Author: Samera Eusufzai

*Mining foreman R. Thornburg shows a small cage with a canary used for testing carbon monoxide gas in 1928. Credit: George McCaa, U.S. Bureau of Mines*

Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, canaries were used in coal mines to assess the risk of toxic gasses. If the birds became ill or passed away, their fate served as a warning for miners to vacate the premises.

Similarly to how a canary detects unseen risks, the insurance industry is responsible for matching assets to liabilities based upon risks, according to Francis Bouchard, the managing director for climate at the insurance company Marsh McLennan. Bouchard spoke at Duke University on November 10 to discuss the insurance sector’s responsibility to tackle risks as a result of climate change.

During a one-year residency that begins in January, Bouchard will explore ways in which the insurance sector can incentivize and support advances in management of climate risks by helping Duke to build new research partnerships and networks with the insurance and other affected sectors.

Historically, the insurance industry has served as a catalyst to influence safety regulations for the welfare of citizens, as opposed to a canary that withers under risks. Take, for instance, the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. It was the first time in history “anyone would deploy electricity on a large level,” Bouchard said. Therefore, an insurance company sent an engineer to examine the security of the electricity and determine the hazards for attendees. Consequently, the brightest minds of this sector banded together to create the Underwriters Laboratories, which is now the largest testing laboratory in the United States.

But more recently, the insurance sector has not acted as a catalyst in its role to address climate risk. Several policies and systems “distort the purity of the risk signals insurance companies send.” Firstly, its inability to combat systemic level risks as they are providing individual incentives. The industry is highly effective in “handling individual risk and incentivizing immediate actions to address an immediate risk,” Bouchard said, but this method cannot translate on a systemic level.

Secondly, the insurance sector provides a “temporal mismatch” as they sell 12 months of risk, but the lasting impacts of climate change will not occur within a year. Therefore, their “ability to capture in a 12 month policy, decades worth of climate change risk is impossible.”

Thirdly, the regulations for insurance differ between states. In most states, the insurance commissioner dictates the price of insurance based upon the company’s risk assessment because when “risk goes up, price of risk also goes up.” When citizens cannot afford insurance, commissioners are more likely to side with the experts of the insurance companies as opposed to their disadvantaged constituents.

Finally, their climate model is not advanced enough to estimate how specific cities will change within a few decades due to climate change. Therefore, it cannot entirely predict its risks either.

You can watch Bouchard’s talk, with slides, on YouTube

The insurance industry has been successful in its asset-liability matching “in committing some of its capital to advancing climate technology or green technology.” However, this sector receives “publicity around insurance companies withdrawing capital from wildfire or climate exposed jurisdiction.”

This system is explained by the TCFD Filing, which was created by the Bank of International Settlements to discover insurance companies exposure to climate transition issues, physical risks from climate change, and their strategy to aid clients. Essentially, most insurance companies are not “concerned about physical risks” as they would simply reprice their 12-month insurance policy if there is a heightened threat to physical risk. According to Bouchard, the “insurance industry has already signaled through its TCFD filings precisely what their strategy is: ‘we’re gonna play this game as long as we can and then we’re going to withdraw.’” Therefore, an insurance company would continue to increase their cost until a person can no longer afford its price or actually endures physical damage to which they would cease providing insurance. “These last resort-type mechanisms are when the government steps in,” Bouchard said. He even estimates that the government will control 30% of this $1 trillion industry ($2 trillion globally) within ten years. This is dangerous as the government is already enduring fiscal dilemmas and will not be equipped to manage the complexity of the sector.

Bouchard, with 30 years of experience in this industry, said he “truly, truly believes in the social role that the industry plays. I’m petrified that we’re not going to be there to help society cope with climate with the technical knowledge we have, the expertise we have, the mechanisms we have, and the money.” If the sector continues upon this path, they will dissolve under the risks, similarly to a canary in a mine.

Francis Bouchard’s work in combating climate battles with insurance is of the utmost necessity. Continued global warming will force citizens to rely on this industry for aid against climate disasters. The most recent Conference of Parties, created by the United Nations for climate change discussions, recognized the insurance industry as a “key finance player in climate transition alongside private industry and government because the world is recognizing that we have a key part to play.”

By Samera Eusufzai, Class of 2026

Historic Stagville: Stories of Resilience

By Samera Eusufzai

On October 25, 2023

In Anthropology, History

I was overwhelmed with tranquility while driving along the everlasting gravel road, encased by looming, forest green trees. This healing reconnection with nature towards the entrance nearly allowed me to forget the purpose of my visit at Historic Stagville in Durham. However, as we arrived closer to the entrance of this state protected historic site, I recalled the haunting darkness of America’s past. Approximately 25 minutes away from Duke University lies what was once the largest plantation site in North Carolina, owned by the Bennehan and Cameron families. At its height, the families owned 30,000 acres and over 900 enslaved people.

Richard Bennehan married Mary Amis in 1776 and acquired the original 66 acres of historic land in 1787. Their home, Stagville, was built by enslaved people on this land and further renovated with an additional story in 1799. They would raise two children, Rebecca and Thomas. Rebecca married Duncan Cameron in 1803 and had two sons and six daughters. Despite their plethora of children, most of the estate was given to their son, Paul, as the other children died and/or did not have heirs. Paul would eventually marry Anne Ruffin and have seven children. These generations of Camerons along with the original Bennehans furthered their infamous and appalling familial legacy of undeserved wealth through slavery.

Despite the Bennehan/Cameron family’s power, wealth, and dominance, the enslaved people of Stagville remained resilient against their injustices. For instance, Emma Turner Henderson decided to continue working for the Camerons as a cook after their emancipation; however, she and her family were evicted on a count of “imprudence” as Emma had claimed ownership of her newfound freedom, claimed ownership of the equality she shared with the white woman who had previously owned her, and claimed ownership of the violence she endured under their regime. According to Paul’s records, Emma had told Margaret Cameron that their disrespectful treatment is not justified as “[Emma’s] skin is nearly as white as [Margaret’s]– that her hair is just as straight– and that she was quite as free”.

Mary Walker was the fifth generation of formerly enslaved people for the Camerons, born in 1820. She was given to four of Duncan Cameron’s daughters when she was nine years old. These young daughters would eventually pass away from tuberculosis, which is why she was given to their sister, Mildred. Mary Walker would act as Mildren’s caretaker as she had an unknown illness that required a wheelchair. She would frequently travel to Philadelphia during the summer, a free state, with the Camerons for Mildred’s medical appointments. By this point, Mary Walker had three children of her own and she constantly feared their safety. Therefore, Mary Walker evaded the Camerons on her last visit to Philadelphia in 1848 as her freedom was protected under the 1847 Personal Liberty Law. She was employed as a seamstress and spent the rest of her life attempting to reunite with her children. Walker attempted to purchase them from the Camerons or even kidnap them from the estate. Even with three known rescue attempts, Walker was unable to live with her children. That is, until seventeen years later, in which a Union soldier reunited Mary Walker with two of her children, Agnes and Bryant, after the Civil War. Historians do not believe that Mary reunited with her eldest son, Frank, as it is assumed that he escaped. His escape from the plantation was a miraculous feat as it would have taken Frank around two weeks to walk off the estate alone. While the Camerons did place ads for Frank, he could have passed as a white man as he had fair skin, blue eyes, straight black hair, and freckles. The greatest act of resilience from Mary Walker was her success as a seamstress after she settled in Cambridge as she created a strong reputation and a healthy life for herself and her family, despite the evil conditions of her past because of the Camerons.

As I explored Stagville and Horton Grove, where the enslaved laborers built their homes and lived as they worked for the plantation, I felt the looming presence of their horrifying traumas throughout the estate. I spent time in each room of the luxurious (for its time period) Stagville home in which enslaved people were constantly beside those who committed the most injustice against them. I compared this to the unlivable conditions of the enslaved family homes in Horton Grove where eight people would stay in each room per building. Along the brick walls of these homes remain fingerprints from enslaved people from the creation of the bricks. One brick, in particular, encased the toe-prints of a small child from hundreds of years ago.

Despite the unimaginable injustice generations of enslaved people endured from the Camerons, their resilient legacy continues with dignified honor. A number of formerly enslaved families continued to sharecrop at Stagville until the 1970s, when it became a state protected site, or settled in nearby locations as a testament to their familial heritage.

Bennehan/Cameron Stagville home

Average dwelling on Horton Grove

A child’s toe prints on the right-side of the third brick from the bottom of a brick on Horton Grove

By Samera Eusufzai, Class of 2026

The Second Kind of Impossible: The Thrilling Discovery of Quasicrystals

By Samera Eusufzai

On October 24, 2023

In Chemistry, Lecture, Physics

The finding of natural quasicrystals is a tale of “crazy stubborn people or stubbornly crazy people,” said physicist and Princeton professor, Paul J. Steinhardt, who spoke at Duke University on October 10 regarding his role in their discovery.

Quasicrystals were once thought to be impossible, as crystals were the only stable form of matter. Crystals allow for periodic patterns of atoms while quasicrystals allow for an ordered, yet non-periodic pattern that results in rotational symmetry. Crystals only allow for two-, three-, four-, and six-fold symmetry and create the geographical shapes of squares/rectangles, triangles, hexagons, and rhombuses (Figure 1). However, quasicrystals allow for ten-fold symmetry with unlimited layers of quasicrystal patterns and various shapes. The penrose tiles (Figure 2) is an example of one-dimensional quasicrystal pattern, while the kitchen tiles of your home is an example of a traditional crystal pattern.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Steinhardt and his student, Don Levine, published a paper in 1984 attempting to prove the theory of quasicrystals.

After the discovery of man-made quasicrystals from a fellow scientist, Steinhardt wanted to find quasicrystals in nature as opposed to laboratories. He began this by contacting museums with global mineral samples in case they contained undiscovered quasicrystals. This did not yield any results.

Luca Bindi, who then worked for the Museum of Natural History at the University of Florence in Italy, discovered that Steinhardt was searching for natural quasicrystal and wanted to join his endeavors. Bindi found the first interesting sample at the museum he worked in through the rare mineral, khatyrkite, from the Koryak Mountains of Chukotka, Russia. They analyzed the tip of this sample, the width was that of a strand of hair, and discovered the most perfect ten-fold, rotationally symmetric pattern of a quasicrystal from minerals in nature. Even more interesting was that the chemical compound of this quasicrystal, Al₆₃Cu₂₄Fe₁₃, was the exact composition of quasicrystals created in a Japanese laboratory, now found in a rock.

Steinhardt then took these findings to Lincoln Hollister, a renowned geologist, for his expert opinion. Hollister proceeded to tell Steinhardt that this discovery is impossible as its chemical composition of metallic aluminum cannot be created in nature. Steinhardt wondered if this sample came from a meteorite, which was an “ignorant, stupid suggestion, but Lincoln didn’t know that,” Steinhardt said. Lincoln refers Steinhardt to Glenn Macpherson, an expert meteorologist, who further elaborated that metallic aluminum from meteorites is, once again, impossible.

Two renowned experts in their fields describing the impossibility of Steinhardt and Bindi’s hypotheses was not enough for them to quit. Their next step was to trace Bindi’s khatyrkite to obtain more samples. Firstly, they attempted to find Nico Koekkoek, a Dutch mineral collector who had sold innumerable mineral samples to various museums. Dead end. Then they wrote to museums globally regarding their khatyrkite samples and discovered four potential samples. All fakes. Yet another dead end. Next was to analyze the legitimate sample in St. Petersburg because any sample of a newly discovered mineral must be given to a museum. The uncooperative discoverer, Leonid Razin, had immigrated to Israel and refused to let anyone touch the sample. They had hit a dead end again.

Bindi relayed this story to his sister and her friend over dinner. The friend’s neighbor shared the same common last name as the Dutch mineral collector, so the friend decided to ask his neighbor if it was an unlikely connection. Miraculously, the neighbor was the widow of the Dutch mineral collector and, after much persuading, handed over her late-husband’s secret diary. The diary reveals a mineral smuggler named Tim from Romania whom he received the khatyrkite. They were unable to locate Tim until Koekkoek’s widow relented yet another secret diary, which revealed that Tim had received these minerals from ‘L. Razin.’ The same Leonid Razin who refused them to view the sample! Eventually, Steinhardt discovered that Leonid Razid had sent a man named Valery Kryachko on an expedition for platinum. While he did not find platinum, he gave his samples to Leonid Razin, which astoundingly contained the natural quasicrystals that Steinhardt had searched for decades. Kryachko was completely unaware of its journey and even provided the remaining sample, which Steinhardt and his team used for testing.

Steinhardt’s original “ignorant, stupid suggestion” proved remarkably accurate, as they discovered that a meteorite hit Chukotka and resulted in natural metallic aluminum.

Steinhardt and his dream team needed more samples of khatyrkite to conduct further research. Therefore, seven Russians, five Americans, one Italian, and a cat named Buck set forth the scientific Mission Impossible for natural quasicrystals. They came back with several million grains and after a few weeks, found a sample of clay layer that had not been touched in 10,000 years. This was the first quasicrystal to be declared a natural mineral. They ultimately discovered a total of nine quasicrystal samples, each from a different part of the meteorite.

Steinhardt and his team’s analysis of quasicrystals is still not over and his book, “The Second Kind of Impossible,” delves further into the outlandish details of the over 30 years of research. This extraordinary journey of passion and ambition allows for the thrilling hope for the future of scientific discovery.

By Samera Eusufzai, Class of 2026

Following the people and events that make up the research community at Duke

Author: Samera Eusufzai

Capital, Canaries, or Catalysts: Insurance Industry’s Role in Climate

Historic Stagville: Stories of Resilience

The Second Kind of Impossible: The Thrilling Discovery of Quasicrystals