Guerrilla Gardening

The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just on the body, but the soul. --Alfred Austin

How We Are Evolving

Thousands of years ago humans moved for the first time into the Tibetan plateau, a vast expanse of steppelands that towers some 14,000 feet above sea level. Although these trailblazers would have had the benefit of entering a new ecosystem free of competition with other people, the low oxygen levels at that altitude would have placed severe stresses on the body, resulting in chronic altitude sickness and high infant mortality. Earlier this year a flurry of genetic studies identified a gene variant that is common in Tibetans but rare in other populations. This variant, which adjusts red blood cell production in Tibetans, helps to explain how Tibetans adapted to those harsh conditions. The dis covery, which made headlines around the world, provided a dra matic example of how humans have undergone rapid biological adaptation to new environmental circumstances in the recent past. One study estimated that the beneficial variant spread to high frequency within the past 3,000 years—a mere instant in evolutionary terms.

The Tibet findings seemed to bolster the notion that our species has undergone considerable biological adaptation of this sort since it first left Africa perhaps 60,000 years ago (estimates range from 50,000 to 100,000 years ago). The transition to high altitude is just one of many environmental challenges Homo sapiens encountered as it migrated from the hot grasslands and shrublands of East Africa to frigid tundras, steamy rain forests and sun-baked deserts—practically every terrestrial ecosystem and climate zone on the planet. To be sure, much of human adaptation was technological—to combat the cold, for instance, we made clothing. But prehistoric technology alone could not have been enough to overcome thin mountain air, the ravages of infectious disease and other environmental obstacles. In these circumstances, adaptation would have to occur by genetic evolution rather than through technological solutions. It was reasonable to expect, then, that surveys of our genomes would reveal considerable evidence of novel genetic mutations that have spread recently throughout different populations by natural selection—that is, because those who carry the mutations have more healthy babies who survive to reproduce than those who do not.

Image: Owen Gildersleeve

In Brief

• As early Homo sapiens spread out from Africa starting around 60,000 years ago, they encountered environmental challenges that they could not overcome with prehistoric technology.
• Many scientists thus expected that surveys of our genomes would reveal considerable evidence of novel genetic mutations that have recently spread quickly throughout different populations by natural selection—that is, because those who carry the mutations have greater numbers of healthy babies than those who do not.
• But it turns out that although the genome contains some examples of very strong, rapid natural selection, most of the detectable natural selection appears to have occurred at a far slower pace than researchers had envisioned.

Doubts about psychedelics from Albert Hofmann, LSD's discoverer

Psychedelics are back! As readers of Scientific American know, scientists have recently reported that psychedelics show promise for treating disorders such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and anxiety in terminal cancer patients. This weekend, researchers and other enthusiasts are gathering in New York City for a two-day celebration, "Horizons: Perspectives on Psychedelics," sponsored by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, or MAPS, along with other groups.

Overall, I'm thrilled by the psychedelic revival. I've had good trips, which gave me first-hand evidence of the drugs' therapeutic potential. But like many other people I've also had bad trips, which left me feeling alienated from, rather than blissfully connected to, the world. In fact, it's worth recalling that the godfather of psychedelic research—the chemist Albert Hofmann, whom I interviewed before his death in 2008—occasionally harbored doubts about these potent drugs.

In 1943, when war wracked the world, Hofmann was in Basel, Switzerland, working for the pharmaceutical company Sandoz. On April 16, he was investigating a compound related to ergot, a toxic extract of a fungus that infects grain-producing plants. Hofmann hoped that the ergot compound, which he had originally synthesized five years earlier, might have potential for stimulating blood circulation.

During his experiments, Hofmann was overcome by what he recalled later as "remarkable restlessness, combined with a slight dizziness." He guessed that he had absorbed the ergot compound through his skin. Three days later, to test his theory, he dissolved what he thought would be an extremely small dose of the chemical—250 millionths of a gram, or micrograms—in a glass of water and drank it. Within 40 minutes Hofmann felt so disoriented that he rode his bicycle home.

When he arrived at his house he spotted a female neighbor, who looked like a "malevolent, insidious witch with a colored mask." Inside his house "furniture assumed grotesque, threatening forms." Hofmann feared he was losing his mind or even dying. He was tormented by the thought that his wife and three children would never understand "that I had not experimented thoughtlessly, irresponsibly, but rather with the utmost caution."

Gradually, "the horror softened and gave way to a feeling of good fortune and gratitude." This sense of well-being persisted through the following morning. When Hofmann walked out into his garden after a rainfall, "everything glistened and sparkled in a fresh new light. The world was as if newly created."

Thus did Hofmann discover the psychotropic properties of lysergic acid diethylamide, LSD. Hofmann's psychedelic research continued. In the late 1950s he showed that psilocybin and psilocin are the primary active ingredients of Psilocybe cubensis, a "magic" mushroom consumed as a sacrament by Indians in Central and South America.

I met Hofmann in 1999 in Basel at a conference on altered states of consciousness—including drug-induced states—at which Hofmann received a prize. We spoke in a lounge of the ultramodern conference center as speakers and guests milled around us. Then 93, Hofmann was a stooped, white-haired man, in coat and tie. He spoke in halting, thickly accented English, but he energetically defended his legacy.

Hofmann blamed Timothy Leary, the renegade Harvard psychologist turned psychedelic guru, for the backlash against LSD and other psychedelics in the 1960s. "You should not tell everybody, even the children, 'Take LSD! Take LSD!'" Hofmann said. Young people "are still in growth, and it is a very dangerous stage."

LSD is "very, very potent," Hofmann acknowledged, "and everything that is potent is dangerous." If used improperly, LSD "can hurt you, it can disturb you, it can make you crazy." But Hofmann believed that scientists and psychiatrists should be allowed to investigate LSD's effects and prescribe it in a safe, controlled fashion. "I don't want to promote absolute freedom," Hofmann said, "but the medical professions should have access to it."

Although it can harm people by provoking reckless or suicidal behavior, LSD is neither toxic nor addictive, Hofmann said; it has never killed anyone by overdose. Used with respect, it has enormous potential as a tool for investigating human consciousness and as an adjunct for psychotherapy. Psychedelics can also stimulate the "inborn faculty of visionary experience" that we all possess as children but lose as we mature. Hofmann hoped that in the future people would be able to take psychedelic drugs in "meditation centers" to awaken their religious awe.

Although Hofmann was not conventionally religious, he believed in God. "I am absolutely convinced," he said, "by feeling and by knowledge—my knowledge as a natural scientist—that there must be a creative spirit, an intelligence, which is the reason for what we have." Everything that exists, Hofmann said, pounding the table between us with his fist, is a manifestation of this plan. "It is impossible to have this without a plan," he insisted. "Otherwise you have only material, material, material!"

Hofmann had had frightening psychedelic experiences, including the early stages of his first LSD trip in 1943, but they usually yielded to more positive emotions. Hofmann's worst trip occurred on a psilocybin trip, when he hallucinated that he was wandering all alone deep inside Earth. "I had the feeling of absolute loneliness," he said. "A terrible feeling!" When he emerged from this nightmare and found himself with his companions again, he felt ecstatic. "I had feeling of being reborn! To see now again! And see what wonderful life we have here!"

Yet in his memoir LSD: My Problem Child (McGraw-Hill, 1980), Hofmann acknowledged that some of the young drug-users who had appeared at his doorstep over the years seemed terribly disturbed. He confessed that he sometimes had misgivings about having brought LSD into the world and helping to popularize psilocybin. He compared his discoveries with that of nuclear fission; just as fission threatens our fundamental physical integrity, so do psychedelics "attack the spiritual center of the personality, the self." Psychedelics, he feared, might "represent a forbidden transgression of limits."

Hofmann also worried about psychedelics' metaphysical implications. The fact that minute amounts of a chemical such as LSD can have such profound effects on our perceptions, thoughts and beliefs suggests that free will, which supposedly gives us the power to shape our destiny, might be an illusion; moreover, our deepest spiritual convictions may be nothing more than fluctuations in brain chemistry. To emphasize this point, Hofmann quoted from an essay that stated: "God is a substance, a drug!"

In other words, psychedelics can undermine as well as promote spiritual faith, and they can shatter as well as heal our psyches. We should keep these risks in mind as the psychedelic renaissance continues.

Nobel Trivia

In 1932, James Chadwick, one of Rutherford’s protégés, discovered the neutron – which the Joliot –Curies in France has actually found first but not recognized. Rutherford was vehement. “I want Jimmy to have it – unshared!” But should the Joliots just be ignored? Rutherford, with all his shrewdness and confidence, roared back: “That boy? Let me tell you. Joliot’s so brilliant that before this year is out, he’ll discover something so new and remarkable that you’ll be able to give him a prize for that!”. Which happened precisely as Rutherford predicted.

James Frank, shared the Nobel prize in 1926 and was a professor in Gottingen. In exile from Hitler, he spent 1935 working with Bohr in Copenhagen on a Rockefeller grant. Even a Nobel Prize Winner could feel inhibited:
“I made some experiments. And when I told Bohr about it, then he said immediately what might be wrong, what might be right. And it was so quick that after a time I felt that I am unable to think at all… Bohr’s genius was so superior. And one cannot help that one would get so strong inferiority complexes in the presence of such a genius that one becomes sterile. You see?”

M. C. Escher

Maurits Cornelis Escher (17 June 1898 – 27 March 1972), usually referred to as M. C. Escher, was a Dutch graphic artist. He is known for his often mathematically inspired woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints. These feature impossible constructions, explorations of infinity, architecture, and tessellations.

Shigeo Fukuda

Shigeo Fukuda, (February 4, 1932 - January 11, 2009) was a sculptor, graphic artist and poster designer who created optical illusions. His art pieces usually portray deception, such as Lunch With a Helmet On, a sculpture created entirely from forks, knives, and spoons, that casts a detailed shadow of a motorcycle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shigeo_Fukuda

Trompe-l'œil

Trompe-l'œil, which can also be spelled without the hyphen in English as trompe l'oeil, is an art technique involving extremely realistic imagery in order to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects appear in three dimensions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trompe-l'%C5%93il