Brenda Wandera’s iPhone buzzes in her lap. A text message has made its way through the blurry heat of Kenya’s Chalbi Desert, and it changes her next move. “As soon as we get to Kalacha, we have to go to Network,” she says. Go to Network, I wonder. That must be a Kenyan turn of phrase for “finding a cell tower.” I’ve been warned that Kalacha is off the grid, which would make it one of the more remote corners of Africa, where mobile-phone and Internet service in even far-flung villages can be stronger and more regular than in parts of the American Southwest or Appalachia. ... Read More
Overcrowded Prisons Giving Old Inmates New Life
February 21, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Anthony Montoya has spent the past 32 years — more than half his life — in prison for burglary and second-degree murder. Based on his crimes and long institutional existence, it’s no surprise that a Colorado parole board has denied Montoya 11 times, and a corrections board has shot down early release three times. Last August, as the morning sun streaked through the windows of an 11th-floor conference room, the Denver Community Corrections Board considered Montoya, who is 57, for supervised discharge into a new county work-release program. “Anthony Montoya,” the chair of the ... Read More
Airport to Nowhere: Spain’s Costly No-Fly Zone
February 20, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Six hundred thousand dollars is a lot to spend for eight ferrets. Administrators at Spain’s Castellón Airport announced the establishment of the ferret contract late last year. The job had been awarded to an animal handler, to control birds and rabbits that might endanger aircraft. The contract will pay the ferret wrangler 450,000 euros, or a little over $600,000. The money buys the weasels, plus a team of falcons, that will work six hours a day. The contract was to start as soon as planes start landing at the airport, which its operators predicted, at the time, would happen this April. ... Read More
Where Have All the Doctors Gone?
January 9, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Technically, all Judy Sweet needs is a blood pressure test. In most doctors’ offices, this would be an in-and-out visit. Sweet’s doctor, however, never rushes her patients. Mary Elizabeth Sokach is a primary-care provider based in Exeter Township, a rural Pennsylvania community about 15 miles west of Scranton. When Sokach walks into the room, she greets Sweet like an old friend, then examines her closely. She asks when Sweet last had an eye exam. (“She’s a phenomenal artist, so we have to keep her hands and her vision going,” explains Sokach.) And she talks to Sweet about sleep and ... Read More
Was Lou Gehrig’s ALS Caused by Tap Water?
January 5, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Rudyard Kipling called it “Hell’s Half Acre,” a geothermal wonderland where people could fall through the Earth’s thin crust or be poached by steamy hot springs and geysers. Most visitors to Yellowstone National Park’s Midway Geyser Basin stroll the wooden boardwalks, but a few hike a short, steep side trail that reveals a bird’s-eye view of the entire valley, including Grand Prismatic Spring, which can be fully appreciated only from above. Mustard-yellow and vibrant-orange mats spread like tentacles from the turquoise pool. “Not even the most talented artist could imagine ... Read More
Placebo Effect Stronger Than We Thought?
January 4, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
In July 2001, the Amgen Corporation announced the failure, in a second-stage clinical trial, of an experimental drug to treat Parkinson’s disease, a degenerative illness that affects nerve cells in the brain. Such a failure was hardly unusual; only a minority of the drugs that undergo trials make it to the marketplace. But for Perry Cohen, who had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s several years before, at age 50, the announcement brought both surprise and disappointment. Cohen, an MIT-trained PhD who had spent decades advising health-care organizations on how to evaluate medical care, had ... Read More
Nixon’s Presidential Library: The Last Battle of Watergate
December 8, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Should the National Archives be in the business of presenting objective public history at the nation’s presidential libraries? Or should the private organizations that fund many of these institutions be able to lionize their man in the White House? In an exclusive from the upcoming issue of Miller-McCune magazine, learn how the fractious new partnership between the Archives and the foundation intent on rehabilitating Richard Nixon’s legacy has become the issue’s ... Read More
Alligator River Refuge Rolls Back From Rising Sea
November 7, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Standing on a beach on the Albemarle Peninsula in North Carolina, Brian Boutin, a Nature Conservancy biologist, points to a rusted piece of rebar with a green tag a few inches from the water’s edge. “That was our original marker to show what was happening here three years ago,” he says. “It was 20 meters from the shoreline. Now, it is the shoreline.” To the south, waves hit the shore and explode into the air, little eruptions of erosion. To the north, the waves break, but more gently. Offshore, Boutin and his Nature Conservancy colleagues have built 500 feet of reefs designed to ... Read More
Vehicle-to-Grid: A New Spin on Car Payments
October 31, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Willett Kempton is an anthropologist. And an electrical engineer. On this winter morning at the University of Delaware, both skill sets come in handy as he courts two Japanese businessmen. They’ve traveled here from Tokyo to see how much progress he’s made toward a revolutionary idea: electric cars that will make several thousand dollars a year for their owners, and speed the switch to renewable energy sources. Observing Japanese business etiquette, Kempton presents his business card to the senior visitor, Makoto Horiguchi, then the two exchange bows. He repeats the ceremony with ... Read More
Post-Gadhafi: What’s Next for Libya’s Government?
October 20, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Moammar Gadhafi, the former Libyan dictator whose regime was toppled in August amid the Arab Spring, was killed on October 20 in his hometown of Surt. Writer Marc Herman was in Libya recently and reported for Miller-McCune.com on how the best the Libyan government can transition from a dictatorship to a democracy. This is his full report, as it appears in the latest issue of Miller-McCune magazine. For much of this summer, few knew where Moammar Gadhafi had fled, but it was a good bet he wasn’t in Nalut. A town of 30,000 residents in Libya’s Western mountains, Nalut was among the first ... Read More
