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РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS Talks spotlight Daniel Davis Professor of Immunology Exploring the future of immune therapy through harnessing natural defences to create immune therapies WKDWKHOSXVĆJKWFDQFHUGLDEHWHV arthritis and many age-related diseases. Pearse Keen Ophthalmologist )LQGRXWZK\3HDUVHEHOLHYHVWKDW RSKWKDOPRORJ\FRXOGEHWKHĆUVW EUDQFKRIPHGLFLQHWREHUHLQYHQWHG through the application of AI. Vivian Li Group Leader, Crick Institute 0LQLRUJDQVDOVRNQRZQDV RUJDQRLGVKDYHWKHSRZHUWR UHYROXWLRQLVHRXUXQGHUVWDQGLQJRI VWHPFHOOELRORJ\DQGSDYHWKHZD\ for personalised medicine. The operating theatre of the future Everyone knows someone living with cancer, heart disease, dementia, diabetes or another devastating condition. The good news is that research is making huge progress. What’s more new technologies such as ÆŐŞċƏâċÆġċĨŞìġġċĂìĨâìʭħìèċâÆġċħÆĂċĨĂʭʒ&ōŐċĨŞċĨĂÆĨè genetics are coming together to diagnose illnesses faster and provide personalised treatments. Sign up to our newsletter get ʐʏ̍Įƌ Standard and All-Access tickets* Buy tickets at NewScientistLive.com *terms and conditions apply SPONSORS AND PARTNERS 0$'9(57,6(6+877(5672&. Healthcare of the future 7DNHDORRNDWWKHWHFKQRORJLHV that will change the future of surgery IRUHYHUVXFKDVURERWLFVLPDJH DFTXLVLWLRQ'SULQWLQJDQGDUWLĆFLDO intelligence in our Operating Theatre of the Future. РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS Goodbye fishbowl helmet The next generation of astronauts will be wearing a zip-uppable “space hoodie” РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS Keep up with tomorrow’s tech today with New Scientist Sign up today and you’ll also receive a free print copy of New Scientist The Collection: The Quest for Space As a New Scientist subscriber you also benefit exclusively from - Free weekly print delivery to your door - The New Scientist app, giving you instant access anytime, anywhere, including - Current and back issues of New Scientist - All issues of New Scientist: The Collection - Full access to newscientist.com with - Over 30 years of archive content - 100+ science talk videos - Early access to magazine features online Subscribe from $1.93 a week For easy sign-up, visit newscientist.com/13440 * A digital subscription package to New Scientist costs $1.93 a week, made payable by quarterly continuous payment methods NASA Or call 1 888 822 3242, quoting reference 13440 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS SUBSCRIPTION OFFER Subscribe today * from only $1.93 a week FREE GIFT! As a New Scientist subscriber you also benefit exclusively from - Free weekly print delivery to your door - The New Scientist app, giving you instant access anytime, anywhere, including - Current and back issues of New Scientist - All issues of New Scientist: The Collection The Quest for Space The ultimate guide to your cosmic neighborhood Over 100 pages of New Scientist’s ķQHVWLOOXVWUDWHGFRQWHQWRQVSDFH exploration – plus an exclusive 20-page lookback at the original space race Subscribe today, and we’ll send you a FREE copy - Full access to newscientist.com with - Over 30 years of archive content - 100+ science talk videos - Early access to magazine features online Easy online sign up, visit newscientist.com/13442 Or call 1 888 822 3242, quoting reference 13442 * A digital subscription package to New Scientist costs $1.93 a week, made payable by quarterly continuous payment methods РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS This week’s issue On the cover 36 Apollo 11 50th anniversary: The moon How we got there What we learned Why we’re going back 32 Why everything you know about nutrition is wrong Convoluted studies Cherry-picked evidence Contradictory advice Coming next week Cosmic countdown The universe’s fate could be stranger than we thought 46 Predictive policing 14 Arctic on fire 8 More CRISPR babies 12 Hypersonic arms race 17 Very ancient Greeks Vol 243 No 3238 News Features 10 Computer genius Software mimics a legendary mathematician’s style 32 Everything you know about nutrition is wrong Why almost all food advice is fatally flawed Views 13 Murder in the Palaeolithic Modern forensics identifies an early homicide 36 The moon 50 years on from the Apollo 11 landing, moon fever is back 18 China races ahead The nation leads the world when it comes to electric vehicles 46 Predictive policing The criminologist working to stop crime before it happens Views The back pages 21 Comment We need to think about how we die, says Clare Wilson 51 Maker Use electronics to communicate with plants 22 The columnist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein wants to save our helium 52 Puzzles A moon-themed cryptic crossword, puzzles and quiz 24 Letters Consciousness really does pose a hard problem 53 Feedback Corr conspiracies and bus building 26 Aperture A kitsch celebration of the epic Soviet space dog flights 54 Almost the last word Readers discuss dinosaur noises and chickpea foam 30 Culture columnist Simon Ings delights in The Hummingbird Project 28 Art in the Anthropocene Olafur Eliasson is returning to Tate Modern ABOVE: ANDERS SUNE BERG, COURTESY OF THE ARTIST; NEUGERRIEMSCHNEIDER, BERLIN; TANYA BONAKDAR GALLERY, NEW YORK/LOS ANGELES © 2014 OLAFUR ELIASSON; TOP RIGHT:DARREN HOPES 56 Me and my telescope Sue Black on tech, women and knitting before it was cool 13 July 2019 | New Scientist | 3 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS Discovery Tours USA Space: Past and future USA A rare opportunity to explore the evolution of space over two weeks A comprehensive and unforgettable experience of visiting sites that have been, and will continue to be, key to the development of space travel. Leading space journalists and academics will accompany the tour to provide fascinating insights. Space centres on the tour include: Plus, visits to: k NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Maryland k Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum k Steven F. Udvar Hazy Space Center, Virginia k New Mexico Museum of Space History k NASA Kennedy Space Center, Florida k New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science k Virgin America Spaceport USA, New Mexico k The Very Large Array Observatory k NASA Space Center Houston, Texas k New Mexico’s stunning landscape To give guests the best possible experience, we have only 29 slots available per tour, so please get in touch early to ensure you don’t miss out. To book call +1 516 226 7726 (UK opening hours 9am to 5:30pm GMT) Or email [email protected] newscientist.com/tours Departing: 15 days from $6,655 6 May 2020 14 days from $6,049 14 September 2020 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS The leader Back for good NASA When we return to the moon, let’s do it for all the right reasons WHEN the Soviet Union put the first satellite, Sputnik 1, into orbit in 1957, Lyndon Johnson, then a US senator, stoked the idea that it was an affront to American prestige. “Control of space means control of the world,” he said. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy agreed with the sentiment and committed to putting a man on the moon that decade. The subsequent success of the Apollo programme was one of the most extraordinary achievements in human history, and our special issue this week explores its legacy (see page 36). But this isn’t just about the past. Fifty years on, we are going back to the moon. The participants in the new race are different, as are the reasons for going, which this time means we are more likely to stay. Science is one reason. Returning to the moon will help us find out how our Humans first reached the surface of the moon half a century ago planet formed and open up new fields of science and discovery, while lunar bases will become staging posts for exploration of Mars and the rest of the solar system. Commerce is another motive. The new space race is as much between rival commercial operations as it is between countries. It remains to be seen how long companies will have to wait until they see a return on their investment: tourism opportunities may bring cash in and providing cargo and passenger transport to the lunar surface could become profitable, but it doesn’t look like a space-based economy will be functional for quite a while. So we need to be clear about the reasons for going back. The first principle should be that the return is the start of something long-term. For the sake of scientific discovery, human lunar exploration shouldn’t peter out like it did last time. The second principle should be to ensure the moon really is for everyone. Despite the diversity of actors in the new race, the old drivers – pride and territoriality and Johnson’s appeal to control – are still there. We must examine the objectives of new missions and ensure that the moon remains an object of wonder and inspiration for everyone. ❚ PUBLISHING & COMMERCIAL MANAGEMENT EDITORIAL Display advertising Tel +44 (0)20 7611 1291 Email [email protected] Commercial director Chris Martin Display sales manager Justin Viljoen Lynne Garcia, Henry Vowden, (ANZ) Richard Holliman Recruitment advertising Tel +44 (0)20 7611 1204 Email [email protected] Recruitment sales manager Mike Black Nicola Cubeddu, Viren Vadgama, (US) Jeanne Shapiro New Scientist Live Tel +44 (0)20 7611 1206 Email [email protected] Events director Adrian Newton Creative director Valerie Jamieson Sales director Jacqui McCarron Exhibition sales manager Charles Mostyn Event manager Henry Gomm Marketing Head of campaign marketing James Nicholson Poppy Lepora, Chloe Thompson Head of customer experience Emma Robinson Email/CRM Manager Rachna Sheth Head of data analytics Tom Tiner Web development Maria Moreno Garrido, Tom McQuillan, Amardeep Sian Chief executive Nina Wright Finance director Jenni Prince Chief technology officer Chris Corderoy Marketing director Jo Adams Human resources Shirley Spencer HR coordinator Serena Robinson Facilities manager Ricci Welch Executive assistant Lorraine Lodge Receptionist Alice Catling Editor Emily Wilson Executive editor Richard Webb Creative director Craig Mackie News News editor Penny Sarchet Editors Jacob Aron, Timothy Revell Reporters (UK) Jessica Hamzelou, Michael Le Page, Donna Lu, Adam Vaughan, Clare Wilson (US) Leah Crane, Chelsea Whyte (Aus) Alice Klein, Ruby Prosser Scully Digital Digital editor Conrad Quilty-Harper Web team Lilian Anekwe, Anne Marie Conlon, David Stock, Sam Wong Features Head of features Catherine de Lange (parental leave) and Rowan Hooper Acting head of features Tiffany O’Callaghan Editors Gilead Amit, Julia Brown, Kate Douglas, Alison George, Joshua Howgego Feature writers Daniel Cossins, Graham Lawton Culture and Community Editors Liz Else, Mike Holderness, Simon Ings Subeditors Chief subeditor Eleanor Parsons Bethan Ackerley, Tom Campbell, Chris Simms, Jon White Design Art editor Kathryn Brazier Joe Hetzel, Dave Johnston, Ryan Wills Picture desk Chief picture editor Adam Goff Kirstin Kidd Production Production manager Alan Blagrove Robin Burton, Melanie Green © 2019 New Scientist Ltd, England. New Scientist ISSN 0262 4079 is published weekly except for the last week in December by New Scientist Ltd, England. New Scientist (Online) ISSN 2059 5387. New Scientist Limited, 387 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016 Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY and other mailing offices Postmaster: Send address changes to New Scientist, PO Box 3806, Chesterfield, MO 63006-9953, USA. Non-exec chair Bernard Gray Senior non-exec director Louise Rogers CONTACT US newscientist.com/contact General & media enquiries US Tel +1 617 283 3213 210 Broadway #201, Cambridge, MA 02139 UK Tel +44 (0)20 7611 1200 25 Bedford Street, London WC2E 9ES Australia PO Box 2315, Strawberry Hills, NSW 2012 US Newsstand Tel +1 973 909 5819 Distributed by Time Inc. Retail, a division of Meredith Corporation, 6 Upper Pond Road, Parsippany, NJ 07054 Syndication Tribune Content Agency Tel 1-800-346-8798 Email [email protected] Subscriptions newscientist.com/subscribe Tel 1 888 822 3242 Email [email protected] Post New Scientist, PO Box 3806, Chesterfield MO 63006-9953 Registered at the Post Office as a newspaper and printed in USA by Fry Communications Inc, Mechanicsburg, PA 17055 13 July 2019 | New Scientist | 5 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS Discovery Tours E C U A DOR Departing: 10 days from $8,819 7 June 2020 Darwin’s Galapagos Explore the Galapagos Islands from the comfort and luxury of a yacht Embark on a magical tour and discover a paradise for lovers of natural history, animals and geology, under the expert guidance of marine conservationist and documentary producer Jo Ruxton. Highlights of the tour include: Plus k Explore eight varied islands including Before setting off, take in Isabela, Espanola and Fernandina k Exclusive behind the scenes access at the Galapagos Science Centre Latin America’s largest and best-preserved historic centre and colonial quarters k Evening briefing from Jo Ruxton in Ecuador’s capital, Quito, k Accompanied by local naturalist guides every day over two days The Natural Paradise yacht only accommodates 15 people, so enquire early to avoid missing out. To book call +1 516 226 7759 (UK opening hours Mon to Fri 9am-5pm GMT) Or email [email protected] newscientist.com/tours Marine conservationist and documentary producer Jo Ruxton РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS News Ransomware Cybercriminals are successfully extorting people p9 AI football pitch Google teaches machines to play the beautiful game p12 Arms restored Nerve transfer surgery helps hands work again p15 Ploonets Runaway exomoons get an oddball new name p15 Seal memory They recall their actions – but only for 18 seconds p16 Artificial intelligence Sheet of glass can recognise numbers MARCIO JOSE SANCHEZ/AP/SHUTTERSTOCK IT IS the smartest piece of glass in the world. A team at the University of Wisconsin– Madison has made an artificially intelligent piece of the stuff that can distinguish images of numbers. Bubbles and impurities in the glass bend light waves as they pass through it. Depending on which of the digits 0 to 9 is written on a piece of paper held up to the glass, the light waves are brought to different focal points, allowing the material to identify digits (Photonics Research, doi.org/c73h). The glass AI could eventually be used as a kind of “biometric lock”, say the researchers. ❚ Donna Lu Earthquakes hit California Two large tremors just a day apart in California have got people asking if there is a bigger quake coming, reports Michael Le Page IS THE much feared “big one” about to strike? That question is back in the minds of many in California after the strongest quakes for two decades struck the state. But we don’t know if these have made an even bigger earthquake any more or less likely. A magnitude 6.4 tremor struck southern California on 4 July, followed by a magnitude 7.1 quake on 5 July, with hundreds of smaller aftershocks in their wake. It was fortunate that the epicentres were under a sparsely populated region, near the city of Ridgecrest. No one was killed, but the quakes were felt across the state. They left a long crack in the desert and damaged buildings and roads in the area (pictured above). The San Andreas fault runs the length of California and lies near major cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco. A major quake, possibly of magnitude 8 or greater, could occur on the fault at any time, potentially killing thousands of people and causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage. However, the latest tremors occurred on different faults far from the San Andreas. Geologists don’t know whether these latest quakes have made a major earthquake on the San Andreas fault more likely or not. There is no way to predict big quakes hours or days in advance, and some think it may never be possible. Some regions have early warning systems that issue alerts as soon as the first tremors are detected, giving people a few seconds or more of warning before the most dangerous shaking starts. The US Geological Survey is currently developing such a “ShakeAlert” system for the west coast. Modern buildings in California are designed to withstand sizeable earthquakes, though many could still be left unusable. However, the state has many older buildings that need retrofitting to be safe. The vast Sacramento river delta is also protected by embankments that could fail in a big quake. If that happened and seawater floods the delta, it would cut off a lot of the fresh water supply to southern California for a year or more. ❚ Global warming Attenborough talks up climate action THE UK must take radical steps to meet its climate change targets, David Attenborough told a UK parliamentary committee on Tuesday. But he warned ministers must carry the public with them because of the cost of such action. “We cannot be radical enough in dealing with these issues,” he said when asked if the UK should bring forward its target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. But he said the real issue was what is politically possible. “The question of how fast we can go is how fast we can carry the electorate with us.” ❚ Adam Vaughan 13 July 2019 | New Scientist | 7 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS News Gene editing Next CRISPR babies planned A controversial effort to edit human embryos in an attempt to avoid deafness could soon be under way, reports Michael Le Page safely – editing the genes of babies might be justified in this situation. That is why Rebrikov at the Kulakov National Medical Research Center for Obstetrics, Gynecology and Perinatology in Moscow has sought out these very unusual couples. “It is clear and understandable to ordinary people,” he says. “Each new baby for this pair would be deaf without gene mutation editing.” In November, a biophysicist in China announced that he had created the first-ever gene-edited 8 | New Scientist | 13 July 2019 babies using CRISPR. He Jiankui tried to induce mutations that protect against HIV by geneediting IVF embryos from couples in which the man is HIV-positive. His work has been condemned for many reasons, but one of the biggest is that there is no need to resort to such a risky experimental procedure to prevent these men giving their children HIV. In June, Rebrikov told Nature he plans to use CRISPR to create HIV-resistant babies, this time for couples where the mother is HIVpositive, but again experts have pointed out that there is no need for risky gene editing in this case. Now Rebrikov has told New Scientist that he also wants to prevent children inheriting a form of deafness caused by mutations in the GJB2 gene. In western Siberia, many people have a missing DNA letter in position 35 of this gene. People with two copies of this mutation never develop the ability to hear. Rebrikov has found five couples in which both would-be parents are deaf because of this mutation and don’t want their children to be deaf too. So he plans to use CRISPR to correct it in IVF embryos from these couples. All the embryos will have two mutations of the GJB2 gene, and correcting one will prevent deafness. “Technically, it is achievable,” says Burgio. In November, experts in the field issued a statement saying this kind of germline genome editing could be acceptable if risks were addressed and certain criteria are met. Those criteria include “a compelling medical need” and “an absence of reasonable alternatives”. COURTESY OF DENIS REBRIKOV “You shouldn’t be starting with an embryo that stands to lead a pretty normal life” Babies have their hearing tested shortly after they are born BURGER/PHANIE/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY FIVE Russian couples who are deaf want to try CRISPR gene-editing so they can have a child who can hear, biologist Denis Rebrikov has told New Scientist. He plans to apply to Russian authorities for permission in “a couple of weeks”. The case for using CRISPR for this purpose is stronger than it is for trying to make children HIVresistant, as attempted previously, but the risks still outweigh the benefits, say other researchers. “Rebrikov is definitely determined to do some germline gene editing, and I think we should take him very seriously,” says Gaetan Burgio at the Australian National University. “But it’s too early, it’s too risky.” Both would-be parents in each couple have a recessive form of deafness, meaning that all their children would normally inherit the same condition. While the vast majority of genetic diseases can be prevented by screening IVF embryos before implantation, with no need for gene editing, this isn’t an option for these couples. Several bioethics reports have suggested that – if it can be done Denis Rebrikov’s plans to edit embryos have been condemned The five couples don’t have any other choice if they want to have their own biological children who can hear. But not everyone will agree that there is a compelling need, because deafness isn’t a lifethreatening disorder. In fact, some people who are deaf don’t consider it to be a disability and want their children to inherit the condition in order to preserve deaf culture. The risks of CRISPR haven’t been addressed either. There is no proven way to ensure that gene-edited children won’t have unintended mutations, or that every cell in the children’s bodies will have the corrected gene. “The first human trials should start with embryos or infants with nothing to lose, with fatal conditions,” says bioethicist Julian Savulescu at the University of Oxford. “You should not be starting with an embryo that stands to lead a pretty normal life.” So why isn’t Rebrikov trying to prevent more deadly genetic disorders? It is because people with such recessive disorders almost never find themselves in the same situation. For instance, people with cystic fibrosis usually die young and are discouraged from meeting to avoid swapping the bacteria that infect their lungs. Savulescu thinks the first geneediting trials should involve couples whose children could inherit fatal conditions such as Tay-Sachs, but who refuse to opt for screening IVF embryos because they are opposed to destroying embryos on religious grounds. If germline gene editing is shown to be safe, Savulescu thinks there would then be a moral imperative to use it to prevent conditions such as deafness. ❚ РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS Analysis Ransomware Cybercriminals are cashing in As extortion ransomware spreads, organisations are paying to release their data. It is a risky move, says Chris Stokel-Walker through malicious email attachments. It encrypts every file on the computer and directs the victim to send two encrypted files to an email address. The two files are returned, decrypted, along with a bitcoin wallet address. The victim must send bitcoins to this address to unlock the rest. Ransomware attacks encrypt your data until you pay up “As criminals become more adept and the tools more sophisticated, yet easier to obtain, fewer attacks are directed towards citizens and more towards small businesses and larger targets, where greater potential profits lie,” says Philipp Amann of Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre. As more organisations pay out rather than lose their data, hackers become bolder. “The reason we’re seeing so much ransomware is that it manifestly works,” says Alan Woodward at the University of Surrey, UK. Affected organisations often have to pay only a small percentage of the total amount. Lake City paid about $10,000 of the $530,000 ransom, with its insurance company picking up the rest. Giving in to demands is dangerous, however. “You’re not guaranteed to get your system unlocked,” says Woodward, because the hackers have little incentive to unlock the data once they have the money. Paying up probably increases the likelihood of future attacks too: criminals distribute “suckers lists” of those who have proven susceptible to extortion. Stopping such attacks is difficult, but there are things people can do. The ransomware attacks often work because computer users often have little understanding of the software they use. Better IT literacy, such as knowing not to open email attachments from strangers, would help prevent the spread. ❚ Down here on Earth, getting heart disease doesn’t make you more or less likely to also get cancer – the two conditions develop relatively independently of each other. But if radiation exposure were causing a surge in both conditions among people who have been to space, then the higher rate of death from one illness may hide a higher rate of the other. This is because anyone who dies from heart disease can’t also die from cancer. Reynolds’s team plotted the space-goers’ deaths over time as survival curves – which show the rate at which a particular group is dying – for each disease, and found no sign of this dampening effect (Scientific Reports, doi.org/c72t). However, that doesn’t rule out radiation giving space-goers a higher rate of one condition but not the other – for instance, if it caused cancer but not heart disease. Radiation would hit future Mars visitors for longer, says Reynolds, so it could still affect their health. ❚ Clare Wilson RITCHIE B. TONGO/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK RANSOMWARE attacks are on the rise. These see individuals and organisations denied access to their data unless they pay the hackers who are holding it hostage. The latest apparent victim is the biggest provider of forensic services to the UK. Eurofins Scientific in Luxembourg was hit with a ransomware attack in early June. Last week, the BBC reported that a ransom had been paid to regain control of the data. Eurofins didn’t respond to a request for comment from New Scientist. This is one of a number of recent high-profile attacks. Lake City in Florida paid $530,000 in bitcoin to unlock its data in June, and another Florida city, Riviera Beach, paid out $600,000. The strain of ransomware used is called Ryuk. It was unleashed by a Russia-based organised crime group called Grim Spider in August 2018. It is estimated that Ryuk earned its creators more than $3.7 million in its first four months of operation. Ryuk, like most ransomware, secretes itself onto computers Space health Exposure to space radiation not a problem so far SPACE exploration is a risky business. As well as the physical dangers, radiation – from the sun and cosmic rays – is thought to put astronauts at a higher risk of getting cancer and heart disease in later life. But so far there is no sign space travellers are dying early from these conditions. “We haven’t ruled it out, but we looked for a signal and we didn’t see it,” says Robert Reynolds of Mortality Research & Consulting. Not enough space-goers have died from these conditions to just be able to compare their age of death with that of other groups. Instead, Reynolds’s team used a statistical technique on survival figures for 301 US astronauts and 117 Soviet and Russian cosmonauts. A total of 89 have died to date. Three-quarters of cosmonaut deaths were due to cancer or heart disease, but only half of the astronaut deaths were. This is principally because there have been more fatal accidents in the US space programme, such as the Challenger shuttle disaster. 89 Number of astronauts and cosmonauts who have ever died 13 July 2019 | New Scientist | 9 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS News Mathematics Computer attempts to replicate the dream-like maths of Ramanujan Donna Lu To mimic this approach, Gal Raayoni at the Israel Institute of Technology and his colleagues created the Ramanujan Machine. It has already come up with tens of conjectures that use continued fractions to approximate π and e (arxiv.org/abs/1907.00205). One method the program uses to search for new conjectures is a “meet in the middle” approach. This involves generating many mathematical expressions, computing their value for a limited number of iterations and eliminating the expressions that give inaccurate results. For example, when trying to approximate e, whose value is a decimal that begins 2.718…, any potential conjectures that yield numbers with a value that is too high or too low are eliminated. Conjectures that appear to work are then calculated for more iterations to identify ones likely to be true. This approach gave the new conjecture shown on the left. Schleimer likens the method to an extensive process of trial and error. “What they’re doing is a nice piece of experimental mathematics,” he says. “But it’s not like this is a new way of thinking.” SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY THE legendary mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan was known for coming up with unconventional mathematical ideas. He has now inspired a computer program that does the same. Called the Ramanujan Machine, the software poses conjectures for generating equations whose output is fundamental mathematical constants such as π and e. A conjecture is an unproven mathematical statement. Born in 1887 in what is now Tamil Nadu in India, Ramanujan was a self-taught mathematician. He often claimed that his results came to him in a dream, and disliked the formal proofs favoured by most mathematicians. Ramanujan moved to the UK in 1914 to study at the University of Cambridge with the mathematician G. H. Hardy, and their long friendship led to a series of important results in the field of number theory. “Ramanujan had a way of producing things which looked true [but] he couldn’t necessarily convince other people why they were true,” says Saul Schleimer at the University of Warwick, UK. Srinivasa Ramanujan, above, came up with many equations similar to the one below, but this formula for the constant e was created by a machine e= 3 + —1 4+ —2 5+ —3 6+ —4 7+ ... Many of Ramanujan’s conjectures were later formally proven. The theorems Ramanujan produced often involved continued fractions, which express a number as the sum of infinitely nested fractions. Some of the formulas the Ramanujan Machine has come up with are new, while others have previously been discovered by human mathematicians. The team wants people to submit suggested proofs to the new conjectures, as it is impossible to prove they are correct with “Ramanujan had a way of producing things which looked true but he couldn’t always convince others” simple arithmetic since they involve infinite sums. “It produces conjectures without exactly knowing why they’re true and it likes continued fractions, which Ramanujan was very, very fond of, ” says Schleimer. But it can’t really match him, he says. “Ramanujan’s continued fractions were more subtle and in some sense more mature.” The researchers behind the Ramanujan Machine have also shared its software, so anyone can download the programme to run on their own computer while it isn’t in use. Any conjectures a participant discovers will be named after them, says the team. ❚ Extracting sperm from testicles may help infertility TAKING sperm directly from the testicles rather than using semen may help some couples conceive through IVF. The approach has been used for some time in men who are infertile because they have a blockage in the tubes that take sperm to the penis, for example. It is now being offered more widely, partly because of a 10 | New Scientist | 13 July 2019 suspicion that some infertility may be down to damage occurring to sperm after they have formed, through exposure to free radicals. “Free radicals are very detrimental to sperm DNA,” says Sandro Esteves of Androfert, a male infertility centre in Campinas, Brazil. But sceptics are concerned that by taking sperm from the testicles, doctors may inadvertently select less fit sperm, which could lead to health problems for the baby. Esteves and his colleagues looked at data from 86 couples USUMU NISHINAGA/SPL Infertility Sperm in the testicles haven’t been exposed to as many free radicals, which damage DNA with unexplained infertility and sperm DNA damage who visited the Androfert centre. Thirty-six had IVF using sperm from their testicles. The rest had IVF using sperm from semen. Regardless of the method used, the team found that the eggs had a similar chance of being fertilised and developing into embryos with the right number of chromosomes. Esteves presented the results at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology conference in Vienna. Kevin McEleny at the Newcastle Fertility Centre, UK, would still like to see evidence of improved live birth rates before the technique is used more widely. ❚ Clare Wilson РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS Human evolution Skull rewrites our history Our species was in Europe 165,000 years earlier than thought RIGHT: BENNY MARTY/ALAMY; TOP: MUSEUM OF ANTHROPOLOGY, MEDICAL SCHOOL, NATIONAL AND KAPODISTRIAN UNIVERSITY OF ATHENS Michael Marshall HOMO SAPIENS lived in Greece 210,000 years ago. The finding rewrites human prehistory, suggesting our ancestors migrated out of Africa – and reached Europe – earlier than we thought. The evidence comes from Apidima cave in southern Greece. Two hominin skulls, both missing their lower jaws, were discovered in the cave in the 1970s. They were thought to be from Neanderthals, who lived in Europe long before modern humans arrived. Katerina Harvati at the University of Tübingen in Germany and her colleagues have now taken a closer look. They CTscanned the skulls and compared their shapes to other hominin specimens. As expected, one of the skulls was from a Neanderthal. But to their surprise, the other didn’t fit the Neanderthal mould, and was instead from a modern human. The next step was to find out how old the skulls were. This was difficult, because they were found encased in a block of hardened mud and rocks stuck to the cave ceiling. “This means that they did not come from the same context as any material excavated from the cave floor,” says Harvati. So Harvati’s team turned to uranium-thorium dating, which estimates the age of an object by tracking the decay of radioactive elements. This found the Neanderthal skull to be 170,000 years old. But the human skull was significantly older: 210,000 years old. “This age makes it older than any other accepted Homo sapiens specimen outside of Africa,” says Harvati (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/ s41586-019-1376-z). In the early 2000s, most anthropologists agreed that Homo sapiens arose in Africa 200,000 years ago and that everyone of recent non-African descent came from a group that left Africa about The ancient skull was found along this Greek coastline 60,000 years ago, with Europe reached 45,000 years ago. However, this story is being revised. Fossils from modern humans found in Morocco date to 315,000 years ago, pushing back the age of our species. A jawbone found in an Israeli cave is 177,000 years old, meaning humans roamed beyond Africa earlier. There are also putative modern humans in China at similarly early times, but these are disputed. Before these discoveries, the Apidima find would have been a shock, but “nothing surprises us any more”, says Fred Spoor of London’s Natural History Museum. Mathieu Duval at Griffith University in Nathan, Australia, points out that the uraniumthorium dating method gives the minimum age of the fossils, meaning the skulls could be even older. Key findings must now be reconsidered, says Eleanor Scerri at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany. For instance, 65,000-year-old cave art from Spain has been attributed to the Neanderthals, as modern humans were assumed to be absent from Europe. “Those assumptions can’t be made now,” she says. This cave contained a 210,000-year-old modern human skull The human skull at Apidima does make sense of a puzzle. Famously, humans and Neanderthals interbred about 50,000 years ago, leaving all people of recent non-African descent with a small amount of Neanderthal DNA in their cells. But it also seems they interbred over 200,000 years ago, giving Neanderthals human DNA. This made no sense if they lived on separate continents, but the Apidima skull suggests they overlapped and so could have met. In separate research, Adam Siepel of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York and his colleagues have reanalysed modern human and Neanderthal DNA using a new technique. They found that the early interbreeding occurred between 300,000 and 200,000 years ago (bioRxiv, doi.org/c72w). The two studies are “consistent in that respect”, he says. It remains clear that humans evolved in Africa, says Scerri. “The oldest fossils are still in Africa and they’re 100,000 years older than these,” she says. However, Scerri says there may have been multiple dispersals out of Africa, perhaps enabled by a greening of the Sahara and Arabian deserts, which happens every 100,000 years. Scerri and her colleagues promote African multiregionalism: the idea that there were many ancient human populations living in Africa, which were sometimes isolated and sometimes connected. It now seems this web of populations extended beyond Africa. “We have this sort of human patchwork of very small populations,” she says. ❚ 13 July 2019 | New Scientist | 11 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS News Military technology Machine learning China, Russia and the US in hypersonic arms race Google has made a virtual football pitch for training AIs David Hambling Donna Lu THE race for hypersonic weapons is heating up. China, Russia and the US are all attempting to create weapons that travel at more than five times the speed of sound. The technology could escalate tensions around the world. Hypersonic weapons move incredibly fast, but what differentiates them from traditional ballistic missiles is that all of their journey is done within the atmosphere, rather 1.7 km/s Hypersonic weapons travel at least this fast than through space. They can also be manoeuvred during flight, making them harder to defend against. Last month, US aerospace giant Raytheon announced it was preparing to test a hypersonic scramjet, a jetpowered vehicle that moves at rocket-like speed and gets oxygen from the atmosphere. The test was part of the US 12 | New Scientist | 13 July 2019 Pentagon’s three-pronged effort to obtain hypersonic weapons, a top priority that attracts billions of dollars in funding. The other two approaches are the Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon, which uses new but not publicly known technology, and the Hypersonic Conventional Strike Weapon, which repurposes existing technology. All three weapons will be launched from aircraft and carry conventional explosives. They could be in service in the early 2020s. Russia is also progressing with two hypersonic weapons: the Kinzhal (Dagger), launched from a plane, and the Avangard, a hypersonic vehicle launched from an upgraded 1960s ballistic missile. Avangard is “invulnerable to intercept by any existing and prospective missile defence”, said Russian president Vladimir Putin, after witnessing a test in 2018. Avangard may be ready by the end of the year and Kinzhal could already be in use. China has carried out more hypersonic tests than the US in recent years, such as for the Xingkong-2 missile and Jiageng-1, which is believed to be a scramjet. “Developing hypersonic weapons has become an end in itself, first as a kind of competitive sport, then as an arms race,” says Mark Gubrud at the University of North Carolina. It is part of a trend towards faster warfare, he says. A report by US think tank RAND Corporation warned that hypersonics will compress reaction times and lead to “hair trigger” responses. The result could be increased instability, says Justin Bronk at defence think tank Royal United Services Institute. “When nuclear missiles replaced bombers, it was highly destabilising because they gave you minutes rather than hours,” says Bronk. He says that was why nuclear powers had ways to mitigate the reduced response time, like the MoscowWashington hotline, a means of direct communication between US and Russian leaders. Recently, US president Donald Trump said he changed his mind about launching conventional strikes on Iran with minutes to spare. The faster pace of hypersonic operations might reduce time for such second thoughts. Gubrud says a ban on hypersonic test flights, which has been discussed by the United Nations, would stop the arms race. “US national security would hardly suffer if plans were put on hold at least long enough to see if China and Russia would reciprocate.” ❚ MANY people have been inspired by football’s 2019 Women’s World Cup in France. Now artificial intelligences are learning the game too. Karol Kurach and his colleagues at Google Research in Zurich, Switzerland, have made a virtual football training pitch that AIs can use to understand how to play. Software simulates a standard football game, with features including goals, corner kicks, offsides and penalties. An AI controls one or all 11 players on a team and tries to defeat another AI opponent. Google has tested its own AI on it and another from sister company DeepMind, but anyone can download the program to train their own AIs. Because football requires both short-term control and high-level tactics, it is challenging for AIs to grasp, says Kurach. To master football, an AI must learn to deal with unpredictability – for example, when a player kicks the ball, it may land in different locations or be intercepted by GOOGLE RESEARCH, ZÜRICH ALEXEI NIKOLSKY/GETTY A Russian fighter jet carries a Kinzhal hypersonic missile For machines to master football, they need to balance shortterm control and high-level tactics the opposing team. “Unlike games such as chess or Go, there is not a set model of moves,” says Kurach. The approach differs from the computer opponents used in games such as the FIFA series, which are manually programmed by game designers to use specific rules and strategies. “Such bots can do only what they were programmed for and always follow the same pattern,” says Kurach. ❚ РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS Forensic science Stone Age human was murdered Injury patterns on an ancient skull strongly indicate an early case of homicide Ruby Prosser Scully Then, using CT scans, they discovered that there were no signs of healing around the fractures, indicating that Cioclovina man didn’t recover from his injuries. The next step was to determine whether Cioclovina man’s fractures were caused by a fall, being hit on the head with a rock, or something else. The pattern of the fractures gave Kranioti and the team some clues. A fairly straight fracture stretched across the skull, while another more circular fracture pushed fragments inwards into the brain. While the cracks from the circular fracture radiated outwards, they stopped when they met the straight line, meaning the straight fracture came first. “The distinctive [circular] depressed fracture found on the right side of the skull is unquestionably evidence that up. Most early measurements come from Europe, the US and regions along trade routes – around 20 per cent of Earth’s area, says Rasmus Benestad at the Norwegian Meteorological Institute in Oslo. Some climate deniers have argued this means records are too incomplete to be reliable, but temperatures are generally similar across regions, so climatologists have been able to fill in the gaps. However, Benestad and his colleagues found a subtler problem. The early weather stations were all in regions where the temperature doesn’t vary too much over time. Only later were stations built in places like Siberia, where monthto-month changes are larger. To find out if this was an issue, Benestad’s team ran computer models of the global climate from 1861 to 2017 and noted how the simulated global average The skull has fractures typical of modern attacks with baseball bats KRANIOTI ET AL, 2019 ONE of the oldest ever cold cases has been confirmed as murder, 33,000 years after the crime was committed. The weapon? A baseball bat-like implement. The Cioclovina calvaria (or skull cap) specimen was found in a cave in Transylvania, Romania, in 1941 by miners searching for phosphate. It is one of the oldest partial skulls of an early modern human in Europe in the Upper Palaeolithic period yet found. There are extensive fractures on one side of the skull, but their cause was a mystery. Forensic scientist Elena Kranioti at the University of Crete, Greece, and her colleagues decided to apply modern forensic techniques in search of an answer. They looked for signs of whether the bones were broken before or after death. Kranioti knew that if the skull was damaged long after Cioclovina man had died, the fractures would be in random patterns and be squareshaped with sharp edges, because old and dry bone breaks in a different way to “living” bone. Instead, they found characteristics that suggest the damage occurred at around the time of death. the person was struck with a blunt object, which directly implies a human agent,” says Kranioti. The researchers then recreated the blow on artificial skulls filled with ballistic gelatin. They tested several scenarios, including falls and blows with a rock or a baseball bat, to different locations on the skulls. The fracture patterns found on Cioclovina man’s skull strongly resemble what happened when the artificial skulls were hit twice with a round, club-like object while against the ground (PLoS One, doi.org/c7zk). “The linear fracture happened first and could have been a result of a person falling from their own height – while running from someone, for example,” says Kranioti. The second fracture is a result of violence, she says. “Which means that, in modern terms, if I had to define the cause and matter of death as a forensic pathologist, I would say that the person died of craniocerebral injuries and that it was homicide,” says Kranioti. Stanley Serafin at the University of New South Wales, Australia, says the authors present a “thoroughly convincing case”. ❚ Climate change Earth warmed more than we thought last century AN OVERSIGHT in historical weather records means we underestimated how much the climate warmed in the past century or so. The finding means we are 0.1°C closer than we thought to passing the internationally agreed absolute upper limit of 2°C of warming. The problem stems from where the first weather stations were set “The net result was that the combined warming over the period was underestimated by 0.1°C” temperature changed. Then, they ran the models again using data corresponding to the weather stations that were present in each year (Geophysical Research Letters, doi.org/c7x8). They found the early weather station sites created a problem. The older records came out slightly too warm, while more recent ones were slightly too cold. The net result was that the combined warming from 1881 to 1910 and 1986 to 2015 was underestimated by 0.1°C. ❚ Michael Marshall 13 July 2019 | New Scientist | 13 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS News Extreme weather The Arctic is on fire Unusual wildfires are releasing huge amounts of carbon dioxide Adam Vaughan bigger than 100,000 hectares, which would classify them as megafires. There are signs they are still burning, although detection is hampered by cloud cover. “Some hotspots are apparent through gaps in clouds, which suggest fires are continuing,” he says. Some Arctic fires seem large enough to be classed as megafires The fires seem to be mostly on carbon-rich peatland. Parrington calculates that the wildfires in June released about 50 megatonnes of CO2, on par with Sweden’s total emissions in 2017. That CO2 will lead to more warming, in a feedback loop. The blazes also seem to be accelerating climate change by depositing soot and ash on sea ice. Satellite photos in June show sea ice in the Laptev Sea and East Siberian Sea turning darker, which will exacerbate melting, in turn bringing more warming because the sea is darker than ice and so absorbs more of the sun’s energy. The Arctic wildfires are in line with predictions made a decade ago, when researchers said they expected the region – which is warming faster than the rest of the world – to see some of the biggest increases in fires. “What we might be seeing this year is widespread breach of a critical temperature threshold, leading to such widespread fires,” says Smith. “The term ‘Arctic fire’ is a relatively new arrival to science and still causes consternation. It isn’t part of common sense yet,” says Guillermo Rein of Imperial College London. What started these fires isn’t known, but given how sparsely inhabited the region is, lightning is thought to be a likely cause. Meanwhile, at least 18 people were killed in the Siberian region of Irkutsk after severe flooding caused by heavy rainfall. A state of emergency was declared and Russian military personnel sent to the region. ❚ and Reddit showed that clicks on posts of each category had no impact on what users saw next. “If you engage with something, [YouTube’s algorithm] shows you more of it, whether it’s cooking videos, music or extremist content,” Whittaker told the Terrorism and Social Media Conference in Swansea. Instead, YouTube’s algorithms could encourage people to break out of their filter bubbles, says Emillie de Keulenaar at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. YouTube told New Scientist that it can’t prevent fake or extremist views being published on the site, but it is reducing their prominence. During the analysis, YouTube said it would tweak its algorithms. Changes are ongoing, but only a handful of extremist channels seen in the study have been removed. ❚ Chris Stokel-Walker KIRILL SHIPITSIN\TASS VIA GETTY IMAGES DOZENS of wildfires have been raging across the Arctic circle for the past few weeks, releasing as much carbon dioxide in just one month as Sweden’s total annual emissions. Fires in the region aren’t unknown, but the scale of the blazes, predominantly in boreal peatlands across Siberia, is unprecedented. Satellite measurements show that the energy released by the fires in June is more than that produced during the previous nine Junes combined. “It’s quite striking, it does really stand out,” says Mark Parrington at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. The last time the region had such big fires was 15 years ago. The driver for the fires seems to be the unusually high temperatures in June, the hottest one on record in Europe. The Arctic was also warmer than average. “It’s hotter and drier. If the temperature is high enough and there’s ignition, fuel burns,” says Parrington. The size of the burning area isn’t clear. Thomas Smith at the London School of Economics says satellite photos suggest that some fires are Social media YouTube’s algorithm keeps suggesting extremist content YOUTUBE’S recommendation algorithm steers people to more extremist content than two other popular sites. The other two were Gab, a social-media site favoured by people on the far-right, and Reddit, a news aggregation site. Joe Whittaker at Swansea University, UK, and his colleagues analysed how personalisation 14 | New Scientist | 13 July 2019 algorithms on the three sites recommend content. They made three YouTube accounts: one clicked mainly on neutral content, one mainly on extremist videos and one didn’t click at all. Extremist content was recommended to the extreme account nearly every time it visited the homepage and was twice as likely to be recommended than it was for the non-interacting account. The neutral-interacting account saw extreme content once in every five sessions. A similar analysis on Gab “If you engage with something, YouTube shows you more of it, be it music or extreme content” РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS Surgery Space Paralysed hands work again after nerve ops When moons leave home they may become ‘ploonets‘ Ruby Prosser Scully Chelsea Whyte MINH HOANG LY/EYEEM/GETTY Movement can return to paralysed limbs by splicing nerves together injury site. But someone with tetraplegia can still have limited nerve activity in their arms, even if they lack hand function for example, because some nerves to the limbs may branch away from the spinal cord above the injury. Van Zyl and her team spliced these working nerves to nonfunctioning ones below the injury site that help control movements in the hands and elbows. Two years after surgery, and after intensive physical therapy, 13 participants still involved in the study regained some hand and 160 Rough number of people who have had nerve transfer surgery arm control – for instance, being able to open their hands, grasp and pinch again (The Lancet, doi.org/c7zh). This study is sufficient to establish the safety and efficacy of the surgery, says Jeremy Simcock at the University of Otago in Christchurch, New Zealand. The nerve transfer technique is similar to tendon transfer, which Simcock says surgeons have been using for 30 years to help people with tetraplegic injury gain some use of their hands. But unlike tendon transfers, which usually involve rerouting a working tendon to provide one muscular function, multiple nerve transfers can be done at once and each one can reanimate multiple muscles. Each person in the study was given at least one nerve transfer, and many had an additional tendon transfer. “It’s a stronger hand [following just tendon transfer], but it’s a bit more clawed in its position and not as natural in its feeling [as with a nerve transfer],” says van Zyl. “It doesn’t open as well.” Van Zyl and her team have performed about 160 of these nerve transfer operations so far, but she says many people around the world don’t have access to the technology. She hopes the new study will help ensure that more people who are eligible are able to have the surgery. ❚ T. PYLE/JPL-CALTECH/NASA SURGEONS have reanimated the hands and arms of people who are paralysed by connecting working nerves to injured ones, giving recipients the ability to feed themselves again, use their phones and apply make-up. The operation is life-changing, says surgeon Natasha van Zyl at Austin Health in Australia. One recipient is now travelling in Europe and another can take his grandchild to the movies. Her team in Melbourne and a few other small groups around the world have been developing this technique over several years and have seen promising results, but published research has focused only on individual cases or small retrospective studies that can’t say for sure how safe and effective it is. So van Zyl and her colleagues recruited 16 people with spinal injuries that led to arm and leg paralysis, otherwise known as quadriplegia or tetraplegia, for a more thorough assessment. If an injury is relatively high up on the spinal cord, it can lead to arm paralysis because many of the nerves through which we control our arms branch off below the DESPITE a lot of searching, we haven’t found a moon around an exoplanet yet. According to a new study, that could be because an exomoon can be ejected from orbit around its home world and turned into a miniature planet called a “ploonet”. This fate may even befall our own moon one day. Mario Sucerquia at the University of Antioquia in Colombia and his colleagues modelled the interplay between exomoons and the gas giant planets they could form around. These worlds are between 0.5 and 1.8 times the mass of Neptune, orbiting stars at the distance Mercury lies from the sun. Their size and proximity to their stars makes any exomoons they have more detectable. However, these worlds turn out to be prone to losing moons. That is because such exoplanets form further out from their star and migrate inward. When near their star, its gravity can disturb any moons they have, potentially flinging them into their own orbits around the star. “Closer-in giant planets are more prone to lose their moons because the tidal interaction between the star and the planet An exomoon flung into orbit around a star could be a kind of mini planet is stronger,” says Sucerquia. “This is, in fact, bad news for exomoon hunters.” Sucerquia and his team found that about 44 per cent of ejected exomoons would collide with their planet in this process, about 6 per cent would be absorbed by the star, and about 2 per cent would be flung out of the planetary system entirely. But the rest would become ploonets. Of those, 54 per cent would end up in orbits further from the star than their home planet. Another 14 per cent would end up on orbits closer to the star, and almost a third would take on eccentric orbits where the ploonet’s path would cross the planet’s orbit every once in a while (arxiv.org/ abs/1906.11400). “Earth’s tidal strength is gradually pushing the moon away from us at a rate of about 3 centimetres a year,” says Sucerquia. “Therefore, the moon is indeed a potential ploonet once it reaches an unstable orbit.” ❚ 13 July 2019 | New Scientist | 15 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS News In brief Climate change Breeding less gassy cattle could cut harmful emissions JAZZLOVE/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO COWS could be selectively bred to halve their significant contribution to global warming. Livestock are responsible for 14.5 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions, with the majority stemming from beef and milk production, largely because flatulent, belching cattle emit so much methane. Researchers have previously looked at tweaking their diet to reduce these emissions. But now there might be another fix. John Wallace at the University of Aberdeen, UK, and his colleagues found that a core group of gut microbes play a key role in how much methane a cow emits. They looked at 1000 cows on seven farms in Europe over four years, finding that at least half of the animals at all the farms had the same group of 500 gut microbes. Animal behaviour SEA lions and seals can recall what they have just done, and repeat it on command, if asked to do so within 18 seconds. This suggests a degree of awareness. Simeon Smeele at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense and his colleagues tested seven captive animals: a grey seal, two harbour seals and four South American sea lions. All had previously been trained to perform actions like waving a flipper on command. They were first taught a new command that meant “repeat what you just did”. To ensure each animal really was thinking about what it did rather than simply recalling the command for the action, it was asked to perform a task, then told to “repeat” it, and then “repeat” it a second time. At which point just remembering the previous cue – “repeat” – wouldn’t help, so it 16 | New Scientist | 13 July 2019 Materials could only respond to the request correctly by recalling the action. All seven animals could do this (Animal Cognition, doi.org/c7zm). Smeele says this shows an awareness of their own behaviour. That means they have a degree of consciousness. But it doesn’t make them as self-aware as we are, as they would also need to be aware of their own inner state and be aware of their own awareness. To make it even harder, the team started putting a delay of a few seconds between the original action and the repeat command. The animals became less accurate with longer delays, and after 18 seconds they were no better than chance. However, Smeele says they may remember actions for longer in more natural settings. So far, we only know of two other animals that can remember their actions: bottlenose dolphins and monkeys called southern pigtailed macaques, which are both renowned for their intelligence, unlike seals. Michael Marshall Squishy marbles can take on many shapes LIQUID marbles have been developed that can be moulded into different forms, such as mini disco balls (pictured below). Syuji Fujii at the Osaka Institute of Technology in Japan and his team were inspired by aphids, which make liquid marbles by coating honeydew with wax particles so that they can easily transport them. The team’s lab-made versions SYUJI FUJII Seals remember, but not for long Genetic analysis found a small but abundant number of those microbes were heritable and played a key role in determining methane emissions (Science Advances, doi.org/c7x9). The team says the microbiome of herds could be sequenced and those animals with the heritable, highemission microbes selectively bred out. Eliminating the worst offenders in the microbiome could halve livestock emissions, says Wallace. James Osman of the UK National Farmers Union says a better understanding of the genetics of low-methane livestock, and any trade-offs with other important traits, would be needed first. The proposed breeding would take decades. A simpler, short-term idea is a probiotic for young cattle to alter their microbiome, says Wallace. Adam Vaughan consist of a droplet surrounded by small hexagonal plates of a waterrepellent plastic – polyethylene terephthalate, or PET. They used liquids such as water and glycerol. The shape of the marbles depends on the relative sizes of droplet and plates. When they are similar sizes, you get cube-shaped, tetrahedral or pentahedral marbles. When the droplets are larger than the plates, you get marbles that are nearly spherical, taking on the form of a disco ball (Advanced Functional Materials, doi.org/gfwqc8). If the marbles are made from transparent plates, they can be used as sensors to detect the presence of gases, says Fujii. For example, by making the droplet from liquid that contains phenolphthalein, the marble’s colour changes to pink in the presence of ammonia vapour. They could also be used to create different-shaped miniature chemical reactors used to catalyse reactions. Donna Lu РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS New Scientist Daily Get the latest scientific discoveries in your inbox newscientist.com/sign-up Space exploration Really brief Solar panels in space just got a bit easier JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES A SPECIAL plastic can make folded solar panels unfurl on their own when exposed to sunlight. This might be helpful for the panels that power some spacecraft. Such panels have to be launched in a small container and opened out in orbit. This usually relies on something like a coiled spring or a motor. But Chiara Daraio at the California Institute of Technology and her team have built a solar cell that unfolds itself using a shape- Largest ever patch of seaweed seen Satellites have revealed a 9000-kilometre algae bloom stretching from West Africa to the Gulf of Mexico, spurred on by fertiliser discharged from the Amazon river. The seaweed hampers marine life, as well as plaguing coastal towns that have to keep removing it from beaches (pictured). A cockatoo called Snowball has invented 14 different dance moves to music. They include body rolls and head banging with a foot in the air (Current Biology, doi.org/dsds9s). Sulphurcrested cockatoos like Snowball are smart and can use tools. However, they are not known to dance in this way in the wild. Zika babies can make a recovery Among a group of 216 babies born to mothers who contracted Zika virus, about one-third had developmental delays. However, a new study has found about half of the affected babies had normal developmental test results by age 3 (Nature Medicine, DOI: 10.1038/s41591019-0496-1). Archaeology the pre-creased sheet would twist them into a tight bundle, known as a flasher origami fold. When the folded apparatus was exposed to heat, the expansion of both the hinges and the creases in the sheet caused the shards to unfurl into a solar panel, its surface area going from 5 square centimetres to half a square metre in under 40 seconds (Physical Review Applied, doi.org/c7zz). This could be used as a simpler solar power device for spacecraft that unfolds when exposed to sunshine after launch, says Daraio. Leah Crane Computing Sweet answer for safer data storage MELISSA AJA, LEON LEVY EXPEDITION TO ASHKELON Cockatoo learns a dance move or two memory polymer which can be packed away and then return to a set shape when warmed. They started with a plastic ring from an expanding toy called a Hoberman sphere. The ring comprises a series of hinged joints that allow it to take on a much smaller size. The researchers replaced the hinges with polymers that expand when exposed to temperatures above about 35°C. They stretched a sheet of shapememory polymer across the ring, and covered it with shards of solar panel. They arranged the shards so that when the ring was collapsed, Biblical Philistines had genetic link to Greeks DNA from skeletons suggests the Philistine people mentioned in the Bible were a genetically distinct community with ties to an influx of Aegean immigrants. The Old Testament makes many references to the Philistines, often as adversaries of Hebrew people. To find out more about them, Michal Feldman at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, and her team used DNA from 10 skeletons found in the ancient Philistine city of Ashkelon (pictured), on the coast of what is now Israel. The earliest three remains date to about 1600 BC, four were infants buried around 1200 BC, and three individuals date to about 1100 BC. Their DNA was compared with DNA from all over the world, both ancient and modern. Those from the middle period had significant ancestry from southern Europe, but this signal had faded in the most recent group, probably as a result of assimilation with locals (Science Advances, doi.org/c7zc). The new genetic data, together with existing archaeological data such as Greek-style pottery found in Philistine cities, strengthens the case that such places saw migration from Greece and western Turkey, says Christoph Bachhuber at the University of Oxford. Clare Wilson WE KNOW DNA can be used for digital storage. Now it turns out that solutions of sugars, amino acids and other small molecules could replace hard drives too. Jacob Rosenstein and his colleagues at Brown University, Rhode Island, stored and retrieved pictures of an Egyptian cat, an ibex and an anchor using an array of these small molecules. They say storing data this way could make it less vulnerable to hacking and better for use in more extreme environmental conditions. Rosenstein’s team created mixtures of common metabolites, solutions containing sugars, amino acids and other small molecules that humans and other living organisms use to digest food and to carry out other important chemical functions. The presence or absence of particular metabolites in different drops of the mixtures represented the binary 1s and 0s to encode information. Rosenstein and his colleagues used many separate drops on a plate to store data and were able to retrieve it with around 99 per cent accuracy. They did this by using a mass spectrometer to analyse the chemical mix within each drop (PLoS One, doi.org/ c7x6). Ruby Prosser Scully 13 July 2019 | New Scientist | 17 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS News Insight Electric vehicles China drives into the future FORGET Tesla – the world’s biggest electric car manufacturer is a Chinese company you have probably never heard of. With the age of the fossil-fuel car drawing to an end, electric vehicles (EVs) from China could be on track for global dominance – assuming that the hundreds of start-ups in the sector don’t skid out and crash. China buys more EVs than any other nation. Last year, 1.25 million electric cars – 984,000 of which were solely battery-powered – were sold in the country, accounting for more than half of all EVs sold globally. A significant proportion of them were made by BYD Auto, a firm headquartered in Xi’an, China. In 2018, BYD sold nearly 248,000 zero-emissions vehicles globally, outpacing Tesla’s sales of roughly 245,000. The company began in 1995 as a manufacturer of batteries for mobile phones and digital cameras, and has since expanded to produce battery-powered cars, buses and trucks. Last week, it launched a fleet of 37 fully electric double decker buses as part of London’s public transport system. Other Chinese companies with international reach include Chery and the Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, which is the behemoth that now owns Volvo, Lotus and the London Taxi Company. China Europe US Japan Rest of the world 1.25m Electric cars sold in China last year, more than half of global sales All this means that despite an overall decline in car sales – the number of Chinese-produced cars sold last year dropped nearly 8 per cent from 2017 – the EV industry is booming. Battery electric vehicle sales rose by more than 50 per cent in 2018. “We are witnessing a transition from internal combustion engine vehicles to zero-emission vehicles,” says Yunshi Wang, director of the China Center for Energy and Transportation at the University of California, Davis. The shift has been driven by a Chinese government goal of reaching 5 million “new-energy” vehicles – including battery electrics, hybrid cars and fuel-cell cars – on China’s roads by 2020, 1.0 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0 SOURCE: EV-VOLUMES.COM 18 | New Scientist | 13 July 2019 when yearly sales of these cars should hit 2 million. Energy security is also a concern. About 70 per cent of China’s crude oil is imported. “China wants to rely mostly on electricity, which it can produce domestically,” says Wang. The Chinese government has been subsidising electric car designs for a decade and has given financial backing to many EV manufacturers. It has also invested in infrastructure for charging the vehicles. By the end of last year, China had an estimated 342,000 public charging points – and new residential buildings are required to have somewhere to plug in. In comparison, there are about 67,000 public chargers in the US. Climate change and the quality of the air are also important factors. China has pledged to reduce its carbon emissions in line with its commitment to the Paris climate agreement, and in June 2018, the government launched a three-year action plan to fight air pollution in its cities. Under the plan, which covers regions home to around one-third of China’s population, heavy logistics vehicles with internal combustion engines will be banned from entering cities. “China is kind of a poster child for incentives in that it is 1.2 Global plug-in electric car sales (millions) China’s electric vehicle market is growing much faster than those anywhere else Sam Korus, an analyst at investment firm ARK, estimates that there are nearly 500 EV companies in China, many of which are yet to produce their first vehicle. Recent reports suggest that 330 firms are registered for government subsidies encouraging investment in EVs. 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 CHEN WEN/CHINA NEWS SERVICE/VCG/GETTY Shifting to electric vehicles is an essential part of tackling climate change and China is doing far better than the West, reports Donna Lu subsidising both the supply and demand,” says Jack Barkenbus at the Vanderbilt Institute for Energy and the Environment in Tennessee. For example, zero-emissions licence plates have been introduced in cities including Shanghai and Beijing, where there are restrictions on the number of new car registrations each year. In Shanghai, new licence plates are sold for around 90,000 yuan ($13,000), says Wang. “If you buy a zero-emission vehicle, you can waive it and get the licence plate right away,” he says. The wait for a licence plate for an internal combustion car is about two years. Shen, an EV owner who lives in Beijing, says he bought his first electric car – a Geely DiHao – in 2016 because it was more difficult to obtain a licence plate for a fossilfuel car. “In Beijing, if you have an internal combustion car, there’s one day a week you can’t drive it, whereas there are no restrictions on electric cars,” he says. РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS Working hypothesis More Insight online Your guide to a rapidly changing world newscientist.com/insight “By the early 2020s, an electric vehicle will be priced cheaper than a fossil-fuel counterpart” than China. “It’s doubtful that we will sell more cars [in these countries] in the future than we have been able to sell in the last few years,” he says. “That’s not the case in China where the per capita ownership is much lower.” And there is still a lot of room to grow. Even though the Chinese EV BYD Auto sells more electric cars than any other firm in the world market is already the biggest in the world, EVs still only make up an estimated 4 per cent of total car sales there. The world leader is Norway, where last year 46 per cent of cars sold were EVs. The transition will take time, says Wang. He calculates that even if close to 100 per cent of Chinese car sales are EVs by 2031, they will still only number around 30 per cent of all cars on roads. And government subsidies to manufacturers, which peaked in 2014 at 100,000 yuan per car, are on track to be phased out by 2020, sparking concerns that sales will plummet. Korus says it may lead to a reduction in the number of Chinese EV firms. He compares it to the US auto industry in the early 1900s, which shrunk from 250 manufacturers to less than 50 in about a decade. “This is a good thing for the market,” he says. International firms are also competing for a share of the Chinese market: Volkswagen announced plans in April to produce 11.6 million EVs in China by 2028, and Tesla is building a massive factory in Shanghai. But why aren’t overseas consumers driving Chinese-made EVs yet? To date, Chinese vehicle companies have been more comfortable exporting commercial logistics vehicles than passenger cars, says Wang, because they prefer to avoid the vagaries of consumer demand. There are also questions over privacy. For example, it was claimed last year that electric car-makers in China give the government data from their cars, and more than a million cars are being tracked in real time. Claims that companies such as BYD will produce a car that rivals Tesla are overblown, says Barkenbus. “I think it’d be pretty hard to match Tesla in terms of its performance.” Where Chinese vehicles may be successful, he says, is in making mid-range vehicles for the global market. Although Tesla’s goal is to make affordable EVs, the price of its current cheapest model is close to that of other luxury car brands. The background in battery manufacturing of BYD – and another Chinese firm, CATL – may be a boon for the Chinese industry. Battery costs account for about a quarter of an EV’s price, and are consistently becoming cheaper to make, says Korus. “Our research suggests that by the early 2020s, you’re going to have an electric vehicle that is sticker-priced cheaper than a gas counterpart,” he says, at which point he foresees a swing in demand. For the sake of the planet, that can’t come soon enough. ❚ ▲ Jodrell Bank Not all satellite dishes are ugly - Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire, UK, is now a UNESCO world heritage site. ▲ Billions of trees Enlarging forests by a third could lock up enough carbon to give us 20 more years to stupidly dither on tackling climate change. ▼ British Airways UK data watchdogs have threatened BA with a £183 million fine for failure to protect customer details – maybe they got sent to the wrong airport? ▼ Uber Eats BOTTOM: H. ARMSTRONG ROBERTS/CLASSICSTOCK/GETTY IMAGES TOP: PAUL ELLIS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES The switch to EVs has been easier in China because private car ownership is a relatively new phenomenon, says Isbrand Ho at BYD Europe in the Netherlands, so there is little brand loyalty. “Whatever will work efficiently, effectively and comfortably for the consumer, they are most likely to adopt,” he says. Barkenbus says peak car ownership in places like the US and UK means that such countries have been slower to adapt to EVs Sorting the week’s supernovae from the absolute zeros The takeaway delivery service has a radical new idea – order your food, then sit down to eat it at a restaurant. No need to wait at home! ▼ Space baby SpaceLife Origins, a Netherlands start-up, had wanted to enable the first birth in space. Now plans are “on hold”, presumably after realising they were really, really, really bad. 13 July 2019 | New Scientist | 19 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS TAKE THE GIANT LEAP INTO YOUR NEXT JOB Let New Scientist Jobs connect you with the top STEM employers Finding the right employer is essential to your career development. Take your pick of top employers at New Scientist Jobs and advance your career today. Visit newscientistjobs.com Putting brilliant minds to work @science_jobs | #Sciencejobs РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS Views The columnist Chanda PrescodWeinstein wants to save our helium p22 Letters Consciousness really does pose a hard problem p24 Aperture A kitsch celebration of the epic Soviet space dogs flights p26 Culture Artist Olafur Eliasson explores the Anthropocene p28 Culture columnist Simon Ings delights in The Hummingbird Project p30 Comment Make a living will For our own sakes, and for those we leave behind, we all need to think about how we want to die, says Clare Wilson Clare Wilson is a medicine and health reporter for New Scientist. Follow her on Twitter @ClareWilsonMed JOSIE FORD B Y THE time you read this, Vincent Lambert may well be dead. He has been in a vegetative state since a car crash in 2008. In a twilight zone between life and death, he has been unable to talk, eat or respond meaningfully to others. Last week, doctors in Reims, France, began to remove his life support following a ruling from the Court of Cassation, the country’s highest appeals court. It followed a six-year legal battle between two sides of Lambert’s family – his wife and six brothers and sisters, who sought to let him die, and his parents and two other siblings, who wanted him to continue to live. The case brought interventions from politicians, the Pope and the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Whatever our views on this case, most of us would think it is sad that Lambert’s family, who presumably all care deeply about him, have been fighting over his fate in court. The problem is that few of us like talking about death, so few of us take an important step to ensure that our loved ones know how we wish to be treated at the end of our lives – in situations such as this and in far more common ones. That step is to make a living will, or advance decision, a document that sets out your medical preferences if you are unable to communicate. In the UK, groups such as Compassion in Dying and Advance Decisions Assistance provide free templates online and advise on how to help make sure these documents don’t get ignored when they are needed. In the US, the National Institute on Aging website provides advice. Many people would want all the medical treatments available to be thrown at them if they were unable to communicate their wishes, and worry that medical staff will give up too soon. It is their right to express that wish. But talk frankly to doctors and they will tell you the bigger problem is the opposite: of overtreatment and inappropriate medical care that makes death more unpleasant and prolonged. It can be just as important to state clearly in what situations you wish to avoid certain treatments. For example, sometimes people in hospital who are dying and have stopped eating and drinking as their body shuts down will have a feeding tube placed through their nose, causing distress and discomfort. Often families pressure staff to do this because they can’t accept how close their relative is to death. Then there are people who aren’t dying, but who have very poor quality of life because of severe Alzheimer’s disease, for instance. Would you want to continue living in that situation? While assisted dying is illegal in the UK, as in most countries, it is legal to refrain from treating infections such as pneumonia, to let people die naturally. This used to be more common, but is often now resisted by relatives or care-home nurses. Some people object strongly to such a course, while others see it as being sensible and humane. The range of opinion is the crux of this matter. Unless you make a living will, it won’t be you who decides what happens to you at the end. It will be someone else. ❚ 13 July 2019 | New Scientist | 21 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS Views Columnist Field notes from space-time No laughing matter Helium is one of the most abundant elements in the universe, yet supplies on Earth are running out – a reminder of how precious our resources are, says Chanda Prescod-Weinstein W Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is an assistant professor of physics and astronomy, and a core faculty member in women’s studies at the University of New Hampshire. Find her on Twitter @IBJIYONGI and the web at cprescodweinstein.com Chanda’s week What are you reading? I am working my way through C. Riley Snorton’s Black on Both Sides: A racial history of trans identity. What are you watching? I have been glued to the soccer Women’s World Cup for the past few weeks. I have also finally managed to see Avengers: Endgame. This column appears monthly. Up next week: Graham Lawton 22 | New Scientist | 13 July 2019 LUXX IMAGES/GETTY What are you working on? I want to better understand the dynamics between galaxies and their dark matter haloes. HEN I was 4, my favourite book was Balloonia by Audrey Wood. It tells the story of a little girl who realises that balloons have an afterlife when they float away. Wielding a sharp pin, she takes a balloon hostage, demanding that it take her to Balloonia. There, she experiences a world where everything is made of balloons, including the animals and the landscape they populate. It is a wonderful tale. It is only later in life that I have come to worry it might be predicated on the continued availability of the second most abundant element in the universe: helium. Trouble is, helium is running out on Earth. When we fill a balloon with helium, it floats because helium is lighter than air. Sound also travels through helium faster than it travels through air, which is why inhaling helium makes people’s voices sound temporarily more high-pitched. Beyond its entertainment value, helium is also a crucial coolant in its liquid form. It pops up in diverse technologies, from fancy medical equipment like MRI machines to big physics toys such as space rockets and the Axion Dark Matter Experiment, which searches for axion particles, my favourite candidate to make up the universe’s missing dark matter. On a day-to-day basis, we rarely give much thought to the origins of helium, but they are fascinating. Almost all of the helium in the universe was produced when space-time as we know it was only a few minutes old. This period is called big bang nucleosynthesis, an era that began when the universe became cool enough that radiation could no longer prevent protons and neutrons coming together to form the first atomic nuclei. During that time, the first element in the periodic table, hydrogen, formed in great quantities, making up 75 per cent of the luminous matter in the universe. Nearly all the rest is the second lightest element – helium. These two elements make up most of the gas clouds that hang around the universe. Along with a small amount of lithium made at the same time, they formed the foundation for the first generation of stars. Stars aren’t just made from helium; they are also a site for making it. Stars are collections of tightly packed hydrogen and “The existence of a world of floating balloons is predicated on the availability of helium” helium atoms whose high density causes the initiation of nuclear explosions. These explosions are extremely bright, producing light across the electromagnetic spectrum, including at visible wavelengths. That is what we have to thank for every sunrise and the beauty of the night sky. But these explosions also smash and glue elements together to make heavier ones. In our sun, hydrogen nuclei fuse into helium, producing high-energy radiation in the form of gamma rays. In more massive stars, this stellar nucleosynthesis is more complex, leading to the production of heavier elements like the carbon that is the basis for human life. We really are made of star stuff! There is an irony in this cosmic abundance, however. All the helium we have on Earth, from the stuff we put in balloons to the stuff we put in MRI machines, originates not directly in stars, but in radioactive decays in Earth’s crust. Over time, the heavy elements uranium and thorium – themselves made when stars explode at the end of their lives or when neutron stars collide – break down. The products include alpha particles consisting of two protons and two neutrons bound together, otherwise known as helium nuclei. Unfortunately for Earth (and Balloonia), helium isn’t endlessly abundant. In fact, we are currently facing a global shortage. More than 90 per cent of the world’s helium supply comes from just three countries – the US, Qatar and Algeria – with most of it a byproduct of natural gas extraction. Current sources are running low and efforts to tap new ones have been delayed. Scientists have tried to get the US Congress to improve the management of existing supplies, but political challenges have got in the way. The link between natural gas and helium supplies is one reason this is complicated: accelerating global warming demands that we move away from fossil fuels as energy sources, not look for more of them. But unlinking helium from fossil fuels raises difficult-toaddress questions given current economic structures. Changing how we do things often seems like an impossibility. The case of helium reminds us that the universe is a vast and wonderful place, but also how we need to make do with – and cherish – what we have on Earth. ❚ РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS SOUVENIR ISSUE MOON LANDING 5OTH ANNIVERSARY 1969-2O19 THE QUEST FOR SPACE Don’t miss a special souvenir issue from New Scientist celebrating the 50th anniversary of the moon landings. Explore the past, present and future of space exploration with over 100 pages of in-depth articles on the wonders of the solar system, plus 20 pages of newly resurfaced historical content from New Scientist’s archive detailing the original space race as it happened Available from all good magazine retailers, digitally in the New Scientist app or direct from newscientist.com/thecollection РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS Views Your letters Consciousness does in fact pose a hard problem 22 June, p 34 From Guy Inchbald, Upton-uponSevern, Worcestershire, UK Rowan Hooper, with help from philosophers Patricia Churchland and Daniel Dennett, does a great disservice to “the hard problem” in the theory of mind. Were “qualia”, the experiential qualities of consciousness, so easily dismissed as the maunderings of the spooky-minded, the problem would never have become so notoriously difficult. Why do we experience consciousness at all? Nothing in any objective scientific theory of physics or information accounts for the subjective qualities of our otherwise empirically measurable experiences. In the integrated information theory proposed by Giulio Tononi, consciousness is what information feels like when it reaches a certain level of sophistication. But the fact of that feeling has no underpinning. That is the hard problem. From Trevor Hussey, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, UK “What is consciousness?” isn’t answered by saying how it is produced and where in the brain this happens, unless we start by assuming we know the answer. If it is just neural activity, there is nothing more to explain. But if I am sad, feeling guilt or in pain and I describe the accompanying physical goings-on in minute detail, you wouldn’t know what I was experiencing. What is missing is the subjective experience: what I am aware of and you aren’t. We may want a naturalistic explanation of consciousness and not a “spooky non-biological” account, but we need one that preserves what is characteristic of consciousness: the subjective phenomena. This “hard problem” isn’t solved by dismissing these as illusory. For something to be an illusion, it has to be observed – that is to say, experienced. Evolution has produced 24 | New Scientist | 13 July 2019 something of great selective advantage using only the physical stuff of the universe, but that also involves subjective phenomena. We know of consciousness only by means of those phenomena, which adds to the puzzle. From David Fitzgerald, Margate, Kent, UK It was interesting how much of your article on the human brain was littered with computer analogies. I suspect some future human brains will shake their formidable heads at this, reflecting on how each generation tries to explain things with the mechanism of their day. Singapore’s falsehood law leaves the courts to decide 1 June, p 23 From Foo Chi Hsia, High Commissioner for the Republic of Singapore, London, UK Donna Lu makes claims about Singapore’s Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Bill (POFMB). Minister for Education Ong Ye Kung and other Singapore officials have said that POFMB can’t affect expressions of opinion, since it covers only false statements of fact. It follows existing jurisprudence that defines what a false statement of fact is. This means that academic research won’t be subject to POFMB so doesn’t need to be exempted. Inquiry in the humanities also won’t be covered, as it is in the domain of opinion, not fact. Lu suggests that the bill gives government free rein to ban any information that the “state deems to be false”. The bill prescribes that Singapore’s courts, not its government, are the final arbiters of truth. Singapore welcomes groundbreaking research and the government is committed to applying the law responsibly. We aren’t seeking to set any global precedent with this law, which is designed for our own multiracial and multireligious context. Remember that climate concern goes way back From the archives, 1 June From Lucia Singer Wantage, Oxfordshire, UK In his article on how New Scientist covered a proposed solution to the hole in the ozone layer in 1994, Simon Ings says concern about climate change was then the “preserve of a fringe few”. Even in the 1980s, global warming was mainstream enough for my teenage friends and me to dread it alongside nuclear war and mass unemployment. This is important because there were already climate change deniers. Then, they said that the planet wasn’t warming; now, they can’t say this, so instead insist it is a natural fluctuation. These people are running behind the science, throwing dust in the air to try to obscure the facts. It is our duty to point out that they were wrong in the past so that we can decide how much to trust them now. The importance of climate change for Christians 22 June, p 24 From Peter Bennett, Nantwich, Cheshire, UK Graham Lawton notes the potential for common ground between science and religion on climate change. The Anglican church defines its mission in five areas. The fifth, added in 1990, is РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS Views From the archives “to strive to safeguard the integrity of creation, and sustain and renew the life of the earth”. Climate change will probably disproportionately affect the poorest in the world. Another part of the Anglican mission is to work to “transform unjust structures of society”. The challenges of climate change should be as immediate to Christians as to atheists. in an underground vault. In 1992, I studied Salix alba in the cold, arid conditions of Ladakh in India and observed that the seeds lose their viability six to seven weeks after collection. I noticed a reduction in germination after 14 days and no germination after 52 days. I suggest the Kew scientists check before banking seeds in deep freeze for long-term use. From Patrick Davey, Dublin, Ireland It is generally accepted that Pope Francis publishing the encyclical letter Laudato Si’ six months before the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference had a material effect on the resulting Paris agreement. This isn’t forgotten by the Global Catholic Climate Movement. Flexibility and innovation are key in education This looks like yet another carbon capture illusion 25 May, p 12 From Derek Bolton, Sydney, Australia Donna Lu reports a scheme to capture the carbon dioxide from industry “before it enters the atmosphere” and produce animal feed by growing bacteria on it. But if CO2 from fossil fuels is captured, used to make either carbohydrate or hydrocarbon using solar power, then used as animal feed or fuel, it has still gone from being safely sequestered underground into the air. The only gain has been a single reuse, a halving of the carbon intensity of that power station. Letters, 15 June From Merlin Reader, London, UK Guy Cox says “able” pupils aren’t challenged in non-selective schools. But most people are able in different ways. As I was good at maths, I could take an exam two years early at my non-selective school thanks to the Secondary Mathematics Individualised Learning Experiment, set up by the Inner London Education Authority, now sadly scrapped. This allowed pupils to learn at their own pace and for the more advanced students to assist others, a good way of reinforcing learning that was valuable for both pupils. There were always areas in which less academically able pupils were better. Mixing people of varying abilities at school was a good learning experience for everyone. Selection isn’t necessary if teachers are innovative and schools are well-funded. No child in such schools would feel they had failed academically before they had even started there. ❚ For the record Please check that those willow seeds will be viable 25 May, p 13 From Vijay Koul, Canberra, Australia Adam Vaughan describes seeking willow seeds to deposit ❚ The area in which ammonia was detected on Pluto is about 200 kilometres wide (8 June, p 18). ❚ Earth takes 23 hours 56 minutes to complete one rotation and Mars takes 24 hours 37 minutes (15 June, p 38). 60 years ago, New Scientist reported on deadly kuru disease, presaging controversies to come IT WAS an exhibition at the Wellcome Medical Museum in London that drew our attention to kuru, a rare disease found only among the people of one tribe in New Guinea. “By a savage irony, one of the most irresistible and mysterious diseases that afflict man is symptomised by uncontrolled laughter,” we wrote in our 2 July 1959 issue. The disease was always fatal. Its first stage “is marked by tremors akin to shivering, occasional jerks and a state of euphoria”, we reported. “The second stage involves shock-like jerks, inability to walk except with the aid of sticks, strabismus or rolling of the eyes, and easily provoked and excessive laughter.” We later learned that kuru was spread by members of the tribe eating dead human bodies during funerals. But it took a while to get to grips with the neurological underpinnings of kuru, along with scrapie in sheep and certain other similar degenerative disorders. In 1982, neurologist Stanley Prusiner identified misfolded proteins known as prions as the cause – and a second, equally dark chapter in the story began to unfold. On 5 November 1987, in an article entitled “Brain disease drives cows wild”, we reported that vets at the UK’s Ministry of Agriculture had identified a new disease among cattle. “The fatal disease, which they have called bovine spongiform encephalopathy, causes degeneration of the brain,” we wrote. “Afflicted cows eventually become uncoordinated and difficult to handle.” Eventually, they had to be slaughtered. If the disease should turn out to be infectious, we wrote, “it could cause problems out of proportion to the number of cases”. It later became clear that infected cattle had been given feed that included meat-and-bone meal from other cows – effectively turning them into cannibals. In 1996, the UK government announced that BSE, also known as mad cow disease, had jumped the species barrier to humans. Since then, every consumer of 1980s British beef has been living in the crosshairs of a kuru-like threat. For a prionic disease, kuru has a relatively short incubation period of six to nine months. With Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human variant of mad cow disease, we simply aren’t sure of the incubation period. We might not be out of the BSE woods yet. Simon Ings Want to get in touch? Send letters to New Scientist, 25 Bedford Street, London WC2E 9ES or [email protected]; see terms at newscientist.com/letters To find more from the archives, visit newscientist.com/old-scientist 13 July 2019 | New Scientist | 25 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS Views Aperture 26 | New Scientist | 13 July 2019 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS Serious about space? Find more chronicles of the cosmos at newscientist.com/space Space hounds Photographer Martin Parr martinparr.com AS WE celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing (see page 36), it is easy to forget that the US’s bitter ideological rival, the Soviet Union, made the decisive first moves in the space race. And that wouldn’t have been possible without a uniquely Soviet team of heroes: the space dogs. Laika, a stray from the streets of Moscow, was the most famous of their kind. On 3 November 1957, less than a month after the Soviets launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, she became the first animal to orbit Earth. For years, the official story was that Laika died painlessly after about a week in orbit. In 2002, it emerged that she probably survived for only a few hours before the heat and stress got to her. Back on the ground, Laika gained a fanatical following – as did Belka and Strelka, two dogs who, in 1960, returned home safely after a day orbiting Earth aboard Sputnik 5. The space dogs were celebrated on stamps, posters, clocks and all manner of memorabilia. Laika even had her own brand of cigarettes, sold until the 1990s. Photographer Martin Parr has acquired an extensive collection of space dog kitsch, the result of a “20-year obsession”, he says. Together with journalist Richard Hollingham, he has now written the book Space Dogs: The story of the celebrated canine cosmonauts. His collection also features in the exhibition Space Steps: The moon and beyond at the Royal Photographic Society in Bristol, UK, until 29 September. ❚ Richard Webb 13 July 2019 | New Scientist | 27 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS Views Culture An artist in the Anthropocene Olafur Eliasson is returning to London’s Tate Modern after a decade and a half. Liz Else and Simon Ings asked him how his art has adapted to a globalised world SIXTEEN years ago, DanishIcelandic artist Olafur Eliasson caught London off guard with a massive indoor artwork. Some 2 million people visited The Weather Project at the Tate Modern gallery to bask in the glow of a giant, artificial sun. It was a rare moment of collective awe – created using the simplest of materials. This week, Eliasson is back with a major retrospective exhibition and most of the pieces are new to the UK. But a lot has changed since 2003. Days before his new show opens, we asked the artist about selfie culture, what accessible art looks like in the teched-up Anthropocene, and the hefty carbon footprint that pictures and installations leave behind. RUNA MAYA MØRK HUBER/STUDIO OLAFUR ELIASSON © 2017 OLAFUR ELIASSON Wasn’t there a plan to stage something outside the gallery? Yes. We’re installing three waterfalls. We know today there are no real waterfalls left because they’re all human-influenced, if not human-made. So our waterfalls are as real as anything in nature – or as unreal. Do big art and big science have to justify themselves to people who don’t get the point? Sadly, yes, and it’s an argument we’re losing because great science and great art are very much long-term projects, views given to politicians with short-term goals. Making a work might take 10 years. Getting it shown might take another 10. For people to finally settle down with the experience might take 10 years, too. It’s a very slow piece of communication. You command big budgets. Is the relationship with money tricky for artists? To make big projects is expensive. But think about how much money an alcohol company throws into the promotion of some new drink! I believe there are studies showing that if you throw a euro or a pound into the culture sector, it generates two to three times as much income. There are more people working in the culture sector than there are in the car industry. It’s also a part of our democratic stability. It’s a space where 28 | New Scientist | 13 July 2019 “If we’re going to re-engineer the systems of tomorrow, we need to risk being foolish. We need to take risks” Exhibition Olafur Eliasson: In real life runs from 11 July to 5 January at Tate Modern in London we feel we can have difficult conversations. Is that expensive? No. It’s actually very cheap. What can we expect from the show at Tate Modern? We have about 42 works, big and small. Some are entertaining, like Your Uncertain Shadow and Your Blind Passenger, where a tunnel full of smoke gives you the experience of being blind. Of course, instantly your ears get more active, you touch the wall and stretch out your hand so as not to bump into somebody. Other works are more contemplative. Do you consider yourself an environmental artist? In the show, there is a series of 40 photos of glacial tongues from Iceland, taken in 1998. I believed then that culture and nature were two distinct spaces. I didn’t fully understand that the Anthropocene age had started. When people look at the photos now, they say “this is about climate”. When I took them, it was about their beauty. Soon, I’ll be retaking those photos from the same angles, in the same places. Maybe in October, if I’ve finished, we will sneak in the new pictures so we have the two series hanging next to each other, 20 years apart. In December, you brought 30 polar ice blocks from Greenland to London and let them melt. Why? Some 235,000 people were estimated to have been not just walking by, but at the ice – sometimes physically hugging it – and this, I think, made Ice Watch a clear and robust statement. This is what the data from the scientists looks like. This is what a block of ice 15,000 years old looks like. And it’s going to be gone in a week. How big is the carbon footprint of your work? We worked with a consultancy called Julie’s Bicycle, which helps people in the culture sector calculate their climate footprint. The London project came to the equivalent of 52 return flights from London to Ilulissat in РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS Hot under the collar? Don’t miss Greenland. For almost two years, we’ve been trying to come up with a step-by-step solution for my Berlin studio. And whenever I work with museums and logistics teams, I ask them to come up with a response to the climate. Our readers care about green footprints, but does everyone? I was with teenage children in Ethiopia in January. They knew all about global warming, they understood about greenhouse gases and how it wasn’t really them, their parents or their ecology that created this problem. There is no place left where people don’t know this. There are deniers in places like the White House who deny things because they’re following other economic or power priorities. What can artists bring to the climate debate? Recently, a far right Danish politician lost a huge number MARIA DEL PILAR GARCIA AYENSA/ STUDIO OLAFUR ELIASSON.© 2010 OLAFUR ELIASSON In his element: Olafur Eliasson’s Your Uncertain Shadow (below) of voters and one of the most prominent members of that party said, well, it’s all these climate fools. And immediately, across the political spectrum, people picked up on it, saying “I’m a clown, a fool, a klimatosser”. If we’re going to re-engineer the systems of tomorrow, we need to risk being foolish. Previous models of success can’t be applied. The planet simply can’t host them any longer. We need to take risks. “Art and culture are hard work, not consumerism. You have to give something to get something” How has social media affected your work? It’s kind of the stone age, the way people walk through exhibitions. People walk up to a piece of art that’s very tangible, highly emotional, with sounds and smells and all sorts of things – and they just bloody look at their phone! The problem isn’t necessarily the audience, but the way institutions over-explain everything, as though without a long text people just won’t get it. And once we are used to that, that’s how we react: “My God, there was no text! I had to find out everything myself!” I say, yes, art and culture are hard work, not consumerism. You have to give something to get something. Does activism consume much of your working life? I’m lucky that art can be seen to be flirting with activism, and maybe there is a fertilising relationship there. But that’s one of the good things about getting older: you know there are things that you aren’t good at. I’m very content just being an artist. But you run a business to drive social change. I have a social entrepreneurship project called Little Sun, which makes a small, handheld, portable solar lantern. On one side, it has a photovoltaic panel, on the other an LED. It replaces the kerosene or petroleum lantern that you would have used previously. Obviously, sitting with an open-wick petroleum lantern is both very unhealthy and very bad for the climate. It’s also expensive. Is the Little Sun a success? We’ve done studies on the impact of the lamp. Say a family eats dinner, then the girl does the dishes while the boy does his homework. Once the girl is done, she sits down only to find there’s not enough petroleum left for her homework. One study showed that the Little Sun increased the boy’s homework efficiency by 20 per cent, but increased the girl’s efficiency by 80 per cent. So the Little Sun project is incredibly inspiring. ❚ Watch London Green Film Festival, at Regent’s Place from 17 July, is full of stories of how we can all treat the planet a little more kindly. There is also the promise of “indulgent vegan dirty jackfruit”. Exciting times… Visit Kew Science Festival, from 20 to 21 July, offers visitors the latest botanical science in the beautiful and biodiverse setting of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in London. This year’s theme is “rare and threatened”. Read More Things in the Heavens: How infrared astronomy is expanding our view of the universe by Michael Werner and Peter Eisenhardt (Princeton University Press) tours the cosmos through the Spitzer Space Telescope. 13 July 2019 | New Scientist | 29 ROYAL BOTANICAL GARDENS KEW Explore our climate futures at New Scientist Live newscientistlive.com РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS Views Culture The science of film An American dream A drama about two cousins setting out to get seriously rich by building a 1600-kilometre-long optical fibre link between New York and Kansas is both funny and fascinating, says Simon Ings Simon Ings is a novelist and science writer and a culture editor at New Scientist. Follow him on Instagram @simon_ings Film The Hummingbird Project Written and directed by Kim Nguyen Simon also recommends... Film The Social Network Directed by David Fincher Jesse Eisenberg plays Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg in this superlative tech just-so story. The Big Short Directed by Adam McKay A meticulous takedown of Wall Street with Steve Carell and Christian Bale. 30 | New Scientist | 13 July 2019 BELGA PRODUCTIONS, AUTOMATIK, HANWAY FILMS, TELEFILM CANADA Jesse Eisenberg and Alexander Skarsgård star as cousins with a plan IT IS 2011, a couple of years after the Great Recession. Quantitative analyst Vincent (Jesse Eisenberg) and his programmer cousin Anton (Alexander Skarsgård) have found a way to steal a march on Wall Street: trading a millisecond ahead of the competition. Where will they find this tiny, telling pinch of extra time? They plan to make it themselves, by stretching an optical fibre from Kansas City Internet Exchange to New York in as straight a line as possible. While everyone else waits 17 milliseconds for their information (the beat of a hummingbird’s wing is the film’s poetic, and accurate enough, conceit), Vincent, Anton and their backers will only have to wait 16 milliseconds. That’s time enough to squeeze in a few thousand algorithmically generated trades. The trick will be to lay the cable as straight as the law allows. Never mind Amish farms, Appalachian mountain ranges, loneliness, obsession or physical frailty. They will build this 1600-kilometrelong, 10-centimetre-wide fibre tunnel if it kills them. Scripted and filmed like a truelife story (after all, who in their right mind would make up a thriller about high-frequency trading infrastructures?) The Hummingbird Project, incredibly, springs entirely from the head of writer-director Kim Nguyen. It can’t quite decide whether to be a think piece or a buddy movie, but “Do you recall when it took a microsecond to win or lose a fortune? What slowcoaches we were, eight years ago” it can be staggeringly funny. Salma Hayek has indecent amounts of fun as Eva, the cousins’ abandoned boss. In a frantic attempt to keep them on her payroll, at one point she shouts: “I think we can break the walls of perception together!” It is one of those stories that, in being made up, encapsulates a lot of historical and technical insight. Hayek’s Eva can talk “nanosecond financial engineering” all she wants. As a sceptical investor notes, her style of trading is really just scalping: profiting off small, short-lived price anomalies between financial exchanges. Scalping is hard because one hefty loss wipes out millions of tiny profitable trades. And it is also impossible to do without computers because markets adjust quicker than the eye can follow. When world markets crashed in 2008, this took a lot of the heat. It was easier for politicians to point the finger at runaway tech and artificially accelerated trading than to challenge and dismantle key institutions. But while trading algorithms have caused the odd “flash crash”, they do far more to sustain a market economy than to threaten it. This is why so-called mechanical arbitrage runs over half the trades in many markets. Vincent and Anton’s project is entirely reasonable in a world that puts commercial operations as close to market exchanges as possible to steal millisecond advantages over competitors. Hanging over the cousins’ project is a rival bid to leave fibre behind and send financial information by microwave (and the discussion of “pulse-shaping algorithms” will warm the heart of any telecoms engineer). Today, the industry is even more complex, with atomic clocks to arbitrate the timing of financial information. Financial instruments that scalp multiple markets are driving the creation of strategic data centres in unlikely places, as banks head for space via Elon Musk’s Starlink servers. All of which gives the film a curiously nostalgic feel. Do you recall when it took a thousandth of a second to win or lose a fortune? What slowcoaches we were, eight years ago. ❚ РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS WHAT IF TIME STARTED FLOWING BACKWARDS? WHAT IF THE RUSSIANS GOT TO THE MOON FIRST? WHAT IF DINOSAURS STILL RULED THE EARTH? AVAILABLE NOW newscientist.com/books РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS Features Cover story The only food advice you need Every week seems to bring contradictory advice about diet. That’s because almost all nutritional science is fatally flawed, finds Clare Wilson LARTAL/GETTY O NE morning a few months ago, I saw a headline that made my heart sink. It claimed that eggs can give you heart attacks. It wasn’t that I was about to eat eggs for breakfast. It was because, as a medical journalist, I knew friends and family would soon ask me what to make of this claim. And I would have a tough time answering. Advice about what to eat seems to change every week. Eggs are a classic example. They were once seen as wholesome packages of protein and vitamins, a perfect start to the day. But in the 1960s we woke up to the dangers of cholesterol. Eggs, which are rich in this fatty substance, became frowned upon. But wait! Around 20 years ago, our ideas about cholesterol were revised: the amount in our food no longer mattered, because it didn’t really affect the levels in our blood and hence our heart health. In the years that followed, it became OK to eat eggs once more. Then in March, the latest study showed the opposite again – that cholesterol in eggs was bad for us. Sometimes I wonder if we should believe anything we read about food. That might sound like an overreaction, but perhaps it is a rational stance. A growing number of scientists are now saying nutrition science is so flawed that we can’t even trust pillars of advice like eating plenty of vegetables and avoiding saturated fat. Within certain 32 | New Scientist | 13 July 2019 common sense boundaries, they say, it doesn’t matter what we eat. But could that really be true? When I started researching this article, I wondered if the doubters were being unfair. Sure, occasional studies with unusual results get seized on by the media, but maybe they are unrepresentative of the wider field. I discovered that this is the first response of nutrition scientists when a journalist tries to ask them, tactfully, if their field is broken. “You have to be careful about not taking one study and saying that’s the be-all and end-all,” says Louis Levy, head of nutrition at Public Health England. “You have to look at the broader evidence.” Yet the more I dug into the subject, the more it became clear that, while misleading media coverage is part of the problem, this field’s flaws run much deeper. There are huge amounts of research on diet published every year, a lot of it funded by governments concerned about rising levels of obesity and diabetes. But even in the pages of respected science journals, we find conflicting results about much of what we eat and drink: potatoes, dairy products, bacon, fruit juice, alcohol, even water. And this isn’t just quibbling over details: there is a major fault line dividing the field over whether we should eat food that is low in fat or low in carbohydrates, for example. Many of the problems stem from the fact that the vast majority of food studies are of a certain kind that makes them easier to carry out but more likely to lead to false conclusions. To understand their weakness, consider the better kind of research, the randomised controlled trial. Here, doctors ask a random half of their subjects to take a new medicine, while the rest take dummy pills that look just like the real ones so no one knows who is taking what. If those that take the real drug end up in better health, there is a good chance the medicine was responsible. РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS “Even the linchpins of dietary advice fail to translate into unambiguous benefits” That kind of study is hard to do for food. Few would agree to change their diet for years based on the roll of a dice, and it would be hard to keep secret what they are eating. So instead, nutrition scientists usually observe what people eat by asking them to fill out food diaries, and then track the health of participants. The big problem with these “observational” studies is that eating certain foods tends to go hand in hand with other behaviours that affect health. People who eat what is generally seen as an unhealthy diet – with more fast food, for instance – tend to have lower incomes and unhealthy lifestyles in other ways, such as smoking and taking less exercise. Conversely, eating supposed health foods correlates with higher incomes, with all the benefits they bring. These other behaviours are known as confounders, because in observational studies they can lead us astray. For example, even if blueberries don’t affect heart attack rates, those who eat more of them will have fewer heart attacks, simply because eating blueberries is a badge of middle-class prosperity. Researchers use statistical techniques to try to remove the distorting effects of confounders. But no one knows for certain which confounders to include, and picking different ones can change results. To show just how conclusions can vary based on choice of confounders, Chirag Patel at Harvard Medical School examined the effects of taking a vitamin E supplement. He used a massive data set from a respected US study called the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Depending on which mix of 13 possible confounders are used, taking this vitamin can apparently either reduce death rates, have no effect at all or even raise deaths. Patel says this shows researchers can get any result they want out of their data, by plugging into their analysis tools whatever confounders give an outcome that fits their favoured diet, be it low-fat or low-carbohydrate, vegetarian or Mediterranean. “We have large studies that measure all things simultaneously – it’s more possible than ever to cherry pick,” he says. Another source of error is known as publication bias: studies that show interesting results are more likely to get published than those that don’t. So if two studies look at red meat and cancer, for instance, and only one shows a link, that one is more likely to be published. This bias happens at nearly every stage of the long process from the initial research to publication in a scientific journal and > 13 July 2019 | New Scientist | 33 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS Food for thought Out of the roughly 1 million papers that have been published in nutrition, only a tiny fraction, perhaps a few hundred, are large, good-quality randomised trials, says Ioannidis. The rest are mainly observational studies, small or poorly designed trials, opinion pieces, or reviews that summarise the results of other papers, with all their potential flaws. Even national dietary guidelines are based on this kind of work. And what do the few hundred decent-sized, randomised trials find? Here is the clincher: when the trials test the dietary recommendations based on observational studies, the strategies almost never succeed at extending lifespan. The studies either find no effect, or one that is much smaller than that predicted by observational studies – so small as to be practically meaningless. Usually any change isn’t in rates of deaths, cancer or heart attacks, but in “biomarkers”; these are generally substances in the blood, such as cholesterol, that are thought to affect health outcomes, but the evidence isn’t clear-cut. “There is almost nothing that finds you can live longer,” says Ioannidis. Take the idea of vitamin pills for the healthy general population. Many observational studies suggested that taking various vitamin supplements kept people healthier. But when these ideas were tested in trials, the pills either had no effect or actually made people die sooner. Fish oil supplements, too, have been shown to have no benefit in clinical trials, despite dozens of observational studies claiming the opposite. Yet dietary advice in many countries, including Australia, the UK and the US is still that people should eat oily fish regularly. 34 | New Scientist | 13 July 2019 Even the linchpins of today’s dietary advice fail to translate into unambiguous benefits when put to the test. “There are no randomised controlled trials showing whole grains, fruit and veg or fibre affect mortality or heart attacks or cancer rates,” says Levy. “It’s just not plausible to do a trial following a large enough group over a sufficient period to see enough deaths.” That’s right. Despite all the urging that we should “eat a rainbow” of different-coloured plant foods, aiming for five portions a day – or maybe seven or even nine, depending on who you listen to – no trial has shown that doing so makes us live longer. The same goes for eating wholegrain versions of foods such as bread, pasta and rice, which is recommended for the fibre content. The best support that randomised trials have given us here is that a type of fibre found in oats, called beta-glucan, brings small improvements in blood pressure and cholesterol levels. But these effects are so small that it is unclear they would protect you from a heart attack, and to achieve them requires eating the equivalent of three bowls of porridge a day – something most people would find hard to swallow. Then we come to the shambles over advice on fat. Numerous national guidelines say we can prevent heart attacks by avoiding saturated fat, mainly found in red meat and dairy products. Again, not one single randomised trial has shown that doing this saves lives, says Susan Jebb at the University “The problem is serious enough that we should be sceptical of all dietary advice” CLAUDIA TOTIR/GETTY ultimately to news stories, if journalists like me write about it. “What you see published in the nightly news is the end result of a system where everyone is incentivised to come up with a positive result,” says Vinay Prasad at Oregon Health and Science University. Prasad is an oncologist who has highlighted the lack of evidence behind certain cancer medicines. But he says nutrition research is in a worse state than his own field. “And they don’t seem to want to improve themselves.” It is impossible to quantify exactly how much confounders and publication bias are distorting the field. But they are enough of a problem that we should be sceptical of all dietary advice, says data scientist John Ioannidis at Stanford University in California. CAVAN IMAGES/GETTY РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS of Oxford, one of the UK’s highest-profile nutrition researchers. The problem is that trials generally don’t last very long, she says, while diet takes years to affect health. “And people don’t necessarily stick to the diet you have recommended.” Although they can’t show that saturated fat reduction saves lives, some trials have at least changed cholesterol levels in ways that should, in theory, cut heart attacks, says Jebb. Yet here the evidence is contradictory from one trial to the next. There is no help even from meta-analyses, which combine the results from multiple trials to try to get an overall picture. One meta-analysis concludes that replacing saturated fat with unsaturated is good for our cholesterol and another shows no effect. To add to the confusion, we lack a clear understanding of how cholesterol affects our arteries, making it unreliable as a biomarker for heart health. Then there is the low-carbing craze. Some trials show that people can lose weight and reverse diabetes by eating a diet that is low in carbohydrates, but high in saturated fat. And it doesn’t raise cholesterol levels, contrary to what government dietary guidelines suggest, although it isn’t known if the approach would be safe in people with a genetic condition that causes high cholesterol. It should also be noted that low-carbing hasn’t been shown in trials to extend lifespan any more than “traditional” low-fat diets. And low-carbing isn’t the only way to lose weight or manage diabetes: people can do the same on a low-fat diet. This is why one week we will hear that experts recommend low-carbing, and the next, a different set of experts will be telling us to avoid meat and eat a low-fat, plant-based diet. “You can find evidence to back up any position you want to confirm your existing beliefs,” says Anthony Warner, a UK food industry chef who skewers fad diets in his books and blogging. “The one conflict of interest that’s never mentioned is people’s ideologies – there’s a lot of ideology in diet.” The simplest explanation for this mess of contradictions is that there are no underlying truths waiting to be discovered, says Ioannidis. It is all just random noise in the data. That doesn’t mean we can now eat as much cake as we like, because when we become seriously overweight, it physically strains the circulatory system and joints. But it does suggest that within limits of common sense and moderation, one way of eating is about as good as another. “If you overeat massively, that’s going to be unhealthy. And there’s a floor beneath which you really can’t go. But if you do everything in moderation, you’ll be fine,” says Amy Tuteur, a former obstetrician and writer who is another critic of nutrition research. It would be unfair to conclude that nutrition science has taught us nothing, though. It was thanks to dietary studies that we identified the vitamin deficiencies of malnutrition, such as rickets, caused by a lack of vitamin D. More recently, it was nutritionists who showed that pregnant women could protect their babies from the spinal disorder spina bifida by taking folic acid supplements, and that people with high blood pressure can bring it down by cutting salt intake. Interestingly, these last two findings have been demonstrated in randomised trials, showing that they can be done, when there is a real effect to find. But these successes came some time ago. “Nutrition science did an amazing job in terms of addressing deficiencies,” says Warner. “But when we started having enough to eat, that science tends not to give as many clear answers.” Ioannidis says nutrition researchers need to universally adopt the good research practices seen elsewhere, such as pre-registering all studies, including stating which confounders they will use, to prevent cherry-picking after the results come in. Prasad goes further, saying there should be a moratorium on observational studies until the problems are fixed. “The public is becoming so fatigued with flip-flopping advice that they are losing faith in science more broadly.” In the meantime, common sense and moderation feel like an unsatisfyingly vague set of dietary principles. And of course, many of us have reasons other than health for eating one way or another, such as forgoing meat for ethical or environmental reasons. Dietary fibre helps prevent constipation, and no one needs a randomised trial to prove that. Can it really be safe to just follow our gut? Duane Mellor, a spokesperson for the British Dietetic Association, says that it might be a reasonable strategy if it weren’t for the fact that we are now surrounded by tempting high-calorie foods, and lots of us simply can’t help overeating. “If we had no food guidelines at all, what would regulate industry?” he says. I can’t think of a good answer. I must admit to some biases of my own. I am happy to accept the evidence that saturated fat has been unfairly maligned all these years, which conveniently means I can eat things like red meat and butter. Yet I find it hard to let go of the idea that it is good for me to eat whole grains and fruit and veg. I try to eat quite a lot of these foods, mainly because I like them or perhaps because I am middle class. I will probably continue, even though I accept that there is little evidence to support doing so. It looks like I’m not immune to ideology either. ❚ Clare Wilson is a medicine and health reporter for New Scientist. Follow her on Twitter @ClareWilsonMed 13 July 2019 | New Scientist | 35 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS Features Special NASA/SANDRA JOSEPH AND DON KIGHT THE MOON PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE 36 | New Scientist | 13 July 2019 NASA JSC/NASA РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS In the 1960s, astronauts trained in mock cockpits and rigs that simulated the effects of thrusters on a capsule’s orientation T H E PA S T I T USED to feel like the moon was somewhere we visited half a lifetime ago, then forgot about. But as we approach the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on 20 July, the world seems to be entering a second era of moon fever. In January, China became the first country to land a rover on the far side of the moon. India is set to launch its first lander before the year is out. And the US has vowed to return humans to the dusty lunar plains by 2024. The moon is cool again. The second space race comes with new, 21st-century challenges. To rise to them, the world will need to consider our satellite’s past, present and future, as we do over the next 10 pages. If we are to visit again, it is worth remembering what a prodigious effort it took the first time, not just in terms of cash, but ingenuity (page 37). Samples from the moon have taught us plenty about Earth, and planetary systems beyond our own too, and there is so much more to learn if we pick the right places to land (page 39). Most importantly, we must understand why we are going back and who we want to send (page 42). For most of the past half century, only robotic missions have made it to the moon, such as the GRAIL probes, launched in 2011 FLY ME TO THE MOON Before anyone had even been to space, engineers had to figure out how to operate there. Nancy Atkinson investigates how NASA did it H OW did the crew of Apollo 11 know how to land on the moon? Practice. In the early days of the space race, NASA engineers spent countless hours simulating space flight before the first astronaut ever left Earth. That is why most Fridays in 1960, Harold Miller and Dick Koos took the “fruit flight” from Cape Canaveral in Florida to NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia. Miller and Koos had been part of a small team working on space simulations at Langley for about a year. But eventually they needed to move their operations far from their homes, to Florida, where the mission control would be based. The passenger planes that flew them home from Florida’s Patrick Air Force Base at the end of the week were always loaded with the Sunshine State’s citrus bounty. When travellers grabbed their bags at the end of the journey, they could also get a large sack of oranges for $3. Cheap fruit was one of the few perks of working at the Mercury Control Center and launch facilities on the isolated and jungle-like Cape Canaveral all week. If a test rocket blew up (which happened about half the time in those days) and a brush fire started, you had to watch out for the alligators or wild hogs trying to escape the flames. Project Mercury, NASA’s first human spaceflight programme, had the goal of putting humans in Earth orbit and getting them safely down again – preferably before the Soviet Union did so. But in those days, no one knew for certain if a person could stay alive, let alone work, in the weightless environment of space. Even if they could, no one knew how humans should operate a spacecraft. Miller, Koos and the small simulation task group were charged with figuring out not only how to train the Mercury astronauts to fly in space, but also with training the fledgling flight control team on the ground. Like everything else under NASA’s purview at that time, it meant figuring out how to do things that had never been done before. “My first trip to Florida in 1960,” Koos recalls, “Harold gave me a tour around the cape, and I said, ‘it sure is sink or swim around here.’ And he said, ‘That’s right. And we don’t have time to teach you how to swim either.’ And that’s > 13 July 2019 | New Scientist | 37 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS THE MOON BY NUMBERS 384,400 km 3 NASA LANGLEY RESEARCH CENTER ; NASA; LEWIS RESEARCH CENTER/NASA The moon’s average distance from Earth really what it was. Everything was happening so fast; it was like drinking out of a fire hose.” Chris Kraft, NASA’s first flight director, had the idea to combine the training for flight controllers with the astronaut crew training, because astronauts would work closely with mission control during the flights. Members of the simulation group needed to organise these “integrated simulations”. In a back room at the first Mission Control Center at Cape Canaveral they used the Mercury cockpit trainer, a rudimentary spacecraft simulator that contained replica switches, gauges, dials and controls – just like the real Mercury spacecraft that would soon carry the first Americans into space. All the instrumentation was connected to a computer console that could manipulate the readouts. In turn, the readouts were wired to the basic consoles developed for the flight control team so it could monitor the spacecraft’s “dashboard” during a mission. The simulations used a room-sized computer to recreate the gauge readings of many events that would take place in a spacecraft during a real mission. Ways were 38 | New Scientist | 13 July 2019 29.5 Earth days The number of new missions to the moon set to launch in 2019 The length of the moon’s day “Everything going on at NASA in its early days involved figuring out how to do things that had never been done” simulations, mission controllers went through every system, working out what could be done if the spacecraft malfunctioned. This helped them produce guidance for what to do in the event of almost every potential glitch. Looking back now, the initial training runs were crude, says Miller. But they built a closeknit team and helped prepare the astronauts and the flight controllers for all the possible contingencies in the various phases of flight. When the Mercury missions to Earth orbit began in 1961, the simulations continued. The weekly trips to the launch base in Florida turned into longer stays, mostly because of launch time slips due to bad weather or problems with rockets. One stretch had Miller and Koos there for six weeks straight. The entire space programme kept moving at an incredible pace. Just as the Mercury flights got started, President Kennedy challenged NASA to reach the moon before the end of the 1960s. The simulation group knew that would mean an even bigger job. After Mercury came the Gemini missions, again to Earth orbit, but they were longer and involved space walks. And the Apollo missions that followed would also developed to inject problems during the simulations. Staff could fake a huge drop in cabin pressure, for instance, or loss of the manoeuvring thrusters. They could also make the various gauges in the cockpit show readings that called for a simulated abort or flight modifications. Unrealistic problems were deemed off limits, but the simulation team’s goal was to think about all the things that could go wrong so that flight controllers could develop solutions to have at their fingertips. Using РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS THE PRESENT WHAT THE MOON HAS TAUGHT US Our satellite has revealed secrets of the solar system – and much more besides, says Stuart Clark The Mercury Control Center with simulation capsule (middle) was where practising for space began. But everything had to be simulated in advance, from reduced gravity walking (far left) to the way the lunar lander’s engines would kick up dust (near left). involve finally landing on the moon. It all had to be practised in advance. The simulation operations moved to the new Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas. With better computers and more functional cockpit simulators – some even had a moving base to recreate the motion of a spacecraft – Miller and Koos’s team devised more sophisticated and complex scenarios. The mission control building had no windows, but that hardly mattered, says Miller. During the run-up to Apollo, the team usually worked seven days a week, and 10 to 12 hours a day. There was no time to glance out of the window, let alone leave the building. The simulation supervisors began to develop reputations for being diabolical, with the crazy, complicated problems they concocted. “In the Star Wars era, we would have been considered to be on the dark side,” jokes Koos. But they had an uncanny knack for coming up with problems that ultimately happened during real missions. For example, they inserted engine failures in several early Apollo simulations. Then during the uncrewed Apollo 6 flight, two engines shut down prematurely. Because of the training, the flight control team knew to burn the remaining three engines longer to compensate. The most celebrated instance might be the “1202” computer alarms that occurred during the Apollo 11 lunar landing. This obscure error code signalled that the lunar module’s navigation computer was overloaded and needed to reboot. The flight control team knew how essential the navigation computer was for the lunar landing, and might have called it off. However, just a few days before Apollo 11 launched, Koos introduced the same computer alarms in the final training run, and one of the flight controllers knew the computer could handle a reboot. Without that simulation, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s Apollo 11 moon landing may have very well been aborted, changing forever the mission’s distinguished place in space history. ❚ Nancy Atkinson is a science writer based in Minnesota. Her latest book is Eight Years to the Moon: The history of the Apollo missions T HERE have been more than 70 successful missions to the moon: fly-bys, orbiters, landers and of course 12 moonwalkers. After Earth, it is the most studied celestial object in our solar system. These missions have unlocked the moon’s geological history, determined its internal structure and measured its surface composition. The conclusions of those explorations stretch well beyond the barren lunar surface. “The moon has been Earth’s sister through these last four and a half billion years,” says Katherine Joy, a lunar geologist at the University of Manchester, UK. Like all siblings, the moon has secrets to tell. The same astronomical processes that have influenced Earth have also been felt by the moon. Yet while weathering and the restless shifting of the continents on our planet have largely erased the most ancient events from our geological record, that isn’t true of moon rocks. “The moon is a tape recorder of terrestrial processes,” says Joy. Decoding the tape began in earnest 50 years ago, when the first moon rocks were collected by Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. During a 2 hour and 36 minute moonwalk, they pocketed 22 kilograms of the lunar surface, then brought it back to Earth for analysis. Another five Apollo missions added to the tally, returning a total of 2200 samples that collectively weigh 382 kilograms. The dust and rocks kept at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, are treated as a priceless scientific and cultural resource. “Of the 2200 numbered samples, all but six have been looked at in some manner or another,” says Ryan Zeigler, NASA’s lunar sample curator. About half of each sample is kept in reserve for future study. And for good reason. Over the years, improved > 13 July 2019 | New Scientist | 39 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS 2.5 seconds The time to wait for a reply when video-chatting to someone on the moon -233°C and 123°C Temperatures measured at the coldest and hottest points on the moon 12 Number of people who have walked on the moon, all between 1969 and 1972 BOTTOM: NASA/SPL; TOP: NASA’S JOHNSON SPACE CENTER “The collision that formed the moon was so hard that the Earth seems to have entirely melted in the process” The Lunar Sample Laboratory Facility (top) at NASA’s Johnson Space Center is where moon rock samples are stored. One experiment tried culturing plant material on lunar soil, which turned it a greeny-yellow (bottom). 40 | New Scientist | 13 July 2019 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS 4.5 billion years These are the smallest particles brought back from the moon, magnified many times. With no wind to smooth them off, moon dust tends to stay sharp and spiky TOP RIGHT: JSC/NASA; LEFT: NASA The age of the moon instrumentation has allowed us to make ever more sensitive measurements. “Each one of those opens up a new avenue of study about the moon,” says Zeigler. It also allows us to re-examine old questions in light of more precise information. Of these, the biggest question is how the moon formed. “We look up in the sky and see the moon and we want to know why it’s there, and how it got there,” says Zoe Leinhardt, an astrophysicist at the University of Bristol, UK. But researchers keep revisiting this question and changing the answer bit by bit. Astronomers have toyed with many ideas about the moon’s origin. Perhaps Earth was spinning very fast and a piece broke off? Or maybe the moon was wandering through space and was captured by our gravity? In 1946, Canadian geologist Reginald Aldworth Daly proposed what we now think is the right idea: that a smaller planet hit Earth, kicking out a ring of debris from which the moon formed. In their first investigations of the Apollo moon rocks, geologists found good evidence that this was the case. The moon rocks looked sufficiently similar to Earth rocks to suggest that the pulverised impactor had been mixed with a large portion of Earth debris. Modern reanalysis shows that the moon rocks are in fact almost identical to Earth’s. In terms of the giant impact formation CELEBRATING THE MOON 10-13 OCTOBER The moon experience Be entranced by a 7-metre model of the moon. Touch moon rocks. Explore what the moon smells like. www.newscientistlive.com/moonexperience Maggie Aderin-Pocock Hear her talk about what the moon has done for us. www.newscientistlive.com/speakers/ maggie-aderin-pocock Welcome to Lunarville Architect Daniel Inocente will speak about how he designed a moon village www.newscientistlive.com/speakers/ daniel-inocente model, that means just one thing: “They had such a big impact that they were totally, intimately mixed up,” says Leinhardt. Her colleagues Simon Lock and Sarah Stewart developed a new model in which Earth was hit so hard that it melted, absorbing the impactor and surrounding itself with a doughnut shaped cloud of vaporised rock. They think the moon formed out of this, explaining the similarity of the rocks. “The moon rocks have given us a huge amount of information. What we need is to be able to make an entire story,” says Leinhardt. This involves using computers to simulate this cataclysmic event from the moment of impact to the birth of the moon. At present, the simulations can’t follow the process from beginning to end. They can simulate the formation of the debris doughnut, called a synestia, but can’t follow its condensation into the moon. And while they can keep track of the temperature and pressure of the synestia, they don’t include any chemistry. To make progress, Leinhardt says better computing rather than more exploration is necessary. Although Leinhardt doesn’t think new samples from the moon will be helpful for her investigations, what happened to the moon after it formed has got other researchers itching for a return mission. Even a casual glance at the moon reveals dark markings across its surface. They are thought to have begun forming during a relatively short period called the late heavy bombardment. Evidence came from the Apollo samples, many of which are about 3.9 billion years old. These suggest a period lasting somewhere between about 20 million and 100 million years in which the moon and the rest of the solar system were heavily pummelled by asteroids, creating large impact basins we see on the moon’s surface. That may not be entirely accurate. “Our ideas are changing as we are reanalysing those samples,” says Joy. Part of that reanalysis is intended to help understand where the moon rocks came from. None of the Apollo samples were bedrock – rocks sampled in the place where they formed – and this has robbed geologists of the geographical context needed to fully interpret their results. It is now thought that most of the Apollo samples could be the debris ejected during the formation of the Imbrium basin, a vast crater formed 3.9 billion years ago. If so, the late heavy bombardment never happened – we were fooled into believing it did by a single huge event that scattered rocks across the lunar nearside. “This could be a massive bias in how we’ve been interpreting these samples,” says Joy. “For the next generation of spacecraft, actually picking places where we can go to sample bedrock is going to be really, really important.” Migrating giants In this way, the true ages of other basins can be determined. And it will show whether there was a short, sharp late heavy bombardment or a continual rain over a longer period. It isn’t just about the Earth and the moon, either. If moon rocks have taught us anything, it is that the entire solar system is connected. Indeed, knowledge about the surfaces of Mercury, Venus and Mars has come from counting craters on the moon and relating that to the ages of the moon rocks. The late heavy bombardment, however it unfolded, was probably caused by gas giant planets including Jupiter migrating through the solar system, knocking asteroids out of their way, some of which sailed towards Earth. Because our solar system is thought to form in essentially the same way as other planetary systems, we are now realising that the moon can teach us about things beyond the reaches of our star’s influence. “There are lots of giant impacts that happen at the end of a solar system’s formation. That would happen in extrasolar systems as well,” says Leinhardt. She says that understanding giant impacts is the key to grasping the diversity of those planetary systems, and comparing them with our own. It may even help tell us which exoplanets are likely to be habitable, because in our solar system the moon’s gravitational pull stops Earth toppling over, keeping its climate stable. “Moon rocks have told us about so many other places than just the moon,” says Zeigler. And with a return on the cards in the near future, who knows what family secrets our sibling still has to share. ❚ Stuart Clark is an astronomy writer based in Hertfordshire, UK. His latest book is The Unknown Universe (Head of Zeus) 13 July 2019 | New Scientist | 41 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS For more moon-related fun, turn to page 52 and a special selection of puzzles celebrating 50 years since the Apollo 11 landing THE FUTURE THE NEXT MOON WALKERS JAXA There are many reasons to return to the lunar surface. The ones we pick will shape it forever, says Rebecca Boyle Lunar litter We have left an extraordinary array of objects on the moon. Chelsea Whyte picks through the rubbish 42 | New Scientist | 13 July 2019 THE moon looks pristine from our vantage point. But there have been six crewed moon landings and about 20 successful rover and lander missions on its surface, and these have left rather a lot of mess behind them. Both intentionally and by accident, we have scattered detritus across the lunar surface during our attempts to land there and as the Apollo astronauts explored the desolate landscape. Now a new space race is heating up, and astronauts may soon return to what Buzz Aldrin called its “magnificent desolation”. If they do, they may well come across some of “not because it was easy, but because it was hard”. And to beat the communists. In 2069, humans go for many reasons. Some are drawn to the bleak beauty of this place. Others are more interested in making life-saving drugs or fibre-optic cables with better quality than is possible on Earth. And there is a good deal of money to be made too. People pay a lot for tomatoes, textiles and art from the moon. But none of this would be possible if, 50 years earlier, people hadn’t decided to go back, for reasons including the simple fact that they could. the estimated 187,000 kilograms of rubbish strewn across it. Here is some of what they might find. DEAD COTTON PLANTS China’s Chang’e 4 rover landed on the moon in January, bringing with it the first moon garden. In a sealed biosphere, cotton, oilseed rape and potato became the first plants that we know of to germinate on another world. After the probe lost power, the plants probably died as the freezing lunar night fell over them. But this experiment is a landmark step towards building a flourishing lunar base where humans can farm their own crops. NASA S HACKLETON BASE, JULY 2069 – The habitat’s carbon-fibre dome glistens as the lunar day dawns. Inside, men and women are tending to rows of tomato plants, the leaves curled towards the sun, the trusses bearing huge fruit. Growing in gravity that is just 17 per cent of Earth’s, the plants’ fuzzy stalks don’t need help carrying their load, so they spread widely. Some of the tomatoes are almost ripe, and will make a fine welcome treat for the new arrivals in a couple of Earth-days, coming for the 100th anniversary ceremony. A century ago, humans went to the moon LOTS OF HUMAN FAECES It is nothing to be embarrassed about: everyone needs to defecate, even space explorers. And when the Apollo astronauts were planning their trip РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS 5.5 km 6 The number of rovers that have trundled across the lunar surface PATRICK T. FALLON/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY Base to peak height of the moon’s tallest mountain, Mons Huygens 382 kg Billionaire Yusaku Maezawa (above) has bought all the seats on a trip around the moon planned for 2023. There are many visions for moon bases (left) Shackleton Base is imaginary, for now. What is real is this: a generation after the Apollo missions, the people preparing to visit the moon look different to their forebears. They aren’t all white American men, for a start (for all that the Soviet Union made the running early on in the space race, when it came to putting someone on the moon, it never really got close). Neither are they all specially trained astronauts; they include artists and billionaires. There are people from China, Japan and Europe, and many will launch far from Cape Canaveral. Once they reach their FALLEN ASTRONAUT MEMORIAL In a long, narrow depression to the west of the Montes Apenninus, a mountain range in the moon’s northern hemisphere, is a memorial to eight American astronauts and six Soviets who died in the pursuit of space travel. The 8.5-centimetre Earth and other planets or to be burned to generate power. Water prospecting is likely to draw people to the moon’s shadowed craters, especially at the south pole, where spacecraft have sniffed its presence for the past decade. Under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services programme, private firms are competing for grants to design spacecraft that can deliver various landers and instruments, including some that can search for resources like water. In March, when US vice-president Mike Pence directed NASA to return humans to the moon by 2024 for a landing at the south pole, he highlighted its abundant water. But water harvesting is only one element of the moon’s possible future. It can be more than a place where people are allowed to extract resources for profit. Perhaps it will end up as an environmental reserve, where mining is banned but tourists can enjoy hiking trips, albeit pretty extreme trips. Or it could be a bastion of research for its own sake, much like Antarctica’s various scientific outposts. Now is the time to decide, according to anthropologists who study space exploration. To figure out what the next crop of moonwalkers will look like, we must first decide why we want to send them, says Lisa Messeri, an anthropologist at Yale University. “What I want for our spacefaring future is honesty about our reasons for going,” she says. “Apollo was as much political as it was anything else, but it was always couched in the language of science and human ingenuity, and I think that led to the kinds of people who were selected and who went.” The Apollo astronauts were mostly pilots with a penchant for danger, hastily trained in > THE SECRETS TO DAVID COPPERFIELD’S MAGIC TRICKS metal sculpture is in the crude shape of an astronaut. It was commissioned and placed on the moon by the crew of Apollo 15, alongside a plaque commemorating their lost comrades. MORTAR LAUNCHERS To learn about the interior of the moon, Apollo astronauts used explosives to give it a good thump and then measured the ensuing sound waves wobbling through its rocky subsurface. The explosives were either remotely launched after they left the moon, or were set to go off days after a grenade-like pin was pulled by astronauts, who then made NASA home, they jettisoned as much weight from the spacecraft as they could to make room for the cargo of heavy moon rocks they were bringing back to Earth. The materials they ejected included 96 bags of faeces and urine (pictured left). destination, they might live in inflatable shelters, single-occupancy domes connected like Lego bricks and larger 3D-printed habitats. And once they arrive, they will change the moon and our relationship with it for good. Most of the countries and companies vying to go back to the moon will want to claw back some of their huge investments, so mining is likely to be one of the first activities on the agenda. Water will probably be the most valuable resource on Earth’s satellite, at least to begin with. It could be split into hydrogen and oxygen to make rocket fuel for return trips to The mass of moon rocks returned to Earth their escape using lunar buggies. The mortar launchers remain on the moon (pictured above), but who knows if they would still work after decades of exposure to the harsh conditions. The most recent attempt to land on the moon took place in April 2019 and ended with the crash of the privately funded Beresheet spacecraft. However, its payload was well protected and might just have survived the impact. The lander was carrying a disc with a 30-million page data library that includes the English version of Wikipedia, tens of thousands of books and the technical instructions for David Copperfield’s illusions. An orbiting NASA craft has spotted the crash site, so future explorers would know where to look for the answers. > 13 July 2019 | New Scientist | 43 geology during field expeditions to Arizona and Iceland. Just one geologist, Harrison “Jack” Schmitt, went to the moon, on Apollo 17, though he also advised other missions. Messeri says more inclusive lunar futures are only possible if mission planners are clear about what they want. “If we are going for mining, then say that; say this is what we want to invest in. If it’s to expand human frontiers or inspire the next generation, then great, send artists,” Messeri says. “We can make the decision as a community to spend a huge amount of money to send artists to space, and that seems to me as legitimate and worthy as sending a bunch of miners.” Last year, Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa made headlines when he bought all the seats on a SpaceX capsule that the company’s CEO Elon Musk wants to send around the moon in 2023. Maezawa said he planned to bring artists and performers, who would be commissioned to create new works inspired by what they see. “If John Lennon could have seen the curvature of the Earth, what kind of songs would he have written?” he said at the time. Maezawa’s plan contrasts with the way Musk often talks about future space settlements on the moon and Mars, says Lucianne Walkowicz, an astronomer at the Adler Planetarium in TWO GOLF BALLS Apollo 14 astronaut Alan Shepard went to a lot of trouble to have a bit of fun on the moon. When he boarded the spacecraft, he brought with him two golf balls and a specially designed golf club head, which he attached to the handle of a soil and rock sampling device to forge a makeshift club. He hit two shots: the first sliced to the side and rolled into a crater, but the second flew about 180 metres. Fore! A FALCON FEATHER Galileo is said to have dropped two balls of different weights off the Leaning Tower of Pisa, proving 44 | New Scientist | 13 July 2019 Chicago. She says she finds a lot of his rhetoric objectionable, partly because it doesn’t imagine an inclusive future and partly because he uses inappropriate language. Using terms like “colonising” space, for example, recalls a violent history of colonial subjugation, which continues to exclude people of colour and women from the imagined future of space, she says. “I felt it was not only harmful to the way we imagine space exploration, but that it whitewashes a lot of history on Earth.” In a gesture towards inclusivity, NASA’s administrator announced that the Artemis programme to return humans to the moon by 2024, will include the first woman among its hammer and a falcon feather (pictured left) taken from a US Air Force mascot. The vacuum of space eliminates air resistance and the feather hit the lunar soil at the same time as the hammer. NASA LEFT: NASA; MIDDLE: NASA/KIM SHIFLETT; RIGHT: PAT RAWLINGS/NASA РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS gravity’s pull on them was unrelated to their mass when they hit the ground at the same time. Apollo 15 astronaut David Scott performed a version of this experiment using a With NASA and others eyeing a return to the moon, it looks likely that humans will return in the not-toodistant future (see “The next moon walkers”, page 42). This time we ought to go forth with a cleaner mentality, says Vera Assis Fernandes, a lunar geologist at the University of Manchester, UK. We may as well leave the debris from our past excursions where it is, she says. “If we clean up the mess, we will also be disturbing the lunar environment.” So what is there can stay as a kind of monument to explorations past. But we should take better care over what we abandon there in the future. The moon is a finite resource, and we can’t just trash it and hope that we won’t run into the same problems we have seen on Earth. “There’s a revival of interest in the moon without a great pondering,” says Assis Fernandes. “Do we want to do the same damage there that we’ve done to this planet?” ❚ РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS 187,000 kg Estimated mass of rubbish left on the moon NASA is among those planning a base on the moon, envisaging habitations (far left) as part of a larger complex (left). Meanwhile, the use of robots for lunar mining is tested on Earth (centre left) crew. Named after Apollo’s sister, a Greek goddess of the moon, the mission will include an orbiting lunar space station enabling sorties to the moon’s surface. China is also developing the hardware it will need to land its taikonauts on the moon. In 2018, the country accelerated development of its Long March 9 rocket, similar in size to the Saturn V that launched the Apollo missions. Chinese officials have said the rocket will power its first lunar surface missions in the 2030s. China’s plans may be one reason for the sudden US interest in returning to the moon within the next five years, instead of NASA’s original plan for a 2028 time frame. If the next moonwalkers aren’t Chinese taikonauts or female NASA crew members searching for water, maybe they will be space miners sent by Jeff Bezos. In May, the Amazon boss, also founder of rocket company Blue Origin, unveiled a new lunar lander design called Blue Moon. He said the lander would help NASA meet Trump’s goal to send astronauts to the moon by 2024. “It’s time to go back to the moon, this time to stay,” Bezos said during the announcement. Citizens of the moon If China, the US and private companies make it to the moon, they might encounter an international moon village, a plan espoused by the European Space Agency’s director general, Jan Woerner. Future moon citizens could include all of the above, mixing jobs and objectives. Taikonauts exploring at the south “Maybe the moon will be a reserve where mining is prohibited but tourists enjoy extreme hiking” pole may, for instance, cross paths with radio astronomers erecting an observatory on the moon’s far side. From that vantage point, the moon blocks radio transmissions and noise leaking from Earth. This real estate is potentially so valuable that Claudio Maccone at the National Institute for Astrophysics in Italy recently called for a radio-free zone on the far side. If that is to be realised, governments and private entities may need to establish firmer rules for how the moon should be used. Some argue that the moon should be treated like a national park, with rules designed to keep it pristine. But the legal framework for doing this is unclear, says Sara Langston, a space ethicist at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida. “If we want to establish some normative framework that creates a duty of humans to the moon as another environmental area, what does that mean?” she says. It could be that not just governments, but scientists and citizens ought to have a part in setting the rules. But recognising the intrinsic value of the environment on the moon is probably going 51 hours 49 minutes The time it took Apollo 11 to get from Earth to lunar orbit to be harder than it is on Earth, says Moriba Jah, who studies space debris at the University of Texas at Austin. “If people don’t see it hit their pocket, they don’t get very concerned with it,” says Jah. “But near-Earth space, and other planetary resources, are a commons. It belongs to all peoples. Going by the premise of firstcome, first-served, without any regard to the long-term sustainability of the environment, is just not right.” Today, the laws of space are governed by the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which rules that celestial bodies, including the moon, can’t be claimed by any country or enterprise. But the treaty doesn’t prohibit mining or other activities. The 108 nations that are parties to the treaty, as well as private companies, all operate as though the moon is similar to international waters. Two hundred nautical miles from a coastline, the oceans belong to everyone and no one. The countries that can access that territory will be the first to access its contents, and possibly get rich from it. There is one other perspective to consider: that of the moon itself. An average person’s lifespan is a blip compared with the time that has elapsed since the moon formed. “This gives humans a very unrealistic sense of time, with a sense of urgency to accomplish as much as possible within those 70 years,” wrote Vera Assis Fernandes, at the University of Manchester, UK, in a recent essay. She argues that a truly sustainable lunar environment would mean leaving it alone. “The celestial body closest to the Earth is an important, powerful and fragile environment that needs to be understood and taken into consideration before we set sail to it again,” she wrote. “Have we ever asked why humans want to return to the moon and then colonise it? There is a need to acknowledge the moon as an entity beyond ourselves that needs to be respected.” Walkowicz says the next wave of lunar missions can do better if we think ahead and have inclusivity in mind. “Going to space is hard. If it’s going to be hard in the engineering sense, then why pretend that the human community and inclusion is too hard?” Walkowicz says. “If we’re going to be patting ourselves on the back for doing the hard things, we might as well do all of them.” ❚ Rebecca Boyle is a freelance writer in St Louis, Missouri. She is writing a book about humanity’s relationship with the moon 13 July 2019 | New Scientist | 45 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS Features Interview Caught before the act TEAMJACKSON/GETTY Shane Johnson is a pioneer of predictive policing. The approach is already changing how we tackle crime, he tells Joshua Howgego A PREMONITION tells me I will enjoy meeting a professor of future crimes at University College London. And I do: his work is fascinating. As well as forecasting how new technologies can be exploited by criminals, Shane Johnson studies which policing strategies really work. He is helping to run one of the most sophisticated predictive policing experiments yet, being trialled on the streets in West Yorkshire, UK. What does a professor of future crimes do? When new technologies are introduced, criminals quickly see ways to exploit them. 46 | New Scientist | 13 July 2019 The reason is that companies don’t often think about the crime implications when they launch new products. For instance, back in the 1980s, vehicle crime was soaring because there were some models of car where one key would open one in five vehicles. Today, it is the internet of things. Around 2016, we started to see malware scouring the internet for devices where the usernames and passwords were easily guessable, and then using those devices to overload websites and make them unavailable. Our aim is to look at some of the things that are happening over the next five to 10 years – from drones to counterfeiting technology – and imagine what the implications are, with a view to try to mitigate them. What are your major concerns in the near future? The number of internet-connected devices in our homes is growing. Many of these devices have access to our data, can stream images to or from our homes and may even control physical security measures, such as door and window locks. We know that many of these devices are insecure, and this needs addressing. Advances in machine learning – currently used in satellite navigation systems, РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS voice-activated devices and so on – continue to revolutionise our lives, but offer opportunities for misuse. At the same time, it is important not to be too alarmist – these technologies can be used to help reduce or detect crime, too. You also study evidence-based policing. How does that work in practice? It means asking whether things the police do will have the desired effect. For example, the City of London Police has recently been running trials to gather evidence on whether having officers wearing tasers increases the number of violent incidents they are involved in. During the trial period, it turned out that officers carrying a taser on their chest were assaulted 48 per cent more than unarmed officers outside the trial period. You can test things like this with trials. More and more groups around the world, including universities and some police forces, are championing evidence-based policing and working collaboratively to generate evidence. But having evidence that a certain policing method is better isn’t yet a requirement for police, and I think there could be more of a push in that direction. I hope future generations of officers are exposed to it right from the start of their careers. This makes sense: if thieves get away with a burglary and know the area, they might be tempted to come back. So you can use weekly reports of burglaries to predict future ones. We developed algorithms based on this, and showed in a 2006 trial that they would out-predict hotspot policing if deployed weekly. Similar algorithms to ours have been used to create commercial predictive policing products. One, called PredPol, is now widely used by police in the US. Could predictions improve further? I think so – and in two ways. First off, most algorithms make predictions in the form of squares on a map. But these bear no relationship to the urban landscape – they might be bisected by a train line. Working with West Yorkshire Police on their PatrolWise project, we wanted to try making predictions at the level of street segments, meaning any section of road between intersections. This is meaningful urban geography, both for police officers and the way that an offender might “Officers carrying a taser were assaulted more You have done a lot of work in predictive policing. It sounds a bit like sci-fi — does it work? than unarmed Forty years of research shows that, roughly speaking, 80 per cent of urban crime occurs officers” in 20 per cent of places. That’s according to both reported crime statistics and surveys of victims, which capture crimes that aren’t reported to the police. Given that we know this, the question is how you direct limited police resources to do the most good. One solution is hotspot policing, where you send police to the places with the most concentrated reports of crime. Randomised controlled trials show that it is effective: if officers patrol the hotspots, it suppresses crime and it doesn’t shift it elsewhere. But you took it further? Places of high crime are unlikely to be the same tomorrow as they are today. One area might generally have the most crime in it over the course of a year, but on a daily basis, it is going to move and temporarily flare up in other places. When we started asking if we could predict that, we discovered a phenomenon we called “near repeats”: when a home is burgled, that house and its neighbours are at greater risk of repeat victimisation for a short period, before the risk quickly fades away. navigate. The idea is that offenders become aware of a house and then forage around the streets nearby for new targets. Second, the high-risk areas we predict can be all over the place, such as on different sides of the city. So we developed our algorithm to spit out four 2.5-kilometre-long patrol routes that cover the highest-risk areas possible in a continuous line. The trial isn’t finished yet, but so far, police figures suggest that crime has reduced more quickly in the areas that are using PatrolWise than those that aren’t. A lot of people are worried about bias in algorithms. Are you? The big worry is that algorithms might perpetuate bias in existing data sets. We should definitely be worried about this – and more worried the less transparent the approaches used are. But this doesn’t apply equally to all algorithms. With the place-based crime prediction that we do, the data that goes in Shane Johnson is a criminologist and director of the Dawes Centre for Future Crime at University College London is crimes reported to the police. For things like burglary and vehicle theft, we know from victim surveys that most are reported, not least because you need a crime number for insurance purposes. So we have a good picture of crime that is committed. That’s different to when an algorithm might be working from a data set that doesn’t include crimes against certain demographics of the population. What our algorithms don’t work on is data on arrests. If they did, that would be a problem, because arrests are a function of police activity, which can, in theory, be biased, for example because not all crime is detected. Besides sending out police on patrols, what can you do to prevent the crime you predict? In something we called Operation Swordfish, we tried to see if we could intervene to prevent burglaries in an easier and less expensive way than sending patrols. In a randomised controlled trial in the East Midlands, we gave at-risk homes a “target hardening kit”, which included things like a tiny LED that made it look like your TV was on at night, and a door alarm. The total cost was about £12. We told people, “you’re at an elevated risk, it’s going to go away – nothing scary – but here are some things you can use to protect yourself.” For every 1000 burglaries that were reported to the police and prompted the delivery of the targethardening kit to nearby homes, around six or seven burglaries were prevented per week. Many people worried the approach would have negative effects, increasing fear of crime, for instance. But we tested it and found that’s not what happens at all: it didn’t increase fear of crime and people in these treatment areas were more satisfied with the police. ❚ Joshua Howgego is a features editor at New Scientist specialising in physical sciences 13 July 2019 | New Scientist | 47 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS Recruitment Lecturer The University of Chicago: Physical Sciences Division: Department of Chemistry Location Chicago, IL Description newscientistjobs.com Recruitment advertising Tel +1 617-283-3213 Email [email protected] ;OL +LWHY[TLU[ VM *OLTPZ[Y` H[ [OL <UP]LYZP[` VM *OPJHNV ZLLRZ H X\HSPÄLK 3LJ[\YLY [V [LHJO JV\YZLZ IV[O PU V\Y 0U[YVK\J[VY` .LULYHS *OLTPZ[Y` ZLX\LUJL HZ ^LSS HZ 7O`ZPJHS :JPLUJLZ *VYL WYVNYHT ;OPZ WVZP[PVU ^PSS IL H TVU[O HWWVPU[TLU[ ^P[O [LHJOPUNYLZWVUZPIPSP[PLZMVY[OLMHSS^PU[LYHUKZWYPUNX\HY[LYZ;LHJOPUNYLZWVUZPIPSP[PLZ ^PSS PUJS\KL \W [V JSHZZLZ ^P[O H JVTIPUH[PVU VM 7O`ZPJHS :JPLUJL *VYL JV\YZLZ HUK .LULYHS*OLTPZ[Y`;OLWVZP[PVUHSZVPUJS\KLZSHIKL]LSVWTLU[HUKTHUHNLTLU[MVYHSS Chemistry Physical Science laboratory experiments. (WWSPJHU[Z ^PSS IL L]HS\H[LK VU [OLPY [LHJOPUN ZRPSSZ HUK JVTTHUK VM ZWLJPÄJ JV\YZL JVU[LU[ HUK T\Z[ OH]L [LHJOPUN L_WLYPLUJL H[ HU HJJYLKP[LK \UP]LYZP[` VY JVSSLNL ,_WLYPLUJL [LHJOPUN .LULYHS *OLTPZ[Y` PZ YLX\PYLK HUK L_WLYPLUJL PU JVSSHIVYH[P]L teaching techniques is important. ;OLWVZP[PVU^PSSILWHY[VM[OL:LY]PJL,TWSV`LLZ0U[LYUH[PVUHS<UPVUHZH3LJ[\YLY ;OLYLSH[PVUZOPWIL[^LLU[OLSLJ[\YLYZHUK[OL\UP]LYZP[`PZNV]LYULKPUWHY[[OYV\NOH Collective Bargaining Agreement. 8\HSPÄJH[PVUZ (WWSPJHU[ZT\Z[OH]LH7O+PU*OLTPZ[Y`VYHJSVZLS`YLSH[LKÄLSK Application Instructions (WWSPJHU[Z T\Z[ HWWS` VU SPUL H[ HWWS`PU[LYMVSPVJVT (WWSPJHU[Z T\Z[ \WSVHK H J\YYPJ\S\T ]P[HL HUK H JV]LY SL[[LY KLZJYPIPUN [LHJOPUN L_WLYPLUJL 0U HKKP[PVU [OYLL YLMLYLUJL SL[[LYZ ^PSS IL YLX\PYLK (WWSPJHU[ ZJYLLUPUN ^PSS ILNPU VU 1\S` HUK JVU[PU\L\U[PS[OLWVZP[PVUPZÄSSLK Equal Employment Opportunity Statement ;OL<UP]LYZP[`VM*OPJHNVPZHU(ɉYTH[P]L(J[PVU,X\HS6WWVY[\UP[`+PZHISLK=L[LYHUZ ,TWSV`LY HUK KVLZ UV[ KPZJYPTPUH[L VU [OL IHZPZ VM YHJL JVSVY YLSPNPVU ZL_ ZL_\HS VYPLU[H[PVUNLUKLYPKLU[P[`UH[PVUHSVYL[OUPJVYPNPUHNLZ[H[\ZHZHUPUKP]PK\HS^P[OH KPZHIPSP[`WYV[LJ[LK]L[LYHUZ[H[\ZNLUL[PJPUMVYTH[PVUVYV[OLYWYV[LJ[LKJSHZZLZ\UKLY [OLSH^-VYHKKP[PVUHSPUMVYTH[PVUWSLHZLZLL[OL<UP]LYZP[`»Z5V[PJLVM5VUKPZJYPTPUH[PVU 1VIZLLRLYZPUULLKVMHYLHZVUHISLHJJVTTVKH[PVU[VJVTWSL[L[OLHWWSPJH[PVUWYVJLZZ ZOV\SKJHSSVYLTHPSLX\HSVWWVY[\UP[`'\JOPJHNVLK\^P[O[OLPYYLX\LZ[ Bring your career to life Sign up, create your own job alerts and discover the latest opportunities in life sciences at newscientistjobs.com The Department of Psychology anticipates making a tenure-track appointment at the assistant professor level to begin July 1, 2020. We seek candidates with expertise in social psychology, broadly defined. The appointment is expected to begin on July 1, 2020. Candidates at all levels are encouraged to apply. Candidates must have a strong doctoral record and have completed their Ph.D. Candidates should have demonstrated a promise of excellence in both research and teaching. Teaching duties will include offerings at both undergraduate and graduate levels. Please submit a cover letter, curriculum vitae, research and teaching statements, up to three representative reprints, and names and contact information of three to five references. Also required is a statement describing efforts to encourage diversity, inclusion, and belonging, including past, current, and anticipated future contributions in these areas. In addition, please arrange for three letters of recommendation to be submitted to http://academicpositions.harvard. edu/postings/9123. The application will be complete only when all three letters have been submitted. Questions regarding this position can be addressed to Joshua Greene at [email protected] with the words “Social Search” in the subject line. Applications must be received by September 1, 2019 to be guaranteed review. Applications will be reviewed until the position is filled. We expect to conduct interviews in October and November. @science_jobs 48 | New Scientist | 13 July 2019 #sciencejobs We are an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, gender identity, sexual orientation, pregnancy and pregnancy-related conditions or any other characteristic protected by law. newscientistjobs.com РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS Assistant/Associate Professor (tenure-leading) in Bioinformatics and Human Microbiome University of Nebraska Medical Center. The Department of Genetics, Cell Biology and Anatomy (GCBA) invites applications for for a tenure-leading, Assistant/ Associate Professor position at the interdisciplinary area of ‘Bioinformatics and Human Microbiome’ to start Fall 2019. The incumbent will complement the existing strengths in genomics, metagenomics, infectious diseases, and bioinformatics at UNMC. We are seeking a dynamic faculty member who interfaces with crosscutting disciplines such as cancer, neuroscience, infectious diseases, precision medicine, etc. to integrate the human microbiome research applications. We seek candidates with a strong record of achievements at the interface of human microbial studies and Bioinformatics including a strong and relevant publication record, proven capacity or clear potential to attract externally sponsored research funding, and demonstrated experience in teaching and mentoring graduate students and postdocs. The candidate should have a Ph.D., or M.D. (or equivalent degree) in Bioinformatics or a related discipline with postdoctoral training in a genomics-based research area associated with microbiomes or infectious diseases. Wet lab experience is a strong plus but not a requirement. State of the art research laboratories, biomedical informatics infrastructure, core facilities and collaborative investigators are available at UNMC/UNL to conduct world-class research in Bioinformatics and Human Microbiome. The research ecosystem contains a number of ongoing projects related to genomics, metagenomics and dietary modulation of gut microbiome to develop independent and collaborative }À>Ì«À«Ã>ð-«iVwV««ÀÌÕÌiÃVÕ`iÌ i development of new computational tools and data analysis pipelines in the areas of metagenomics, nutrigenomics, obesity predisposition and prevention, and dietary modulation of gut microbiome. UNMC is an equal opportunity employer Applications must include curriculum vitae, statements of research and teaching interests, and contact information for three professional referees. Application review will begin immediately and continue until the «ÃÌÃwi`° To apply to this position please go to: http://unmc.peopleadmin.com/postings/42979 newscientistjobs.com Postdoctoral AssociatesHuman Immunology Dr. Karolina Palucka, Principal Investigator Dr. Adam Williams, Principal Investigator The Palucka Lab and Williams Lab at JAX-GM are currently seeking motivated scientists interested in leveraging modern genomic advancements to study immune responses to viruses and tumors. Particular focus is on antigen presenting cells in lung cancer and breast cancer, and their interaction with epithelial cells. To learn more more, visit the Palucka Lab and Williams Lab online. >``Ì]Ƃ8*ÃÌ`VÌÀ>ƂÃÃV>ÌiÃLiiwÌvÀ\ • Research training and mentorship from awardwinning faculty • Individualized career advising and a dedicated *ÃÌ`V*À}À>"vwVi U-Õ«iÀÀÃViÌwVÃiÀÛViÃ>`Õ«>À>ii`ÕÃi resources • A uniquely collaborative academic research environment • Guidance from JAX’s Postdoctoral Training Committee to help you succeed • Professional skills workshops including JAX’s holistic The Whole Scientist course • Free access to JAX’s world-renowned Courses & Conferences programs U"ÕÌÃÌ>`}LiiwÌÃ>`Ã>>ÀÞV«iÃ>Ì above the NIH scale • Generous relocation assistance and free oncampus parking The successful candidates will be able to plan, develop, execute, and analyze research projects. • PhD and/or MD • Background in immunology and/or cell biology • A track record of research publications • Research experience with mice is desirable, but not required • The ambition to thrive within a highly collaborative, interdisciplinary research environment https://careers-jax.icims.com /jobs/26625/postdoctoral-associate/job 13 July 2019 | New Scientist | 49 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS Our popular event is coming to Boston … INSTANT EXPERT: MYSTERIES OF THE MIND September 7, 2019 District Hall, Boston You’re in possession of one of the most complex and incredible objects in the known universe: the human brain. How does a 1.4 kilogram tangle of nerve cells allow you to sense, understand and change the world? Discover why this is the most exciting time in the history of brain science with six experts working at the forefront of neuroscience, genetics and psychiatry. TOPICS COVERED WILL INCLUDE: Intelligence Consciousness Memory Plus much more Reserve your place today and view our speaker line-up newscientist.com/mindevent-boston РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS The back pages Puzzles A moon-themed cryptic crossword, puzzles and quiz p52 Feedback Corr conspiracies and bus building: the week in weird p53 What does… Liana Finck? A cartoonist’s take on the world p53 Almost the last word Readers discuss dinosaur noises and chickpea foam p54 Me and my telescope Sue Black on tech, women and knitting before it was cool p56 How to be a maker 2 Week 1 Communicating with plants The outdoors is the theme for Hannah Joshua’s new series of projects that you can make at home New stuff you need BBC micro:bit starter kit (the same one we used in the first “How to be a maker” series) Soil moisture sensor Crocodile clips Jumper wires Next in the series 1 Moisture-sensing plant 2 Moisture and temperature-sensing plant 3 Plant auto-waterer 4 Tweeting wildlife cam 5 Pest scarer 6 BBQ thermometer 7 Rain alarm 8 Mini weather station 9 Remote controlled pest-proof bird feeder part 1 10 Remote controlled pest-proof bird feeder part 2 MARVIN DAVID STOCK FOR NEW SCIENTIST Hannah Joshua is a science writer and maker based in London. You can follow her on Twitter @hannahmakes IN OUR previous 10-week “How to be a maker” series, we went on a tour of the basics, culminating in building an autonomous biscuit-fetching robot. If you missed it, you can catch up online at the address below. This second series will explore some practical applications of the skills you learned and help you get in touch with plants, wildlife and the great outdoors. Projects will range from a tweeting wildlife camera to a pest-resistant bird feeder. Whether your outdoors is a window box or a wildlife reserve, there will be something for you. To start off, we are going to enable plants to communicate. My spider plant Marvin is delighted, although he might not look it from the picture. For this project, you need a soil moisture sensor. It will have two legs with metal strips down the middle. The sensor works by passing a current through the soil between the legs and seeing how much resistance there is to its flow. The more water there is, the lower the resistance. That lets us estimate how wet the soil is. Using the crocodile clips and jumper wires, attach the sensor’s “gnd” wire to the micro:bit’s ground, its “vcc” to the 3V pin and its “ao” (analogue out) to pin 0. Then, go to the online micro:bit MakeCode editor to create a program. From the “Basic” menu on the left, grab a “show number” block, then put it in “forever”. Next, from the “Pins” menu (under “Advanced”), take an “analogue read pin p0” and clip it MICRO:BIT MOISTURE SENSOR Make online Projects will be posted each week at newscientist.com/maker Email: [email protected] in “show number”. Now you have a simple program to display the sensor output. Download it to the micro:bit and attach its battery. Time for an experiment. Poke your sensor into some dry soil and note the reading, then do the same for freshly watered soil. I got around 1000 for the dry soil and 400 for the wet. Between these extremes, pick a number that you think represents when your plant might be thirsty. I chose 800. Back in the editor, grab an “if <> then else” from the “Logic” menu and clip it into “forever”. Next, take a “0 < 0” comparison from the same menu, change the “<” to “>” and clip the comparison over the default “true”. Clip another “analogue read pin p0” over the first 0, then change the second 0 to your threshold. Find “show icon” in “Basic” and nestle it in the if block, picking the sad face icon from the drop-down list. In the else part, add another “show icon” with a happy face. And just like that, your plant can pull faces! It will look miserable when thirsty and smile when satisfied. Remember, though, plants’ thresholds can change. A cactus needs to stay dry in winter, for example. Next week, we will get to know our plants better by improving their communication skills. ❚ 13 July 2019 | New Scientist | 51 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS The back pages Puzzles... in a lunar phase Cryptic crossword #10 Set by Wingding Across Madness to put global body in ornate surroundings (6) 8 Regret turning zero pressure to 9 (6) 9 Satellite low on gas (4) 10 Haze goes solar, chaotically, defying gravity (8) 11 One follows woman, sign of 9 observer (7) 13 Nothing spinning behind unknown gas (5) 15 Severe wound in hospital department (5) 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 Down Dazzling light is a precursor to migraines outside operating theatre (6) No way back without oxygen - boring! (4) Desperately try sage whirls (7) Highland water rambler distilled (5) Superbug odour a sign of 9 (8) A vote on nothing that sent people to 9 (6) 3 Where does our moon rank in the table of solar system satellites by size, relative to their planets? 4 The Chinese probe Chang’e 4 achieved what first on 3 January 2019? 5 What name is given to the Mars-sized object that, according to the giant impact hypothesis, smashed into early Earth, carving out the moon? Answers below 17 Carbon evaluators are the pits (7) 20 Worms initially fed on grains - a clue for astrobiologists? (5,3) 21 Train becomes a lab staple after test (4) 22 Reptile poisoned again with uranium (6) 23 9 explorer, somewhat pathological drinker (6) 12 Obstructing any white moves? (2,3,3) 14 Four elements in armoury (7) 16 Tinker with 9 lander? (6) 18 Fast runner raised bar a little (6) 19 Newton chased bird with a 9 (5) 21 Bound to hear effect of 9 (4) Answers and the next quick crossword next week. 52 | New Scientist | 13 July 2019 #11 Lunar years 2 On 15 April 1970, Fred Haise, James Lovell and John Swigert set a still-unbroken record of 400,171 kilometres for what? 1 Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the moon. Who was the last? Quick Crossword #35 Answers Across 1 Cubic, 4 Kraftwerk, 9 Two, 10 One, 11 Meccano, 12 Sick, 13 Epithelial, 15 Prime, 16 Tyre Tread, 17 Laserdisc, 21 Pulse, 23 Tree Canopy, 24 Gaia, 27 Edifact, 28 Cat, 29 Dog, 30 Eclampsia, 31 Hoyle Down 1 Cetus, 2 Bronchi, 3 Crow, 4 Kneepit, 5 Ammeter, 6 Ticker Tape, 7 Examine, 8 Knowledge, 14 Meerschaum, 15 Polythene, 18 Special, 19 Ignites, 20 Captcha, 22 Leap Day, 25 Angle, 26 Itch Quick quiz #11 Answers ALAMY Puzzles set by Hugh Hunt 1 Eugene Cernan, as commander of the Apollo 17 mission in December 1972. A total of 12 people walked on the moon 2 The furthest distance reached by humans from Earth. The crew of the ill-starred Apollo 13 mission, they were forced to orbit high around the moon’s far side to regain a homeward trajectory 3 First. It is fifth largest overall: Ganymede (Jupiter), Titan (Saturn), Callisto and Io (both Jupiter) are bigger 4 Touching down on the far side of the moon 5 Theia Quick quiz #11 My twin sister went to live on the moon on our 30th birthday. From then on, she counted a year as 365 sunrises, just as we do on Earth. I am now 60. Which birthday did she last celebrate? #12 Hole of the moon I punched a hole 6 millimetres across in a piece of paper and held it at arm’s length to look at the full moon. I was pleased to find that the moon filled the hole perfectly. If the moon is 3500 kilometres across, can you estimate how far away it is? Answers next week #10 Betty’s change Solution The smallest amount of change you could have received is 30 cents. With no nickels, Betty would have been obliged to give you a quarter – the largest coin that doesn’t take her over the amount that she owes you – and then five pennies (25c+1c+1c+1c+ 1c+1c), so six coins in total. She could have reduced the number of coins to three by giving you your change in dimes (10c+10c+10c). Get in touch Email us at [email protected] [email protected] РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS The back pages Feedback What does Liana Finck? Corr blimey “Funny how #Homeopathy gets ridiculed in the media, yet royalty swear by it. They sure live to ripe old ages...” So sayeth on Twitter Jim Corr, the male quarter of celebrated 1990s Irish band The Corrs. Indeed, there is something about being born into a life of wealth and privilege that seems to keep one chipper. Must be (a very little) something in the water. Not feeling so chipper, though, is Corr himself, if his Twitter timeline is at all reflective of his mood. In the past few weeks alone he has collected a dizzying number of stamps on his balderdash bingo card, from pointing to the “imaginary problem” of climate change to retweeting opinions about the dangers of 5G wireless transmissions. Despite protestations from fans (of Irish music and science), Corr also isn’t dropping his anti-vaccine position – although he did manage to meet critics halfway somewhat by accident, musing aloud: “What if we were actually meant to get mild childhood illnesses like Measles so as to help prime our immune systems into fighting much greater diseases in later life?” An inoculation to ward off more serious illnesses? A Corrking idea. Seek and ye shall not find Winning in the STEM skills stakes, meanwhile, is blond bombshell Boris Johnson, whose aspirations to become the next UK prime minister have, somewhat indirectly, led him to confess to a surprising hobby of constructing model buses. Arise conspiracy theories more left-field than Jim Corr’s tick-box efforts. A post on the website of digital consultancy Parallax suggests Johnson’s actions are those of a Machiavellian political operator of unparalleled genius in search-engine optimisation. A man not short of torrid relationships, Johnson’s previous with buses is proving particularly vexing. During the UK’s Brexit referendum, he famously used the side of a red bus hired by the campaign to quit the European Union to deliver promises about the amount of money an exit would bequeath the nation’s public services – promises that led to accusations that they were, in fact, lies, and an attempt to take him to court over the matter. What better way to send those earlier inconvenient headlines plunging down the search rankings than to invent a cockand-bus story? Or indeed a story about a story. Checking for the effectiveness of the scheme by typing “Boris bus” into a well-known search engine on our mobile teleconnecting device, Feedback discovers that the first page of results is largely devoted to stories about whether the candidate is an evil cyber genius for contriving to create a story to displace other inconvenient stories. And now we’re adding to it. Sigh. But sweltering in a traffic jam in an unexpected burst of London heat, we are at least glad to see the first of our search results directs us to the New Routemaster, a retro model of London bus introduced by Johnson in a former life as the capital’s mayor. The double-decker is infamous for roasting its inhabitants in the heat of summer. Sadly it seems some legacies are less easily expunged. It’s a negative It may be dehydration kicking in, but Feedback thinks that if life gives you lemons, make lemonade. And if life gives you 1000 lemons, and you are a mechanic, try making a battery strong enough to jump-start a car. Russian YouTube channel Garage 54 did just that last month, constructing a zesty power pack capable of getting 13 volts from 60 kilos of lemons. Unfortunately, the meagre current generated by the device and the non-existent charge-storage capacity of the fruit meant the lemons would have been better used for biofuel. The intrepid engineers calculate that, based on their experiment, they would need 66 million lemons to summon enough juice to start a car. Which gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “being sold a lemon”. Eye watering sums Talking of lemons, Feedback previously pondered what the costliest piece of equipment ever trashed by a forgetful user is. Bids began at $3billion, the price of the Indian nuclear sub nearly scuttled by an open hatch (22 June). “The winner must surely be the (eventually magnificent) Hubble Space Telescope,” writes Herman D’Hondt. At launch our orbiting eye on the cosmos cost around $5 billion, but proved unusable thanks to a badly polished mirror. “Adding mirror repair and other fixes brings us to a total cost estimated at about $10 billion,” says Herman. Any advance? Hungry for love The course of true love never did run smooth, but if your date is spooning chocolate pudding into your mouth, you are probably on the right path. So say Colin Hendrie and Isolde Shirley at the University of Leeds, UK. They have been watching reality TV show First Dates, in which lonely hearts are filmed meeting for the first time in a restaurant. Their goal? To see whether “courtship feeding” is a sign that love is blossoming. In their study published in the journal Appetite, they reveal that of 792 dinner dates, participants fed each other on 58 occasions. Women most often shared their food, typically a chocolate dessert. Of those couples who participated in courtship feeding, a mighty 93 per cent said they would be willing to go on a second date – compared with just 43 per cent of plate-hoggers. So now we know: the way to the heart really is via the stomach. ❚ Got a story for Feedback? Send it to New Scientist, 25 Bedford Street, London WC2E 9ES or you can email us at [email protected] 13 July 2019 | New Scientist | 53 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS The back pages Almost the last word Do some human peoples have better eyesight than others? Clucking dinosaurs Tony Holkham Blaenffos, Pembrokeshire, UK The same question occurred to me when I first saw Jurassic Park. Why would a stealth predator roar? T. rex was a carnivore, and carnivores are usually only vocal when establishing territory or seeking a mate. Advertising their presence when hunting wouldn’t be smart. The same goes for birds, which evolved from dinosaurs. Mike Follows Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, UK There is no way to be sure what T. rex sounded like because the soft tissues of its voice box haven’t been fossilised. The roar of the T. rex in Jurassic Park was created by combining sounds made by a baby elephant, alligator and tiger. But dinosaurs would have used sound not to frighten prey but to communicate. Birds and crocodilians are the dinosaurs’ nearest living relatives. Julia Clarke at the University of Texas has combined the booming cry of the Eurasian bittern (Botaurus stellaris) with sounds made by Chinese alligators (Alligator sinensis) to make a fearsome low-frequency rumble ideal for long-distance calling. The fossilised ear cavities of T. rex suggest they were sensitive to low-frequency sound. Or maybe dinosaurs didn’t have vocal organs and made vibrations in resonating chambers. This would have allowed them to make noises with their mouths closed, as birds and reptiles do. Peter Jones Wolfenbüttel, Germany Those interested should check out the “Jurassic Squawk” episode of 54 | New Scientist | 13 July 2019 DEEPOL BY PLAINPICTURE When a Tyrannosaurus rex or other carnivorous dinosaur is depicted on screen, it roars like a carnivorous mammal. But birds developed from dinosaurs, so could they have screeched or called like the modern cassowary, or made no noise at all? This week’s new questions Far-sighted On a safari holiday in Kenya, I was stunned by our local guide’s ability to see wildlife at a great distance and spot things that I could barely see with binoculars. Does visual acuity vary between human peoples? John Wilkinson, Diss, Norfolk, UK Food fatigue I often feel tired after a large meal and I am told it is because blood “rushes to the stomach to help with digestion”. Is this actually what happens? How can the body regulate that? Evan Slater, London, UK BBC Radio 4 series The Curious Cases of Rutherford & Fry, from May 2019. T. rex may not have had a larynx or had a mouth cavity suitable for vocalisation. Its branch of dinosaurs evolved into birds, which use a different organ, the syrinx, to make sounds, but this developed later. Our best guess, based on closed-mouth vocalisation similar to modern crocodiles, is that they made an underwhelming low-pitched hum. If you turn the volume up, it does sound a bit more threatening. Richard Lucas Camberley, Surrey, UK The only dinosaur sound we have any confidence in is that of the Parasaurolophus. Its bony, crested skull held tubes connected to its nasal passages that would have been used to make a sound like a trombone. Birds use a thoracic organ called a syrinx to form their calls. A late-age dinosaur fossil complete with syrinx has recently been found in Antarctica. Hazera Forth Bedford, UK This is why my 10-year-old and I cluck when a T. rex appears in any scene of the Jurassic Park franchise. It is hilarious. Foam over When I drain a can of chickpeas, the liquid forms a soapy foam. What causes this, and if it is related to soap, could it be used as an eco-friendly replacement? Isabella Van Damme Arborfield, Berkshire, UK The foaming ability of chickpea water, often referred to as aquafaba, makes it a suitable vegan replacement for egg white. Proteins and other compounds seep out of the chickpeas during cooking. Aquafaba’s foaming capacity correlates with the water’s protein content. Proteins can stabilise air bubbles in foam by forming a film over them, as happens with whipped egg whites and milk foams. The proteins also impart gelling properties and stabilise oil-water emulsions. And the liquid contains saponins, another group of compounds able to stabilise bubbles. The cooking water of all pulses shows these properties to some extent, but chickpea water appears to be one of the best and has a range of applications in food. David Muir Edinburgh, UK Many plant materials contain long molecules such as lipids, proteins and carbohydrates, which may behave as surfactants, or surface-active agents. These lower the surface tension of water and can act as emulsifiers and foaming agents. Soap and detergent are also surfactants. The viscous liquid left after beans and peas have been cooked, as well as in tins of such legumes, is called aquafaba, which translates as bean-water. It can be used as an eco-friendly handwash, since it probably ends up going down the drain anyway. As a vegan replacement for egg whites, it can be used to make foods like ice cream and marshmallows. Don Taylor Sydney, Australia Aquafaba can be used to make meringues. It may also be used in other dishes that require egg whites, such as fettucine carbonara. Egg replacement would be at the rate of 60 millilitres to 1 egg. ❚ Want to send us a question or answer? Email us at [email protected] Questions should be about everyday science phenomena Full terms and conditions at newscientist.com/lw-terms РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS The back pages Me and my telescope Sue Black has done a lot since leaving school at 16, including leading the campaign to save Bletchley Park. She talks empowerment, technology and knitting before it was cool First up, do you have a telescope? No. As a child, what did you want to do when you grew up? Drive a big red London bus. Explain what you do in one easy paragraph. I am a professor of computer science and technology evangelist at Durham University, founder of social enterprise #techmums and Women’s Equality Party candidate for London Mayor in 2020. What does a typical day involve? Some of the things I did in one week recently are: I interviewed candidates for #techmums CEO, went to a #techmums graduation in Leeds where I met 45 wonderful women and heard their stories, gave a talk for a UK government conference about technology and had a TechUP Women meeting at Durham University. If you could send a message back to yourself as a kid, what would you say? Don’t listen to the haters. You are amazing and can do so many incredible things with your life, just get out there and have a go! What’s the best piece of advice anyone ever gave you? Trust your gut instincts. If you could have a long conversation with any scientist, living or dead, who would it be? Ada Lovelace. I would love to tell her how groundbreaking her work was and find out how she managed to be so far ahead of her time. It is so tragic that she died at just 36 years old. What’s the best thing you’ve read or seen in the last 12 months? Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez. What do you love most about what you do? Do you have an unusual hobby, and if so, please will you tell us about it? I love technology and how it can empower people to change the world for the better. I love the people I meet, the projects I am working on and the people I work with. I have been teased my whole life for knitting and crocheting clothes, until recently, when it became trendy. I loved making clothes for my kids and now my grandchildren. Were you good at science at school? Pretty average, I think. I loved chemistry but was persuaded to take home economics instead. I hated the subject and failed it. My physics teacher used to take the piss out of me in front of the class, which put me off physics completely. Sum up your life in a one-sentence elevator pitch… If I can do it, so can you. What’s the most exciting thing you’re working on right now? I am so excited about the new programme we have put together, called TechUP Women, which will retrain 100 women into tech careers this year. At #techmums, we are working towards creating 1 million #techmums by 2020. I love igniting potential in people and seeing them change their lives for the better. 56 | New Scientist | 13 July 2019 How useful will your skills be after the apocalypse? I am quite practical and good at problem solving in difficult circumstances, so hopefully my skills would be pretty useful. OK, one last thing: tell us something that will blow our minds… I left school at 16, was a single parent in a refuge at 25 with three children, went back to education at 26, got a degree in computing, a PhD in software engineering, ran the campaign to save Bletchley Park, got an OBE in 2016 and am now living the dream as a professor of computer science. ❚ Sue Black is a professor of computer science and technology evangelist at Durham University, UK, and author of Saving Bletchley Park (Unbound) ALI TOLLERVEY; SERG VELUSCEAC/GETTY “My physics teacher used to take the piss out of me in front of the class. That put me off completely” РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS k3 nights at 4-star Crowne Plaza Hotel just minutes from the festival k4 day All-Access festival ticket includes entry to all the stages, the Main Stage Hospitality Lounge and fast-track access kGala dinner hosted by the New Scientist editor Emily Wilson with two exclusive speakers: Andy Smith The British Antarctic Survey Steve Haake The Advance Wellbeing Research Centre Sheffield Hallam University Plus Science and History of the Docklands guided tour New Scientist Live Hotel+ experience 10-13 October 2019 The hassle-free premium experience. Stay close by with like-minded guests and attend an exclusive gala dinner Earlybird discounted price: Approx $825* per guest If you have already bought a ticket the Earlybird price for the rest of the package is approx $570 NewScientistLive.com/hotel NewScientistLive.com/hotel *Based on two people sharing
