November 26, 2024: Magnet fishers, data-theft responses and success in restoring the Klamath River habitat. —Robin Lloyd, Contributing Editor | | | A firefighter is surrounded by heavy smoke as he battles the advancing Silverado Fire fueled by Santa Ana winds at the 241 toll road and Portola Parkway on October 26, 2020, in Irvine, California. Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images | | | • Exposure to the particles that make up wildfire smoke may increase the risk of dementia even more than similar airborne pollutants from other sources. | 3 min read | | | • Targeted public health interventions to reduce "silent spread" of pathogens, or transmission from asymptomatically infected people, is necessary to prevent future pandemics. | 5 min read | | | Trash Fishing with Magnets | A hobby known as magnet fishing took hold during the COVID pandemic as a way to pass time outdoors, reports Scientific American technology editor Ben Guarino. Treasure seekers typically "fish" with a rope attached to a stainless-steel shell housing a strongly magnetic alloy of iron, boron and the rare earth element neodymium. Fishers are motivated to clean waterways of trash, hazards and toxic pollution like batteries, although the overall environmental impact is not entirely clear. The "intermetallic compound" used in magnet fishing was invented independently and nearly simultaneously by two industrial workers in the early 1980s as an alternative to powerful but expensive cobalt and samarium magnets.
Why this is cool: Magnet fishers in the U.S. are pulling up such items as firearms, a grenade, electric scooters, bicycles, pliers, bottle caps, iPhones, signposts, a safe full of cash and an iron rod called a sash weight, a counterweight used to open heavy windows.
How it works: The magnets feature multiple layers of aligned electrons; tiny amounts of neodymium help to hold the iron atoms in a crystalline lattice. Miniature versions of the neodymium magnets, which are created through sintering or bonding, are key components for computer hard drives, electric motors, wind turbines, headphones and speakers. | | | What Data Breaches Mean for You | As we embark on the holiday shopping season, it's wise to update one's online security practices, particularly in light of recent confusing reports on the breach of background-checking company National Public Data. Some of your personal data, such as your social security number, likely has already been stolen and put up for sale by hackers. And this risk is likely to worsen over time, says online security consultant Troy Hunt, who started the site " Have I Been Pwned?" in 2013 and is featured in a recent Q&A in the December issue of Scientific American. (Not familiar with the early 2000s Internet slang "pwned"? The story explains.) Of the six billion email addresses checked by Hunt's site, each has been breached at least twice, on average.
What to do: "You should have whatever freezes you have available on credit until you actually need to apply for it. For identity-theft monitoring services, you have to spend some money, but it's not a bad idea. And then, of course, use strong, unique passwords and multifactor authentication," Hunt says. It's also prudent to use a password manager, or at least to devise complex passwords and never re-use them.
What the experts say: Even savvy digiterati can be vulnerable to online data breaches. Having our personal data stolen comes with the territory of using the Internet-connected computers and smartphones. "While we hurtle around at 100 kilometers an hour in metal machines, this is what's going to happen," Hunt says. | | | Biologists capture juvenile Coho salmon, Chinook salmon and steelhead trout in Wooley Creek, a tributary to the Salmon River which is one of the largest tributaries to the Klamath River on August 15, 2024. The Coho and Chinook are tagged with a monitoring device and also fin clipped for a genetic study.Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images | | | • Efforts to restore wildlife and reverse precipitous population declines can draw lessons from the diverse leadership and commitments that led to the largest dam removal project in history, at the Klamath River, in Oregon and California. Following the removals, salmon surged into previously abandoned or unreachable upstream habitats, writes Jeff Opperman, a scientist at the World Wildlife Fund. The restoration project relied on new agreements on agricultural water uses. Land conservation alone can be insufficient. | 4 min read | | | The role of plastics in climate change is easy to overlook, but many folks are monitoring negotiations for a global treaty on plastics, according to the site Carbon Brief. The piece, which Scientific American editor Andrea Thompson alerted us to, features charts illustrating why the treaty could prove important. One chart based on the publication's calculations shows that the production and disposal of plastics generate three times more global greenhouse-gas emissions than aviation does.
Another of Thompson's finds today: The Weather Watchers, by meteorologist and Floridian Julia Haley. The book explains weather concepts in accessible language and tells a story of kids who band together to keep their community safe from an incoming hurricane. Proceeds currently go to hurricane relief efforts, Haley writes.
| —Robin Lloyd, Contributing Editor | | Subscribe to this and all of our newsletters . | | | | Scientific American
One New York Plaza, New York, NY, 10004 | | | | | | Support our mission, subscribe to Scientific American | | | | | | | | | |
