The Washington Post - USA (2020-07-28)

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HEalth&Science

TUESDAY, JULY 28 , 2020. WASHINGTONPOST.COM/HEALTH-SCIENCE EE E

BY JIM MORRISON

W

hen Randy Jordan, a fifth-

generation dairy farmer in

central Massachusetts,

looked into turning ma-

nure from his 300 cows

into natural gas more than a decade ago,

he just wanted to find a way to lower his

increasingly painful electric bill.

He knew that biodigesters, a sort of

modern alchemy that transforms poop

into profits, had been around for decades.

But many of the tanks, where microor-

ganisms digest manure and turn it into

methane gas that can be burned as fuel or

converted to electricity, had been aban-

doned. They proved too complicated to

manage. “It was challenging,” he remem-

bered, “and the money didn’t work.”

Then he met Bill Jorgenson, a longtime

Turning cow manure into money

ADAM GLANZMAN FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

BY KATHERINE ELLISON

Can a video game help children strug-

gling with ADHD?

T hat question inspired hopeful head-

lines last month after the Food and Drug

Administration permitted marketing of

the first digital game that may be

prescribed to treat children ages 8 to 12

who have been diagnosed with atten-

tion-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

In EndeavorRx, designed for iPhones

and iPads, children guide an avatar

surfing through molten lava and an icy

river, dodging fires and icebergs while

grabbing flying objects. The game is not

yet available for purchase, nor has a

price been released, but its Boston-based

developer, Akili Interactive Labs, may

now feature its unique status in ads and

pursue coverage by insurance plans. No

SEE ADHD ON E6

Digital game for

ADHD children

stirs controversy

BY CAREN CHESLER

I sent a text to an old college friend in

April, inquiring how she was faring un-

der the covid-19 stay-at-home order then

in place, and I confided in her that I’d be

sad to see it end. I liked that everything

had slowed down, that for a brief time, I’d

stepped off the conveyor belt I’d been on

that made my life feel less meaningful.

My friend, a 57-year-old writer in New

York, wrote back immediately: “Wow.

Will not be sad when it’s over. It’s a dark

cloud hanging over life, and I feel pan-

icked and dread for people in the restau-

rant industry, tourism, etc., and the dom-

ino effect that will have on us all.

“It’s nice to have dinner with my kids

every night,” she said, but she lamented

how very different their lives will be from

ours if this persists, affecting everything

SEE PANDEMIC ON E6

I know it’s weird,

but I’ll miss our

stay-at-home era

Farmers and utilities

burn methane for

energy — and curtail a

powerful greenhouse

gas in the process

Jordan Dairy Farms in

Massachusetts use a biodigester

to convert cow manure into

methane gas, which can be used

for fuel or electricity.

MARINE LIFE

Scientists unravel the secrets of ultra-

black fish that swim in the deepest and

darkest depths of the ocean. E2

MORE INSIDE

For black men, higher education and incomes don’t lower risk of depression. E3

Why masks are helpful to you, even though they don’t filter everything out. E3

College biology textbooks still portray a world of white male scientists. E5

caused by the coronavirus], we see

similar processes, but we are watching it

unfold in real time,” said Anne Stone,

regents professor in the School of Hu-

man Evolution and Social Change at

Arizona State University, whose focus is

anthropological genetics. She also has

studied evidence of tuberculosis in an-

cient DNA.

Paleogenomics, which adapts high-

end medical tools similar to some now

being used to track the coronavirus, has

amounted to a “revolution” in under-

standing disease history, says Maria

Spyrou, a microbiologist at the Max

Planck Institute in Germany.

“This is one of the things that we can

now start saying,” said Spyrou, adding

that where historical records are lack-

ing, DNA evidence offers the possibility

of filling in gaps, sometimes in surpris-

ing ways.

“One of them is plague,” Spyrou said.

SEE EPIDEMICS ON E4

Ancient teeth show that epidemics

began much further back in history

BY IAN MORSE

As the novel coronavirus pandemic

reshapes lives and entire economies,

historians tell us this is not the first time.

The earliest written records of tiny

infectious organisms overhauling hu-

man societies stretch back as far as the

Plague of Justinian in A.D. 541, which is

thought to have killed up to 50 million

people, or even the earlier Antonine

Plague in A.D. 165, which left 5 million

dead, a substantial portion of the world

then.

Now, paleogenomics — a nascent field

that studies DNA in remnants of ancient

teeth — is rewriting the first chapter of

humanity’s entanglement with disease

to thousands of years older than origi-

nally thought. The growing evidence

suggests that these first epidemics

forced societies to make epoch-defining

transformations.

“In the case of covid-19 [the disease

energy consultant with a vision.

Jorgenson told Jordan that while

87 percent of the digesters in the country

had failed, he had a new recipe for suc-

cess: add food waste to the manure. It

would increase the energy output and

boost the income for farmers through

tipping fees from manufacturers, retail-

ers and others looking to unload food

waste. Best of all, it would use methane

from the manure, instead of venting it

into the atmosphere to contribute to

climate change.

It was an unlikely alliance between the

farmer and the consultant. “This guy

genuinely did not know which end the

manure came out of the cow,” Jordan s aid

jokingly.

Along with four other farmers, they

formed AGreen Energy and began oper-

ating on five farms. By 2014, after three of

the farmers dropped out and sold their

shares to Jordan, the project smelled just

right to Vanguard Renewables, a start-up

that saw the technology’s promise with

the addition of food waste. The compa-

nies merged. Vanguard soon raised

$72 million in venture capital and began

financing biodigesting partnerships with

other New England dairy farms.

That caught the fancy of Dominion

Energy, which is now investing more than

$200 million to join with Vanguard to

capture manure methane from dairy

farms in Colorado, Utah, New Mexico,

Georgia and Nevada, and convert it into

natural gas. Dominion will own the proj-

ects and sell the gas. Vanguard will de-

sign, develop and operate the bio -

digesters. Farmers get paid for hosting

the digester and benefit from the byprod-

SEE MANURE ON E5