Landscape architect Kate Orff has proposed a series of oyster reefs that would serve as an integral part of New York City's storm surge protection system.

Storm Surges and New York City

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<p>Days after Hurricane Sandy rumbled through the Northeast, New York City, the region's economic hub, was struggling to get back on its feet. Crews were desperately scrambling to get the city's crippled infrastructure operational. It wasn't the hurricane force winds that were the problem, per se, but the extra seawater they had blown into the harbor. Salt water had crept into electrical substations, poured into basements, and cascaded into tunnels and subway stations. It swiftly corroded mechanical and electrical equipment, plunging much of the city south of 39th Street into darkness and shutting down hundreds of miles of transportation corridors. Nearly 400,000 people would return home, uncertain of what damage lie in wait for them.</p>
<p>Sandy was predicted to be a large storm, but no one had anticipated the height of the storm surge. Originally predicted to be up to 11 feet, it finally crested at <a href="http://www.climatecentral.org/news/hurricane-sandy-paralyzes-new-york-new-jersey-15188">13.88 feet</a> in Battery Park in Lower Manhattan. That's over three feet above the previous record, set in 1960. Since then, the water level in New York Harbor <a href="http://change.nature.org/2011/01/06/as-seas-rise-along-the-east-coast-flooding-becoming-ho-hum/">has risen four to six inches</a>, meaning the city will likely have to endure similarly threatening surges in the coming years.</p><p></p>
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<img alt="" class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/storm-surges-cities-01.width-990_3Vat0Cj.jpg"/>
<figcaption>A nine kilometer long storm surge barrier at the mouth of the Oosterschelde is an integral part of the Netherlands's Delta Works.
        
        <div class="credit">By Rob Broek/iStockphoto</div>
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<p></p><p>Though the word "surge" evokes a tsunami-like wall of water, storm surges are comparatively calm events. As hurricane winds whip over the surface of the ocean, they pile up water on the leeward side of the storm. A surge is essentially a bulge of water that slowly creeps above normal levels, similar to flooding on a river like the Mississippi. Storm surges may lack the brutal physicality of a tsunami, but their destructive power shouldn't be underestimated.</p><p>Much of New York City is built right up to the water's edge, making it especially vulnerable to storm surges. New Yorkers are coming to grips with this, and, as a result, are starting to ponder how best to adapt the city to the new reality. Proposals run the gamut from quick and dirty—inflatable plugs to seal off subway tunnels—to expensive and permanent—a massive storm barrier that will cost billions of dollars.</p><h3>The Barrier</h3><p>Perhaps the most captivating proposal is a storm surge barrier, like the sort Malcolm Bowman advocates. "What I've been proposing over the last five, six years is a barrier system like they have in Europe," says Bowman, a professor of physical oceanography at SUNY Stony Brook. "If it was in place, there would be no damage now within the harbor proper."</p><p>Bowman's system would consist of earthen barriers separating the New York Harbor from the Atlantic Ocean, interrupted at intervals by gates that could close in advance of threatening conditions. The majority of the earthwork would span the five mile gap from Sandy Hook in New Jersey to Breezy Point in Brooklyn. Running along the top would be rail lines and a highway.</p><p>Barriers for New York Harbor have been proposed in the past, but Sandy has breathed new life into the idea. New York City wouldn't be the first to consider such a vast project. New Orleans is a city surrounded by extensive levees, and though they famously failed after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, they have been rebuilt since and this year during Hurricane Isaac passed their first major test. London has the Thames Barrier, which was completed in the 1980s but was planned after a surge flooded the city in 1953. The Netherlands started planning their defense against the North Sea after that same storm. Called the Delta Works, it is a collection of dikes, dams, and barriers, each of which would be considered a large undertaking on its own. The system took nearly 50 years to complete and separates hundreds of square kilometers of water from the ocean.</p><p></p>
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<img alt="" class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/storm-surges-cities-02.width-990_qJH0EWa.jpg"/>
<figcaption>New Orleans's new storm surge barrier was built in response to the devestating storm surge caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
        
        <div class="credit">Courtesy U.S. Army Corps of Engineers</div>
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<p></p><p>By all accounts, the Delta Works' barriers have been successful. So, too, has the Thames Barrier. But no one knows whether they'll stand the test of time. Despite being built to last hundreds of years, not all of the Delta Works' barriers were built to accommodate sea level rise caused by climate change. The same is true of the Thames Barrier, which will need to be upgraded and supplemented over the coming decades in order to cope. As for New Orleans, the new system has held up so far, but there are thousands of people who live outside the walls. They still get flooded.</p><p>Which is to say that while manmade barriers are useful—and sometimes indispensable—tools for dealing with storm surges, they aren't the whole answer. "It's really about hybrid solutions, it seems to me," says Denise Reed, a professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of New Orleans. "It's really about using some of the characteristics of the natural environment to contribute towards risk reduction."</p>
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<h3>The Reef</h3><p>Kate Orff feels the same way. Two years ago, Orff, a landscape architect and assistant professor at Columbia University, proposed rehabilitating New York Harbor's once-extensive oyster beds. Called "<a href="http://www.scapestudio.com/projects/oyster-tecture/">Oyster-tecture</a>," her plan was part of an exhibition on rising sea levels at New York's Museum of Modern Art. "I was interested in the idea of scaling as a strategy," Orff says. She was drawn to the idea of using a small organism on a wide scale—"the oyster as a unit of change," as she puts it—rather than relying solely on a monolithic structure. Individually, each oyster may not make much of a difference, but collectively, they might. The beauty of her plan, she says, is "you could start now and begin to build over time."</p><p></p><p>Reed agrees. "Why not do it?" she says of Orff's Oyster-tecture and other such proposals. "They're what you might call 'no regrets' actions. They don't necessarily cost us a lot of money, they might help a little bit, and there are other benefits out of them, so then why not?"</p><p>Given that a storm surge barrier could take 15 years or more to complete, New York City will need other ways to cope with surges in the meantime. Oyster reefs could be one of many adaptations, including trap doors on tunnel openings, elevated subway station entrances, and roof-mounted back-up generators.</p><h3>The Hybrid</h3><p>But just as storm barriers aren't a complete solution, neither are oyster reefs. "Are oysters enough?" Orff says. "No. Is a storm barrier enough? No. Are making trap doors to our tunnels enough? No."</p><p></p>
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<img alt="" class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/storm-surges-cities-04.width-990_bRn6mOQ.jpg"/>
<figcaption>Orff's "Oyster-tecture" would be multipurpose, providing economic and recreational opportunities in addition to protection from storm surges.
        
        <div class="credit">Courtesy Kate Orff</div>
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</figure>
<p></p><p>That's in part because we've built many of our cities right up the the water's edge, where they are most vulnerable. We've filled wetlands that had historically acted as mops during storm surges. We've placed important pieces of infrastructure under sea level. And we're changing the climate in a way that's causing the sea level to rise, which compounds all of the problems listed above.</p><p>In the past, people adapted to storm surges by, for example, moving to higher ground or placing their houses on stilts, as Reed and her neighbors southwest of New Orleans have done. But those adaptations are unrealistic for a city of more than 8 million people, especially one built so closely to the water's edge. "New York Harbor, if you add it all up, is 520 miles of coastline," Bowman says. "A great amount of it is bulkheaded. In other words, it's docks, piers, vertical walls." In other words, it would be difficult and expensive to modify such a shoreline to deal with storm surges.</p><p>"There will never be a year 15 if there is never a year one."</p><p>"I think the idea of multiple lines of defense is something that should be introduced into the conversation in New York," Reed says. That means a storm barrier, oyster beds, restored wetlands, elevated entrances at subway stations, tunnel plugs, and so on.</p><p>Figuring out how to pay for all that will be a challenge, as will determining the proper balance between small adaptations, rehabilitated natural defenses, and large constructed works like a storm barrier. But we need to answer those questions soon, Reed says. "It might take 15 years to study, plan, design a major structure, but there will never be a year 15 if there is never a year one."</p><p>"It's going to be expensive to build anything like this, and it's also going to take a long time," she adds. "But we have to really think of the cost of the construction, of whatever we want to do, in relation to the damage that occurs if we don't do it."</p>
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<p data-block-key="6pt5l">How multiple lines of defense, from massive barriers to oyster reefs, can protect our cities from storm surges.</p>

U.S. Supreme Court Hears DNA Evidence Case

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<p>
  Garrett Epps, writing for the Atlantic:
 </p>
<blockquote>
<p>
   Fingerprints and photos are taken to make sure that an arrested person really is who he or she claims to be, and to make a quick check of the records to see whether there’s a criminal history there. Is a DNA sample really a part of the identification procedure? Or is it a free-form investigation of whether the person may have committed some other crime?
  </p>
</blockquote>
<p>
  Fingerprints are questioned less, in part, because they have been used in criminal investigations for ages. DNA hasn’t. Plus, there’s the issue of DNA’s perceived infallibility. Yes, it’s better at identification that fingerprints, but it’s not as foolproof as some people assume.
 </p>
</section>

Millionaire's Mission to Mars

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<p>
  Brian Vastag, reporting for the Washington Post:
 </p>
<blockquote>
<p>
   The Inspiration Mars Mission for America would launch, by necessity of orbital mechanics, on Jan. 5, 2018.
  </p>
<p>
   There is no spaceship yet, and little notion of a budget. There is no funding beyond a two-year research and development commitment by Tito. But the wealthy former rocket scientist and financier has assembled a team of credentialed advisers and plotted a mission that teeters, outside experts say, on the edge of credibility.
  </p>
<p>
   “It’s about inspiring the children,” Tito said at a news conference Wednesday to announce the scheme.
  </p>
</blockquote>
<p>
  That’s one tight deadline.
 </p>
</section>

Suomi NPP is a weather satellite in low-Earth orbit—the only one the U.S. currently operates for civilian uses.

Going Blind: The Coming Satellite Crisis

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<p>
 For many of us, inaccurate forecasts do little more than ruin a picnic or sully a recently washed car. We’re lucky. Weather is a sideshow to our daily lives. For others, though, advance knowledge of the weather directly affects their livelihoods, from farmers to construction workers to airline pilots. But there are times when weather affects us all, especially instances of severe weather like Hurricane Sandy. There, accurate forecasts can save lives, and those forecasts rely heavily on satellite data.
</p>
<p>
 Unfortunately, in just a few years, part of our weather satellite system that is vital to forecasts will very likely go blind.
</p>
<p>
 Berrien Moore, director of the National Weather Center, and many other experts who spoke with me cite Sandy as a prime example of how vital satellite data has become in weather forecasting and how terrible it would be if we lost any part of it. Typically, hurricanes that make their way up the East Coast end up veering back out to sea. But Sandy didn’t, and thanks to a European weather model that deeply incorporated satellite data, forecasters were able to predict its sudden turn west into the coast.
</p>
<p>
 Though damage from the storm was still extensive, without satellite data the aftermath could have been far worse. In the months following Sandy, meteorologists reran the European model, but withheld information from weather satellites. It failed to predict Sandy’s left turn. “Satellites allow us a complete picture of the atmosphere,” says J. Marshall Shepherd, president of the American Meteorological Society, something weather balloons and Doppler radar cannot provide. “The satellite data is critical,” he adds.
</p>
<p>
 “Sandy was just a warning,” Moore says. Without satellites, “that could have been a fundamental disaster.”
</p>
<p>
 To appreciate how indispensable weather satellites are to forecasts today, we have to go back to the 1950s. Then, the science of weather prediction was just a couple of decades old, and incremental improvements had led to 24-hour forecasts. But the pace quickened when, in early 1959, the United States Navy launched Vanguard 2, the world’s first weather satellite. Though it didn’t return useable photographs, it paved the way for TIROS 1 a little over a year later. The squat cylinder beamed back images of cloud cover for a brief 78 days. Meteorologists couldn’t have been happier. Since then, our forecasts have only gotten longer and more reliable, so much so that many of us take them for granted.
</p>
<p>
 “Much of that advancement is due to the assimilation of satellite data,” Shepherd says. “Take that away, are we going to go backwards in terms of our skill in weather forecasting? I think that’s a real possibility.”
</p>
<h2>
 Satellites Near and Far
</h2>
<p>
 Currently, the U.S. has 24 Earth-observing satellites in orbit. Their missions are widely varied, covering more than just weather. There are satellites that monitor tropical rainfall (key in our understanding and prediction of hurricanes), keep an eye on land-use change (important for urban development and habitat conservation), and observe the ice sheets that cover Greenland and Antarctica (an indicator of sea level rise). Each different program provides important data on our planet’s many systems.
</p>
<p>
 The U.S. Earth-observing system consists of satellites in two basic orbits, geostationary and polar. Geostationary satellites sit high above the Earth at an altitude that allows their orbital period to match the rotation of our planet. One geostationary satellite can continuously observe one part of the Earth, sending updates as often as its mission requires. The GOES weather satellites, for example, beam back periodic updates which produce the stuttering images of cloud cover found on weather websites and TV news broadcasts. Such a high frequency of updates makes geostationary satellites valuable, but their distance from the Earth—about 22,300 miles—decreases their resolving power. They’re simply too far away to record in great detail.
</p>
<p>
 That’s where polar orbiting satellites come in. They complement geostationary satellites by trading frequent updates for sharper images. Polar orbiting satellites sit much closer to Earth—generally about 500 miles up—and complete a trip around the globe every 100 minutes or so. Most Earth-observing satellites, weather and otherwise, fly in polar orbits. With the right sensor, they can image the entire planet twice a day, once on the day side, once on the night side.
</p>
<p>
 Their role in meteorology is unquestionable. “The polar orbiting satellites give us the ability to do long term weather forecasts,” says Jane Lubchenco, outgoing administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Currently, NOAA’s forecasts go out 7 to 10 days. If we don’t have a polar orbiting satellite, we would do 2 to 3 day forecasts. That’s a huge difference.”
</p>
<div class="pullquote">
<p>
 We are in the golden age of Earth observation. But all golden ages eventually come to an end.
</p>
</div>
<p>
 Since the 1960 launch of TIROS, there has never been a moment when the U.S. hasn’t had a weather satellite in low Earth orbit. The latest is Suomi NPP, a next-generation satellite that was originally a testbed for advanced sensors and was only intended to last three years. Because of problems with its now-cancelled replacement, the National Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellite System, or NPOESS, it’s now being asked to serve for five years. Yet even that won’t be enough. It’s likely that sometime in 2016, for the first time in over 50 years, the U.S. won’t have a polar orbiting weather satellite.
</p>
<h2>
 Ignominious Beginnings
</h2>
<p>
 The trouble started on May 5, 1994 when, with little fanfare, President Bill Clinton signed one of the 80-some directives he would issue during his time in office. The Soviet Union had collapsed two and a half years earlier, and the federal government was looking to trim budgets inflated by the Cold War. Clinton’s order directed the Department of Defense and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to merge their weather satellite systems.
</p>
<p>
 Administration officials hoped the merger would save hundreds of millions of dollars. While the arranged marriage between NOAA, NASA, and the Air Force may have sounded good on paper, the way it was carried out “was flawed from day one,” says Tom Young, former director of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and chairman of an independent review of NPOESS.
</p>
<p>
 By 2003, the Government Accountability Office had grown concerned over NPOESS’s progress, or rather lack thereof. They issued a report, something that would happen more or less annually for the next several years. David Powner, director of IT management issues at the GAO, authored those reports. “It was very common for us to go up and tell Congress a delay was forthcoming and that there was an overrun somewhere,” he says. “Very common.”
</p>
<p>
 Most of the technical delays can be traced to development of the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite, the satellite’s most important sensor and an incredibly complex piece of equipment. It was to be built by the Santa Barbara Research Center, which like many defense contractors, was many layers removed from the top. A subcontractor to subcontractors. That sort of isolation doesn’t always foster efficiency or accountability.
</p>
<p>
 Making matters worse, the NPOESS program manager was an Air Force officer with no experience working on space projects, according to a later report commissioned by NOAA and confirmed by a former NASA official. Those circumstances, combined with technical delays wrought by the complexity of the device, meant VIIRS wouldn’t be completed until December 2009.
</p>
<p>
 Each VIIRS delay caused a domino effect. Because the many sensors on NPOESS needed to be integrated into one coherent system, a single missing piece set back the entire project. Other sensors were troublesome, and some were eventually cut from the manifest. But none were as problematic, or essential, as VIIRS.
</p>
<h2>
 The Golden Age
</h2>
<p>
 Meanwhile, other Earth-observing satellite systems were firing on all cylinders. Between 1999 and 2004, nine satellites were successfully launched. Though many were only expected to last three to five years, all but two remain in orbit today. And that doesn’t count earlier satellites that are still beaming back data.
</p>
<p>
 We are in the golden age of Earth observation. But all golden ages eventually come to an end.
</p>
<p>
 One of the darlings of the Earth-observing community is Landsat. Since its first satellite was launched in 1972, the program has never had a gap in coverage. Some of its success is due to luck. Landsat 5 was only decommissioned earlier this year after nearly 29 years in operation, giving it the record for the longest running Earth-observing satellite. But the rest is because of commitment and good planning. Landsat 8 entered orbit earlier this year, and there are plans on the table for 9 and 10. Thanks to Landsat, we know exactly how the Earth has changed, in two-week increments, for the last 40 years.
</p>
<p>
 Other successes abound. MODIS sensors aboard the twin Terra and Aqua satellites continue to deliver daily updates of the Earth’s surface years beyond their expectations. EO-1, launched in 2000, was only anticipated to last for 12 months. Today, it’s still recording over 200 different wavelengths of light reflected off the Earth’s surface. And NASA would have been pleased with GRACE if it had lasted the five years it was intended. Instead, it’s turning 11 this year and still helping scientists track the movements of water, ice, and magma to better understand ocean currents, plate tectonics, and more.
</p>
<p>
 However, the future of our Earth-observing capabilities is anything but robust, even when you don’t consider the looming gap in weather satellite coverage. Of the 24 satellites in orbit today, it’s expected that just six will be working by the end of the decade. Two recent launches, the Orbital Carbon Observatory and Glory, failed to reach orbit due to rocket malfunctions. Only six satellites are scheduled to be launched between 2014-2020, not enough to keep up with the rate of attrition. We’re living on borrowed time.
</p>
<h2>
 Dire Straits
</h2>
<p>
 We’ve known this for a while now. In 2007, the National Research Council issued a report on the overall status of the U.S. Earth observation system. What they found wasn’t promising. “The extraordinary U.S. foundation of global observations is at great risk,” they wrote.
</p>
<p>
 Today, more than five years later, the situation hasn’t improved. Of the 15 satellite missions reviewed for that report, “I believe two of those are actually on track,” says Dennis Lettenmaier, a hydrogeologist at the University of Washington and member of the NRC committee. Budget shortfalls have jeopardized nearly every program. “Notionally, at least, there was enough money to do all those things, so it wasn’t supposed to be about there not being enough money,” he says. That changed when the economy soured. When NASA started running short on funds, it went looking for programs to cut. Satellites that were many years away from launch got the ax. “NASA basically just dropped them all,” Lettenmaier says.
</p>
<p>
 The other problem lies in the distinction between research and operational satellites. Typically, NASA will launch a satellite as a research platform and distribute the data to scientists. Eventually all satellites stop working, but the data doesn’t necessarily stop being useful. Someone then has to launch a replacement.
</p>
<p>
 “NASA says, that’s not research anymore, that’s operations. Somebody else needs to do it,” Lettenmaier says. “The problem is, who’s the somebody else? Well, the somebody else they usually look to is NOAA, but NOAA never seems to have a budget for these things.”
</p>
<p>
 That was partially because of NPOESS. Its numerous cost overruns and missed deadlines were straining NOAA’s budget. The program was turning into an albatross.
</p>
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<h2>
 “Too late”
</h2>
<p>
 In 2006, Congress forced NPOESS to restructure, but it wasn’t enough. “It was really too late,” says Young, the former Goddard director. “They had done too many things that had the program in jeopardy by that time.”
</p>
<p>
 NOAA and NASA soon became adamant that the Air Force leave the program, and eventually that’s what happened. In early 2010, the Obama administration annulled the three-way marriage. NPOESS was scrapped and reborn as the Joint Polar Satellite System, which was was run by NOAA and NASA alone. The Air Force is back at the drawing board developing a new, independent platform.
</p>
<p>
 To date, JPSS has launched one satellite, Suomi NPP, the sensor testbed mentioned above. It’s a carryover from NPOESS and the defunct program’s only tangible result. It’s also our only weather satellite in low Earth orbit. The longest anyone reasonably expects it to last is until early 2016, but it may stop functioning as early as next year—it was originally designed to operate for three years, not five. All satellites have a life expectancy, a standard to which they are engineered. After that time, probability suggests they’ll succumb to the harsh conditions in space: extreme heat and cold, constant radiation, solar flares, space debris, and so on. Some, such as Landsat 5, operate for decades beyond expectations. But that doesn’t guarantee every one will.
</p>
<p>
 Of course, everyone hopes Suomi NPP will be one of the lucky ones. The first true JPSS satellite won’t be operational until late 2017.
</p>
<h2>
 Hindsight
</h2>
<p>
 So what lessons can we learn from NPOESS?
</p>
<p>
 For one, the program was based on the assumption that civilian and defense weather satellite systems could be merged. They couldn’t, at least not in a way that didn’t create unwanted compromises. For example, the military prefers observations in the morning, civilian meteorologists in the afternoon; the Air Force doesn’t need certain types of information, such as temperature and humidity, data that is critical to civilian forecasts; and civilian meteorologists don’t need to see clouds at night, but the military does.
</p>
<div class="pullquote">
<p>
 “Space programs are very difficult.”
</p>
</div>
<p>
 Furthermore, the three organizations pooled their resources, but not necessarily their expertise. The interagency office that ran the program was “on an island by itself,” Young says, and missing on that island were NASA’s decades of experience putting satellites in orbit. As a result, there wasn’t anyone who could help the project when it started to founder. Worse, there wasn’t anyone who could realize there were problems in the first place.
</p>
<p>
 Finally, these sorts of projects are never easy. “Space programs are very difficult,” Young says. “To make these things really work, you’ve got to have some strong, crisp leadership, and maybe we’ve gotten away from that in some of our space activities.” It’s also the tenor of our time, he adds. The space program doesn’t have the same popular or budgetary support it once did, making it difficult to lead with the boldness that once defined our space program.
</p>
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<h2>
 A Perilous Future
</h2>
<p>
 With NPOESS dead and JPSS years from readiness, NOAA is scrambling. “We are looking at a lot of different options and doing everything possible to not have further delays,” Lubchenco says of JPSS. There’s also a study underway looking for ways to mitigate the gap. “We don’t have the report back from that yet, but we’re pulling out the stops to try to figure out how to deal with this while keeping our fingers crossed that maybe,
 <i>
  maybe
 </i>
 these satellites will last longer than the models suggest they will.”
</p>
<p>
 In response to one of Powner’s GAO reports, NOAA has created a website where the public can submit mitigation strategies for consideration. Dozens have been submitted so far, but it’s anyone’s guess as to which are being seriously considered. No one in the agency has hinted that they’re close to a viable solution.
</p>
<p>
 “We are in a precarious position. We don’t know how long NPP is going to last,” says Moore, the National Weather Center director. “I honestly believe we have become complacent about our infrastructure,” he adds. “I understand we’ve got huge budget issues, but these are fundamental things we ought to be doing. Weather waits for no man.”
</p>
<p>
 It’s probably too late to completely eliminate the gap. We simply can’t build satellites fast enough, at least not with NASA’s or NOAA’s current budgets. If we’re lucky, one of NOAA’s mitigation strategies will pan out. “We’re usually good at solving problems once we decide they’re a problem,” Young says.
</p>
<p>
 Hopefully, we’ve decided this is a problem, because it could become a very serious one in the near future. “We are not a weather ready nation,” Moore says. “And Sandy showed just how close we came. Suppose we had lost a satellite?”
</p>
<p>
 We may find out yet.
</p>
<p>
 Illustration courtesy NASA
</p>

<p>A lack of new satellites threatens our ability to predict severe weather and observe systems critical to our survival.</p>

Ancient Microcontinent Discovered in Indian Ocean

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<p>
  Ker Than, reporting for National Geographic News:
 </p>
<blockquote>
<p>
   [B]ased on a recalculation of how the ancient continents drifted apart, the scientists concluded that Mauritia was once a tiny part of a much larger “supercontinent” that included India and Madagascar, called Rodinia.
  </p>
<p>
   The three landmasses “were tucked together in one big continent prior to the formation of the Indian Ocean,” Jamtveit said.
  </p>
<p>
   But like a prehistoric Atlantis, Mauritia was eventually drowned beneath the waves when India broke apart from Madagascar about 85 million years ago.
  </p>
</blockquote>
</section>

The Gene Machine and Me

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<p>
  Eliza Strickland, writing for IEEE Spectrum:
 </p>
<blockquote>
<p>
   My personal quest for genetic enlightenment begins with a visit to Ion Torrent’s black glass headquarters in a Guilford, Conn., office park. Ion Torrent isn’t really Rothberg’s baby anymore—the company was bought by biotech giant Life Technologies Corp. in 2010 for $725 million—but he still strides through the facility with a proprietary air. He beams as we tour labs where biochemists and electrical engineers work side by side. The windows, pressed into service as extra whiteboards, are covered with scribbled sketches of molecular diagrams and circuit diagrams alike.
  </p>
<p>
   Several other companies are also racing toward the $1000-genome goal. But Rothberg was the first to tap into the accumulated expertise of the computer industry with a method he calls “semiconductor sequencing.” Inspired by the cover of a computer magazine in a hospital waiting room, he figured out how to use an integrated circuit to record how a DNA molecule is built out of chemical components, and how to turn that chemical information into a digital readout.
  </p>
</blockquote>
</section>

The Boring and Exciting World of Biometrics

<p>
 It’s a dreary March morning in Massachusetts, and I’m sitting in my car in an anonymous office park an hour outside of Boston trying to understand what just happened. I’m here because I wanted to get a better grasp on biometric identification, specifically what it’s like for a person like you or me, who hasn’t committed a crime but, at some point in the near future, will use some part of our bodies to confirm a credit card purchase or enter a foreign country. I’m trying to square what just took place inside with what I had secretly hoped would happen.
</p>
<p>
 Biometric identification has a faint whiff of the future about it, though what that future looks like depends entirely on your perspective. It could be a dystopian world, often seen in movies, novels, and comic books where Big Brother haunts our heroes, monitoring them through iris scans or facial recognition. Or it could be a sleek and polished future, where speaking an authorization code grants you control of a vehicle or glancing at a camera opens a locked door with a hushed hiss.
</p>
<p>
 But what I had just experienced was neither. Inside at Aware, Inc., a Bedford, Mass., company that makes software for biometric systems, Sarah Fischer, a programmer, had walked me through the process of scanning my fingerprints. She had me place my right fingers on the scanner, then my left, then both thumbs. The software would let her know if my prints were successfully captured.
</p>
<div class="related"></div>
<p>
 I failed at first, if you can fail at such a thing. Press harder, Sarah had said. That seemed to do the trick, but my second attempt still took longer than it should have—38 seconds to scan all ten fingerprints. According to guidelines issued by the federal government, the process should take 20 seconds or less.
</p>
<p>
 Despite the hiccup, my first experience with biometrics was neither flashy nor frightening. In fact, it was kind of boring (no offense to Sarah), which is actually kind of exciting—biometrics are sufficiently advanced to be almost unremarkable. Just in time, too. Soon, our smartphones and tablets will employ some form of biometric identification to keep our personal data private. Before long, physical driver’s licenses will be obsolete and credit card purchases won’t require signatures, just a wave of our hands over a sensor. And it won’t take dozens of seconds like my fingerprinting, but one or two.
</p>
<p>
 As I pull out of Aware’s nondescript parking lot, I’m starting to believe what all those scientists and researchers have been telling me these past few weeks. Biometrics are the future of identification, and the future is almost here.
</p>
<h2>
 A Need to ID
</h2>
<p>
 Since the earliest days of human history, we’ve needed to verify who the people around us are. In more recent times, as the human population has surged into the billions, that need has only intensified. Are you part of the tribe or are you an outsider? According to research by Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist at Oxford University, the average person can only recognize about 1,500 faces. That’s a pretty astonishing number, but it pales in comparison to the numbers of people we come into contact with over a month or even a day.
</p>
<div class="ad"></div>
<p>
 Today, our identities are verified almost exclusively by one of two methods—things that you carry with you and things you remember. Driver’s licenses and passports are examples of the former, passwords and PINs the latter. But physical identification is easy to fake, and passwords are easily cracked by hackers, who then have nearly unfettered access to our credit cards, bank accounts, and personal data. Something needs to change.
</p>
<p>
 Biometrics could be that change. They are a fundamental shift in the way we are identified. Unlike traditional identification which you must either remember or carry with you, biometrics
 <i>
  are
 </i>
 you. Fingerprints, voice analysis, iris patterns, vein matching, gait analysis, and so on. Such traits are unique to an individual and often, though not always, incredibly difficult to fake.
</p>
<p>
 Some concepts behind biometrics are old, dating back to the late 1800s. Sir William Herschel, a British magistrate in India, looked into fingerprints as a unique identifier for individuals, and later Sir Francis Galton, Charles Darwin’s cousin, developed a method for classifying fingerprints. The technology was quickly applied to criminal investigations, and to this day, suspects around the world are fingerprinted after their arrest.
</p>
<p>
 For more than 100 years, that was about the extent of it. It wasn’t until the 1990s that computers and scanners had become sufficiently advanced to support true biometric identification. But even then, their use was limited primarily to law enforcement.
</p>
<h2>
 Watershed Moment
</h2>
<p>
 Then 9/11 happened. Suddenly, the U.S. government became acutely aware that it didn’t know exactly who was passing in and out of the country. “After 9/11, the U.S. Congress decided we must have some way of securing our borders,” says Anil Jain, a computer scientist at the University of Michigan. The terrorist attack, he says, was a “major watershed.”
</p>
<p>
 The use of biometrics has spread rapidly. “In the past 12 years since 9/11, the amount of biometrics collected in the United States has increased exponentially,” says Jennifer Lynch, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
</p>
<figure class="richtext-image full-width">
<img alt="Afghan fingerprint scan" class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/afghan-fingerprint-scan.width-990_vVAhQts.jpg"/>
<figcaption>A U.S. Army officer scans an Afghan villager's fingerprints using a Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment, also known as HIIDE, in Ghazni Province, Afghanistan.
        
    </figcaption>
</figure>
<p>
 That’s in part because the U.S. government has poured money into research, development, and acquisition of biometric identification systems. The Department of Homeland Security has spent
 <a href="http://www.itdashboard.gov/investment?buscid=151">
  over $133 million on biometrics since 2003
 </a>
 , and the Defense Department is predicted to spend
 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/14/world/asia/14identity.html?pagewanted=all">
  $3.5 billion on the technology
 </a>
 between 2007–2015. The FBI has rapidly expanded its fingerprint database and is currently developing a more sophisticated system that will add iris scans, palm scans, and facial recognition to the mix. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has its own system called US-VISIT, for which non-U.S. passport holders are required to submit all 10 fingerprints and a digital photograph before leaving for the U.S. When they enter the country, their biometrics are collected again and compared against a database of many possible matches to verify their identity.
</p>
<p>
 The U.S. military, too, uses biometrics extensively. Its first widespread applications were in Iraq and Afghanistan. In an attempt to weed out insurgents from the general public, the U.S. military has collected fingerprints, iris scans, and facial images from millions of
 <a href="http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/12/iraq-biometrics-database/">
  Iraqis
 </a>
 and
 <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/21558263">
  Afghans
 </a>
 .
</p>
<p>
 Other countries are rolling out biometric identification systems for their own citizens. India’s is the largest to date. Introduced in 2010, it has over 200 million people currently enrolled. Unlike many other biometric databases, which are aimed at finding criminals, India’s system will eventually encompass everyone in the country. India’s millions of poor often lack official identification, complicating the allocation of aid and other social services. Biometrics will serve as a form of national ID that can’t be lost or misplaced.
</p>
<h2>
 Keeping Your Prints Private
</h2>
<p>
 But just because they can’t be lost or misplaced doesn’t mean they can’t be misused. Privacy concerns loom large with biometrics. A biometric by itself isn’t threatening, though they are easily linked to other, potentially sensitive information, and that’s when people grow uneasy.
</p>
<p>
 Some of the anxiety stems from the fact that biometrics are a part of who we are—they’re not an internet username that can be easily discarded or created anew. Biometrics will likely persist in government and private databases, accreting information whether we like it or not.
</p>
<figure class="richtext-image full-width">
<img alt="Afghan woman iris scan" class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/afghan-woman-iris-scan.width-990_sXSfiuh.jpg"/>
<figcaption>A U.S. Air Force airman scans an Afghan woman's iris in the waiting area of the Egyptian Hospital at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan.
        
    </figcaption>
</figure>
<p>
 “I think the biggest problem with biometric collection is that once the government has your biometric, it becomes incredibly useful for a whole host of purposes, and the government tends not to want to delete it,” Lynch says. Until recently, the only people who were fingerprinted were criminals or those who had to undergo background checks. But with biometrics, more people are likely to be caught in the net, and the consequences could be wide-ranging. “We’ve seen that with some of the data sharing programs in the federal government right now,” Lynch says. “A biometric collected for an immigration purpose could then be used for a criminal purpose.”
</p>
<div class="newsletter"></div>
<p>
 The debate over the extent and uses of government databases has intensified since the public became aware of the surveillance program PRISM, run by the National Security Agency, known as the NSA. According to news reports citing leaked confidential information, the NSA created PRISM to monitor the electronic communications and digital breadcrumbs of foreigners suspected of being terrorists. It siphons data about phone calls, search histories, email messages, and more from private servers run by technology companies, including Google, Facebook, and others. The volume is so great that innocent U.S. citizens are likely caught in the broad net.
</p>
<div class="pullquote">
<p>
 “I think that people have a fundamental right to privacy.”
</p>
</div>
<p>
 While biometrics haven’t been mentioned as being stored in the PRISM database, there’s a good chance a biometric of yours is stored in at least one of those companies’ databases—Facebook. “Facebook has the largest facial recognition database in the entire world,” Lynch says. Whenever someone uploads a photo to Facebook, the company’s algorithms scan the image for faces and sifts through their own records to suggest a name. It sounds innocuous enough, but there’s no guarantee they won’t be used for another purpose in the future.
</p>
<p>
 “When you’re dealing with a private company, where your interaction with that company is governed by a term of use, the company could change it at any time,” Lynch says. Savvides shares those concerns, too. It seems increasingly unlikely that people will be able to control who or what has access to their personal information, including biometrics. “I don’t think that it’s easy to exist in today’s society without using these services,” Lynch says. “We all make phone calls, we all send emails, most of us use Facebook, a lot of us use Apple products. I think it’s a false choice to say that we have any kind of choice over sharing our data with third parties.”
</p>
<p>
 That doesn’t sit well with Senator Al Franken. “I think that people have a fundamental right to privacy,” he tells me. “We have the right to tell people exactly where we are and what we’re doing or to remain anonymous in a crowd. I’m concerned with the potential uses of facial recognition technology because this technology makes it exceedingly easy to infringe that right.”
</p>
<p>
 “This technology is already in wide deployment by commercial entities like Facebook and state governments, and federal law enforcement,” Franken says. “I’m worried that we’re rolling this technology out without adequately considering its consequences or putting the right protections in place.”
</p>
<p>
 Franken has been the most vocal elected official pushing for regulation of biometrics, but unfortunately his efforts have stalled. “Last summer, Senator Franken was looking into facial recognition limitations, and we haven’t seen anything with that,” Lynch says. The problem, she says, is a familiar one: “Congress is inherently gridlocked.”
</p>
<h2>
 Foiling Hackers
</h2>
<p>
 While current regulations lag behind technology, researchers are feverishly working to address people’s concerns—namely, what happens if a database holding your biometrics gets hacked? You can reset a password, but you can’t replace your fingertips or eyeballs. To work around this problem, computer scientists have been exploring two promising ways to link individuals with their fingerprints, iris scans, and other features without exposing the original biometric to hackers, even if the system is compromised.
</p>
<p>
 One approach is to store biometric data in what’s called a hash. Hashes are widely used in computing as a way of encoding data that masks information about the original. They are commonly used to store passwords in databases. Each hashed password is unique, and changing just one character in a password produces a hash that’s completely different. Depending on the hashing function, decoding a hash can be extremely time consuming. You can cryptographically hash any digital file, including images of fingerprints and other biometrics. Hashes are relatively secure because they are computed using one-way functions, which means they are computationally easy in one direction (encrypting) but hard in the other (decrypting).
</p>
<p>
 Since we already hash passwords, it seems logical that we’d also hash biometrics. Unfortunately, it’s not as straightforward. That’s because passwords can be reliably entered the same way every time, but no two biometric scans are identical, says Shantanu Rane, a research scientist at the Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories in Cambridge, Mass. Hashing the resulting images would produce wildly different results, making matching impossible without inverting the hash, which would take an unreasonably long time. To sidestep this problem, researchers first extract features that can be reliably reproduced most of the time but don’t reveal the underlying biometric. For fingerprints, these would include collections of points such as ridge ends or bifurcations. These features are encoded and then stored in a database. The original images are never stored in the system. If the system is hacked, these encodings are thrown out and new ones are issued.
</p>
<figure class="richtext-image full-width">
<img alt="" class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/iris.width-990_bLdAid1.jpg"/>
<figcaption>Unique identifiers from scans of people's irises can be encoded and stored as secure biometrics.
        
    </figcaption>
</figure>
<p>
 There is still a chance that hackers could eventually reverse the stored encodings, though. At that point, they would have access to the original biometrics, which would compromise both security and privacy. A better way would be to encrypt a biometric prior to storage and never decrypt it. But if you never decrypt the original, how do you compare it to a submitted biometric? The answer, Rane says, is to perform all computations required for the comparison in the encrypted domain. That way, even if a hacker is snooping on the system, they’ll never see unencrypted data. Everything on the computer is encrypted. The downside is that while theoretically possible, such computations are incredibly complex today. “There is a lot of research happening today on computation in the encrypted domain,” Rane says. He predicts that we might see such computers in the near future.
</p>
<p>
 Encoding and computing in the encrypted domain could go a long way to securing databases. But there are other uses for biometrics that wouldn’t put any personal information at risk. In fact, it’s possible that the broadest use of biometrics—completing purchases—won’t require that they be stored on centralized databases.
</p>
<p>
 Known as verification, the technique simply compares a submitted biometric with a reference copy stored on a device like a credit card, which is carried by its owner, Jain says. To use it, you would insert your card into a reader and then present your biometric. The reader would compare your submitted biometric with the record on the card. If the two match, the transaction would be approved. It’s just like the signature on the back of your credit card, but less easily faked. Plus, Jain points out, “There is no centralized place where your fingerprint is stored.”
</p>
<h2>
 The Real World
</h2>
<p>
 Already, we’re seeing glimpses of what this biometric future will look like. Electronic payment company Square recently released a feature where you can pay simply by carrying your phone in your pocket or purse. When you walk in a shop, Square’s software will bring up your photo on the store’s register. If you want to buy something, a clerk can complete the transaction by verifying that the image on screen is, in fact, you. It’s a similar process to that used at border crossings in many countries, where citizens or visitors wave their electronic passports over a sensor and immigration officials verify that the information stored on the passport matches the individual in front of them.
</p>
<div class="pullquote">
<p>
 We’re not quite there yet.
</p>
</div>
<p>
 With these systems, Savvides says, “the human is doing the biometric matching.” They aren’t fully automated, which means they fall short of what researchers like Savvides consider true biometric systems. But they’re “starting to bridge the gap,” he says. It’s easy to imagine replacing the human in these situations with a camera and a computer. “Wouldn’t it just be so much faster and increase throughput to have an automated system that does that?” he asks.
</p>
<p>
 That may happen someday soon, but we’re not quite there yet. A few of weeks ago, I had my first real-life experience with biometrics. I had just gotten off a 14.5 hour flight from New York to Tokyo when I stepped up to an immigration officer, who instructed me to look into the camera and place my fingers on the scanner. Bleary-eyed, I stared into a pinhole above the monitor and then rested my fingertips on a green-glowing plate. I waited for an affirmative that didn’t come. The officer mumbled something I couldn’t hear.
</p>
<p>
 “I’m sorry?” I asked him.
</p>
<p>
 “Press harder.”
</p>
<p>
 Photo credits:
 <a href="http://www.navy.mil/view_image.asp?id=92741">
  U.S. Navy
 </a>
 ,
 <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/1bct82/7728887108/">
  U.S. Army
 </a>
 ,
 <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/usairforce/8693093969/">
  U.S. Air Force
 </a>
 ,  and
 <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/soyignatius/2524633232/">
  soyignatius/Flickr
 </a>
 .
</p>

<p>Fingerprints, iris scans, facial recognition—like it or not, they&#x27;re the future of identification.</p>

Tim De Chant

Articles