APPY TALK It’s never too late to learn another language WHO’S IN THE MIRROR? How it feels to have someone else’s face COSMIC BRUISE Glimpse of another universe? WEEKLY October 31 - November 6, 2015

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CONTENTS Volume 228 No 3045 This issue online newscientist.com/issue/3045

News Leader 5 Tech is closing language gaps, 8 with results we can’t predict Cosmic bruise News 6 UPFRONT Evidence we got 23andMe returns with new genetic test. bashed by another TB now world’s leading cause of death. universe? Flying through a Saturn moon plume 8 THIS WEEK Rosetta finds oxygen on comet 67P. Anaesthesia blunts emotional memories. Self-sacrificing cells use DNA as weapon. Bumblebees deliver pesticides. Asthma

RUDI SEBASTIAN/PLAINPICTURERUDI drug rejuvenates brains. Dark matter may blow up stars 10 SPECIAL REPORT On the cover The plan to make meat without animals 16 IN BRIEF 40 Appy talk Neighbouring planet could be an illusion. 31 Learn another language King penguins face longer swims for food 28 Who’s in the mirror? Seeds of How it feels to have Technology revolution someone else’s face 8 Cosmic bruise 20 Your career is in the hands of recruitment AI. How civilization Glimpse of other universe? Ball bots to monitor underwater world took root all over 20 Computer says no the world AI is running your career Aperture 36 Trust no one 24 The extraordinary beauty of snails Laws of physics keep secrets safe from hackers Cover image Opinion Tim McDonagh 26 No more red pen! Rachael Jolley says China must come clean on its deadly air pollution 26 Unhealthy stealth Trust in medical tech Features depends on openness, says John Ioannidis 27 One minute with… Chris Henstridge My brain collection may help us thrive in old age 40 28 Behind my new face Carmen Blandin Tarleton on life after a face transplant Appy talk Features It’s never too late 31 Seeds of revolution (see above left) to learn another 36 Trust no one Laws of physics keep your language secrets safe from hackers 40 Appy talk It’s never too late to learn another language

CultureLab GONÇALO VIANA GONÇALO 44 Worlds remade A tale of the search for the ultimate algorithm dodges the big questions 45 Winning ways Can science win book prizes Coming next week… only if it dons other clothes? Entangled universe The quantum origins of space-time Regulars 52 LETTERS Morality needs more thought Therapist in your pocket 56 FEEDBACK Rotting apples with your mind The apps people are turning to for support 57 THE LAST WORD Perfect perch

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SUBSCRIPTION SERVICE For our latest subscription offers, visit newscientist.com/subscribe Customer and subscription services are Deconstructing Babel also available by: Telephone 1-888-822-3242 Email [email protected] Tech is closing language gaps, with results we can’t predict Web newscientist.com/subscribe Mail New Scientist, PO Box 3806, WHY does humanity speak so Many constructed languages years ago, Google’s question Chesterfield, MO 63006-9953 USA many languages? Our ancestors were created in the hope that a “Translate this page?” seemed One year subscription (51 issues) $154 decided it must be the result of linguistically unified humanity more hopeful than helpful. But CONTACTS divine intervention: when the would become socially unified, torrents of data have changed all Contact us newscientist.com/contact people of Babel decided to build too. Another, Lojban, is designed that: the latest version of Android Who’s who a tower to the heavens, God on the basis of logic, enabling will translate typed messages on newscientist.com/people “confused” their tongues to any person to communicate with the fly. Audio is not far behind: General & media enquiries [email protected] scupper work on their hubristic any other without ambiguity – Skype already offers real-time Editorial project. or perhaps even talk to a machine. translation for some language Tel 781 734 8770 Today, we think languages Talking to machines turns out pairs. You might not yet trust any [email protected] [email protected] “speciate” much as organisms do. to be key to demolishing language of these with literature or legal [email protected] Biological speciation is a complex barriers, although not in the way papers – but that day is coming. Picture desk process with many disparate Lojban’s founders might have Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1268 How such services will affect Display advertising triggers; languages, too, may split the evolution of language remains Tel 781 734 8770 for reasons ranging from genetic “ You might not trust today’s to be seen. Linguists are in despair [email protected] mutations to changes in the machine translation with at the rapid extinction of minority Recruitment advertising Tel 781 734 8770 environment. Some celebrate this literature or legal papers – languages; could automated [email protected] diversity, but others wonder what but that day is coming” translation actually shelter them Newsstand Tel 212 237 7987 humanity might achieve if united from competition with English Distributed by Time/Warner Retail by a common language. In an imagined. Smartphone apps, or Mandarin? The internet has Sales and Marketing, 260 Cherry Hill Road, Parsippany, NJ 07054 obscure sequel to the biblical tale, it seems, can sometimes succeed already helped far-flung speakers Syndication Fénius Farsaid, legendary patriarch where correspondence courses of rare tongues find each other. Tribune Content Agency of the Irish people, directed 72 wise and evening classes so often fail: But the interplay of language Tel 800 637 4082 men to spend a decade studying in teaching adults a new language. and culture is complex, to say © 2015 Reed Business Babel’s confused tongues before This success is in part due to the least, and we should be wary Information Ltd, England. reintegrating them into a single apps’ tireless capacity for tuition, of potential homogenisation. New Scientist ISSN 0262 4079 is published weekly except for the last perfect language: Gaelic. but it’s also because their design Still, there are plenty of week in December by Reed Business Gaelic has yet to catch on as a is informed by an improved reasons to hope that automated Information Ltd, England. global lingua franca, but there are understanding of how adults translation will help humanity New Scientist (Online) ISSN 2059 5387 New Scientist at Reed Business plenty of other candidates, most learn – and how this differs from reach new heights. Fittingly, Information, c/o Schnell Publishing Co. famously Esperanto, devised by children’s apparently effortless one such app was created to Inc., 225 Wyman Street, Waltham, MA 02451. Polish linguist Ludwik Zamenhof language acquisition (see page improve communication at Periodicals postage paid at in the late 19th century. Although 40). Whether adult learners will CERN, a multinational consortium Boston, MA and other mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes its fans claim that 2 million people share any of the cognitive benefits probing the secrets of creation. to New Scientist, PO Box 3806, have learned it, it cannot be said kids get from bilingualism (5 May A better analogue to the tower Chesterfield, MO 63006-9953, USA. Registered at the Post Office as a to have caught on: Klingon could, 2012, p 30) remains to be seen. of Babel is hard to imagine. newspaper and printed in USA by Fry by some measures, be seen as But learning languages at all And perhaps this time the story Communications Inc, Mechanicsburg, PA 17055 much more successful. may fast be becoming passé. Five will end differently. ■

31 October 2015 | NewScientist | 5 UPFRONT

Quake hits Afghanistan

A MAGNITUDE-7.5 quake that struck to be the remnants of a former north-east Afghanistan on Monday subducting piece of Earth’s crust that has killed at least 311 people and is burrowing beneath another piece, injured 1500. says Gavin Hayes of the USGS. “Deep The final death toll could reach quakes [in north-east Afghanistan] XINHUA NEWS AGENCY/REX SHUTTERSTOCK NEWS AGENCY/REX XINHUA 1000, according to the US Geological represent rupture within the core of Survey. “Communications appear to the subducted ‘slab’.” have gone down in the worst-affected By contrast, the Nepal quake was areas, so it will be some time before on a much shallower and more active we know the full impact,” says Ilan plate boundary and was related to Kelman of University College London. the release of strain at a plate The depth and nature of the quake boundary. Such quakes have the means there should be fewer deaths potential to be much larger and more than when an earthquake hit Nepal in damaging than the deep slab events April, killing 8000 people. As well as seen in Afghanistan, says Hayes. being a lower magnitude, the source of Reaching and helping casualties the Afghan quake was 200 kilometres could be tricky, says John McCloskey below the surface, whereas the Nepal of the University of Ulster, UK. “In one was just 8 km down. this region, the topography is very The great depth stems from the steep, so landslides are likely to pose near-vertical dipping of slabs thought a particular threat.” –Up to 1000 people may have died–

Climate sidetracked a year by 2020 to help them limit No let-up on TB 1.5 million people in 2014. The their emissions and adapt to death toll for HIV was 1.2 million. SHOW us the money. Negotiators extreme weather. They expect WE HAVE made great strides Last month, the UN set new at last week’s UN climate talks in government-to-government aid. against tuberculosis, but much is global development targets – Bonn, Germany, spent most of But the developed world says still to do. Although infection rates which include ending the global their time talking about finance. most of the money will be private- are down, TB ranks alongside HIV TB epidemic by 2030. This will By the end of the talks – the last sector investment, especially in as the leading cause of death from be a massive challenge, requiring before the showdown on a climate renewable energy. The US chief infectious disease. five times the current rate of climate negotiator told the US This year marks the deadline decline in TB cases. “No one is better placed to Senate last week that “no one is for the Millennium Development “[With] the lack of funding, and win big in the multi-trillion better positioned to win big in the Goal of cutting the number of the fact you can count the number dollar low carbon energy multi-trillion dollar 21st century TB cases globally, set in 2000 by of good TB research facilities on future than the US” market for low-carbon energy the UN. The World Health one hand, I think the idea that we innovation than the United States.” Organization’s annual report on can get rid of this disease in a few treaty expected at the UN climate That’s not what developing the disease, out this week, says the decades is unlikely,” says Ian summit in Paris in December – countries had in mind – and goal has been reached. Even so, Orme at Colorado State University some 150 governments had made could halt a deal in Paris. TB remains a major threat, killing in Fort Collins. pledges to cut or moderate growth in their greenhouse gas emissions Patricia’s close call after 2020. Hold-outs included oil-producing Gulf states such as PHEW! Mexico had a close shave Saudi Arabia. But even so, analysts this week with the strongest say the pledges put the world on hurricane ever to develop in NASA/REX SHUTTERSTOCK a path to halt global warming at the East Pacific. Patricia broke 2.7 °C – higher than the agreed records, reaching wind speeds safe rise of just 2 °C. of 354 kilometres per hour and a Whether those voluntary pressure low of just 880 millibars. pledges form part of a wider It made landfall on the west treaty now hangs on wrangling coast, where a catastrophe was over money. Developing nations widely expected. But luckily this say their price for a deal is the category 5 hurricane hit sparsely fulfilment of promises from rich populated mountainous areas nations to stump up $100 billion –A disaster in the making– and quickly ran out of steam. Its

6 | NewScientist | 31 October 2015 For new stories every day, visit newscientist.com/news 60 SECONDS

remnants brought more rain to Enceladus sampled instruments can’t detect life Mission beyond Pluto the south-east US and contributed directly, but can measure levels Engage thrusters! NASA’s New to flooding in Texas and along the DRINK up. If all went to plan, we of hydrogen in the plumes. Horizons spacecraft, which flew by Gulf coast. will have just got our best taste That, in turn, should give us Pluto this year, is now manoeuvring The trigger for this monster is yet of the salty sea under Saturn’s clues as to what conditions exist towards its next target. The probe is thought to be this year’s strong moon Enceladus. at potentially habitable vents on lining up to reach 2014 MU69, a small El Niño. “There’s a strong link On Wednesday, NASA’s Cassini the sea floor. Kuiper belt object beyond Pluto, in between this event and El Niño,” spacecraft was due to descend On Earth, simple microbial 2019, but the spacecraft team still says Julian Heming, who works to within 49 kilometres of the ecosystems thrive in the warmth needs funding to ensure it gets there. on predicting tropical cyclones surface, making its lowest pass of hydrothermal vents, where for the UK’s Met Office. “Ocean ever through the plume of ice and they can produce energy by Defying death temperatures across the East vapour erupting from the moon. metabolising hydrogen released Pacific have been well above Although the craft will have by the vents. Something similar It’s a good time to be alive. Between average and atmospheric spent only tenths of a second could be occurring on Enceladus. 1969 and 2013, death rates in the conditions have been conducive within the plume, it should “You could perhaps have very US have fallen by 43 per cent, to to the development of intense have been able to fingerprint diverse kinds of life there,” says 730 deaths per 100,000 citizens tropical cyclones.” simple organic molecules from Linda Spilker at the Jet Propulsion a year. Deaths from stroke or heart More could be on the way. the underground ocean. Its Lab in Pasadena, California. attack have plummeted by 77 and 68 per cent, which could be down to reduced smoking and better blood pressure control (JAMA, Genetic test is back Lion king’s Africa rule in jeopardy DOI: 10.1001/jama.2015.12319). WHAT are the odds of that? IS THE lion king being dethroned? from more than 200,000 a century 23andMe is relaunching its direct- Almost all large populations in ago. The main reasons for the decline Superhot Hajj to-consumer genetic tests – now West and Central Africa are declining, are habitat loss, the depletion of Will the Hajj pilgrimage be a victim of with official approval. and may halve within 20 years. prey through hunting, and conflict global warming? Parts of the Middle In 2013, the company was The situation is similar in East Africa. with people who perceive lions as a East, including the Muslim holy banned from selling a genetic But there is a glimmer of hope: threat to their livestock, says Bauer. places around Mecca, could become test kit that provided customers lion populations in southern Africa But in Botswana, Namibia, South uninhabitable even for the young with information about their are stable or increasing. This means Africa and Zimbabwe, where most and fit before the century is out, risk of developing 254 conditions, it might be possible to reverse the lions live in fenced reserves that are according to the latest climate including breast cancer and heart overall downward trend, says Hans heavily managed, lion populations modelling (Nature Climate Change, disease. The US Food and Drug Bauer of the University of Oxford’s have been growing. doi.org/8qs). Administration (FDA) said the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit. Bauer believes that such artificial company hadn’t proved that it Bauer and his colleagues analysed management should be combined Home for longer had clinically validated its tests existing information on populations with more traditional conservation A drug usually given to people for their intended uses. across Africa, identifying declines efforts to ensure lion survival in with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s Last week, 23andMe announced in much of the continent. They then a more natural environment. disease could allow people in the that it will resume selling a used this to model future trends “We know what we need to do to more advanced stages to live in their genetic health testing kit, for (PNAS, doi.org/8qr). save the lions,” Bauer says, but there homes for longer. A study of 295 a smaller number of diseases. Estimates suggest there are about is a lack of resources and political will. people found that taking donepezil Each test has been FDA approved. 20,000 lions left in the wild – down “What we need is implementation.” made a person half as likely to move The kit, which costs $199, will into a care home within the next provide customers with data year. But the effect fell away in based on “carrier information” subsequent years (The Lancet about genetic mutations that Neurology, doi.org/8qq). could lead to diseases – such as cystic fibrosis – in offspring. Dung shortage hits One concern about the previous kit was that the results didn’t Extinctions and the decline of large reflect the effect of environmental mammal populations have deprived influences on many of the Earth’s ecosystems of fertilisation diseases. Such effects don’t tend CREATIVE GEOGRAPHIC JOHNS/NATIONAL CHRIS from their dung and decomposing to matter for the conditions bodies. Without their travels across included in the new test package. vast distances, the capacity to The company is, for now, spread nutrients around the globe refraining from testing for high- has plummeted to 6 per cent of its risk genetic mutations related to former level (PNAS, doi.org/8qv). breast cancer or Alzheimer’s. –Where is everybody?–

31 October 2015 | NewScientist | 7 THIS WEEK

A brush with a universe next door Could cosmic bright spots reveal the multiverse, asks Joshua Sokol

THE curtain at the edge of the universe seem to be so exquisitely universe may be rippling, hinting tuned to allow for galaxies, stars, that there’s more backstage. planets and life (see “Just right for Data from the European Space life?”, right). Agency’s Planck telescope Sadly, if they do exist, other could be giving us our first bubbles are nigh on impossible glimpse of another universe, to learn about. With the space with different physics, bumping between them and us always up against our own. expanding, light is too slow to That’s the tentative conclusion carry any information between of an analysis by Ranga-Ram different regions. “They could Chary, a researcher at Planck’s never even know about each other’s existence,” says Matthew “ If two bubbles started out Johnson of York University in close enough that they Toronto, Canada. “It sounds like touched, they could leave a fun idea but it seems like there’s an imprint on each other” no way to test it.”

US data centre in California. Armed with Planck’s painstaking Bubble trouble map of the cosmic microwave However, if two bubbles started background (CMB) – light out close enough that they lingering from the hot, soupy touched before expanding state of the early universe – space pushed them apart forever, Chary revealed an eerie glow they could leave an imprint on that could be due to matter each other. “You need to get from a neighbouring universe lucky,” Johnson says. leaking into ours. In 2007, Johnson and his PhD This sort of collision should be adviser proposed that these possible, according to modern clashing bubbles might show up cosmological theories that as circular bruises on the CMB. suggest the universe we see is just They were looking for cosmic one bubble among many. Such a dance partners that resembled multiverse may be a consequence our own universe, but with more of cosmic inflation, the widely of everything. That would make accepted idea that the early a collision appear as a bright, universe expanded exponentially hot ring of photons. in the slimmest fraction of a By 2011, they were able to

second after the big bang. SEBASTIAN/PLAINPICTURERUDI –A gentle nudge– search for them in data from Once it starts, inflation never NASA’s WMAP probe, the quite stops, so a multitude of place to place, so some regions own spin on physics. The matter precursor to Planck. But they universes becomes nearly would eventually settle down and in some bubbles – the boring came up empty-handed. inevitable. “I would say most stop expanding at such a manic ones – would fly apart within Now Chary thinks he may versions of inflation in fact lead pace. But the spots where 10-40 seconds of their creation. have spotted a different signature to eternal inflation, producing a inflation is going gangbusters Others would be full of particles of a clash with a foreign universe. number of pocket universes,” says would spawn inflating universes. and rules similar to ours, or even “There are two approaches, Alan Guth of the Massachusetts And even areas within these new exactly like ours. In the multiverse looking for different classes of Institute of Technology, an bubbles could balloon into pocket of eternal inflation, everything pocket universes,” Johnson says. architect of the theory. universes themselves. that can happen has happened – “They’re hunting for lions, and Energy hidden in empty space Like compositions on the same and will probably happen again. we’re hunting for polar bears.” drives inflation, and the amount theme, each universe produced That notion could explain why Instead of looking at the CMB that’s around could vary from this way would be likely to have its the physical constants of our itself, Chary subtracted a model

8 | NewScientist | 31 October 2015 In this section ■ The plan to make meat without animals, page 10 ■ Asthma drug rejuvenates brains, page 14 ■ Your career is in the hands of recruitment AI, page 20

of the CMB from Planck’s picture have roughly 1000 times as Eternal inlation Chary acknowledges that his of the entire sky. Then he took many such particles as ours. idea is as tentative as it is exciting. away everything else, too: the “To explain the signals that Our universe could be one of many “Unusual claims like evidence for bubble universes in a branching, stars, gas and dust. Dr Chary found with the ever-expanding multiverse. If we bump alternate universes require a very With our universe scrubbed cosmological recombination up against another universe, it could high burden of proof,” he writes. away, nothing should be left radiation, one needs a large leave a mark on the ancient sky He makes an effort to rule out except noise. But in a certain enhancement in the number OUR UNIVERSE more prosaic explanations. If it is frequency range, scattered of [other particles] relative to dust, Chary argues, it would be the patches on the sky look far photons,” Chluba says. “In the coldest dust we’ve ever seen. It’s brighter than they should. If realm of alternative universes, probably not noise masquerading they check out, these anomalous this is entirely possible.” as a signal. It could be carbon clumps could be caused by Of course there are caveats, monoxide moving toward us, but cosmic fist-bumps: our universe and recent history provides an we don’t usually see that. It could colliding with another part of important reality check. In 2014, be faraway carbon, but that the multiverse (arxiv.org/ a team using the BICEP2 telescope emission is too weak. abs/1510.00126). at the South Pole announced “I am certain he made every These patches look like they another faint signal with earth- be worth looking into alternative effort to ensure that the analysis come from the era a few hundred shaking cosmological possibilities,” he says. “The dust is solid,” says Chluba. Even so, thousand years after the big bang implications. The spirals of properties are more complicated foregrounds and poorly when electrons and protons first polarised light, spotted in the than we have been assuming, and understood patterns could still joined forces to create hydrogen, cosmic background, would have I think that this is a more be the source of the signals. which emits light in a limited provided more observational plausible explanation.” “It will be important to carry out range of colours. We can see signs evidence for the idea of inflation Joseph Silk of Johns Hopkins an independent analysis and of that era, called recombination, and helped us understand how University in Baltimore, Maryland, confirm his finding,” Chluba says. in the light from that early inflation occurred. But it turned is even more pessimistic, calling hydrogen. Studying the light from out that signal came from dust claims of an alternate universe recombination could be a unique grains within our galaxy. “completely implausible”. Sensitive solutions signature of the matter in our Princeton University’s David While he thinks the paper is a good One obstacle to checking is that universe – and potentially Spergel, who played a major role analysis of anomalies in Planck we’re limited by the data itself. distinguish signs from beyond. in debunking the BICEP2 finding, data, Silk also believes something Planck was hyper-sensitive to the “This signal is one of the thinks dust may again be is getting in the way. “My view is cosmic microwave background, fingerprints of our own universe,” clouding our cosmological that they are almost certainly due but it wasn’t intended to measure says Jens Chluba of the University insights. “I suspect that it would to foregrounds,” he says. the spectral distortions Chary is of Cambridge. “Other universes looking for. Johnson’s team also should leave a different mark.” plans to use Planck to look for their Since this light is normally JUST RIGHT FOR LIFE? own alternate universes, once the drowned out by the glow of the If our universe is just one of many, That’s because our own universe data they need is released to the cosmic microwave background, that could explain why it seems so might be an oddball compared to public – but they estimate that recombination should have been exquisitely tuned for our existence. most bubbles. In many, dark Planck will only make them tough for even Planck to spot. If dark energy, the repulsive energy would be too strong for twice as sensitive to the bubble influence hiding in empty space galaxies, stars and planets to collisions they’re looking for “This signal is one of the that speeds up the expansion of the form, but not in all. “Plenty of them as they were with WMAP. fingerprints of our own universe, were just a little stronger, would have energies as small as An experiment that could universe. Others should matter would be flung apart before what we observe,” says physicist help might be on its way. leave a different mark” galaxies could ever form. If it were Alan Guth of MIT. Scientists at NASA’s Goddard attractive instead, the universe would That still leaves us struggling to Space Flight Center plan to submit But Chary’s analysis revealed collapse. But it is shockingly puny, explain why our universe is one of PIXIE, the Primordial Inflation spots that were 4500 times as and that’s weird, unless our universe the special ones. Our best answer Explorer, to be considered for bright as theory predicts. is one of many in the multiverse. so far, Guth says, is a philosophical funding at the end of 2016. One exciting explanation for Compared with what we might headache: our universe has to be PIXIE’s spectral resolution this is if a surplus of protons expect from quantum theory, dark special because we are alive in it. could help characterise Chary’s and electrons – or something a energy is 120 orders of magnitude In a more average region, where dark signals if they really are there, lot like them – got dumped in too small. So far, no compelling energy is stronger, stars, planets, Chluba says. But even if they at the point of contact with explanation for that discrepancy and life would never have evolved. aren’t, reconstructing how another universe, making the has emerged. But if the multiverse That could mean life only exists inflation happened could still light from recombination a lot exists, and dark energy varies from in a sliver of the multiverse, with any lead us once again back to the brighter. Chary’s patches bubble to bubble (see main story), conscious beings convinced their multiverse – and tell us what require the universe at the that might not seem so strange. own slice of space is special, too. kind of bubble collisions we other end of the collision to should look for next. ■

31 October 2015 | NewScientist | 9 THIS WEEK ARTIFICIAL MEAT REUTERS/DAVID PARRY REUTERS/DAVID

–Never been part of a cow– Meat without murder? We had the first lab-grown burger. Now a bioreactor for growing artificial meat on a large scale is about to be built

Hal Hodson, Maastricht, the first-ever symposium on cultured from the UN Food and Agriculture greenhouse gas emissions, and Netherlands meat, held in Maastricht. Around Organization paints a clear use much less water and land 100 scientists met to discuss the picture: livestock farming is one of (see chart, right). DEEP in the industrial heartland promise and pitfalls of meat made the “most serious environmental So could we get to a point of the Netherlands, far from without animals. Tissue engineers problems, at every scale from where synthetic meat replaces any cows, the future of meat is presented new ways to grow flesh, local to global”. Beef is the worst farm animals? In essence, the taking shape. This time next social scientists discussed its offender: producing 1 kilogram process is simple. Take stem cells year, a 5000-litre bioreactor public acceptance, and biological uses 15,000 litres of water and from animals (see “Will vat meat could be up and running with engineers highlighted the vast sends 300 kilograms of carbon ever replace animals?”, above the goal of eventually growing scale needed to produce the stuff dioxide into the atmosphere. right), feed them and allow them enough synthetic flesh to provide in useful amounts. According to a 2011 analysis to divide and grow into a big 2000 people with their annual Trying to grow meat in a vat, by Hanna Tuomisto at the chunk of muscle cells. There are meat ration. rather than raising and killing University of Oxford, cultured several key challenges in this, This is the vision of Mosa Meat, animals, makes sense if we want meat would produce far fewer however, one of which was spelled launched last week by Mark Post, to continue eating it in large out by meeting attendee Chris whose lab-grown beefburger quantities while preventing “ We want to end up with Hewitt, a biological engineer at was cooked and eaten on live further damage to the a 25,000-litre bioreactor, Aston University in Birmingham, television in 2013. environment – and maximising enough to feed vat meat UK. Unlike most bioengineering The launch coincided with the animal welfare. A 2006 report to 10,000 people a year” on the planet today, he points out,

10 | NewScientist | 31 October 2015 For daily news stories, visit newscientist.com/news

culturing meat means growing WILL VAT MEAT EVER REPLACE ANIMALS? concept than a specific substance, cells as a product, not using them defined by taste, smell and to make something else. If we work out how to make artificial tracked down when it’s time for a texture rather than any one Bioreactors typically use cells meat on a global scale, what would new batch of cells. source. After two days listening to produce useful proteins, then the world look like? Will farm animals Cell cultures currently rely on fetal to tissue engineers and food discard the cells. For example, the simply disappear? serum taken from the appropriate scientists detail their struggle to breast cancer treatment herceptin The transition will not be a species. But even if no alternative is produce anything that resembles is made using genetically sudden one, but even then found, livestock would be far fewer real meat, Zilber concludes that modified hamster ovary cells in domesticated livestock will be in number, and with no need for a bioengineered meat broth gigantic 25,000-litre vats. Human needed. They will be valued for the intensive farming there would be an might be a more useful first insulin comes from modified stem cells that are the foundation end to the most environmentally product to aim for, perhaps to E. coli bacteria and the statins of meat cultures. “Adult stem cells destructive, high-density feedlots. accompany ramen noodles. And used to treat heart disease, are have a limited lifetime,” says Post. David Zilber, a chef at Danish other vat-derived components made in yeast cells. “I’ve spent “You need to keep a donor herd.” restaurant Noma, says that in a could help push non-animal my career growing cells in tanks,” This means that producers will world where artificial meat is protein sources such as soya over Hewitt says. “It’s very rare that the need to keep returning to live herds mainstream, there would be a market the edge into meatiness. cell is the basis of the product.” for stem cells, which can be taken for high-quality real meat, produced Verstrate agrees that focusing The difficulty is keeping them without harming the animal. Future in a way that is as ethically and on particular characteristics, and alive – making sure they have a herds might become semi-wild, only environmentally friendly as possible. bioengineering for flavour, rather constant supply of oxygen and than structure and calories, may food. Growing a giant blob of cells have merit. “I do see this Lego doesn’t work, as the cells in the after a certain number of years, provided by blood and fat. approach emerging in the future,” centre die for lack of oxygen. but it negates for the time being Post hopes to find solutions to he says. any potential environmental or these problems as they go along. Meanwhile, the market for ethical advantages to be gained “We want to end up with a meat substitutes is taking shape, Plastic beads from cultured meat. Post hopes to 25,000 litre bioreactor – enough with multiple start-ups, mostly One way to get around this is to eliminate the need for this in the to provide meat for 10,000 people in the US, coming onto the scene. grow the cells on a surface of tiny long run. a year, at European consumption Los Angeles-based Beyond Meat plastic beads that facilitates the The rest of the nutritious levels,” he says. uses pea protein to mimic meat flow of oxygen and nutrients. goop fed to the cell culture is Still, even this ambitious target structure, for example, and Companies like Janssen in the US ethically unobjectionable, but is nothing compared with the Impossible Foods in Redwood City do this in vats with a capacity of is nevertheless expensive, scale required to make any kind of up to 1000 litres, but it is a appropriate for the relatively dent in global meat consumption. “The meat cells rely on a relatively expensive and small scale needed for medical Hewitt and his colleague Qasim feedstock containing complicated process. cultures but not for food Rafiq estimate that total bovine fetal serum, derived Because of this, producers have production on an industrial scale. bioreactor space available on the from slaughtered cattle” now figured out ways to adapt the Nor will Mosa’s final product planet at the moment amounts to, cells to operate in a suspension. bear much resemblance to actual at most, 1 million litres. If all this in California, is developing a Floating free in a vat allows cells meat. What comes out of the vat is space was turned over to cultured mixture of plant-derived proteins to be grown at much higher a collection of muscle cells, white meat production, it would provide to make meat-like patties. Dutch densities and in greater quantity. until coloured by beetroot and meat for just 400,000 people. company Beeter and British firm But Post’s business partner lacking in the real-meat flavours So we will need to dramatically Quorn both have sizeable market Peter Verstrate points out that improve the efficiency of the shares in imitation meat. getting a 5000-litre bioreactor up cultured-meat producing process, “There’s an ecosystem building and running does not mean Mosa Artiicial but greener not to mention building a lot to make animal products without will be producing edible artificial Estimates of lab-grown meat’s more steel vats. animals,” says Isha Datar, CEO of meat right away. environmental impacts suggest it would This scale means alternative New Harvest, a non-profit which only use a fraction of the resources Like all cell cultures, the solutions are likely to win in the needed to produce beef advocates and raises funds for meat cells rely on a feedstock short run. For example, rather animal alternatives. containing nutrients and growth 100 than muscle cells, it may make Along with growing muscle, hormones. For cultured beef, this 80 more sense to focus on producing Post’s lab at Maastricht means including 5 per cent bovine synthetic versions of the things University has now started work fetal serum. This is a substance 60 that make meat delicious – blood on synthesising fat from stem derived from blood collected from 40 and fat – to flavour non-animal- cells. And if the chef’s word is the heart of an unborn calf after derived protein. anything to go by, that could be 20 % of resource use resource % of

its mother is slaughtered. It is a with beef compared David Zilber, a chef at Michelin- where the big advances are made. “by-product” of the dairy 0 starred Norwegian restaurant “Blood and fat is what makes Energy Carbon Water Land industry, in the sense that dairy emissions Noma who attended the meeting, meat,” says Zilber. “Muscle is cows are routinely disposed of SOURCE: ENVIRON. SCI. TECHNOL. DOI: 10.1021/ES200130U says that meat is more of a just the vehicle.” ■

31 October 2015 | NewScientist | 11 THIS WEEK

made in the solar nebula later,” grains in the disc, where it says Klaus Pontoppidan of stayed trapped for eons. Rosetta’s comet is the Space Telescope Science Either theory would require Institute in Maryland. that when grains combined first with oxygen Astronomers have long into pebbles, boulders and searched for oxygen in the kinds eventually the comet, they of interstellar clouds where we never got too hot or pressurised. #ROSETTAWATCH The oxygen levels also varied think solar systems are born, but “The whole accretion of these in step with water levels as without much luck. So how did icy grains has to be pretty IF THE comet lander Philae were Rosetta flew around the comet, 67P come to have oxygen? gentle,” Bieler says. alive, it might be able to breathe. suggesting that ice and oxygen Andre Bieler of the University Recent models of 67P’s The Rosetta spacecraft has in 67P’s atmosphere are coming of Michigan and his team have formation agree with the idea that discovered oxygen in 67P from the same places in its two theories. In one scenario, the comet’s birth was relatively Churyumov-Gerasimenko’s nucleus. That could help solve interstellar clouds contain tricky- calm. The fusion of its two lobes atmosphere – and the team a mystery about when oxygen to-see oxygen gas, which got seems to have been a peaceful thinks it may date back to the first appeared in the solar system. caught up as the cloud collapsed affair, not a dramatic collision. birth of the solar system, when “This goes to the core of the into a disc, then flash-froze and That’s not the only comet comets and planets first formed. question of whether this stuck to tiny grains of ice. But the chemistry in the news this Molecular oxygen – the kind primitive solar system material more likely explanation, they week. In another study, we breathe – has never been seen was made in the interstellar think, is that the oxygen was researchers observing comet on a comet before. Oxygen is a medium, or whether it was chemically made later – inside ice Lovejoy, which veered closest volatile chemical that shouldn’t to the sun in January, spotted stick around for long in space, and alcohol and simple sugars in its the team couldn’t be sure that it atmosphere – another first for wasn’t coming from the spacecraft comets (Science Advances, itself. But after seven months of DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1500863). observing, they were confident The Rosetta team says 67P that the oxygen had been buried hosts similar stuff. in the comet since its birth about If other comets have oxygen, 4.5 billion years ago (Nature, this glimpse into the early solar DOI: 10.1038/nature15707). system’s chemistry could help Oxygen levels stayed high from us piece together a record of September 2014 to March 2015, conditions on early Earth, too. even while the comet’s upper few “It’s linked to how well we centimetres hissed away into know the composition of the space. That rules out chemical planets early on, especially reactions between ice and sunlight, with regards to habitability,” which would only have happened Pontoppidan says. “It changes in the comet’s outermost skin, how we may understand the and hence would have declined as conditions for life.”

this layer disintegrated. ESA –Oxygen, booze and sugar– Joshua Sokol and Sam Wong ■

brain, so it wasn’t clear whether it Half were asked to recall the story more malleable for about 24 hours Anaesthesia was the anaesthetic or the therapy as soon as they came round, the after we’re reminded of it. Strange’s dulls emotional causing the change in memory. others 24 hours later. Those tested on study suggests that interrupting To find out, Bryan Strange at the spot could remember the whole reconsolidation might cause the most memories the Technical University of Madrid, story, but after 24 hours the others emotional aspects to fade. Spain, recruited 40 people having an found it much harder to remember the Strange thinks this could help ANAESTHETICS do more than numb endoscopy under general anaesthetic. emotional middle than the mundane people with PTSD or depression forget pain, they also blunt memories. Participants first watched two beginning or end. They remembered painful memories. But, he says, there In 2014, a small study showed narrated slide shows that each told all three parts of the other story. is no need to panic before surgery that after coming round, people a story made up of three parts – with Reconsolidation is thought to be a about accidentally erasing memories: found it difficult to remember the the middle part containing some process in which a memory becomes “The effect might be transient and we emotional content of memories negative emotional content. A week need to look at whether it works in they recalled just before they were later, and minutes before being given “Perhaps interrupting real-life memories first.” He presented given an anaesthetic. But the people an anaesthetic, each volunteer was the reconsolidation of the work at the Neuroscience 2015 in this study were undergoing reminded of one of the stories by a memory causes some conference in Chicago this week. electroconvulsive therapy to their showing them the first slide. aspects of it to fade” Catherine de Lange ■

12 | NewScientist | 31 October 2015 For daily news stories, visit newscientist.com/news

Now those losses are negligible Self-sacrificing and profits have gone up by a immune cells quarter, he says. “I wouldn’t even try to grow without it now.” spew DNA net The idea of using bees to carry pesticides isn’t new, but BVT is AS WELL as carrying the instructions one of the first to attempt to for how to build you, it turns out DNA commercialise the approach. makes a handy weapon. As a last-ditch “It’s a good idea. It’s better than defence against invading microbes, spraying highly toxic chemicals immune cells spew out sticky nets over acres of land,” says Don of their DNA. Steinkraus, an entomologist at “DNA is so physically packed that the University of Arkansas in when you uncoil it you get a huge Fayetteville. “As long as it doesn’t net,” says Donald Sheppard of McGill have a bad effect on the bees.” University in Montreal, Canada. “It’s Jeremy Kerr, a biologist at the like one of those cans of exploding University of Ottawa in Canada, snakes, only a thousand times more thinks it should only be used dramatic.” inside greenhouses, away from Normally, immune cells called wild bees. If used outside, he says, neutrophils kill microbes by gobbling it could have unintended effects

them up or releasing toxic chemicals. TECHNOLOGY VECTORING BEE –Another job? Quit pollen my leg– on non-target plants or other But recently it was found that when pollinators. all else fails, they disgorge nets of Another concern relates to BVT’s DNA studded with antimicrobial Bees put to work lugging use of commercially bred insects. compounds, destroying themselves “Domesticated bumblebees carry in the process. The nets can span pesticides to flowers pathogens that can be transmitted small blood vessels, ensnaring and into the wild,” says Sydney killing bacteria. THEY’RE not called worker bees leave a dusting of pesticide to Cameron of the University of Now Sheppard’s team has shown for nothing. Bumblebees buzz protect the plant and future fruit. Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. that neutrophils also use this tactic from plant to plant collecting Many crops can be protected “That issue has not been resolved.” against fungal infections in the lungs food, and plans are afoot to give this way, including blueberries The company plans to work (PLoS Pathogens, doi.org/8qx). them another task while they do and bell peppers. BVT plans to with other companies to deliver Aspergillus usually infects people it – carrying pesticides to where provide its dispensing system to inorganic pesticides that have with weakened lungs or immune they are needed. Bee Vectoring a number of companies that have been deemed safe to bees by systems, and is too big for a neutrophil Technologies (BVT) in developed biological controls for the US Environment Protection to ingest, so the immune cells use Mississauga, Canada, has opened other pests such as fireblight, Agency. But the agency typically their nets to deliver a concentrated a commercial production plant which affects apples and pears. tests only on honeybees, using dose of toxins. this month in the hope that the them as surrogates for all But one virulent strain of tactic will lure farmers away from “These bees fly for us, pollinators, despite differences Aspergillus seems to evade indiscriminate crop spraying. delivering pesticides to between bee species. destruction. Work in mice suggests The idea involves placing a tray targeted crops. It’s better “Honeybees and bumblebees that this strain has acquired a sugary of organic pesticide powder inside for the environment” differ in their responses to coating that repels the nets, so a commercially bred hive. The pesticides in ways that can be Sheppard’s team is developing drugs powder contains a substance to “Farmers usually spray the hard to predict,” says Dave against this coating. help it stick to bees’ legs and a whole orchard and 99 per cent of Goulson at the University of The neutrophil nets have a strain of Clonostachys rosea it ends up in the wrong place,” Sussex in Brighton, UK. What’s downside, however: they may trap fungus that is harmless to these says Collinson. “We can deliver more, the EPA generally tests only any cancerous cells circulating in the insects but attacks crop diseases it locally and use 20 grams as to see if chemicals are acutely bloodstream, helping them spread and pests. “It’s a perfectly natural opposed to 2 kilograms. It’s much toxic, rather than looking at the into nearby tissues and seeding the fungus found very commonly better for the environment.” effects of long-term exposure. growth of secondary tumours. throughout the world. We’ve David Passafiume, an organic Collinson says the company is “It’s a double-edged sword,” says just developed a way to grow farmer near Toronto, has been “very cautious” about the insects’ Lorenzo Ferri, also at McGill University. and harvest it efficiently,” says using the system for five years well-being. “Our business is bees. He has shown that when mice with Michael Collinson, CEO of BVT. on 8.5 acres of strawberries and We need these guys to fly for us.” a version of lung cancer are given The bumblebees walk through raspberries. “We were losing a His company now plans to add drugs that dissolve the nets, they the powder as they leave the hive. significant portion of our crop more biocontrols to its pesticide develop fewer secondary tumours. When they land on flowers to each year to Botrytis and mix to create broad-spectrum Clare Wilson ■ gather nectar and pollen, they tarnished plant bugs,” he says. crop protection. Olivia Solon ■

31 October 2015 | NewScientist | 13 THIS WEEK

companions. “We restored learning and memory 100 per cent, to a level comparable with youth,” says Aigner. He presented his findings earlier ANDREW ERRINGTON/GETTY ANDREW this month at the Neuroscience 2015 meeting in Chicago. Old rats that had been given montelukast had 80 per cent less brain inflammation than old rats that hadn’t been given the drug. They also had greater new neuron growth than untreated old rats – about 50 per cent of that seen in young rats, says Aigner. The team also found that the blood-brain barrier – which stops –Time for a memory game– infectious agents reaching the brain but weakens with age – human years. The younger rats was stronger in treated old rats. were 4 months old – roughly the “Structurally, the brain had Brains rejuvenated equivalent of 17 human years. rejuvenated,” says Aigner. The animals were fed the drug The drug had no effect on by asthma drug daily for six weeks, while another young animals, probably because set of young and old rats were left it targets inflammation associated untreated. There were 20 young with age, says Aigner. “We’ve IT’S as good as new. An asthma targeted a set of receptors in the and 14 old rats in total. identified a target that affects drug has rejuvenated rat brains, brain that, when activated, trigger The rats took part in a range many different systems of the making old rats perform as well inflammation. These receptors of learning and memory tests. aged and degenerated brain,” he as young ones in tests of memory are also thought to be involved One of these involved the rats says. “I think the drug reverses the and cognition. in the birth of neurons. being placed in a pool of water damage associated with ageing.” Our brains slowly degenerate A drug called montelukast with a hidden escape platform. Because montelukast is widely as we age. Typically, we lose the (Singulair), regularly prescribed At the start of the study, untreated used, it should be relatively easy ability to make new neurons. for asthma and allergic rhinitis, young rats learned to recognise to look for similar effects in And age-related inflammation blocks these receptors, so Aigner landmarks and quickly find clinical trials in people, says James of the brain is implicated in and his colleagues tested it on their way to the platform, while Nicoll, a neuropathologist at the many brain disorders. young and old rats. The team used the untreated older animals University of Southampton, UK. To tackle both problems in one oral doses equivalent to those struggled at the task. Aigner agrees – he will start by go, Ludwig Aigner at Paracelsus taken by people with asthma. By the end of their six-week testing the drug in people with Medical University Salzburg in The older animals were 20 months drug regime, though, old animals Parkinson’s disease, he says. Austria and his colleagues old – perhaps between 65 and 75 in performed as well as their younger Jessica Hamzelou ■

volume. Any heavier than that, and it contact with ordinary matter. Since it areas with lots of dark matter, the Dark matter will explode as a supernova. has mass and responds to gravity, central region of a galaxy, say, and may send stars White dwarfs in turn only explode it should pool inside the dense white checking to see if their progenitor if they find a way to gain mass, which dwarfs. Assuming that dark matter stars differ from what we expect. over the edge turns them into a variety of supernova particles are fairly heavy and can Dejan Stojkovic of the State called a type Ia. Astronomers thought interact with each other in some way, University of New York at Buffalo says EXPLODING stars may have dark white dwarfs gained mass from a they could increase the white dwarf’s the model sounds reasonable, but fuses. The same mysterious stuff that companion star, but about half of the density enough to make it explode. remains cautious. It depends on dark holds galaxies together could also be type Ia supernovae show no signs of To test whether this is really matter having specific properties, responsible for blowing stars apart. a companion. Now Joseph Bramante happening, Bramante suggests and nobody knows yet what kind of Once a star has exhausted its fuel, at Northwestern University in looking for type Ia supernovae in particles make up dark matter. it will collapse under its own gravity. Massachusetts says dark matter could Dark matter isn’t the only possible If a star started out with 1.4 times the provide the missing mass (Physical “ White dwarfs explode if culprit: primordial black holes could mass of the sun or less, it will become Review Letters, doi.org/8qb). they have a way to gain occasionally hit lone white dwarfs, or a dense white dwarf, packing the Dark matter makes up most of mass, which could be white dwarfs could collide with each mass of the sun into an Earth-sized the mass in the universe but shuns provided by dark matter” other. Jesse Emspak ■

14 | NewScientist | 31 October 2015 The baffling, trivial, curious, or strange . . . KNOW IT ALL

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Musicians know

MARIANA RAÑO MARIANA how to take it slow

NOT a fan of slow jams? Maybe you haven’t had enough training. When we listen to music or speech, electrical waves in our brains synchronise to the tempo. But some people’s brains are better at syncing to the beat. Keith Doelling at New York University and his team recorded brainwaves of musicians and non-musicians as they listened to music. While both groups could synchronise their brain waves to the rhythms, non-musicians struggled to sync to particularly slow music, with some saying they couldn’t keep track of the tempo (PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/ pnas.1508431112). Musicians can do this not because of natural talent, Doelling thinks, but because they have been trained to mentally subdivide music into shorter sections. Since It’s all show: loudest howlers They compared them with the size of the howler’s a similar process happens for hyoid bones, which are found in the neck and hold a speech, musical training might have the smallest testes sound-amplifying air sac. Larger hyoids meant help people with dyslexia, he says. smaller testes. And species that formed social groups PERHAPS the quieter ones have nothing to prove. containing proportionately more males tended to Male howler monkeys are famed for their deep, have smaller hyoid bones but larger testes (Current Cervix test predicts powerful roars, which are among the loudest in the Biology, doi.org/8qg). animal world. They call at frequencies as low as those This suggests an evolutionary trade-off between the a baby’s birth date used by tigers and reindeer, which are some 10 times two: given limited resources, monkeys might have to larger. The calls may make the monkeys seem larger choose whether to invest energy in roaring or making READY for the big event? A simple than they are, helping them impress mates and sperm to maximise their chances of reproducing test could make it easier to predict intimidate rivals. But what they gain in vocal ability, successfully. Alternatively, big voiced-males might be when a baby is due. it seems they lose in testicle size. better able to fend off other males, reducing competition Estimates of when a woman Jacob Dunn at the University of Cambridge and his for their sperm, and so not needing large testes. “There will give birth can be off by weeks. colleagues analysed the size of testes in nine species. might well be an element of both,” says Dunn. But a test, usually used to monitor women at high risk of giving birth prematurely, seems to also predict Neighbouring planet could be an illusion only look at this star occasionally whether labour will begin within may have created a rhythm in the the next week in women who have ALPHA Centauri Bb may be an wobble in the light from Alpha signal that had nothing to do with reached full term. ex-exoplanet. This long-sought Centauri B, a star just 4.3 light planets. The test uses an ultrasound world was announced in 2012 as years away. They attributed this to To check, the team simulated probe to measure the length the first Earth-mass planet in the the gravity of a planet with that signals that looked close to the of the cervix. This is normally nearest star system to our own, orbital period pulling on the star. originals, but didn’t include any between 3 and 5 centimetres, but statistical analysis has now But now, Vinesh Rajpaul of the planets. They then used the but shortens in the run-up to revealed it to be an apparition. University of Oxford and his original team’s model to analyse giving birth. Once it measures The original discovery was colleagues have shown that the the fake data, and were still able to 1 centimetre or less, a woman has made by Xavier Dumusque, then signal could have been introduced see a spurious 3.24-day signal an 85 per cent chance of delivering at the Geneva Observatory in by the way measurements were “Given what we’ve shown, it within the next seven days Switzerland, and his colleagues. made (arxiv.org/abs/1510.05598). seems very, very implausible that (British Journal of Obstetrics and They found a 3.24-day periodic The fact that the telescope could the planet is real,” says Rajpaul. Gynaecology, doi.org/8m8).

16 | NewScientist | 31 October 2015 For new stories every day, visit newscientist.com/news

Saving face for Stingless Brazilian bees farm fungi to feed their larvae

Sunflowers FLOWERS aren’t enough. For the the white Monascus fungus and food inside larval cells, and first time, bees have been seen growing in all of the 30 bee nests disperse it to new colonies. THE brilliant yellows in four farming fungus to provide food they looked at. The fungus only This important relationship of Vincent van Gogh’s famous for their larvae. grew inside the cells that the raises concerns about the use of Sunflowers paintings are fading Though farming is well-known social bees build to house their fungicides. While not directly fast. Now a map details the parts in social insects, such as ants and growing larvae – and the young harmful to bees, they may be most at risk, which could help termites, bees had been thought larvae devoured it with gusto. affecting them by killing off their protect them from further damage. to depend solely on pollen and When the team tried to grow symbiotic fungi, the team says. Four of the seven Sunflowers nectar for sustenance. the bees in the lab without the There may be more farming paintings were made with a class But it seems a Brazilian fungus, the survival rate of the bees to be found. “Given the of pigments called chrome yellows, stingless bee, Scaptotrigona larvae dropped dramatically – substantial diversity of bees, which are based on chromium and depilis, struggles to survive from 72 per cent to just 8 per cent many of which are poorly lead. Van Gogh mixed and layered without a crop of the fungus. (Current Biology, doi.org/8qj). studied, it is likely that other bees these yellows to produce subtle Cristiano Menezes of the The fungus also profits from engage in similar associations,” contrasts and shades. But which of Brazilian Agricultural Research this arrangement, because bees says Cameron Currie of the the vibrant hues seen today are the Corporation and his team found offer it a protected environment University of Wisconsin. work of a master painter, and which are due to chemical degradation, has been debated for decades, says Death of plankton Letizia Monico of the University of Perugia in Italy. exaggerated

Her team used high-powered ROY/MINDEN DE TUI X-rays to analyse microscopic GOING, going, not gone! The samples from the version at the rate at which phytoplankton are Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, disappearing as oceans warm has the Netherlands. Some of the lead been vastly overestimated by a chromate at the painting’s surface glitch in models. had turned into greenish chromium That’s good news, given that oxide, which combined with the these tiny ocean plants and underlying yellow to produce microbes support other marine a darker and browner hue than life, remove half the carbon van Gogh may have intended. dioxide from the atmosphere each The team also produced a “high year and produce up to 70 per cent risk” map showing which regions of the oxygen we breathe. contained the most light-sensitive Estimates of the abundance of pigments (Angewandte Chemie, these photosynthesising cells are doi.org/f3jpnd). That will come calculated by looking at levels of in handy when the painting in the green pigment chlorophyll Amsterdam is restored, set to in satellite images of the oceans. King penguins face longer commute happen in the next few years. The images appeared to show that plankton numbers fall as WHERE did all the fish go? Strong with an abundance of sea life. the ocean temperature rises. climatic events, such as this year’s But, during extreme climatic But plankton can adjust how El Niño, can force king Penguins to events in the region, the front can much chlorophyll they make travel further in search of fish, shift by 130 kilometres, doubling depending on light conditions. threatening their very survival. the penguins’ return trip, says When Michael Behrenfeld of For king Penguins on the Crozet Charles-André Bost of the Hubert Oregon State University took that Islands in the southern Indian Curien Multi-disciplinary Institute into account, he found it can Ocean – home to some 700,000 in Strasbourg, France. explain more than 85 per cent of breeding pairs, nearly half of the wild Bost’s team studied penguin observed changes in chlorophyll population – an increase in water foraging trips from the islands levels (Nature Climate Change, temperature of just 1 °C means the between 1992 and 2010. In 1997, doi.org/8qh). difference between life and death. during the strongest El Niño year Yet he thinks plankton During the summer months, on record, the penguin breeding

VAN GOGH MUSEUM, AMSTERDAM (VINCENT VAN GOGH FOUNDATION) AMSTERDAM GOGH (VINCENT MUSEUM, GOGH VAN VAN will still suffer under climate the penguins swim out from the population decreased by 34 per cent change, because warmer surface islands to forage at the Antarctic (Nature Communications, DOI: water does not mix well with polar front, a major ocean boundary 10.1038/ncomms9220). colder, nutrient-rich lower layers.

31 October 2015 | NewScientist | 17

TECHNOLOY QILAI PICTURES SHEN/PANOS

–Does your CV have the right keywords?–

ones, and the candidate rejected. “Sometimes there’s a little bit The AI headhunters of conflict between HR and the actual managers because they’re saying, ‘What are these résumés Computers often have the final say over whether your CV ever makes I’m getting?’ says Skillings. “Or, it into human hands, says Chris Baraniuk. Is there a better way? ‘Someone I know applied and they didn’t get through – there’s something broken here between APPLYING for a job can be a soul- harder to get a foot in the door assume that their application will what you’re screening for and destroying process. First you have (see “Found wanting – by a be screened by an algorithm, and what we actually want.’ ” to polish your CV and make sure machine”, opposite). Now a quite probably rejected, before a Moves are afoot to make the your covering letter matches number of companies want to human ever looks at it. But such recruitment algorithms more the job description. Then you change the way AI helps find systems are hardly foolproof. sophisticated. The biggest name send them off into the void, the right person for the job. They don’t just frustrate people in online recruitment is Silicon hoping they will catch the eye of Existing applicant tracking looking for jobs with non- Valley giant LinkedIn, and a few a recruiter who will call you in systems (ATS) typically scan traditional CVs – they are also weeks ago it unveiled its for an interview. applications for keywords that far from ideal for employers. For revamped Recruiter app at a But no human may ever read the employer has selected. The example, excessively rigorous glitzy event in Los Angeles. your résumé. For the past few software might prioritise sections screening can mean relevant On stage, Eduardo Vivas, head of years, the world’s biggest firms of the CV in which those words sections of a CV will be passed LinkedIn Talent Solutions, showed have been using AI recruitment appear alongside more recent over if they contain words and how typing the names of two software to filter job applications positions, for example. Any CVs phrases only slightly different software developers he manages and streamline the process, that don’t fit the bill are instantly from the employer’s preselected into a search box would cause the and smaller businesses are rejected; those that pass are system to sift millions of LinkedIn increasingly interested, too. stored and indexed for a human “ Jobseekers should assume users for matching talents. Then That should make selection recruiter to look through. their application will be it displayed a list of candidates at fairer and less open to abuse, Career coach Pamela Skillings screened by algorithm and other companies with like-for-like in theory. But it can also make it believes applicants should quite probably rejected” skills and experience.

20 | NewScientist | 31 October 2015 For more technology stories, visit newscientist.com/technology ONE PER CENT

“Instantly, I see people on the picture of skills and expertise. developer”are very similar roles, platform that look just like them,” “We can look at things in for example. he said. “The ability to take our finer detail – things that a Six Danish firms have been best people and find people just recruiter might have a hard time testing the system on open job like them is incredibly powerful.” taking into account. Like, does positions. “Because we had Another of the firm’s algorithmic someone have a lot of friends in a lot of résumés in the database innovations is that employers will a certain location or at a certain we could actually detect patterns,” be able to narrow down huge lists company?” says CEO and co- says Jonas Krarup, one of Reveal’s of existing contacts to find those founder John Jersin. founders. with the skills appropriate for a The system can also, for Krarup and his co-founder recently advertised job. instance, harvest data from a site Joel Raucq say their approach like GitHub, where programmers could help companies with large share and discuss code. numbers of CVs on file to make A button for itchy feet “If they’re posting a significant the most of that data and identify The app will also indicate how amount of code online, we know good candidates as soon as often a prospective candidate that they know the language new roles come up. The system has interacted with the they’re writing in,” says Jersin. can even predict how interested Drones for ski action company’s posts on LinkedIn “If they’re answering a lot of a candidate might be in a job Time to bust some moves. Two and show whether he or she is questions about a specific change from their current major ski resorts in Colorado want actually looking for a new job language or technology, we have position. This is done by to use drones to film their skiers’ right now. This bit of knowledge a lot of information about their sickest stunts. Copper Mountain will be picked up thanks to the knowledge on those skills.” “AI selection will only work and Winter Park want to create “something new” button coming It’s not the only such if recruiters and algorithm “Drone Zones” where a staff to LinkedIn profiles. By clicking technology out there. Reveal is a designers carefully define member uses a drone to film skiers on it, users on the social network small Danish start-up touting “a what they really want” or snowboarders in action. People can tell employers – except, of machine learning engine for your will be charged up to $200 to have course, their own – that they recruitment”. The software has assessing how many previous jobs their best moves captured from have itchy feet. been trained on professional candidates have listed on their CV the air and receive an edited Other companies are going vocabulary relating to job and noting how frequently they highlights reel the next day. The even further to cherry-pick the descriptions and is able to analyse have moved from role to role. firm providing the drones, Cape best candidates. Connectifier, databases of CVs, looking for Of course, there are those who Productions, has worked with founded by ex-Google staff, candidates who might fit a post. resist the encroachment of AI on the US ski team during training. markets itself as a search engine The firm’s algorithm uses recruitment. Unsurprisingly, for recruiters. The firm’s statistical models that look at headhunter Nick Corcodilos is algorithms crawl a range of the distribution of words. It not a fan. websites and candidates’ profiles, understands that “software “The reason companies need as well as CVs, to build up a engineer” or “software technology to sort through so many résumés is because they 2trillion mindlessly solicit so many,” he The number of public posts by people FOUND WANTING – BY A MACHINE says. Corcodilos thinks that firms on Facebook that the firm has made For 10 months, Alyssa Mathews has the algorithms work, Mathews should move away from online accessible to users via the search been looking for her first full-time has changed tactics and begun recruiting, and he worries that function on the site. job. She has sent off well over approaching recruiters at job fairs. “potentially outstanding” 100 applications, so far to no avail. She is now getting many more candidates are being unfairly It’s not that she’s underqualified – interviews. ruled out by some systems. Self-driving taxi? she has a master’s degree in Some find the problem For Skillings, AI has great Uber is getting into the mapping environmental science. Instead, insurmountable, though. One potential in recruitment but, she game. After a photo of one the she thinks she is falling foul of 48-year-old graphic designer who adds, it will work only if recruiters firm’s street-mapping cars was CV-screening algorithms. wished to remain anonymous says and algorithm designers are posted to a private Facebook “I’ve got rejection upon submission, she has sent out several hundred willing to take the time to group, Uber admitted that its cars where I submit my application and it applications in recent years. carefully define what they really have been on the road for several immediately rejects me,” she says. A large number of rejections, she want in a candidate. months, with Microsoft mapping “I know that’s just a computer, and I suspects, are to do with her age “The end result could be that technology strapped to their failed some sort of algorithm or test.” and gaps in her CV. algorithms could actually identify roofs. Uber could be using them to She believes that because her CV is “I’ve met a lot of people in my people who would be great at the pave the way for self-driving cars, highly interdisciplinary, the computer exact situation,” she says. “Over 40, job,” she says, “but might not which need extremely accurate perceives it as lacking specialisation. unemployed for over three years have ever been given a second and precise 3D maps of the road Since discovering more about how and they know that it’s over.” look under the traditional to function. ■ keyword scan.” PENSINGER/GETTYDOUG

31 October 2015 | NewScientist | 21 TECHNOLOY

Yogesh Girdhar of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Stress tests for Robots of Massachusetts. medics keep tabs Such a network of autonomous drones could be used for disaster on their health the Caribbean response, coral reef monitoring, surveillance for port security and HOW stressed is your doctor? finding places to drill for oil and A large-scale test of wearable Land ho! Fleets of cheap bots could map the gas. Bhattacharyya says EVE stress monitors, announced this seas for us, finds Anna Nowogrodzki would have been useful for week, is set to provide some answers. monitoring pollution from the BP Boston start-up Neumitra will test oil spill. Its elliptical frame can be its wearable devices with 1000 or fitted with the right sensors for its more doctors and nurses in January mission, such as environmental next year. It will measure stress levels sensors to monitor pH changes. at two of Boston’s biggest hospitals – A swarm of them could be used to Massachusetts General Hospital and look for missing aircraft by fitting Beth Israel Deaconess. the robots with acoustic sensors “Stress can impact on the common to listen for pings from a downed cold all the way up to a heart attack,” jet’s black box. says Aditi Nerurkar, a stress “It can be operated as a single management clinician at Beth drone or as a kind of sensor Israel Deaconess. Although we know network,” Bhattacharyya says. stress affects the health of patients, Mapping the ocean is difficult. medical professionals themselves “Underwater, if two robots are have a culture of stoicism about their talking to each other, they pollute health, she says. the entire sound channel,” says Neumitra’s devices look like smart watches. They take physiological “ Autonomous robots are measurements – of heart rate, most needed underwater. temperature, motion and skin The future is small robots, conductance – and use an algorithm and a lot of them” to convert the data and display it as a number from 1 to 10, with 10 being Girdhar. “That means everybody the highest stress level. They can also else on the network has to use colour coding: blue for low stress, stay quiet.” And he says EVE is red for high. The devices vibrate when probably too small for some your stress level increases.

HYDROSWARM –Is it a ball? Is it a brain? No it’s a robot– sensors, such as those that The stress monitors can sync with measure ocean current. It’s also a smartphone calendar, colour-coding THE planet’s surface is more method of scanning large areas tricky to do real-time video times that were particularly stressful, than 70 per cent water. Yet we of the ocean,” says Bhattacharyya, processing underwater. or mapping apps, highlighting areas in know more about the moon than who founded her company “These are all challenges, but the city where you feel most stressed. we do about what’s going on in Hydroswarm to commercialise they’re all solvable theoretically,” Neumitra is hoping its system will the deep oceans. A Massachusetts EVE and do exactly that. The Girdhar says. become a standard for stress start-up has a ball-sized robot start-up is one of 26 finalists Another challenge is battery measurement. It is working with it wants to fix that. for the MassChallenge Awards, life: one charge currently lasts companies that make smart watches Meet EVE – the Ellipsoidal which will select winners at the EVE only two and a half hours, and Fitbit-style fitness trackers to Vehicle for Exploration – a end of the month to receive a so the length of its expeditions have them include its “Bio+” sensor-studded yellow robot share of $1.5 million in grants. is limited. stress-measuring technology. the shape of a rugby ball. EVE’s These awards are designed to Bhattacharyya says the robots The first such devices will be available creator Sampriti Bhattacharyya, help fledgling start-ups get off will be in operation very soon. in early 2016, says Neumitra founder a mechanical engineer at the the ground. “I think autonomous robots Robert Goldberg. Massachusetts Institute of Existing ocean-going robots right now are most needed Nerurkar hopes that tracking stress Technology, has a grand are remotely operated, but EVE is underwater”, rather than in aerial will remind medical professionals to mission in mind for a swarm autonomous, making it cheaper or land environments, says take care of themselves, as well as of EVEs: she wants to build and more feasible to use swarms Girdhar. “Hopefully these kinds their patients. “It’s time for us as Google Maps for the ocean. of them to search large areas. of start-ups will bridge that gap. doctors to recognise that we’re human “We do not yet have a very “With a swarm you can get faster I think the future is small robots, first, and doctors second,” she says. cheap, scalable, easily deployable coverage of a big area,” says and a lot of them.” ■ Anna Nowogrodzki ■

22 | NewScientist | 31 October 2015 Want to develop presentation/professional development skills and network with scientists in various career fields in the microbial sciences?

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31 October 2015 | NewScientist | 23 APERTURE Here’s lookin’ at you

NO, THAT’S not a minor character from the latest Star Wars movie. This exotic-looking creature with its anteater-like snout is Tropidophora cuvieriana, an example of the incredible diversity and, yes, strange beauty of land snails. “Most people think land snails are just ugly and slimy, and some are,” says photographer Ingo Arndt. “But many species are also very beautiful and show interesting behaviour.” He decided to photograph the land snails’ beauty and coloration as he travelled around the world. He saw a wide variety of shell colours and patterns, for example the tree snail of the genus Amphidromus (right, top) and the Cuban land snails Polymita venusta (right, second from top) and Polymita picta iolimbata (right, bottom). Caracolus excellens (right, second bottom) has a distinctive flat, black shell. “I think these animals deserve it that we show their beautiful side,” he says. But Arndt also wanted to bring the snails’ plight to the public’s attention. Like other animals, habitat destruction and pollution mean that thousands of snail species are endangered. Around a tenth of the 200 known species have probably disappeared. These beauties also face another threat: shell collectors. With the Cuban snails in particular, Arndt notes that many are smuggled out of the country to fill collections across the globe. “Some important areas are already empty [due to collectors],” he says. Rachel David

Photographer Ingo Arndt ingoarndt.com OPINION

End the censorship

China must stop the suppression of data and debate on its deadly air-pollution problem, says Rachael Jolley

THERE was plenty of pomp and Environmental Law and Policy, ceremony, political protest and and showed that China is among business dealing during Chinese the worst for exposure to fine president Xi Jinping’s state visit particulate matter, a pollutant to the UK last week. Less was said that can harm health. A recent about the pressing issue of dirty US study put the toll in China at air and the censorship around it 4000 lives a day. in his country. But when a documentary called The visit was an ideal chance Under the Dome, which tackled to urge for research on pollution the issue of air pollution in China, levels and environmental issues was shown there earlier this year, to be released to the Chinese it was soon removed from view. people, so they can be fully The film discussed microscopic informed about risks to their airborne soot clearly and health and, where possible, accessibly. The presenter, Chinese take precautions. The Chinese environmental activist Chai Jing, government often seeks to restrict spoke about its impact on her the latest data on pollution and life and that of her 6-year-old its impact. daughter. The film is now being Globally, about 7 million people compared to Rachel Carson’s book died in 2012 because of bad air Silent Spring, which highlighted quality, according to estimates the damage caused by pesticides from last year by the World in the US. Health Organization. The After its release, Under the information it used was mapped Dome went viral across the world, by Yale University’s Center for with reports about its censorship

but cautioned that FDA clearance we need to know it works. That’s alone is not enough to protect why I have favoured large-scale Unhealthy stealth consumers. Fast-forward to mid- randomised trials for health- October, when the Wall Street related interventions, testing by Trust in new medical tech depends on Journal ran an investigation with publicly funded stakeholders with multiple anecdotal examples no vested interests, improved openness over results, says John Ioannidis of potential issues with the peer review, thorough publication company’s technology. Theranos of findings, and the sharing of has rebutted these, via its lawyers protocols and data sets. THE age of “stealth research” with innovative lab technology, and in statements to the media. Such measures will ultimately is upon us – in case you hadn’t promise fast, accurate results But what about the science? benefit innovators: strong noticed. Work that could relevant to dozens of illnesses, I have long advocated that all evidence buttresses disruptive transform healthcare is under using pinprick samples, and at medical research be transparent. technologies, and makes a way, yet the results don’t appear low cost. If tests rely on a new technology, better case than any advert could. in peer-reviewed journals. Not so long ago, I warmly Given that health-related This issue has been brought applauded Theranos for seeking “ Strong evidence supports technology is ultimately about to the fore by the case of Silicon clearance from the US Food and disruptive technologies life-and-death situations, drugs Valley biotech firm Theranos. Its Drug Administration for its and makes a better case have to prove their worth in consumer blood test, combined proprietary diagnostic tests, than any advert could” randomised trials. For other

26 | NewScientist | 31 October 2015 For more opinion articles, visit newscientist.com/opinion

drawing global attention. Now it seems this was not the ONE MINUTE INTERVIEW only way the Chinese government chose to restrict information to the public, according to research published in the current issue The brain collector of the magazine Index on Censorship. Matthew Auer of Dissecting the brains of people who took part in an IQ study Bates College, Maine, and King-wa 70 years ago could help us all in old age, says Chris Henstridge Fu of the University of Hong Kong studied how Weibo, China’s answer to Twitter, had also been censored, with hundreds of posts Why did your team resurrect this research? related to the film being removed. Retesting those people first tested in 1947 These covered subjects such as now they are approaching their 80s is an demonstrations and accusations incredible resource for learning how we can stay that the government was not mentally sharp into old age. Many things have taking responsibility for dirty air. been claimed to help, like drinking red wine or President Xi has stated that learning new languages. But the picture might he is committed to cleaning up be getting muddied because those things also pollution, and has appealed to the correlate with baseline intelligence in childhood: public to participate in this. But it’s not that drinking red wine keeps you sharp, people need open information it’s that if you are clever to start with you are more to do so. likely to be middle class and therefore drink red Air pollution is not just the wine. But if you know childhood IQ, you can take problem of one nation: air doesn’t this into account. We have shown that some of respect borders, so there are these popular myths are actually rubbish. implications for other countries. PROFILE Surely Xi’s responsibility is Chris Henstridge at the University of Edinburgh, What is gained by dissecting brains as well? not to stifle debate, but to share UK, analyses the brains of people from the Lothian It may shed light on the idea of cognitive reserve. scientific research and data Birth Cohort study of childhood intelligence This suggests that if you spend your life reading with his own people and other books, being socially active and healthy, it helps governments, so that the best your brain to form more connections, or synapses. way to tackle this ever-increasing How do you persuade people to agree When you get older and start to lose some problem can be found. ■ to donate their brain after death? synapses, these extra ones can retain your People can understandably be a bit squeamish cognitive performance into old age. Rachael Jolley is editor of quarterly about the idea of handing over their brain. But global magazine Index on Censorship these are people we’ve been working with face- Are you able to count synapses in brain to-face, doing cognitive testing, for over a decade samples? so we know them fairly well. We send them Yes. We are using a technique that cuts pieces of aspects of healthcare, including a letter so they have the opportunity to think brain tissue into 70-nanometre-thin slices that lab testing, standards of evidence about it with their family without any pressure. we look at using fluorescent microscopy. Then are lower. Laboratories can get our computer reconstructs the sections into 3D accreditation, but for new There are several other brain banks, why is shapes, so we can count the synapses. We will technologies this is not enough. yours different? look at 38 different areas of the brain. Scientists need to know how a It is the only one where the people had their technology works and why it has intelligence tested 70 years ago. It started with How far along is the project? advantages or disadvantages over the discovery of a box of old IQ test scores in a So far 173 people have agreed to donate their existing ones. They need to see all basement of the University of Edinburgh. At that brains and the first two brains have just come the evidence. I trust in innovation, time, the UK government believed the population in. Obviously it is too soon to draw conclusions, and perhaps Theranos will change was becoming less clever because better-off but as the study progresses we are going to the medical world. But first of all it couples were having fewer children than the gather valuable information. We are also about needs to show us the data. ■ “lower classes” – just crazy! They tested the IQ to start sequencing the genomes of participants of 11-year-olds in 1932 and 1947 to see how and take blood samples so we can create John Ioannidis is professor of medicine, intelligence shifted. A comparison of the results – personalised stem cells for each one and grow health research and policy, and published in The Annals of Eugenics – showed them into neurons, for testing in the lab. It’s a statistics at Stanford University. He is that intelligence was in fact slightly increasing, very exciting time. also co-director of its Meta-Research so the project was shelved. Interview by Clare Wilson Innovation Center

31 October 2015 | NewScientist | 27 OPINION INTERVIEW

Photographed for New Scientist by Ken Richardson Looking out from behind someone else’s face

There’s a part of you that has nothing to do with what you see in the mirror, discovered Carmen Blandin Tarleton following a horrific attack that left her with 80 per cent burns

What was it like to see your changed later, and even then we were not a complete mirror. During that time, I wasn’t afraid or appearance after you were attacked in 2007? match. As a result, I take high doses of worried, given how disfigured I had been Doctors put me in a coma to operate on immunosuppressive medications that before. It was a big relief to look in the me after the attack. When I woke up, I was stop my body from rejecting the face. mirror that first time. I looked good. completely blind for the first two years, so I didn’t really know what I looked like. It wasn’t How did you prepare for the face transplant? How has your recovery been? until October 2008, the beginning of the court When you agree to the transplant, My recovery was quite long. But by the end case, that I realised I looked significantly bad: psychologists and psychiatrists evaluate of the first year, I could see improvements. the TV news coverage came with a graphic you, but they don’t really tell you anything. I could start to close my mouth and smile a content warning. For a year and a half I didn’t A social worker was always on hand to bit. I could open my left eye just enough, feel good about the way I looked – I made little answer any questions I had. I was a registered and blink it a little bit, which was all I really kids cry. Eventually I had to accept it. But when nurse for 20 years, and I took care of kidney needed. I can eat without drooling and now I did regain enough eyesight to see myself in and liver transplant recipients, so I was well I have lips. I can breathe out of my nose for the mirror, it was difficult. I couldn’t see who versed in the medications. the first time since I was injured. Those kinds I was before. Even my eye colour had changed. of things mean a lot. When I woke up after I couldn’t see me in there. It was disturbing. How did you feel just before the surgery? the transplant I couldn’t feel my face at all. That was one of the most surreal moments Now I’ve gained about 65 per cent sensitivity How did you feel when your doctor, Bohdan of my life. It was emotional, but at the same in my face. A lot has changed in the two years Pomahacˇ at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital time it wasn’t. It was glorious because I knew since I had my surgery. in Boston, suggested a face transplant? things were going to change for the better, I was surprised. I didn’t know he was doing but it was also heartbreaking that someone Your appearance has changed dramatically. them. After he first suggested it, I looked had died. It was as if time had stopped while Do you still feel like you? online at the pictures of people he had already this big event was happening. I now have a whole different face that performed face transplants on. I was shocked – doesn’t look anywhere near the way I used it was just such a transformation. I wanted What happened during the surgery itself? to look. I now see a pleasing image in the that transformation for myself. It seemed I don’t know much about it. The doctors took mirror – I’m not all scarred, and I appreciate a little sci-fi, but he told me it would also be pictures and scans beforehand to find out that – but I still don’t see me. After seeing my a real opportunity to regain some function in what wasn’t working and what I was missing old reflection for 40 years it is going to take a my face. That was what I was most concerned from my scarred face. The left side of my face while to look in the mirror and not think, with. For example, I have synthetic corneas didn’t work well. I could barely move it. I didn’t “Hey, this doesn’t really look like me”. I’ve sort in my eyes that were bearing the brunt of not have eyelids, so I couldn’t blink. I couldn’t of gotten used to it. It’s not stressful – being having eyelids, which meant I couldn’t blink. breathe out of my nose. I didn’t have lips. They disfigured was a lot more stressful. > made a map of everything I would need from a Did you have to wait long for a suitable donor? donor. It was a huge undertaking. The surgery PROFILE Yes. Because I’d had so much surgery and lasted about 17 hours. Carmen Blandin Tarleton, a nurse from Vermont, blood from other people during the many was left with 80 per cent burns after she was procedures, it was difficult to find a tissue What was it like to wake up with a new face? attacked and doused with industrial-strength match. By the time I was on the list for a face I couldn’t see my face at first because it was alkali by her estranged husband. Two years ago, transplant, I had already had 58 surgeries. swollen, and I couldn’t see out of my eye. It was she became one of the first people in the world They couldn’t find me a donor until 14 months probably a good 10 days before I looked in the to receive a full face transplant

28 | NewScientist | 31 October 2015 31 October 2015 | NewScientist | 29 For more opinion articles, visit newscientist.com/opinion

What are your treatments like now? A different tune: Carmen Blandin Tarleston has There is always surgery for me because my learned to play the banjo since her horrific attack body is 80 per cent burned. Even if I’m not going to have surgery on my face for a while, Will your ability to feel and use your face I always need scar releases. I have huge scars, continue to improve with time? and they are so tight that they keep my arms Yes. I’ve recently had a little setback – a nerve and legs from moving. I need surgery to cut or muscle is not working correctly on the left them from time to time, and cover them with side of my mouth, which has started to droop. skin grafts. Those kinds of surgeries are much It happened after I gave a talk to teenagers, and more painful than the face transplant. I also then posed for about 300 photos, so I might have biopsies taken from my face every six have overused it. Things like that set me back, months. Doctors look at the tissue and can tell but I think it’s looking better as time goes on. whether or not the face is being rejected. When you have setbacks like this, should you Have there been any signs of rejection? rest your face, or perhaps exercise it? All face transplants have shown signs of My doctors aren’t really sure because this is all rejection at one time or another. I’ve had three so new. There are no guidelines to follow, so we episodes. They usually happen in the winter play it by ear. In this case, my speech therapist months. Sometimes I put a steroid cream on is going to give me a call. I’ll do the exercises my face, and sometimes my medication is she tells me to do to see if I can recover from increased. It usually takes about six weeks for this setback, which I think I can. the biopsies to return to normal. It’s nothing to get upset about. Three months after you received your face transplant, you met Marinda Righter, the face donor’s daughter. What was that like? FACE TRANSPLANTS BACKGROUNDER It was great. It was her decision to meet me. We’ve had a really good relationship since. Face transplants involve carefully selected donor. years, he says. “Only half of She was the person that gave permission for removing significant amounts Nerves and blood vessels are transplanted kidneys are still her mother’s face to be donated. Her mother of damaged facial tissue painstakingly reconnected functioning 10 years later, was a registered organ donor, but given the and replacing it with healthy under a microscope. which is a sobering thought.” newness of the procedure the doctors asked tissue from a donor. The Once the surgery is All seven of Pomahacˇ’s for special permission to take her face, and exact number is unknown, complete, face-transplant face-transplant recipients are Marinda agreed to that. The faces of most but between 30 and 35 face recipients have a lifetime doing well, and their ability people who have face transplants change transplants are thought to of follow-up treatments. to feel their new faces seems significantly over the years. I don’t know why, have been performed around There is always a chance to be improving with time. but my face hasn’t changed much, so Marinda the world, since Isabelle that a person’s immune Their ability to control facial still sees her mother in me. Dinoire received the world’s system will attack the muscles has also got better first partial face transplant foreign tissue, called with time and use, although Do you think the experience has changed you in France in 2005. rejection. A fully rejected these improvements seem in other ways? Different surgical teams face might “just slough off to plateau about three years It has. I wasn’t happy being disfigured, but use different procedures, and die in pieces”, says after the operation. I also knew that I didn’t have to let it stand in but Bohdan Pomahacˇ, who Pomahacˇ, or it could scar Pomahacˇ says he is looking my way. I felt like I needed to shine my light performed Carmen Blandin over and stop working. to perform the procedure within so brightly that my looks on the outside Tarleton’s transplant at the for more people, but any wouldn’t be so bothersome. I give a lot of talks. Brigham and Women’s LONG TERM PROSPECTS candidates will have to pass My partner has taught me to play the banjo, Hospital in Boston, uses Pomahacˇ hasn’t yet seen any a screening process before so we play banjo together at the end of my a conservative technique complete rejections, but they can be considered. His talks. I have a great life. that minimises the amount recipients tend to have small team will only perform the of tissue to be grafted. episodes about once a year, surgery for people whose Most people will struggle to imagine coming to He tries to avoid making which can be controlled with disfigurement can’t be terms with such a dramatic change in their a complete swap. immunosuppressant drugs. addressed with established, appearance. Pomahacˇ’s team first He hopes all the face less-invasive surgery. They The only thing I can say is that it really makes examines the patient’s face, transplants will last for life, have also turned down you realise that there’s a part of you that has before removing only those but he can’t be sure. People people who are not medically nothing to do with what you look like. That parts that are damaged who receive liver and kidney well enough to undergo the part of you has nothing to do with the person beyond repair. They then transplants can sometimes procedure, and those that are you see in the mirror. ■ cover the removed areas with develop chronic rejection unable to fully understand fat, muscle and skin from a against these organs over the the risks involved. Interview by Jessica Hamzelou

30 | NewScientist | 31 October 2015 COVER STORY HARRY PHOTOS GRUYAERT/MAGNUM Quiet revolutions The irst people to till the earth weren’t ploughing such a lonely furrow, inds Bob Holmes

N FEBRUARY 1910, British botanist to flourish. The forest appeared to be In recent years, archaeologists have Lilian Gibbs walked across North partitioned and managed to get the found signs of this “proto-farming” on IBorneo and climbed Mount Kinabalu, most rattan canes, fibre for basketry, nearly every continent, transforming a lone white woman among 400 locals. medicinal plants and other products. our picture of the dawn of agriculture. She later wrote: “The ‘untrodden Generation after generation of people Gone is the simple story of a sudden jungle’ of fiction seems to be non- had cared for the trees, gradually revolution in what is now the Middle existent in this country. Everywhere shaping the forest they lived in. This East with benefits so great that it the forest is well worked and has been wasn’t agriculture in the way we know rapidly spread around the world. It so for generations.” it today but a more ancient form of turns out farming was invented many What Gibbs saw was a seemingly cultivation, stretching back more times, in many places and was rarely an curated tropical forest, regularly set than 10,000 years. Half a world away instant success. In short, there was no alight by local tribes and with space from the Fertile Crescent, Gibbs was agricultural revolution. “We’re going to carefully cleared around selected witnessing a living relic of the earliest have to start thinking about things in a wild fruit trees, to give them room days of human farming. different way,” says Tim Denham, an >

31 October 2015 | NewScientist | 31 archaeologist at the Australian RED-FACED FACTOID: ancestors were forced into farming National University in Canberra. when their populations outgrew what Farming is seen as a pivotal TOMATOES WERE the land could provide naturally. If invention in the history of humanity. humans had turned to crops out of Before, our ancestors roamed the FIRST FARMED IN hunger and desperation, you would landscape gathering edible fruits, seeds PERU OR MEXICO  expect their efforts to have intensified and plants and hunting whatever game when the climate took a turn for the they could find. They lived in small BUT WE STILL HAVE worse. In fact, archaeological sites in mobile groups that usually set up NO IDEA WHEN Asia and the Americas show that most temporary homes according to the early cultivation happened during movement of the prey they hunted. periods of relatively stable, warm Then one fine day in the Fertile freed up time for new tasks. climates when wild foods would have Crescent, around 8000 to 10,000 years Craftspeople were born: the first been plentiful, says Dorian Fuller of ago – or so the story goes – someone specialised toolmakers, farmers, carers. University College London. noticed sprouts growing out of seeds Complex societies began to develop, as Nor is there much evidence they had accidentally left on the did trade networks between villages. that early farming coincided with ground. Over time, people learned how The rest, as they say, is history. overpopulation. When crops first to grow and care for plants in order to The enormous impact of farming is appeared in eastern North America, get the most out of them. Doing this for widely accepted, but in recent decades for example, people were living in generations gradually transformed the the story of how it all began has been small, scattered settlements. “The wild plants into rich domestic varieties, completely turned on its head. For sites are less than 10 houses and most of which we still eat today. starters, while the inhabitants of the they’re not very numerous,” says This accidental revolution is credited Fertile Crescent were undoubtedly Bruce Smith, an archaeologist at the with irreversibly shaping the course of some of the earliest farmers, they Smithsonian Institution in Washington humanity. As fields began to appear on weren’t the only ones. Archaeologists DC. “There’s no real evidence that the landscape, more people could be now agree farming was independently population increase was the prime fed. Human populations – already on “invented” in at least 11 regions, from mover causing them to shift over to the rise and stretching the resources Central America all the way to China domesticated crops.” The earliest available to hunter-gatherers – (see map, page 33). Decades of digging Setting forests South American farmers also lived in exploded. At the same time, our have kicked up numerous instances of alight is now- as the very best habitats, where resource ancestors traded their migratory habits ancient proto-farming, similar to what it was then - a shortages would have been least likely. for sedentary settlements: these were Gibbs saw in Borneo. clever way of Similarly, in China and the Middle East, the first villages, with adjoining fields Another point archaeologists are shaping forests domesticated crops appear well before and pastures. A steadier food supply rethinking is the notion that our to produce food dense human populations would have made foraging impractical. Instead, Smith suggests, the first farmers appear to have been pulled into experimenting with cultivation, presumably out of curiosity rather than necessity. “These are additional food supply sources, but otherwise the subsistence system based on wild species pretty much remains unchanged,” he says. That lack of pressure would explain why so many societies kept crops as a low-intensity sideline – a hobby, almost – for so many generations. Only much later in the process would densely populated settlements have forced people to abandon wild foods in favour of near-exclusive reliance on farming. Those first experiments most likely happened when bands of hunter-gatherers started tweaking the landscape to encourage the most productive habitats. On the islands of South-East Asia, people were burning

CORNELL CAPA © INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF PHOTOGRAPHY/MAGNUM PHOTOS PHOTOGRAPHY/MAGNUM OF CENTER INTERNATIONAL © CAPA CORNELL patches of tropical forest way back >

32 | NewScientist | 31 October 2015 Where did all the potatoes come from?

Our picture of the dawn of farming is being redrawn. Gone is the simple story of a sudden agricultural revolution in the Fertile Crescent at the end of the last ice age that spread around the world. Archaeologists now agree that farming was “invented” at least 11 times in 11 diferent places

fertile crescent new centres of farming

The ingredients you cook with were once separated by oceans. We now know that most went through long periods of “proto-farming” before being grown in recognisable ields and turned into the crops we still eat today. Proto-farmers would tend to wild plants, perhaps planting some in small gardens

Archaeological evidence of:

farming proto-farming DOI/10.1073/PNAS.1323964111 SOURCE:

MEXICO USSOUTH AMERICA AFRICA MIDDLE EAST SOUTH ASIA EAST ASIA NEW GUINEA

AvocadoCommonMaize bean Pepo squash SquashSunlower CommonWhite bean potatoPeanutChilli pepper Rice (African) Wheat Lentil Chickpea Pea Rice (indica)Mung bean Rice (japonica)Soybean Melon Banana Today 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Thousands of years Thousands of 9 10 11

12 DOI/10.1073/PNAS.1323964111 SOURCE:

31 October 2015 | NewScientist | 33 CUSCUS TO during the last ice age. This created From burning, it is just a short step SLAUGHTER clearings where plants with edible to actively nurturing favoured wild tubers could flourish. In Borneo, species, something that also happened Domestic food animals, the Smithsonian Institution. evidence of this stretches back 53,000 soon after the end of the ice age in traditionally viewed as This implies that they were years; in New Guinea, 20,000 years. some places. Weeds that thrive in a later add-on in the not just hunting the animals, We know the burns were deliberate cultivated fields appear in the Fertile development of agriculture, but deliberately managing because the charcoal they left behind Crescent at least 13,000 years ago, for may have been part of herds to maintain fertile peaks during wet periods, when natural example, and New Guinea highlanders the picture from the very females. She is now looking fires would be less common and people were building mounds on swampy beginning. In fact, the at 11,700-year-old sites for would be fighting forest encroachment, ground to grow bananas, yams and roots of animal husbandry evidence that the practice says Christopher Hunt of Liverpool taro about 7000 years ago. In parts of probably stretch back into began even earlier. If she is John Moores University, UK, who has South America, traces of cultivated the last ice age. successful, it would imply worked in Borneo for many years. crops such as gourds, squash, There is some evidence people began domesticating arrowroot and avocado appear as that the common cuscus, a animals in the region at the early as 11,000 years ago, says Piperno. Burnt riches small marsupial native to same time as they began Evidence suggests that these people New Guinea, appeared on domesticating crops like Burning forest would have paid off lived in small groups, often sheltering remote islands such as New wheat and barley. for hunters too, as game is easier to under rock overhangs or in shallow Ireland 20,000 and 10,000 So why have historians spot at forest edges. At Niah Cave on caves, and they tended small plots years ago, at the same time assumed that animal the northern coast of Borneo, Hunt’s along the banks of seasonal streams as the first humans arrived. domestication came colleagues have found hundreds of in addition to foraging for wild plants. The cuscus is a favoured second? Further south orang-utan bones among the remains Their early efforts wouldn’t have prey for modern hunter- in the Levant, the most of early hunters, suggesting forest looked much like farming is today. “It’s gatherers, so the suspicious common prey animal back regrowth after a burn brought the better to see it as small gardens,” says timing may mean early then was a species of apes low enough to catch, even before Fuller. “Small, intensively managed Pacific islanders brought the gazelle whose behaviour the invention of blowpipes. Burning plots on riverbanks and alluvial fans – animals with them to seed made it unsuitable for probably intensified as the last ice possibly not all that important in their new home with prey. domestication. age gave way to the warmer, wetter terms of the overall calories.” Instead, In the Fertile Crescent of Since most archaeologists Holocene beginning about 13,000 Fuller thinks these gardens may have south-west Asia, skeletal working in the region have years ago. Rainfall in Borneo doubled, provided high-value foods, such as rice, remains of sheep and goats tended to study the Levant, producing a denser forest that would for special occasions. “It’s like growing suggest that by 10,500 which is more accessible, have been much harder to forage something for Christmas dinner instead years ago, humans living in this may have led them to without fire. of year-round meals,” he says. what is now Turkey were the erroneous conclusion This wasn’t only happening in As Gibbs discovered in Borneo, preferentially killing young that animal domestication South-East Asia. Changing climates and others have seen elsewhere since, male animals, says Melinda lagged behind that of plants, also pushed hunter-gatherers into this kind of proto-farming is still Zeder, an archaeologist at says Zeder. landscape management in Central and practised by some hunter-gatherer South America. At the end of the last ice tribes today. They often move every age, the perfect open hunting grounds few years as local game populations Pity the common of the savannahs began to give way are depleted, leaving behind fruit cuscus: cute but to closed forest. By 13,000 years ago, trees that their descendants may tasty people were burning forests during return to decades later. Hunt recalls the dry season when fires would meeting a man gathering fruit in carry, says Dolores Piperno, also at the the forest near Niah who told him Smithsonian Institution. Researchers he was harvesting the trees “that my are now turning up evidence of similar grandfather planted for me”. (Sadly, management activities in Africa, Brazil as younger people abandon their and North America. traditional lifestyles, this multi-

“ THEY LIVED IN SMALL GROUPS IN SHALLOW CAVES, AND TENDED SMALL PLOTS ALONG THE BANKS OF SEASONAL STREAMS” ROBIN MOORE/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE MOORE/NATIONAL ROBIN

34 | NewScientist | 31 October 2015 domesticated crops. We know from the type of starch grains found on their teeth that people living in southern Mexico 8700 years ago were eating domesticated maize, yet large-scale slash-and-burn agriculture did not begin until nearly a millennium later. In several cases – Scandinavia, for example – societies began to rely on domesticated crops, then switched back to wild foods when they couldn’t make a go of farming. And in eastern North America, Native Americans had domesticated squash, sunflowers and several other plants by about 3800 years ago, but only truly committed to agriculture about AD 900, says Smith. Indeed, some cultures didn’t commit to domesticated crops until modern times. The highlanders of Borneo, for example, only began growing domestic rice after the second world war. Many of the indigenous crops grown by traditional New Guineans, like sago palm and some tubers, are even now

MATTHIEU PALEY/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE GEOGRAPHIC PALEY/NATIONAL MATTHIEU only semi-domesticated at best, says Denham. One reason may be that generational knowledge is rapidly that stay in the seed head instead of Cream of the traditional gardening hunter-gatherers being lost, says Hunt.) falling off to seed the next generation, crop: maize has use so many plants – often a different Archaeologists have long assumed didn’t appear until about two-and-a- changed through mix for each month of the year – that that this proto-farming was a short- half millennia later. Fully domesticated the ages their crops experience very little lived predecessor to fully domesticated rice didn’t appear until 6000 years ago, evolutionary pressure toward crops. They believed that the first says Fuller. domestication. farmers quickly transformed the Even after crops were domesticated, The story of agriculture, in short, is plants’ genetic make-up by selecting there was often a lag, sometimes of not the sudden agricultural revolution traits like larger seeds and easier thousands of years, before people of textbooks, but rather an agricultural harvesting to produce modern began to rely on them for most of evolution. “The evidence is showing a domestic varieties. After all, similar their calories. During this prolonged much more patchwork-quilt mosaic, selection has produced great changes transition period, people often act with different sorts of practices and in dogs within just the past few as though they haven’t made up different plants being used in different hundred years. their mind how much to trust the ways,” says Denham. “In those newfangled agricultural technology. conditions, when agriculture emerges The inhabitants of China’s Yangtze over time, it’s a long, drawn-out We’ll farm... maybe delta about 6900 years ago, for process. It’s a much more diffuse But new archaeological sites and better example, lived primarily on wild foods event, both in time and in space.” techniques for recognising ancient like acorns and water chestnuts. They That means people’s motivations plant remains have made it clear that also grew a small amount of partially for making the switch were equally crop domestication was often very domesticated rice, often in small complex, as crops become gradually slow. Through much of the Middle depressions just a metre or two across. more dominant in their lives. “If people East, Asia and New Guinea, at least But Fuller has found that rice makes are cultivating plots, their life is going a thousand – and often several up only 8 per cent of plant remains in to be oriented to those areas,” says thousand – years of proto-farming archaeological sites in the region. Three Denham. “That would require a shift preceded the first genetic hints of hundred years later, the use of rice had in their way of engaging with the domestication. tripled, and yet wild foods still made up landscape, and with each other as In China, for example, people the bulk of the diet. “They’re keeping well. That’s really why we’re interested began cultivating wild forms of rice their options open,” says Fuller. in it – because it’s a story about us.” ■ on a small scale about 10,000 years The record also shows a long period ago. But physical traits associated with of overlap in other regions, with Bob Holmes is a consultant for New Scientist domesticated rice, such as larger grains cultures using both wild foods and based in Edmonton, Canada

31 October 2015 | NewScientist | 35

HE Romans had a saying in praise of a operations are hard to do. The best known of Even if we could prove that the factorisation reliable man: “You can trust him in the our modern encryption systems is called RSA. problem is beyond the abilities of traditional Tdark.” But as Julius Caesar realised when To encode data, it builds a key from two very computers, there are still quantum computers several members of his inner circle stabbed large prime numbers. These are kept secret, to consider. Because they compute using him to death, sometimes the best course of but their product – a number thousands of quantum phenomena they could consider action is to trust no one. binary digits long – is public knowledge. Data all the possible primes at once. In 1994 Throughout history, people have been can be encoded using this public key, but only mathematician Peter Shor, now at the burned by misplaced trust. Users of the those with knowledge of the original numbers Massachusetts Institute of Technology, extramarital affairs website Ashley Madison, can decrypt it. RSA’s security relies on the fact showed this would be a speedy process. whose details were leaked in August, are a that there is no known shortcut to find the two Simple quantum computers already exist good example. Their spouses are another. starting numbers. The only ways to do it are and advanced machines able to realise But as far as cybersecurity is concerned, we almost interminable processes, such as trying Shor’s idea can’t be far off. are finally poised to create a world in which all the possibilities one by one. One way to reinvigorate our privacy is trust is optional. The development taking us Or so we hope. “We cannot prove that these to fight fire with fire and employ quantum there is called device-independent quantum problems are inherently difficult,” Ekert says. cryptography. This promises the ability to cryptography. Once it is perfected, you will be It’s not impossible that someone will discover create keys that are entirely random, entirely able to buy a secure device from your worst a procedure allowing a conventional computer unpredictable and totally inaccessible to spies. enemy and still be certain that no one is spying to quickly factorise the product of two huge Quantum cryptography hinges on the rules on the messages you send using it. “You don’t primes. Maybe they already have and they’re that govern particles like photons or electrons. have to trust anyone,” says Artur Ekert, the cleverly keeping it secret. If such an algorithm Their properties, including polarisation University of Oxford physicist whose ever came to light, internet transactions would for instance, take multiple values at once, innovations in cryptography led to the idea. collapse, and financial deals and top secret only snapping into sharp definition when This perfectly secure future can’t arrive government communications would be measured. Use these properties as a basis for quickly enough, as present-day cryptographic exposed. “It would truly be a catastrophe,” encryption and you preclude any attempt to systems are in a precarious state. The says Michele Mosca of the Institute for peek at your key: that would change the result security of all of our online purchases, bank Quantum Computing in Waterloo, Canada. of the measurement, in effect destroying the transactions and personas rely on a single “It’s like a Y2K problem, except we don’t know key’s tamper-proof seal. The technique has

JAMIE MILLS shaky assumption: that certain mathematical precisely when it might happen.” already been used to protect hospital data, >

Need to share a secret? You’ll want a cipher that’s as strong as the laws of physics, says Michael Brooks ONE NOTRUST

31 October 2015 | NewScientist | 37 Talking in secret? financial transactions and voting in the know the manufacturer hasn’t built in a Swiss general elections. covert back door that allows them to read Alice and Bob like to encrypt messages using Current systems use a protocol where the and sell your secrets? entangled photons, but two loopholes can person transmitting the key, usually referred It’s hardly unthinkable. As soon as a new compromise privacy to as Alice, releases a polarised photon and encryption technology becomes available, ALICE’S DETECTOR makes a measurement on it before sending governments, corporations and intelligence it. Her listening partner, usually referred to agencies look for – and may even demand – a as Bob, chooses a particular way to make a hidden flaw that they can exploit. Maybe your Locality loophole measurement of that polarisation, and then machine is programmed to spit out a key If Alice and Bob’s he and Alice use an unencrypted channel matching what someone somewhere has on detectors aren’t far SOURCE OF to compare the sort of measurements they file. Or perhaps there is a side-channel that enough apart, we can’t ENTANGLED did. This allows them to create one digit of a logs a copy of any key you generate. rule out a physical signal PHOTONS passing between them private key for use in encrypting messages. Here’s where device-independent that would compromise To build the entire key, Alice and Bob simply cryptography comes in. It started when Ekert the system repeat the process. came up with a smart new form of quantum You might think that’s good enough, yet cryptography in 1991 (Physical Review Letters, this type of quantum cryptography has vol 67, p 661). BOB’S DETECTOR weaknesses. “You always have to make This protocol also uses a stream of photons Detection loophole some assumptions about certain pieces of and, just as before, Alice creates a string of Detectors can’t pick up every photon, equipment,” says Vadim Makarov, one of random numbers by measuring a property which can skew the statistical tests Mosca’s colleagues in Waterloo. Makarov is of each. The twist is that this time Bob has a that guarantee privacy an expert at showing that those assumptions separate stream of photons from the same matter, having broken into many “secure” source, and his photons are “entangled” with systems around the world. He is the first to Alice’s. Entangled photons are generated in admit that you have to go to fantastic lengths pairs, and their properties are subtly connected. to exploit these weaknesses, but when it If Alice has one of a pair, and Bob has the other, comes to state secrets, say, or large bank they can perform measurements on their transactions, who’s to say nobody would? respective photons that will help them create One example of such a vulnerability is each digit of a shared key. known as the detection loophole. It arises because the efficiency of photon detectors is never perfect, making practical quantum So random cryptography a bit like sending multiple Until 2004, Ekert’s idea was just another copies of your key via an army of couriers way of doing quantum cryptography, subject to an office that occasionally shuts for lunch. to the same old loopholes (see “Talking in Alice has to send far more photons than would secret?”, left). But that changed when Antonio otherwise be necessary, because Bob can’t Acín of the Institute of Photonic Sciences in detect them all. This intermittent detection Barcelona, Spain, and colleagues realised means Alice and Bob can’t be certain that their that this version of cryptography contained apparatus is working securely. a way to check the trustworthiness of the It’s not impossible to dream up ways of manufacturer. The implications are profound: solving these technical hitches, but there’s with this protocol, you could buy the machine another more subtle problem that comes as from your worst enemy and still be certain an unavoidable side dish and which takes us that it couldn’t leak your secrets. “It came as a to the heart of the problem with trust. surprise to me,” Ekert says. “Sometimes your Imagine you have bought a state-of-the-art inventions can be cleverer than you are.” quantum cryptography system. It might The rules of quantum theory say that well come complete with a shiny certificate the link between two entangled particles is guaranteeing its security, but how do you “monogamous”: there is no correlation with anything else and so no information can escape to an eavesdropper. Acín’s neat insight was that you can prove whether this is the “How do you know the device case using something known as a Bell test. hasn’t got a back door that First set out by physicist John Bell in 1964, the test aims to determine whether two sets will leak your secrets?” of numbers are more highly correlated than can be achieved by chance. “The more they are correlated together, the less they can be correlated with anything outside,” Ekert says. If your system passes the Bell test, you have a cast-iron guarantee of three things. First, that your key is generated on the fly and thus not predictable. Second, that its digits have an inherent randomness, and thus can’t be guessed. Third, and perhaps most

38 | NewScientist | 31 October 2015 the electrons. Now Alice and Bob have a pair of Privacy guaranteed entangled electrons that haven’t travelled Earlier this year an experiment beat the loopholes that compromise anywhere (see “Privacy guaranteed”, left). the security of existing quantum cryptography Because electrons are much easier to detect than photons, the experiment easily closed ALICE Alice and Bob each have a diamond BOB the detection loophole. And because the and they ire a microwave pulse at it, electrons were so far apart, the researchers causing the diamonds to emit a photon had a 4-microsecond window in which to measure their correlations – plenty of time in 21st-century physics – and prove that any physical signal that could have created them Each photon is entangled would have needed to travel faster than light. with an electron inside the Since this is forbidden by the laws of general diamond it came from relativity, of course, that took care of the locality loophole.

DETECTOR Under wraps

If the two photons arrive at the detector simultaneously, the entanglement gets Thanks to this ingenuity, the correlations transferred: now the electron in Alice's diamond is entangled with the electron passed the Bell test, and we know that they inside Bob's diamond. This allows Alice and Bob to have entangled particles are not due to detector errors, nor to a without needing to exchange them – and that closes the loopholes communication that has a hackable physical mechanism. “That feels good,” says Wehner’s college Bas Henson who led the project. 1.3km Finally, we have closed the loopholes; Alice Bob quantum theory has passed the test and we know it can be used to create a certifiably Detector safe cryptographic system. There are still a few wrinkles. Familiar ones Aerial view of experiment at Delft University, the Netherlands that have always hindered cryptographers. An enemy might break into your office and steal importantly, that no one is tapping into your had done both at the same time. It’s your key, for instance. “Physical security is key transmission using a back door. If they surprisingly hard to do, according to always an issue,” Mosca says. “If I can look into were, the correlations would be tainted. Stephanie Wehner of Delft University of your lab and see the plain text, then I don’t There was just one problem with the Technology in the Netherlands. “It’s like saying need to break your cipher.” Makarov points to scheme: no one had built a fully watertight I can ride a bike and I can juggle, so I must be another caveat: the key distribution might be experimental set up to conduct the Bell able to juggle while riding a bike,” she says. device-independent, but other parts of the test. It comes down to the same problems “It’s not as easy as you might think.” system could be compromised. “You have to that plague today’s versions of quantum But Wehner and her colleagues finally trust that no ingredient at the end stations cryptography, plus one more that comes into performed a loophole-free Bell test earlier this contains some malicious piece,” he says. play now we’re dealing with entanglement. year (Nature, doi.org/8km). The crucial idea Those eternal issues aside, though, we This final problem is called the locality have finally reached the end of the road for loophole. The worry is that there might be “It’s like a Y2K problem perfecting security. It will take time to move some as yet undiscovered signal relaying from proof of principle to application: information between the entangled particles. except we don’t know implementing the protocol is still hard If there were, that would invalidate our when it will happen” work for now. The Delft team achieved 245 assumptions about randomness and open entanglement events in 9 days – not exactly a up the possibility of some genius adversary useful rate for generating a cryptographic key, tapping the signal. they harnessed in their experiment is called which might need to be thousands of digits It might seem like madness to be concerned entanglement swapping. The Delft team set long. But things are improving. “We expect to about all this, but there are two good reasons up two diamonds, 1.3 kilometres apart on be able to make entanglement 100,000 times to push ahead. For one thing, get this right and their campus. Imagine our hypothetical faster in the near future,” says Henson. we would have totally eliminated the need for Alice being stationed at one, Bob at the Device independent quantum trust. And for another, this is where the story other. Each diamond contained a defect cryptography, the last word in secret of quantum cryptography intersects with known as a nitrogen vacancy centre. Hitting messaging, does now appear to be within physicists’ quest to prove quantum theory is an electron located there with a microwave our grasp. The quantum part provides a full and accurate description of reality. Here pulse produces a photon that is entangled an unbreakable protocol; the device- is an opportunity to slay the lingering doubt with the electron. The team arranged things so independence takes the reliability of the about whether there is something beneath the that pulses hit both diamonds at roughly the supplier out of the equation. “In terms of spooky links between entangled particles. same time and their respective photons shot being able to verify physical security, it’s the Proving that there isn’t would involve a off to a detector in the middle. Here’s the best,” says Mosca. Ekert agrees: the Bell test Bell test where the locality and the detection smart bit: if the photons arrived at that central routine is so simple anyone can use it. “You loopholes are simultaneously closed. In detector exactly in sync, the entanglement don’t even have to understand physics.” ■ the 51 years since Bell published his test would swap from being between each person’s researchers did one or the other, but no one electron-photon pair to being shared between Michael Brooks is a consultant for New Scientist

31 October 2015 | NewScientist | 39 Live and learn

Apps promise to help adults learn languages in their spare time, but can you really become bilingual as you commute to work, asks Hannah Joshua

T WAS time to say tawa pona, or farewell in language”, and has 5 million users. Another a language most of us had never heard of language app, Duolingo, one of the most I48 hours before. I had joined a group of popular, has accrued 105 million registered 17 language enthusiasts who signed up to learn users since it launched in 2011, and there are a new way of communicating in just two days. many other similar tools out there (see It seemed a lofty goal, but by the end of the “Teacher in your pocket”, page 42 ). Such is experience, we were all reasonably fluent. their popularity that several of the companies As someone who flunked French and behind the apps are now hoping to get their German in my teens, the idea that I could pick tests approved as recognised language up a new language so quickly was a revelation. certificates. But does the technology work, and I had labelled myself a lifelong monoglot, and, can people really multitask their way to being like many others who never took to languages multilingual? at school, was discouraged by the idea that It’s no secret that children tend to find it once the precious easy-learning window of easier than adults to pick up language skills. childhood has passed, the task of mastering Part of that is because children’s brains are a new language becomes an uphill struggle. tuned to discern the sounds of any language, Research has now dispelled that notion. The allowing them to develop the right accent. But brain does get rewired as you age, and kids do that ability doesn’t last forever, and later in life grow up surrounded for much of the day by clumsy accents are hard to shake. the language they want to acquire, but being That doesn’t mean we should lose heart. an adult does have advantages when it comes There are other reasons why children are quick to learning. One of them is probably in your on the uptake, and insights into the way adults pocket right now. think and learn can help technology recreate “Technology is really the way that learning the benefits. For a start, kids have adults is going,” says Rosalind Potts, who studies correcting them whenever they err. Adults are memory and learning at University College more likely to learn new words through study, London. Gone are the days of parroting stock and tend to rely on self-testing instead. phrases from a chalkboard. Mobile devices This is one area where technology can step and the internet are offering us adaptive, in. Testing not only helps us find out what we personalised ways to absorb more don’t know, but is itself a good way to make information and make the most of every spare words stick. Without a top-up, the strength of second. “Learning is coming out of the memories can halve within a day or two of classroom and into the big wide world where learning something. After this we continue to people are much more in control,” says Potts. forget at a less dramatic rate for some time. The idea that technology can fast-track us to But when is best to test yourself? Test too fluency during stolen moments in our busy soon and the benefit might be wasted; too late lives is an attractive one. My two-day boot and you’ll have to do some relearning. In camp to learn an artificial language called Toki 2008, psychologists at Carnegie Mellon Pona made use of an app called Memrise – a University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, put kind of intelligent flash-card deck that taps testing to the test. They found that each exam into the latest findings in cognitive science to gives your memory a little boost that weakens make learning vocabulary easier. It bills itself over time. For optimal learning, you need to be as “the ultimate memorisation tool for tested soon after first studying, and then at >

40 | NewScientist | 31 October 2015 GONÇALO VIANA GONÇALO

31 October 2015 | NewScientist | 41 “There’s no harm in making errors – in fact it’s probably better for memory”

TEACHER IN YOUR POCKET carefully timed and ever expanding intervals There’s no shortage of apps to help you (see graph, opposite). Using this knowledge, learn a language: the team developed algorithms for optimal test scheduling. CNA SPEAKING EXCHANGE connects English Several companies are trying to capitalise learners with elderly speakers seeking social on this idea. Memrise, for instance, shows you interaction a word, then immediately tests you on it. The FLEEX puts subtitles on videos, gradually app also sends notifications to tell you when adjusting the mix from your native to your to practise to boost your decaying memories. target language This kind of regular testing was a key part of our first morning learning Toki Pona. But LANG-8 lets you blog in a foreign language, while such drilling certainly gets some words while native speakers correct your mistakes stuck in your head, we still spent much of that WAITCHATTER tests your vocabulary while time getting things wrong. Toki Pona only has you wait for friends to reply using instant 120 words – creator Sonja Lang designed it to School is an immersive messenging simplify her thoughts – but getting to grips language-learning with even a simple language is a tall order environment BUSUU is a social media site for language before lunch. learners around the world phrases and were forced to get creative. Coffee was “telo pimaje wawa”, which means HINATIVE allows you to put language Memorable mistakes questions – such as the meaning of idioms – powerful dark liquid. to those who know Unknown to us, making mistakes so soon But according to Katie Nielson, chief might have been useful. The accepted wisdom education officer of Voxy, which has a digital DUOLINGO treats learning like a game, with suggests that getting things wrong hinders tool for English learners, immersion might points and extra lives to keep you motivated learning. “Wrong answers can be quite not be ideal for adults. “It’s impossible to learn MEMRISE quizzes you on foreign vocabulary deleterious for memory because you run the a second language the way you learn a first just before you forget danger of storing them,” says Ed Cooke, language because your brain is structured co-founder of Memrise. differently,” she says. “If you take adults who VOXY displays foreign media articles relevant But it’s time to rethink this idea, says Potts, don’t know anything and you put them into to your interests and at exactly the right level whose latest research implies that we’d do well an environment where everyone is speaking of difficulty to err more often. Her team asked people to this new language, they’re not going to learn guess the meanings of Basque words. None of it. They need to have it offered to them at a the participants knew the language, so their level that they can understand.” guesses tended to be wildly wrong. However, Part of the reason might be because adults this group had better recall in a subsequent can think about their use of language in a way test than a group who just read translations that children can’t. This helps with learning of each word. vocabulary. Children are learning new “As long as you get feedback then there concepts at the same time as they’re learning doesn’t seem to be any harm in making errors, how to express them. For adults, when it and in fact it’s probably better for memory,” comes to learning the word for love, say, in Potts says. She reasons that a desire to know another language, there’s no need to build the the right answer after making a wrong guess concept of love from scratch; you just attach a

IAIN MASTERTON/INCAMERASTOCK/CORBIS means people pay more attention to the new label to your existing association. Love is feedback, which creates stronger memories. still love in Sweden even if it is called kärlek. The potential embarrassment of messing But too much thinking about language can up renders many adults mute when abroad. make learning a new grammar tougher. In one But testing yourself with an app, chatting to recent study, researchers asked two groups of strangers over social media or using a foreign people to listen to an artificial language. One language blogging platform like Lang-8 – group was told to pay attention to the words. where native speakers correct your errors – The other was given tasks like colouring as a all provide a non-judgemental environment distraction. Although both groups picked up for making mistakes. the rules governing word order, those who had Our Toki Pona learning marathon rivalled concentrated had a harder time working out another advantage that children ostensibly which out of three categories a novel word have over adults. Kids spend lots of time would belong to. immersed in a new language. The turning All this hints that the best approach might Je m’APPelle: your point for us came on the second morning, be a combination of techniques. If there are tablet won’t judge you when we banned English. There was awkward some aspects that we pick up more easily when you mess up silence at first, but we soon began to venture without overthinking them, apps that allow

42 | NewScientist | 31 October 2015 Research suggests that games can lower Timetabled testing language learning anxiety, but with games Scheduling tests at just the right time can stop specifically designed to teach language, the you gradually forgetting what you have learned. The bells and whistles can be distracting. In one longer since you irst encountered the information, study, people who watched an interactive the less often you need to practise language game being played could recall more vocabulary than those who actually played it. Without testing Spaced repetition The cognitive burden of playing and learning was too great. But what of other games? Dionne Palmer of 70 the University of California, Davis, looked at whether it would be possible to use the online 30 multiplayer game World Of Warcraft to learn of Percentage SOURCE: EFAQT.COM SOURCE:

Spanish, just by changing the location remembered information settings. After 370 hours of playing over eight 1 day 1 hour 1 week months, she improved her Spanish literacy 1 month 6 months

HIROKO MASUIKE/NEW YORK TIMES REDUX/ EYEVINE/ skills to an extent equivalent to two academic terms of classroom instruction, or roughly you to learn passively – for instance by 200 hours. It’s a major time commitment, language test commonly used for university watching a foreign film – could be just the but if you are playing anyway, just switch placements. “What seems to matter most is ticket. When it comes to grammar, some your settings and learn. not how much you do, but how regularly,” he digital tools can make learning more implicit. Enjoyment can also come from tapping says. The team is now conducting studies on Estonian physicist Mait Müntel was working into the endless online content aiming to give other apps. at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland, when he learners a choice of relevant material. Nielson This kind of independent evaluation is realised he wasn’t interacting with his French says this maintains motivation because the important not just for casual learners, but also colleagues. But learning French was a learned skills seem relevant, and providing because the technology is catching the eye of daunting prospect. To make the task more people with material tailored to their interests formal educators. “I am constantly getting manageable, he wrote algorithms that would can also help them decipher unfamiliar words. questions from school district representatives adapt to his strengths and weaknesses as he With so many factors influencing how we looking to buy language apps,” says Vesselinov. learned. The system starts off with simple learn, it’s not easy to identify the best mix of “All of them want efficacy measures for the sentences, getting you to fill in easy nouns or tools to suit a learner’s needs. “We tend to most popular apps.” basic present-tense verbs, but gets more study techniques in isolation and we don’t Companies behind the technologies also challenging as you improve, adjusting the know the effect of combining them,” says want to establish their credentials by having example sentences to make you practise the Potts. But with millions of users, apps provide users gain recognised language qualifications. things you’re worst at more frequently. “It a mine of information about what works. Duolingo, for example, has set up a paid-for constantly calculates in real time what you Memrise recently launched a competition testing service, and Voxy and another popular should do to be most efficient,” says Müntel. to figure out the most effective way to use a platform called Busuu have deals with The method worked for him. “I learned for single hour of study time. And Voxy has begun Pearson, a company that sets one test for a couple of months, then passed the national a partnership with the University of Maryland, English as a foreign language, accepted by examination of French that usually people using tests to measure learners’ working governments and universities. take after learning for 10 years in school,” he memory and preferred learning styles in order From personal experience, I can say that says. Müntel is now one of a team developing to better personalise instruction. digital tools are making language learning fun the program, called Lingvist, promising to get The big question is whether the skills and engaging, and that they can give you the confidence to at least give it a try. I gave up “ What seems to matter most is not how much learning Toki Pona (along with my fears about remaining a monoglot), and applied the same practice you do, but how regularly” tools and techniques to Swedish. By swatting up on vocabulary on my people speaking French in 200 hours or less. gleaned from digital tools translate to the real commute, watching subtitled Scandinavian So, app-based learning can be effective, world, or whether people’s language scores dramas in the evening, and writing on my and what’s more, it’s enjoyable. Our Toki Pona improve simply because they get better at Lang-8 blog, I managed to surprise my marathon proved the power of games in using the technology itself. That’s hard to test, Swedish-speaking partner by holding court language learning. How do you describe a and so far relatively little research has been on Valentine’s Day, just three months later. spider in a language that only has 120 words? done. One way is to pit the technology against There’s no better way of showing your kärlek We played Pictionary, hangman, charades – traditional standards. Last year, Roumen than that. ■ anything we could think of that might help. Vesselinov of the City University of New York That interaction and competition was a boon, and his colleagues showed that, on average, Hannah Joshua is a subeditor at New Scientist so it comes as no surprise that many apps use Duolingo users took 34 hours to cover the To hear Hannah speak Toki Pona, visit levels and badges to keep learners keen. material needed to pass one semester of a bit.ly/NSLanguage

31 October 2015 | NewScientist | 43 CULTURELAB

A world remade

Are we sleepwalking towards a strange new society, asks Anil Ananthaswamy

and hence our lives, irrevocably. The Master Algorithm: How the quest If it exists, says Domingos, the for the ultimate learning machine will master algorithm can derive all remake our world by Pedro Domingos, knowledge in the world “past, Basic Books/Penguin, $29.99/£20 present, and future – from data”. WHEN machine In theory, such an algorithm learning could derive Newton’s laws from algorithms that the astronomical observations replace newspaper of Tycho Brahe, with no a priori reporters became knowledge of such laws. fodder for a recent But why should such an episode of Comedy algorithm even exist? Domingos Central’s The provides compelling arguments Daily Show, it was clear that the from neuroscience, evolution, technology had gone mainstream. physics, statistics and computer But as Pedro Domingos points science. For instance, the cerebral out in The Master Algorithm, cortex might be an instance

machines that learn have been of such an algorithm: some PHOTOS PARR/MAGNUM MARTIN deeply involved with our lives neuroscientists think that it for a while. If you use Google, implements the same algorithm desirable and maybe even after the children while the Netflix, Amazon, Pandora, Yelp, all over, just tweaked to learn inevitable. This cheery outlook parents work. How soon depends Xbox or just about any online to see or hear, or to make sense shines through large parts of the on how hard finding the Master dating service, your life is being of touch. book, when he writes that such an Algorithm turns out to be.” run by algorithms that are Depending on your world view, algorithm will “speed poverty’s The implications of machine learning more and more about the development of a master decline”, that routine jobs “will be learning for war and politics may you by chomping on the data you, algorithm is either really thrilling automated and replaced by more be the most far-reaching of the sometimes unwittingly, provide. or downright scary. It’s not interesting ones”, that the health transformations in store for our “Society is changing, one surprising that Domingos, an of our planet will “take a turn for world. One reason that Barack learning algorithm at a time. expert in machine learning, has the better”, and that our own lives Obama defeated Mitt Romney in Machine learning is remaking a very optimistic view. He clearly will be “longer, happier and more the 2012 US presidential election science, technology, business, sees the master algorithm as productive”. is that his campaign embraced politics and war,” writes Domingos has few doubts, Domingos, a computer scientist and those he has mainly concern “ Depending on your world at the University of Washington, whether the technology will really view, a master algorithm Seattle. happen as promised. “Maybe,” is either really thrilling For people in his field, the he muses, “the master algorithm or downright scary” problem is that there are myriad will take its place among the such algorithms, each trying to great chimeras, alongside the machine learning. In the future, discern patterns in the masses philosopher’s stone and the “elected officials will be able of data we produce. “Machine perpetual motion machine.” to ask voters what they want a learning is about prediction,” he But what about the future thousand times a day and act writes, “predicting what we want, that lies in store for us, should accordingly”, writes Domingos. the results of our actions, how to machine learning take over our This might work if elected officials achieve our goals, how the world lives (if it hasn’t already)? Again, always had their constituents’ will change.” Domingos sees it all as a positive. good in mind. But could they The book is about the quest for “Someday there’ll be a robot in not subvert the technology to that one master algorithm which every house, doing the dishes, manipulate the electorate?

would change machine learning, PHOTOS PARR/MAGNUM MARTIN making the beds, even looking As for war, the scenario is

44 | NewScientist | 31 October 2015 For more books and arts coverage, visit newscientist.com/culturelab

a permanent basic income doled out by the government, while those in the few remaining Winning ways human occupations will be stupendously wealthy. “For those Can science only win book prizes if it dons of us not working, life will not be meaningless, any more than other clothes, asks Sumit Paul-Choudhury life on a tropical island where nature’s bounty meets all needs is meaningless.” WHY doesn’t science win Four-Dimensional Human: Ways Despite my reservations mainstream book prizes? No of being in the digital world (New about the value of lives ruled straight science book has won Scientist, 9 May), and for Steve by algorithms, I found the book the Samuel Johnson Prize for Silberman’s powerful study of oddly compelling. Domingos Non-Fiction, often called the the medical and social history of writes with verve and passion, UK’s most prestigious non-fiction autism, Neurotribes: The legacy of and the book has a strong award, in its 17-year history. Why? autism and how to think smarter narrative. This can stall because Is it because writing original, about people who think differently of lengthy, fairly technical clear and readable science books (New Scientist, 10 October). Both descriptions of the various is hard? Or perhaps publishers Scott and Silberman made it onto learning algorithms, such as are reluctant to submit them to the shortlist of six, too. neural or Bayesian. Reading a competition that has in the past But the story is more nuanced. about their innards can be hard leaned heavily towards history Science made itself felt elsewhere work, even for a former software and biography? Then again, on the longlist. Black Earth: The engineer like me. maybe there is a lack of science Holocaust as history and warning But these interludes aside, advocates among the prize’s jury? by Timothy Snyder is framed by the book manages to build up a Things have changed a little in revelatory chapters about the sense of anticipation as we join recent years: with greater science ecological foundations of Hitler’s Domingos and his ilk in their representation on the panel, the world view, and the potential for pursuit of the ultimate learning field has fared noticeably better. history to repeat itself as climate algorithm. He makes you want to As one of the five judges this year, change sets in. And Landmarks, Once machines do all the work, know whether they will succeed. I was hopeful this trend might Robert Macfarlane’s beautiful will we be at leisure or in despair? Domingos also provides an continue, that we might even see wilderness gazetteer, is a fusion insider’s view, and doesn’t hold science take the £20,000 prize. of geology and nature with the scarier. One can envisage fighting back from dishing out delicious vanishing language that describes robots that use machine learning titbits on big names in the field. “ One of the joys of reading them (New Scientist, 28 March). to get better and better at killing. “If the history of machine so many books was being Both books enriched my reading Eventually, people will be off the learning were a Hollywood reminded that science of Jonathan Bate’s Ted Hughes: battlefield and robots will fight it movie,” he says, “the villain touches all of human life” The unauthorised life, about the out among themselves – and this would be Marvin Minsky.” That’s poet whose work combined will prevent human casualties and because Minsky, a really stellar At it turned out, the list of books nature and nihilism – a more hence suffering, says Domingos. name, was deeply sceptical about submitted for consideration was traditional shortlistee. But surely, all that would do machine learning, Domingos light on science. Many touched on And other threads of science ran is shift the suffering to other explains. scientific subjects, from anatomy through the books – the influence realms of life, not eliminate it? The Master Algorithm is a very to cosmology, and there was a of Freud, for example. Indeed, one It’s hard to avoid the feeling thorough account of its subject, notable amount of nature writing, of the joys of reading dozens of that machine learning is only but I kept thinking that there is but few had theory or discovery as highly diverse books for the prize going to increase the rift between another book hidden inside: one their central concern. Even fewer was being reminded that science the haves and the have-nots, as we that eschews much of the technical focused on technology – a striking and technology touch every enter a new phase of survival of stuff and tackles the extraordinary deficiency given the social sphere of human life, and that the fittest. As Domingos writes, consequences in more depth. That upheaval it is causing. the branches of knowledge and “He who learns fastest wins”, and book would build a broader picture The overall quality was high, culture all, in reality, flow together machine learning “is the latest for lay readers, to prepare them nonetheless, and the longlist in one continuous stream. chapter in the arms race of life for what lies ahead. If Domingos’s included The Planet Remade: How Science or not, whichever book on Earth”. work provokes someone to write geoengineering could change the triumphs on 2 November will be a But he’s still not worried. As such a book, then it will have done world, Oliver Morton’s thoughtful worthy winner. We will tweet the machine learning does away with us all a great service. ■ look at the challenges of results on @CultureLabNS. ■ most jobs, the world Domingos geoengineering. There was also envisions consists of a large class Anil Ananthaswamy is a consultant for a spot for Laurence Scott’s lyrical Sumit Paul-Choudhury is editor of of unemployed people living on New Scientist exploration of living online, The New Scientist

31 October 2015 | NewScientist | 45

LETTERS [email protected] @newscientist newscientist

EDITOR’S PICK Shining a light on reliable before giving an opinion. From Shelley Charik It is important that experts Your leader on metrology rightly ancient caving ground the testimony they emphasised its importance as provide in scientific evidence a fundamental, though little- From Donald McCoy rather than opinion, whether they regarded, infra-technology The large collection of Homo are representing the prosecution (3 October, p 5). The UK has long naledi fossils found deep inside or the defence. been a world leader in metrology. a cave system in South Africa For the avoidance of doubt, So why is the National Physical appears to have been placed there I do not believe that memories Laboratory’s watt balance in intentionally, suggesting some recovered in all forms of therapy Canada? Why is work on the type of ritual for disposing of the are less likely to be real, because Planck constant being done dead (12 September, p 8). That there is no consistent scientific there and in the US, France, raises an interesting question. evidence to support such a Switzerland, New Zealand and Morality needs How did this ancient hominin, claim. It is, however, universally South Korea, instead of at the with a brain half the size of ours, recognised that certain therapeutic NPL in Teddington, Middlesex? more thought navigate caves that are clearly techniques such as hypnosis may Could it be because UK dangerous in pitch blackness be risky if used inappropriately. government funding for From Anthony Richardson while carrying a dead relative? London, UK metrology is now £15 million less Dan Jones discusses ways to make Surely they must also have in real terms than it was a decade people moral (26 September, p 36) mastered the making of fire ago? In the government’s current and Christian B. Miller asks whether torches – a skill usually attributed The measure of the spending review, ministers are “character education” works (p 26). to much later development of the demanding “proof”, through In part, dilemmas on morality human species. class and the nation econometric modelling, that come from a lack of understanding West Lakes, South Australia science funding increases that moral behaviour requires From Bernadette Waugh prosperity, while competitor thought. “Moral instruction” is an It is intriguing to read of the nations continue to outspend us. oxymoron promoted by religious Memory recovery lengths to which scientists go to I imagine the minister responsible and other groups seeking power obtain accurate measurements watching a son parading with and conformity, and doesn’t lead and therapy as, for example, in measuring the a marching band and proudly to moral behaviour, simply Boltzman constant to one part exclaiming: “There’s my boy, acquiescence or worse. From Bernice Andrews, Emeritus per million (3 October, p 38). the only one in step.” Our progress has been hampered Professor (Psychology), Royal My field is educational London, UK by a lack of planned education in Holloway University of London measurement. Schools and the area. In the UK, this hasn’t Discussing the issues of “lost” universities, when marking, for been helped by a lack of strategic memories and therapy, you report example, a physics exam, don’t Glass myth needed planning in the National Curriculum. me saying that memories that re- even use an agreed unit. Teachers Pupils should be given the emerge spontaneously are more and professors just have a group to be smashed opportunity to see how their likely to be real than those from of questions on their topic, instinctive reactions and behaviours recovered-memory therapy allocate some marks and add the From Val Sigstedt are based on priorities which served (10 October, p 8). To put the record marks to produce a percentage Stained glass craftspeople thank us well a million years ago. straight, I did not use the term non-linear score. Sometimes Gilead Amit for busting forever These reactions originate in “recovered-memory therapy” they even add these non-linear the hoary myth that the ancient deep-seated parts of our brain, and and would never do so. It is a term scores (like an assignment) to glass found thicker at lower edges often do not serve us well today. It is with no specific definition, often other non-linear scores (like of leaded glass tesserae “proved” correct to say that moral behaviour used indiscriminately to describe a semester test) to obtain a that glass is “a super-cooled must be based on an understanding any therapy (appropriate or composite non-linear score, liquid,” and slumps at ordinary of this, together with an exploration otherwise) that might have not mentioning any errors. temperatures (5 September, p 30). of how we think through how we preceded memories of abuse. The errors in these scores Medieval glaziers deliberately make good decisions for ourselves In my role as an expert witness would probably be 5 to 10 in 100 used variations in their hand- and others. in the courts I recognise that and maybe more. Nobody knows blown glass to put functional, Ironbridge, Shropshire, UK recovering a memory in therapy because nobody tests for these water-shedding “shelves” at the per se does not necessarily render errors. Here in Perth it is common lower edges of individual pieces it unreliable, and the majority for the Curriculum and Standards of stained glass. Like shingles on a of therapists do not use Authority to report subject roof, these optimised the working inappropriate practices. In legal examination scores to two life of their lead, putty and glass cases it is necessary to weigh up decimal places – an accuracy constructions which, before a variety of factors that might they cannot possibly meet with protective glazing was invented, To read more letters, increase or decrease the non-linear percentage scores. had to face corroding rain. visit newscientist.com/letters likelihood of a memory being Perth, Western Australia Point Pleasant, Pennsylvania, US

52 | NewScientist | 31 October 2015 “Listening then developing legislation is better than what we are stuck with in the UK” Maureesa Walsh welcomes, perhaps wistfully, the science policy of Canada’s new government (24 October, p 6)

An Ig Nobel with a limit of human hearing” lowest notes are clearly audible. Another change is cooking (26 September, p 17). In fact this Indeed, a 32 foot reed is often the methods. When I was growing up practical point frequency, F#2 in Helmholz loudest stop on the organ: hugely in the UK in the 1960s vegetables notation, is just within the range expensive, so only the largest were routinely boiled until they From Bill Corner of the human voice. The lowest cathedral and concert organs have were soft. This destroyed organic David Hue and colleagues won note a bass is normally asked to them. More than anything it is nutrients, though the cooking an Ig Nobel prize this year for sing is a semitone below this, F2 or the throb of the 32 foot reed that liquids were sometimes reused, finding that urination takes about 87.3Hz, for example in Sarastro’s makes the sound of an organ at preserving some minerals. We 21 seconds in most mammals aria “O Isis and Osiris” in The full power so thrilling. eat our cooked veg in a much (Feedback, 26 September). Should Magic Flute. Human hearing goes London, UK crunchier state than our parents. this be supported by follow-up way past that. The bottom note Dundee, Fife, UK studies, it could prove an of the piano is A0 at 27.5Hz. From Malcolm Shute invaluable early medical Returning to The Magic Flute, Given the discussion of the effects diagnostic for men. some productions have animals, of our sonic environment on Sakhalin Island is If they find that the time including giraffes, appearing health, what a pity that Europe’s required for them to empty a full during Sarastro’s aria. Maybe they standard mains frequency is not quite Arctic bladder is significantly different, could be trained to help out with somewhere around a G on the it could be a very useful indication the bottom F, since many basses musical scale (or Bb in the US), From Eric Kvaalen that they should visit their doctor have trouble with it? instead of a more healthy A. You quote a spokeswoman for for a prostate check. Maybe older Sydney, Australia Perhaps we would have tolerated Shell saying: “We already have men should be advised to keep a the mains hum better, and maybe an operation with the Russian watchful eye on this as a matter From Alan Harding even have actively sought it. firm, Gazprom, to explore in the of routine. You say that frequencies below La Tour d’Aigues, France Russian Arctic around Sakhalin Amersham, Buckinghamshire, UK about 20 hertz are “too low for Island” (3 October, p 7). Sakhalin us to hear” (12 September, p 36). goes only as far north as 54°N Below these frequencies we Nutrition versus or so, not even close to the 66°N How low can don’t hear a single musical note; used to define the Arctic circle. instead we hear the individual stewed tradition Les Essarts-le-Roi, France we go? vibrations. Think of the sound of motor bikes, helicopter blades From Peter Ashby From Guy Cox or pneumatic drills. The 32 foot Chloe Lambert discusses how the When the You say giraffe vocalisations at stops on large organs go down nutritional content of vegetables 92 hertz are “just within the lower to around 16 hertz, and even the has changed (17 October, p 32). hurlyburly’s done

From Liz Tucker TOM GAULD Thanks to climate change, trees are now “heading north” (3 October, p 42). Has anyone warned Macbeth? London, UK

For the record

■ We inverted the figures: of the 47 pairs of twins in Tuck Ngun’s epigenetic study, 10 were both gay and 37 differed (17 October, p 12).

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31 October 2015 | NewScientist | 53

FEEDBACK For more feedback, visit newscientist.com/feedback

Union competition designed FEEDBACK previously examined the to foster new, more sustainable benefits of short and humorous paper products. titles. Brian Horton supplies both in “Pygmies and Civil Servants”, a study IS BLOOD thicker than ink? That is published by Conor Ryan in Advances the question prompted by a dispute in Genetic Programming. between two British men both The paper describes a method of claiming to be the true heir to the finding better solutions to a problem baronetcy of the Pringle of Stichill. by using an algorithm to “mate” The Telegraph reports that Simon competing answers in succession Pringle, son of the 10th baronet, over many generations. was the sole contender until an On the provenance of the title, amateur genealogist uncovered DNA Brian explains: Civil servant solutions evidence that his father was only are as exact as possible regardless distantly related to the rest of the of their length or complexity; pygmy Pringle clan – prompting pure-blooded solutions are short, and being correct accountant Murray Pringle to lodge is only of secondary interest. By his claim. combining the two philosophies, the The Judicial Committee of the Privy algorithm eventually approximates Council must now rule on whether a solution that is both simple and DNA can be used as evidence in a correct. dispute over a hereditary title – surely HOW’S this for fruitloopery? We can rot is that it works”. Feedback can only akin to asking if the presence of stool LAST week, Feedback revealed apples with the power of our minds, put the “hundreds” of successful can clarify whether bears crap in the the existence of facial recognition says a lifestyle coach. Self-described replications claimed by her followers woods. Of course, a ruling in favour systems for dogs (24 October). self-improvement guru Nikki Owen down to good old cherry-picking. of Murray could uncover innumerable claims that focusing negativity on cuckoo’s eggs in Britain’s noble a slice of apple will cause it to decay OUR dowsing rods continue to houses. Are the UK’s aristocrats born more quickly than one showered with point us towards “afuncts” – or made? Watch this space. compliments. The finding received a items rendered useless by their double-page spread in that august overwrought design (17 October). SEVERAL readers offered journal of the fringe sciences, the The Ooho is billed as an “edible solutions to the brain-teaser Daily Mail. water bottle”, and resembles a posed in Tom Gauld’s cartoon This is, inevitably, an extension of small, liquid-filled plastic bag – (17 October, p 53), but Hillary the curious theories of Masaru Emoto, although the plastic is actually a Kerner’s really floats our boat. the Japanese researcher who claimed blend of brown algae and calcium Her three-part solution is as that attaching emotive labels to chloride. Delicious. follows. Firstly, the Scientist can saucers of freezing water could All very clever, except that soft convince the Businessman to lock influence the shape of the ice crystals. jelly is fairly useless as a water the theory in his briefcase, then Naturally, the fact that human bottle. The small, fragile capsules distract him with something Alan Oliver sends news from flesh and apples both contain water are almost impossible to drink shiny to encourage him to enter South Australia that may throw a means the effect should translate, from without spilling. The Ooho the boat and leave his briefcase confounding factor into the mix. or in Owen’s words: “An apple is a can’t be resealed or reused after behind. Once safely on the other A possibly mis-typed headline tiny human I can experiment on.” opening, like a normal water bottle. bank, she should apologise in The Times of Victor Harbor You can watch Owen do just that And the water must be frozen profusely and then go back for the announces a “Crack down on online, berating an apple like the before it is coated with alginate, locked briefcase and the Student. Victor’s rouge dogs”. Reportedly drill instructor of a fruity boot camp. so the oil you save on plastic can Alternatively, we are told, the the problem pets make it Quizzed by the Daily Mail on the be burned for electricity instead. Scientist could throw the theory “extremely difficult for a lost dog science behind the fruitloopery, In all, a costly and impractical into the river to protect the to be reunited with its owner”. Owen cheerfully admitted “there isn’t way to deliver water. Strange then Student, because a backup copy Who exactly is handing out any”, before concluding, somewhat that the Ooho just won a grant is most likely saved on her office blusher to these pets, and for

PAUL MCDEVITT counter-intuitively, that “the proof worth €20,000 – in a European computer at the university. what purpose, remains a mystery. “Otherwise, the Scientist could hypnotise the Businessman into Stealing the limelight this week: the larval cover thinking he is a duck,” Hillary You can send stories to Feedback by star of Biology Letters, featured in a paper titled: concludes. “This doesn’t solve email at [email protected]. the problem, but at least provides Please include your home address. “I’m sexy and I glow it: female ornamentation in amusement for the Scientist This week’s and past Feedbacks can a nocturnal capital breeder”. and Student.” be seen on our website.

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Perfect perch them to more accessible roosts. amount of moisture that the with our body oils and therefore And this may help explain why fibre will absorb, expressed as a will tend to remain cleaner. Birds perch standing up, bats birds don’t sleep as we understand percentage, starting from a bone J. Robert Wagner upside down. Are there any bird the term – they rest each side of dry condition when placed in Plymouth Meeting, or bat exceptions to this? And why the brain in turn so that they stay an atmosphere of standard Pennsylvania, US do the two perch differently? alert to predators and possibly temperature and humidity. to avoid falling off their perches. This means cotton can absorb ■ There is a misconception However, there are a few birds, our body moisture and give us This week’s questions that bats can’t take off from an including the vernal hanging the sensation of being cool. In upright position owing to their parrot (Loriculus vernalis), that contrast, polyester, a synthetic ABOVE BOARD small leg bones and muscles, roost upside down in trees. that many fabrics are made from Does wood from the upper which have been reduced to today, only has a moisture regain part of a horizontal tree branch, make flight more efficient. “Tendons in bats and birds of 0.4 per cent and will feel hot, which is under tension, have However, flapping their tail close the claws and lock sticky and clammy, especially different characteristics to that membrane allows bats to launch the feet to the perch when the humidity is rather high. from the lower part, which is upwards. Granted, such an when they are relaxed” Cotton feels soft because it has under compression? Is wood ungainly take-off would make a ribbon cross-sectional shape ever selected for a purpose on them vulnerable to predation The tendons in bats’ and birds’ and as a result will bend easily the basis of such differences? if they nested on the ground, feet are arranged to close the when pressure is applied. Most Ross Kinneir which makes dropping into flight claws and lock the feet to the synthetic fibres have a circular Bristol, UK from a perch a better strategy. perch when the creature is cross section and tend to be stiff It’s not just risk of predation relaxed, minimising energy because of their low elasticity. In ATOMIC BONDS that explains the difference, expenditure. If a bat dies in its the last 20 years, methods have On an atomic level, how do though. Bats also have superior sleep, it doesn’t automatically been developed that enable the Post-It notes stick to things? aerobatic ability. These animals fall to the ground, and needs manufacture of fibres that are Felix Barbour can invert and come to a virtual to be knocked off its perch. very fine in diameter, and as a London, UK standstill in flight, which allows Mike Follows result many synthetics now also them to grasp a suitable roosting Sutton Coldfield, feel rather soft. LITTLE GREEN ROCKS position from underneath. This West Midlands, UK Cotton fabrics are also easier to We often hear in the news means bats can monopolise the clean. When our clothing becomes about the results of analysis of ceilings of caves and other soiled, most people wash them meteorites that have arrived here inaccessible roosting sites. Cottoning on with soap and water. Cotton is from Mars. How do we know that Bats are more manoeuvrable alkali resistant and therefore the rocks are actually from Mars? because their wings are larger Why do we prefer to use cotton for our soap doesn’t damage the fibre. In Neil Ayre relative to their body mass than clothing – a water hungry crop – and addition, cotton is stronger when Kalgoorlie, Western Australia is the case for birds. In addition, not synthetic fibres? Is it for particular it is wet, and so cotton clothing though wings have evolved from characteristics that synthetics still will resist being damaged by the EIGHT-LEGGED SHRIEK arms in both cases, the bone is do not have? agitation of the washing machine. Do spiders make any vocal sounds? limited to the front edge of a Most important is the fact that My arachnophobia means that bird’s wing whereas in bats the ■ We love cotton clothing because cotton cleans well when washed. my wife has to eject them from fingers extend across and to the it is comfortable, soft and easy to Polyester and olefin fibres tend the house, and she claims that rear edge of the wing, giving bats clean. Cotton is comfortable as it to absorb our body oils and some of the bigger ones have finer control of the wing surface. has a high amount of moisture other oil-borne stains which “hissed” at her when disturbed. Conversely, birds’ lack of regain, generally about 7 to 7.5 are difficult to wash out. Cotton Joe Roberts manoeuvrability might limit per cent. Moisture regain is the doesn’t readily become stained St Austell, Cornwall, UK

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