Home/Science/New Scientist International Edition/22-jul-17/In This Issue
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17Oh, lonesome us“We can’t stop social trends driving the epidemic, but our collective denial still needs to change”ALL the lonely people, where do they all come from? When The Beatles wrote Eleanor Rigby in 1966, they helped perpetuate the stereotype that loneliness is a problem of elderly and isolated people. Maybe it was true 50 years ago, but no longer. Loneliness can and does affect anybody. And yet we barely talk about it.If loneliness were just a social problem, it would be bad enough. But it is also a public health disaster, linked to a slew of chronic illnesses (see page 30). Surveys suggest it is a routine feature of modern life. In the UK, for example, the Co-op and the British Red Cross found that more than 9 million adults are…3 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17No smokingTIME for the English to stub out their cigarettes. That’s the aim of the UK government’s latest plan to discourage smoking, ultimately driving the proportion of adult smokers below 5 per cent (see page 22).Over the past six years, the proportion of adult smokers in England has already fallen from 20.2 to 15.5 per cent, the lowest since records began. But the goal now is to get it down to less than 12 per cent by 2022.Another key aim of the plan is to produce a generation of non-smokers by reducing the proportion of under-15s who smoke from 8 to 3 per cent by 2022. More than three-quarters of adult smokers began as teens.Anti-smoking lobby groups have welcomed the plan, but warn that it won’t work unless the government reverses…1 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17US health fraudHUNDREDS of people have been charged with acts of healthcare fraud in the largest crackdown in US history.In all, the allegedly fraudulent insurance claims are said to add up to $1.3 billion. A total of 412 people have been charged, US attorney general Jeff Sessions and Tom Price, US secretary of health and human services, announced last week.Many charges relate to treatments that were deemed unnecessary or weren’t provided but were billed to the federally and state-funded healthcare programmes, as well as an insurance programme provided for members of the military and their families.The crackdown was coordinated by multiple federal and state law enforcement agencies. Over 120 of the defendants are alleged to have played a hand in illegal opioid distribution.“An illegal clinic in Houston allegedly gave out prescriptions for…1 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17Most of your DNA is junk after all“We’re walking around with a genome where only 1 in 10 of the bases actually matters”YOU’RE far from a perfect product. The code that makes us has to be at least 75 per cent rubbish, according to the latest study.After 20 years of biologists arguing that most of the human genome must have some kind of function, it now seems that, because of the way evolution works, the vast majority of our DNA has to be useless – a suggestion that contradicts claims from prominent researchers.When we first worked out how the bases of DNA function as a blueprint for making proteins, it was assumed that almost all DNA codes for proteins. However, by the 1970s, it became clear that only a tiny proportion of a genome encodes proteins –…3 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17Galaxy of games bursts filter bubbleTHE constellations spin dizzyingly, 15,000 stars against the blackness. Click, zoom in, and individual dots pop up from the nearest clusters: Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture (2015), Red Dead Redemption (2010), Nancy Drew Dossier: Lights, Camera, Curses (2008).This is GameSpace, an experimental online tool designed to help you find the next video game to play. It doesn’t just work for gamers, though – it could soon make life a bit better for anyone looking for the next great book or movie.Like the rest of us, gamers can’t keep up with all the new titles constantly being published. “The accumulation is ridiculous,” says James Ryan at the University of California, Santa Cruz.Apple’s App Store has around 800,000 games, with several hundred new ones added every day. Even if they’re great, many…2 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17Alien hunters should track ET like an animal“One animal will leave countless traces in its lifetime, but it can only leave one body fossil”TO DETECT alien life, try to find footsteps. The first signs of life on another planet may not be a complex signal captured by an antenna or images of a scampering creature on the horizon, but a track left in long-dried mud.On Earth, palaeontologists study traces left behind when an organism interacts with its environment. A team led by Andrea Baucon at the University of Modena, Italy, suggests that astrobiologists should follow suit and search not just for living and fossilised creatures, but also the traces they may have left behind.“You have a heck of a lot more chance of finding the trace of an organism than you do the actual organism itself,” says…2 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17Swiss banks now invest in bitcoinWHAT do you get the person who has everything? As of 12 July, investors at Falcon Private Bank –a boutique investment firm headquartered in Zurich – were able to ask their asset manager to purchase and store bitcoin on their behalf. Despite the cryptocurrency’s infamous volatility, this is another indication that bitcoin is here to stay.“We have various clients that are interested in buying bitcoin for investment purposes,” says Arthur Vayloyan, the global head of products and services at Falcon. And now, these customers won’t require any specialist knowledge to switch their cash into bitcoin. The Swiss financial authority, FINMA, granted Falcon regulatory approval on 11 July.Only a few years ago, many conventional banks still thought that bitcoin was doomed to fail. But the price has soared and it has…2 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17AI coach helps chatbots seem more humanLITTLE clues make it obvious that Siri or Alexa are driven by artificial intelligences, but you might struggle to nail what gave the game away.A new AI can suss out the specifics. Given a snippet of dialogue between a chatbot and a human, the system – developed at McGill University in Montreal, Canada – predicts how convincingly human you or I would rate the chatbot’s response. In other words, it automates the Turing test. This could help build better virtual assistants.Today’s chatbots are great for specific tasks – Amazon’s voice-operated assistant Alexa can order you a pizza, for example, or check the weather – but try asking if it’s enjoying the weather.To make their chatbots more convincing, companies like Amazon use large teams of human testers as evaluators. But for…1 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17Giant galaxy supercluster foundTHINK big. No, much bigger. At over 650 million light years across, the Saraswati supercluster of galaxies is one of the largest structures in the universe.It is about 4 billion light years away – much more distant than other superclusters we’ve seen. It is made up of at least 43 galaxy groups and clusters that contain about 400 galaxies in total, giving it a combined mass 20 million billion times that of our sun.Joydeep Bagchi at Savitribai Phule Pune University in India and his colleagues discovered it using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a map of galaxies (arxiv.org/abs/1707.03082v1).As it was formed relatively early, it could help us probe the tiny fluctuations that later expanded to form the largest structures. “It’s like a geographer discovering a new, great mountain…1 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17Hairs across the body tell each other when to growHAIRS all over the body use the same two chemical signalling pathways to communicate with each other – a finding that might help treat baldness.Hair doesn’t constantly grow. Each hair follicle goes through a cycle of growing, dying and resting. There are two chemical pathways called Wnt and BMP that are known to help regulate this for the hairs on the backs of mice.Now Maksim Plikus at the University of California, Irvine, and his team have used mathematical modelling to see if Wnt-BMP signalling might play a role across the whole body.They found that waves of Wnt and BMP signalling accurately explain the growth cycles of all mouse hairs. Waves of Wnt signalling spreading from hair to hair activate follicle growth, followed by waves of BMP signalling that shut down…1 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17Towards the sound of silenceThe impact of noise can be profound. Many office workers believe poor acoustics undermine their ability to do their jobs. And in 2005, researchers found that long-term exposure to noise at home or at work significantly increases heart attack risk.This problem is set to get worse as the number of people living in cities increases. Today, around half the global population lives in cities and the UN believes that will reach two-thirds by 2050. The types of noise society is generating is changing too. It’s easy to imagine that processes such as urbanisation will increase our exposure to unwanted sound. But researchers at the German chemicals giant BASF beg to differ. The ability to absorb sound is an engineering challenge that the company has long held dear. And it has…4 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17How to spend itAH, THE joys of (social) science. You’ve been saying something for years, as publicly as possible, and then new research comes along that suggests you might have been wrong all along.A few years back, I bet the proverbial farm on writing a book about what I believe is one of the most important social trends of our era: the move from materialism to experientialism. Instead of looking for pleasure, identity and status in material things, we’re increasingly seeking them in experiences instead.One core reason is that if you spend your cash on experiences you’re more likely to be happy. This advantage was shown in 2003 by psychologists Leaf Van Boven and Thomas Gilovich. At least seven studies since have backed that up, via both small-scale experiments and nationally representative surveys.…2 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17Future proofing“Young scientists joining the company want to feel like they will be making a difference”The half-life of big businesses is about 75 years – that’s the time it takes for half the companies started at a particular time to die away. So a company that survives for 200 years is highly unusual. Johnson Matthey, which is celebrating its 200th anniversary this month, is one of these enduring businesses.That raises an interesting question: how is it planning for its third century in business? The answer is with a powerful focus on researching and developing innovative science-led products and sustainable technologies.Take clean air. A large part of Johnson Matthey’s business involves reducing toxic emissions to enable a cleaner world. This is one reason the company stands out: it embraces the kind of…4 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17Alone in the crowd“Loneliness may have very little to do with being on our own, even though it is often defined that way”IMAGINE you are a zookeeper and it’s your job to design an enclosure for humans. What single feature would best ensure the health and well-being of the animals in your care? Appropriate access to food and water? Shelter?The thought experiment has only one answer, according to social neuroscientist John Cacioppo who proposed it. The enclosure, above all else, must take into account our need for connection with other humans.We are an “obligatorily gregarious species”, in Cacioppo’s words. Yet if so, this is not how many of us live today. We are often far from our families, in homes where we are the sole occupant, socialising, working and shopping online.This can have…11 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17Waste not...?1 Which materials are worth recycling?From the most basic environmental point of view, all materials are worth recycling, because this reduces the need for energy-intensive mining and smelting of virgin materials. That makes a huge difference for some things – notably aluminium – but even recycling glass leads to a small energy saving and consequent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Recycling can also provide a reliable, non-imported source of scarce resources such as the rare earth metals that are crucial parts of touchscreens and other high-tech devices.However, the answer gets muddier when we consider economics. The price of recycled material fluctuates wildly, and some often aren’t profitable to recycle, especially if the recovered material has to be shipped long distances to a reprocessing plant. Waste managers often have to pay…7 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17Sweet anticipation“Music seems to be imitating itself. Each note appears to be derived from what went before”Comparing Notes: How we make sense of music by Adam Ockelford, ProfileWHEN Derek Paravicini was 8 he had thousands of pieces of music at his fingertips on the piano, playing each with fluency in any key. Whether Bach or Beethoven, the blues or the Beatles, he played with a joyous vitality, adding notes to melodies, enriching harmonies and filling out textures. He still does so at the age of 37.Celebrated as a musical genius, Paravicini was born prematurely, blind and with severe learning difficulties. Adam Ockelford, now professor of music at the University of Roehampton in the UK, patiently honed Paravicini’s musical skills from the age of 5, and weaves his story, along with those…4 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17EDITOR’S PICK Consciousness and intelligence are differentFrom Anthony Castaldo, San Antonio, Texas, USI agree with Quentin Macilray that the brain constructs predictive models of everything, and that consciousness is a consequence of building a model of one’s self (Letters, 1 July). This allows planning, which can benefit survival more than moment-by-moment reactions, even if the “plan” is for just a few seconds into the future.Many creatures, including apes, corvids, dolphins and elephants, show signs of consciousness and an ability to solve novel problems – in the short term. My dog is clearly conscious of himself, but he isn’t intelligent enough to use a stick as a weapon, though he can hold one quite firmly. It is an error to conflate consciousness with intelligence.Humans seem to be unique in their ability to consider abstractions of abstractions to…7 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17FEEDBACKGloucestershire Live informs Eugene Doherty that resurfacing a local road will use 770 tonnes of material, “equivalent to 855 adult kangaroos in weight”. Well, that clears that up.MANY British readers may be feeling uneasy that their government has formed a coalition with Northern Ireland’s DUP, whose anti-science positions include one assembly member’s call for creationism to be taught in all schools to counter the “peddled lie” of evolution.The US has long been pioneering efforts to rejoin church and state. A recent innovation is found in Florida, where state governor Rick Scott signed into law legislation allowing any resident to challenge educational material used in public schools. Passed under the auspices of empowering parents, critics warn that the bill will allow people to target the teaching of evolution and climate change…4 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17Ancient footprints at riskIT’S only a matter of time. Scientists studying tremors in east Africa’s rift valley say an eruption from the Ol Doinyo Lengai volcano is imminent. This could threaten ancient hominin footprints preserved at two sites.The volcano lies 120 kilometres north-west of Arusha in Tanzania. It has erupted three times in the last century, propelling debris and ash high into the air. Increased earthquakes, ash emissions and a widening crack on the west side of the volcano all suggest it will erupt soon, says D. Sarah Stamps at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg.The volcano is a mere 14.5 kilometres from Engare Sero, where anthropologists recently unearthed over 400 hominin footprints dating back 19,000 years. A large volcanic debris flow could, in theory, swamp the area.The iconic site of Laetoli, with 3.7-million-year-old hominin…1 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17Moon mine planned for 2020COULD there be a mining outpost on the moon by 2020? The US firm Moon Express has raised $45 million for three expeditions to the moon, ending with a robotic mining operation.The Lunar Scout expedition aims to carry a telescope and a laser array to the moon. In 2019, Moon Express plans to land a second craft at the south pole, to prospect for water and useful minerals. The third expedition, Harvest Moon, would begin the mining operation in 2020. This lander may have the capability to launch a capsule full of samples back to Earth while it continues mining.Those lunar samples would be the first to return to the US since 1972. All samples from prior US missions are owned by the US government, but recent US legislation encourages…1 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17Red Spot spottedIT’S the first close-up of the biggest storm in our solar system. On 10 July, NASA’s Juno spacecraft flew closer to Jupiter’s Great Red Spot than ever before, passing within 9000 kilometres of its swirling clouds.“How a storm, 16,000 kilometres wide, could persist for centuries is still a mystery”The first images from the flyby show the tops of clouds stirred by winds at speeds well over 600 kilometres per hour.Juno reached Jupiter in July 2016 after a five-year trip. Since then, it has studied the planet’s atmosphere, magnetic field and auroras to get a handle on the gas giant’s structure and formation.During the flyby, all eight of Juno’s scientific instruments were running, observing the magnetic field and atmosphere around the Great Red Spot in detail. They will study the molecular…1 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17Earliest Australians are a prehistoric puzzleHUMANS may have arrived in Australia 15,000 years earlier than we thought. Artefacts found in the north of the country suggest that the region was occupied 65,000 years ago –which raises all sorts of questions about how the country’s first inhabitants interacted with wildlife and what became of them.Until recently, the oldest evidence of human occupation in Australia came from 50,000-year-old stone artefacts found in a rock shelter in the country’s north.Now Chris Clarkson at the University of Queensland and his colleagues have found artefacts dating back 65,000 years in a different rock shelter – this one in Kakadu National Park in the far north of the country. The artefacts include fireplace remains, stone axes, grinding stones, ground plant matter and ground ochre – a type of red pigment commonly…2 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17Blood test spots rare anomalies in fetusesA BLOOD test can scan a fetus’s entire genome for chromosomal abnormalities at 10 weeks of pregnancy. The test may help identify pregnancies in need of closer monitoring, or those at a higher risk of miscarriage or complications.Chromosomal abnormalities occur in around 1 in 1000 births. The most common are Down’s syndrome, Edwards’ syndrome and Patau syndrome, which are caused by carrying an extra copy of a chromosome. These can all be detected by the form of non-invasive pre-natal testing (NIPT) currently offered by private clinics. NIPT works by detecting fetal DNA fragments in maternal blood.Several teams around the world have now developed whole-genome versions of NIPT that can detect rarer chromosomal anomalies, such as mosaic trisomy 22, which can cause learning difficulties, short stature and webbing of the neck.Mark…2 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17Ravens make plans for the futureRAVENS can plot for long-term gain at least as well as 4-year-old humans and some adult, nonhuman great apes.“Ravens can make an immediate decision for a future that will occur at another place”The birds planned for future events in tasks they wouldn’t encounter in the wild. This means this isn’t an adaptation to an ecological niche, but rather a flexible cognitive ability that evolved independently in birds and hominids.Planning requires the use of long-term memory for some anticipated gain down the line. For many years, it was thought to be a uniquely human trait that develops in young children. But it turned out that chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans have this ability too, making tools to use later on.In 2007, researchers at the University of Cambridge showed that scrub jays can…2 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17Rats know when they forget stuffMUCH like students doing a test, rats tend to skip questions when they have forgotten the answer. The finding suggests rats share an ability of humans and some primates – they may have metamemory, an awareness of what they can remember.Victoria Templer at Providence College, Rhode Island, and her team trained rats to sniff samples of cinnamon, thyme, paprika or coffee, and then go to a dish smelling of the matching scent. If the rats picked the correct dish, they got a piece of cereal.But there was a twist. Although rats that chose a dish with the wrong scent got no reward, rats that chose a fifth, unscented dish received a quarter-piece of the cereal. This meant that when rats forgot what they had smelled, their best bet was to…2 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17Polar bear attacks on humans rising as climate changesCLIMATE change may be driving more aggressive polar bears to areas where people live, and the consequences could be lethal. With ice freezing later and thawing earlier, polar bears can’t stock up on seal meat for as long, leading hungry animals to search for food in populated areas. “You’ve got bears that are spending increasing amounts of time on land becoming nutritionally stressed, moving into areas of human settlements,” says Todd Atwood, a wildlife biologist at the US Geological Survey.Atwood’s team combed through 150 years of records of bear attacks in Canada, Greenland, Russia, the US and Norway. They drew data from government agencies, news reports and, in the older cases, from ships’ logs.They found 73 cases of polar bears attacking groups or individuals, with 63 people injured and 20…1 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17Ancient asteroids were big mudballsBEFORE asteroids, the solar system was awash with giant mudballs.Not much is known about the history of the most common asteroids, carbonaceous asteroids, which may have delivered water and organic molecules to Earth. Philip Bland at Curtin University in Australia and Bryan Travis at the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona modelled the formation of these rocks and found when ice, dust and mineral grains came together, they wouldn’t have been compacted straight away (Science Advances, doi.org/b9p6).Radioactive atoms would have melted the ice, making a sludgy mud that became rock, perhaps aided by gravitational pressure once the asteroid got big enough, or impacts with other objects.…1 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17Breast implants slow down bulletsCAN breast implants really protect against gunshots? It has previously been claimed that implants have saved women from gunshots, stabbings and even kangaroo attacks.To test if there’s any scientific credibility to this, Christopher Pannucci, a plastic surgeon at the University of Utah, and his team analysed bullets shot through saline breast implants into ballistics gel – a substance designed to mimic human tissue.Using a handgun, they fired shots at 300 metres per second into blocks of gel 2.5 metres away. When these blocks were placed underneath large saline breast implants, the distance the bullets travelled into the gel was reduced by an average of 8 centimetres, or 20 per cent (Journal of Forensic Sciences, doi.org/b9m2).An analysis of the gel showed that the implants seemed to flatten the bullets and make…1 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17Virtually quietEVEN the best architectural drawings reveal little about the acoustics of a building or room. This can be a big problem if the premises are intended to house a lot of people who want to talk with each other.That’s why BASF has developed a virtual reality audio simulation tool called Envison Mobile that allows users to hear the difference that Basotect® can make in different scenarios.Designers and building managers using the tool wear a virtual reality headset to explore an open plan office, a restaurant, a children’s nursery and a swimming pool with a joystick.Through headphones they can hear people talking, footsteps, background music and children playing in these virtual environments with and without melamine foam sound absorbers.The system was developed by Inreal Technologies, a company in Karlsruhe, Germany, that…1 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17Fry harderDEMONISING food choices is not usually my thing, but I’ll make an exception for the horror show that is partially hydrogenated vegetable oils (HVOs). These are high in trans fats, which are very damaging to heart health.“New York banned trans fats in restaurants and takeaways. The result was fewer heart attacks”The US, ruling them unsafe in any amount, will ban them next year. Their downsides have been well known since the 1990s, and efforts to get them out of food have by and large worked. In the UK, average trans fat intake is below the 5 gram daily limit the NHS advises. This is due to voluntary removal by food firms, so a ban was deemed unnecessary.Despite the success, average intake can be misleading. You may struggle to find HVOs…2 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17SUSTAINABILITY TARGETSAt Johnson Matthey, sustainability is central not only to its processes and use of resources, but also to the ethos of its business. Most of its products and technologies are designed to reduce the impact of harmful substances on the planet.That’s why, in 2007, the company set itself six sustainability targets for 2017. They were challenging goals: stop sending waste to landfill; halve the use of electricity, natural gas and water relative to sales; halve carbon dioxide emissions by the same measure; eliminate workplace accidents; reduce occupational illness to zero; and double underlying earnings per share.The company hasn’t hit all of these, but it has come pretty close, particularly on its environmental goals. For example, it has cut its carbon intensity by half and significantly reduced the waste it sends…1 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17Understanding lonelinessWhat is loneliness?Loneliness is often inaccurately defined as being without friends or companions.But while being unintentionally alone or cut off can make someone more likely to become lonely, loneliness is actually a subjective feeling of social isolation.It might be cold comfort at such times, but loneliness probably evolved to make sure we seek out others for our own protection, and has come to be a deep-rooted part of the human experience. Why do some people feel lonely in situations where others don’t? Genetic predisposition seems to play a part. And new research suggests different personality types are more or less resilient.There is also a distinction to make between introversion and loneliness, says Steve Cole at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Introverts are people who are happy being alone, or…5 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17Towards zero wasteOne of the big impediments to recycling is products made of mixed materials that can’t easily be separated – but solutions are on the way. Sachets are a prime example. People living in poorer countries often purchase single-use sachets of things like ketchup and detergent because they cannot afford to buy in bulk. These sachets need to be durable as well as impermeable, so they are often made of layers of different materials. Hundreds of billions are produced annually. Unilever, a major manufacturer of sacheted products, pledged earlier this year to make all of its packaging recyclable by 2025, and is developing new ways to dissolve the polyethylene out of used sachets so that it can be reused. Others are developing ways to separate mixed plastics by shredding them and…2 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17The joy of science fiction“This year’s collection offers grounds for hope. People still reach out for loved ones in these worlds”The winner of the 2017 Arthur C. Clarke Award will be announced at a ceremony at Foyles bookshop on Charing Cross Road in London on 27 JulyTHE first Arthur C. Clarke Award for best science fiction novel went to Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale in 1987. It’s a book which many commentators still refuse to call “science fiction” because it doesn’t grapple with the shiny stuff we might get in the future. Instead, it deals with how lines of power and identity might be redrawn and society restructured along the lines of a nightmare.Reflecting the UK’s own fractured, unstable identity, all of this year’s nominees share an interest in the relationship between person, system…3 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17Digital buddy knows when you’re too tipsy to tweet“I enjoy a quiet drink at home,” says Michael Bacchus. “Trouble is, a few beers in I find myself tweeting Game of Thrones spoilers. Can you help me avoid upsetting my friends?”Embarrassing tweets happen to us all: that’s why every 28 April we celebrate Ed Balls day, and every time I’ve had some wine I wax lyrical about Patrick Stewart. Could a digital drinking buddy keep me in check?First, I needed a way to measure my drinking. A reed switch inside a coaster could detect when I raised my glass, but would require magnets to be glued to my glassware. With visions of tumblers stuck to the sides of my dishwasher, I settled on a force-sensitive resistor to measure pressure.Tracking the total weight of booze didn’t work: topping up my…2 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17THE LAST WORD“Flies of different species deposit their eggs in a cadaver at well-defined times following death”Remote scentingHow far away can flies smell potential food? We see very few flies in our garden, yet by the time a sparrowhawk had finished his breakfast on our lawn a few days ago, the remains were covered with flies. Do they hold a record for keenness of sense of smell versus their size?There is no particular limit; a gentle breeze can carry aromas of guts and flesh for hundreds of metres.Flies, like polar bears, will follow such a scent upwind for as long as they can detect it, covering surprising distances within minutes. If they lose the scent, they veer back and forth across the wind until they relocate the trail or give up and…4 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17The 51-qubit featA TEAM in the US has created a simulator with 51 quantum bits – the largest of its kind so far. Mikhail Lukin at Harvard University announced the achievement on 14 July at the International Conference on Quantum Technologies in Moscow.Quantum simulators are used to model the minute behaviour of molecules, and could help study how drugs act within the human body. They aren’t full-blown quantum computers, though, says Simon Devitt at Macquarie University in Sydney.Lukin’s system was specifically built to solve one equation that models the interactions between certain atoms. If you wanted to solve a different equation, you’d have to rebuild the system from scratch.Quantum computers, on the other hand, are theoretically capable of handling any equation you throw at them. But they are a much bigger challenge…1 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-1760 SECONDsMaths world mournsIranian mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani has died of breast cancer at the age of 40. She was the only woman to have won the Fields Medal, sometimes called the Nobel prize of maths, for her work on the geometric structures of surfaces.Climate forecastWe are heading for over 4°C of warming by 2100. This dire warning comes not from scientists, but from an asset management firm called Schroders, which looks after assets worth $520 billion for investors. It has done its own analysis of trends in fossil fuel production and efforts to curb emissions.Dockless sharing failsTwo dockless bike schemes in the UK – oBike in London and mobike in Manchester – have had underwhelming results. Both offered bikes for rent that could be picked up and left anywhere, using only…1 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17Lifespan gain slowsANNUAL rises in life expectancy have begun to stall in England, finds an analysis of mortality rates and causes of death.Between 2000 and 2009, women in England were on average living a year longer every five years, and men every 3.5 years. But since then, a one-year increase in longevity would take 10 years for women and six for men.“Since 2010, the rate of increase in life expectancy has about halved,” says Michael Marmot, director of the Institute of Health Equity at University College London, who led the work.The reasons for the slowdown aren’t clear, Marmot says, but it coincides with austerity-driven cuts in health and social care spending. Prior to 2010, UK National Health Service spending rose annually by about 3.8 per cent, but this has since fallen to…1 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17Drone buzz is the most annoying soundBUZZ off. NASA may have flagged a future area of discord for Amazon, UPS, Domino’s Pizza and other firms planning delivery services using drones: people find the noise they make more annoying than that of ground vehicles, even when the sounds are at the same volume.“We didn’t go into this test thinking there would be this significant difference,” says study co-author Andrew Christian of NASA’s Langley Research Center, Virginia. The study ’s purpose was merely to prove that Langley’s acoustics research facilities could contribute to NASA’s wider efforts to study drones.Nonetheless, the results indicate the extra irritation the 38 subjects experienced when listening to drone noises was as if a car were suddenly twice as close as it had been before (DOI: 10.2514/6.2017-4051).Less clear was why drones sound so annoying.…1 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17Hot ice could have seeded life on EarthJUST add salt to a new form of ice and we may have the recipe for the primordial soup. Such exotic “hot” ice could also have shaped the geology of our solar system.Ice VII has completely different properties from regular ice. It only forms under intense pressure, and is dense enough to sink in water.Outside of the lab it exists mostly in the deepest layers of Neptune and Uranus, and perhaps also on icy moons like Europa and Ganymede.Arianna Gleason at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Stanford University and her team used a laser to compress water between two sheets of quartz. Next, they placed the water next to a diamond, then fired the laser at the diamond. This recreated the effect of a collision between a comet and a…2 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17Ghost ponds hide 150-year-old plants“Life hangs on – the species that lived in the past pond are still alive, dormant and waiting”WE’RE raising the dead. Well, almost. Plants discovered in “ghost ponds” are being revived after lurking underground as dormant seeds for up to 150 years.These so-called ghost ponds are formed when agricultural land expansion means that existing ponds are filled in, and buried alive, says Emily Alderton, at University College London (UCL), who led the study.To expand a field, farmers commonly remove hedgerows then use the uprooted plants and soil to fill up any ponds. This happened at the site Alderton’s team studied in Norfolk, UK.“Small ponds were not drained, but were filled in while they were still wet. We think this is likely to have contributed to the survival of the seeds…2 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17Bad period pains linked to infertilityEXCRUCIATING period pain can be a sign of endometriosis. Now it seems the degree of pain may also be linked with fertility problems.Around 10 per cent of women have endometriosis, a poorly understood condition in which uterus cells turn up elsewhere in the body and bleed each month.Some women with the condition experience a little pain, but for others it can be much worse. No one knows why the symptoms vary so much, says Mathilde Bourdon at Descartes University, Paris.To find out more, Bourdon’s team found 422 women with endometriosis who had been unable to conceive naturally after a year. When asked to score their pain on a scale of 1 to 10, 289 of them rated it as a 7 or higher. By looking at surgical reports, the team…1 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17Lioness adopts a leopard cubA LIONESS has been spotted nursing a leopard cub. The never-before-seen behaviour between two natural enemies was photographed in the Ngorongoro conservation area in Tanzania on 12 July.Estimated to be only 3 weeks old, the leopard cub suckled on a 5-year-old lioness that is collared and monitored by KopeLion, a conservation NGO in Tanzania supported by Panthera, the global wild cat conservation organisation.Normally, the two felines kill cubs of the other species to eliminate future competition for food and raise the chances that their own progeny will survive to adulthood.Pumas sometimes adopt members of their own species, but cross-species adoption among big cats remains rare. “This is a truly unique case,” says Luke Hunter, Panthera’s president and chief conservation officer.The fact that this lioness recently gave birth is a critical…1 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17Glove lets phones read sign languageHANDWRITING will never be the same, thanks to a glove. Developed at the University of California, San Diego, it allows the alphabet as signed in American Sign Language to be turned into text on a smartphone.“For thousands of people in the UK, sign language is their first language,” says Jesal Vishnuram at the UK charity Action on Hearing Loss. “Many have little or no written English. Technology like this will completely change their lives.”Unlike existing systems, which are bulky and inconvenient, the new device simply consists of a standard sports glove, with lightweight strain and motion sensors that allow software to work out what letter the wearer is signing (PLoS One, doi.org/b9pw).Since the glove can interpret the alphabet only, it requires users to spell out words letter by letter. To…1 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17Stubbed out“In the UK, adult smoking rates are now down to about 16 per cent, in the US, 15 per cent”MOST of us in the West are an unhealthy lot: we eat junk food, drink too much alcohol, exercise too little and generally ignore medical advice designed to help us live longer.But there is one thing we are listening to our doctors about. Smoking rates have been slowly falling, year on year, in most Western countries for decades. This month saw the 10-year anniversary of England’s ban on smoking in enclosed workplaces –including bars and restaurants –a change that once would have seemed inconceivable. The UK government is due to announce new tobacco control strategies for the next few years.The decline of smoking is emboldening some public health officials to plan…7 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17Web firms are right to demand net freedoms“ISPs should not be able to accept payment from a company to make sure that its website loads faster”PEOPLE visiting some of the world’s most popular websites, including Amazon, Netflix and Twitter, on 12 July saw pop-up messages saying that the site had been blocked or slowed down.The pop-ups were fictional, all part of an online protest supporting the principle of net neutrality. Its backers believe that internet service providers should not be allowed to prioritise some types of web traffic over others. ISPs should not be able to accept payment from Amazon, for example, to make sure that its website loads faster than competing sites.The protest arose because the US Federal Communications Commission – the government agency that regulates the country’s ISPs – wants to overturn rules, dating from…3 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17APERTUREWhite gold rushIN THE far north-eastern reaches of the Siberian wilderness, a new industry is booming. The frozen soil hides treasures from an earlier era of our planet’s history: perfectly preserved woolly mammoth bones and tusks. The discovery of this ivory has turned many local men to “tusking” in the hopes of striking it rich by selling their prehistoric loot to enthusiastic Chinese buyers.These mammoth mining sites are far off the beaten track. The nearest village is a 4-hour speed boat ride away. The nearest city, Yakutsk, is a 4-hour flight from there. Last summer, Amos Chapple, a photojournalist with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, spent three weeks at one of these isolated outposts, shedding light on the tusking lifestyle with this set of pictures.There’s serious money to be made. The…2 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17The eyes have it“Bigger eyes and better eyesight revealed the bounty of prey on land”SEEN through the right geological lens, the bucolic countryside near Chirnside, a village in south-east Scotland, becomes a tropical swamp. The rocks divulge a picture of a sweltering and soggy landscape, tangled with all manner of tree ferns, horsetails and 30-metre-high clubmosses that look like giant scaly asparagus spears.Here, 350 million years ago, off the edge of a muddy bank, a pair of eyes poked above the water. They belonged to a newt-like creature with a broad head, a wide mouth full of needle-sharp teeth and a long tail. It also boasted four limbs, with which it shuffled awkwardly onto the bank.This amphibious vertebrate, nicknamed Tiny by its discoverers, might be the most important fossil you’ve never heard of.…8 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17How am I feeling, machine?“I want people to be aware of a looming emotional storm before it hits them”WHEN Rosalind Picard announced to the world that computers needed to understand emotion, many scoffed. But her book, Affective Computing, published 20 years ago, seeded a new field. It’s now clear that computers will serve us better if we can help them understand what matters to us – using changes in our physiology, movement, facial expression and tone of voice to discern our emotions.Affective computing is enjoying quite a few real-world applications. What kinds of ideas are you working on at the moment?Something I’m excited about are wearable systems that help people see their stress levels and mood changing. In the early days of affective computing, a “wearable” computer might have weighed 50 pounds – totally…5 min
New Scientist International Edition|22-jul-17A very British coup“It is the first time that many important dinosaur fossils have travelled outside China”Dinosaurs of China: Ground shakers to feathered fliers, Wollaton Hall, Nottingham, UK, until 29 OctoberTHE city of Nottingham knows a thing or two about punching above its weight. In 1979, Nottingham Forest won the European Cup – possibly the greatest feat in the history of English football. In 1980, they did it again.The story of a hitherto-unfashionable Nottingham institution pulling off a major coup has just repeated itself. Landing Dinosaurs of China is possibly the greatest feat in the history of English natural history museums. It is the first time many of the world’s most important and iconic dinosaur fossils have travelled outside China. Some have never even been seen by the public before. When it is…3 min
