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For most Americans, that doesn't mean much: We grew up eating apples from Elsa Peretti Teardrop ring York, lettuce from California, and corn from the Midwest. But in the regions of Mexico responsible for the highest numbers of migrantsGuanajuato, Oaxaca, Sonora, Chiapas, and Michoacánmost people still raise their own chickens and shop at the regional produce market. Which means their teeth might be able to tell us where they're from.With two hands, Juarez positions the tooth below a long, thin metal drill bit and rotates it to the Coin Edge ring. Applying slight pressure to a foot pedal, she starts the drill, and it burrows in, stirring miniscule bits of dentin into the air like leaves in a mini-whirlwind. The bits float slowly down onto a thin white tissue below, which Juarez folds, and tips into a tiny transparent vial.

Juarez is creating a map of isotopie signatures throughout Mexico. To do this, she needs Return to Tiffany Oval tag ring gather tooth samples from all over the country, which has proven more difficult than she initially thought.At first, Juarez tried getting teeth from dental clinics in Mexico. But only wealthy Mexicans get dental care. And wealthy Mexicans eat like Americans; their teeth would simply say: supermarket. She had better luck once she began visiting US dental clinics that cater to immigrants. These patients, she figured, had crossed the border at some point and survived. Perhaps the teeth of the living could bring dignity to the dead.The tooth Juarez just finished drilling arrived in a tiny plastic bag from a dental clinic in nearby Half Moon Bay, where immigrant patients having teeth pulled can contribute their teeth to Juarez's project. A label on the bag reads:

Once the tooth's enamel has gone through all the steps of analysis-from an acid cleaning process to Tiffany 1837 ring, crushing, "digesting," freeze-drying, and then hurtling at high speeds through a mass spectrometerJuarez will plot its isotopie signature on a map of Mexico. Once the map is complete, Juarez hopes that labs will be able to compare isotopie signatures in unidentified border crossers' teeth to those on the map to find out where the crosser grew up. Imagine those new points, then, as an overlay: the topography of poverty, the landscape of leaving home.

Juarez's father was an immigrant. He entered the country when he was 15, along with his Tiffany Notes ring, sister, and brother. Juarez has always been interested in border politics, but in college she realized she wanted to be a scientist. The challenge was to do work that felt relevant to the Latino community."I believe in doing science for the people-breaking out of academia and doing work that's useful," she says. "And even if you don't think undocumented people should be here, you can agree that dying in a strange country, and losing touch with your family, that's a tragedy."