The Dogon Villages of Bandiagara Escarpment

In central Mali, about 90 km to the east of Mopti, rises a dramatic sandstone cliff with a high plateau above and sandy semi-desert plains below. Known as the Bandiagara Escarpment, this cliff stretches for about 150 kilometers, and is noted by the UNESCO as “an outstanding landscape of cliffs and sandy plateaux with some beautiful architecture.” The Bandiagara site is considered one of West Africa's most impressive features, due to its geological and archaeological features as well as its ethnological importance.

The site has been settled for at least 2,000 years. Since the last five hundred years it has been home to the ethnic group known as Dogon. Before they migrated to this area from their homeland far to the south-west in what is now Burkina Faso and Ghana, the Dogons were frequently raided by neighboring Islamic tribal groups. Men, women and children alike were captured and thrown into the slave trade.

Cliff dwellings in the Bandiagara escarpment. 

Around the 15th century or probably earlier, the Dogons started to arrive to this region and settled in the cliffs of Bandiagara taking advantage of the cliff’s natural refuge as defense against potential invaders. When they got there, they found the escarpment already inhabited by the “little red people”, the Tellem tribes, who were pygmies. The Tellem built dwellings around the base of the escarpment and carved burial caves high up on the cliff-face. The seemingly impossible-to-access location of these dwellings made the Dogons believe that the Tellem people could fly.

Originally, the Dogons shared the escarpment with the Tellem, but gradually the indigenous people were pushed out and the Tellem disappeared. It is thought that the Tellem people either assimilated into the Dogon culture or migrated to nearby Burkina Faso. But many of the dwellings and structures they left behind survived for centuries and are still visible in the area. Some Tellem buildings, most notably the granaries, are still used by the Dogon.

The first Dogon settlement was established in the extreme southwest of the escarpment. Over time, the Dogon moved north along the escarpment, over the plateau, and the plains of the Seno-Gondo to the southeast. Today, the “Land of the Dogons” encompass over 400,000 hectares and includes nearly three hundred villages scattered along the length of the Bandiagara Escarpment. Their villages are usually located on the plateau at the top of the escarpment or at the foot of the cliffs beneath the older Tellem structures on the cliff face.

The Dogons were virtually unheard of in the West until the early 1930s, when a young French anthropologist named Marcel Griaule embarked on a fifteen-year long research trip across West Africa. After years of questioning the Dogon elders about their religion, Griaule was finally granted a series of interviews with a blind Dogon hunter named Ogotemmeli, who taught Griaule the religious stories in the same way that Ogotemmêli had learned them from his father and grandfather. Later this was turned into a fascinating book titled “Conversations With Ogotemmeli,” which challenged all accepted ideas of African mentality and of primitive people in general.

The Bandiagara Escarpment and the Dogon culture today draws a large number of tourists to Mali each year.

Restoration of the Tellem granaries in Bandiagara Escarpment. Photo credit: Fondation Dogon Education

Restoration of the Tellem granaries in Bandiagara Escarpment. Photo credit: Fondation Dogon Education

Dogon village of Ireli in Mali.  

Thatched granaries in a partially abandoned Dogon village on the Bandiagara Escarpment in Mali. 

Bullfrog County: How an Empty County Tried to Prevent Nevada From Becoming The Nation’s Nuclear Waste Dump

Deep in southern Nevada’s Nye County, in the harsh, sun-drenched desert, there was once a small county named Bullfrog. It was one of the most recent counties to join and leave the United States of America, having been created in 1987 and dissolved two years later in 1989. During its brief existence as an enclave of Nye County, Bullfrog County had no residents, no businesses, no buildings, no roads and no private land of any sort. Three-fourths of it consisted of military bombing ranges, while the remaining quarter was owned by the Bureau of Land Management that few people visited. So why did a 12 miles square patch of wilderness in Nye County became its own county for two years?

The Yucca mountain with the drilling site in view. Photo credit: United States Department of Energy

The answer lies in Bullfrog’s most prominent geological feature—the huge volcanic mesa called Yucca Mountain rising out of the desert floor. This region, located 110 miles northwest of Las Vegas, was one of three sites shortlisted by the United States government as a possible underground repository for tons of spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste piling up in nuclear plants all over the country.

The storage of radioactive waste produced by commercial nuclear power plants and the military is a major issue that was first tackled decisively in the 1980s, when the federal government passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act that directed the Department of Energy to find a site and build an underground facility where the entire country can dump all of its radioactive waste.

Originally ten sites were chosen, out of which three were approved for intensive study. Yucca mountain was one of the finalists. The other two sites were Hanford, Washington and Deaf Smith County, Texas.

Spent nuclear fuel and other radioactive waste is currently being stored in dry casks like these. Photo credit: Nuclear Regulatory Commission

Naturally, the prospect of getting all of the nation’s radioactive waste dumped in their backyard was incredibly unpopular in all three of the states, and each state lobbied hard to take itself out of the consideration. To make the deal lucrative, the federal government promised that it would pay property taxes on the dump site as if they were a private corporation. Furthermore, this money would go directly to the county that housed the dump rather than to the state.

This was attractive for the people of Nye County, the majority of whom supported the creation of the nuclear dump, but Nevada was still against it. Nevada also knew that they had no power over the federal government, and if there was nothing to stop the U.S. Department of Energy from building the dump in Yucca Mountain, they might as well make Congress pay for it. But that last part of the deal—the money going to the county rather than to the state—meant the state wouldn’t see a penny.

“This is a statewide issue, not a county issue," said State Assemblyman Paul May of Las Vegas to LA Times. May noted that he and "nearly all of Nevada's elected officials are dead set against having a nuclear dump in our state. But if it happens, it would seem tragic not to take the federal government for all the money possible."

On his suggestion, Nevada passed a bill in the dead of the night on June 18, 1987, that carved a new county around Yucca Mountain. This new county, measuring 144 square miles, was named Bullfrog after a now-defunct gold mine in the area. Because Bullfrog had no population it was controlled by the state, and so if the feds did build a nuclear dump site there they would have to pay taxes directly to the state and not to Nye County. Its seat of government was placed 270 miles to the northwest in Carson City, Nevada’s capital. Commissioners were appointed by the state, rather than elected, and their salaries were set to $1 per year.

In order to make the deal as profitable as possible for Nevada and prohibitively expensive for the federal government, the tax rate for Bullfrog County was set to $5 per $100, the maximum allowed by the state and more than three times that of Nye County. This meant the federal government would have to pay $25 million per year to host a dump site at Yucca Mountain.

Location of Bullfrog County (red) in Nevada.

The obvious loser of this legislative plan was Nye County. The state had stolen a chunk of their land, and with it taken a ton of potential tax revenue and other economic benefit. Some leaders were also concerned that the creation of Bullfrog might give federal officials an impression that the state was not opposed to the nuclear waste repository and that it would be acceptable if the price was right.

Besides, in their haste to push the bill (it was passed at 3 am in the morning), the state government had forgotten to provide a court of law and legislation placing it in a state judicial district. Bullfrog County had no legal system, and since it had no residents, there was no way to empanel a jury. This created a situation just like Yellowstone’s Kill Zone—anybody can commit a crime in Bullfrog County and get away with it.

In the end, the gambit didn’t work. Nye County sued, claiming the law was unconstitutional, and in late October 1987, a state judge agreed. In 1989, Bullfrog County was dissolved.

Despite all the political and legislative drama, Yucca Mountain became the chosen site for storing radioactive waste. The repository was supposed to have been completed nearly two decades ago, but legal challenges, concerns over how to transport nuclear waste to the facility, and political pressures delayed the project, and as of 2018, construction on the repository is still ongoing on.

The nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain will sit inside a long ridge, approximately 1,000 feet beneath the surface and 1,000 feet above the water table. Consisting of 40 miles of tunnels, the repository will accommodate an estimated 77,000 tons of nuclear waste. Graphics by the US Department of Energy.

The entrance to Yucca Mountain as in 2007. Photo credit: Nuclear Regulatory Commission

What You Need to Know About Sun Allergies

Right now, you may be asking yourself if sun allergies are truly legitimate. The short answer is: yes. It’s as real as a peanut allergy. Allergies occur when your immune system reacts to a substance to which you are hypersensitive. And it’s no different with a sun allergy.

WHAT IS A SUN ALLERGY?

An allergic reaction to the sun occurs when changes take place within the skin, and then that area is exposed to the sun. The immune system mounts an attack against what it perceives to be as “foreign” within the skin.

Sun allergy symptoms include a rash, tiny blisters, or a skin eruption. The symptoms appear in as short as a few minutes after sun exposure to several hours later.

The causes are not totally clear, but there are several risk factors for sun allergies. Those risk factors include…

• Genetics. If you have a family member, like your mom and brother, with a sun allergy, then you are more likely to have it as well.
• Race. Caucasians and Native Americans are more likely to develop a sun allergy.
• Exposure to substances. Substances that irritate your skin like unnatural fragrances, chemicals in sunscreen, or disinfectants can alter your skin, which then primes you for a sun allergy the next time that area of your skin steps outside.
• Other skin conditions. If you have any other skin condition like dermatitis increases your likelihood of having an allergic reaction to the sun.
• Medications. Certain types of medications can make your skin more sensitive to the sun and lead to a sun allergy.

TYPES OF SUN ALLERGIES

There are four primary types of sun allergies. 

1) Polymorphous Light Eruption (PMLE)

This type of sun allergy appears first as an itchy rash. After sunburn, it’s the most common sun-related skin problem that doctors see. An approximate 10-15 percent of the population is affected by this type of allergy; women more so than men.

PMLE is less common during the winter months, but it appears as soon as you spend more time outdoors in the spring and summer. The more time spent outside and in the sun allows you to become less sensitive to the light with rashes being less severe as the summer wears on.

2) Actinic Prurigo

Actinic Prurigo is a hereditary form of PMLE seen mostly in the Native American populations. It’s common for several generations to display the same sun allergy, which begins early in childhood. The symptoms for this type of sun allergy are generally more severe.

3) Solar Urticaria

Young women are most often affected by this form of sun allergy. You may experience large hives that are itchy and red after being exposed to the sun. This is a more rare form of a sun allergy.

4) Photoallergic Eruption

This kind of sun allergy occurs when you expose skin to sun that has been affected by some form of chemical, like fragrance, sunscreen, antibiotics, or cosmetics.

Certain medications cause the skin to be more sensitive to sunlight, leading to this form of sun allergy. Medications like antibiotics (sulfonamides) or even common over-the-counter pills like ibuprofen and naproxen can lead to this form of sun allergy.

HOW TO PREVENT AN ALLERGIC REACTION TO THE SUN

No one wants to deal with a sun allergy during the long days of summer. You’d rather be enjoying the outdoors with friends and family than wrapped up inside (that’s what winter is for!). If you’re living with a sun allergy, here are the best ways to prevent a reaction.

Wear sunscreen.

Not just any sunscreen. Be sure to use high-quality, natural sunscreen. It needs to be at least SPF 15 with broad spectrum protection against UVA and UVB rays. And you need to apply it 15 to 30 minutes before you plan to be outside. Also remember to apply sunblock to your lips with sunscreen chapstick.

Avoid peak time.

In the continental U.S., the peak time for sun is between 10 am and 3 pm. Try to stay indoors during these hours.

Sunglasses.

Make sure your sunglasses offer ultraviolet light protection.

Avoid sudden, long exposure to sun.

If you have a known sun allergy, then you’re most sensitive in spring and early summer when you start to spend more time outdoors.

Plan ahead to spend small amounts of time outdoors. Gradually increase how much time you spend outside so that your limit the severity of your reaction. Spending the first sunny, warm day outside for several hours is sure to cause a severe reaction.

Wear protective clothing.

If you are super sensitive to the sun, then protective clothing is a must. Long sleeves, pants, and a hat will cover most of your skin.

Beware of chemicals.

Look into swapping your fragrances, cleaning supplies, and other body care products to products that offer natural ingredients. The less exposure you have to harsh chemicals the less likely you’ll be to have a reaction to the sun.

Revealed: What the colour of your urine can tell you about your health - and the exact shade when you need to reach for a bottle of water this summer

The colour of your urine can tell you if you should be drinking more water, which is extra important during the hot summer months.

Urine is usually varying shades of yellow and, the darker it is, the more likely it is that you're becoming dehydrated.

Dehydration can be a serious health risk and is particularly dangerous for babies, children and elderly people.

The NHS says people in the UK should drink at least 1.2 litres of water a day – 2.4 pints – and more when the weather is hot.

And if your urine is consistently red or orange it could be a sign of a more serious underlying condition such as a urine infection, prostate problems or kidney disease.

Using a urine colour chart like the one below created by sports drink company iPro Sport, you can work out if you're drinking enough water.

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The urine of someone who is properly hydrated should be a very pale yellow or clear, according to the sports drink company.

Whereas a darker yellow or more brownish colour could be a sign someone is getting dangerously dehydrated.

Dehydration can usually be easily avoided and treated by drinking enough water, but if left to get worse it can cause dizziness and tiredness or lead to more serious complications like heatstroke, muscle cramps or exhaustion.  

Someone's heatstroke could be severe or life-threatening if they are not sweating even though they are too hot, have a body temperature of 40C or more, becomes confused or short of breath, or has a seizure or passes out.

If this happens an ambulance should be called immediately.

Often dehydration is simple enough to avoid – just feeling thirsty is likely a sign that someone's body needs them to drink more water.

iPro Sport's chart explains that someone whose urine is brown is likely to be seriously dehydrated. 

The symptom could be a sign of something more serious, however, and may need medical attention if it continues.

Yellow or dark yellow urine are signs of dehydration 

Yellow or dark yellow urine are also both signs of dehydration, but it is not likely too severe – drinking more water immediately should be enough to rehydrate the body.

Some people are more at risk of dehydration, including those with diabetes, people who have been vomiting or suffering diarrhoea, and people who have been in the sun for a long time.

Exercising and sweating, drinking alcohol, and having a fever or taking medicines which make you pee more can all raise the risk of dehydration.

 

The colour chart produced by iPro Sport acts as a handy guide for people to check whether or not they are dehydrated

Red or orange could be a sign of something more serious 

If urine is a colour other than yellow – such as red, orange or green – it is likely to be because of something you ate or drank. 

For example, beetroot may turn urine red temporarily.

But urine that is consistently another colour for a long time could be a sign of something more serious.

Red urine can be caused by blood, which could be pointing towards kidney disease, cancer, an infection or prostate problems.

Meanwhile orange could signal a problem with the liver or bile duct. 

DRINKING TOO MUCH WATER IS ALSO DANGEROUS 

Drinking too much water can lead to just as severe problems as not drinking enough, but is far less likely.

American football player Tom Brady, the quarterback for New England Patriots in Boston, revealed in a book that he drinks a whopping 37 glasses of water a day – half of his own body weight.

Drinking too much water can dilute vital sodium supplies in the body and cause a condition called hyponatremia.

This is most common in endurance athletes or people who take drugs like ecstasy, which can make them feel thirstier than they really are.

If sodium in the body becomes too diluted, your cells start to swell. 

This can cause headaches and confusion and fatigure, but can also lead to muscle weakness, cramps, seizures, and even a coma.

Dietitian Abbey Sharp said it was highly unlikely Brady needs to drink as much water as he claims to, and said: 'My recommendation is to forget all of the standards about how much you should be drinking each day.

'It's not half your body weight, it's not two liters, it's not that any one size fits all.

'Listen to your body's thirst cues and keep plain water near by at all times to hydrate. Check in with yourself regularly to see if you are indeed thirsty and don't deny those cues.'

Should We Take DHA Supplements to Boost Brain Function?

The concept of vitamins was first described by none other than Dr. Funk. In his landmark paper in 1912, he discussed the notion that there were complex compounds our body couldn’t make from scratch, so we had to get them from our diet. By the mid-20th century, all the vitamins had been discovered and isolated, but it wasn’t until the 1960s that we realized that certain fats were essential, too.

In 1929, the necessity for fat was definitively settled… “in the diet (of the rat),” but when one of the researchers tried a 99 percent fat-free diet on himself for six months, ironically, he felt better. His high blood pressure went away, he felt more energetic, and his migraines disappeared. This one-man experiment “fortif[ied] the medical profession’s doubt that essential fatty acids had any relevance to humans,” until TPN—Total Parenteral Nutrition, meaning feeding someone exclusively through an IV—was developed in the 1960s.

TPN was initially developed for babies born without working intestines. Because we didn’t think humans needed fat, “the first preparations were fat free, and they rapidly induced severe EFA [essential fatty acid] deficiencies, ultimately convincing the medical community” that some fats are indeed essential. They started out using safflower oil, but, as they discovered in a young girl given the oil after an abdominal gunshot wound, we don’t just need fat—we need specific fats like omega-3s. So, when they switched from safflower oil to soybean oil, she was restored to normal. 

The fact it took so long and under such extreme circumstances to demonstrate the essential nature of omega-3s illustrates how hard it is to develop overt omega-3 deficiency. Of course, the amount required to avoid deficiency is not necessarily the optimal amount for health. The vitamin C in a spoonful of orange juice would be enough to avoid scurvy (the overt vitamin C deficiency disease), but no one considers that enough vitamin C for optimal health.

What would optimal omega-3 status look like? Well, doubt has been cast on its role in heart health, which appears to have been based on a faulty premise in the first place, so taking extra omega-3s for our heart might not make any sense. But what about for our baby’s brain Extra DHA may not help pregnant or breast-feeding fish-eaters, but those who want to avoid the contaminants in fishes can take supplements of pollutant-free algae oil to get the best of both worlds for their babies . What about adults? There doesn’t appear to be any apparent psychological or neurological benefit of DHA supplementation for the general public, but what about in those who don’t eat fish?

The famous Alpha Omega Trial randomized thousands of people over three years to get either long-chain omega-3s from fish, short-chain omega-3s from plants, or placebo. The result? The study found no significant benefits for any kind of omega-3 supplementation on global cognitive decline. However, most of the subjects were eating fish, thereby already getting pre-formed DHA in their diets. General population studies like this, that find no benefit, can’t fully inform us about the role of DHA in brain health. It would be akin to giving half these people oranges, finding no difference in scurvy rates (zero in both groups), and concluding vitamin C plays no role in scurvy.

In 2013, for the first time, DHA supplementation was found to improve memory and reaction time among young adults who rarely ate fish. Previous randomized, controlled trials failed to find such a benefit among 18- to 45-year-olds, but they only lasted a few months at most, whereas the 2013 study lasted for six months. If all the studies showed either no effect or a positive effect, one might give it a try. But in one of those shorter trials, DHA supplementation didn’t just fail to show benefit—it appeared to make things worse. After 50 days, those who consumed the DHA had worse memory than those taking the placebo. So, out of the six randomized controlled trials for DHA supplementation, four showed nothing, one showed a benefit, and one showed a harm. If it were just about boosting brain function in the short term, I’d err on the side of caution and spend my money elsewhere.

Do this One Thing to Improve Your Memory

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been introduced to someone, only to walk away wondering what the heck their name was. Even worse, I’ll bump in to a colleague at the mall, and hit a complete blank.

The only reason I don’t lose my car keys is because I don’t drive. As for phone numbers, fuhgeddaboudit. Thanks to the advent of smartphones, many of us struggle to remember our own number, never mind anyone else’s.

HOW MEMORY WORKS

The reason we don’t remember whether we locked the front door, turned off the oven or put our car keys in our bag is because simple tasks that don’t require focus allow our mind to wander. After all, if it’s not needed, why should it hang around?

“Attention is critical for initiating memory formation,” says The Florey Institute’s Dr Jee Hyun Kim in his comic explainer how memory works.

When you remain present (i.e. immerse yourself fully in the task at hand, however menial it may be) you activate your working memory long enough for you to recall that you did, in fact, switch off the iron before leaving the house. Yay, emergency averted!

We have different kinds of memory for different things: short-term, long-term, episodic, procedural, semantic, etc. The key to all of them is attention. If you don’t pay attention, you’re not going to remember. Period. 

IS IT POSSIBLE TO DEVELOP A GREAT MEMORY? 

Joshua Foer —author of Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything— claims he used to be just as forgetful as the rest of us. Phone numbers and car keys were things he knew he had, he just didn’t know where.

He figured that was just how it went. Some people had great memories, others, well, they lost their car keys.

That all changed when he found himself at the U.S. Memory Championships and learned the participants weren’t savants (as he’d assumed), but regular folks with average recollection abilities.

As a journalist, Joshua wanted desperately to write about what he’d gleaned from hanging out with these memory geeks. Given that the championships were duller than a cardboard knife, he decided a participatory approach would work best.

Joshua returned the following year as an entrant and, spoiler alert: he took first place. Interestingly, the newly-crowned memory champ’s biggest takeaway from the experience wasn’t the extent to which he was able to hone his recall skills.

REMEMBER TO REMEMBER.

What Joshua learned in the year he spent preparing for the memory championships was that we all have latent in us the ability to perform incredible feats of memory. It’s simply a matter of learning and applying memory techniques.

Much like when you go to the gym and work out, your muscles grow fitter, stronger and more defined. So, too, does your brain (and memory) respond when put through its paces on a regular basis.

The thing is, in order to live a memorable life, you have to be, as he says, “…the kind of person who remembers to remember.”

STEP AWAY FROM YOUR DEVICES TO IMPROVE YOUR MEMORY.

When we lose ourselves in our devices, we’re losing more than just time. We’re losing the ability to process deeply. Everything we take in is ‘screen deep.’ More importantly, we’re losing the ability to pay full attention.

There are plenty of tips and tricks to improve your short-term memory and any number of memory loss remedies available for you to try. But a far easier approach is simply to put away your smartphone and immerse yourself fully in the present moment.

When you do that, your recall capabilities increase exponentially.