princeton University

Jonathan Foley

Executive Director, Project Drawdown

Jennifer A. Francis

Senior Scientist,

Woods Hole Research Center

Harold “Skip” Garner

Executive Director and Professor, Primary

Care Research Network and Center for

Bioinformatics and Genetics, Edward Via

College of Osteopathic Medicine

Michael S. Gazzaniga

Director, Sage Center for the Study of

Mind, University of California,

Santa Barbara

Carlos Gershenson

Research Professor, National

Autonomous University of Mexico

Alison Gopnik

Professor of Psychology and

Affiliate Professor of Philosophy,

University of California, Berkeley

Lene Vestergaard Hau

Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and

of Applied Physics, Harvard University

Hopi E. Hoekstra

Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology,

Harvard University

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson

Founder and CEO, Ocean Collectiv

Christof Koch

Chief Scientist, MindScope Program,

Allen Institute for Brain Science

Morten L. Kringelbach

Associate Professor and

Senior Research Fellow, The Queen’s

College, University of Oxford

Robert S. Langer

David H. Koch Institute Professor,

Department of Chemical Engineering,

M .I.T.

Meg Lowman

Director and Founder, TREE Foundation,

Rachel Carson Fellow, Ludwig Maximilian

University Munich, and Research

Professor, University of Science Malaysia

John Maeda

Global Head, Computational Design +

Inclusion, Automattic, Inc.

Satyajit Mayor

Senior Professor,

National Center for Biological Sciences,

Tata Institute of Fundamental Research

John P. Moore

Professor of Microbiology and

Immunology, Weill Medical College

of Cornell University

Priyamvada Natarajan

Professor of Astronomy and Physics,

Yale University

Donna J. Nelson

Professor of Chemistry,

University of Oklahoma

Robert E. Palazzo

Dean, University of Alabama at

Birmingham College of Arts and Sciences

Rosalind Picard

Professor and Director,

Affective Computing, M.I.T. Media Lab

Carolyn Porco

Leader, Cassini Imaging Science Team,

and Director, CICLOPS,

Space Science Institute

Lisa Randall

Professor of Physics, Harvard University

Martin Rees

Astronomer Royal and Professor

of Cosmology and Astrophysics,

Institute of Astronomy,

University of Cambridge

Daniela Rus

Andrew (1956) and Erna Viterbi Professor

of Electrical Engineering and Computer

Science and Director, CSAIL, M.I.T.

Eugenie C. Scott

Chair, Advisory Council,

National Center for Science Education

Terry Sejnowski

Professor and Laboratory Head of

Computational Neurobiology Laboratory,

Salk Institute for Biological Studies

Meg Urry

Israel Munson Professor of Physics

and Astronomy, Yale University

Michael E. Webber

Co-director, Clean Energy Incubator,

and Associate Professor,

Department of Mechanical Engineering,

University of Texas at Austin

George M. Whitesides

Professor of Chemistry and Chemical

Biology, Harvard University

Amie Wilkinson

Professor of Mathematics,

University of Chicago

Anton Zeilinger

Professor of Quantum Optics, Quantum

Nanophysics, Quantum Information,

University of Vienna

Laura Helmuth is editor in chief of Scientific American.

Follow her on Twitter @laurahelmuth

Lessons from the

Natural World

During this strange and scary pandemic year, a lot of people
have been spending more time outdoors, admiring flowers and
listening to birds they may have rushed past in the Before Times.
The more you learn about nature, the more fascinating it is, and
this month’s cover story on oaks may help you appreciate these
majestic trees. Plant scientists Andrew  L. Hipp, Paul  S. Manos
and Jeannine Cavender-Bares show that over the past 56 million
years, oaks have evolved into 435 species with elaborate adapta-
tions that let them thrive in habitats around the world, domi-
nating many North American forests. Turn to page  42.
Our other natural world feature story this month reveals that
we can learn pandemic survival skills from other species. House
finches, spiny lobsters, guppies, ants, mandrills, and more can
recognize illness and practice social isolation to avoid infecting
others in the group. Dana M. Hawley and Julia C. Buck, experts
on animals and disease, describe these newly relevant behaviors,
starting on page  36.
We can learn from history as well. A plague outbreak in the
1630s gave Galileo an excuse to publish his Dialogue concerning
the Two Chief World Systems (the one about how Earth moves
around the sun) in nearby Florence rather than Rome, evading
the Vatican’s censors, at least for a while. He had to quarantine
when summoned for a trial for heresy, and his daughter sent pro-

visions to care for him remotely. Historian Hannah Marcus

begins the story on page  32.

Humans became human through friendliness, researchers

Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods assert on page  58, likening the

process to the domestication of wolves into dogs. The ability to

create large and versatile social networks may have been our

greatest evolutionary advantage.

Having a strong and healthy community is a key indicator of

quality of life, according to Joseph  E. Stiglitz ( page  24 ). He and

other economists increasingly say that gross domestic product

is a mismeasure of a country’s economic well-being, and a focus

on GDP has impaired our ability to prepare for pandemics. Edu-

cation, environmental quality, housing, safety and health are

what really matter.

Limiting climate change will require many solutions, and

agroforestry experts Eric Toensmeier and Dennis Garrity explain

on page  64 how growing trees among crops and pastures can

use land more efficiently to grow biomass that removes carbon

dioxide from the atmosphere.

One of the great mysteries in physics has been the quantum

Hall effect, which is the surprising behavior of electric currents

under certain conditions to change in a stepwise fashion rather

than smoothly. On page  50, mathematician Spyridon Michala-

kis tells us how he helped to solve the problem using a field of

mathematics called topology, which studies the fundamental

properties of shapes.

Thank you for reading Scientific American, and I hope you

all are having a safe and healthy summer with plenty of oppor-

tunities to enjoy the shade of an oak tree.

© 2020 Scientific American