Navajo Nation's Monument Valley Park, Arizona.
Elmer Guy and Nonabah Lane.
Credits: Navajo Technical University, left, and Diana Levine
Nonabah Lane: The COVID pandemic is really highlighting a lot of ways in which we are lacking, and that's especially true here in our tribal community, because the first thing you need to even address where we are in this science and technology space is the internet. There's a considerable gap between the haves and the have-nots in terms of internet. The Navajo Nation is roughly the size of West Virginia, but we don't have anywhere near the broadband and internet access that other "states" this size would have. Some of the more glaring reasons for this go back to historical policies, lack of funding for infrastructure on tribal lands, and current rights-of-way issues, and a lot of it has to do with the fact that larger corporations aren't as willing to take risks in doing business on a tribal trust land. When you don't have the internet, you don't have access to information, you don't have access to what is going on in the world or science or technology, and you can't keep up with work or school.
Dr. Elmer Guy: That's right. In this pandemic, as we're being forced to go online, I see school buses parked outside for students who don't have internet at home. The buses are equipped with Wi-Fi, so if students can find a way to get to where those buses are parked, they can get on and do their homework. But only then.
Internet has long been an issue, and the Navajo Nation's telecommunications department created a cyber task force that we at Navajo Technical University (NTU) are members of. One of the things we recently did was to petition the FCC for special temporary authority of an EBS [Educational Broadband Services] 2.5-GHz spectrum that was available but not being used. So now we have that and we're using it to set up hot spots for students to connect. We're also working with the four internet-service companies: Cellular One, Navajo Tribal Utility Authority, Sacred Wind, and Frontier. As Nonabah was saying, the Navajo Nation is quite large and has five agencies. NTU is in the eastern agency, but Navajo Tribal Utility Authority doesn't have a footprint here, so we partnered with Sacred Wind as well as Frontier to broaden our bandwidth.
We've also been collaborating with the Navajo Cyber Team on developing a Navajo Nation broadband policy, and we're almost done with that. The Navajo Nation received some CARES [Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security] funding, and part of that is being used to address broadband. One of the things we're trying to do is see if tribal colleges can qualify for E-Rates [educational rates], since schools are eligible for E-Rates. And so some of the schools are getting connected.
What's also happening is that the Navajo Nation is trying to expand water lines to families so that they have water to wash their hands during this pandemic. We're recommending that if they're going to dig for the water lines, they might as well lay down conduits, too, so that later we will be able to install fiber as well. We happen to specialize in wireless technology here at NTU, and that is making a significant impact. In the past, it used to be about point-to-point, and when you're trying to serve a community in the valley, you'd have to find a water tank or something high and then get down and into that community from there. But with newer technology, they can bend now into those valleys. We keep reminding the state that they need to address rural communities. We've reached out to congressional members to push them to address broadband issues with Indian communities, and there are a couple of bills out now addressing that.
Of course, there are other things we're looking at in terms of scientific priorities: artificial intelligence, robotics, and climate change. We're in a high-desert environment, and the sand dunes are increasing because of overgrazing and other factors. Water sources are limited, and air pollution doesn't really help, so robotics could be promising. For example, we're looking at the water-filtering systems for wells so that both animals and humans have access to safe water. We're beginning to see the reach of technology in places like grocery stores, where people can check themselves out without the need for cashiers. So we try to look ahead and project what kinds of jobs will and will not be needed on the Navajo Nation, then have our faculty think about ways of adjusting the curriculum to stay in line with where the world is headed.
"One of the biggest challenges for us is how we make sure there's a connection between the students who want to go into science and how they can continue to contribute to Navajo communities—to their parents' and grandparents' way of life."
NL: Since we're talking about the internet and A.I., I think one of the key issues that isn't addressed in tribal communities is data: data security, privacy, and, ultimately, ownership. It's such a gray area. Take this pandemic, for instance, and the numbers and the data that's being collected: who's taking all of this information out of our communities and who's accounting for it? It's an important component being extracted seemingly covertly. Our tribal communities don't necessarily understand how valuable it is to keep that data within our communities.
I know there are various data holders who are not Navajo who have studied Navajo people and our environment, from soil samples to diabetes rates, and it's just not information we fully have access to as a population—our own information. It's critical to get everyone on the same page and to understand the importance of that.
There's a water project I'm working on that came out of the Gold King Mine waste-water spill of 2015, which was a major environmental catastrophe in New Mexico that affected the run-off from the San Juan Mountains. The water contamination really hurt agriculture, especially Navajo farmers on the San Juan River. We still feel it, even if the pandemic has kind of overshadowed it, and before the pandemic, my organization, Navajo Ethno-Agriculture, adopted a lot of the hard-science data that was taken by the University of Arizona. We've been working with New Mexico State University in continuing to collect and share data with the community in order to build back confidence with Navajo consumers about our farm produce. We have an ongoing partnership with New Mexico State University where they come out and do soil testing, and Navajo Preparatory School students are developing a curriculum around this as well. The point is to get easy-to-use, low-cost technology so that farmers can do this testing on their own and not have to wait for and rely on a university or the government agencies to come out and test it. This initiative would not have been possible without the support of the MIT Solve Indigenous Communities Fellowship.
Of course, you're always going to have the people in the community who don't believe in science and don't believe that the water is, in fact, okay, but it's essential that we have that scientific data. It's about empowering farmers to be able to relay that message as well—and finding a bridge between our longstanding traditions and modern science. A lot of the farming among the Navajo is deeply traditional to this region, and, as a culture, we're focused on the traditional aspects of the food. That's really why we felt like it was important to be proactive about this—because if you lose one more generation of farmers who don't produce these heritage foods, it's not just your food, it's your whole culture and way of life—your heritage—that could be gone. So it's important to preserve that tradition, but also alongside Western science—and data is critical.
EG: Nonabah is right about tradition, and I think one of the biggest challenges for us is how we make sure there's a connection between the students who want to go into science and how they can continue to contribute to Navajo communities—to their parents' and grandparents' way of life. A lot of the time, you have to create those opportunities. For example, we're trying to develop an environmental laboratory at one of our sites in Chinle, Arizona, where we want to be able to test the water, soil, air, uranium, etc. We have people who can run that facility mainly to help with the uranium mine clean-up. There are over 500 abandoned uranium mines, and what might usually happen is that funds would become available and outside entities would get those grants and they'd come in and do the work. Then, as soon as the grant is up, they leave and everything disappears, but the problem remains. It's these kinds of situations where we say, Why can't we do that ourselves? And the only way is to train and prepare engineers ourselves, from our community.
A lot of our students intern with the U.S. Army and Air Force Research Labs Faculty Fellowship or with Boeing or NASA, and, when they graduate, those groups grab them for themselves. So I keep asking the Navajo Nation where they are in all of this. A lot of times we are the ones who create the barriers that only end up hurting us. When the Navajo Nation puts out job vacancies, they require candidates to have so many years of experience, and our students don't qualify. There is a tremendous need for our graduates, but everybody except the Navajo Nation ends up hiring them.
NL: As Dr. Guy says, creating opportunity is so important. My family's non-profit organization, Navajo Ethno-Agriculture, actually came about for that particular reason. We had people coming in and doing workshops and telling us how we should plant and do this or that. It was absurd—how can you come from Washington State and tell us how to plant when you don't know what native crops have been planted in our home region for centuries? And so, because of my family's background in the sciences and the traditional upbringing we all share, we built this program ourselves. We incorporate the science into our program, and we encourage students to pursue a career in science, while trying to create those job opportunities for them here. I find that more than 75% of the Navajo students I interact with—whether in high school or college—want to come back home. They just don't have the work or career opportunities to do so.
EG: NTU also has a partnership with the Navajo Nation's economic department, and we run their business incubator program. We encourage people to go into businesses here on Navajo. One of the challenges is that, even though the Navajo Nation may be the size of West Virginia, we don't own the land. So you have to deal with leases or homesite land-use permits, and it's daunting. We streamline that process and help people put together business plans, set up payroll taxes, figure out marketing strategies, and so forth.
One of the challenges is resistance, and that's something you have to deal with. For example, when I was pushing my faculty to develop an engineering degree, no one could understand why. So I told them about the national goal—that the United States has set a goal for itself that by the year 2026 or whenever, it wants to have 100,000 engineers. But what about the Navajo Nation's goals? We don't have a goal, but we should, and you have to push people to get there. Eventually everyone sees the benefits of these kinds of decisions.
NL: I also believe we have to encourage the entrepreneurial mindset: If something doesn't exist here already, then ask yourself what's needed and create it. This is our community, and we can make that change. I'm really biased toward starting your own thing because that's what I do. Before COVID-19 hit, I was developing a water lab that would stand closer to the Southern Ute Reservation so that it could be at the opening to the tributaries that run into the Colorado River and downstream to the tribes. I wanted that specific site because it would allow us to monitor the water that's a priority for tribes—because everyone else already has their own resources. And all of the water scientists involved were Navajo. If people like us don't take the initiative for these kinds of projects, the absolute wrong person is going to do it, without understanding the community.
EG: Whether it's the environment or water or some other scientific need, it's important that we remember to develop the smaller steps necessary for achieving any goal. For example, if we need veterinarians, then we have to ask what the steps are to get us to that point. A veterinary or medical school probably won't happen at NTU, but we could begin by identifying and building the steps needed to get there. We did this by starting a veterinary technician program and then added an animal science degree and then a biology degree, which is designed somewhat as a pre-medical degree, so that students can go into either medicine or veterinary science. We know we can't always make a leap right away, but we can build the pathways that get us there.
NL: For everything we've been discussing, I think it's really important to understand that we're not talking for the whole of the Navajo Nation; the Navajo Nation is large, and its culture is regional. There are different priorities in different communities. Where I live, we have abundant water around us, so that is not a need, but if you go 100 miles south, there's no water infrastructure whatsoever. And there are other issues, from coal and oil and gas extraction, to the uranium issue, which are regional. Some people live close to large health facilities while rural communities only have access to a clinic. NTU is resource-abundant in terms of having that academic outlet for students while people on the other side of the reservation may not have that. I'm always very clear about this. I may be speaking from a tribal nation, I may be speaking from experience, but I'm not speaking for the Navajo Nation as a whole, and I'm not speaking for tribal communities as a whole. Yes, we are a community, and we can expose a greater picture in our area of expertise, but there are definitely different areas that have individual needs.
Still, I do believe in the promise of what the future can hold for us in terms of both science and tradition. The two can complement each other and are not at odds, even though we tend to think of sustainability in scientific terms. And yes, science can help us achieve sustainability through things like solar tech, health innovations, and natural sciences. But I'm talking about sustainability overall and of the Earth: sustainability of water, energy, and agriculture, but also of human capacity and Navajo culture.
[Editor's Note: To read other articles in this special magazine issue, visit the beautifully designed e-reader version.]
Some researchers argue that active, playful engagement with a "robot nanny" for a few hours a day is better than several hours in front of a TV or with an iPad.
A 2017 study led by Google executive James Manyika suggested that skills like creativity, emotional intelligence, and communication will always be needed in the classroom and that robots aren’t likely to provide them at the same level that humans naturally do. But robot teachers do bring advantages, such as a depth of subject knowledge that teachers can’t match, and they’re great for student engagement.
The teacher and robot can complement each other in new ways, with the teacher facilitating interactions between robots and students. So far, this is the case with teaching “assistants” being adopted now in China, Japan, the U.S., and Europe. In this scenario, the robot (usually the SoftBank child-size robot NAO) is a tool for teaching mainly science, technology, engineering, and math (the STEM subjects), but the teacher is very involved in planning, overseeing, and evaluating progress. The students get an entertaining and enriched learning experience, and some of the teaching load is taken off the teacher. At least, that’s what researchers have been able to observe so far.
To be sure, there are some powerful arguments for having robots in the classroom. A not-to-be-underestimated one is that robots “speak the language” of today’s children, who have been steeped in technology since birth. These children are adept at navigating a media-rich environment that is highly visual and interactive. They are plugged into the Internet 24-7. They consume music, games, and huge numbers of videos on a weekly basis. They expect to be dazzled because they are used to being dazzled by more and more spectacular displays of digital artistry. Education has to compete with social media and the entertainment vehicles of students’ everyday lives.
Another compelling argument for teaching robots is that they help prepare students for the technological realities they will encounter in the real world when robots will be ubiquitous. From childhood on, they will be interacting and collaborating with robots in every sphere of their lives from the jobs they do to dealing with retail robots and helper robots in the home. Including robots in the classroom is one way of making sure that children of all socioeconomic backgrounds will be better prepared for a highly automated age, when successfully using robots will be as essential as reading and writing. We’ve already crossed this threshold with computers and smartphones.
Students need multimedia entertainment with their teaching. This is something robots can provide through their ability to connect to the Internet and act as a centralized host to videos, music, and games. Children also need interaction, something robots can deliver up to a point, but which humans can surpass. The education of a child is not just intended to make them technologically functional in a wired world, it’s to help them grow in intellectual, creative, social, and emotional ways. When considered through this perspective, it opens the door to questions concerning just how far robots should go. Robots don’t just teach and engage children; they’re designed to tug at their heartstrings.
It’s no coincidence that many toy makers and manufacturers are designing cute robots that look and behave like real children or animals, says Turkle. “When they make eye contact and gesture toward us, they predispose us to view them as thinking and caring,” she has written in The Washington Post. “They are designed to be cute, to provide a nurturing response” from the child. As mentioned previously, this nurturing experience is a powerful vehicle for drawing children in and promoting strong attachment. But should children really love their robots?
ROBOTS AND THE PEOPLE WHO LOVE THEM: Holding on to Our Humanity in an Age of Social Robots by Eve Herold (January 9, 2024).
St. Martin’s Publishing Group
The problem, once again, is that a child can be lulled into thinking that she’s in an actual relationship, when a robot can’t possibly love her back. If adults have these vulnerabilities, what might such asymmetrical relationships do to the emotional development of a small child? Turkle notes that while we tend to ascribe a mind and emotions to a socially interactive robot, “simulated thinking may be thinking, but simulated feeling is never feeling, and simulated love is never love.”
Always a consideration is the fact that in the first few years of life, a child’s brain is undergoing rapid growth and development that will form the foundation of their lifelong emotional health. These formative experiences are literally shaping the child’s brain, their expectations, and their view of the world and their place in it. In Alone Together, Turkle asks: What are we saying to children about their importance to us when we’re willing to outsource their care to a robot? A child might be superficially entertained by the robot while his self-esteem is systematically undermined.
Research has emerged showing that there are clear downsides to child-robot relationships.
Still, in the case of robot nannies in the home, is active, playful engagement with a robot for a few hours a day any more harmful than several hours in front of a TV or with an iPad? Some, like Xiong, regard interacting with a robot as better than mere passive entertainment. iPal’s manufacturers say that their robot can’t replace parents or teachers and is best used by three- to eight-year-olds after school, while they wait for their parents to get off work. But as robots become ever-more sophisticated, they’re expected to perform more of the tasks of day-to-day care and to be much more emotionally advanced. There is no question children will form deep attachments to some of them. And research has emerged showing that there are clear downsides to child-robot relationships.
Some studies, performed by Turkle and fellow MIT colleague Cynthia Breazeal, have revealed a darker side to the child-robot bond. Turkle has reported extensively on these studies in The Washington Post and in her book Alone Together. Most children love robots, but some act out their inner bully on the hapless machines, hitting and kicking them and otherwise trying to hurt them. The trouble is that the robot can’t fight back, teaching children that they can bully and abuse without consequences. As in any other robot relationship, such harmful behavior could carry over into the child’s human relationships.
And, ironically, it turns out that communicative machines don’t actually teach kids good communication skills. It’s well known that parent-child communication in the first three years of life sets the stage for a very young child’s intellectual and academic success. Verbal back-and-forth with parents and care-givers is like fuel for a child’s growing brain. One article that examined several types of play and their effect on children’s communication skills, published in JAMA Pediatrics in 2015, showed that babies who played with electronic toys—like the popular robot dog Aibo—show a decrease in both the quantity and quality of their language skills.
Anna V. Sosa of the Child Speech and Language Lab at Northern Arizona University studied twenty-six ten- to sixteen- month-old infants to compare the growth of their language skills after they played with three types of toys: electronic toys like a baby laptop and talking farm; traditional toys like wooden puzzles and building blocks; and books read aloud by their parents. The play that produced the most growth in verbal ability was having books read to them by a caregiver, followed by play with traditional toys. Language gains after playing with electronic toys came dead last. This form of play involved the least use of adult words, the least conversational turntaking, and the least verbalizations from the children. While the study sample was small, it’s not hard to extrapolate that no electronic toy or even more abled robot could supply the intimate responsiveness of a parent reading stories to a child, explaining new words, answering the child’s questions, and modeling the kind of back- and-forth interaction that promotes empathy and reciprocity in relationships.
***
Most experts acknowledge that robots can be valuable educational tools. But they can’t make a child feel truly loved, validated, and valued. That’s the job of parents, and when parents abdicate this responsibility, it’s not only the child who misses out on one of life’s most profound experiences.
We really don’t know how the tech-savvy children of today will ultimately process their attachments to robots and whether they will be excessively predisposed to choosing robot companionship over that of humans. It’s possible their techno literacy will draw for them a bold line between real life and a quasi-imaginary history with a robot. But it will be decades before we see long-term studies culminating in sufficient data to help scientists, and the rest of us, to parse out the effects of a lifetime spent with robots.
This is an excerpt from ROBOTS AND THE PEOPLE WHO LOVE THEM: Holding on to Our Humanity in an Age of Social Robots by Eve Herold. The book will be published on January 9, 2024.
Stem cells from a fetus can travel to the heart and regenerate the muscle, essentially saving a mother’s life.
If there is a silver lining to peripartum cardiomyopathy, it’s that it is perhaps the most survivable form of heart failure. A remarkable 50% of women recover spontaneously. And there’s an even more remarkable explanation for that glowing statistic: The fetus‘ stem cells migrate to the heart and regenerate the beleaguered muscle. In essence, the developing or recently born child saves its mother’s life.
Saving mama
While this process has not been observed directly in humans, it has been witnessed in mice. In a 2015 study, researchers tracked stem cells from fetal mice as they traveled to mothers’ damaged cardiac cells and integrated themselves into hearts.
Evolutionarily, this function makes sense: It is in the fetus’ best interest that its mother remains healthy.
Scientists also have spotted cells from the fetus within the hearts of human mothers, as well as countless other places inside the body, including the skin, spleen, liver, brain, lung, kidney, thyroid, lymph nodes, salivary glands, gallbladder, and intestine. These cells essentially get everywhere. While most are eliminated by the immune system during pregnancy, some can persist for an incredibly long time — up to three decades after childbirth.
This integration of the fetus’ cells into the mother’s body has been given a name: fetal microchimerism. The process appears to start between the fourth and sixth week of gestation in humans. Scientists are actively trying to suss out its purpose. Fetal stem cells, which can differentiate into all sorts of specialized cells, appear to target areas of injury. So their role in healing seems apparent. Evolutionarily, this function makes sense: It is in the fetus’ best interest that its mother remains healthy.
Sending cells into the mother’s body may also prime her immune system to grow more tolerant of the developing fetus. Successful pregnancy requires that the immune system not see the fetus as an interloper and thus dispatch cells to attack it.
Fetal microchimerism
But fetal microchimerism might not be entirely beneficial. Greater concentrations of the cells have been associated with various autoimmune diseases such as lupus, Sjogren’s syndrome, and even multiple sclerosis. After all, they are foreign cells living in the mother’s body, so it’s possible that they might trigger subtle, yet constant inflammation. Fetal cells also have been linked to cancer, although it isn’t clear whether they abet or hinder the disease.
A team of Spanish scientists summarized the apparent give and take of fetal microchimerism in a 2022 review article. “On the one hand, fetal microchimerism could be a source of progenitor cells with a beneficial effect on the mother’s health by intervening in tissue repair, angiogenesis, or neurogenesis. On the other hand, fetal microchimerism might have a detrimental function by activating the immune response and contributing to autoimmune diseases,” they wrote.
Regardless of a fetus’ cells net effect, their existence alone is intriguing. In a paper published earlier this year, University of London biologist Francisco Úbeda and University of Western Ontario mathematical biologist Geoff Wild noted that these cells might very well persist within mothers for life.
“Therefore, throughout their reproductive lives, mothers accumulate fetal cells from each of their past pregnancies including those resulting in miscarriages. Furthermore, mothers inherit, from their own mothers, a pool of cells contributed by all fetuses carried by their mothers, often referred to as grandmaternal microchimerism.”
So every mother may carry within her literal pieces of her ancestors.
