A slum in Nairobi. Photo: Gates Foundation

One in four adolescent girls living in the congested slums of Nairobi, Kenya, falls victim to rape each year. An organization called No Means No Worldwide is trying to improve that disturbing statistic. According to one study the non-profit conducted, a short course in both verbal and physical self-defense can significantly improve the girls’ odds of escaping their would-be rapists, Stanford School of Medicine reports.

Sexual assault usually is not openly discussed in Kenya, but in this trial more than 400 high school girls, aged 14 to 21, discussed the topic. In addition to learning self defense techniques, they also received information about what to do and how to get help if they ever suffered sexual assault.

In the 10 months after receiving self-defense training, more than half of these girls reported using what they had learned to fend off would-be attackers. The proportion of them who were raped fell from 24.6 percent in the year before training to 9.2 percent in the 10-month period after.

Another 120 girls served as a control group. During the trial, they took a life skills class that is administered by the Kenyan government. The proportion of these girls who went on to suffer rape remained about the same, or around 25 percent.

Next, No Means No Worldwide plans to move into trials with boys to see whether teaching them not to attack women has any effect on curbing sexual violence.

While the problem of rape in Kenya may seem remote to Western readers, a recent survey found that nearly 1 in 5 women in the U.S. say they have been raped or suffered an attempted rape at some point in their life.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Uganda: The Horror 
Making Cooking Safer in the Developing World 

Smog in a Beijing neighborhood. Photo: Chris Aston

Next month, China will begin its first carbon-trading pilot program in Shenzhen, a major Chinese city just north of Hong Kong, the Guardian reports. The program will begin modestly, targeting only certain Shenzhen companies, but will soon expand to other sectors and cities. Environmentalists hope these initial trials will help the country determine how to best go about setting caps on emissions, the Guardian writes.

China ranks as the world’s number one carbon dioxide emitter, thanks in part to the massive amounts of coal the country burns. China currently builds a new coal-fired power plant at a rate of about one every week to ten days. The country’s coal burning levels are nearly on par with the rest of the world combined.  

Politicians around the world have focused on carbon trading as the market-based strategy of choice for regulating greenhouse gas emissions. HowStuffWorks explains the basic concept:

Cap-and-trade schemes are the most popular way to regulate carbon dioxide (CO2) and other emissions. The scheme’s governing body begins by setting a cap on allowable emissions. It then distributes or auctions off emissions allowances that total the cap. Member firms that do not have enough allowances to cover their emissions must either make reductions or buy another firm’s spare credits. Members with extra allowances can sell them or bank them for future use. Cap-and-trade schemes can be either mandatory or voluntary.

But in the European Union, this system has not worked so well. The Royal Society of Chemistry explains the problem:

In theory, the cost of buying the allowances, either directly from other companies or on the open market, is supposed to provide financial incentives for companies to invest in carbon reducing technology or shift to less carbon intensive energy sources. But after reaching a peak of nearly €30 (£25) per tonne in the summer of 2008, prices have steadily fallen. By January they had crashed to under €5, providing little, if any, financial incentive for companies to reduce emissions.

This initial effort in China will extent to just 638 companies, the Guardian reports, though those businesses are responsible for 68 percent of Shenzhen’s total greenhouse gas emissions. While any efforts China undertakes to reduce its emissions will help ward off global climate change and reduce greenhouse gas build up in the planet’s atmosphere, China’s leaders say the decision primarily stems from it’s escalating in-country problems with air pollution, the Guardian reports.

If things go well, the scheme will further incorporate transportation, manufacturing and construction companies as well. China plans to enroll seven cities in the experiment by 2014. By 2020, China hopes to have implemented a nation-wide carbon control program—just in time for the country’s estimated emissions peak in 2025.

More from Smithsonian.com:

The Political History of Cap and Trade 
China Acknowledges It Has a Problem with Pollution-Laden ‘Cancer Villages’ 

Photo: BenSpark

Having a child fall out of a roller coaster or flung out of the Tilt-A-Whirl ranks pretty high on the list of “parents’ worst nightmares.” So it’s a bit surprising that there’s not a huge body of a research on the risks of these rides. The first study to look at national rates of amusement park ride injuries to children just came out and reported that a total of 92,885 kids in the U.S. under the age of 18 wound up at the emergency room between 1990 to 2010 after an unfortunate encounter with a ferris wheel, merry-go-round or other ride. That’s around 4,400 kids, on average, each year.

In the context of total amusement park attendance, that’s not such a high number of injuries. An estimated 300 million people visit amusement parks each year in the U.S., according to a report published by CQPress. With that context, the rate of injuries children suffer at amusement parks seems much less alarming. The authors write:

In the case of amusement park rides, according to a study by the National Safety Council, nearly 280 million visitors rode 1.7 billion rides in 2009 and reported 1,181 injuries—or less than one injury for every million rides. The vast majority of these injuries are not considered to be serious; in fact, only about 6 percent of them required an overnight stay in a hospital.

Similarly, a 2005 report issued by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission did not find any statistically significant trends for mobile amusement park rides between 1994 to 2004. (This excludes rides at permanent amusement parks, however.)

But if that’s your kid in the hospital, even a relatively low rate of injury probably seems too high. Kids most often suffered injuries to their head or neck, followed by the arms. Soft tissue injuries were most common, followed by strains or sprains. (Only 10 percent of the incidences involved broken bones.) Children usually received these injuries by falling or else by banging into something or being hit by something while on a ride. Most of the injuries took place at permanent parks (as opposed to traveling fairs or mall rides).

The majority of the injuries weren’t serious enough to warrant overnight hospitalization. But the mom or dad whose kid just came crying off a roller coaster probably isn’t going to be reassured by that statistic, either.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Goodbye My Coney Island? 
Learning About Magnets, Acceleration and Electricity at the Amusement Park 

Photo: WilliamNYC

It took a while for Americans to get comfortable with the idea of shopping for groceries online. The first ventures into online groceries through sites—like Webvan, founded in the 1990s, closed in 2001—flopped. But as consumers bought more books, movies, shoes, clothes, toys and everything else online, companies like New York-centric FreshDirect made web grocery shopping and delivery work.

Services like FreshDirect don’t just cut down on hassle of having to drive to the grocery store. New research shows that they can also be good for the environment. Ordering online cuts carbon emissions on average by half when compared with traveling to the store by car, the researchers found, especially when delivery trucks were filled to capacity. 

This is how a delivery truck can save on mileage when compared with personal vehicles driving to and from a store. Photo: Goodchild/Wygonik, UW

In their analysis, the researchers randomly sampled Seattle households. To calculate emissions, they included data such as the type of car families owned, the roadway type, the distance to the grocery store and the speed limit.

They found that grocery delivery trucks produced 20 to 75 percent less CO2 emissions than the corresponding number of personal vehicles would have. If households were targeted based upon established routes rather than individual delivery time requests, that figure jumped to 80 to 90 percent fewer emissions. This finding held true in both Seattle’s dense downtown and in the suburbs.

Nothing beats walking or riding a bike, however, for those shoppers living close enough to the grocery store to enjoy that option.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Shopping Gets Personal 
A Week Without Groceries 

Photo: Shuggy

Like a scene from a horror or crime film, an invisible, odorless gas will be released into seven subways throughout New York City this July. But this gas will be harmless, part of a controlled experiment conducted by New York City police and Brookhaven National Laboratory to better understand how particles circulated in the subway’s underground air, the New York Times reports.

The gases, known as perfluorocarbons, will be dispersed to study how airborne toxins would flow through the city after a terrorist attack or an accidental spill of hazardous chemicals, the department said on Wednesday.

Around 200 monitors will trace the gases’ path, in the biggest study to date on measuring and understanding urban airflow. The police are especially interested in how the subway system influences the flow of air above ground. Knowing this would help authorities decide which trains would need to shut down in the event of an anthrax attack or hazardous radioactive spill, for example. Likewise, toxic gas released above ground could infiltrate some tunnels below ground and endanger subway riders.

Mr. Kalb said his colleagues planned to enlist about 100 college students as interns to help set up the test and gather air samples to be analyzed. He said they would install small black-and-gray boxes containing monitoring equipment on subway platforms and lamp posts poles around the city. Then, the traceable gases will be released in seven different locations — three above ground and four below — on three nonconsecutive days in July.

In order not to spook the public, the police plan to issue prior announcements about the experiment as well as list numbers and web addresses that concerned citizens can reach out to for more information.

But you have the think that plenty of nasty toxins may already be lurking in the dank subway system. Rest assured, a new study says. Researchers found that microbes in the air in the NYC subways and those floating around above ground air were nearly identical. That’s not exactly reassuring, but it does mean that there likely are no super bugs lurking in the air near the tracks or on the train. The only slight variation the researchers found was a slightly higher density of skin microbes and fungal microbes, which may come from rotting wood.

More from Smithsonian.com:

The Microbes We’re Made Of
Microbe Hunters 

Photo: Cibic Workshop

Around the world, from the U.S. to the U.K. to Canada, homes are getting smaller. Some people choose to shirk the excesses of bygone eras. Some opt for smaller abodes to keep utilities down and save the planet. Rising prices push others into cramped quarters. But whatever the reason, the square-footage we each get to call home is on the way down, and living in smaller houses means making better use of what space we have.

One group of people are already experts at living in confined places. They are neither hippies nor minimalists nor struggling to pay rent. They were put there by the law—they are prisoners. In Italy, an intriguing project saw inmates at a high security prison in Spoleto team up with the design firm Cibic Workshop to have the inmates redesign their own living quarters. What they came up with, says Gizmodo, is quite inventive:

At twelve by eight feet, the prototype is the exact dimensions of the cells where the prisoner/designers live, and it incorporates their collective experiences living in 96-square-foot rooms. Mostly, their ideas are surprisingly simple—after all, living in a pillbox, you glean a few subtleties about detailed space planning. For example, the prisoners explained that they had taken to building shelving out of cigarette cartons—so they created a long line of shelves that snake along the wall. There’s storage packed into every square inch of the place, from around the bathroom mirror to under the beds, and every flat surface has a specific purpose, including a sliding counter that attaches to the sink.

Photo: Cibic Workshop

“Although the designers don’t expect the Freedom Room to be adopted for use inside prisons,” says The Verge, “they hope the concept will spark a conversation about improving the living conditions inside Italian correctional facilities.”

“Whether or not the prototype is implemented in prisons,” says Gizmodo, “the designers at Cibic also hope that Freedom Room could serve as a model for low-income social housing and youth hostels—hence their introduction to the project, which reads, ’4 x 2.7 meters are the dimensions of a prison cell, but this is not a cell.’”

More from Smithsonian.com:

Micro Apartments Are the Future of Urban Living
430 Square Foot Apartment Isn’t Too Small for Indoor/Outdoor Shower

Image: Jason Trommetter

What is your purpose in life? You might say: to make the world better, to cure cancer, to pester my little brother, to write a novel. But, biologically, is your purpose really just to have lots of little versions of yourself? If so, what does that really mean for what we do each day, our culture and our society?

At Scientific American, Lawrence Rifkin attempts to answer this question. First, there’s the familiar argument for babymaking as a life goal. Evolution says that you want your genes to live on forever. The best way to do that is to bestow those genes on as many tiny replicas of you as it is humanly possible to create. (It’s even possible for one woman to produce 69 children, apparently.)

Of course, living solely based on baby-making can have its downsides, as Rifkin writes:

Fundamentally, as humans, the problem with identifying the meaning of life with having children is this — to link meaningfulness only with child production seems an affront to human dignity, individual differences, and personal choice. Millions of homosexuals throughout the world do not have children biologically. Millions of heterosexual adults are unable to have children biologically. For many adults, not having children is the right choice, for themselves, the world, the economy, or for their would-be children. Socrates, Julius Caesar, Leonardo da Vinci, George Washington, Jane Austen, Florence Nightingale, John Keats, Vincent van Gogh, Vladimir Lenin, and Steven Pinker as far as we know did not have biological children. Would we deny the meaningfulness of their impact or existence? The meaning of life for childless adults — roughly 20% of the population in the U.S. and U.K. –  has nothing to do with fame, but everything to do with what makes life meaningful for everyone: experiencing pleasure, personal relationships, and engagement in positive activities and accomplishments.

And interpreting the principle of evolution simply as “make loads of kiddos” isn’t really right either. Rifkin argues that it’s not simply about how many babies you make, but how fit they are for their environment. And there are all sorts of things that evolution deals with that extend beyond the individual. Rifkin writes:

Evolution by natural selection occurs by differential survival and reproduction of genes in a population as a consequence of interactions with the environment. There is also the danger of overpopulation, which could result in famine, disease, and environmental catastrophe, perhaps jeopardizing the future evolutionary success of the entire species. So, ironically, perhaps not having children is the best way to ensure longevity of the human genome. Unlike other animals, we can be conscious stewards of the future.

So, Rifkin concludes, in some ways your purpose on this planet is indeed to make babies. But that doesn’t necessarily mean to make your own babies. People who adopt could be helping the species as a whole. Those who don’t have children might play their part, too. His final conclusion is that while we think our individual actions are the most important, they’re really not. “We perform our solos with passion, but we are playing in nature’s grand symphony,” he writes.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Movie of the Inside of a Woman’s Body as She Gives Birth
Robot Babies

Image: Jack Zalium

Earlier this month, locals spotted what would prove to be the first of a plague of dead pigs floating down the Huangpu River in Shanghai, which supplies drinking water to the metropolis. The pig death toll has steadily risin since then—16,000 confirmed at last counting.

But just as officials said they were finishing up with recovering the last of the carcasses, dead ducks joined the swine in polluting China’s rivers. Locals in Sichuan Province spotted around 1,000 of the birds floating down the Nanhe River, the BBC reports.

As for the dead pigs, officials still have not produced an explanation for the animals’ presence. The Huffington Post writes:

Hog farmers have told state media that the dumping of swine carcasses is rising because police have started cracking down on the illicit sale of pork products made from dead, diseased pigs.

Local officials also told Southern Weekly that the city lacks enough facilities to properly dispose of dead pigs.

Though many hog farms are situated upstream of Shanghai, the authorities still haven’t nailed down any culprits. The New York Times explains that authorities do have their eye on the upstream farmers, though: 

Those suspicions seemed to be confirmed when Shanghai officials said that more than a dozen of the pigs carried ear tags indicating that they were from Jiaxing. The authorities then announced that they had detained a farmer who confessed to throwing his animals into the river.

But in Jiaxing, farmers denied dumping pigs into the river, calling it preposterous and saying that the animals could not possibly have floated all the way to Shanghai.

It’s also possible, the Times writes, that the animals died on their way to Shanghai and that truck drivers decided to dump the bodies in the river. The paper argues, though, that this may actually be a bit of positive environmental news from China:

In May, for example, the police in this hog-producing city arrested four people who had sold dead pigs to slaughterhouses. And in December, a Zhejiang Province court sentenced 17 people to prison sentences, one for life, for processing and selling meat from pigs that had died of various diseases. In less than two years, the group had collected about 77,000 animals.

So, as the authorities have cracked down on people selling diseased or dead pigs, agriculture experts say, it is possible that someone may have decided it was better to dump dead pigs into the river.

Officials insist to locals that the water is still safe to drink and that the city’s pork is fine to eat.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Is It Safe to Eat Pork? 
Horse Meat Turned Up in Irish and British Burger Meat 

Photo: ponte 1112

Deborah Blum, a journalist who specializes in poisons, first picked up on the disturbing frequency of pet poisonings after setting up a Google alert on poisoning events and accumulating more 300 news stories on poisoned pets over the course of one year. Then, she began receiving unsolicited emails from pet owners who had lost animals. When she began looking into it, she also stumbled upon forums where pet haters who wanted to rid themselves of their neighbor’s pesky dog or cat would post messages such as:

I want to know the best way to kill next door neighbors’ cat, with out them suspecting anything. Its her closest pet and I need it to be gone. It kills bird and it comes in my back yard. Is there any way to poision it or dart it?

Last year when Blum wrote a piece for PLoS Blogs on the topic, the comment section turned into a bragging forum on the best ways to kill a messy cat or poison a barking dog.

So why do people chose to harm others’ pets? From the hundreds of news stories, comments and emails Blum has combed through, she explains on Wired, she found a few culprits that cropped up again and again:

• Common crime. For example, a California burglar recently poisoned two dogs in order to break into a house.
• Neighbors or people we know. Estranged spouses or exes may kill an animal as a form of revenge upon their former flame. Others do it to terrorize or send a threatening message to enemies. (Think of the horse head scene from The Godfather.) Neighbors often poison pets in order to quiet a noisy dog or stop a cat from digging up the rose garden or stalking the birds.
• Random cruelty. Still others chose to poison pets for the heck of it, Blum writes, leaving poison-laced treats in public parks.

As Women in Crime Ink writes, the link between animal cruelty and crime is well documented in scientific literature. Killing a noisy dog or an irksome cat is only a step or two removed from carrying out similar violence upon fellow humans. So there is ample reason for anyone who suspects their pet was poisoned to feel nervous.

More from Smithsonian.com:

We Spent $52 Billion on Our Pets Last Year 
Pet Store Refuses to Sell Impulse-Buy Puppies Before Christmas 

Not the self-healing concrete, obviously. Photo: Bill Keaggy

Concrete, a slushy mix of cement, rocks and sand, has built empires. The Assyrians and Babylonians used it. So did the Egyptians. Though the specific formula has changed with time, today, concrete is the “single most widely used material in the world,” says Chemistry World [pdf], used in everything from bridges and highrises to, in some cases, benches, lights and coasters.

But concrete can crack, and when it does, water and salt can get inside, further breaking down the material’s integrity. But recent research has resulted in self-healing concrete, says Mike Orcutt for Technology Review. With a special polymer coating and the power of the sun, says Orcutt, a new type of concrete can heal tiny cracks before they get a chance to grow.

The new coating contains polymer microcapsules, filled with a solution that, when exposed to light, turns into a water-resistant solid. The idea is that damage to a coated concrete surface would cause the capsules to break open and release the solution, which then would fill the crack and solidify in sunlight.

The Economist describes the research:

Dr Chung …and his colleagues knew from laboratory tests that when two substances called methacryloxypropyl-terminated polydimethylsiloxane and benzoin isobutyl ether are mixed in the presence of sunlight, they are transformed into a protective waterproof polymer that sticks readily to concrete. The challenge was to pack these chemicals up in a way that would keep them safe until they were needed, and then release them. The solution the team came up with was to put the healing balm inside tiny capsules made of urea and formaldehyde. These would screen the chemical mixture from sunlight and keep it safely stowed away. They would, however, be weak enough to rupture and release their contents when the concrete near them cracked.

This isn’t the first case of self-healing concrete, but the reliance on sunlight as the source of energy to drive the chemical reaction that does the healing is a good step.

More from Smithsonian.com:

The Secrets of Ancient Rome’s Buildings

The Cyclorama building in happier, less demolished days. Photo: National Park Service.

After a long legal battle and strong words from preservationists of all stripes, demolition work has begun on the Richard Neutra-designed Gettysburg Cyclorama.

Built in 1962, the Cyclorama building was part of the National Park Service’s Mission 66 program, a mid-century initiative designed to use the nation’s new highways to get people to spend their family vacations driving to national parks and historic sites instead of the beach.

The Chester County Daily News reports:

The park service has planned to tear down the building since 1999 but the architect’s son and a preservation group opposed the decision, and a court battle ensued that lasted more than three times the length of the Civil War. A court-ordered study last year concluded that demolition was the best course of action.

The building was constructed to house Paul Philippoteaux’s 360-degree painting of Pickett’s Charge, which was moved to a new visitor’s center in 2008. Some Civil War historians and preservationists long advocated its demolition, saying the building — which closed in 2005 — blocked views necessary to teach the story of the battle of Gettysburg.

Advocates of demolition called the Modernist structure a blight upon the historic landscape and hope to see Gettysburg returned to a more natural state, while the building’s advocates point out that turning back the clock to 1863 is, in fact, impossible:

“It’s the National Park Service’s own history,” said Susan Cabot, of Harrisburg.

Visitors can look across the field from the Cyclorama building and see Steinwehr Avenue, a busy street lined with fast food restaurants and heavy traffic, Cabot said.

This isn’t the first time the NPS has stepped in to moderate the Gettysburg landscape. In 1974, the agency purchased Gettysburg Fantasyland, a small-scale Disneyland-style theme park which opened in 1959 just south of General Meade’s headquarters. Before it closed in 1980, Gettysburg Fantasyland featured attractions like the Enchanted Forest and Santa’s Village; Fort Apache, which included nightly “attacks” by actors dressed as Native Americans; Rapunzel’s Castle, and a dairy barn that allowed visitors (5′ and under, alas) to slide into a pile of hay. Entrants to the park were greeted by a talking, twenty-three foot Mother Goose.

More from Smithsonian.com:

How We’ve Commemorated the Civil War
Where Travelers Go to Pay Their Respects

A man sorts through rubbish in Guiyu, the world’s largest center for electronic waste. Photo: Bert van Dijk

After several years of speculation, China’s environment ministry just acknowledged the existence of so-called “cancer villages,” France24 reports. Rumors of these cancer hot spots first began in 2009 after a Chinese journalist posted a map pinpointing areas that seemed to suffer from higher incidences of disease. But this is most likely the first that authorities dubbed the pollution-laden problem locations “cancer villages” in an official report.

Across China, there is growing discontent over the levels of industrial waste, smog and other environmental problems that have resulted from rapid, sometimes unregulated development. The new five-year plan points out: ”Poisonous and harmful chemical materials have brought about many water and atmosphere emergencies… certain places are even seeing ‘cancer villages.’”

The report doesn’t get into too many specifics or potential solutions, but it does acknowledge that China uses “poisonous and harmful chemical products,” many of which are banned in developed countries around the world. These chemicals, they write, “post long-term or potential harm to human health and the ecology.”

More from Smithsonian.com:

Take That, Cancer! 
Air Pollution As Seen From the Skies 

This mural, called “Slave Labour,” was cut from the wall and sent to an auction house in Miami. Photo: DeptfordJon

Over the weekend, a mural thought to be painted by famed street artist Banksy—who Smithsonian Magazine profiled recently—was set to go up for auction, expected to fetch a price between $500,000 and $700,000. The mural, says Reuters “was painted on a building occupied by Poundland Stores, a British retailer that sells various items for only a pound,” in a North London neighborhood.

The work, titled “Banksy: Slave Labour,” shows a young boy kneeling at a sewing machine with Union Jack bunting.

The mural appeared in 2012 during Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee celebrating her 60th year on the throne. The Poundland chain was a focal point of controversy in 2010 because of allegations it sold goods made by Indian children as young as 7.

Though Saturday’s auction was to include two Banksy pieces, both were pulled at the last minute amidst public controversy. The whole spectacle, says PetaPixel, raises interesting questions over the ownership of public art.

The auction house, reports the BBC, “says that it was acquired legally, and it will be sold legally.” Frederic Thut, the owner of the auction house, told the BBC that “the work was painted on the private wall, and the owner of a private wall can do whatever he wants with his own wall.”

PetaPixel:

If the Banksy sale does go through and end up fetching a sizable figure, we may soon find many other examples of famous street art installations being ripped out of their original “canvases” and sold to private art collectors.

In this instance, however, says the Associated Press, the local council “will now try to bring the artwork back to the community.”

More from Smithsonian.com:

The Story Behind Banksy

From anxiety medication to birth control, pain killers, nutrient supplements and blood thinners, the remains of what we put into our bodies pass through the other end, off to the waste control centers that need to deal with our mess. Getting pharmaceutical leftovers out of the water so that it can be safely passed back into the environment is a costly and tricky task, and conventional waste water treatment techniques aren’t up to the task.

The introduction of drug remnants to the environment has even been found to affect the behavior of fish, says Smithsonian‘s Surprising Science blog:

Over the past decade, researchers have repeatedly discovered high levels of many drug molecules in lakes and streams near wastewater treatment plants, and found evidence that rainbow trout and other fish subjected to these levels could absorb dangerous amounts of the medications over time. Now, a study published today in Science finds a link between behavior-modifying drugs and the actual behavior of fish for the first time. A group of researchers from Umeå University in Sweden found that levels of the anti-anxiety drug oxazepam commonly found in Swedish streams cause wild perch to act differently, becoming more anti-social, eating faster and showing less fear of unknown parts of their environment.

The way to stamp down on any possible ecological effects of accidentally medicating the world’s waterways, they suggest, is to devise technologies to skim them out. Scientists are trying to do this, through reverse osmosis and ozone treatment, says science journalist Jill Adams for Ensia, but it’s really expensive.

An affordable and environmentally friendly alternate path to getting pharmaceutical waste out of the water, says Adams, can be found in a fifty-year-old approach—one that’s been on display for more than a decade at a small wastewater treatment plant in western New York. In the village of Minoa, she says, sits “a weedy lot measuring 100 by 200 feet.”

Beneath plants and rocks, an artificial wetland, brimming with bacteria, “hold[s] the ability to do what few other water treatment systems can: remove pharmaceuticals, environmental pollutants of increasing concern in wastewater streams around the world. Fill this well with up to 130,000 gallons of drug-laced water and the next day it will come out clean enough to put into a nearby stream.”

The 18-year-old constructed wetland may seem simple, but there’s a lot of science and hard-earned experience behind the drug-removal process. Bacteria living in the wetland do the muscle work of breaking down organic compounds, and different species have different specialties, says Chris Nomura, a biochemist at SUNY-ESF.

The artificial wetland costs less than traditional wastewater treatment equipment, and “has almost no operational costs, Doelle says — no chemicals and no electricity.”

On the flip side, it takes a lot of land and can’t process waste nearly as quickly as a regular plant.

More from Smithsonian.com:

California’s Gender-Bending Fish Was Actually Just a Contamination Accident
Flushing Your Anti-Anxiety Pills Down the Toilet Could Affect the Behavior of Wild Fish

How important is it to share this view in real time? Image: Clint Melander

That dreaded phrase of signal-searching—”Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now?”—threatens to invade U.S. national parks, which are one of the last places still off the digital grid. Under pressure from telecommunication companies and disgruntled visitors, Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks announced plans to consider network coverage, Reuters reports. And no doubt, other parks will follow if Yellowstone and Glacier opt to forge ahead with digitizing. Reuters:

That prospect has given pause to a more traditional cohort of park visitors who cherish the unplugged tranquility of the great outdoors, fearing an intrusion of mobile phones – and the sound of idle chatter – will diminish their experience.

But the world, some point out, has changed. Technology is part of daily life, and future visitors may be deterred from paying homage to the country’s wilderness if cell phones and email cannot be a part of that experience.

The agency’s mission statement requires it to protect park resources and the visitor experience, but each individual experience is unique, said Lee Dickinson, a special-uses program manager for the Park Service.

“I’ve had two visitors calling me literally within hours of each other who wanted exactly the opposite experience: One saying he didn’t vacation anywhere without electronic access and the other complaining he was disturbed by another park visitor ordering pizza on his cell phone,” Dickinson said.

The decision to offer cell service is up to each of the system’s 300 individual parks, monuments and other sites under the National Park Service’s purview. Verizon argues that a proposed 100-foot tall cell phone tower in Yellowstone would be an asset for visitor safety by providing them means of reaching out for help in an emergency. Verizon also points out that cell phone apps can enhance experiences by providing maps, plant and animal guides and the ability to instantaneously share memorable moments with others.

Members of the opposite camp argue that others yammering or fidgeting with phones would be annoying, and that cell phones may give backcountry adventurers a false sense of safety in the wilderness that may lead to reckless behaviors.

A Chicago Tribune op-ed argues:

The problem is that some people don’t appreciate the difference between a national park and a theme park. It’s one thing to use your cellphone to warn your pals that the line at Space Mountain is two hours long. It’s another thing entirely to tweet the coordinates of a baby moose sighting.

People who can’t live without their cellphones aren’t just the wrong demographic for Yellowstone. They’re the very demographic the rest of us go to Yellowstone to escape. Let’s not encourage them. The call of the wild doesn’t need a ring tone.

But really it seems only a matter of time before networks are welcomed to the parks. Yellowstone, for example, already offers limited coverage in select areas, and park officials there say they regularly field complaints from many of their 3 million annual visitors who find the lack of coverage disconcerting.

Those left behind may also benefit from coverage, according to Reuters.

Park spokesman Al Nash said he routinely fields calls from anxious relatives of Yellowstone visitors unable to contact their loved ones.

“They say, ‘My gosh, my niece, daughter or parents went to Yellowstone, and we haven’t heard from them for three days,’” he said.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Off of the Beaten Path  
Elephants Chose to Stay Inside Safe, Less Stressful National Parks