January 23, 2018

On Sunday, January 21, Pope Francis (Papa Francisco in Spanish) departed Lima, Peru, concluding an apostolic journey that began in Santiago, Chile, on January 15. Apostolic is another word for papal or having to do with the pope. Throughout the journey, enthusiastic crowds turned out to welcome the pope, who is particularly popular in the traditionally Roman Catholic nations of Latin America. Francis is from Argentina and has been leader of the Roman Catholic Church since 2013.

Pope Francis smiles and waves from the popemobile as he leaves the Señor de los Milagros Sanctuary in Lima, Peru, on Jan. 21, 2018. Credit: © Luka Gonzales, Getty Images

The Chile portion of the trip was themed “Mi paz les doy” (“I give you my peace”); the Peru theme was “Unidos por la esperanza” (“United by hope”). In both countries, the Pope addressed recent sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church. Francis also stressed the importance of protecting the environment, and discouraged the increasing tide of secularization (the removal of religion from people’s everyday lives). In Chile, the number of people calling themselves Catholics fell to 45 percent in 2017, a drop from 74 percent in 1995. In Peru, only about 5 percent of Catholics regularly attend weekly church services.

On Tuesday, January 16, Francis met with Chilean President Michelle Bachelet at La Moneda, the presidential palace in Santiago, the capital, and held an outdoor Mass at the city’s O’Higgins Park. The next day, the pope flew to the southern city of Temuco, where he celebrated Mass and lunched with indigenous Mapuche leaders before returning to Santiago. On January 18, Francis held a Mass at Lobito beach in the northern port city of Iquique before flying north to Lima, the Peruvian capital. On Friday, the pope met with indigenous leaders in the the southeastern Amazon city of Puerto Maldonado before returning to Lima, where he met with Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski.

On Saturday, January 20, Francis flew to the northwestern coastal city of Trujillo for a Mass at Huanchaco beach and a city tour in the popemobile. In Trujillo’s Plaza de Armas, he hosted a celebration of Our Lady of La Puerta and delivered a speech before returning to Lima. On Sunday, January 21, the pope met with local dignitaries at Lima Cathedral and the Archbishop’s Palace. After a Mass before more than 1 million people at Las Palmas Air Base, Francis boarded a plane and returned to the Vatican in Rome.

Francis is the first pope from Latin America and the first Jesuit pope. Jesuits are members of a religious order called the Society of Jesus. Francis is known for his commitment to social justice, especially for the poor; his humble lifestyle; and his conservative religious beliefs. This was his sixth visit to Latin America since becoming pope. His previous stops were in Brazil; Bolivia, Ecuador, and Paraguay; Cuba; Mexico; and Colombia. The last pope to visit Chile and Peru was St. John Paul II, who made trips to Peru in 1985 and 1988 and to Chile in 1987.

November 21, 2017

An innovative college campus building in Lima, Peru, is the inaugural winner of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) International Prize for the world’s best new building. Ireland’s Grafton Architects created the University of Engineering and Technology (UTEC) building, a vertical, concrete structure in the city’s lovely Barranco district overlooking the Pacific Ocean. RIBA, a professional body for the advancement of architecture, was founded in London, England, in 1834.

The UTEC building in Lima, Peru, won the inaugural RIBA International Prize for world’s best new building. Credit: © Christian Vinces, Shutterstock

The building’s stark reinforced concrete plates stand in line with the rolling green cliffs of Barranco, housing an all-in-one campus of classrooms, exhibition spaces, laboratories, offices, restaurants, theaters, and interior gardens that absorb the area’s temperate climate. Air circulates throughout the open spaces of the puzzle-piece building, which is flooded with natural light.

An exceptional example of civil architecture, UTEC’s 10 floors form a “modern-day Machu Picchu” with a large A-shaped section leaning toward the busy Quebrada de Armendáriz avenue. (Machu Picchu is an Inca archaeological site in Peru.) The backside staggers above nearby ravines and terraces. The building, also dubbed a “man-made cliff,” is built at an angle on fast-sloping ground, reflecting Lima’s unique geography and existing architecture. The city is a bustling mix of old and new, filling a dramatic space between the gray expanse of sea and the green foothills of the Andes Mountains.

Grafton Architects, based in Dublin, worked with Lima’s Shell Arquitectos on the $100 million project, which was completed in 2015.

August 25, 2017

The Andes Mountains of Peru in South America have recently revealed some grape-sized secrets: three new species of so-called rubber frogs. An international team of researchers discovered the tiny amphibians while rooting through the Andean grass, rocks, and moss, and the scientists published their findings last month in the journal Zootaxa. The team, which consists of Edgar Lehr from Illinois Wesleyan University, Rudolph von May from the University of Michigan, and scientists from Peru and the Czech Republic, has been rather frog happy lately. The newly described animals—the Pui Pui rubber frog, Humboldt’s rubber frog, and the hill dweller rubber frog—are actually the third, fourth, and fifth new frog species discovered by the team this year. The species discovered earlier, which are also found in the Peruvian Andes, are Attenborough’s rubber frog and the Ashaninka rubber frog.

Humboldt’s rubber frog is found only at a single site high in the Andes Mountains of Peru. The frog is named for German naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt. Credit: © Rudolf von May, University of Michigan

To make these discoveries, the scientists ventured to the hard-to-reach Pui Pui Protected Forest in Peru, a two-day hike from the nearest human settlement. The remote protected area, established in 1985, consists of alpine forests and grasslands. There have been few biological surveys conducted in the park since it was established, which leaves the possibility of more animal discoveries in the future.

The tiny hill dweller rubber frog lives among the bushes, mosses, trees, and feather grass of the Peruvian Andes. Credit: © Rudolf von May, University of Michigan

The three new species are land-breeding frogs, and they do not have a tadpole stage. The eggs laid by females develop directly into froglets. This mode of reproduction is successful as long as there is plenty of moisture.

Like all frogs, these new species are faced with threats from habitat loss and climate change, as well as Chytrid fungus, which can lead to chytridiomycosis, an infectious disease that has depleted amphibian populations around the world. The scientists took skin samples from the frogs, and several had the fungus—but that does not necessarily mean the frogs have the deadly disease. It is important to know that the fungus is there, however, so scientists can learn how these isolated frogs react to it.

May 3, 2017

In Andy Weir’s 2011 book The Martian and its 2015 film adaptation,  botanist-astronaut Mark Watney manages to grow potatoes while marooned on Mars. Watney hauls Martian soil into a pressurized, climate-controlled base and harvests a crop that provides food while his other supplies run out. Today, a group of Peruvian scientists are working on transferring this fiction to reality. Agricultural researchers from the International Potato Center (called the Centro Internacional de la Papa in Spanish, or CIP) in Lima, the Peruvian capital, have grown some rather hardy potatoes in an even worse environment than Watney’s Martian garden. The scientists’ research, carried out in the Andes Mountains of South America (where potatoes originated), might make farming on Mars or other barren places possible.

Scientists at the International Potato Center in Lima, Peru, grew a “Unique” potato in simulated Martian conditions within the container at left, called the “CubeSat.” Credit: © International Potato Center

Human exploration of Mars is one of the primary long-term goals of such space agencies as the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the European Space Agency (ESA). But before people get there, scientists must solve a host of problems. First among them will be how to feed astronauts during an extended stay in the harsh environment of the Red Planet.

Potatoes originated in the often harsh environment of the Andean Highlands of South America. Credit: © Roux Frederic, Shutterstock

The ability to grow food during a space journey or while on the Martian surface has a number of benefits. Space could be saved in the spacecraft, allowing for other needed supplies, and instead of freeze-dried or tubular “astronaut food,” space explorers could eat a variety of freshly grown produce. But growing food on Mars—an extremely cold, dry, and nearly airless planet—will not be easy. Life as we know it cannot survive on its surface—yet.

The ability to grow food on Mars will greatly help in the planet’s exploration and possible settlement. Credit: NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems

In Peru, the CIP scientists wanted to see if certain hardy potatoes could be grown in conditions similar to those found on Mars. To do this, the scientists built a sealed growing chamber (a garden in a box they called a “CubeSat”) and layered it with nutrient-weak, sandy soil similar to that found on Mars. They installed low-powered lights on a longer-than-Earth day-night cycle, and created a low-temperature and low-atmospheric pressure environment. They then tried growing dozens of varieties of potatoes in the simulator, irrigating them with nutrient-rich water. Of all the tested varieties, one called “Unique” grew best under the extreme conditions.

The Unique potato is exceptionally hardy, but it could not possibly grow on the surface of Mars without human intervention. The scientists grew the potatoes at temperatures around freezing, but surface temperatures on Mars can dip below -150 °F (-100 °C) at night. They were able to achieve growth with somewhat reduced atmospheric pressure (like the thin air at the top of the Andes Mountains), but Mars’s atmospheric pressure is a mere 0.7 percent of the atmospheric pressure on Earth. And, as far as we know, there is no nutrient-rich water on Mars. Liquid water near the Martian surface is only present during the planet’s summer, and it is extremely salty.

Potatoes are one of the world’s most important crops. The ability to grow potatoes and other crops in harsh conditions could prove vastly important as climate change alters the global environment. Credit: © David R. Frazier

The CIS experiment provided scientists and engineers with useful information on the extreme limits of vegetable cultivation. With the use of extremely hardy plants like the Unique potato, astronaut greenhouses could be kept cooler than Earth spaces, saving valuable electricity for purposes other than heating. Because plants can survive on carbon dioxide concentrations, excess carbon dioxide exhaled by astronauts could help provide the space garden’s protected atmosphere. If Martian soil could be manipulated for vegetable growth, it would negate the need to send bundles of Earth soil to the Red Planet.

Beyond its applications to space travel or Martian living, the CIS potato research has a more practical use here on Earth. As the climate changes from global warming, environmental conditions will become harsher in many places around the world. By studying how crops survive in extreme conditions, agricultural scientists may be able to discover and breed crops more resistant to the worst effects of climate change.

October 29, 2014

The native inhabitants of Easter Island, one of the most remote and isolated places on Earth, mixed with Native Americans more than 600 years ago, according to surprising genetic evidence from a new study. Anna-Sapfo Malaspinas and her team from the Denmark Natural History Museum Centre for Geogenetics in Copenhagen analyzed the genomes of 27 people from Easter Island. A genome is the entire set of chemical instructions that control heredity in a human being. The scientists found specific genetic patterns that indicated admixture (interbreeding) between the native inhabitant of Easter Island and Native American populations several hundred years before the first Europeans reached the island in 1722.

Huge stone statues called moai stand on Easter Island. Genetic studies have revealed that Native Americans mixed with Easter Islands before the arrival of Europeans in the early 1700′s. ((c) George Holton, Photo Researchers)

The scientists also examined the family histories of eight unrelated individuals on Easter Island. This helped them to determine that European genes entered the islanders’ genomes after about 1850. This was not surprising, as immigrants, mainly from Chile, have mixed with the island’s population since the 1800′s. However, the scientists calculated that the Native American genes entered the population sometime around A.D. 1280 to 1495–hundreds of years before the first European contact.

Easter island lies in the Pacific Ocean about 2,300 miles (3,700 kilometers) west of Chile. Called Rapanui by the native people, the island was first settled between about A.D. 900 and 1200. The settlers were Polynesians who had sailed from islands to the west on large, double-hulled seagoing canoes. Easter Island is famous as the site of enigmatic giant stone statues called moai that were carved hundreds of years ago. More than 600 moai are scattered across the island. Jacob Roggeveen, a Dutch explorer, first sighted the island on Easter Sunday in 1722 and gave the island its name.

Easter island lies in the Pacific Ocean about 2,300 miles (3,700 kilometers) west of Chile. (World Book map)

The scientists believe that the seafaring Polynesians from Easter Island likely made several short trips to and from South America, perhaps bringing a few Native Americans back with them. They point out that a voyage originating from South America to Easter Island would be much more difficult and unlikely. Without modern navigation technology, any boat sailing from the Americas would likely miss the remote island completely.

Norwegian author and adventurer Thor Heyerdahl won fame in 1947 by sailing a balsa-wood raft named Kon-Tiki from Peru to the Tuamotu Islands in French Polynesia. He and his crew made the trip to test his theory that the islands of Polynesia could have been settled by Indians from South America. Most archaeologists and scholars have dismissed Heyerdahl’s ideas as fantastic speculation. However, the new study suggests that Heyerdahl may have been at least partially correct in arguing that Native Americans had visited the islands.

Additional World Book articles:

• Pacific Islands
• Ocean (1947) (a Back in Time article)