SMART PLANTS They hear, they learn – and they remember GHOST PARTICLE The hunt for the elusive fourth neutrino GREEN SKY THINKING An entirely new kind of aircraft
WEEKLY 24 November 2018 37 TRILLION PIECES OF YOU Mapping the epic complexity of the human machine
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9 770262 407282 DISRUPTING SCIENCE The radical plan to make all research free PLUS TERMITE NATION / THE MISSING METEORITES / VERY ANCIENT CHINA
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Recruitment advertising Tel +44 (0)20 7611 1204 On the cover Leaders Features Email [email protected] Recruitment sales manager Mike Black 40 Smart plants 5 Academic publishing’s stranglehold 28 37 trillion pieces of you Isabelle Cavill, Nicola Cubeddu They hear, they learn – and they needs to be broken. We must let We are finally working out how Key account manager Viren Vadgama US sales manager Jeanne Shapiro remember radical ideas bloom the human body fits together 32 Hunting the ghost particle Marketing Head of marketing Lucy Dunwell 32 Ghost particle Will we find the elusive fourth David Hunt, Nashitha Suren, Chloe Thompson The hunt for the elusive fourth News neutrino?
Web development neutrino 6 THIS WEEK A brand new type of 36 Access all areas The radical Maria Moreno Garrido, Tom McQuillan, plane. NASA picks landing spot on plan to make all research free Amardeep Sian 7 Green sky thinking Mars. Au revoir, Le Grand K 40 Smarty plants It’s not just New Scientist Live An entirely new kind of aircraft animals that can learn and Tel +44 (0)20 7611 1206 Email [email protected] 8 NEWS & TECHNOLOGY remember, says Monica Gagliano Events director Adrian Newton 28 37 trillion pieces of you Antarctica’s summer research Creative director Valerie Jamieson Sales director Jacqui McCarron Mapping the epic complexity season begins. Gene silencing Exhibition sales manager Charles Mostyn of the human machine may treat pre-eclampsia. Termites’ Culture Event manager Henry Gomm Marketing executive Sasha Marks monumental mounds. Star smash 42 Poles apart We love heroic 36 Disrupting science shows Einstein was right. polar explorers, but there are UK Newsstand Tel +44 (0)20 3787 9001 The radical plan to make Exosuit-assisted car makers. richer stories to be found Newstrade distributed by Marketforce UK Ltd, all research free China’s stone tools may rewrite 43 Iconic investment Victoria and 2nd Floor, 5 Churchill Place, Canary Wharf, London E14 5HU our species’ ancient history. Albert Museum’s ambitious plans. Plus Termite nation (10). The missing Blockchain genome sequencing PLUS: This week’s cultural picks Syndication Tribune Content Agency meteorites (8). Very ancient service. Deleting your cookies 44 The drugs may work... Netflix Tel +44 (0)20 7588 7588 China (15) won’t stop this web tracker. Ghost hit Maniac runs with psychedelic Email [email protected] galaxy lurks behind Milky Way science Subscriptions newscientist.com/subscribe 19 IN BRIEF Walking backwards Tel +44 (0)330 333 9470 Regulars Email [email protected] boosts your memory. Microrobot Post New Scientist, Rockwood House, grabs heavy metals. Your taste 26 APERTURE Perrymount Road, Haywards Heath, West Sussex RH16 3DH for coffee may be in your genes. The amber spyglass Alien world hides in plain sight 52 LETTERS Tipping points in risk perception 55 CRYPTIC CROSSWORD Analysis 56 FEEDBACK 22 INSIGHT Should disposable Le Grand K and other standards nappies be banned? 57 THE LAST WORD 24 COMMENT Embracing nuclear One for the eggheads power. Ungendered brains 25 ANALYSIS Google to take control of app used by NHS
24 November 2018 | NewScientist | 3 SCOTTISH MORTGAGE INVESTMENT TRUST
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But Gagliano is sticking to it, Let radical ideas bloom and plans experiments that might reveal the equivalent of a plant’s WHEN New Scientist first wrote to some research inspiration, brain (see page 40). She is out to ecologist Monica Gagliano asking she visited a shaman deep in do no less than transform how for an interview, her response was the Amazon jungle, she said. we see one of the kingdoms of life. unexpected. She couldn’t commit Gagliano’s research itself is For our part, we applaud to anything immediately because unorthodox too. She is known for Gagliano. She is doing the right
© 2018 New Scientist Ltd, England she was about to seal herself away a string of experiments that she thing by testing her ideas and New Scientist is published weekly in a pitch dark room for 40 days claims show that plants can learn publishing the experiments. by New Scientist Ltd. ISSN 0262 4079. to meditate. to associate a stimulus with a Some might call the ideas out New Scientist (Online) ISSN 2059 5387 When the interview eventually reward, just as Pavlov’s dogs did. there. But what great scientific Registered at the Post Office as a newspaper and printed in England happened, she revealed more in Plant biologists may not like her breakthrough wasn’t viewed like by Precision Colour Printing Ltd the same vein. Once, in need of use of the word “learn” one bit. that to begin with? ■
24 November 2018 | NewScientist | 5 THIS WEEK
Volcano of Fire erupts
THOUSANDS of people were evacuated from the area around the Volcano of Fire in Guatemala on Monday after it erupted for the fifth time this year. The eruption appears to have quickly died down. The authorities were taking no chances after around 200 people died in an eruption in June, during which fluid-like masses of ash and debris called pyroclastic flows struck several villages on the surrounding slopes. Such flows can reach up to 700 kilometres an hour. The Volcano of Fire, also called Vulcan de Fuego, is one of the most active volcanoes in Central America. Numerous small eruptions occur each day but large ones are rare. ESTEBAN BIBA/EPA-EFE/REX/SHUTTERSTOCKESTEBAN
NASA picks Mars Dry summer set the week, which may help to contain the Metrologists bid Le blaze. However, wet conditions bring rover landing site stage for Camp Fire a threat of mudslides and could also Grand K au revoir hamper search and rescue efforts. AFTER four years of deliberation, THE cost of California’s devastating This year has seen California’s most THE kilogram is to be defined using NASA has picked its next Mars landing wildfire known as the Camp Fire destructive wildfire season on record, fundamental constants instead of spot: Jezero crater. The hope is that it continues to rise. As New Scientist with 7579 fires burning 1.7 million an old lump of metal, following a has the right environment to preserve went to press, there were acres in total. The long dry spell and unanimous vote at the General signs of ancient life. 79 confirmed deaths, with almost record summer temperatures created Conference on Weights and Measures Satellite images suggest the 700 people still unaccounted for. ideal wildfire conditions. in Versailles, France, last week. 50-kilometre-wide crater once had a Authorities say the fire, which has Due to climate change, such dry Since 1889, the kilogram has been river flowing along its rim and into a hit the town of Paradise (below) and conditions are about seven times defined using a cylinder of platinum big lake. It is thought to hold rocks that other parts of Butte County, will more likely now than they were at the and iridium known as Le Grand K, or can preserve organic molecules, such probably continue to burn until the end of the 19th century, says Patrick the International Prototype Kilogram. as clays and carbonates. It is located end of the month. The first major Brown at the Carnegie Institution for Copies of this weight have been 18 degrees north of Mars’s equator. rainfall in six months is expected this Science in Washington DC. distributed around the world, but “Getting samples from this unique discrepancies between these have area will revolutionise how we think revealed that Le Grand K has lost a about Mars and its ability to harbour little weight, and brought down the life,” said NASA’s Thomas Zurbuchen value of the kilogram with it. in a statement. From May next year, the official If all goes to plan, NASA will launch kilogram will be defined by the Planck its six-wheeled rover in July 2020 and constant, which describes the size of it will land on Mars in February 2021. the smallest possible packet of The lander will include a solar- energy. The Planck constant is powered drone to help pick out incredibly small, so it is measured interesting sites to visit. using a specialised piece of equipment The European Space Agency also called a Kibble balance. The hope is plans to send a rover to Mars in 2020, that eventually anyone will be able to and recently chose Oxia Planum – a accurately weigh anything without large plain packed with clay rocks – having to fly it to France to compare
as its preferred destination. YING/XINHUA/ALAMY LI it with Le Grand K.
6 | NewScientist | 24 November 2018 For new stories every day, visit newscientist.com/news
Zero-emissions plane has lift-off Streams of ions could propel aircraft of the future, reports Douglas Heaven
IT ONLY flew for 12 seconds – the same as the Wright brothers achieved with their maiden flight – but it marks another aeronautical milestone. After nine years’ work, Steven Barrett at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his colleagues have flown a first-of- its-kind zero-emissions plane with no moving parts. The small, This plane produces thrust unpiloted plane flew for 55 metres through an electric field
in an indoor sports hall, steered BARRETT,MIT STEVEN by remote control. Instead of propellers or jet perfect balance between weight a better alternative to jet fuel (see batteries can get even a small engines, the plane uses electrodes and power for flight. The resulting “Clean green aviation”, below). passenger jet, such as a Boeing 737, on its wings to produce ions that aircraft has a wingspan of 5 metres, Norway has been testing electric, into the air. push against the surrounding weighs just 2.45 kilograms and two-seater planes and wants all What’s more, switching to air. The team claims the plane produces more thrust per unit of short-haul flights leaving its electric planes without tackling is quieter and cleaner than any power than a standard jet engine. airports to be electric by 2040. where their power comes from other powered aircraft. There is a long way to go before In theory, electric aircraft won’t cut emissions overall. “It really wasn’t clear that it such a plane could do anything have a lower carbon footprint Most electricity still comes from would work,” says Barrett. “Quite useful, however. A bigger plane than conventional planes. They burning fossil fuels. “If all planes a few colleagues said it had less would need a larger power supply, also produce no air pollution were electric today and powered than 1 per cent chance.” making it too heavy to fly. The during a flight. But the batteries from the US grid, their footprint team optimised their design for needed to power them are so would be worse,” says Barrett. “ It weighs just 2.45kg and lightness not speed: it only flies heavy that larger planes are With their greater efficiency, produces more thrust at 5 metres a second compared currently unviable. electroaerodynamic planes could per unit of power than with 200 metres a second or more Electric planes won’t replace give electric flight the boost it a standard jet engine” for most passenger jets (Nature, existing passenger jets without needs. The team’s design pushes doi.org/cw7m). a battery breakthrough, says the limits of what is possible with The idea of producing aircraft With air travel continuing to Lynnette Dray at University today’s materials and electronic thrust via an electric field, known increase, many people hope that College London. She estimates technology. But Barrett thinks as electroaerodynamics, was first electric planes will one day provide it will be at least 30 years before that it could be made to fly faster explored in the 1960s. Electrodes and for longer in the future. are used to create an electric The prototype only produces discharge that produces CLEAN GREEN AVIATION thrust around its wings. Barrett electrically charged atoms or Passenger planes that fly using Electric planes: Small electric wants to make every surface, molecules in the air. An electric electroaerodynamics (see main story) planes are being developed for short including the aircraft’s body, field then accelerates these ions are many years away. Here are three flights. But it could be decades before propulsive. He thinks future towards the back of the plane. alternatives for greener flight. batteries are both light and powerful planes might have two sets of Collisions with air molecules enough to power larger aircraft. wings – one in front of the other – produce a thrust force in the Biofuel: Aircraft powered by jet with a flow of ions between them. opposite direction, pushing fuel partly produced from biomass Hybrid planes: Like hybrid cars, You could also steer the plane the plane forwards. have lower carbon emissions. A few hybrid planes could use a mixture by changing the shape of its But nobody could make airports, including Los Angeles of fuel and electricity to make them electromagnetic field, he says. this “ionic wind” work for a International, are already refuelling greener. Airbus, Rolls-Royce and The result would be a plane plane. “The physics of thrust some planes with biofuel. However, Siemens are collaborating on a that was carried along inside a had not been fully worked out,” growing enough biomass to power hybrid plane that could use pocket of electrically charged says Barrett. the world’s aircraft could cause batteries during take-off, when wind. “The whole aircraft would So the team used a computer environmental problems of its own. fuel consumption is greatest. move through the air in a to generate a design that hit the slipstream,” he says. ■
24 November 2018 | NewScientist | 7 NEWS & TECHNOLOGY
The Antarctic summer brings more people to its research stations
heading to the British Antarctic Survey field station, Sky-Blu, at the southern end of the Antarctic Peninsula, to test equipment – in essence, a metal detector and a chainsaw – for finding and extracting buried meteorites. Joy is aiming to reach a rarely visited region south of the Shackleton mountain range, to scope out promising places to use this equipment the following season. “We’ll be out on skidoos for most of the day, exploring the ice fields. Hopefully the weather will be kind, because you need good visibility to spot small meteorites on the ice,” she says. If their buried meteorite hypothesis is correct, it might
MANUEL ROMARIS/GETTY allow them to uncover a new trove of space rocks. “It’s utterly rocks collected so far, giving exciting to be at the heart of this. valuable information about We may find a new Martian or Scientists migrate the solar system. lunar sample,” says Joy. But very few iron-based On the other side of the meteorites have been found in continent, at France’s Dumont to Antarctica this Antarctic bounty. These are d’Urville Station, work has already made from the cores of destroyed begun to survey the breeding Alison George place to collect these rocks – not small planets, so hold vital clues success of a nearby colony of only are they easy to spot there, about how planets formed in emperor penguins. There are only AS THE nights get longer in the but the ice acts as a conveyor belt the early solar system. 54 breeding colonies of this iconic northern hemisphere, scientists that deposits them in hotspots. Evatt and Joy think these Antarctic resident, many of which are heading to Antarctica in their Meteorites from the frozen meteorites are missing because are under threat from climate thousands. Their quarry includes continent make up about they get trapped below the ice change. But the colony of some meteorites, penguins and two-thirds of the 35,000 space surface. In January, Evatt will be 4000 breeding pairs near revealing ice cores. Only about 1000 people overwinter in Antarctica, and the population PICKED UP BY A PENGUIN is set to quintuple for the next It is tempting to think of Antarctica Swabbing the throats and cloacas that it is people’s presence in six months as scientists make the as pristine and protected from human of 20 penguins, they found that both Antarctica that is causing these most of the continent’s summer influence, but that isn’t the case. populations had resistance genes in bacterial genes to spread to research season, which runs from The Antarctic summer sees many their microbiomes, and that those penguin populations. Antibiotic November until April. scientists arriving on the continent, living near O’Higgins Base carried a resistance can occur naturally, Constant daylight, sub-zero some of whom go there to study how greater number of resistance genes and microbes with resistance temperatures and brutal winds climate change is affecting penguin than those near the smaller, genes have been found in ancient await. But that isn’t enough to species (see main story). less-populated González Videla Antarctic soils before. put the travellers off. “We are well But when we travel, we take our Base (bioRxiv, doi.org/cw5m). Francois Balloux at University kitted out, and we stay in pyramid bacteria with us. Vanessa Marcelino The study “demonstrates really College London says more evidence tents, which are surprisingly at the University of Sydney, Australia, nicely the interlinkage between is needed to tie the presence of this cosy,” says Katherine Joy from and her colleagues have compared humans and the environment, genetic material to human activity the University of Manchester, the diversity of gut microbes which is very often overlooked”, in the areas sampled. “There’s no UK, who is heading south with carrying antibiotic-resistance genes says Josef Järhult at Uppsala pristine place on Earth as far as colleague Geoffrey Evatt in search in gentoo penguins living near two University in Sweden. antimicrobial resistance is of buried meteorites. Chilean Antarctic bases. However, it is hard to know for sure concerned,” he says. Chris Baraniuk Antarctica is a particularly good
8 | NewScientist | 24 November 2018 For daily news stories, visit newscientist.com/news
ATLANTIC OCEAN O’Higgins Base Gene silencing treats
Shackleton González pre-eclampsia mountain range Videla Base ONE of the leading risks to women Moore’s team has tested the method Sky-Blu and fetuses during pregnancy could in a mild version of pre-eclampsia in be stopped in its tracks by an injection baboons. When the condition was that targets genes in the placenta, induced in nine monkeys, their SOUTH POLE suggests a small study in monkeys. placentas pumped out more FLT1. Little Dome C Pre-eclampsia occurs in up to The team injected the RNA therapy 10 per cent of pregnancies and can into three of the baboons. Over the McMurdo Station lead to seizures, strokes, and kidney next two weeks, the three made less SOUTHERN OCEAN and liver damage. When it gets severe, FLT1, had lower blood pressure and Dumont d'Urville the only treatment is to deliver the signs of less kidney damage than INDIAN Station Bases OCEAN baby, no matter how early in the the six untreated animals (Nature Geographical features pregnancy. This can mean women Biotechnology, doi.org/cw7g). having to choose between their own Their offspring seemed normal, Dumont d’Urville seems to be This summer, the “Beyond health and their baby’s. “It’s very but were born a little smaller than doing well for now. Their chicks EPICA” team is making scary,” says Melissa Moore at the average. Moore says this could be a hatched in July. In some years, preparations to drill a core that University of Massachusetts, who result of reducing the blood pressure, few survive. But this year has stretches back at least 1.2 million is developing the treatment and has so further studies are needed to find been a very successful one, years. The group has identified had the condition herself. the optimal therapy dose. says Christophe Barbraud of a place high on the Antarctic Pre-eclampsia happens when the An Irish biotech firm called Alnylam the French National Centre for plateau called Little Dome C, placenta isn’t delivering enough has had success in rats with another Scientific Research (CNRS). where it thinks this ancient ice nutrients and oxygen to the fetus. RNA therapy for pre-eclampsia, which But one thriving colony doesn’t might lie. To compensate, the placenta releases targets a different protein involved in mean all is well for emperors If it works, an ice core from proteins to raise the woman’s blood blood pressure. Alnylam brought the elsewhere. “You can have very this spot will enable us to study pressure, boosting their supply. first RNA therapy to market earlier different breeding success at the period about 1 million years But these proteins can push blood this year, designed to combat a rare, ago when Earth started having pressure to dangerously high levels. hereditary form of nerve damage. “It’s utterly exciting to ice ages every 40,000 years, Moore’s team has come up with RNA therapy is appealing for be at the heart of this. instead of every 100,000 years. a highly targeted approach, known pre-eclampsia because, as well as We may find meteorites Understanding what drove this as RNA silencing, that may be able being highly targeted, the treatments from Mars or the moon” shift, and whether increasing to treat pre-eclampsia with little risk don’t seem to cross the placenta, carbon dioxide levels played a of unexpected side effects for the making them less likely to affect the different colonies due to different part, will help us to predict future fetus. The technique destroys fetus. A single injection should target ice conditions,” says Barbraud. climate responses to higher levels short strands of the RNA molecules a particular protein for several weeks, To see how penguins are faring in of greenhouse gases. in our cells that are the blueprints which would be useful in developing less-accessible places, researchers The team doesn’t yet know if it for making proteins. It targets the countries, where regular medical use satellite imagery and aerial will be given European research RNA blueprint for a placenta protein care may be difficult to achieve and photography, including photos of funds to drill this core – a huge called FLT1, known to raise blood pre-eclampsia is a major cause of five colonies taken on helicopter undertaking that will probably pressure in pre-eclampsia. death in women. Clare Wilson ■ flyovers by a team at the US’s take place in two Antarctic McMurdo Station. summers’ time. Meanwhile, 1200 kilometres While waiting to hear, the inland, a European team is team is drilling at Little Dome C preparing to drill back in time. to obtain ice chips, and measure Analysing the air bubbles isotopes within the ice to trapped in ice cores extracted from determine how old it is. “This the thick ice sheet that covers will give us information about Antarctica has enabled us to study samples at depth, without waiting the climate of Earth going back for the real core,” says glaciologist hundreds of thousands of years. Olaf Eisen of the Alfred Wegener These measurements have been Institute in Germany, who is invaluable for understanding coordinating the project. how our planet’s climate can The team can expect harsh change, but so far we have only conditions, he says. “It’s -30°C on ■ looked back 800,000 years. a warm day,” says Eisen. NUNTASIRI/EYEEM/GETTY NONTAPAN
24 November 2018 | NewScientist | 9 NEWS & TECHNOLOGY
Tiny termites dig a world of their own
Sam Wong The piles of earth are very conspicuous in areas where plants A VAST part of the dry forests have been cleared, but most of of north-east Brazil has been them are covered by caatinga reshaped by one of the world’s forests, made up of small, thorny biggest engineering projects – all trees that shed their leaves the work of termites. seasonally. These leaves are the An area of 230,000 square only known food for the termites, kilometres, larger than Great but they fall once a year at most, Britain, is covered in 200 million and disappear quickly. regularly spaced mounds, each This sporadic food supply about 2.5 metres tall. Known as may explain the vast network of murundus, they are made of tunnels: they allow the termites waste earth dug out by termites to to get to the food quickly. “It is as
create a huge network of tunnels. if all the supermarkets were open FUNCH ROY Some of the mounds and passages for one day a year – the person are up to 4000 years old. with the fastest car would get the Insect power has created a huge, them find their way to the nearest In all, the termites have most food,” says Martin. “You undulating landscape waste mound. excavated more than 10 cubic need a network of roads to get In most termite colonies, the kilometres of earth, making this to the supermarket as quickly as Their remarkable persistence queen, after mating, builds herself the biggest engineering project you can because you’re in open is thanks in part to the dry, stable a chamber where she grows to an by any creature besides humans, competition with other colonies.” climate, with little rainfall to enormous size and produces huge says Stephen Martin at the To estimate the age of the erode them. In addition, the soil quantities of eggs. Martin and University of Salford, UK. mounds, Martin and his is hard, acidic and lacks nutrients, his team were unable to find one Despite the extent of the colleagues turned to a technique so the area hasn’t been farmed. of these royal chambers, so the mounds, they have been little called optically stimulated Martin thinks the regular structure of the colonies, as well studied until now. That changed luminescence. This can be applied pattern of the mounds is the as their size, remains unknown. when Martin came across them to quartz crystals in the soil to result of each colony having to It is also unclear how the while researching honeybees determine when they were dig vast, interconnected networks termites sustain themselves in the Brazilian state of Bahia. last exposed to sunlight. From of tunnels to find food. The when their food supply is only “I looked on Google Earth and this, conservative estimates of spacing of the mounds minimises available for such a short period. realised they are everywhere in the ages of the mounds range the energy costs of removing soil “We don’t know any [termite] this area, but I could find nothing from 690 to 3820 years old from the tunnels. The termites species that hibernate, but maybe about them online,” he says. (Current Biology, doi.org/cw7h). might use pheromones to help they do,” says Martin. ■
that gravity, but not light, could light by the time they reached Earth. out in favour of general relativity Neutron star occupy them. But the two measurements (arxiv.org/abs/1811.00364). smash supports To test the idea, a team of more matched up perfectly. Although There is one potential spoiler. All of than 1000 researchers looked at this isn’t definitive proof that extra the tests included data from LIGO, the Einstein again the aftermath of neutron stars dimensions don’t exist, it is another gravitational wave detector in the US, smashing together. The collision of hint that Einstein was right. however some physicists question if it NO MATTER what tests we throw at these stars is so cataclysmic that The team also measured how has detected any gravitational waves. Albert Einstein’s theory of gravity, it it causes ripples in space and time long the neutron stars took to spiral Because general relativity isn’t just won’t break. A collision of stars known as gravitational waves. towards one another and how the compatible with quantum mechanics, has now shown he was right, again. The team detected such an gravitational waves stretched and the suspicion is that Einstein’s theory The general theory of relativity event using both light waves and squeezed space-time. These too came will have to break. “Every time we get predicts there are four dimensions, gravitational waves. They believed a new result that is again perfectly three of space and one of time, and that if the gravitational waves travel “The collision of two highly consistent with general relativity, that both gravity and light exist in in more dimensions than light, the dense neutron stars is so I am secretly surprised,” says team these. But some people argue there strength of the gravitational waves cataclysmic that it causes member Michalis Agathos at the may be extra dimensions. They think should be reduced in comparison to ripples in space and time” University of Cambridge. Leah Crane ■
10 | NewScientist | 24 November 2018
NEWS & TECHNOLOGY
FIELD NOTES Flat Rock, Michigan releases, making it feel like raising my arms is easier than keeping Exoskeletons for them at my sides. It wasn’t immediately making Mustangs comfortable. I couldn’t reach my back pockets or scratch my shoulder, for example. But it got Leah Crane workers can’t simply be replaced easier as I moved around. Within with robots, says Smets. The vest a few minutes, I was resting my WHEN a few workers at Ford’s is the next best thing. arms at shoulder level, like a child assembly plant in Flat Rock, Wearing the EksoVest feels sidled up to a kitchen counter. Michigan, started wearing halfway between carrying a large “It’s like breaking in a new exoskeletons for the first time, backpack and putting on a pair of work boots,” says Bruce
people made fun of them. Calls climbing harness. There are lots Watkins, who was one of the first FORD of “Hey, Iron Man!” rang across of straps: a thick support strap workers to try the EksoVest in 2017 the factory line. Putting one on, around the hips, a chest buckle, and now wears it almost every Leah tries out the exoskeleton, I understand the comments – a forearm sleeve and a biceps day. “When I first tried it on, which helps protect shoulders – I feel and look a bit like a superhero. cuff with two magnetic buckles. it felt awkward, but now it’s like an The inside of the assembly All this serves to hold up a device extension of me.” Moving around more than 20 Mustangs’ worth plant is like the inside of a clock, that looks like a folded bicycle, the line, he looked completely of weight a day”, says Smets. full of moving parts that all work natural in the exoskeleton. There haven’t yet been any together. Cars wind their way “If he does 6000 arm lifts It is easy to see how physically long-term studies about whether through the huge building with a day, the exoskeleton is strenuous the work would be the suit lowers injury rates, so it’s their tyres at eye level, and saving him 20 Mustangs’ without it. The suit provides not yet clear how effective it is, but workers stand beneath them, worth of weight” about 2 to 7 kilograms of lift feedback from workers has been attaching bits of plastic and assistance per arm. That may not positive. “Before I started wearing securing screws and bolts. with bars connecting to the feel like much, and I was initially it, I was always really sore at the As workers are reaching up arms acting as the main support. disappointed that it wouldn’t end of the day,” says Watkins. a lot, they are prone to shoulder The whole thing weighs about let me pick up a car, but some “Now it’s nothing.” injuries. This is the most common 4 kilograms. workers on the line lift tools Another early EksoVest adopter, medical problem for those At the shoulder is a compressed above their heads thousands of Nick Gotts, says that on shifts working at the Ford factory, says spring that powers the whole suit. times every day. If Watkins does that can be nearly 11 hours long it Marty Smets, the company’s head Pull a small strap and the spring 6000 arm lifts, “that’s saving him makes a big difference, especially of manufacturing ergonomics. in the last hour. He wishes there The EksoVest, a wearable was a version for legs, too. support system designed by Smets and his team are working Ford and the California-based on developing and testing other exoskeleton firm Ekso Bionics, types of exoskeletons to assist is designed to prevent these with jobs elsewhere on the problems. It uses compressed production line, like those where springs to support the arms workers have to be bent over most when they are overhead, diverting of the day, reaching to attach parts weight to the larger muscles lower to the inside of cars. in the body. It has been rolled out The field is advancing fast, in 17 factories in eight countries says Smets. “This is what they so far. At about $6000 apiece, look like now – who knows what the vests are much less expensive they’ll look like in two years?” than treatments for shoulder My experience at Ford hints injuries, which can run into the at what the future of factories tens of thousands of dollars. may be like. Robots will surely Because each factory tends take over many tasks, but for to make more than one type of those that still need a human car – the plant in Flat Rock puts eye, technology can help together both Mustangs and enhance their performance, Lincoln Continentals – and lots of with exoskeletons being a part the tasks involved require human of it. Jobs for superheroes are ■ judgement and expertise, the FORD safe, for now at least.
12 | NewScientist | 24 November 2018
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The finding follows an thought. But who were these announcement at the start of the ancient toolmakers? China’s advanced year that Levallois stone tools – It is a difficult question to some of which were 385,000 years answer, says Michael Petraglia Stone Age tools old – were found at a site called at the Max Planck Institute for Attirampakkam in India the Science of Human History in (Nature, doi.org/gcwsh8). Clearly, Germany, who wasn’t involved Colin Barras have just confirmed that hominins in central and east in either study. No human fossils Levallois-style stone tools Eurasia began making Levallois have been found at either site. A HAUL of ancient stone tools recovered from Guanyindong tools much earlier than we In Africa, Levallois tools are has plugged a big gap in China’s cave in south China are between associated with our species archaeological record, challenging 160,000 and 170,000 years old These stone tools from China are (Homo sapiens), while in Europe our understanding of how our (Nature, doi.org/cw6j). 160,000 to 170,000 years old it was Neanderthals who made species spread around the world. them. Petraglia says either species Our hominin predecessors could in principle have moved began making stone tools more east to China, taking Levallois than 3 million years ago. As time tools with them. But it is also went on, these tools became more possible that an ancient human complex. About 300,000 years already living in the east of ago, a new style of tool made Eurasia – for example the using “Levallois” techniques Denisovans, about whom we began to appear in Africa and know very little – invented the western Eurasia. tools independently. Rather than chipping flakes off If it were our species, though, a stone to create a tool, Levallois we would need to rethink when techniques work on the stone so H. sapiens arrived in China. Recent it is the flakes themselves that finds have pushed back China’s become the tools. This enables record of H. sapiens to about several tools to be made from a 120,000 years, but that is still single stone. 50,000 years after the tools at Until recently, it seemed that Guanyindong cave were in use. the Levallois revolution didn’t Li says archaeologists urgently spread east to places like China need to find more human fossils until much later – about in China, ideally some preserved 40,000 years ago – but that idea well enough to yield ancient is now being questioned. Bo Li DNA. “Hopefully our study at the University of Wollongong, will stimulate a new wave of 5 cm ■ Australia, and his colleagues LI BO DR. OF COURTESY DESCRIPTION: archaeological studies,” he says.
such as pharmaceutical firms, but researchers identify patterns upwards of $1000 for individual New company users don’t receive any reward or between certain gene variants genomes, but Nebula hasn’t decided sequences your compensation for this. and diseases, says the company’s yet whether to allow such cash Nebula Genomics, which launched co-founder Dennis Grishin. transactions, says Grishin. DNA for free last week, aims to connect consumers Users can access services on the Jacqueline Savard at Deakin interested in exploring their genetics Nebula platform using their credits. University in Australia warns that A FIRM co-founded by pioneering with researchers looking for large For example, someone could buy some drug companies may use Harvard geneticist George Church DNA data sets to assist with drug information about their risk of people’s genetic data in ways they wants to let people learn about their development. developing Alzheimer’s disease aren’t aware of or can’t foresee. genetic code for free. The blockchain- The service offers to sequence based on their genomic data. “People should be free to do what secured service will sequence people’s your entire genome for free and keep For the time being, people won’t they want with their genomic data,” genomes without charging a fee and it secure. You can then choose to be able to convert the credits into she says. “But they need to be given will offer rewards to those who let share the genomic data anonymously money. Pharmaceutical companies clear information about how it will third parties access their data. with companies or research institutes are currently prepared to pay be used so they can make the right People can already get their DNA in return for “Nebula credits”. decisions.” sequenced by companies such as People will also receive credits for “ Nebula Genomics aims to Church’s other ambitions include Helix and 23andMe, typically for sharing other health information, connect people who want bringing back the woolly mammoth, around $200. If a user consents, their such as whether they have diabetes to explore their genetics editing our genes to fix diseases and results can be sold to third parties or arthritis. This should help with drug researchers” reversing ageing. Alice Klein ■
24 November 2018 | NewScientist | 15 NEWS & TECHNOLOGY
Haunting our corner of the cosmos, Your computer’s Ant 2 is in the box to the top left clock can give known surface brightness of any you away online stellar system we have seen. Torrealba suggests one A WEBSITE tool can track your internet explanation might be that the activity even if you use standard ways dark matter in Ant 2 is distributed to hide your browsing habits. in an unusually diffuse way. Tracking people on the internet is (arxiv.org/abs/1811.04082). normally done using cookies, tiny files But before we can know for sure left on our computers by the websites how unusual Ant 2 is, there are we visit. These are used for security questions to answer, says Gisella purposes, such as for detecting Clementini at the National suspicious online banking logins, and Astrophysical Institute in Italy. also by advertisers to target people She studies RR Lyrae stars based on their online visits. observed by the Gaia satellite, But these tracking cookies have and says there is an error in the become increasingly ineffective, formula Torrealba’s team used because many people use tools, such to calculate the distance to Ant 2. as ad blockers, which keep them at That is potentially a significant
bay. Now Iskander Sanchez-Rola at ESO problem, because the galaxy’s the University of Deusto in Spain and extremely odd traits are only colleagues have developed a tracking that strange if the galaxy is as tool that doesn’t need to use cookies. far from us as Torrealba’s team Instead, it relies on detecting tiny Phantom galaxy is calculated. Clementini says she variations in a computer’s hardware. has alerted his team to this and The tool works by measuring subtle our new neighbour they have agreed to redo the but unique differences in the way the analysis. “They have discovered quartz crystal in a computer’s clock something, but at this stage, I behaves compared with crystals in Chelsea Whyte surroundings. They found that could not bet on any property of other computers. These differences four bright stars of the same type, the system unless we can confirm affect how quickly websites are LURKING behind the disc of dust known as RR Lyrae variables, were the calculations,” she says. processed by a computer, so they act and gas that makes up the Milky moving together. They then Torrealba says that, from an as a digital fingerprint for a device. Way is a nearby ghostly galaxy measured the light coming from initial assessment, the error in When 300 volunteers made a that we haven’t noticed before. 100 red giant stars around the their distance formula puts the RR one-off visit to a website using the It looks like no other galactic four bright stars and found that Lyrae stars at about 260,000 light tool, it could uniquely fingerprint structure we’ve seen, according they, too, were moving at the years away, instead of the original around half of them. When combined to the astronomers who found it, same rate, which means they measurement of 424,000 light with other techniques that measure although not everyone agrees. are part of the same galaxy. years. But he says they confirmed how a computer processes a web site’s The newly detected dwarf But these stars also revealed the distance of the rest of the stars graphics, 80 per cent of devices could galaxy is a third of the size of that the galaxy they live in is odd. in Ant 2 with two other methods, be identified. the Milky Way. It is in the Antlia and the distance to those stars is “Our technique is far more reliable constellation and has been “ Calculations show that secure. A galaxy like Ant 2 should and practical than any existing named Antlia 2, or Ant 2. the galaxy is enormous, hold hundreds of these Lyrae fingerprinting technique,” says While it emits about the same spanning about 9500 light variable stars, he says, so it might Sanchez-Rola. His team presented total light as other galaxies near years, but extremely dim” be that the group of four stars his the tool at the recent ACM Conference the Milky Way, it is 10 times the team looked at happen to be the on Computer and Communications size of them, so its brightness is Based on the stars’ distance from closest ones to us. The new Security in Toronto, Canada. spread over a bigger area in the Earth, the team calculated that calculation doesn’t change the “Unfortunately, modern computers sky, says Gabriel Torrealba at Ant 2 is enormous, spanning bizarre nature of Ant 2, he adds. are too diverse, and there are too Academia Sinica in Taiwan. This about 9500 light years. “It would need to be twice as many ways that diversity can be makes it much fainter and harder But it is extremely dim for close for the unusual aspects of noticed and used by trackers,” says to see. something that big. In fact, it this galaxy to look less unusual. Peter Eckersley at the Electronic Torrealba and his team found is 100 times more diffuse than Changing it by 10 or 20 per cent, Frontier Foundation, a privacy rights Ant 2 using data from the Gaia members of an unusual class of it would still fall into this class of group. That means privacy tools must satellite, which tracks the position galaxy that astronomers have very bizarre objects,” says Alan improve to stay ahead of detection and movement of nearby stars to labelled ultra-diffuse galaxies. McConnachie at the University techniques, he says. Edd Gent ■ make a map of our galaxy and its This means Ant 2 has the lowest of Victoria in Canada. ■
16 | NewScientist | 24 November 2018
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Nearby alien world hiding in plain sight EFETOVA/GETTY
A STELLAR neighbour that we have stared at for years appears to have a planet after all. Barnard’s star is a red dwarf just 6 light years away. That makes it the next closest star to the sun after those in the Alpha Centauri system, and an obvious target for planet-spotters. But despite many astronomers looking, no planets ever showed up. Ignasi Ribas at the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia in Spain and his colleagues may have hit the jackpot. They combined the results of earlier surveys, looking for the wobble of the star caused by the tug of an orbiting object. So small was the effect of their proposed planet, GJ 699 b, on Barnard’s star that they needed 771 readings taken over 20 years to be sure they had seen something (Nature, doi.org/gfjzh7). That espresso habit may caffeine more vividly were 20 per cent more likely than GJ 699 b is thought to have three a normal caffeine taster to be heavy coffee drinkers. to four times Earth’s mass and a be down to your DNA The caffeine supertasters were less likely to drink tea. surface temperature of -150˚C. This may be because people who detect caffeine more ARE you a tea or a coffee person? The answer may be easily are more prone to getting addicted to its stimulant written in your genes. effects, and coffee has more caffeine than tea. Fungus-based bots Both drinks contain bitter components such as caffeine. In contrast, participants with gene variants that made Previous research has found that people experience them more sensitive to two other bitter tastes – quinine to tackle pollution bitter flavours differently according to the taste receptor and propylthiouracil – were 4 and 9 per cent more likely genes they have. to be heavy tea drinkers respectively (Scientific Reports, MICROBOTS made with Now Daniel Hwang at the University of Queensland in doi.org/cw5f). mushroom spores could help Australia and his colleagues have studied links between These people were also less likely to drink coffee. remove heavy metals from taste receptor genes and tea and coffee consumption in It is unclear why, but it may be because they are more contaminated water. over 430,000 men and women in the UK, aged 37 to 73. sensitive to bitter tastes overall. As a result, they may Metal pollutants cling to the Those with gene variants that made them taste prefer the gentler bitterness of tea, says Hwang. devices, which are spores coated in iron oxide. An external magnetic field can be used to Icy grave of huge meteorite discovered short episode of northern move the microbots around in hemisphere cooling called the water and recover them later. A GIANT meteorite crater that has telltale internal structure that Younger Dryas, says McDonald. The system was created by Li turned up under the Greenland results from a brief shock wave. Its cause has long been unclear. Zhang at the Chinese University ice sheet may hold clues to a mini “They’re absolutely characteristic One theory involved an impact of Hong Kong and his colleagues. ice age some 13,000 years ago. of impact,” says team member from space, but we knew of no They found that the microbots An international team found Iain McDonald at Cardiff suitable crater recent enough. could reduce lead levels in the 30-kilometre-wide feature University, UK. If the meteorite had hit ice contaminated water from 5 parts using NASA radar data. It would Without access to the crater, hundreds of metres thick, millions per million to 0.9 ppm within have been made by a meteorite the team can only date the impact of tonnes of fresh water would 50 minutes. That is still not safe about 1 kilometre across. to some time in the past 3 million have melted and flowed into the to drink, but Zhang suggests using A river draining from under the years (Science Advances, doi.org/ sea. This could have disrupted the devices in less heavily polluted ice covering the crater is washing cw5d). But that leaves open the ocean currents and cooled the water (Advanced Functional out sediment particles with a possibility of a connection with a climate, says McDonald. Materials, doi.org/cw5q).
24 November 2018 | NewScientist | 19 IN BRIEF For new stories every day, visit newscientist.com/news
How cities can Hungry for something new? This edible game might satisfy
boost a hurricane YOU really are the controller now. players. Both swallow a sensor felt trepidation at taking the Players of the Guts Game must and must then alter their gut device. Others said they had THE towering skyline of Houston, swallow a sensor in a pill and then temperature at set times over 24 to learned about their bodies, Texas, made Hurricane Harvey fight off an imaginary parasite by 36 hours to kill a virtual parasite. especially how food and drink dump even more water – because making changes to their own gut. To do this, they can consume hot could change temperature in the tall buildings shifted air upwards, Small wearable sensors such as or cold items, exercise hard, or stomach, whereas gut temperature generating more rain. This and those in Fitbits have already been eat spicy dishes that make them was most affected by exercise. other consequences of urbanisation used to gamify exercise. Now sweat. The game ends once one The researchers presented increased the overall flooding risk Zhuying Li and Floyd Mueller at player excretes the sensor. the game at a computer-human by a whopping 2100 per cent. the Royal Melbourne Institute of The sensor beams temperature interaction conference in Harvey caused damage to the Technology have explored what is data to a phone app. The winner Melbourne. They say there tune of $125 billion last year. Now, possible using ingestible sensors. is the player who does best at was no risk to players as the using climate models, researchers at These can capture video, detect matching the target temperature temperature changes are small. the University of Iowa and Princeton chemicals or measure acidity, at the given times. Mueller hopes gamifying University have studied the impact temperature or pressure. Seven pairs of players tried the pill-taking will provide ideas to of a hurricane like Harvey on a The Guts Game is for two game, with mixed reactions. Some help people stick to medication. virtual version of present-day Houston, and compared it with what would have happened if the Painful downside city were replaced by farmland. Vegetated land soaks up a lot of weekend lie-ins of rain. But if roads, buildings and paving replace plants, the rain SLEEPING in on days off may
flows straight into rivers, which cause period pain by disrupting SETIADI/EYEEM/GETTYSETIADI can increase flooding downstream. reproductive cycles. In addition, the larger surface We know female shift workers “roughness” of urban areas created are more prone to irregular a drag effect on Hurricane Harvey, menstrual cycles, to difficulties says team member Gabriele Villarini in conceiving and to miscarriages, at Iowa. The result was to push possibly because their work hours warm surface air higher up, creating affect the circadian rhythms that conditions favourable for cloud control hormone cycles. formation and precipitation Now Yoko Komada at Meiji (Nature, doi.org/gfjzjg). Pharmaceutical University in Previous studies had suggested Japan and her colleagues have that global warming may have looked at whether social jet lag – increased Harvey’s rainfall total sleeping in on weekends to make by between 15 and 40 per cent. All up for early starts during the in all, it seems Harvey was a very week – has similar effects. Just hit reverse to remember better unnatural disaster. They surveyed 150 female Japanese university students TO IMPROVE your recall, try walking than the forward-walkers and the about sleep habits and menstrual backwards – it boosts scores in non-walkers – a small but statistically patterns. The students were memory tests. significant improvement. deemed to have social jet lag if That is the finding of Aleksandar Five variants of the experiment the midpoint of their sleep was Aksentijevic at the University of showed a similar effect. In some, at least an hour later on days off. Roehampton, UK, and his colleagues. participants imagined forwards or REUTERS/RICHARD CARSON REUTERS/RICHARD Those with social jet lag They asked 114 volunteers to watch backwards motion, or watched a reported significantly more pain, a video in which a woman has her bag film shot on a train to give a sense of bloating and behavioural changes stolen. Ten minutes later, they asked forwards or backwards movement. during their periods. The greater some volunteers to walk forwards or We are used to thinking about time the social jet lag, the worse the backwards 10 metres, while a control as a space we navigate, and to using symptoms (Chronobiology group stood in one place. Then all spatial language to talk about time. International, doi.org/cw5c). had to answer 20 questions about Studies of this sort suggest this is The team ruled out any impact the video. not just a convenient analogy, but from late-night drinking or On average, the backward-walking intrinsic to the way we conceptualise smoking, since few of the students group got two more answers correct the past (Cognition, doi.org/cw5g). drank and none smoked.
20 | NewScientist | 24 November 2018
INSIGHT DISPOSABLE NAPPIES
Messy business Disposable nappies have been named as the latest plastic items we should ban, but are the alternatives any better? Alice Klein investigates
A FRESH stink is being kicked of these was commissioned in plastic disposables because the report in 2008. It found that if up over the use of nappies. the early 2000s by the UK electricity consumed by washing cloth nappies were washed in Last month, UK environment Environment Agency, after prime and drying them cancelled out full loads, air-dried on a washing secretary Michael Gove ignited minister Tony Blair was quizzed the benefits of reducing plastic line and reused on a second controversy by hinting at a about what kind of nappies he production and waste. “I still get child, they resulted in 40 per cent crackdown on disposable nappies. would use on his fourth child. email abuse every now and again,” lower greenhouse gas emissions Environmentalists welcomed the The report, which was says Simon Aumônier at UK than using plastic disposable ones. idea, but time-poor parents published in 2005, sparked fury consulting firm Environmental These benefits are likely to be even baulked at the prospect of having among anti-plastic campaigners. Resources Management, greater today now that half the to wash piles of cloth substitutes. It concluded that reusable cloth who co-wrote the assessment. UK’s electricity comes from low- Despite feeling soft, the surface nappies were no greener than Critics said the report was carbon sources, says Aumônier. layer of disposable nappies is just misleading because it was based Similarly, Kate O’Brien at the one of many plastic components. “One child typically gets on how most people use the University of Queensland in These nappies generate 4 million through 4000 to 6000 nappies, rather than optimal use. Australia co-authored a study tonnes of waste a year in the US disposable nappies from In response, Aumônier and his showing that reusable cloth alone, with each child typically birth to toilet training” colleagues published a follow-up nappies were much greener than getting through 4000 to 6000 of them. So it is no surprise that they have become the latest in a list of items being targeted for environmental reasons. Governments around the world are already phasing out single- use plastic items such as bags, straws and utensils in an attempt to cut waste. But some parents argue that, when you look at the data, cloth nappies are no better than the standard, disposable variety. Reusable cloth nappies carry a cost to the environment because of the water and energy used during repeated laundering. There are also dozens of new “eco-disposable” products, which their makers claim combine the convenience of disposable nappies with environmental sustainability. But these come with their own flaws. How do the options stack up? To compare different nappies, researchers conduct life-cycle assessments that consider their environmental impact from production to disposal. The first
Some nappies, such as these
gDiapers, have compostable parts GDIAPERS
22 | NewScientist | 24 November 2018 For daily news stories, visit newscientist.com/news
plastic disposables if they were time or live in a flat,” says O’Brien. YOU’VE COME A LONG WAY, BABY washed in front-loading machines Plastic nappies are still used by in cold water – although most 95 per cent of parents in the West Old-school cloth nappies were squares super-absorbent polymer beads. manufacturers recommend and make up about 4 per cent of of cotton terry towelling that had to Some modern cloth nappies have washing at warmer temperatures – municipal household waste. Once be folded and safety-pinned in place. two parts: a waterproof cover and and line-dried. “It’s pretty clear in landfill, they take hundreds of Modern cloth nappies are far easier to an absorbent insert. Only the insert that cloth nappies have less years to break down. To cut this use because they come pre-shaped needs to be washed and dried. impact overall if you wash them burden, some councils in the UK and are usually fastened with press Cloth nappies are about $20 each, the right way,” she says. and Australia offer cash incentives studs or Velcro. They are often made which is 10 times more than plastic That may be the case, but it to encourage parents to switch to from bamboo or hemp, which are disposables, but because they are is hard to deny the superior cloth nappies. Others are thinking more absorbent than cotton. But they reused, they end up costing about convenience of plastic disposables. about setting up schemes to turn are less effective than disposable half the amount overall from birth Modern cloth nappies are much discarded plastic nappies into plastic varieties, which contain to toilet training. easier to use than the safety- new products. pinned terry towelling squares Small nappy-recycling comes with a major caveat. UK, to test the idea. They deliver of yesteryear (see “You’ve come initiatives in the UK and the Although some eco-disposables compostable nappies to the centre, a long way, baby”, right), but they Netherlands have previously failed are marketed as having a then collect used ones at regular still require time, commitment because of high running costs, but flushable insert, most only intervals for composting. All and physical space for washing and now bigger players are stepping in. break down efficiently when nappies can be composted with drying. And they can’t simply be One is Procter & Gamble, which composted. If they end up in this set-up, no matter what they chucked in the bin when you are currently owns the lion’s share of landfill, the lack of oxygen means are soiled with. “It’s completely out and about. “For a stay-at-home the global nappy market. Last year, even plant-based nappies may zero waste,” says Graham-Nye, parent living in a house, cloth it announced it was investing in take decades to decompose. who hopes to eventually expand nappies are a very feasible option, a European Union scheme aiming Moreover, the types of bacteria the service to households, but they’re harder if you work full- to convert 10,000 tonnes of used that degrade them under such although it’s not yet clear how nappies – as well as products such low-oxygen conditions release the as incontinence pads – per year potent greenhouse gas methane “For stay-at-home parents into plastic bins, packaging and as a by-product. In fact, a life-cycle in a house, cloth nappies medical devices. assessment by Nadia Mirabella are feasible, but it is harder It sounds ideal, but Aumônier at the University of Milan in Italy if you work, or live in a flat” warns that it may not be the found that eco-disposable nappies miracle solution everyone is were no better than plastic ones if much this service will cost parents. hoping for. The recycling process they went into landfill. For the time being, however, is likely to be energy-intensive, To get around this problem, parents face an unavoidable which could outweigh the waste- some parents use home trade-off between eco-friendliness reduction benefits. “There’s an composting systems to turn and convenience. The greenest assumption that recycling used eco-disposable nappies options appear to be cloth nappies automatically means better, into fertiliser. “We hear neat that are laundered with minimal but as a bit of a sceptic, I’d like testimonials of people whose energy and eco-disposables that to see it demonstrated,” he says. gardens are powered by their kids’ are composted at home, although nappies,” says Jason Graham-Nye, they require bigger investments of co-founder of US-based company time and effort. Plastic disposables Guilt free? gDiapers, which sells eco- make life easier, but only at the In the meantime, some people disposable nappies. Each nappy expense of the environment. are turning to “eco-disposable” takes about 40 days to break Fortunately, governments nappies, which are marketed as down in home compost, he says. and companies seem to be get-out-of-jail-free cards for busy, But this can only be done for increasingly motivated to find environmentally conscious urine-containing nappies, due solutions. After Gove made his parents. These are also single-use to the risk of spreading faecal initial comments about needing nappies, but they are made of pathogens. It is also unlikely to to tackle plastic nappy waste, he plant-based materials – such as appeal to time-poor parents or clarified that the UK government cellulose, wood pulp, bamboo, those without a garden. would be looking at green or corn or wheat starch – that are The answer may be to introduce alternatives rather than an meant to be more sustainable pick-up services that take outright ban. If these take the and biodegradable than plastic. households’ used nappies away form of eco-friendly recycling A clear benefit is that they are to commercial composters, says or composting schemes for made from plants instead of Graham-Nye. This month, his disposable nappies, the babies of non-renewable petrochemicals. company started a trial at a today may become the guilt-free However, their biodegradability childcare centre in Southampton, parents of tomorrow. ■
24 November 2018 | NewScientist | 23 COMMENT
Nuclear power play
The Union of Concerned Scientists has warmed to nuclear power. Environmentalists should too, says Mark Lynas
CHANGING your mind on a Angela Merkel’s decision to phase controversial topic isn’t easy, out all nuclear power generation especially when you have spent has led to an increased reliance on decades campaigning against fossil fuels. The sight of a nation your new position. Which is why that once led the fight against the decision by the Union of climate change bulldozing forests Concerned Scientists (UCS) to to expand open-cast coal mining drop its long-standing opposition serves as a warning of where anti- to nuclear power is so important, nuclear ideology can lead. and why the organisation In its report, the UCS recognises deserves great credit for having that nuclear is the single largest the courage to take this step. source of low-carbon electricity in The US advocacy group isn’t the US. Yet many US reactors are campaigning for new nuclear threatened with closure due to plants to be built, however. Its competition from cheap fracked president, Ken Kimmel, has called gas and a power market that puts for funding “to preserve nuclear no value on low-carbon electricity. power from existing plants that The UCS estimates that if at-risk are operating safely”. The nuclear plants are closed early – rationale, laid out in the UCS’s as Greenpeace and Friends of the latest report, being that shuttered Earth demand – then US power nuclear plants are often replaced sector emissions could increase with ones burning fossil fuels. by 4 to 6 per cent. This switch from nuclear to coal The truth is that nuclear power and gas happened most clearly will be an essential component of
in Germany, where Chancellor FORDJOSIE any rapid transition away from
many other factors and variables Why is so much energy, which that can affect how we use our could be better used elsewhere, One track mind brains, which cannot be screened ploughed into an effort to show out by modern research methods. functional differences between The brains of men and women aren’t We all grow and develop in a the brains of men and women – society that imposes countless especially when it is far from fundamentally different, says Dean Burnett differences between males and certain such things even exist? females from birth. Given how An optimistic view is that our brains grow in response to our uncovering them could be LAST week, a widely reported differences due to the sex environment – they are the most valuable to medicine, mental study claimed to show “very chromosomes, varying hormone “plastic” organ in our bodies by health, user interfaces, workplaces clear” differences between the regulation during development far – any of these could turn out and more. But something being brains of men and women. and obvious anatomical to be a big influence over how our useful to us isn’t evidence that it It was trumpeted in the media as differences are all reflected in brains work as adults. should exist. “proving” that male and female the structure of the brain. A more cynical view is that brains are inherently different. But whether these have any “ Sex difference studies there is a strong gender imbalance The actual evidence falls way impacts on the functioning of the often seem like attempts in our society, with men holding short of such claims. mature adult brain is a lot harder to justify the status quo, the majority of power and control Distinctions do exist. Genetic to determine. There are just too rather than question it” in almost every field. Studies
24 | NewScientist | 24 November 2018 For more opinion articles, visit newscientist.com/opinion
fossil fuels. Renewables like wind Data pivacy and solar will hopefully provide ANALYSIS the bulk of future global energy, but without nuclear, any low- carbon pathway is a dead end. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s recent report issued a stark warning: global emissions must fall by 45 per cent in just 12 years if a reasonable chance of a 1.5°C pathway is to be retained. It would be immensely foolish to begin a colossal effort to decarbonise the world’s economy by getting rid of the largest existing source of low- carbon electricity. Nuclear’s problems of waste,
cost and safety are trivial DUTTON/GETTY LAURENCE compared with the threat posed by unmitigated global warming. profit from their medical records? The UCS’s decision will be seen Dominic King, clinical lead at as a hugely significant moment in Google to take control DeepMind’s health division, seems to the battle against global warming, suggest so. “At this stage our contracts when environmentalists began have not moved across to Google and to wake up to the sheer magnitude of app used by NHS will not without our partners’ consent,” of the global, low-carbon energy he wrote on Twitter on 14 November. challenge. “The same applies to the data that we The next step is for all of us Douglas Heaven be linked or associated with Google process under these contracts.” to unite to demand the rapid accounts, products or services.” Yet the legal issues are murky. phasing out of fossil fuels and ANOTHER tech company doing So, it is no surprise that the DeepMind’s contract with the Royal their replacement with low- something it said it wouldn’t. Another announcement has led to a chorus of Free says it cannot transfer intellectual carbon energy sources – including eye roll, another shrug? complaints on social media, with many property (IP) derived from patient data nuclear – before it is too late. ■ Last week, the London-based people feeling particularly strongly obtained under the terms of that deal. artificial intelligence company about a powerful private firm putting Exactly how much of Streams counts Mark Lynas is an environmentalist and DeepMind announced that the team its hands in the NHS cookie jar. as data-derived IP can be spun in author of Seeds of Science: Why we got behind Streams – an app designed to DeepMind argues that Google will different ways, however. it so wrong on GMOs monitor people in hospital with kidney have no access to identifiable patient “Our contractual agreements with disease – will be joining DeepMind’s data. True, DeepMind is only handing existing partners, and their restrictive sister company Google. The tech over synthetic data – made-up medical rules on patient data, are still in trying to show that the brains of giant wants to turn Streams into records generated from the real force and unchanged,” a DeepMind men and women are functionally an AI-powered assistant for doctors NHS ones – and the algorithms that spokesperson told New Scientist. different – and their inevitable and nurses. Google has long had its eye on wide coverage in the media – To test Streams, DeepMind used “ Many people feel strongly healthcare but if it had tried to make often seem like attempts to justify the identifiable medical records of about a powerful private a deal with the NHS, it would probably the status quo, rather than 1.6 million people obtained in a deal firm putting its hands in have been blocked because of question it. with the Royal Free London NHS Trust, the NHS cookie jar” privacy concerns. Our brains develop in a culture as first revealed by New Scientist. AI is capable of amazing things and that keeps insisting men and The UK’s Information Commissioner’s were trained on it. But this valuable there is little doubt that eventually the women are different, and so we Office (ICO) later said the data sharing information only exists because of technology will help save many lives. behave accordingly. And this agreement “failed to comply with data that identifiable data. But it will also make the companies includes, unfortunately, carrying protection law”. One question is whether Google offering such services vast sums of out and reporting research that The transfer appears to renege should have its own data sharing money. The NHS giving Google a leg- confirms such beliefs. ■ on promises made by DeepMind. agreement with the NHS. In its ruling up for free is at the very least anti- Co-founder Mustafa Suleyman wrote on DeepMind’s original deal, the ICO competitive. Inviting a tech giant into Dean Burnett is a neuroscientist and in July 2016, for example: “DeepMind concluded that patients hadn’t been the heart of the healthcare system honorary research associate at Cardiff operates autonomously from Google, adequately engaged in giving could also lead to a loss of control in Psychology School, UK. His latest book and we’ve been clear from the outset informed consent. Do they need to how care is provided and cost the is The Happy Brain that at no stage will patient data ever give additional consent for Google to NHS more in the long run. ■
24 November 2018 | NewScientist | 25 APERTURE
26 | NewScientist | 24 November 2018 The amber spyglass
SOME 50 million years ago, an ant was foraging on a tree trunk growing on what is now the Baltic coast of Russia. A trickle of resin oozing from the tree trapped the insect, killing it and sealing it off from the world. And yet here it is. Fossils invoke a sense of wonder because they connect us physically to the distant past. When organisms are trapped in tree resin and fossilised as it turns to amber, this dehydrates their body and drastically slows decomposition, forming beautifully preserved specimens. But the captured organisms, literal time capsules, have never been so clearly seen as in new images by photographer Levon Biss. Previously, Biss specialised in photographing insects with a microscope by stitching together thousands of close-ups to create ultra-high resolution images. Looking for another challenge, he has now turned his attention to insects trapped in amber, and the first finished print is this ant, from an unknown species. These fossil subjects are smaller than those Biss usually photographs and are in a material that makes the camerawork more difficult. “To overcome the effects of refraction within the amber, the stone is suspended within an oil of a similar refractive index,” he says. “This allows me to produce images of a far higher clarity. Creating unique and beautiful imagery should not be easy. If it was, the final photograph would be worthless to me.” The images are printed using a process called carbon transfer, which should stop the colours fading for 1000 years. They are framed in wood from trees preserved in peat bogs, carbon-dated to 5300 years ago. The piece of amber used is presented in a cavity in the frame, to provide the viewer with a sense of scale. “I adore the fact that this project essentially began millions of years ago when these creatures were encapsulated within the tree sap,” Biss says. “It began long before me, and because of the longevity of the printing process, it will continue long after I have gone.” Rowan Hooper
Photographer Levon Biss microsculpture.net
24 November 2018 | NewScientist | 27 MARINA ESMERALDO MARINA
28 | NewScientist | 24 November 2018 COVER STORY
T IS one of biology’s dirty little secrets: we don’t really know what we are made of. The Ihuman genome may have been decoded back in 2003, but we still can’t list all the types of cells in our bodies. Everything we do, from moving to thinking, digesting food to sleeping, depends on a vast array of different cells: disc-like red blood cells, spindly nerve cells, stretched-out cells that make our muscles, the list goes on. These specialised units come together to form our tissues and organs, and make us the complex organisms we are. And yet so many of them remain mysterious. Now, for the first time, we are set to make a comprehensive inventory – an aim every bit as ambitious as the Human Genome Project that decoded our DNA. The Human Cell Atlas project plans to identify and locate every type of cell we possess, and so revolutionise our understanding of the body in the same way You, that the first atlases transformed our view of the world. The first results are already showing how this can help us find our way around healthy bodies, not to mention finding routes deconstructed to new treatments for conditions like cancer that occur when cells turn bad. “Knowing cells is knowing life,” says There are 37 trillion cells in Aviv Regev of the Broad Institute in the human body. Now Cambridge, Massachusetts. “If you do not know which cells are there, and understand we’re nally working out how they operate, you can’t really say you understand biology.” what they all do, says Easier said than done. For more than Jeremy Webb 150 years, researchers have categorised cells by all manner of methods: their size and shape, their location in the body, the way they react to dyes and, most recently, by the proteins they produce. Look in a textbook today and it will probably divide the body’s 37 trillion-odd cells into about 300 types (see “What is a cell anyway?”, page 30). But each time a novel way to look at cells has come along, more differences have emerged, and the number of distinct types has continued to rise. The Human Cell Atlas will use an even more powerful way to classify cells, by the genes that are switched on inside them – their “transcriptome”. Barring a few exceptions, all our cells contain identical copies of our genetic code. Each cell controls which of our 20,000 genes it expresses, and different types of cell express different selections of genes. Knowing which genes are active and at what levels should go beyond the promise of the Human Genome Project. This allowed us to compare people’s genomes and understand better than ever which genetic changes are involved in >
24 November 2018 | NewScientist | 29 various diseases. But exploiting that knowledge Previously unknown means first knowing which cells these changes cells called ionocytes are expressed in. (shown in orange, To do that, biologists needed to be able to right, and green, far read the gene expression profiles of individual right) may be at the cells. Until recently, that process needed a root of cystic fibrosis fair-sized chunk of tissue that inevitably contained many different types of cell. These cells then got mushed together into what Regev describes as a fruit smoothie. What was really needed instead, she says, was a fruit salad in which every individual piece of fruit could be identified.
Unknown fruits In 2011, that became a real prospect, when Regev and her colleagues managed to create gene-expression profiles from the tiny amount of genetic material in a single cell.
They used their method on apparently 2018 AL./NATURE ET MONTORO identical immune system cells – called dendritic cells – and immediately picked up differences between them that signalled at once, from just 18 to a whopping 250,000. says. In 2013, she helped to found a centre unknown fruits in the salad. “We found two “These single-cell methods are really within the Sanger Institute to develop the new subsets of cells we didn’t know existed transformational,” says Ed Lein at the Allen field. “The obvious question in a place like before,” says Regev. Institute in Seattle, who specialises in mapping this is how big can we take it? Can we scale it Since then, there has been a revolution brain cells. “You can input a large number to a whole organism?” in transcriptomics, with new and faster of cells from a tissue and get a molecular In 2014, Regev started to think about a techniques emerging. Most rely on separating classification of the cell types in a way that systematic project to sequence all the cells in out individual cells in a sample and adding a supersedes 100 years of prior research.” the body. She began to evangelise about the unique barcode, in the form of a DNA tag, to While Regev was busy in Cambridge, idea in talks and seminars. In 2016, the two each one’s genetic material. The tags allow Massachusetts, Sarah Teichmann of the researchers spoke. They decided to gather the output of individual cells to be traced Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridge, UK, specialists from a range of fields – medics, even when many cells are mixed together had also seen the potential of profiling the pathologists, cell and computational biologists, for sequencing. There has been an explosion gene expression of single cells. “I would really genomics technology developers and big data too in the number of cells that can be profiled love to see a periodic table of our cells,” she analysts – to gauge their interest. A hundred
WHAT IS A CELL ANYWAY?
Cells don’t exactly broadcast their responsible for generating energy; roles. Nerve cells receive, process and hence to develop into different importance. Most are invisible to and the endoplasmic reticulum, and transmit information through cell types. the naked eye, yet without them where proteins and fats are made. electrical and chemical channels. The number of active genes vary there would be no life. All this paraphernalia is surrounded Hair cells in the ear turn vibrations even in mature cells. “If you have It was the English scientist by the cell membrane, which acts into impulses that we perceive as a rapidly proliferating cell, you’re Robert Hooke, looking at slices of like a national border, allowing only sounds. Natural killer cells carry talking 5000 to 6000 genes,” says cork through his home-made certain commodities in and out. deadly chemicals inside them, Sarah Teichmann of the Wellcome microscope in the 1660s, who first Human cells are nothing if not with which they eliminate infected Sanger Institute in the UK. “But if saw cells and named them. It took diverse. Among the smallest is or cancerous cells. This is to name you have a quiescent cell, that’s just another 200 years for scientists to the 50-micrometre-long sperm. but a few. Each type depends on minding its own business and not realise their true significance. The Compare that with the egg. With others to sustain them. Nearly all doing much, you can be talking a cell is the most basic unit of life – all a diameter of 1 millimetre – or cells, for example, depend on red couple of thousand genes.” Cells living organisms are made of one or 1000 micrometres – it is just visible blood cells to bring them oxygen. can also change their outputs in more of them. to the naked eye. A nerve cell that The types emerge in the embryo, reaction to signals from their Our cells contain an astonishing runs from the lower spinal cord to where cells in the various regions surroundings. Teasing apart all array of tiny structures, such as the big toe can reach more than a are exposed to different cocktails these signals and reactions is a the nucleus, which is home to metre in length. of proteins, driving them to express key aim of many Human Cell Atlas the genome; the mitochondria, There is similar diversity in their a particular combination of genes researchers (see main story).
30 | NewScientist | 24 November 2018 SINGLE CELL, BIG DATA
When it comes to profiling the than 500,000 cells, this April. genes within a cell, the numbers One technique popular with are mind-boggling. the project’s biologists is a data Different cell types express visualisation tool, called t-SNE different genes, and to quantify the (pronounced tisnee), which groups activity of each could mean 20,000 cells according to similarities scores per cell. The Human Cell Atlas between their thousands of project expects to profile billions of gene-expression scores. It then cells. Making sense of data at this displays them in two dimensions. scale is going to need methods that This tool played a crucial role in don’t yet exist. the discovery of a new kind of lung The project has received funding cell. When all the different cell from the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, types from the lining of the lung set up by Facebook owner Mark were plotted using t-SNE, the graph Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan. showed a blob distinct from all the The money will go towards creating other cells. This led researchers to a software tools and a platform where previously unknown cell type, which researchers can upload results and they called an ionocyte, that has now analyse data. The project released been implicated in the disease cystic
MONTORO ET AL./NATURE 2018 AL./NATURE ET MONTORO its first tranche of data, from more fibrosis (see main story).
people came to the resulting meeting and samples – which come from a range of sources, the cancerous cells the correct protein signals they were enthusiastic about the proposal. from operating theatres to tissue banks – will to nudge them into becoming mature kidney The idea of the Human Cell Atlas was born, be stored and examined later once the cells. “This could lead to an entirely new model with Teichmann and Regev at the helm. “There technology catches up. Eventually, the atlas for treating childhood cancer,” he says. was that zeitgeist thing,” says Regev. “It was an will bring together data from many labs Perhaps most surprising of all, in August, idea whose time had come.” relating to one organ or point within it. This two teams discovered a previously unknown Over 1000 scientists are now involved in will enable researchers to run analyses that cell type in the lining of the lung that may the project, representing 584 institutes from encompass all the latest information. That well be at the root of cystic fibrosis. This is the 55 countries including Ecuador, Kenya, Nigeria is where its real power lies, says Lein. most common single-gene disorder in people and Russia. Atlases of the cells of the immune Despite it being early days, the project of northern European descent, and develops system, skin and lungs are already under way. is making groundbreaking discoveries. when the body doesn’t make enough of a The effort faces many technical challenges Single-cell profiling has already been used to protein called CFTR. The deficit causes sticky (see “Single cell, big data”, above). Uncertainty investigate the earliest stages of pregnancy, mucus to build up in the lungs, repeated still surrounds a second pillar of the project, as the fetal placenta implants into the infections and early death. that of locating cells in the body. Regev’s mother’s uterus. It revealed the locations of For 30 years, we thought CFTR was made analogy of its structures being like a fruit salad fetal and maternal cells across the interface in the lungs mostly by ciliated cells. Existing isn’t entirely accurate. “Biology is beautifully and the protein signals they use to drugs and gene therapies for cystic fibrosis structured. It’s actually a fruit tart,” she says. were designed assuming this to be true. Yet “It’s not everything mixed together or we the new research shows that the lion’s share would look kind of messy.” “There was that zeitgeist of CFTR is made by the newly discovered cells, So to really understand how our bodies thing. It was an idea now named ionocytes. These findings suggest work, we need to be able to pinpoint individual a way to boost the number of ionocytes, which cells within tissues. The past five years have whose time had come” should help some people with cystic fibrosis. also seen huge advances in these location Improved treatment for cystic fibrosis and technologies. Cells in a slice of tissue can be communicate. These findings should shed Wilms’ tumour, and better understanding of flooded with fluorescent probes that latch new light on the causes of miscarriage and why pregnancies fail are significant steps in onto a specific gene sequence. Or the details disorders such as pre-eclampsia. their own right. But this is to miss the broader of each cell’s location can be encoded into its Teichmann has also been working with Sam value of the Human Cell Atlas, reckons Sten genetic material using DNA tags before tissue Behjati at the Sanger Institute and others on Linnarsson at the Karolinska Institute in is broken up for profiling. In June, researchers the gene-expression profiles of kidney cells. In Sweden, one of the project’s organising at Stanford University in California described August, they published research showing that committee. “The atlas is not enabling one a technique for sequencing single cells cells from Wilms’ tumour, the most common specific thing,” he says. “It’s a foundation embedded in a 3D tissue sample. childhood kidney cancer, resemble cells that for exploring all human biology.” ■ But these methods cannot yet cope with the haven’t matured properly. Today, Wilms’ is sheer number of cells and genes the Human treated with toxic chemotherapy. Behjati Jeremy Webb is a former editor in chief of Cell Atlas needs to analyse. Instead, some suggests a better alternative would be to give New Scientist
24 November 2018 | NewScientist | 31 HIS is the story of a particle that has refused to die. For 50 years, it has Thaunted particle physics, with hints of its presence appearing in maddeningly Hunting the ambiguous ways. Some believe they have seen it. Others think it is a figment of our imagination. But every time we think it is definitely not there, a sudden gust of wind knocks over the furniture and once more there is room for doubt. ghost particle Elusive though it is, the sterile neutrino would be a real boon. It could make sense of experimental anomalies stretching back decades, and give us the first confirmed To x fundamental physics we may need glimpse of physics beyond what we know. It could even explain the strangely low masses to raise the sterile neutrino from the dead, of the ordinary neutrinos, as well as offering says Abigail Beall a convincing candidate for dark matter. The bad news is that the latest round of experiments set up to look for it claim that it can’t possibly be there. Some physicists think that’s the end of the story. Others still believe in a mystery particle, but conclude it is
32 | NewScientist | 24 November 2018 nothing like we imagined. However, for some, The tiny, chargeless particle Pauli dreamed The neutrino beamline a combination of experimental uncertainties up was subsequently called the neutrino, and at Fermilab could help and flawed analyses means that maybe – just was spotted in the wild in 1956. Over the in the hunt maybe – the sterile neutrino could be alive and following decades, experimentalists gradually kicking after all. The problem starts with the worked out that neutrinos came in multiple reaching Earth found a major shortfall, with neutrino bit. Neutrinos are notoriously hard types, or flavours. There were neutrinos one experiment detecting only 25 per cent of to pin down. They have no charge, almost that Pauli had predicted, with an intimate the expected number. no mass and can pass through matter by the connection to the electron, but also those with Solving the mystery involved conceding millions without leaving a trace. similar relationships to the electron’s heavier that the standard model of particle physics, The first inkling we had that they were out cousins: the muon and the tau. These three which had guided the field for decades, was there came in 1930, when physicist Wolfgang neutrinos neatly slotted into the standard incomplete. Rather than being massless, Pauli was struggling to make sense of the model, the grand blueprint of particle physics, each neutrino did in fact have a tiny amount decay of certain radioactive atoms. Atoms and that appeared to be that. of mass, no more than a millionth that of consist of a nucleus made out of protons and But the neutrinos were only getting started. an electron. This mass gives neutrinos a neutrons, orbited by much lighter electrons. As it happens, we have a massive source of remarkable ability to switch between flavours, When an atomic nucleus undergoes beta neutrinos right next door, in cosmic terms. morphing from one into another as they zoom decay, it morphs into a daughter nucleus, The sun is a nuclear fusion reactor, powered along, in a process called neutrino oscillation. emitting an electron in the process. The by beta decays that pump out electron That meant electron neutrinos produced in problem perplexing Pauli was that the two neutrinos by the billion – some of which come the sun’s core could transform into either decay products went in directions that seemed our way, passing straight through Earth on muon or tau neutrinos, evading our searches to violate the cast-iron law of conservation of their journey out into the wider universe. on Earth. “If we had not realised this could momentum – suggesting some third particle As long ago as the 1960s, however, physicists happen, then we would never have been able
REIDAR HAHN/FERMILAB was needed to make sense of the results. measuring the quantity of electron neutrinos to figure out what was going on,” says Janet >
24 November 2018 | NewScientist | 33 THE SECRET LIFE OF Conrad, an experimental physicist at the the other. What on earth is going on? MUONS Massachusetts Institute of Technology. That’s where the sterile neutrino comes in. Granting neutrinos the ability to transform Instead of the neat trio of neutrinos, the idea is Neutrinos have always been the black into one another solved the solar neutrino to invent a fourth, “sterile” flavour of neutrino sheep of the particle family. They come problem, but other mysteries remained. The capable of shape-shifting into any of the other in three “flavours”, each associated most vexing of these dates from the 1990s, three. This seems like a big deal given that the with heavier cousins called the when an experiment called the Liquid notion of three “generations” is deeply baked electron, the muon and the tau. These Scintillator Neutrino Detector (LSND) in Los into the standard model (see chart, below left). heavier particles were long thought Alamos, New Mexico, found that the antimatter But with the reasons for this magic number of as well-behaved, but now it seems versions of muon neutrinos were oscillating still a mystery, inventing a whole new the muon may have a dirty secret. into electron antineutrinos faster than generation of particles, or even assuming the In 2001, an experiment at the expected. The result was confirmed by a sterile neutrino is a lone misfit, might be no Brookhaven National Lab in New York second experiment, MiniBooNE, which ran at more puzzling. measured a quantum property of Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois, from 2002 to 2017. Unlike its siblings, though, which interact the particle known as its magnetic Either the experiments were both plagued via the weak nuclear force, the sterile neutrino moment and found that it exceeded by the same design flaw, or something deeper would only feel the pull of gravity. This idea theoretical predictions. This could was going on. “The LSND/MiniBooNE anomaly was proposed in 1958 by Italian nuclear have been a statistical fluke, but we is a genuine mystery,” says Raymond Volkas at physicist Bruno Pontecorvo, as a way to allow will have a better idea once more the University of Melbourne. neutrinos to morph into antineutrinos. But sensitive experiments start collecting Another set of confounding results comes the sterility of his proposed particle meant it data in February next year. from radioactive decays within nuclear would be almost impossible to detect. Interest Meanwhile, experiments at the reactors. Much like within the sun, these rapidly waned, until the anomalies revived it. Large Hadron Collider near Geneva decays are a strong source of neutrinos. For The logic goes that MiniBooNE and LSND have also seen muons behaving some unexplained reason, though, nuclear saw more electron neutrinos than predicted oddly. Decays of particles known as reactors on Earth appear to produce about because of all the extra sterile neutrinos that B-mesons should produce muons 6 per cent fewer electron antineutrinos than decayed into this kind. And the reason the in roughly the same quantities as the standard model predicts. reactor experiments saw all those electron electrons, but the detectors are So: too many electron antineutrinos being neutrinos go missing was because they had spotting far fewer than expected. produced on the one hand, and not enough on decayed into their sterile counterpart. Genius! This raises interesting parallels Summoning the sterile neutrino into with the fact that muon neutrinos existence could exorcise a number of other don’t disappear as often as electron problems as well. Neutrino masses are tiny, neutrinos do (see main story), a major The generation game over a million times smaller than for the next problem for neutrino physics. The two The standard model classiies elementary matter lightest particle, the electron. The reason anomalies could be connected, says particles into three generations. The sterile neutrino for this gap is unknown, but a heavier fourth Sabine Hossenfelder, a theoretical would be the irst sign of new physics neutrino could offer a solution. Via a process physicist at the Frankfurt Institute known as the seesaw mechanism, its for Advanced Studies in Germany. FERMIONS increased mass would drive the masses of the “You get the impression we are LEPTONS QUARKS others down, like toddlers going up and down missing something here, but no one on a seesaw. Charge 0 Charge –1 Charge –⅓ Charge +⅔ has a clear idea just what we are The same particles have also been proposed missing,” she says. “It’s as frustrating ELECTRON ELECTRON DOWN UP NEUTRINO as a plausible candidate for dark matter, the as exciting.” e d u mysterious stuff known to make up 27 per ie cent of the universe. Others say sterile neutrinos could also solve the question of why MUON MUON STRANGE CHARM antimatter, produced in equal quantities to NEUTRINO matter at the start of the universe, has now all + s c but vanished. If so, “three puzzles of modern MATTER i+ physics would find their explanation within one theory,” says Oleg Ruchayskiy at the TAU TAU BOTTOM TOP University of Copenhagen in Denmark. NEUTRINO b t Alas, nothing involving the neutrino is i o ever simple. o For each experiment suggesting hints of a sterile neutrino, there is another offering STERILE NEUTRINO evidence that it does not exist. The most INCREASING emphatic is the universe itself – the present- is MASS day arrangement of stars and galaxies, and the faint surviving echoes of the big bang.
34 | NewScientist | 24 November 2018 Sterile neutrinos are even ghostlier than the regular kind, which took 26 years to detect
Karol Lang, spokesperson for the MINOS/ MINOS+ collaboration, says the team has been in contact with Louis and others while auditing and dissecting its results to better explain the underlying trends, and the resulting constraints on the sterile neutrino. So where do things stand? If the results from both MiniBooNE and MINOS+ survive further scrutiny, then a sterile neutrino on its own is just not going to cut it. We need something else to help explain why the same particle causes both muon and electron neutrinos to appear, but only electron neutrinos to vanish. Some models invent a new force that could resolve the discrepancy. Or perhaps, says Conrad, we don’t need to invent anything beyond the standard model. “It might be nuclear physics – we really don’t understand nuclear effects that well,” she says. When experiments like MiniBooNE search for neutrino oscillations, the nature of the oscillation depends on the energy of the neutrinos observed at the detector. But neutrinos can interact with other particles on
MAXIMILIEM BRICE/CERN their way, changing their energy. We assume most neutrinos are interacting with free If sterile neutrinos had existed throughout based at Fermilab. Over the 10 years it and neutrons in atomic nuclei, but some neutrinos the universe’s history, says Volkas, then their its predecessor have been running, muon can hit a neutron-proton pair instead, and presence would have caused the cosmos to neutrinos have steadfastly refused to vanish. this changes the amount of energy they have. look different than it currently does. This places severe limits on what any potential Conrad says we don’t fully understand this What’s more, the reactor anomaly has sterile neutrino may look like, if it even exists. effect yet, so our analyses could make it look recently been called into question. Several For all the stakes hammered through like there are oscillations when there aren’t. experiments now under way have put neutrino the sterile neutrino’s heart, it still keeps If this is the case, we might not need a sterile detectors closer to the nuclear reactors lumbering on. Conrad says that experiments neutrino at all, just an improved calculation. than before, allowing for a more accurate that conform to our expectations, like However, says Conrad, such effects could measurement of electron antineutrino MINOS+, historically receive less scrutiny than be working in the other direction, shielding disappearance. Although the statistical analysis those like LSND and MiniBooNE, which show a sterile neutrino signal that would otherwise of the data is not yet sufficiently advanced to signals we were not expecting. “Limits always be much stronger. This could be enough to say anything for certain, preliminary results get a lot less scrutiny than anomalies.” rescue the sterile neutrino from its deathbed, suggest the anomaly might have disappeared. she says. MiniBooNE’s latest results, released earlier While theorists develop ever more exotic this year, muddied the waters still further: Ghostbusters ideas about what could be out there, they showed a larger anomaly than before. This time, however, someone has stepped up experimentalists will keep on searching. Some hailed this as strong evidence for the to do the scrutinising. Bill Louis, a physicist at Using detectors around the world, from existence of this hypothetical particle. But if Fermilab, combed through the results from Russia to the UK and even under the Antarctic a sterile neutrino exists, then muon neutrinos MINOS+ and how the team analysed them. ice, they hope to place ever tighter bounds shouldn’t just transform into electron “The MINOS+ collaboration has worked on the disappearance of muon and electron neutrinos on their way to a detector – some very hard on the data analysis,” says Louis, neutrinos, as well as the rate at which one should disappear as well. who stresses the quality of the experiment turns into the other. Yet muon neutrino disappearance has and the complexity of the mathematics Whether these experiments wind up never been seen. “The recent strengthening involved. That being said, he believes that discounting previous results or backing them of the MiniBooNE anomaly actually makes errors in the data may have been overlooked, up is yet to be seen, but it is an exciting time. the situation worse, because the stronger leading the team to rule out disappearances Volkas believes current experiments could appearance signal implies a stronger with greater certainty than is warranted. provide a definitive answer to these questions disappearance signal as well,” says Volkas. The most recent paper from MINOS+ has within the next few years. If Louis’ hunch is During the 15 years MiniBooNE was ticking been awaiting publication since October last right, the zombie particle could rise from the away, physicists set up a number of smaller year, held up because of issues including those grave once again. ■ experiments to probe for this disappearance raised by Louis, says Conrad. “Bill only touches explicitly. One of the biggest is called MINOS+, on about half the obvious problems,” she says. Abigail Beall is a writer based in Leeds, UK
24 November 2018 | NewScientist | 35 ACCESS ALL AREAS
An audacious plan to make research freely available could transform science as we know it, says Graham Lawton
S SCIENTIFIC wagers go, Lenny through the music industry. Napster and its costs £4574. Access to a single research paper Teytelman’s isn’t up there with the many imitators were in the business of music is likely to set you back £30 or more. Agreats. It doesn’t have the celebrity piracy. Their technology allowed people to This all adds up to a very lucrative business. appeal of Stephen Hawking’s bet on black holes access play lists on each other’s computers, In 2013, academic publishing generated global or the intrigue of the wager between Christof making almost any song freely available to revenues of $25.2 billion. Profit margins are Koch and David Chalmers on consciousness. anyone with an internet connection. The reported to be between 30 and 40 per cent: But the outcome will, arguably, have greater industry rightly regarded this as a criminal, the figure is hard to verify, although not impact than any of them. In February last existential threat, and sued Napster. The site disputed by the industry’s leading trade body, year, Teytelman bet $100 that, by 1 January was shut down in 2001. However, it is credited the International Association of Scientific, 2030, all biomedical research will be published with forcing the industry to rethink its Technical and Medical Publishers. Indeed, last in open-access journals. In other words, it business model, first by embracing legal year Elsevier, the world’s largest academic will be freely available to read as soon as it digital download stores such as iTunes and publisher, reported a profit margin of nearly is in print. No subscription, no paywall, no eventually subscription-based streaming 37 per cent, amounting to £913 million. In restrictions – ever. services such as Spotify. other words, academic publishing is one of This may sound like the beginning of a Today, scholarly publishing is facing its the most profitable businesses in the world. tedious story of interest only to academics and own Napster in the shape of a website called It is also one of the most controversial, publishers. I suspected so too when I started Sci-Hub, which lets anybody download almost because it is built on privatising assets created looking into it, but I soon discovered I was any academic paper free of charge. And there by public money and free labour. Here’s how wrong. The battle over scientific publishing is is an awful lot of research out there: according it works. Research funders receive taxpayers’ a tale of big money, piracy, hacking, infighting, to a recent estimate, it runs to 2.5 million money, which they dole out to scientists, fake news and free speech. At stake is the papers each year, and rising. Most are who then submit their findings to journals soul of science itself. And after bubbling away published by traditional publishing houses in an attempt to get them published. If a for 20 years, it is about to boil over, with and available, legally, only with a subscription subscription journal accepts a paper (usually unpredictable consequences for all of us. or on payment of a one-off fee. Neither option on the recommendation of peer reviewers To understand what is going on, it is helpful is cheap. For instance, an annual subscription who aren’t paid for their work), it publishes to hark back to the late 1990s, when a notorious to Biochimica et Biophysica Acta – required and then charges people to read it. Taxpayers website called Napster was spreading panic reading for biochemists and biophysicists – often pick up these charges too, for example >
36 | NewScientist | 24 November 2018 EMILIANO PONZI
24 November 2018 | NewScientist | 37 when a university library buys a subscription. That is if they can afford to. Many universities, even in the US, lack the resources to buy all THE MANY FACES the journals that scientists need to keep up OF OPENNESS with their field, says Teytelman. “It’s an absurd situation.” Under open-access publishing anyone Sci-Hub was set up in 2011 as a direct can read a research paper free of (although illegal) challenge to the status quo. charge. However, open access takes Since then, its founder, Kazakhstani graduate a variety of forms. student, hacker and activist Alexandra Elbakyan, has begged, borrowed and stolen GOLD: Articles are published in online millions of paywalled research papers. open-access journals. Authors pay the Sci-Hub’s technology isn’t the same as processing costs and retain copyright. Napster’s, but its effect is. The site claims to have 70 million papers in its repository, and PLATINUM: Like gold but article growing. Accessing them is simple: you just processing costs are met by a third input the web address or digital identifier of party, such as a philanthropic body. the paper you want. Both are easy to discover. According to Elbakyan, last year there were DIAMOND: Like gold but without 150 million downloads, with users in China article processing costs; the and India leading the way. publication work is done by Sci-Hub has been playing legal cat-and- volunteers. mouse as the academic publishing industry tries to take it down. Elsevier and the publishing powerhouses such as Sage, Wiley GREEN: Articles are published in a American Chemical Society have won and Springer Nature. Veteran publishers are paywalled journal but authors are lawsuits against it. Elbakyan is in hiding to increasingly “flipping” their business models permitted to deposit a copy in an open avoid extradition. And, of course, Sci-Hub from subscription to open access, or at least a online repository. isn’t an alternative to the traditional way mixture of both. of publishing research because it doesn’t What is more, many open-access publishers HYBRID: Articles are published in a produce any papers itself. Nevertheless, like make a decent living – not from subscriptions paywalled journal but authors pay a Napster before, it may be the catalyst that and paywalls, but by charging authors a fee fee to lift the paywall for everybody. changes how an industry works. to publish their papers. The highly respected In fact, a small group of Davids began PLoS Biology, for example, charges $3000. DELAYED: Articles are behind a fighting the Goliaths of academic publishing “Nobody is arguing that publishing should be paywall for an embargo period of two decades ago. They argue that the free. It does cost a lot, and you need a source between 6 and 12 months and then traditional, subscription model undermines of revenue to cover the expenses,” says the journal makes them freely one of the accepted norms of science: Teytelman, who is CEO of protocols.io, an available. openness. Scientific progress depends on open-access repository of experimental methods in life science. On the other hand, the LIBRE: Articles are published under a “ Everyone agrees that aim isn’t to make big profits and, in fact, both creative commons licence so they are flipping to open access is PLoS and eLife registered losses in their most free to read and even reprint, provided recent financial reports. In addition, although they are republished under creative the right thing to do” open-access journals still rely on unpaid peer commons. reviewers, many academics see this as part of open communication, so research shouldn’t their duty and they feel less exploited working be locked behind paywalls. They have shed for open-access publishers. blood, sweat and tears to invent a new way of Admittedly, some scientists are wary of this publishing openly while still covering the cost. model too, arguing that high publication fees “Open access” comes in various forms (see create inequalities. “That removes barriers for “The many faces of openness”, left) but they reading, but creates barriers for publishing,” all have one thing in common: a paper can be says Lynn Kamerlin, a biochemist at Uppsala read for free by anyone, anywhere. University in Sweden. She leads a growing From small beginnings in the 1990s, campaign group that supports open science open-access publishing has grown into a in principle but has concerns about it in thriving industry. The Directory of Open practice. “Getting published should be about Access Journals lists more than 12,000 quality, the quality of your research, not the size of peer-reviewed journals from 62 publishers, your wallet,” she says. Some open-access including pioneers such as the Public Library of publishers make a living by publishing large Science (PLoS) and eLife, as well as traditional volumes of mediocre papers and that should
38 | NewScientist | 24 November 2018 Human progress depends on discoveries made has said it will implement the plan. Two more in the lab getting out into the world European funders have also joined and, according to Schiltz, there is interest from “please God make me good, but not just yet”? many of Science Europe’s 29 other members When I put this to McKay, he replied that what and from research funders worldwide. may look like stalling is actually an attempt This looks potentially transformative. to engineer an “orderly transition”. There are “It took nearly 20 years to get one funder to risks associated with flipping to open access, commit to immediate open access – the Gates he says, not least preserving the integrity and Foundation – so to suddenly get 12 more is continuity of the scholarly record. That will quite an outcome,” says Teytelman. “I’m sure not be aided if the transition is badly executed the other bodies will join.” or journals go bust. “I don’t see any real What if they don’t, though? This worry is disagreement over whether open access is a one reason the plan hasn’t been met with good thing or a bad thing – the key differences universal acclaim. If funders in the US and are over how we get from A to B,” says McKay. Asia won’t follow suit, that would create The latest bid to break the logjam came in disadvantages for European researchers by early September, when a group of 12 European locking their work out of prestigious journals research funders delivered what they hope such as Nature and Science. Some members will be a decisive shock to the system: as of of Science Europe may also demur, leading to 1 January 2020, any research they pay for the Balkanisation of the European research must be published in an open-access journal. landscape. But, if that happens, the journals
MONTY RAKUSEN/GETTY MONTY Subscription publishing will be totally stand to lose too, and cOAlition S is gambling banned, including in hybrid journals, but that the publishers will blink first. “This is concern us all, she adds. “We’re living in a beyond that the details are negotiable. “We do basically a line in the sand saying, if you don’t world where we have a big problem with not advocate any particular open publication flip to open access you’re going to lose the fake news. There are problems in academic model. The research communities can take output from our grantees. And if you reject publishing, but we do have systems of checks over and design publication models that fit top research you cannot be a top journal, your and balances and gatekeepers on how their needs best,” says Marc Schiltz, president impact factor will slide, your brand will be information is disseminated.” of Science Europe – an umbrella organisation damaged,” says Teytelman. of science funders, including the group of Not everyone is convinced. Kamerlin and 12 that signed up to the move. her campaign group dislike the ban on hybrid Free for all The group calls itself cOAlition S, where publishing, which they say will exclude them Advocates of open access point out that these OA stands for open access and S for “science, from some of the most prestigious journals in journals have essentially the same quality speed, solution, shock”, according to Schiltz. their fields, and so restrict academic equality controls as traditional ones, including “It was a working title and it kind of stuck,” he and freedom. She is also nervous about the reputation and impact factors, which measure adds. Between them, they control more than assumption that research communities will how frequently the average paper is cited in a €18 billion of annual research funding. And come up with new models to make this work. year. But there is another problem with open the coalition is growing. The Wellcome Trust “It’s a shove into the unknown,” she says. access, as they see it. The original ambition But perhaps a shove is what is needed. was to totally replace traditional publishing, Everyone, whatever their position, agrees that and that is far from happening. “Most research Printing money flipping to open access is the right thing to do. is still published in subscription journals,” Like many traditional academic publishers, the The benefits will go far beyond science and says Teytelman. In 2016, just 15 per cent of RELX Group’s scientiic publishing arm Elsevier publishing. “Most people are not researchers, journals were pure open access; 38 per cent rakes in money and has big proit margins but they care about things like advances in were pure toll access. Most of the rest were 2500 40 medicine and technology. And a lot of public “hybrid” journals: subscription journals that Prot margin policies depend on evidence that is turned up will also publish papers as open access, for by researchers,” says Peter Suber of Harvard 2000 a fee. This hybrid model is the bugbear of 30 University, a leading expert on open-access openness purists who argue that it gives publishing. “Open access helps researchers do traditional publishers two bites of the cherry, 1500 their work, and so helps the benefits that flow so no incentive to fully embrace open access. Revenue from research.” 20 Perhaps surprisingly, traditional publishers Teytelman agrees: “At this point, coming 1000 cent Per are quick to profess admiration for open out and saying that subscription publishing access. “We are highly supportive of all forms is good for society is a bit like saying smoking 10 of sustainable open access,” says Matt McKay (millions) sterling Pounds 500 is good for you.” of the International Association of Scientific, Prot I know who I’m rooting for to win $100. Q Technical and Medical Publishers. “We’re 0 0 Graham Lawton is a staff feature writer at aiming for as much open access as possible.” 2005 2010 2015 So why hasn’t it happened? Is it a case of SOURCE: www.relx.com/investors/results/archive New Scientist
24 November 2018 | NewScientist | 39 INTERVIEW The plant whisperer
It’s not just animals that can learn, adapt and remember – Monica Gagliano has coaxed the same behaviour from plants, she tells Joshua Howgego
ONICA GAGLIANO was diving on senses. The more we have looked, the The sentient abilities Australia’s Great Barrier Reef one day more we have realised that they have of plants fascinate Min 2008 when she had an epiphany. a suite of behaviours. Monica Gagliano She was carrying out ecological experiments on reef fish that required her to kill them What kinds of abilities do they have? afterwards to harvest tissue samples. The fish One that might come as a surprise is their had been swimming in and out of her hands acoustic abilities. Plenty of organisms for weeks. But that day they seemed to be have mechanoreceptors that respond to hiding – almost as if they knew. mechanical forces, and we now know plants It was the moment at which Gagliano have one that can pick up vibrations. Some decided not only never to kill another animal can even “hear” the vibrations of a caterpillar for scientific purposes, but also to devote her munching their leaves and strike back by research time to the sentience of other life emitting repellent chemicals. forms. That led her to plants. Since no models existed for studying their behaviour, she You say plants can learn. Why do you think that? applied her existing knowledge. “I looked My idea was to take something that plants at them as if they were my animals,” says might consider a threat and see whether they Gagliano, who is due to take up a post at the could learn not to bother about it. Mimosa was University of Sydney this year. The approach a good plant to use because it quickly folds up has revealed that plants have a surprising its leaves when it feels threatened. I created a range of abilities – and Gagliano is convinced set-up that allowed me to drop a mimosa from she will discover more. about 15 centimetres high. It sounds terrible! But it actually wasn’t. I put it in a pot and it People often think plants don’t do much. would slide down a bar onto some foam. wrong words. But “learning” is exactly what Are they wrong? The first couple of times, the plant was like, I mean. Whether it is an animal, a plant or The main reason we don’t appreciate them “What’s happening?” It closed up its leaves. bacteria, if it ticks the boxes that we agree is that they operate at a different pace. It Usually with animals we need to do lots of define learning, then that is what it is doing. isn’t just a slower pace. Some plants are too repetitions before they learn what’s going fast for us, like the ones that explode to fire on. So I was quite surprised that some of my Does this go beyond the most basic learning? out their seeds. Plants also have a different plants started reopening their leaves after The next level up is Pavlovian learning. In the way of manoeuvring in the environment. two to six drops. famous example of Pavlov’s dogs, the dog Animals move from A to B, but plants grow learns that the bell always comes before from A to B. They need to detect as much as How did other researchers react when you dinner. I tried it with pea plants. The plant’s possible beforehand to avoid growing in the said that plants are good learners? “dinner” was light and the “bell” was a little wrong place, so they have very fine-tuned Plant biologists told me that I’m using the fan. I tested the fan first and the plant couldn’t
40 | NewScientist | 24 November 2018 last – not just sometimes, 100 per cent of the time. So, if 60 per cent go the other way, that is a high proportion.
You used the word “remember”. Are you saying plants have memories? Memory is intrinsic to learning. And by the way, the pea wasn’t the first to show that plants have memory. In the mimosa drop experiment, I left my plants for almost a month and then went back to repeat the experiment. The plants responded exactly as if the last drop had been 5 minutes before.
If plants have memories, where are they stored? The neat thing about plants, and the thing that makes them challenging for us to understand, is that they are totally decentralised. That means memories won’t be in a specific place like the leaves or the roots. The plant functions as a total brain, if we want to put it that way. Our memories are stored in the brain, in patterns of electrochemical activity. Plants “Plant memories are decentralised – the whole plant is a total brain”
are masters of electrochemical signalling. A lot of electricity and a lot of chemical signals are running through plants. They have the same kind of channels that power our own cells’ electrical signalling and very similar chemicals are involved.
Could we ever see such signals? If this were an animal, we would challenge it with a task and monitor what is occurring at the electrochemical level. We can plug a human into a machine and see how brain activity changes when they view happy or sad pictures, for example. I am planning to try something similar in plants soon. FRANCES ANDRIJICH/ANDRIJICH.COM.AU Why have we been so slow to appreciate care less about it. It was a meaningless cue, light was the day before; plants are good at plant abilities? just as the bell was for the dog. remembering where they saw light. But would We assume that humans are the golden I put the peas in Y-shaped chambers that, it learn to go against its instinct and follow the template: anything that operates as we do gets once the plants have grown to a certain height, fan, which is a precursor of where the light is a big tick. But that assumption is proving quite forced them to grow either left or right. I let going to be? That is exactly what the peas did. bad for the environment. It is also a hypothesis the fan blow down one arm of the chamber that doesn’t hold because the evidence is then followed it with light. I did the same for How could you tell that plants weren’t just showing that the brain isn’t the only thing to two more days, each day changing the side the choosing randomly which way to go? produce learning. Plants are revealing that. ■ fan and light came from. Around 60 per cent of the peas grew towards On the fourth day, I turned on the fan, but the fan on the fourth day. That might appear Joshua Howgego is a features editor at New Scientist. not the light. The instinctual response would not much more than random, but normally Thus Spoke the Plant, by Monica Gagliano, has just be for the plant to grow towards the side where plants always go towards where they saw light been published (North Atlantic Books)
24 November 2018 | NewScientist | 41 CULTURE
Poles apart
We love heroic explorers, but there are richer stories to be found, says Alun Anderson
North Pole: Nature and culture by let us add context. Helpfully, exploration – the exhibition destinations, but also to deliver Michael Bravo, Reaktion Books; Kristian London’s National Maritime succeeds magnificently. And stories with mass appeal. This Gerhard Jebsen Gallery: Polar Worlds, Museum has recently opened you can gaze into the eyes of the inevitably shaped their psyche. National Maritime Museum, London a Polar Worlds gallery, which heroes, portrayed in oil paintings. Bravo tells of David Buchan, provides a straightforward However, to explore what the commander of the 1818 North Pole AT THE start of his book, Michael history of polar exploration. North Pole “means”, we must expedition, who was so busy Bravo promises to “treat the There are plenty of heroes, from return to Bravo. There is a link: “being pummelled by the brutal mysterious power and allure of Martin Frobisher, who sailed to in one exhibit of quotes from and crushing force of the polar the North Pole in a way you will the Arctic in the 16th century, to polar diaries, a sailor complains ice pack” he made the ultimate not have seen before”. William Parry and George Nares, mistake of not writing his journal. It is a promise he fulfils in North who tried and failed to reach the “ Explorers faced pressure He lost support from his backers Pole, a narrative that avoids the North Pole in the 19th century. not just to reach their and vanished from history. usual histories of exploration. Then there are the very famous – destinations, but to deliver We also learn more about His mission is to chart the layers Scott and Shackleton in stories with mass appeal” the real Peary. He cultivated a of meaning that the pole has Antarctica, and Franklin – who nationalistic, masculine image to accumulated in our minds and all died on their expeditions. of having to take snapshots of feed “an audience hungry for tales that motivates the explorers And finally, the American Robert icebergs “on the sly” because the of heroic purity and suffering”, who try to reach it. He asks: Peary, who claimed to have crew signed away rights to record writes Bravo. Peary wrapped “Why has the North Pole reached the North Pole in 1909. the expedition. That, the diarist himself in the Stars and Stripes, mattered, and to whom?” Thanks to its treasure trove continues, is so the leaders can scattering strips cut from the flag Before considering his answers, of objects – sledges, telescopes, “spin their tales without being as he neared the pole “as a ritual mittens, chronometers, snow contradicted by the sailors”. act of territorial possession”. Polar Worlds shows equipment goggles and much more that tell Explorers faced tremendous Like the other explorers, Peary used by the great explorers the stories of 500 years of pressure not just to reach their saw the “epic voyages of classical heroes as their ancestry and inheritance”, identifying with Hercules in his fight to reach “the summit of the world”. All the great explorers were visionaries, but were they gifted or self- deluded, Bravo asks. Certainly, explorers inherited a long history of obsessions about the pole’s cosmic significance. In the 16th century, new maps provided a fresh world view, looking down on the pole to show Earth in relation to the heavenly spheres. Peter Apian, from Saxony, printed a string of bestsellers. His Speculum cosmographicum of 1524 even came with a paper wheel that could be used to track the sun’s path once mounted on the map. At its centre, holding Earth and the universe together, was the North Pole. This view of the pole made it a fertile ground on which to site
IMAGE COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL MARITIME NATIONAL CASSON AND THE COURTESYIMAGE OF MUSEUM ©HUFTON+CROW MANN. lost Edens, spirit worlds and
42 | NewScientist | 24 November 2018 For more books and arts coverage, visit newscientist.com/culture DON’T MISS
imaginary utopias. The most extraordinary is that envisioned Read by proto-feminist Margaret Iconic investment In The Autobiography of a Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle. Transgender Scientist, Ben Barres In her 1666 novel, she is propelled Simon Ings explores the Victoria and Albert recaps a stellar scientific career and through the pole into an his gender equality advocacy. It was alternative world where power Museum’s ambitious plans for east London after transitioning to a man that he is “gendered female not male”. realised how differently male and Bravo paints other pictures of female scientists are treated. the pole. Its allure is seemingly lost on the Inuit. Their vast Listen network of trails takes them The inaugural meeting of the Mars around the Arctic’s rim, and the Society’s London chapter will be constellations that guide them lie at RocketSpace on 26 November. just above the horizon, where sled Among the speakers will be Robert drivers can see them. The Pole Zubrin, a founder of the society. Star above is of little use and the concept of “north” is foreign to Visit them, he writes. Artist and “private ear” Lawrence Among the explorers, we find Abu Hamdan interviewed former different visions of the pole, too. Syrian prisoners for a human rights My hero, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, probe. They could only provide sonic lived with Inuit. After Peary’s evidence as they were kept in the “victory”, Bravo writes that he dark or blindfolded. In Earwitness asked, “What if the North Pole Theatre at Chisenhale Gallery, were celebrated for the values and London, to 9 December, Abu Hamdan
way of life found in the Arctic NINETY90 O’DONNELL+TUOMEY, examines the politics of listening. itself, rather than by images of conquering the environment?”. THE director of London’s Victoria The plans for V&A East include Listen Stefansson mapped a new “pole and Albert Museum, Tristram a museum due to open in 2023 Alastair Hay, an environmental of inaccessibility” so much farther Hunt, has recently revealed toxicologist at the University of out from land that no Western dramatic plans to expand into the Faced with global troubles and Leeds, UK, is Jim Al-Khalili’s guest on conqueror could lay out enough Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in a fourth industrial revolution, BBC Radio 4’s The Life Scientific on supply depots to reach it. For east London. The development science, art and design are 27 November at 9 am. He will talk him, only hunters who lived in will comprise a five-floor rejoining forces, Hunt argued, about eliminating chemical weapons. harmony with the Arctic could museum and the relocation of to deal with “problems we can arrive there. Sadly, his utopian the V&A’s research and storage only address by working on them Visit view was shattered when the facility to the nearby Here East together”. Collaboration between This is your last chance to see nuclear submarine Nautilus building, once part of the Olympic nations and across disciplines Deconstructing Patterns (pictured) passed below his pole in 1958. Games complex. was, agreed the Smithsonian’s at London’s Francis Crick Institute, Bravo notes the comment by its Announcing the plans, Hunt secretary, David Skorton, “sorely which ends on 1 December, with its master:“Who cared? We were called the development a “cultural needed in the world right now”. riveting science-art collaborations safe, warm, and comfortable.” sourcebook”, rather underselling Meanwhile, the V&A’s storage examining microscopic phenomena. The Arctic may have been such a colossal logistical and and research facility is also a conquered by technology, but architectural undertaking. The big headline. Architects Diller the values of Stefansson and US’s Smithsonian Institution Scofidio + Renfro plan to remove Peary are still in opposition. will join forces with the V&A to part of the Here East building, The North Pole hasn’t become a provide around a quarter of the creating a kind of panopticon cartographical dot – it remains new site’s attractions, when it from which the public can view a sacred place for adventurers. opens in 2023. the museum’s vast and closely Bravo has written a rich and It is a significant moment for packed holdings. Even the main insightful book about our ideas the US behemoth (which boasts gallery’s floor will be transparent, of the pole. Although his focus is 19 museums, 21 libraries, nine allowing for some vertiginous the North Pole, it left me thinking research centres and a zoo). inspection of treasures below. about the stories we all tell V&A East will be its first overseas Hunt and Skorton are right: ourselves in our everyday lives. ■ outpost, and will make some of collaborations are needed. The the Smithsonian’s scientific V&A’s plan proves they can also Alun Anderson is an editor emeritus collection available outside the be expensive, ambitious and
of New Scientist US for the first time. very pretty indeed. ■ IMAGES TAYLOR/GETTY JACK
24 November 2018 | NewScientist | 43 CULTURE
The drugs may work…
Medical use of hallucinogens is controversial. But a hit show runs with it, finds Rowan Hooper
trial uses pills to put subjects into episode, Annie is a wood elf in 2013, there is anecdotal evidence Maniac, Netflix, written by Patrick a deep dream state, then monitors a Lord of the Rings world. Seeing that even a single dose of ibogaine Somerville and directed by Cary Joji and guides their dreams using a Emma Stone with pointed ears can reduce cravings for heroin Fukunaga supercomputer – programmed playing a world-weary elf with and other drugs. Despite its illegal MANIAC, a Netflix 10-part series, to develop empathy – to try to rid a booze problem and a British status and the so far unverified is like an epic dream where you get them of a few demons. There is accent is one of many highlights. claims made for it, the drug is to inhabit very different personas evidence that dreams may partly Maniac is fantasy, of course, but used in guided, hallucinatory and go on wild adventures. But serve to process emotionally real-world psychedelic drugs are therapy in many countries. fun dreams can have a deeply powerful experiences, so this being used to treat psychological Other trials have shown personal and disturbing edge. So is a solid start. disorders. Psychoactive medicine promising results for the use of it is for Maniac: it is really about a What follows is basically a has a long history, but perhaps psychoactive drugs such as LSD method – more pharmacological sequence of extended dreams or psilocybin to treat depression, than psychiatric – of exploring in which, mysteriously, Owen “ It is good that the show and there is evidence that they memory, sadness and trauma. and Annie meet up and have takes seriously the idea can lead to personality changes. It’s the latest in a line of recent adventures. Director Cary Joji that psychedelics have Recent research also shows that shows and films – from Westworld Fukunaga and writer Patrick a role in medicine” psychedelic drugs can help the to Inside Out to Inception, that Somerville have obviously had a brain form new connections. draw heavily on science to bolster lot of fun, and Stone in particular the drug most relevant to Maniac is not a vehicle their narrative foundations. relishes the actor’s dream of Maniac is ibogaine. A highly aimed at promoting the use The show is set in an uncanny playing many different roles. psychoactive chemical derived of psychedelic drugs to treat valley, 21st-century New York. In one adventure, set in the from the central African mental health issues: it is a Robots trundle along sidewalks 1980s, Owen and Annie are a rainforest shrub Tabernanthe clever and thoughtful piece of scooping up dog mess, but people married couple trying to rescue a iboga, ibogaine is illegal in most entertainment. But I applaud it use dot-matrix printers and captured lemur. In another, they countries, although it has been for taking seriously the idea that monochrome monitor displays are con artists attending a 1940s used in some clinical trials. psychedelics have a role to play from the 1980s. New York harbour seance. In the most spliffed-out As reported in New Scientist in in medicine. ■ is dominated by a huge, winged Statue of Extra Liberty, and Blade Runner-style neon ads can be seen through apartment windows. Our heroes are Owen Milgrim (Jonah Hill), who is the depressed, neglected, possibly schizophrenic fifth son of a wealthy Manhattan family, and Annie Landsberg (Emma Stone), a penniless young woman who can’t move on from a terrible family tragedy. In an attempt to rid themselves of their psychological baggage, they sign up for a drug trial at the sinister Neberdine Pharmaceutical Biotech and their paths cross. There is more than a hint of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind here. But rather than simply erase memories, the Neberdine
Actors Jonah Hill and Emma Stone
have fun dumping their baggage NETFLIX/ SHORT MICHELE K.
44 | NewScientist | 24 November 2018
New Senior posts in the NSHS 7KHVHDUHQHZVHQLRUSRVWVLQWKH1DWLRQDO6FKRRORI+HDOWKFDUH6FLHQFHDQGH[FLWLQJRSSRUWXQLWLHVWRWDNHDQDWLRQDO leadership role in leading the STP and HSST Programme for NHS healthcare scientists. These two posts are for a senior highly visible national lead for STP and HSST training who will ensure that the SURJUDPPHLVDEOHWRFRQWLQXHWRGHOLYHUIXWXUHVHQLRU1+6VFLHQWLVWVZLWKWKHQHFHVVDU\VFLHQWLÀFFOLQLFDOPDQDJHULDO and leadership competencies. 1. Training Programme Director 2. Training Programme Director for the Higher Specialist Scientist for Scientist Training Programme Training (HSST) Programme (STP) Band 8c (£59,090-71,243) t Band 8c (£59,090-71,243) t You will have relevant experience and skills gained by You will be educated to Masters level in an appropriate working in a Healthcare Science discipline within an VFLHQFH DSRVWJUDGXDWHTXDOLÀFDWLRQLQVSHFLDOLVHG NHS organisation for a number of years. You must be VFLHQWLÀFÀHOGGRFWRUDWHRUHTXLYDOHQW HJ able to demonstrate an appreciation of the day to day SURIHVVLRQDOGRFWRUDWH)5&3DWK LVGHVLUDEOHEXWQRW working and challenges faced by senior trainee HVVHQWLDO(YLGHQFHRISRVWTXDOLI\LQJDQG&3'LV scientists working in the NHS; and have experience of essential as is registration as a clinical scientist with contributing to STP and/or HSST training. the HCPC. You will be educated to doctoral level or have )RUERWKWKHVHSRVLWLRQV\ou will need to ensure the equivalent experience and learning in a relevant maintenance of appropriate professional standards and VFLHQWLÀFVXEMHFW(YLGHQFHRISRVWTXDOLI\LQJDQG the professional reputation of the school. continuing professional development is essential as is registration as a clinical scientist with the HCPC. 3OHDVHUHIHUWRRXUZHEVLWHIRUDSSOLFDWLRQIRUPDQGMREGHVFULSWLRQhttps://www.jobs.nhs.uk
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ANALYTICAL TEAM LEADER ANALYTICAL SCIENTIST We have an opportunity for Analytical Team Leader to We are also looking to recruit an Analytical Scientist to join a coach, mentor and lead a team of motivated scientists team of motivated R&D scientists and play a vital role in within R&D and play a vital, laboratory-based role in delivering our pipeline activities. delivering our promising pipeline. KEY RESPONSIBILITIES KEY RESPONSIBILITIES Provide a range of analytical support to project teams You will provide strong leadership and people management Contribute towards development and optimisation of skills to the team to ensure project deliverables are met. analytical test methods You will also: Analyse samples to support characterization of various starting materials, intermediates, APIs and drug products Oversee analytical method development, validation and Provide technical expertise on a range of analytical tech. transfer activities techniques (e.g. HPLC/UPLC, GC-MS and other Provide the technical expertise on a range of analytical spectroscopic techniques) techniques (e.g. HPLC/UPLC, LC & GC-MS and other Troubleshoot and maintain equipment, and participate in spectroscopic systems) LQVWUXPHQWTXDOLÀFDWLRQ Mentor direct reports to develop and maximise individual Author and review technical documents and team performance Coach and mentor less experienced colleagues as required Lead by example, demonstrating the highest levels of Exhibit strong teamworking and communication skills professionalism and accountability, underpinned by a positive attitude ROLE REQUIREMENTS Continuously review existing processes, challenge ‘the norm’ and provide input into process improvements 0LQLPXPRIDKLJKHUOHYHOVFLHQWLÀFGHJUHHLGHDOO\ZLWK Support regulatory submissions and keep abreast of relevant work experience in the Pharmaceutical Industry. relevant ICH guidelines and trends in the pharmaceutical Alternatively, you will possess an analytical/chemistry/ industry forensic sciences PhD Experience of analytical method development. ROLE REQUIREMENTS A track record of delivering to deadlines, proactivity and 0LQLPXPRIDKLJKHUOHYHOVFLHQWLÀFGHJUHHDQGLQGHSWK problem-solving skills experience in the pharmaceutical industry, including deep Experience of working expertise in analytical chemistry collaboratively with Skilled in developing methods for a variety of product chemists, formulation types and an understanding of the analytical method scientists, regulatory, requirements at the different stages of product quality and production development colleagues is Proven experience in line management and staff an advantage development A track record of delivering to deadlines, proactivity, taking accountability and a desire to use own initiative to improve existing processes Experience of working collaboratively with chemists, formulation scientists, regulatory, quality and production colleagues is an advantage
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48 | NewScientist | 24 November 2018 newscientistjobs.com
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24 November 2018 | NewScientist | 49 newscientistjobs.com We are HIRING Gresham Professor of Astronomy New Scientist is the world’s leading weekly science and Applications are invited for the position of the Gresham technology magazine. We currently have three vacancies in Professor of Astronomy (or other physical sciences). Gresham Professors must be able to communicate with our award-winning editorial team. All three roles will be a public audience who will not normally have specialist EDVHGLQRXUKHDGRIĆFHLQ&RYHQW*DUGHQ/RQGRQ expertise in the subject area, but who will be informed people with a thirst for increased knowledge and understanding. The College offers free public lectures, Head of Production which are live-streamed and archived on the Internet. The appointment is part-time from 1 August 2019 and normally for This is a senior role within editorial, reporting to the editor, and three years. Gresham Professors present six one-hour lectures each working across all platforms to ensure the seamless publishing of academic year. Attendance at Academic Board meetings four times New Scientist in all its print and digital iterations and across all per year and some social events is also expected. The College pays three of its key territories: the UK, the US and Australia. an annual stipend of £7,000 (plus reasonable expenses) and encourages applications from all backgrounds and communities. The successful applicant will run a small team of production staff, and also take overall responsibility for the magazine’s relationships Opportunities may also be available for a number of part-time Visiting with its printing and paper suppliers in all territories, as well as all Professorships, tenable from August 2019 for a period of 1-2 years. external contractors which assist with its online activities. Further information is available on the Gresham website at: www.gresham.ac.uk/vacancies/astronomy As we move further into the digital sphere, digital innovation and Informal discussion may take place with the Academic Registrar, evolution will become an increasingly large part of this role, and Dr M. Clare Loughlin-Chow, Gresham College, Barnard’s Inn Hall, will involve working closely with the editor, art editor and chief Holborn, London EC1N 2HH Telephone 020 7831 0575, [email protected] WHFKQRORJ\RIĆFHUDVZHOODVWKHFRPPHUFLDODQGPDUNHWLQJWHDPV The closing date is 9:00 am Monday 14 January 2019 Interviews To apply, please visit jobs.newscientist.com. Ref code: NSHOP will be held in London on 4 February 2019
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50 | NewScientist | 24 November 2018 Faculty Position in Human Cellular Genetics
The Wellcome Sanger Institute is seeking an early/mid-career stage scientist to join its Core Faculty to lead a research team in Human Cellular Genetics. Positions JHYY`HZPNUPÄJHU[JVYLWHJRHNLVMZHSHYPLZHUKZ\WWVY[IHJRLKI`YL^HYKPUNHUK ÅL_PISLLTWSV`TLU[[LYTZPUJS\KPUNL_JLSSLU[ILULÄ[ZHUKYLSVJH[PVUZ\WWVY[ 6\YL_JLW[PVUHSJVYLM\UKPUNLUHISLZMHJ\S[`[VMVJ\Z[OLPYLULYN`VUZJPLUJL
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Closing date for applications: 30th November 2018. Interviews will be held in January 2019. LETTERS [email protected] @newscientist newscientist
EDITOR’S PICK Gravity wave Science Center; also software and researchers respond tutorial links are found there. Causes of tipping points in risk perception In our article in Physical Review From David Shoemaker, Letters on GW150914, Figure 1 trader, Mohamed Bouazizi, set himself LIGO Scientific Collaboration demonstrated the clear presence alight to protest corruption and spokesperson, Boston, of a signal compatible with his inability to make a living – and Massachusetts, US, and Jo van general relativity in LIGO data. triggered the Arab Spring. Sympathy den Brand, Virgo spokesperson, Small correlations in “residuals” for refugees to Europe rose after Amsterdam, The Netherlands are not indicative of a lack of publication of a photo of a Turkish The LIGO and Virgo collaborations signal. A wealth of peer-reviewed police officer holding a drowned wish to give our perspective on papers cited in that article provide child by the Mediterranean. The TV what we see as inaccurate claims many answers to questions raised programme Blue Planet II alerted us to about the robustness and in your article. Those interested the damage plastic does to the oceans transparency of our research in a in how the “glitch” was removed and wildlife, and with an earlier media recent article by Michael Brooks from the data for event GW170817 campaign built support for such (3 November, p 28). can read our Science Summary for measures as the EU plastic bag charge. We did contact Andrew the paper on it. From Hillary Shaw, At every possible tipping point, Jackson’s team both before and We are preparing a paper for Newport, Shropshire, UK vested interests quickly try to dampen after the posting of their article peer review that explains the Bryn Glover wonders what causes things down. on the event labelled “GW150914”, approaches the LIGO/Virgo switches in perception such as that Will there be a trigger for climate and had extensive email and collaboration uses. over smoking (Letters, 10 November). change that overcomes this? I fear it in-person exchanges with them. Science thrives on scepticism Tipping points in risk perception are will instead take a prolonged heatwave LIGO signal data are in fact and a desire to understand deeply not unlike triggers that set off with high humidity in a large south available to all. The time series how a result has been obtained. revolutions. It may be a single event Asian city, causing heat-stress deaths from all LIGO’s signals are posted We welcome efforts to further or news report. One Tunisian market maybe in the millions. on the Gravitational Wave Open replicate and extend the work
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52 | NewScientist | 24 November 2018 “ One imagines that people on those planets once had a vote to be better off on their own” Jennie Kermode responds to our report of the discovery of two new rogue planets that do not orbit stars (17 November, p 19) we have done in interpreting to life expectancy (r = 0.3782). electricity used was generated as the effect a row of very tall the gravitational-wave data, and Furthermore, I found a stronger from gas and coal, while 69 per trees has on the wind. In the case are continually working to make correlation between wealth – GDP cent came from wind and nuclear. of trees, the wind will create our data and tools even more per capita – and life expectancy The car provides information on movement of the branches and accessible. The Virgo and LIGO (r = 0.4036). Both are relatively energy use, helping me to drive leaves, and possibly the roots in laboratory and collaboration low correlations, given that a more economically. Its limited the ground. These movements leaders endorse this letter. direct correlation is r = 1. range makes me plan journeys will emit a small amount of heat, I conclude that economic more carefully: can I combine which will be released into the Wealth, education and empowerment is a stronger factor several errands into one journey? atmosphere. Downwind of the lifespan in Africa than educational empowerment I am not changing the world trees, the speed of the wind will be when determining life expectancy here. But I am making a small reduced, so that any loss of energy From Mariam Al Khalifa, in Africa. step forward. from the ground to the air will be Manama, Bahrain reduced. Do these two processes Debora MacKenzie reports Using my electric car Consider a wind farm cancel each other out? a finding based on data from is a small step forward as a sort of forest… In the case of the turbines, 174 countries that more education because there is little friction in is what makes people live longer, From Robin Shipp, Bristol, UK From Greg Nuttgens, the system, most of the wind’s not more money (28 April, p 12). I accept that electric cars are a Porthcawl, Glamorgan, UK energy will be converted into I used this as a springboard for cause of carbon emissions, as Sean Confrey raises some the movement of the blades and a school maths assignment. Tom Watts points out (Letters, interesting questions about wind thus into electricity. There will I calculated the correlation 29 September). But I note that farms and their possible effects on be a reduction in wind speed of wealth, education and life the UK’s national grid averages the weather (Letters, 3 November). downwind of the turbines, but expectancy, using data only for suppliers across the country. While it must be true that any I imagine this would be small. Africa. I found that education – While my Nissan Leaf was on obstruction to the wind will have One of the great advantages of measured by the literacy rate for charge between 2 am and 4 am an effect, such effects must surely using wind, tide or solar power is over-15s – had a low correlation this morning, 31 per cent of the be very small, on the same order surely that there is an >
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24 November 2018 | NewScientist | 53 LETTERS [email protected] @newscientist newscientist
abundance of energy in these set out by William Lane Craig. bursts of radio-frequency energy entrance. There will never be a sources, and that we only need to The person on the street will detected in space (27 October, p 8). scenario in which we can declare use a fraction of what is available often say “How else have we got Surely these emissions travel at there is no alien life. All we can to satisfy all of our energy needs. here?”. Ball isn’t correct to refer the same speed as any other conclude is: there is no other life, the argument to theologians or electromagnetic energy? or we haven’t found it. Explaining origins as the to deny this is a cause of belief. Better terms would be: brief common people do it radio burst (BRB) or short radio Excessive hours are a Stable and unstable burst (SRB.) An appropriate failure of economies From Peter Scott, locations in space adjective starting with “F” would Bolton, Lancashire, UK preserve the acronym, but a From Richard Mellish, Philip Ball says Stephen Hawking From Eric Kvaalen, quick – or, better, a brief – search London, UK told us that God is all about Les Essarts-le-Roi, France found nothing suitable. Michael Cook complains, rightly, explaining the origin of the You say the Earth-moon system about games developers working universe and responds that has a set of five gravitational The extraterrestrial hunt excessive hours (27 October, p 24). no theologian ever did this balance points, where the is a never-ending story He notes that the economist John (20 October, p 44). As a former gravitational forces from Earth Maynard Keynes predicted that Christian who regularly debates and the moon balance out, and From David McKenzie, automation would lead to shorter such things with theists, it seems that objects can get trapped in Summerhill, Tasmania, Australia working weeks and this hasn’t to me that Ball is out of touch these regions, called Lagrange Douglas Heaven says our hunt come to pass. and struggling with the reality points (3 November, p 8). You for alien life is far from over The problem is by no means of at least part of the argument. could have made it clearer that (6 October, p 15). The frustration confined to the technology Hawking is referring to common objects cannot get trapped in three felt at the absence of alien life sector. Those in employment are people’s views. out of the five, which are unstable. detection thus far needs expected to work long hours while Cosmological arguments for tempering by a thought not others are unemployed. That is a the existence of deities hold that What kind of radio mentioned. The writer Arthur clear failure of current economic whatever begins to exist has a bursts are these? C. Clarke is reported to have systems. Notably, total working cause; the universe began to exist, observed that “we are either alone hours per year vary considerably therefore the universe has a cause. From Ray Vickers, in the universe, or we are not”. between countries, even those Like other first-cause arguments, Ipswich, Queensland, Australia We can have a definitive answer with generally similar economies. they are used by apologists As a radio-communication on whether there is life out there around the world, of all theistic engineer, I am surprised at the only if we detect transmissions Electrical repairs put me faiths. Many now quote the choice of the term “fast radio from an exoplanet – or if someone in a trance-like state “Kalam cosmological argument” burst” (FRB) for the mysterious travels here and makes a dramatic From Sarah Brocklehurst, Maidstone, Kent, UK Michael Marshall thought he was weird experiencing autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) while watching towel- folding (3 November, p 35). In a life spent in laboratories, I used to get exactly that tingle when engineers came to fix or service any piece of electrical equipment. I would find myself in a trance-like state that was quite hard to shake off. Even the Bosch engineer working on the washing machine at home could induce it.
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54 | NewScientist | 24 November 2018 CROSSWORD Set by Wingding
Cryptic crossword No1
This is the first New Scientist cryptic crossword. Let us know what you think at [email protected]. Answers and the next quick crossword from Richard Smyth will appear in the 8 December issue
ACROSS 7 Boyfriend goes around ancient 15 Extremely likely measure of city to find office (6) speed in body fluid (5) 8 Augmented reality in medicine? 16 Hot drink unfinished on southern It’s poisonous (6) sites for 2 (7) ALL THE BIG IDEAS, 9 Mediterranean island half 18 Dog eats heads of any other destroyed for marine animal (4) mammal (3,5) 10 Extended greeting on outdated 19 Writer repeated: “it gets passed SIMPLY EXPLAINED broadcasting technology (4,4) around” (4) 11 Teddy dreaming of mathematical 21 Soft metal produced from rum law (7) and ice (6) 13 Soldiers chasing article have 22 Fruit, a type of berry containing a brain wave (5) nitrogen (6)
DOWN 1 Seed pod’s raised edge (4) 6 Hypothetical particle resembles 2 Homo primates evolved before old lady embracing godfather (8) first sapiens – a major 12 Spooner’s elf-like tugger has transformation (13) allergy (3,5) 3 Headless seabirds caught by 14 Pens put resistance in sea fishing equipment? There’s creatures (7) nothing in it (4,3) 17 Units of matter switched ends 4 Smell of sulphur and small for opening (5) change (5) 20 Birds make sound of gardening 5 Doping agent found in the wrong tools (4) hotel room, somehow (6,7)
Answers to Quick crossword No24
ACROSS: 5 KATRINA, 9 KERATIN, 10 ELEMENT, 11 LIMONITE, 12 ISOGON, 14 TELEPHOTO, Available now wherever books are sold. 17 FOSSA, 18 PAULI, 20 EMPHYSEMA, 23 RIBOSE, 24 MARGULIS, 28 GALILEO, 29 SYNAPSE, 30 ENCRYPT, 31 SYSTEMS. DOWN: 1 INKBLOT, 2 STROMAL, 3 ACTIN, 4 ERNST, 5 KEEL, 6 TSETSE FLY, 7 ICE AGES, 8 ANTENNA, 13 LOOP, 15 PRIESTLEY, 16 ONES, 18 PERIGEE, 19 UMBILIC, 21 ECLIPSE, 22 ABSCESS, 25 APSIS, 26 GENUS, 27/1A LOST IN SPACE
24 November 2018 | NewScientist | 55 FEEDBACK For more feedback, visit newscientist.com/feedback
for Big Chinese Tech”, “Amazon is ANOTHER bright idea: Volkart Recalling 1 Trillion Jobs” and the Wildermuth sends news of an open question: “Should I Pay My exciting development in the Workers?” Harmonie lamp, which claims Others sound like practical to be “specifically designed to advice and explainers we really enhance brightness and to would like to read, such as “How minimize at the same time to Make a New Tax Law for Your electromagnetic light rays, which Boss”, and the enigmatic “5 Ways occur in most conventional LED to Trump on Chipotle Industry is lamps and are harmful”. the Random Wedding”. It is true that most lamps produce electromagnetic rays – MORE slipping standards: “In your you might say it was the item on a gas tax increase in New distinguishing feature of a lamp. Zealand, you write ‘assuming a Though their only health risk to mileage of 10 kilometres per litre’,” our knowledge is allowing you says Robert Wills (29 September). to stay up all night reading when “Surely that should be kilometrage? you should be asleep. Or is there some quantum blue whale “I hope the people behind conversion that I missed?” Harmonie lamp will tackle global warming next,” says Volkart,
PAUL MCDEVITT FRUITLOOPERY abounds in all “enhancing power output at sorts of places, as Brian Darvell the same time as minimising discovered while he queued in that dangerous electricity.” NOT for the first time in Paris, a cabal Catching our standard London bus his local pharmacy. There he of plotters has dethroned a king. ought to be easier, and less legally spotted a box of Revitale Deeply This time, however, the coup is troublesome. Given their habit of Absorbent Nose Strips, which bloodless: Le Grand K, a 1-kilogram coming in threes, we can also promised “each cleansing strip lump of platinum-iridium alloy kept distribute these to aid scientists (or has a unique magnetic system, in a vault outside Paris, is no longer is that journalists?) the world over. seeking out unwanted blackheads the canonical weight from which all The passengers, however, might be and unclogging pores”. others are derived. upset to find themselves in Timbuktu Who knew skin blemishes were From now on, scientists will define instead of Tooting. magnetic? Having already paused the kilogram based on the Planck Finally, standardising an area the to apply fridge magnets to our constant, making Le Grand K little size of Wales ought to be easy, as face, Feedback reads on to find more than a paperweight. there is only one Wales, and no matter that the strips are powered by This got Feedback thinking: what size it is, it is always the size of “natural charcoal extract”. isn’t it time we standardised our Wales. Who said science was difficult? However, says Brian, the own favourite units of measurement? ingredients list not charcoal but THE Irish Aviation Authority is That is easier said than done, FAKE news! AI researcher Janelle carbon black, a delightful material investigating an unidentified flying given that removing blue whales from Shane, who previously gave us AI- synthesised from smouldering object spotted by three pilots in the the ocean, even in the interests of generated April fool’s pranks, fed coal tar, and used mostly to make early hours earlier this month. “We science, is frowned upon these days. 8500 headlines drawn from the tyres more robust. saw a bright light and it then just What’s more, Le Grand K was kept pages of CNN Business into an “I would not be inclined to put disappeared at a very high speed,” inside a trio of nested, vacuum sealed algorithm that imitates text. that on my face, or anywhere,” said one perplexed pilot. bell jars, and only removed once every The results aren’t particularly says Brian. Not so fast, says Aliens? Astronomer Apostolos 40 years for calibration and a bit of believable, but they do tell us Feedback: a magnetic carbon Christou had a more prosaic light dusting. That sort of timescale something about the world of black adhesive patch could make explanation. “It was most likely what isn’t likely to challenge the lifespan business. Many of the fake an excellent puncture repair kit. are commonly called shooting stars,” of a blue whale — hereon referred to headlines allude to companies he told BBC News. “It must have been as Le Grand B — but where will we behaving badly, such as “Coca- READERS may recall Feedback’s quite a large piece of material… the find a set of jars big enough? Cola is Scanning Your Messages discussion of a font that makes size of a walnut or an apple.” writing unforgettable, and our proposed opposite (27 October). Signage in a public bathroom warns Giuseppe “Surely the typeface used for You can send stories to Feedback by Sallazzo that a running tap “wastes the equivalent election manifestos has the unique email at [email protected]. property of causing those who write Please include your home address. weight of 250 penguins or £22 a day”. But what’s them to forget the contents?” says This week’s and past Feedbacks can that in blue whales? Brian Reffin Smith. be seen on our website.
56 | NewScientist | 24 November 2018 THE LAST WORD Last words past and present at newscientist.com/lastword
One for the eggheads coating slowly wears off and the Watery trails portion of water remains in egg becomes more porous. The about the same place relative to I like hard-boiled eggs. When I peel carbon dioxide dissipates and the Ferries and other craft crossing each other. And although wind one, the shell and underlying pH increases to around 9.2. At this Sydney Harbour naturally leave a may cause the surface water to membrane sometimes separate pH, the inner membrane doesn’t distinct wake, signified by trails of a flow in a particular direction, cleanly from the albumen, leaving a stick as much to the albumen so lighter colour than the surrounding it doesn’t normally cause a lot perfectly smooth white egg. At other the shell peels off more easily. water. These sometimes persist for of mixing. times the shell, membrane and first Jo Watson more than 30 minutes after the craft Eric Kvaalen layer of the albumen all stick together Tadley, Hampshire, UK has passed through, and the surface Les Essarts-le-Roi, France and are impossible to separate, so I takes on an appearance reminiscent end up with a pitted mess. Why the Q If you want to find out how of ski trails through virgin snow. How Q Sydney Harbour is nearly difference? Is it something to do with old your eggs are, put them in a can this be so on a body of water that surrounded by land. Its complex the egg itself, the way I cook it, or the bowl of water. Fresh eggs will is in constant, albeit gentle, motion? shoreline damps currents, wind way I leave it to cool afterwards? sink on their sides (too fresh for and waves, leaving vertical hard-boiling), older eggs will sink Q The wake has two main oscillations that do little to Q The reason some eggs are at a tilted or in an upright position components: the bow wave that scramble anything writ in water. difficult to peel is because they (perfect for hard-boiling). Eggs spreads out at an angle behind the Other factors help trails persist. are too fresh. The shells of such that are too stale to use will float. boat and turbulence created by In clean water, bubbles soon eggs are always difficult to Katherine Miller the craft and its propellers, which escape, but pollutants that are remove cleanly. Those a few days Toronto, Canada produces eddies or swirls in the distressingly common in such older are much easier. This is all water. These eddies have angular areas weaken the bubbles’ surface down to how the chemistry of the Q I have a method for peeling momentum that is slow to tension. The shearing action of albumen, or egg white, changes eggs that works well even if they dissipate, so the disturbance high-speed propellers can then over time. This is also why, if you are very fresh. Run cold water into lingers and is visible for some split bubbles so finely that some ever try to make meringue with the pan to cool the egg, then crack time after the boat has passed. become microscopic and remain fresh egg whites, they won’t easily it round its middle. With spoon Ships don’t just mark their submerged long after the boat has whisk up and become thick. Use and egg in the water, lever up a paths on the water, but in the air passed. The frothiness of these older egg whites for them. section of shell using the tip of the too. Their routes can be traced small bubbles scatters light, Jackie Jones spoon. Slide the spoon into the by a phenomenon similar to giving a pale cast to boat trails. Brighton, East Sussex, UK crack between the white and the aircraft contrails (condensation Jon Richfield membrane, and rotate it around trails). Known as ship trails, Somerset West, South Africa Q This only happens with very these are strings of cloud induced fresh eggs. We have chickens and “ Ships don’t just mark their by particulate pollution from are familiar with this problem. paths on the water. Their the exhaust fumes of boats This week’s question It is the same whether the egg is routes can be traced by (24 February, p 24). hard or soft-boiled. contrails in the clouds too” David Muir THE SOUND OF VINYL The albumen of fresh eggs is Edinburgh, UK We often hear from enthusiasts more acidic, and this makes it the egg making sure both egg that analogue vinyl audio sounds stick to the inner shell membrane and spoon stay wet. Q The trails persist because better and fuller than that of more strongly. Fresh egg white You should then be able to there isn’t much mixing of the digital systems. If this is a real has a pH between 7.6 and 7.9 and remove the half shell intact. Do disturbed water in the wake difference, why isn’t the digital a cloudy appearance due to the the same with the other half. This by wind and waves. Water gets signal tweaked to mimic the presence of dissolved carbon works even for soft-boiled eggs. stretched a bit in one direction characteristics of a vinyl disc? dioxide, which is a weak acid. David Newton and compressed in another when Andrew Brooker As the egg ages, the shell’s outer Ipswich, Suffolk, UK deformed by waves, but each Dursley, Gloucestershire, UK
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