The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2014 (51 page)

W
ENDEE
N
ICOLE

Game On!
Ensia.
March 26

M
ICHELLE
N
IJHUIS

The Ghost Commune.
Aeon Magazine.
October 31

Swimming in Sperm and Eggs.
Slate.
February 26

 

C
AITLIN
O'C
ONNELL
-R
ODWELL

Mean Girls.
Smithsonian.
March

D
ENNIS
O
VERBYE

A Quantum of Solace.
New York Times.
July 1

 

K
HARUNYA
P
ARAMAGURU

The Battle over Global Warming Is All in Your Head.
Time.
August 19

C
OREY
S. P
OWELL

The Sculpture on the Moon.
Slate.
December 16

 

D
AVID
Q
UAMMEN

The Wild Life of a Bonobo.
National Geographic.
March

 

B
ENJAMIN
R
ACHLIN

The Accidental Beekeeper.
Virginia Quarterly Review.
Summer

M
ARY
R
OACH

The Marvels in Your Mouth.
New York Times.
March 25

L
ESLIE
R
OBERTS

The Art of Eradicating Polio.
Science.
October 4

J
ULIAN
R
UBINSTEIN

Operation Easter.
The New Yorker
, July 22.

 

C
AMERON
M. S
MITH

Starship Humanity.
Scientific American.
January

D
ON
S
TAP

Site Fidelity.
Fourth Genre.
Fall

M
ANIL
S
URI

How to Fall in Love with Math.
New York Times.
September 15

 

J
OHN
T
IERNEY

The Rational Choices of Crack Addicts.
New York Times.
September 16

A
BIGAIL
T
UCKER

Born to Be Mild.
Smithsonian.
January

 

E
RIK
V
ANCE

Emptying the World's Aquarium.
Harper's Magazine.
August

P
AUL
V
OOSEN

A Brain Gone Bad.
Chronicle Review.
July 19

 

E
LLIOT
D. W
OODS

Line in the Sand.
Virginia Quarterly Review
. Fall

 

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www.hmhco.com
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^®
.

D
EBORAH
B
LUM
, guest editor, is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and the author of five books, including
The Poisoner's Handbook
. She writes about environmental chemistry for the
New York Times
at Poison Pen and is a blogger for
Wired
at Elemental.

 

T
IM
F
OLGER
, series editor, is a contributing editor at
Discover
and writes about science for several magazines.

1 Mirex, also known as dechlorane, is a persistent organic pollutant (POP) that is now banned by the United Nations Environmental Programme and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It is one of the original “dirty dozen” chemicals targeted for elimination by the international treaty signed at the Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants in 2001.

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2 There are five times more fire ants per acre in the United States than in their native South America. Fire ants cover 321 million acres in this country, across thirteen states and Puerto Rico, which adds up to 501,563 square miles. That's more than Germany, France, and the UK combined, or almost one-eighth of Europe.

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3 Lucille Devers, who was found swarmed by fire ants at the nursing home where she lived, was awarded $5.35 million by an Alabama jury. The $5.35 million award, returned on June 28, 2002, included $3.5 million in punitive damages, with Greystone and Terminix paying $1.75 million each.

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4 Forty million people live in fire ant–infested areas, 30 to 60 percent of whom are stung annually by the ants, according to the USDA report “Integrated Management of Imported Fire Ants and Emerging Urban Pest Problems.” It is estimated that 1 percent, 400,000 people, have an anaphylactic reaction.

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5 The ants are also drawn to electrical boxes; when one gets fried, a signal is released that brings others. The ants have been known to short out traffic lights and airport radar systems.

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6 Use of insecticide spray averages 4 fluid ounces per 1,000 square feet, which comes to 174,240 fluid ounces—or 1,361.25 gallons—of spray per acre. This equals 436,961,250,000 gallons for the entire affected region, or nearly 662,000 Olympic-size swimming pools full of insecticide spray each year in the United States.

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7 Several days after the phorid fly lays eggs in the thorax of a worker ant, the maggot releases a chemical that causes the ant to crumple over; it also loosens its head and front legs. The maggot then eats the contents of the ant's head and the head falls off. Other ants carry the body to the colony's refuse pile, including the head occupied by the maggot, which it uses as its pupal case. It emerges forty-five days later as an adult fly.

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8 More than 54,000 cargo ships are hustling goods around the world, and checking all of them for fire ants has proved impossible.

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9 Correction: The original version of this article classified more of these disasters as weather-related; as one reader pointed out, four of them were instead earthquake-related.

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10 Stein fared better than Mock Sen, a Chinese man who a few decades earlier had been imprisoned in a boxcar and shuttled between Baltimore and Philadelphia. Neither city would accept him, and so for thirteen days he was sent back and forth, until the boxcar was opened and he was found to have solved the problem by dying from exposure.

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