New Scientist Magazine - 6 March 2010

IRRELIGIOUS MINDS Why atheists don't need God

BUGGING THE BUGS Tapping 'into the secret language of bacteria

OUCH FACTOR A brain scan to measure pain

•

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Volume 205 No 2750

NEWS 3 4

EDITORIAL Effective interrogation UPFRONT Climategate goes to Parliament. Iceberg threatens world's weather, Chile quake

COVER STORY

28

Touching the multiverse

will leave volcanic legacy

6

THIS WEEK

At last there's a

The brain scan that feels your pain, Shaped

way to find out

moulds tell stem cells what to be, Why alien

if it exists

worlds are like a toaster, Brain imaging goes chemical. Dino-eating snake caught red-jawed

14 IN BRIEF Mind-controlled prosthetics without brain surgery, The downside of happiness, Flipping Earth's protective shield

17 TECHNOLOGY

Cover image Eoi n Ryan

Wave powers grand designs, Blooming green fuel cells, Bone echoes drive body-based computing

OPINION

As bad as torture

22 A third nuclear option Fission and fusion power each have thei r problems, but there is another way, argueJulian Hunt and Graham O'Connell

23 One minute with... Ginny Barbour, on why we

The mental

should shun tobacco industry research

scars of coercive

24 LETTERS Darwin evolves, Aliens can't hear us

interrogation

26 Anatomy of atheism Religion is the norm for most humans, so what makes some reject it ask Lois Lee and Stephen Bullivant

FEATURES 2B Touching the multiverse (see right) 32 Trouble in paradise Time is running out to eradicate the killers wreaking havoc on an island wildlife haven

36 Bugging your bugs Why it will pay to turn the tables on the microbes that eavesdrop on your body's every move

40 As bad as torture (see right)

REGULARS

Coming next week

24 ENIGMA

Accidental origins

44 BOOKS & ARTS Review A travelogue with a difference follows

Evolution is even more

scientific endeavour to Earth's bleakest locations

random than we thought

45 Gallery A modern take on the art of the diorama 56 FEEDBACK Less fat than", what? 57 THE LAST WORD Honey for theflies

The writing's on the egg A treasure trove of 60,OOO-year-old

46 JOBS & CAREERS

ostrich eggs resets the clock for early

PLUS When em pathy goes into ove rd rive

symbolic writing

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5 March 2010 I NewScientist 1 1

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EDITORIAL

The power of persuasion

Here is a field in which science really can point to effective techniques for extracting useful Coercive i n terrogati on is i neffective and damag i n g, information. We know, for example, that successful We need a m o re effective and hu mane approach persuasion rests on the reputation of the person doing the fail to yield any information persuading. This may help explain HOWLS of outrage greeted US at all, or elicit worthless Attorney General Eric Holder's the civilian justice system's greater statements by causing detainees decision to try Khalid Sheikh success at bringing terrorists to Mohammed - who claims to have to lose touch with reality. book: they have a much better President Barack Obama has masterminded the 9/11 attacks on reputation for fair dealing than the military tribunals system. tried to draw a line under all this New York and Washington - in a civilian court rather than before a with the establishment ofa team Commenting on the of elite interrogators, the High­ military tribunal. The protesters' announcement that the alleged wish to see Mohammed treated as Value Detainee Interrogation Christmas day bomber Umar Group, that will only use an enemy combatant is perhaps Farouk Abdulmutallab - who is to "scientifically proven", humane understandable, but in fact be tried by the civilian courts - is techniques. But where these will dealing with suspected terrorists cooperating with the FBI, Holder in this way has a poor track record. come from is hard to know, as the said: "You are much more likely research has simply not been done. to get people to cooperate with us Since 2001, US military commissions have convicted just if their belief is that we are acting "Techniques such as sleep three detainees of perpetrating in a way that is consistent with terrorist acts. Civilian courts have deprivation m ight not fit American values." secured around 150 convictions. the definition of torture. If the security services want to but are just as traumatic" Why the difference? improve their reputation there is a proven way: reputation requires The "enhanced interrogation" There is, however, a promising techniques sanctioned by the Bush trust, and trust rests on openness. alternative to coercion, and For that reason, the workings administration after 9/n have though it may seem at first sight surely not helped: as we report of Obama's new interrogation like a feeble strategy for dealing group must be more transparent this week (see page 40), they are both inhumane and ineffective. than the shadowy world of with people thought to be bent Practices such as sleep deprivation, on mass murder, it has much Guantanamo Bay. That would to recommend it. It is simple isolation and forcing prisoners begin to repair the damage done persuasion, something that to maintain stress positions may to America's reputation. It might fall outside the legal definition of has been the subject of intense also deliver the result that is torture but their impact can academic interest for decades, and surely to be desired: better be just as damaging. And as with intelligence, more terrorists that modern consumer societies "proper" torture, they often have become very good at. behind bars, and less torture. •

Time to accept that atheism, not god, is odd IF YOU'RE one ofthose committed atheists in the Richard Dawkins mould who dreams of ridding the world of religious mumbo-jumbo, prepare yourself for a disappointment: there is no good evidence that education leads to secularisation. In fact, the more we learn about the "god instinct" and the refusal of religion to fade away under the onslaught of progress, the more the non-religious mindset looks like the odd man out. That is why anthropologists, psychologists and social scientists are now putting irreligion under the microscope in the same way they once did with religious belief (see page 26). The aim is not to discredit atheism but to understand how so many people can override a way of thinking that seems to come so naturally. For that reason, atheists should welcome the new scrutiny. Atheism still has a great deal to commend it, not least that it doesn't need supernatural beings to make sense of the world. Let's hope the study of atheism leads to new insights into how to challenge such irrationality.•

What' s hot on N ewScientist.com D

NEW SCIENTIST TV March 2010 vodcast We take

a look at blow-up fabric spaceships, check out the work of a robot artist and attend a wedding with a biochemical twist

g

SPACE 'Satel loons' and lunar lasers: communicating in

space

NASA is revamping how it transmits signals to spacecraft both near and far. We take a look at the history and future of the agency's space-communication projects

BLOG Ki ller whale: the clue's in the name

Perhaps the oddest explanation for the death of a ki ller­ whale trainer is that the whale was enacting a mating behaviour. We examine why keepi ng top predators captive will always cause problems

ZOOLOGGERThe monster land crab

As the sun sets over a beautiful Pacific island, the world's largest land arthropod emerges from its burrow. Coconut crabs have evolved a host of strange adaptations to survive on

land, but their exceptional lifestyle has also putthem at great risk. Only now are conservationists working out how to protect them

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UPFRONT

Quake now, erupt later TALK about big. Chi le's magnitude 8.8 earthquake shook the region so violently that it may leave a legacy of volcanic eruptions, and could even

l i n ked to vol canism. "We expect to see an upsurge i n volcanic activity but he stresses that the risk to local

in crease volcanic activity. In his

people is likely to be minimal (Earth

records, he notes that a Chilean

and Planetary Science Letters, DOl:

quake in February 1835 appeared

10.1016/j. epsl .200B.ll.005).

and cause eruption rates to rise. Last year, David Pyle at the university of Oxford and his colleagues

MORE than a decade since it was first spotted, element 112, the newest element in the periodic table, has arrived at the finish line, winning its chemical symbol at last. The name "copernicium" was suggested last year by the element's discoverers, led by Sigurd Hofmann at the Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt, Germany. Now the International Union for Pure and Applied Chemistry has given its official seal of a pproval - and announced that its symbol will be Cn. "It is good to have a final decision on it," says lohn Corish of[UPAC. IUPAC rejected the initial suggestion of the symbol Cp,

4 1 NewScientist 1 6 March 2010

Richard Gross, a geophysicist at NASA'sjet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, has claimed that the shake could have shifted

confirmed that this was a real effect

enough material inside the planet

in Chile. In particular, they found that

to signif icantly alter its mass

after a magnitude B.3 quake in 1906

distribution, changing the axis

and a magnitude 9.5 quake in 1960,

about which the Earth turns. "The

there were three or four more volcanic

length of the day should have gotten

eruptions than would normally be

shorter by 1.26 microseconds;' he

expected within about 500 kilometres

told Bloomberg.

Jones explains

stations, nor the computer codes used to analyse data, because it is not " standard practice". He added that other climate scientists who have reviewed his papers have never asked for such data. However, written evidence submitted by the Institute of Physics in London claimed the hacked emails had revealed "evidence of determined and coordinated refusals to comply with honourable scientific traditions" through "manipulation ofthe publication and peer-review system" and "intolerance to challenge".

BELEAGUERED climate scientist Phil lones was questioned by a British parliamentary committee this week, in one offive inquiries into the " climategate" scandal. Iones, a researcher at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, denied trying to keep papers by his critics out of journals. ''I've written some awful emails," he said, but later rejected "the view that I've been trying to pervert the peer-review process". He also said he did not usually publish raw data from weather

Antarctic break-up

"IUPAC has g iven copern icium its official approval and announced that its symbol will be Cn"

mainly to avoid confusion. Prior to 1949, Cp referred to cassiopeium, an element with the atomic number 71 that is now known as lutetium. Corish adds

over the next 12 mo nths," says Pyle,

first to suggestthat large earthquakes

to resurrect i nactive volcanoes,

that Cp is also used to refer to the organic compound cyclopentadienyl, and as an abbreviation for " specific heat capacity at constant pressure". Hofmann's team discovered element 112 in 1996, after fusing atoms of zinc and lead. But it wasn't until 2009 that IUPAC finally confirmed the element had been made - and that Hoffman's team deserved the credit. "You have to be very careful," says Corish. "People say you are slow, but it's very difficult science, so it has to be done extremely carefully."

Last week's quake occurred on the same section of fault that Darwin

have shortened the length of a day. Charles Darwin was among the

Clash of symbols

of the epicentre i n the following year.

The loose tooth breaks away

THIS is the moment, on 20 February, when a massive tongue of ice (left in the picture) protruding into the ocean broke free of Antarctica. It had earlier been rammed by a huge iceberg, and now forms another giant berg with an area of 2500 square kilometres. After the collision it was "hanging like a loose tooth", says Rob Massom of the Antarctic Climate & Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre in Australia.

For daily news stories, visit www. NewScientist.com/news

60 SECONDS

The event could affect ocean currents and marine life. While attached to the Antarctic ice shelf, the ice tongue had helped hem in an area of open water surrounded by ice. Known as polynias, such areas encourage the formation of dense, highly saline water which sinks to the seabed, and are oases of marine life. Whether the event is linked to climate change is a matter of dispute. Some climatologists see it as part of the normal course of events, while others say it is consistent with observations that a large part of Antarctica's ice shelf is warming rapidly.

Fighting Spirit

scientist Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, told the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas, this week. In January and February, NASA coaxed the rover backwards by

DEAR Spirit rover, your refusal to bow out gracefully is making things a mite awkward back on Earth - we've been writing your obituary for years. But the Mars rover's death is as distant as ever: it should wriggle free of its sandy "As long as it survives the trap after all. winter, the rover has a In April 200g Spirit became good chance of backing mired in loose sand on Mars. After out of the pit" months of trying to free the rover, NASA declared on 26 January that 34 centimetres, a big advance on Spirit was stuck, but could at least the millimetres it had managed continue taking measurements. before. As long as it survives the But the announcement was " a winter, the rover should back little bit premature", rover out of the pit, says Arvidson.

Count your way to hella We need a way to describe super· high numbers. So says an online petition with over 20,000 supporters, advocating the prefix "hel la" for 1027• Yotta (1024) is the largest prefix in the International System of Units, but hella units could prove handy for n u mbers such as the sun's wattage, says physics student Austin Sendek of the U n iversity of California, Davis.

Titanic survival A studyofshipwrecks shows that speed of capsize dictateswho survives. Able-bodied men were less l i kely to survive than women and children on the Titanic, which san k i n 2 hoursand40 min utes. The opposite was true on the Lusitania,

Worm killer

Add oxygen to speed sobriety

which sank i n 18 m i n utes. Benno

IT WORKS for crops. Now a common organic pesticide could cure hundreds of millions of people of intestinal worms, if cash can be found for trials. More than 1 billion people, almost all of them living below the World Bank's poverty line, are infected with nematodes. While the worms don't usually kill, they stunt growth, cause anaemia and impair cognitive development. All this helps to "trap the 'bottom billion' in poverty", says Peter Hotez, a specialist in tropical diseases at George Washington University in Washington DC. The current treatment doesn't work well on all types of worms - and resistance is emerging. Now Raffi Aroian at the University of California, San Diego, and colleagues have shown that the protein CrySB, produced by the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis and used as a crop pesticide, could act as an effective drug. An oral dose cleared around 70 per cent ofthe worms from infected mice (PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, DOl: 10.1371/ journal.pntd.oooo614.t002). CrySB is about three times as effective as tribendimidin, the leading drug in development. A big obstacle is a dearth of funding for human trials, says Aroian.

BOOZE that has been treated so that

average, those whose drinks

Torgler of Queensland University

you sober up faster afterwards may

contained 20 or 25 ppm of oxygen

ofTechnology, Australia, says self­

sound like a drin ker's dream. but

went to zero 23 mi nutes and

sacrifice trumps self-preservation if a ship takes longerto sink.

could end up being their downfa l l

27 m i n utes faster respectively than

if i t encourages heavy drin kers to

those who had the lowest-oxygen

consume even more alcohol.

drinks (Alcoholism: Clinical &­

Vaccine fear persists

Experimental Research, DOl: 10.

Although there is no evidence for

atChungnam National U n iversity in

lll1/j.1530-0277.2010.01155.x).

a l i n k between autism and vaccines.

Daejeon, South Korea, gave 30 men

The researchers suggest that

about 1 in 10 US parents still refused

Kwang-il Kwon and his colleagues

and 19 women 360 millil itres of a

enriching alcoholic drinks with

d ri n k containing 19.5 per cent alcohol

oxygen might "allow individuals to

because of safety fears. A quarter

by volume, about the stre ngth of

become sober faster". 'The reduced

believe vaccines can cause autism,

a vaccine fortheir children in 2009

fortified wine or sake. The drinks

time to a lower blood-alcohol

according to a su rvey of 1552 parents

also conta i n ed 8, 20 or 25 parts per

concentration may reduce alcohol·

of under-17s by researchers atthe

m i llion of d issolved oxygen, which

related accidents," they write.

University of Mich igan, Ann Arbor.

is known to play a role i n alcohol breakdown by the body. Ittook about 5 hours for the blood

A spokeswoman for the British Medical Association was unimpressed. "We would n't want a situation where

alcohol levels of volu nteers to reach

people drank more simply because

zero. But Kwon's team found that on

they would recover q u icker."

Flu shot from tobacco The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is ploughing $ 40 mil lion into the possi bil ity of growing flu vaccine in genetically modified, low-nicoti ne tobacco pl ants. It hopes this will make it easier to produce large amou nts of vaccine at short notice than by the egg-based method used today.

Collider thaws out The Large Hadron Collider is out of h i bernation. Aftera wi nter break, the first beam of 2010 was circulated on 28 February. It w i l l i n itially run at 0.9 teraelectronvolts, gradually i ncreasing to 7 TeV in the coming weeks - half its designed energy.

6 March 2010 I NewScientist 1 5

THIS WEEK

The scanner that feels your pain A brain scanning technique is fue l l ing debate ove r whether pain can be m easured o bjectively in pain. Because oxygenated and deoxygenated blood have PAIN intensity, the most personal different levels of magnetisation they look different under MRI. of experiences, can now be measured from the outside, say A technique for analysing fMRI scans called BOLD, for blood­ researchers who scanned the oxygen-level dependent, exploits brains of young men who were fresh out of the operating theatre. this difference to determine Their claim reopens the debate which areas are most active: high oxygen is a sign that a brain over whether pain can be region is particularly active. While measured objectively. It might even be possible to gauge the pain BOLD can reveal if the amount of oxygen flowing to a particular felt by newborn babies, fetuses, region has increased or decreased, "locked-in" patients, who can't it doesn't measure by how much. communicate with the outside Now Tara Renton of King's world, and animals. College London has used an "The definition of pain is that alternative way of analysing fMRI it is subjective, and until now an scans called arterial spin labelling objective measurement has remained elusive," says Morten (ASL) to measure how much oxygenated blood is flowing Kringelbach of the University of through particular areas. ASL is Oxford, who has previously not new but has only recently worked on a method of objective been applied to the study of pain. pain measurement and was not In regions of the brain involved in the most recent work. Functional MRI scans have been associated with feeling pain, used before to identify brain areas Renton and her team found that that "light up" when someone is the amount of oxygenated blood

Jessica Hamzelou

correlated with the intensity of pain described by 16 young men, just after they had had their wisdom teeth removed. Renton, who described the findings at King's College London on 24 February but has not yet

published them, says her team's ASL technique is the first objective measure of ongoing pain intensity. In earlier experiments, volunteers were pricked with a pin or touched with a hotplate. But a short sharp shock provides a

PAIN - A SYMPTOM OR A DISEASE? There is still disagreement over

cultural attitudes to pain.

whether it's possible to measure pain

Beverly Col lett, consu ltant i n pain

unacceptable. She highl ights

associated with functional, structural

cultural attitudes which e n courage

and chemi cal changes in the brain, thus putting it into the realm of a

objectively. But attempts to do so are

medicine atthe University Hospitals

people to put up with pain, rather

already driving calls for pain to be

of Leicester, described the scale of

than seeking treatment - including

recognised as a disease in its own

the problem in the UK, where she

sayi ngs like "no pain, no gain".

right, rather than a mere symptom .

says 7 . B m i l l i on people are l iving with

She and Col lett are calling for

disease state ( Thejournal Of Pain, 001: 10.1016/j.jpain.2009.09.001).

"Chro n i c pain fits the definition of a

On 1 March a group of UK pain

chronic pai n . "Of these, 25 per cent

pain to be treated as a disease, rather

researchers gathered in London to

will lose their jobs and 22 per cent

than a symptom as is the case at

complain about the way pain is

will develop de pression." The cost of

the mom ent. This would hopefully

viewed and treated. They argued

pain is estimated at over €200 b i l l i on

em phasise its seriousness and lead to

diagnose pain within the next 5 to 10

that far too many people in the world

per year i n Europe and $150 billion

more extensive treatment.

years. "It's very hard to unravel the

get no treatment for their pain,

per year i n the US.

partly because we are just starting

Irene Tracey of the Pain Imaging

Tracey and her colleague Catheri ne Bushnell recently reviewed the last

disease;' says Tracey. She hopes that imaging tech n i q ues (see main story) w i l l also be used to

complexities of pain from a verbal response," says Tracey. "The use of

to u n derstand the u n d erlying

Neuroscience Group at the U n ive rsity

10 years of imaging research and

imaging to measure pain objectively

causes, and partly because of

of Oxford says this sufferi ng is

concluded that chronic pain is

is potentially very powerf u l ."

61

NewScientist 1 6 March 2010

In this section

• Shaped moulds tell stem cells what to be, page 8 • Dino-eati ng snake (aught red-jawed, page 8 • Why al ien worlds are I ike a toaster, page 10

simplistic view of pain that doesn't take into account the emotional response to longer­ lasting pain, which can affect its perceived intensity, says Renton. The group are developing their ASL-based technique as a potential alternative to existing methods of assessing the effectiveness of novel analgesics during clinical trials. At the moment, researchers have to rely on a subjective description: volunteers and patients are often asked to describe the level of their pain by placing it on a "visual analogue scale", from 1 to 10. But as Renton says, "a line on a page is really a rather inadequate measure of pain". David Borsook, who leads the Pain and Analgesia Imaging and Neuroscience group at McLean Hospital in Boston, agrees. "Whilst it offers a reasonable guesstimate of the amount of pain a person is in, it's not

objective, and there is great variation in responses." Brain scans could help identify which areas are involved in an individual's pain, perhaps leading to personalised treatments that target those areas. An individual's brain activity might gUide a choice between different drugs or counselling, say. "Right now there is little objective data for a clinician to use to choose one drug over another," says Robert Coghill, a neurobiologist at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina. "Different patterns of activation might predict the success of different therapies." Of course, some big challenges remain. "The response to pain may vary throughout the day, depending on what you're thinking about, and we don't know why," says Kringelbach. There are also bound to be vast differences in the level of brain

activation that indicates a given degree of pain in one person compared with another. "The differences haven't been systematically examined yet," says Coghill. Even if we can overcome these difficulties, can pain really be reduced to a mere blip on a brain scan? It is after all an experience that blends emotional and physical responses in a highly complex way. "The hunt for an objective measure of pain is a fool's errand," says Stuart Derbyshire, who researches pain at the University of Birmingham, UK. He adds that, since pain is a subjective experience, objective measurements don't really tell us that much anyway. "We will always need to rely on subjective measures," he says. Richard Gracely at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, agrees. "It's like saying you can measure love, or the beauty of a painting, objectively. Pain is such a private, personal experience. You can only validate what you've measured by asking patients how much pain they're in, so why not just ask them in the first place?" In some cases, though, it is not possible to ask. Jeffrey Mogil, who researches pain at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, says a technique like Renton's could be used to measure the level of pain in patients with locked-in syndrome or who are in a vegetative state.

Fetal brain scan Another question is whether it might be used to help resolve the contentious question of whether fetuses feel pain. There are some obvious hurdles to scanning a fetus's brain. You can't stabilise its head inside the scanner, and blood flow is very low because it is so small. Borsook also worries about the high magnetic field produced by fMRI : "Nobody knows ifit would be dangerous, but it might affect the developing brain in some way."

Despite these challenges most think some form of brain scanning is our best bet for measuring fetal pain. "I think in the not-too-distant future it will be feasible to image the fetus using ASL," says Coghill. The new technique might also allow us to explore animal pain­ both so that it can be compared with the human variety, and because it might be possible to test drugs for pain relief on animals. Mogil says that while "An opiate addict m ight exaggerate how much pain they're in to be prescribed opiate pa inkillers"

there are behavioural indicators for pain in animals -for example, mice lick their paws when in pain - assessing ongoing pain is much harder. Mogi! also raises the intriguing idea of using objective pain measurement on someone who might want to hide the true extent of their suffering. "An opiate addict might exaggerate how much pain they're in, in order to be prescribed opiate painkillers, for example," he says. But Coghill warns against disregarding someone's description of pain in favour of an objective measure. "In the US, insurance companies would jump on an objective method of measuring pain, but this could mean that certain people with different patterns of activation lose out," he says. "We need to ensure that patients are never in a position where they are denied treatment." He says that objective measurements of pain might be improved by finding indicators for how someone was dealing with it. But he emphasises that patient pain ratings should always have a role in pain assessment. "It's not impossible to have an objective measurement of pain, but this will ultimately need to be complemented by subjective reports." • 6 March 2010 1 NewScientist 1 7

THIS WEEK

For fat cells, try flower power to blood, bone and fat. The moulds were bathed in a broth of chemicals that encourage GROWING bone marrow cells in star or flower-shaped moulds may cells to become fat and bone. sound frivolous. But this difference Despite experiencing identical chemical conditions, 70 per cent is enough to dictate whether the cells become fat or bone. of cells sitting in angular moulds, It's the first time geometry such as stars or thin rectangles, alone has been shown to shape a matured into bone. However, cells cell's fate, and could lead to new grown in more curvy moulds, including circles or flower shapes, ways of coaxing stem cells into becoming specific tissues for were more likely to become fat (Proceedings of the National transplant into patients using Academy ofSciences, 001: physical, not chemical, cues. Milan Mrksich of the University 10.1073/pnas.og0326g107). Mrksich's team concluded of Chicago and his colleagues created moulds, 50 micrometres that the deciding factor was the wide, rather like miniature cookie availability of corners, which provide points for cells to push cutters, in shapes including stars, flowers, squares, pentagons and circles. Into each they placed "In star-shaped moulds, the corners trigger the growth a single human bone marrow of long, strong filaments, cell. A type of stem cell, these lead ing to hard bone cel ls" immature cells are precursors

Geom etry decides fate of stem cel l The shape of the mould a bone marrow cell grows in influences the structure of its skeleton and ulti mately the type of cell it becomes FLUORESCENT IMAGES OF PROTEINS

PERCENTAGE OFCELLS

THAT MAKE UP EACH CELL'S SKE LETON

DIFFERENTIATING TO EACH LINEAGE

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60

Andy Coghlan

8 1 NewScientist 1 6 March 2010

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against and sprout internal "stress filaments". These springy nanocables span cells and form their inner skeletons (see picture). In star-shaped moulds, the sharp corners trigger the growth of long, strong filaments, leading to hard bone cells, says Mrksich. By contrast, the rounded edges of flower-shaped moulds encourage the cells to grow short soft filaments, leading to fat cells. Geometry almost certainly influences the fate of cells in their

natural setting in the body. "Cells change their geometries and mechanics throughout development and as they move through the body," says bioengineer Christopher Chen of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Cells may have evolved to use these changes as triggers for switching on genes that guide their development. Physical forces such as pressure from moving fluid or air are also known to alter a cell's fate. •

For daily news stories, visit www.NewScientist.com/news

Brain scans now catch chemicals too

INSIGHT

A CHEMICAL produced during sex

IT SEEMS obvious: if you're planning a new generation of nuclear power stations, you should invest in the most advanced and efficient designs available. Yet that's not what seems to be happening in the US. The first new nuclear power plants on American soil for 30 years could soon be under construction. President Barack Obama has promised tens of billions of dollars in loan guarantees for reactor builders, of which $8.3 bi llion was last month committed to back the construction of two Westinghouse APlOOO light water reactors. These reactors differ only slightly from plants built by the US in the 1970s, yet they have problems of their own, notably questions about whether they can withstand severe hurricanes and earthquakes. The UK is looking to similar light water reactors for its own nuclear expansion. Meanwhi le, other countries are exploring newer technologies. France, Russia, China and Japan are backing Generation IV reactors (see table below), which are more efficient and in some respects safer. Further into the future, advanced fission-fusion hybrid reactors may hold promise (see "The third nuclear option", page 22). China has already begun site preparations for a Generation IV reactor called the HTR-PM, a gas-cooled "pebble bed" reactor powered by fuel in the form of spheres rather than

and l inked to addiction has been visualised in a scanner as it washes across rats' brains. The feat means that functional magnetic resonance i maging (fMRI), a workh orse of neuroscience, can now be used to observe the flow of brain chemicals, not just oxygen - rich blood. By p i n pointing i ncreases i n blood oxygenation i n the brain i n response to d ifferent events - a sign that specific groups of neurons are active - fMRI is responsible for some of the hottest findi ngs about the brai n . Now Alan jasanoff at the Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology and colleagues have extended its power. His team repeatedly mutated a magnetic, i ron-contai n i n g enzyme that "lights up" i n fMRI readi ngs. With each mutation, the researchers tested its te ndency to b i n d to d o pa m ine, a learning and reward chemical in the brain involved in sex and addi ctive behavi o u rs. Mutations that i ncreased this tendency were com bined, resulting in a mo lecule that was both magnetic and strongly attracted to dopam i n e . The team injected t h e molecule i nto the brains of rats, in a region laden with dopamine-producing celis. When given a chemical that triggers dopa m i n e release, that area "lit up" underfMRI (Nature Biotechnology,

001: 1O.103B/nbt.1609).

As China forges ahead with advanced reactors, the US is taking the slow road

New light water reactors will use technology from the 1970s

rods. Due for completion as early as 2013. it will run far hotter than existi ng reactors, and produce roughly 30 per cent more electricity from a given amount of fuel. The higher temperature means that waste heat from the HTR-PM can be used to split water molecules to generate hydrogen for use asa clean fuel for vehicles, The design is also inherently less likely than light water reactors to suffer meltdown followi ng a runaway reaction, as its fuel becomes less reactive if heated beyond normal operating temperatures, Forthe US, perhaps one of the

biggest advantages of some Generation IV designs would be that they produce less waste, Generation IV "fast reactor" technology - which is named for the high-energy or "fast" neutrons that drive the nuclear reaction - can burn spent fuel from conventional l ight water reactors, The US is stopping work on the Yucca mountain project - its only potential repository for spent fuel. Despite these potential advantages, sections of the Obama administration appear to be at odds with each other over the desirability of Generation IV reactors, A letter written in December by US energy secretary Steven Chu, and seen by the trade publication Energy Doily, reveals that the White House sought to ban the Department of Energy from doing research on fast reactors, This stems from concerns over weapons proliferation, To burn spent fuel in fast reactors, it has to be reprocessed to extract plutonium, which can also be used in weapons, Nevertheless, Chu's letter expressed "deep concerns" about the potential ban, noting that other countries are racing ahead, "If the United States does not have a broad fast reactor research program," he wrote, "we will have no opportunity to influence design of these foreign reactors from a vital national security perspective such as prol iferation resistance," The White House has since changed tack, and is including a modest $10 million for fast reactor research in the 2011 budget. Phil McKenna.

Because the molecule must be i njected i n to the brain, t h i s kind of

Nuclear reactors, present and future

chemica l - based fMRI won't be appl ied to humans anytime soon, says

TYPE

COOLANT

AVAILABLE

PROS

jasanoff. b u t it could be used to probe

Generation III

Water

Now worldwide

Proven track record

addiction and d isease using ani mals.

neurons across animal brains react when the chemical is produced in a specific regi o n . The technique could also be used to probe dopam i n e's role in d i seases such as Hunti n gton's. The magnetic enzyme can i n

Low efficiency, Low - te m perature waste heat is less useful. Cannot

Light water reactor

burn recycled fuel efficiently

His lab is now using the enzyme to view how dopami ne-sensitive

CONS

Generation IV

2013 i n C h i na

Produces useful heat.

High-pressure coolant

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gas reactor

and safety

Helium

Generation IV

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France, Japan

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Fast reactor

or lead

and Russia

heat. Can burn

reactors to be processed into

spentfuel

pluto n i u m , Safety issues with coola nt. Early-stage technology

theory b e "evolved" t o b i n d t o other brain chemicals.

Ewen Callaway . 6 March 2010 1 NewScientist 1 9

THIS WEEK

Charged wind keeps planets puffed up Rachel Courtland

A PLANET-sized version of an electric toaster could explain why some exoplanets get so large. A related phenomenon could be responsible for keeping in check the gusting winds that form the stripes of Jupiter. More than 150 planets have been found orbiting closer to their host stars than Mercury is to the sun. Many of these star­ hugging gas giants - known as "hot J upiters" because they can have surface temperatures of 2000 °C or more - have a similar mass to Jupiter but can have

up to six times the volume. Something must be heating the interior of these planets to make them puff up in this way ­ but what? Radiation from the host star can't be the source, as most of it is reradiated into space from gas at the surface. Gravitational heating effects might work for planets with elongated orbits. The ever­ changing gravitational tug of the host star on the orbiting planet would create friction by flexing its interior, possibly generating enough heat to cause the expansion we see. But this mechanism can't explain how

I M PACT ! EX I BITION 16

-

21 March 2010

A un i qu e col l aboration between s c i e n c e and

some planets with a circular orbit - such as TrES-4, which is less massive than Jupiter but 1.8 times as wide - get to be so large. Konstantin Batygin and David Stevenson of the California Institute ofTechnology in Pasadena now suggest that the missing energy could originate in a wind of charged particles circling the planet. The temperature in the atmospheres of hot Jupiters is high enough to knock large

modelling is needed to determine whether currents generated this way reach far enough into the interiors of hot Jupiters to puff them up. "I t might only work at some times in some planets." If the theory proves correct, it could "kill two birds with one stone", says Burrows, because a similar mechanism could play a part in maintaining the speed of wind bands that whip around Jupiter and Saturn. These winds may be driven by the temperature variations between regions "Electrons whipped around receiving different amounts by winds interact with the planet's magnetic field, of sunlight or by the churning generated by the planet's own generating a current" heat. But some other process is needed to keep the winds moving numbers of electrons off atoms like sodium and potassium. These at constant speeds. electrons could then be whipped Even though these gas giants around by the planet's winds and are too cool to liberate electrons interact with its magnetic field, in the same way as on hot Jupiters, generating a current that can the heat deeper within the planet extend deep into the planet (see may strip electrons from hydrogen and other elements. diagram), heating up its interior The interaction of these electrons like the element of an electric toaster (arxiv.org!abs!1002.36So). with a planet's magnetic field, as Batyginhas proposed for "The little power that you're depositing there may be enough exoplanets, may create a counter­ force that helps restrain the winds. to inflate the planet," says Adam Burrows of Princeton University, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, due to launch in 2014, who models the properties of exoplanets but was not associated could help refine the model by with the study. narrowing down the speed of Burrows adds that more detailed winds on puffed-up exoplanets . •

des i g n that expl ores the importance of

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For daily news stories, visit www.NewScientist.com/news

Decision-makers betrayed by their wide eyes WHY can't teachers keep a secret?

Carter concl udes that, rather tha n

Because their pu pils give them away.

driving decisions, noradre n a l i n

It turns out that when peo ple make

helps u s t o cement decisions w e are

decisions, their p u p i l s dilate, a s u btle

veeri n g towards anyway, and that

cue that could be used to predict a

pupil dilation is an outward sign of

person's intentions, or even conve rse

this. "Once you've made a decision,

with people with locked-in syn d rome.

you may as well make it," she says.

It is well known that pupils d i late as it gets darker, and in stressfu l situations as part of the

"You d o n't want to dither." Christopher Summerfield, a cognitive ne uroscientist at the

"fight-or-flight" response. The

University of Oxford, isn't convinced

reflex is mediated by the release of

that the di lation - and therefore

the horm one noradrenalin, which i n

noradrena l i n - is related to decision·

a nimals has a lso been i m p licated

making. Pupils d i l ate when people

in me mory and decision-making.

are excited, and Carter's team could

Ol ivia Ca rter, a neuroscientist at the

be capturi ng that, he suggests.

U n iversity of Mel bourne in Australia,

Ca rter points out that in some of

wondered if noradrenalin - and by

her trials volunteers earned 10 cents

i mplication pupil d i lation - m i g ht

when they chose ce rta i n n u m b ers,

a lso be l i n ked to human cog nition. To investigate, her team asked

while in others there was no opti o n to w i n a prize. But i n both scenarios,

volunteers to pick one of five random

volunteers' pupils tended to d i late

d i gits that d isplayed on a monitor o n e

when they made their choice, i n d icating that d i l ation isn't related to

"Noradrenal in helps us to cement decisions, and pupil dilation is an outward sign of this"

excitement. Even if pupil di lation isn't a sign of decision- maki n g per se, p u p ils could sti l l be used to deduce when someone is ma king a decision, or to help predict their choices, says Carter.

after another for 2 seconds each,

John-Dylan Haynes atthe

and to press a button ind icating

Bernstein Center for Computati onal

the i r cho ice after the final n u m ber

N e u roscience i n Berl i n, Germany,

vanished. An eye sca n n er revealed

has used brain activity p icked u p by

that volu nteers' pu pils were at their

an M R I sca nner to d eterm ine when

widest during the 2 seconds that

a decision is being made. He says

corresponded to their eventual

pupil dilation may reveal a person's

n u mber choice. Carter's team found

concealed thoughts without having to

that they co u l d eventu ally predict

put them into contact with a machine.

with 62 to 100 per cent accuracy

That might make for a low-tech way

which of the five n u mbers people

of reaching out to people who cannot

would ch oose, dependi ng o n the

communicate due to brain damage or

volunteer, based only on when their

paralysis, such as those with locked­

p u pil dilated (Frontiers in Human

i n syndrome. Steven La u reys at the

Neuroscience, 001: 10.3389/

University of Liege i n Belg i u m says

fnhum.20l0.000l8). In 2008, Carte r's team found that

that pupil di lation persists in locked­ i n syndrome. Responses to yes/no or

peopl e's p u p i ls dilate when they

multiple-choice questions could be

switch between two alternative ways

inferred from pupil d i lation if choices

of viewing an optical illusion, such

were read out o r displayed o n a

as the video-based s p i n n i n g woman

monitor. Laureys's team is using MRI to

i l l usion, i n which the woman seems

attempt communication with people

to switch direction but in fact does

with brain damage, but he says that

not. The effect results from the

eye-tracking gear is more portable

viewer swa p p i n g how they view her.

and cheaper.

Pl asti city of the b ra i n the key to h u m a n deve l o p m e nt, cogn iti o n a nd evo l uti o n Ferrier prize lecture - open to the public

Monday 1 5 March 20 1 0 from 6 .30pm to 7.30pm Professor Col i n Blakemore FRS U n i versity of Oxford and U n i versity of Warwick How do our genes program the complexity of our brains? Why i s human culture s o much richer than that of the Great Apesl And how has human cognitive achievement continued to accelerate. when our genetic makeup has changed very little over the past 100.000 yearsl The answers might lie in the adaptability and plasticity of the brain

roya lsociety.org/events-diary

free - no ticket or advance booking reqUired Doors open at 5. 45pm and seats will be allocated on a flrst­ come-firs i-served baSIS. ThiS leclUre will be webcast live at rovalsociety.orgllive and available 10 View on demand within 48 hours of delivery ViSit our video archive at royalsoC/ely tv

Admission

The Roya l Society 6-9 Carlton House Terrace London SW1Y 5AG Tel +44 (0)20 745 1 22 1 3

Email [email protected]

Ewen Cal laway . 6 March 2010 I NewScientist 1 11

THIS WEEK

Cryptic remains reveal their secrets Linda Geddes

RARE snippets of genetic material locked inside fragments of bone and teeth can help identify people who die at war or sea, even when little remains oftheir bodies. But often there simply isn't enough DNA to be sure. A new technique, recently used to identify the Titanic's " unknown child", could make it easier for bereaved families to get a positive ID. To extract DNA, researchers mix ground-up fragments of tooth or bone with a solution containing a chemical called EDTA, which removes calcium from bone. Mike Coble of the us Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory in Rockville, Maryland, and his colleages increased the concentration of EDTA and added an enzyme called pro-K, which breaks down the crys tallised clumps of protein that lock DNA away in bone (Forensic Science International: Genetics, in press). The net effect, says Coble, was to "liberate" more DNA, increasing the chances of identifying remains. In the case of the unidentified child who died in the Titanic disaster, the new technique

enabled Ryan Parr of Lakehead University in Ontario, Canada, to say that the remains were most probably not those of Eino Panula - as initially thought - but another child, Sidney Goodwin. However, as with most identifications, Goodwin's relies on DNA from mitochondria, because it is more abundant than DNA from cell nuclei. Nickolas Papadopoulos ofthe Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, cautions that excluding someone on the basis "The technique should be welcome news for fami lies waiting to find out about deceased relatives"

Registry. "In most cases we weren't of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) Other evidence, like shoes found with the body, suggests that getting anything but mtDNA, but alone might be a mistake. the child was indeed Goodwin. In In a study published this week, this technique means we can use future, though, Coble's technique more of the bone and as a result his team shows that mtDNA can vary within different tissues of pull out more DNA." should reduce the reliance on That should come as welcome mitochondrial matching, as it the same individual. Previously news to the thousands offamilies it had been assumed that mtDNA will often be possible to extract was the same in every cell (Nature, sufficient amounts of nuclear DNA still waiting to find out about DOl: lo.1038/natureo88oo). "It loved ones following conflicts like from badly damaged remains. "In battlefield remains, often all the Vietnam and second world doesn't mean that you can't use you end up with is bone and teeth," wars. "For them, the wounds are mtDNA, it just means that you as fresh as if it had occurred says Louis Finelli, director of the have to be careful about who you exclude," says Papadopoulos. yesterday," says Finelli. • US Department of Defense DNA

Females wear the horns in the battle for dung

a va luable resource that provides

ball, the larger a n d more fertile the

du ng, raid other brood bal ls, a n d

nutrients for the i r eggs. Matched for

offspri n g will grow to become.

replace existing e g g s with the i r own .

IN HUMANS a s i n other a n i mals, it's

001: 10.1098/rspb.2009.233S).

usually the male of the species who

body size, females with bigger horns

female-female rivalry that the horns

so provide better for their offsp ring

produce more brood b a l l s and i n t u rn

have evolved, says Watson.

(Proceedings of the Roya/Society B,

more offsprin g," says Watson.

Patricia Backwell, a behavioural ecologist at the Austra l i a n National University in Canbe rra, says that

usability q u i c kly, so they have to

a lthough there are many cases of

much larger horns than males -

seize it fast." says Watso n . Female

female weaponry - in liza rds, crabs

make balls of dung, ca lled brood bal ls,

beetles have been found to steal

a n d some dinosa u rs, for instance ­

dung, it's female beetles that have resorted to horned aggression.

in most cases it is used in defence

from cowpats and bury them

of the Unive rsity of Western

underground. They then lay an egg

Austra lia, Perth, pitted female d u n g

into each ball; each ball provides

beetles ( Dnthophagus sagittarius)

nutrition for the developing l a rva,

against each other in a race for d u n g -

and the more d u ng there is i n the

1 NewScientist 1 5 March 2010

The life of a female d u n g beetle is h i g h ly competitive. "Dung loses its

To give their young a start i n life, female d u ng beetles - which have

12

I t is against this backdrop of intense

to get greater access to the d u n g a n d

bears arms. But in the epic battle for

Nicola Watson and Leigh Simmons

"Larger-horned females managed

managed to coll ect more d u ng and

"Female beetles have been found to steal dung. raid other brood ba lls. and replace existing eggs"

agai nst predators. I n the beetles, h owever, weaponry has evolved under female competition, she says, which is rare.

Wendy Zukerman .

For daily news stories, visit www. NewScientist.com/news

The writing is on the 60,OOO-year-old eggshells COULD these lines etched into 60,000-year-old ostrich eggshells (see photo) be the earliest signs of humans using graphic art to communicate? Until recently, the first consistent evidence of symbolic communication came from the geometric shapes that appear alongside rock art all over the world, which date to 40,000 years ago (New Scientist, 20 February, p 30). Older finds, like the 75,000-year-old engraved ochre chunks from the Blombos cave in South Africa, have mostly been one-offs and difficult to tell a part from meaningless doodles. The engraved ostrich eggshells may change that. Since 1999, Pierre-jean Texier of the University of Bordeaux, France, and his colleagues have uncovered 270 fragments of shell at the DiepkloofRock Shelter in the Western Cape, South Africa. They show the same symbols are used over and over again, and the team say there are signs that the symbols evolved over 5000 years. This long-term repetition is a hallmark of symbolic communication and a sign of modern human thinking, say the team (Proceedings ofthe National Academy ofSciences,

DOl: 1O.1073/pnas.0913047107). The eggshells were probably used as containers, and the markings may have indicated either the shells' contents or their owner. Texier points out that until recently, bushmen in the region carved geometric motifs on ostrich eggshells as a mark of ownership. If the symbols do signify ownership, it could have implications for the evolution of human cognition. lain Davidson, an Australian rock art specialist at the University of New England in Armidale, New South Wales, has suggested that marking ownership must have come after humans became self-aware. The eggshells could help to illuminate when this happened in this part of the world, he says. Written language may have evolved more than once in human history. "judging from what we know about the evolution of art all over the world, there may have been many traditions that were born, lasted for some time and then vanished," says jean Clottes, former director of research at the Chauvet caves in southern France. "This may be one of them, most probably not the first and certainly not the last." Kate Ravilious •

6 March 2010 1 NewScientist 1 13

IN BRI EF

Happiness ain't all it's cracked up to be THE Founding Fathers liked happiness so much they declared its pursuit an inalienable right of US citizens, but maybe this wasn't such a good idea. Happiness seems to make people more selfish. Joe Forgas at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and his colleague Hui Bing Tan put 45 students into good or bad moods by giving them positive or negative feedback on a task, then gave each raffle tickets for a A$20 prize. The students could choose to share these with others or keep them all for themselves : those who had been praised kept more (Journal ofExperimental Social Psychology, 001: 1O.1016/j. jesp.201O.01.007).

There'll be little warning if Earth's magnetic field flips

Hulot of Denis Diderot Un iversity in Paris, France, and colleagues ran computer simulations of Earth's magnetic dynamo based on a range of plausible values for inputs

It's not the first study to smear happiness's golden image. Forgas has also found that happy people are less persuasive, more influenced by stereotypes, more gullible and have worse memories than their unhappy fellows.

such as the viscosity, el ectrical and thermal conductivity EVEN if we knew precise details of Earth's core, we would

of the outer core, and the temperature difference across it.

not be able to predict a catastrophic flip in the po larity of

The mode l's predictions remained consistent over this

its mag netic field more than a decade or two ahead.

range of values for no more than a few decades, Hulot's

Our planet's magnetic field has reversed po larity from t i m e to time throughout its history. Some models suggest

team wi l l report in Geophysical Research Letters. Their

Sleep: too little and too much create fat

result impl ies thatwe can forecast a flip only this far in

SLEEP'S effect on fat is becoming clearer. Having too much or too left exposed to space radiation. This could short-circuit The last polarity switch was around 800,000 years little piles on the worst kind of fat. satell ites, pose a risk to ai rcraft passengers and play ago. Overthe past few decad es, the magnetic field has Kristen Hairston and colleagues at Wake Forest University in havoc with electrical equipment o n the ground. weakened rapidly enough to fl ip wit h i n a few thousand To test whether we would see a flip coming, Gauthier years, but this could also be part of a more lim ited variation. Winston-Salem, North Carolina, monitored 1100 African and Hispanic Americans for five years. Both groups are at a high risk of (Proceedings ofthe National Flies' self-righting akin to early aircraft Academy ofSciences, 001: obesity-related disorders. HOW do flies right themselves so measure changes in direction. It is 10.1073/pnas.l000615107). People under 40 gained thought that the halteres are wired 1.8 kilograms more on average if swiftly after being batted away in Simultaneous recordings by mid-flight? Experiments on fruit directly to the wing-control system, three high-speed cameras showed they got less than 5 hours of sleep flies suggest their stabilisation allowing them to recover quickly. that the flies can right their course per night than if they slept for 6 or systems are similar to the to an accuracy of 2 degrees within 7 hours. Those regularly sleeping To determine how halteres 60 milliseconds. Drag on their gyroscopes of early aeroplanes. work, Leif Ristroph of Cornell for more than 8 hours gained 0.8 Flies are known to reorient University in Ithaca, New York, wings dampens their rotation, then kilograms more than the medium­ themselves from small placed tiny magnetic rods on the the flies " row" their wings to right sleep group (Sleep, vol 33, p 289). disturbances faster than their backs offruit flies and released themselves. This is akin to early CAT scans revealed increases visual systems can react. In lieu them. Altering the magnetic field planes, which used gyroscopes to in visceral fat, which accumulates of hind wings, they have two tiny around the flies made the rods automatically adjust wing shapes around the internal organs and is sensors, called halteres, that twist, pushing the flies off course to help stabilisation in flight. particularly dangerous to health. that a flip would be completed in a year or two, but it as

advance - and then o n ly with data that is as precise as

others predict, it lasted decades or longer we would be

possible. "It's l i ke predicting the weather," says Hulot.

14 1 NewScientist 1 6

March 2010

For new stories every day, visit www.NewScientist.com/news

Do good genes aid sexual success? GENES behind the immune system may explain why some women have more sexual partners than others. The major histocompatibility complex (MHC) is a region of DNA vital to the immune system. The more diverse the genes of the MHC, the more effective it is at conferring disease resistance, and i n a variety of an imals individuals with diverse MHCs are more l i kely to be chosen as a sexual partner. Its effect i n humans, however, i s unclear. Hanne Lie of the U n iversity

Simple scalp electrodes follow hand's twists and turns MIND-READING is powerful stuff, but what about hand-reading? Intricate, three-dimensional hand motions have been " read" from the brain using nothing but scalp electrodes. The achievement brings closer the prospect of thought-controlled prosthetics that do not require brain surgery. Electroencephalography (EEG), which measures electrical activity through the scalp, was previously considered too insensitive to relay the neural activity involved in complex movements of the hands. Nevertheless, Trent Bradberry and

colleagues at the University of Maryland, College Park, thought the idea worth investigating. The team used EEG to measure the brain activityoffivevolunteers as they moved their hands in three dimensions, and also recorded the movement detected by motion sensors attached to the volunteers' hands. They then correlated the two sets of readings to create a mathematical model that converts one into the other. In additional trials, this model allowed Bradberry's team to use the EEG readings to accurately

monitor the speed and position of each participant's hand in three dimensions (The Journal of Neuroscience, DOI:1O.1523/ jneurosci.6107-0g.2010). IfEEG can, contrary to past expectation, be used to monitor complex hand movements, it might also be used to control a prosthetic arm, Bradberry suggests. EEG is less invasive and less expensive than the implanted electrodes, which have previously been used to control robotic arms and computer cursors by thought alone, he says.

of Western Austra lia in Perth measured the diversity of the MHC in 74 heterosexual female students and asked them about the number of sexual partners they had had.

Neutrino subway to flashy destination

After controlling for attitudes towards sex and age of fi rst

AN INTREPID subatomic particle

intercourse, she found that the

has been detected after travelling beneath Japan, heralding a new attempt to probe the mystery of neutrino oscillations. The result could take us closer to explaining why the universe is full of matter. In the "T2K" experiment, a beam of neutrinos is sent from a particle accelerator near the village ofTokai to the Super­ Kamiokande neutrino detector deep under mount Ikenoyama 300 kilometres away. A small fraction will hit an atomic nucleus inside Super-Kamiokande and so create a distinctive flash of light. The goal is to find out why neutrinos oscillate spontaneously between three "flavours": electron, muon and tau. "It is 10 times as sensitive as previous experiments," says David Wark of Imperial College London. I t could also shed some light on why we exist. "The known laws of physics should lead to roughly the same quantity of matter and antimatter in the universe," says Wark. But for some reason matter dominates. Particle physicists suspect that whatever process gives the universe this bias also plays a part in the physics of neutrino oscillations.

g reater a woman's MHC diversity. the more sexual partners she had had. There was no correlation with overall genetic diversity (Animal Behavio ur, 001: 10.1016/j. anbehav.2009.12.040). Whether this means women with diverse MHCs have greater evolutionary success is debatable. Boguslaw Pawlowski, an anthropologist atthe U n iversity of Wroclaw. Poland. points out that contraception means there may not be a strong correlation between number of sexual partners and reprodu ctive success.

Martian glacier lube could fuel rockets ROCKET engines could benefit from

at the edge of the ice cap. forming a

a natural Martian lubricant - but not

ring of concentrated salt. This could

to keep them oiled. A salty sludge

one day be m i n ed as a component

that may be l u bricating the ice caps

of solid rocket fuel, says Fisher.

of Mars could one day provide fuel. The ice is too cold to flow

The team found that patterns i n radar maps of layers in the ice cap

normal ly. But if winds were to carry

made with the Mars Reconnaissance

salty soil particles to the ice cap. they

Orbiter are consistent with flowing

might gradually sink to form a briny

ice Uaurnal of Geophysical Research,

bed. kept liquid by the planet's

001: 10.1029/2009je003405).

warmth. This could allow the ice cap

However, the probe's radar has 50 far

to flow l i ke a glacier. say David Fisher

found no sign of brines. saysJack Holt

at the Geological Survey of Canada in

atthe U n iversity of Texas. Austi n .

Ottawa, and colleagues.

"We could be missing something,

Such brine would freeze as it

but so far there is no evidence for

moved toward lower temperatures

anything wet at the base," he says.

6 March 2010 I NewScientist 1 15

TECHNOLOGY

For daily technology stories, visit www.NewScientist.com/technology

No need to fear an overloaded i nbox

Keep it mobilel keep it charged YOUR cellphone need never again run out of juice while you're on the go. So says Nokia of Finland, which filed a US patent last week for a handset that recharges itself by harvesting energy from the owner's motion (bit.ly/b8gFt3). Nokia envisages a phone in which the heavier components, such as the radio transmitter circuit and battery, are supported on a sturdy frame. This frame can move along two sets of rails, one allows it travel up and down, the other side to side. Strips of piezoelectric crystals sit at the end of each rail and generate a current when compressed by the frame. So as the user walks, or otherwise moves the phone, the motion generates electricity. This charges a capacitor which in turn trickles charge into the battery, keeping it topped up.

886m The value of the contract (in dollars) awarded by the US a i r force to Raytheon to im prove the accuracy, rel iabil ity and security of G PS

conference, and how a worker might prioritise them. It then scans a user's inbox and orders the emails by priority. The team tested Radar using EMAIL overload need not be so a grou p of volunteers who were unmanageable, thanks to a new asked to pick up the planning planning tool which makes it of a large conference with only easier to spot urgent messages a full inbox to gUide them. Some in a bulging inbox. emails contained critical tasks ­ Andrew Faulring along with such as finding a new room for a colleagues at Carnegie Mellon scheduled speaker- others were University in Pittsburgh, unimportant or even unhelpful. Pennsylvania, devised the Faulring found that volunteers Reflective Agents with Distributed given the tool significantly Adaptive Reasoning (Radar) outperformed those left to sort system to help tame out-of­ through the emails unaided, and control inboxes. made fewer mistakes. The results The system relies on human were presented at the Intelligent trainers to teach it what words User Interfaces conference in might characterise the tasks Hong Kong, China, last month. involved in, say, organising a

"Only o u r Twitter acco u nt has been ha cked" UK-based online bank First Di rect tells its Twitterfollowersthat i napprop riate tweets

they received were a result of itsTwitter accou ntbeing com p ro m i sed, while stressing that customers' account deta i l s have not been affected (26 February)

6 March 2010 I NewScientist 1 17

TECH NOLOGY

Will the anaconda or the oyster rule the waves?

to an area where waves are relatively strong makes it a popular choice. It has also been tested at the world's first commercial wave farm off the Portuguese coast. Early experience with these devices shows how difficult it is to set up a viable wave power system. The three Pelamis snakes tried out in Portugal's wave farm in 2008 Only ti m e will te l l if any of the creati ons desi gned to harness the powe r of th e had to be towed back to shore waves have th e staying power to help the green el ectricity ind ustry th rive after barely two months because of buoyancy issues and a lack of cash. Trident Energy, meanwhile, developed the Oyster, a hinged the surface, converting the up­ is still struggling to start sea trials. Colin Barras and-down motion of the waves Last September, the company's metallic shell that sits on the FROM giant hydraulic oysters that into electrical power. sea floor and opens and closes prototype rig capsized as it was as waves wash over it - hydraulic This project and others like it sit on the sea floor, to long rubber being towed to its test site, setting snakes that writhe in the ocean cables link it to onshore the project back several months. will add to the growing throng of hydroelectric generators. It has wave-power systems already in Although early setbacks are to swell, there's no shortage of creatures designed to harness the the water. been powering gooo homes in be expected, says Peter Tavner, a renewable energy engineer at power ofthe waves. Ifwave power Orkney since November 200g. Trident Energy of South end­ The Pelamis device is a jointed on-Sea, UK, chose a system of is to emerge as a viable form of Durham University, UK, wave green energy, we need to put them floats that bob up and down in the mechanical snake that floats near power must learn lessons from the surface, flexing in the waves waves to drive generators on a to the test and only the most the more established wind-power reliable can expect to survive. to drive hydraulics systems that platform above. Aquamarine industry if it is to thrive. power electrical generators. It has Power and Pelamis Wave Power, While there's a veritable Unlike solar energy, where both based in Edinburgh, UK, menagerie of strange beasts already been tried out in the efforts have focused on making taking to the sea, most of them North Sea off Orkney - the have opted for more unusual designs more efficient, successful solutions. Aquamarine Power has proximity of a populated region can expect a humdrum life, says wind-power designs are based on John Chaplin, a marine engineer at the University of Southampton in the UK. "The fundamental problem facing wave-power devices is that most ofthe time the water is moving with rather low velocities," he says. Just as wind turbines grind to a halt on a quiet day, wave power machines generate little power in quiescent conditions. That's the challenge for wave power - how to extract energy from lifeless waters. "Such a wide-open brief has led to an enormous range of inventions," says Chaplin. Budding wave-power designers are getting ample opportunity to find ways to tum gently bobbing waves into energy, with new projects hitting the water with metronomic regularity. For example, last month, New Jersey­ based Ocean Power Technologies confirmed it was to start work on a project to deploy 10 of its PowerBuoy machines 4 kilometres off the coast of Reedsport, Oregon. They ride on 18 1 NewScientist 1 6 March 2010

For daily technology stories, visit www.NewScientist.com/technology

reliability. The ubiquitous three-blade wind turbine has a history stretching back at least 50 years to Gedser in Denmark. The Gedser Mill, as the turbine is called, hardly represents the pinnacle of turbine efficiency, says Tavner. Others in the industry, particularly engineers in the US, thought a two-blade turbine offered better aerodynamics, he says. "The wave-power industry will have to throw the machines out there and see how long they survive"

The trouble was that the hub at the centre of a two-blade turbine is under severe strain as the two blades rotate. That strain reduces the turbine's life expectancy; adding a third blade eases the problem. As tweaks to the Gedser Mill design further improved its reliability, it became clear even in the US that the Danish turbine would win out. "Is a three-blade

turbine optimal? No," says Tavner. "But is it functional and has the production volume risen to make it a good solution? Yes." "I think the three-blade Gedser turbine design is a bit like a four­ stroke petrol engine," Tavner says. "I t worked and it was rugged." There are signs that the wave­ power industry has grasped the importance of reliability. For exam pie, the Trident Energy system has abandoned hydraulics, which are prone to rusting, so its bobbing floats, whose movement is used to generate energy, should stay operational, says company founder, Hugh-Peter Kelly. The Pelamis snakes are easily towed into dry dock for cheap and easy onshore maintenance, points out Tavner. Aquamarine Power claims that maintenance problems with the Oyster are minimal because it pumps pressurised water onshore to drive easy-to-reach generators there. Chaplin, meanwhile, is a member of the team behind perhaps the most outlandish of all wave-power converters, the 200-metre-long Anaconda. Floating just below the surface, the water-filled rubber tube is squeezed by the waves. As a swell hits the front of the snake, it squeezes the tube creating a bulge that ripples along its length to power a turbine in its tail. The unusual material and general lack of moving parts should give it a long life, Chaplin claims. At this stage in the nascent wave-power industry, no one actually knows which designs will prove to be up to the job, says Tavner. To some extent, the industry will have to " throw the machines out there" and see how long they survive. It's only through a period of very public failures that the wave­ power industry will arrive at its own version of the Gedser Mill, he suggests. When that happens, perhaps the industry will become known for its utility, ratherthan its oddity. •

INSIGHT Hope for a fuel cell future Blooms but there is truth behind the hype AN EN ERGY revolution started last week that will see fridge-sized boxes in every building generate electricity on demand from natural gas or biogas, At least, that was the story told by the publicity and excitement around the celebrity­ backed debut of Californian company Bloom Energy. The firm's solid-oxide fuel cells (SOFCs), dubbed "Bloom boxes" by the media, are already being trialled by eBay, Google and Coca-Cola, and Bloom says they can shrinka building's carbon footprint by half. Bloom's claims are plausible, despite few details being released, But the company isn't the vanguard of a revolution in electricity supply; the revolution has already begun, Several more experienced firms already make fuel cells much l ike Bloom's, and some are cheap enough to be heading into homes already. The technology at the heart of the excitement looks unspectacular: a chunk of ceramic. But the right ceramic can be an electrolyte that allows the movement of ions needed to combine natural gas with oxygen from the airwithout burning, driving power around an external circuit in the process, No expensive catalyst is required - an advantage over hydrogen fuel cells, most of which need plati num to work, An SOFC must be heated to reduce the ceramic's resistance and start the reaction, which then generates its own heat. Despite that, Bloom claims its cell can power a building more efficiently than an electricity grid, which loses power in transmission and is fed by power plants that waste heat from combustion, Bloom's boxes are impressively compact, but so are most SOFCs, As far as innovation goes, the firm will say only that the chunk of ceramic inside is painted with "secret inks" that act as anode and cathode. That suggests its interior is held

Bloom ing marvels Solid-oxide fuel cells offer a cheap a n d clean method o f generating power from heated air and hydrocarbons

Oxidation of fuel

gas forms water and electrons

together by the ceramic, says Helge Hol m-Larsen ofTopsoe Fuel Cell in Lyngby, Denmark, requiring a relatively thick chunk of it that would need heating to at least 900 OCto operate, That cuts efficiency, although a fuel cell serving a constant demand would not need to start from cold very often, For more variable demands, like those of an office or home, cutting the start-up penalty is crucial. Topsoe uses an enlarged anode to support its own SOFes interior, allowing a smaller electrolyte that operates effectively at 750 °C, says Holm-Larsen. Fuel cells can be even cooler, though, Those from Ceres Power in Crawley, UK, operate below 600 °C thanks to a custom electrolyte of lower resistance. The temperature is low enough for steel welds to hold the device together inside, Domestic boilers powered by Ceres's cells are cheap and advanced enough for 37,500 of them to be headi ng to homes in the UK this year, as part of a four-year programme for customers of energy supplier British Gas, Once installed, the cell will generate most of a home's electricity, says Ceres, Colin Barras.

6 March 2010 1 NewScientist 1 19

TECH NOLOGY

M ini-projector tu rns your body into a touchscreen FINDING the keypad o n your cell phone or music player a bit cramped? Maybe your forearm could be more accommodating. It could become part of a skin-based interface that effectively turns your body into a touchscreen. Called Skinput, the system is a marriage of two technologies: the ability to detect the ultralow­ frequency sound produced by tapping the skin with a finger, and the microchip-sized "pico" projectors now found in some cell phones. The system beams a keyboard or menu onto the user's forearm and hand from a projector housed in an armband. An acoustic detector, also in the armband, then calculates which part of the display you want to activate. But how does the system know which icon, button or finger you tapped? Chris Harrison at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, working with Dan Morris and Desney Tan at Microsoft's research lab in Redmond, Washington, exploit

the way our skin, musculature and skeleton combine to make distinctive sounds when we tap on different parts of the arm, palm, fingers and thumb. They have identified various locations on the forearm and hand that produce characteristic acoustic patterns when tapped. The acoustic detector in the armband contains five piezoelectric cantilevers, each weighted to respond to certain bands of sound frequencies. Different combinations of the sensors are activated to differing degrees depending on where the arm is tapped. Twenty volunteers tested the system and most found it was easy to navigate through icons on the forearm and tap fingers to actuate commands. "Skinput works very well for a series of gestures, even when the body is in motion," the researchers say, with subjects able to deftly scroll through menus whether they moved up and down or flicked across their arm.

Uncovering the facts that onl ine news leaves out EVEN the most conscientiously crafted

the Google News site to find related

The system could use a wireless technology like Bluetooth to transmit commands to many types of device - including phones, iPods and even PCs. The researchers will present their work in April at the Computer­ Human Interaction meeting in Atlanta, Georgia. Pranav Mistry ofthe Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology warns that users will have to position the armband very precisely so the projection always appears in the right place. Nevertheless, Skinput looks a

promising idea, says Michael Liebschner, director of the Bio­ Innovations Lab at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, who has worked on bone acoustic conduction technology for gadget -to-gadget transmission. "This sounds a very feasible approach to using the body itself as an input device," he says. "When you are immersed in a virtual game using a head-mounted 3D display, you cannot just take it off to fiddle around with control buttons. This will make things much easier." Paul Marks.

working to add automatic translation

misconduct appears alongside it.

to the software so it can also work

The sentence was taken from a later

with Arabic or Turkish news articles.

New Scientist tested the softwa re on an article from Fox News about the

article in The Hill, a newspaper that covers the US Congress. Although correct in that instance,

incident in November 2009 in which

Tel l Me More cannot be trusted to

news story can omit i nformation that

articles, and analyses them i n the

emails at a climate research unit i n

always present a balanced vi ew. It

some readers mightfind relevant.

same way to ide ntify any new

the U K were hacked (New Scientist,

b l i ndly presents any new information

A prototype web service sets out to

information they may contain.

19 December, p 4). The article states

it finds, leaving the user to weigh u p

that the unit's head a n d his collaborator

what they read.

change that, by sourci ng additional

'We then label this information

quotes, figures and other information

as additional actors, figures or

to augment it.

q u otes and present it next to the

Called Tel l Me More, it takes the

initial story," says Francisco Iacobelli

online story you are reading and

of Northwestern University in

scours other web news stories for

Evanston, Illino is, who co-developed

extra information. It starts by

Tell Me More.

characterising the original article in

Iacobe l l i says the software

"It does exactly what an active

"Tell M e More may not always present a balanced view. It blindly presents any new information it finds"

news consumer wants the internet to do: it brings you new ideas and pe rspectives, and it brings them to you q u ickly," says Daniel Sin ker, who teaches online journalism at Columbia

M i chael Mann from Pen nsylva nia

College Chicago and has no ties to the

three ways: using the frequency of

demonstrates a way of helping readers

State University were under particular

software. He warns, however, that

individual words; identifying named

b u i l d up a balanced view of events,

scrutiny, but when viewed using Tell

the tool might be difficult to launch

entities such as people, cities and

by presenting additional and perhaps

Me More an extra sentence sayi ng

commercially, as publishers are

organ isations; and using n u mbers

conflicting information not i n cl u d ed

that a panel at Man n's u n iversity has

l i kely to object to such use of their

such as dollar amounts. It then trawls

in their original news source. He is

clea red him of all al legations of

copyrighted material.

20 1 NewScientist 1 6 March 2010

Phil McKenna .

Conversations for a Smarter Planet.

,

I ,

Smarter energy for a smarter planet. For most of the last century, our electrical g rids were a

companies on how they can better manage del ivery

symbol of progress. The inexpensive, abundant power

and balance loads. Decisions by governments and

they brought changed the way the world worked -

societies on how to prese rve our environment. The

f i l l i n g homes , streets, businesses, town s and cities

whol e system can become more effi cient, rel i able,

with energy.

adaptive ... smart.

But today's electrical grids reflect a time when energy

Smart grid projects are already helping consumers

was cheap, their im pact on the natural environment

save 1 0% on their bills and are reducing peak demand

wasn't a priority and consumers weren't even part of

by 15%. I magine the potential savings when this is

the equatio n . Back then, the power system could be

scaled to include enterprise, govern ment departments

central ised, closely managed and s u p p l ied by a

and u n iversities. And imagine the economic stimulus

relatively small number of large power plants. It was

that an i nvestment i n smarter grids could provide i n our

designed to distribute power in one direction only - not

current cris is.

to manage a dynamic gl obal network of energy supply and demand.

In fact, there's no need for mere imagi nation. A recent report by the London School of Economics calculates

As a result of inefficiencies i n this system, the world's

that an investment of £5 b i l l ion in the deve lopment of

creation and d i stribution of electric power is now

a sm art power grid in the UK could create or retain

wastefu l . With little or no intelligence to balance loads

almost a quarter of a m i l l ion jobs in energy and rel ated

or monitor power flows, enough electricity i s lost

i ndustries. It cou l d enable new forms of ind ustrial

annually to power I n dia, Germany and Canada for an

i nnovation by creating exportab le skills, resources and

entire year. In the UK, Government projections show

tec hnology.

that without new capacity generation, supply will not meet demand by 201 6 , whilst at the same time b i l l i ons of pounds are wasted on energy that never reaches a single l i g ht bulb.

I BM scie ntists and i ndustry experts are working on smart energy solutions around the world. We're working with util ity companies g l obally to acce lerate the adoption of smart grids to help m ake them more

Fortunately, our energy can be made smart. It can be

reliable and give customers better usage information.

managed l i ke the complex g lobal system it i s .

We're working on seven of the world's ten largest

W e can now instrument everyth ing from t h e meter i n

automated meter management projects. We're even

t h e home t o the turb i nes i n t h e plants t o the network itself. In fact, the intelligent utility system actually looks

exploring how to harness i ntermittent wind power by turning mil lions of future electric vehicles into a

a lot more like the I nternet than like a trad itional grid.

distributed storage system.

It can be linked to thousands of power sources -

Our electrical grids can be a symbol of progress again

including climate-friendly ones, such as wind and tidal.

- if we i m b ue the entire system with intelligence. And

All of this instru mentation then g enerates new data,

we can. Let's build a smarter planet. Join u s and see

which advanced analytics can turn into i nsight, so

what others are th i nk i n g , at ibm.com/think/uk

that better decisions can be made in real time. Decisions by individuals and bu sinesses on how they can consume more efficiently. Decisions by utility

IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com and the globe design are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation, registered in many jurisd ictions worldwide. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at 'Copyright and trademark information' at www.ibm.com/legaVcopytrade.shtml

OPI N ION

The third nuclear option Fissi on is unsafe and fusion is decades away, but p u t them to gether

and the p roblems melt away, say Julian H unt and Graham O'Connor THE long-anticipated nuclear renaissance has arrived. In his State ofthe Union address last month, President Barack Obama announced plans for the US to build a new generation of nuclear power plants, and his budget for 2011 proposes large funding increases for the industry. Several European countries are also likely to restart their nuclear power programmes soon. The UK plans to increase to 20 per cent the proportion of its electricity generated from nuclear. A return to nuclear power is attractive right now for many reasons. It promises to help cut carbon emissions and reduce imports offossil fuel. What's more, unlike renewables, it can ensure a stable baseload electricity supply whatever the weather. However, nuclear energy also creates problems of its own, not least the risk of Chernobyl-style accidents and the production of radioactive waste that takes tens ofthousands of years to decay. One thing Obama did not spell out is how the US will deal with a new generation of waste now that it has abandoned plans for a storage facility at Yucca mountain. There is a way of returning to nuclearwhile overcoming all these concerns: hybrid nuclear fusion. The concept has been around for decades, and has been discussed in the technical literature and at the International Atomic Energy Agency. But it has not yet been explained to governments, industry, researchers and the public. Hybrid nuclear fusion combines the two forms of nuclear power, 22 1 NewScientist 1 6 March 2010

than three times the proposed volume of ITER, the world's most advanced fusion project now under construction in France. Another unsolved issue is how to construct a reactor wall, or "blanket", capable ofwithstanding intense bombardment from high­ energy neutrons generated by the plasma. Materials that can do this do not yet exist. Hybrid nuclear power potentially solves both these problems. First, the blanket is itself a fission reactor that burns nuclear fuels and generates neutrons. In the process it absorbs high-energy neutrons from the plasma, reducing the energy flux reaching the outer wall by a factor of 50, meaning that existing materials could be used. Second, a hybrid reactor's plasma ball can be much smaller than in a pure fusion reactor ­ about the same size as ITER's, in fact - because energy generated by fission can be fed back into the plasma to keep it burning. as the solution to all our energy fission and fusion, ina single reactor. This has several problems, and it has undeniable Hybrid reactors have other advantages over fission alone: advantages too. One is that the advantages over fission. It fission reaction can burn a range it minimises the environmental produces no long-lived nuclear im pact, reduces risks, enlarges waste and needs no fuel other than offuels, including the long-lived water. But it could take another 50 high-level nuclear waste produced reserves of nuclear fuel and is years to make fusion technically more flexible to operate. in conventional fission reactors. and economically viable - if it can It " transmutates" these waste Fission, the process behind products into isotopes that decay ever be made to work at all. conventional nuclear power, harnesses energy from the One problem with fusion is the over a hundred years rather than tens of thousands. Not only does radioactive decay of uranium size of the reactor core. To make and other fissile materials. Fusion, a fusion reaction self-sustaining this eliminate some of the nuclear industry's waste problems, it also meanwhile, is an experimental requires a plasma volume of about 3300 cubic metres, more technology that extracts energy potentially helps to rid the world from processes similar to those of plutonium and other weapons­ "Hybrid reactors can help grade materials. occurring inside the sun, where hydrogen atoms are fused rid the world of pluton ium Hybrid reactors also sidestep and other weapons-grade looming shortages of the high­ together to form helium. "Pure" fusion is often touted materials" grade uranium required to fuel

Comment on these stories atwww. Newscientist.com/opinion

conventional reactors, as they can run on non-emiched uranium and thorium. Low-grade uranium and thorium are plentiful in most parts the world. And because the fissile material produced in the blanket remains at well below critical mass, hybrid reactors have a much lower risk of suffering an accident than conventional reactors, as runaway reactions and consequent meltdown are impossible. Finally, the power output of a hybrid reactor can be easily varied. That would allow nuclear power to be combined with renewables, which are inherently unpredictable, to provide baseload power. There is growing interest in hybrid reactors. The Institute of Plasma Physics in Hefei, China, a world-class fusion research centre, is planning to build a prototype by 2020 in collaboration with China's growing nuclear industry. Other countries, including those participating in ITER, are also looking at R&D programmes on hybrid reactors. Last month the UK science minister, Paul Drayson, suggested that nuclear research in the UK and elsewhere should consider hybrid systems. The US energy secretary, Steven Chu, has also mentioned hybrid reactors. Existing fusion research programmes, such as the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy in Oxfordshire, UK, can contribute a great deal to these efforts. Workable hybrid technology is still some way off, but given the inherent problems with fission and the uncertainty over fusion it has to be worth pursuing. Even modest-sized reactors could provide affordable and almost limitless energy for all. Hybrid fusion deserves wider understanding and support from governments, scientists and environmentalists. • J u li a n H u nt is professor of climate

modelling at U niversity Co lleg e London and a formerfusion researcher, G raham O'Co n n o r is a former senior scientist at the ITER project

One minute with ...

G i n ny Ba rbo u r Several j ournals wi l l no longer publish research supported by the

to bacco i n dustry, The chief editor of one of the m explains why

What made you decide to stop accepting papers reporting research funded by tobacco companies?

Last year PLoS Medicine decided to prioritise research about conditions and risk factors that cause the greatest burden of disease, Tobacco is certainly one: i t directly kills over 4 million people a year worldwide, and more indi rectly. We didn't want our pol icy to attract a flood of ind u stry funded tobacco research; we feel the tobacco industry has no reason to fund research ai med at improving public health, If they wanted to do that, they could just shut down, Its main reason for publishing research about tobacco is to downplay the harm it causes, in orderto sell products: it has a long history of that. It also funds research unrelated to tobacco, but that is still a form of advertising, ­

PROFILE

Ginny Barbour is a f o u n d i n g edito r, a n d Is it a medical journal's job to try and stop that?

now c h ief e d itor, of the o p e n access j o u rn a l

Journals cannot just be passive conduits for papers, We have a duty to promote human health, Banning tobacco-funded papers can help researchers who are under pressure to accept funding: the next time a tobacco company offers them money, they can say "No thanks, that would limit where we can publish," Besides us and our colleagues at PLoS ONE and PLoS Biology, the British)ournal of Cancer and the American Thoracic Society journals have also banned tobacco-funded research,

PLoS Medicine, and acting s ecreta ry of t h e

Tests of new drugs are usually funded by drug companies, and some studies have found that company-funded trials are more

Committee on Pu b l i c atio n Ethi cs, a n a s soc i at i o n o f research j o u rna l s

The industry is developing "safer ci garettes" and will need them to be tested in clinical trials. Shouldn't the results be publ ished in peer-reviewed journals?

If tobacco companies fund these trials it will be hard to have confidence in the outcome, But in any case, even a so-called safer cigarette will not contribute to public health, The only reason the i ndustry has for developing one is to promote smoking.

likely to get results favouring the company. Why single out tobacco?

Wouldn't that reduce the harm caused

There is a huge problem with all corporate funding of cl inical trials: irs like asking the coach of the football team to referee the game, But unlike pharmaceuticals, the tobacco industry's products are never useful, they only harm human health. And there has been i ncreasing evidence that the industry's research is problematic; one of our editors opposed banni n g research funded by tobacco companies as a restriction on free speech, but changed his mind because of that.

There is one simple way to reduce the harm caused by tobacco: stop it being sold, I don't acceptthat it will help even if y ou can m ake a slightly safer cigarette, That research is just advertising. Medicaljournals and the p u blic health community musttake a strong stand and say it isn't acceptable to publish research that only seeks to legitimise tobacco.

by tobacco?

I nterview by Debora MacKenzie

6 March 2010 1 NewScientist 1 23

OPINION LETTERS

they ever decrease fitness in a significant manner and become a burden, natural selection will either lower the fitness ofthe linking trait, or select for individuals that happen to unlink both traits. Ever since biologist Motoo Kimura popularised the concept of neutral evolution in the late 1960s, evolutionary biologists have widely accepted that natural selection is not the only factor in evolution. However, it still plays the leading role in the main evolutionary changes leading to the fundamental taxonomical differences observed between species.

I wrote in 1994, as part ofa Aliens can't hear you critique of certain gene-centred From Ivan Erill, Biological Sciences aspects ofneo-Darwinism. From Ray Francis Department, University of The idea that natural selection The comments by David Brin and Maryland, Baltimore County involves a static measure of others about broadcasting our Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli­ fitness influenced solely by presence to aliens leave me Palmarini discuss what they the environment is naive and see as flaws in Darwin's theory outdated. It is true that some (6 February, p 28). They argue models of evolution are restricted that Darwin, and his uncritical to these ingredients, particularly neo-Darwinian synthesis in classical population genetics, followers, got things wrong but few geneticists imagine by attributing so much power that their models are complete to natural selection. descriptions of reality. Their opinion piece covers The transmission of genetic two major themes: endogenous and epigenetic information to constraints and genetic free­ the next generation is a dynamic riding. Darwin clearly process: the fitness land sea pe acknowledged the first, and the changes in response to the neo-Darwinian synthesis has Baltimore, Maryland, US evolving organisms, genes near long accepted the latter. No sane to others can hitch a free ride, doubting the validity of the evolutionary biologist would deny From Ian Stewart and what works is a compromise. inverse square law governing the that evolution is time-constrained Judging by their arguments, All this is well known and has radio spectrum (13 February, p 24). Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini Applying this law shows that and that it must act on whatever been for decades. designs are available at the time. seem to be aiming at the wrong The issue is therefore not the combined output from all target in entitling their book What natural selection, but what this the radio stations on Earth is so So pigs could not evolve wings process involves and how it works. diffuse as to be non-existent easily these days - big news. Darwin Got Wrong. Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini The points they raise do not Darwin did not address these before it travels even one­ millionth of the way to the argue that genetic linkage of relate to flaws in the idea of questions, and deserves no natural selection, but to the blame for the misconceptions nearest possible source of alien phenotypic traits, in which one of other people. life, Proxima Centauri. is selected and the other"free­ many and varied constraints rides", are counter-examples to and influences under which Warwick, UK It seems likely, given the natural selection. That is just plain it must operate. This has long immense number of possibilities, been known: similar observations From Michael Crick that there is life on other planets wrong. Linked phenotypic traits, or spandrels, can only free-ride for can be found in The Col/apse of In discussing evolutionary in our galaxy, perhaps intelligent as long as they remain "silent". If Chaos, which Jack Cohen and pressure by "endogenous life on a few. However, having some grasp of the distances variables", Fodor and Piattelli­ Palmarini have put forward involved, one must realise the as new an idea about the possibility of getting in touch evolutionary process that is as near to zero as you can get. Enigma Number 1585 Bristol, UK I thought was well understood. The genome is part of nature any integer divisible by 5 up to and a source of pressure for a maximum of 300, The tariff RICHARD ENGLAND selection. The first test for any can be any integer between Wonderful water 20 and 38. new mutation is that it should In international diving, the judges' score forthe dive is multiplied On this dive the nine digits From Peter Mahaffey be compatible with the existing genome. That the mutation that appeared in the judges' score, In his article on the unusual by a tariff that represents the degree of difficulty of the dive to the tariff and the points awarded need not be of benefit to the host properties of water (6 February, were all different. How many points give the points awarded for the is one reason for the redundant p 32), Edwin Cartlidge failed to dive, The judges' score can be were awarded for the dive? material accumulated by mention the weirdest property of all: the "Mpemba effect". That is, genomes. It is only after meeting WIN £15 will be awarded to the sender of the first correct this first requirement that the if identical vessels of hot and cold answer opened on Wednesday 7 Apri l. The Editors decision is final. water are placed in a freezer at more obvious selection by Please send entries to Enigma 1585, New Scientist, Lacon House, external environmental factors the same time, the hot water will 84 Theobald's Road, London WClX 8NS, orto [email protected] becomes significant. freeze first. This was first alluded to by Aristotle and then reported (please include your postal address), Darwin was unaware of the Answer to 1579 Fifteen: The number is 4043551 modern concept of the genome, in the late 19 60s as a result The winner Darren Anderson of Mortdale, New South Wales, Australia of observations by a young but he was not wrong. Hexham, Northumberland, UK Tanzanian student. The findings

Evolving argument

Diving points

24 1 NewScientist 1 6 March 2010

For more letters and to join the debate, visit www.NewScientist.com/letters

were eventually published (Physics Education, vol 4, p 172), but the reason is still unexplained.

Darwinian proposition that we are, in fact, just animals. The biological facts are simple: we are Bedford, UK animals in every sense and all our apparent distinctions are merely of degree, not of kind; a fact that is Code-breaking codon easier to spot if you tum off the cultural soundtrack and just From Joe Mortimer watch the action. Animals read the world via a In his article on horizontal gene transfer, Mark Buchanan series of sensory" snapshots". We erroneously states that the genetic read our existence in exactly the code is "universal, shared by all same fashion, but our sensory organisms" (23 January, p 34). snapshots are so multitudinous, overlaid and interlinked that the In mammalian mitochondria there are two codes for methionine, individual frames bleed together and run as a continuous movie in rather than one, and one of the stop codons, which usually the multiscreen theatre of our overgrown brain, resulting in terminates a protein sequence, encodes tryptophan instead. In what we call consciousness. ciliated protozoans, two of the Charles Darwin, 170 years ago, standard stop codons instead scribbled the following asides in encode glutamine. Therefore his notes: "Thought, however the code is not universal, unintelligible it may be, seems as although it can be called much a function of organ, as bile of liver," and "This view should widespread as, for example, the codon TCT codes for serine teach one profound humility, no in any organism. one deserves credit for anything, Bracknel/, Berkshire, UK nor ought one to blame others." Sadly, this fact-based proposition The editor writes is as unpalatable now as when Darwin originally noted it. • Joe Mortimer is correct. There are in fact numerous variations Bi/gola Plateau, to the standard genetic code, New South Wales, Australia particularly in mitochondria but also in the nuclear genomes of a few protozoans, algae and yeasts. Quantum petunias These differences are presumed From David Weldon to have evolved after the fixing of the universal genetic code In your editorial on quantum biology, you write that "the by horizontal gene transfer as discussed in our article, but pigments used in photosynthesis we should have made their use quantum calculations" (6 February, p 5). existence clear. I shall soon be taking a closed­ book exam and, since I sus pect

Darwin's conscious From Reg Morrison

Ouryeaming for distinction from the animal world induces us to explore some weird mental byways, one ofwhich being that we are special because we possess consciousness (g January, p 28, and 6 February, p 26). This tedious hunt for distinction goes on because most people cannot quite believe the

that most definitions of closed climate is the average of weather book would fail to make mention over a long period of time. of pot plants, I intend take a plant The fact that both sceptics into the exam with me, show it and climate scientists are fOCUSing the questions and get it to do the on extreme weather events is irrelevant; the important point is appropriate calculations for me. Since neither my gardening that climate scientists recognise books nor BBC Radio's Gardeners' that robust and statistically Question Time show have been significant conclusions about of any help, are there any plants climate can only be drawn from the analysis of many weather which you could recommend as being particularly adept in matters events over a long period. relating to the quantum universe? Bangor, Maine, US Ch urch Stretton, Shropshire, UK

Climate confusion From Jim Ring

In his letter detailing why the Nobel committee rejected calls for new prize categories, Michael Sohlman claims that the Nobel prize in chemistry fOr IggS was given to Paul Crutzen et al for work on "climate change" (13 February, p 22). This prize was given for work on the ozone hole. This has little to do with climate change, although in the popular mind the two fields are frequently confused. Nelson, New Zealand

For the record • We lost our sense of proportion when stating how many people there are i n the world without access to banking services who could benefit from mobile money technol ogy. It is

Weather isn't climate

of course around a billion people, not a

From Thomas Young

• In our article about atmospheric

Michael Payton criticises Michael Le Page's suggestion that one cannot logically draw conclusions about climate change from a single severe weather event (6 February, p 27). Payton appears to miss Le Page's point entirely when he suggests that climate scientists are doing this by using extreme weather events as evidence of climate change. Le Page was not suggesting that one cannot make reasonable inferences about the climate from extreme weather, but rather that it is a statistical fallacy to draw conclusions about the climate from any single weather event or observation (16 January, p 20). After all, weather is not climate, but

water vapour (6 February, p 16) we

million as we stated (20 Februa ry, p 20).

moved the U n iversity of Bern north of the border from its rightful location in Switze rland.

• In a caption in our story o n rock art, we noted that spiral signs on cave wal l s are rare. This was particularly the case for the picture in question, which actua lly depicted concentric circles(20 February, p 30).

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6 March 2010 1 NewScientist 1 25

OPI NION TH E BIG I DEA

Where do atheists come from? Cal l ing yo u rself an atheist o r agnostic i s thou g ht to be a hal l mark of the well -educated, Can it really be that s i m p l e, ask Lo is Lee and Stephen B u l l iva nt HERE's a fact to flatter the unbelievers among you: the bright young things at the University of Oxford are among the most godless groups ever studied in the UK. Of728 students surveyed in 2007, 48.9 per cent claimed not to believe in any god, with 49.6 per cent claiming no religious affiliation. And while a very small number of Britons typically label themselves as "atheist" or "agnostic" (most surveys put it at about 5 per cent), an astonishing 57.3 per cent ofthe Oxford sample did. This may come as no surprise. After all, atheism is the natural stance ofthe educated and the informed, is it not? It is only to be expected that Oxford students should be wise to what their own professor Richard Dawkins calls "self-indulgent, thought-denying skyhookery" - and others call "faith". The old Enlightenment caricature, it seems, is true after all: where Reason reigns, God retires. Of course, things are never quite that simple. Within the sample, for instance, the postgraduates (that is, the even-better educated) were notably more religious than the undergraduates, in terms of both belief in God and self-description. Although the greater number of non-Europeans in the postgraduate population is almost certainly a significant factor here, evidence from elsewhere backs the idea that there is no straightforward relationship between atheism and education. Let's look at some results from the World Values Survey, an international attempt to PROFILE

Lois Lee is a PhD student at the University of Ca mb ri dge and founder-director of the

Non-religion and Secularity Research Network (NSRN). Step h en Bullivant is a research fellow at St Mary's University College, Twickenham, and Wolfson Coll e g e University of Oxford ,

26 1 NewScientist 1 6 March 2010

assess the global state of socio-cultural, moral, religious and political values. The 2005 results show that while there is a clear positive correlation between education and lack of belief in God, the effect is slightly weaker, not stronger, among those with a university education (14.8 per cent were non-believers) compared with those whose highest attainment was secondary level (17-2 per cent). What is more, the survey shows a far stronger correlation between education and certain "irrational" beliefs : for example, only 29.6 per cent of those without even an elementary education believe in telepathy, compared with 51.8 per cent of people with degree-level education. Closer to home, an analysis of the 2008 British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey by David Voas of the University of Manchester reveals that the historical correlation between being educated and being " non-religious" has not only weakened but reversed. Looking at white of Oxford, think we may have the answer. The British people, for example, the findings show problems stem from a long-term, collective that only around 25 per cent of men aged blind spot in research: atheism itself. between 25 and 34 claiming " no religion" have This oversight might seem remarkable (or degrees, compared with around 40 per cent of remarkably obtuse on the part of the social those describing themselves as religious. For scientists) but it is one with deep historical women in the same age group, the difference roots. Many of social science's 19th-century founders, including Sigmund Freud, Karl is less marked but the trend is the same. The picture is more complicated across different Marx, E mile Durkheim, Auguste Comte and ethnic groups, although the overall trend Max Weber, were unbelievers, or " religiously unmusical", as Weber memorably put it. For remains the same. It appears that E nlightenment assumptions them, religion was the great explicandum: about the decline of religion as the population how, they wondered, could so many people believe in something so absurd? What they becomes more educated will no longer do - at least, not without considerable qualification. failed to recognise was that their own, taken­ for-granted, "lack" of belief might its elf be Why is it that, despite the long history of the amenable to inquiry. study of religion, the picture seems to be Ironically, sociologists, psychologists, getting more and not less confused about what it means to believe in God? We, and the economists and, particularly, cognitive anthropologists have become so skilled at scholars who gathered in December last year for a conference at Wolfson College, University explaining why humans seem to have such

For more opinion articles and to add your comments, visit www.NewScientist.com/opinion

Perhaps thecapacityto bel ieve in a supernatural agency is simply non-existent in atheists

For all these reasons and more - not to mention the sheer thrill of entering uncharted waters - we set up the international and interdisciplinary Non-religion and Secularity Research Network in late 2008. The Wolfson meeting was the NSRN's inaugural conference, only the second event on this topic ever to be held in Europe. (The first was convened by the Vatican in 196 9 : make of that what you will.) The conference presented the first fruits of research in this area - and discussed how much still needs to be done. One of the first tasks is to develop a common academic vocabulary. In this article, for instance, we have danced between "atheistic", "non-theistic", "non-religious", "unbelieving" and "godless" as if they were synonyms. They're not. Interesting findings have, however, begun to emerge; some providing insight into the relationship between education and atheism. Voas, also a keynote speaker at the Wolfson conference, says one reason why a greater number of religious people are degree-holders may be that "better educated people have typically reflected on religion and have the self-confidence to come down decisively, on one side or the other". The issue is not which idea - atheism or theism - is more stupid than the other, but that education helps us either to work out or simply to communicate our beliefs, no matter what they are. He also notes the observation by another keynote presenter, Colin Campbell of the University of York, whose 1971 book Toward a Sociology ofIrreligion had until very recently of the theistic, but the atheistic mind. been a lone voice in the wilderness. Campbell 1111 religion comes naturally argues that though the educated are often the We need to discover why some people do not to us, why are so many "get" the supernatural agency many cognitive first to articulate a new cultural pers pective, scientists argue comes automatically to our if that pers pective becomes popular, it will people resistant to it?" spread across the population. As a result, brains. Is this capacity non-existent in the a widespread bias towards theistic beliefs non-religious, or is it rerouted, undermined the education levels associated with that or overwritten - and under what conditions? perspective naturally average out. So it is that a new question readily presents itself: if religion comes so naturally to us, why are Psychologically, we need to know how the that the relationship between intelligence so many people, especially in western Europe, self functions without theistic belief, and how or education and cultural shifts may not be apparently resistant to it? In the UK, for our emotional resources might be altered by as significant as they first appear. example, a sizable 43 per cent said they its absence. Anthropologically, we need to Everybody stands to benefit from wider and understand how people without religion make more systematic research ofthe atheistic or had "no religion" in the 2008 BSA survey. sense of their lives, how they find meaning, Moreover, social scientists themselves non-religiOUS. The believers may take heart consistently rank as the most atheistic of all and how non-theistic systems ofthought are from the fact that the most comprehensive academics: see a recent study by Neil Gross at embedded in, and sha pe, the different cultures studies no longer suggest the unreligious are the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, in which they are present. Sociologically, we cleverer or more lettered than them. But the Canada, and Solon Simmons of the Institute need to know how these alternative meaning­ non-believers might also comfort themselves for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George making systems are shared between societies, that they are no longer outside the how they unite or divide us, and whether non­ mainstream. They have become a "normal" Mason University, Arlington, Virginia (SOciology ofReligion, in press). and significant part of many societies. And religious groups contain pro-social elements What we need now is a scientific study not commonly associated with religion itself. researchers ignore them at their peril. • 6 March 2010 I NewScientist 1 27

Touching

the multiverse Is it possible to glean any useful information from a multitude of un iverses in wh ich anything can happen? It is now, says Amanda Gefter 28 1 NewScientist 1 6 March 2010

W

HEN cosmologist George Ellis turned 70 last year, his friends held a party to celebrate. There were speeches and drinks and cana pes aplenty to honour the theorist from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, who is regarded as one of the world's leading experts ongeneral relativity. But there the similarity to most parties ends. For a start, Ellis's celebration at the University of Oxford lasted for three days and the guest list was made up entirely of physicists, astronomers and philosophers of science. They had gathered to debate what Ellis considers the most dangerous idea in science: the suggestion that our universe is but a tiny part of an unimaginably large and diverse multiverse. To the dismay of Ellis and many of his

COVER STORY

with its own value for the quantity of dark energy it contains, the value we observe becomes not just probable but inevitable. Despite the many virtues ofthe multiverse, Ellis is far from alone in finding it a dangerous idea. The main cause for alarm is the fact that it postulates the existence of a multitude of unobservable universes, making the whole idea untestable. If something as fundamental as this is untestable, says Ellis, the foundations of science itself are undermined.

colleagues, the multiverse has developed rapidly from a being merely a speculative idea to a theory verging on respectability. There are good reasons why. Several strands of theoretical physics - quantum mechanics, string theory and cosmic inflation - seem to converge on the idea that our universe is only one among an infinite and ever-growing assemblage of disconnected bubble universes. What's more, the multiverse offers a plausible answer to what has become an infuriatingly slippery question: why does the quantity of dark energy in the universe have the extraordinarily unlikely value that it does? No theory of our universe has been able to explain it. But ifthere are countless universes out there beyond our cosmic horizon, each

its infinite number of bubble universes. Unfortunately, there's a nasty hole in this approach, in the shape of the phrase "at some particular time": according to Einstein's theory of relativity, it renders the whole exercise utterly meaningless. The problem arises from Einstein's insight that clocks run differently for different observers. Two events that are simultaneous for me are not simultaneous for you, so there are an infinite number of ways you can slice up the multiverse. None is more "true" than any other, so there's no reason to choose one time Comparing infinities slicing over another- and different slices can One of the guests at Ellis's party doesn't see yield dramatically different results. it that way. Raphael Bousso ofthe University Implicit in previous approaches was the of California, Berkeley, has also been grappling idea that the multiverse can be described from with the multiverse, and in the past few an observerless, God's-eye-view, and Bousso months he has found a way round the realised that this was what lead to all those troubling problem of unobservable universes. intractable infinities. So he decided to calculate At a stroke, he has transformed the multiverse probabilities based on what any one observer can see from within their own universe. from a theory so problematical that it threatens to subvert science, into one that Quantum mechanics tells us that the promises predictions we can test. His insights vacuum of space is not empty; instead, it are steering physicists along the path to their crackles with energy. It also tells us that, ultimate goal of uniting quantum mechanics sooner or later, any given universe will decay and gravity into one neat theory of everything. spontaneously into another one with lower Bousso's achievement is all the more energy. Indeed, most cosmologists envisage impressive because he has succeed where our big bang as precisely such an event, during so many others have tried and failed. The which the vacuum we live in emerged from a problem they all encountered boils down higher-energy vacuum that constituted a to this: like quantum mechanics and universe before ours. What matters here, thermodynamics, multiverse cosmology is an though, is that there are a plethora of possible exercise in statistics. Given a universe within universes that can be produced in this way­ the multiverse, you cannot predict what its each one with its own probability. By adding key characteristics will be - how much dark up these probabilities, Bousso was able to energy it contains, say. The best you can do is work out the various probabilities of the calculate the probability that it looks the way observer ending up i n a universe with a it does based on how likely it is that a universe particular set of characteristics. with its particular set of characteristics will occur in the multiverse. Calculating probabilities, though, requires a "measure" - a "Everyth ing that ca n mathematical tool that tells you how to define happen wi l l happen i n the relative probabilities. And finding the right mu ltlverse - an mfmlte measure for the multiverse is far from easy. The trouble is that in an infinite multiverse, n umber of ti mes" everything that can happenwill happen - an infinite number oftimes. In such a set-up, probability loses all meaning. "How do you U sing this approach, Bousso was able to compare infinities?" asks Andrei Linde of derive probabilities for things like the amount Stanford University in California. of dark energy in any particular universe, Prior to Bousso's work, the favoured without ever have to resort to a God's-eye approach was to pick a snapshot ofthe point of view, or speculation about what multiverse at a particular time and calculate might be happening in disconnected bubble the characteristics of all the bubble universes universes beyond our view. He calls this approach the causal patch measure, and the inside, noting how many different values for the amount of dark energy crop up. From important thing is that it works. He has used it there, you extrapolate the relative probabilities to predict the value ofthe dark energy we to the multiverse as it develops over time with ought to see in our own universe, and it > •

•

•

•

6 March 2010 1 NewScientist 1 29

turns out to be remarkably close to the observed value (arxiv.orglabs/hep-th/0702115). So, job done?Not quite. The problem with the causal patch measure is that the result depends on the vacuum energy of the universe the calculation starts with. And such arbitrariness is anathema to physicists.

A hologram of the multiverse While Bousso was working on his observer's­ eye view of the multiverse, cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin ofTufts University in Boston was formulating another approach to the global picture. Vilenkin, too, had become dissatisfied with past approaches to measure making, and had decided there had to be a better way. Together with Jaume Garriga ofthe University of Barcelona in Spain, Vilenkin thought there might be some clues in an earlier breakthrough made by Argentinean physicist Juan Maldacena at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Maldacena had been working with string theory to build model universes when he made a startling discovery. He found a model in a bizarrely shaped universe with five dimensions that is exactly eqUivalent to a simpler model on its four-dimensional boundary. This is a classic example ofwhat is known as the "holographic principle", the idea that for a space in any number of dimensions,

all the physics inside that space can be encoded on its outer boundary in much the same way that a two-dimensional hologram on a credit card can encode all the information about a 3D object. Vilenkin and Garriga figured the entire multiverse must similarly have a holographic image living on its boundary (arxiv.orgl abs/0905.1509). In the case of the multiverse, though, the boundary is not a frontier in space, but in time, infinitely far into the future. Could it hold a uniquely defined measure for the multiverse? Bousso was intrigued. While he believed his causal patch measure was more promising, he decided to see what would happen ifhe tried to derive a measure for the multiverse by studying its boundary instead. "I wanted to figure out a straightforward way of transferring what we had learned from Maldacena to the multiverse," he says. It turns out that zooming in on part ofthe boundary is equivalent to selecting different, finite slices oftime in the interior of the multiverse (see diagram). To see how it works, imagine you are standing in a dark room with your back against one wall and facing another wall. You switch on a flashlight, which illuminates a large oval on the far wall. As you walk towards the wall ahead, the illuminated oval shrinks. The further away you move from the back wall where you started, the smaller the

"We are learn ing how to formulate a quantum gravity theory of the multiverse"

Getting the measure of the m u ltiverse Wh ile traditional approaches to assessing the characteristics of the mu ltiverse have failed, two new approaches have i n d e p e n d e ntly made the same predictions, which also match observations ofthe amountof dark e n e rgy in our own u n i verse

TRADITIONAL V I EW The mu ltiverse cons ists of an i nfinite n u m b e r of , 'UNIVERSES, each one having different properties such as the a m o u n t of dark e n e rgy it conta i n s

CAUSAL PATCH M EAS U RE Ra phael Bousso's a p p roach is to

HOLOGRAPHIC M U LTIVERSE Acco r d i n g t o t h e hologra p h i c p r i n c i p l e, a l l the

restrict o u r v i ew to ONE UN IVERSE. '

physics of the mu ltiverse is encoded o n a B O U N DARY ' ,

It can decay in many different possible

in time, w h e n t i m e is setto I N F IN ITY "

ways with different probabilities

Attempts t o u n d e rsta nd these u n iverses by stu dying a slice

of the mu ltiverse at a particular

'TIME have p roved m i s l e a d i n g beause ti me is d i fferentfor different observers

30 I NewScientist 1 6 March 2010

By co m b i n i n g all possible h istories, you can

Zoo m i n g in a nd out on a section of the

calcu late the value of dark energy we oug ht to

bound ary selects D I FFERENT T I M ES '

s e e , H owever, the result d e pends on the

with in the multiverse, The resulting predictions turn

conditions chosen for the universe to start with

outto b e equivalent to the causal patch measure

What black holes can teach us When Stephen Hawking

universe. And since a hot

would seem the elephant has

cal culated that black h o les

gas of ordinary particles never

been cloned, but the laws of

radiate away energy and

loses information, neither can

physics prohibit such

eventually evapo rate, he left a

a black hole.

duplication of information.

nagging question: what

Cosmologist Raphael Bousso explains the paradox

happens to the information

holographic picture is that no

about all the stuff that has

observer should ever see

results from the mistaken idea

fallen in? If it escaped back into

information disappear from the

that we can descri be what's

the universe, it would have to

universe. If Alice is watching

happening both inside and

be travelling faster than the

from a distance as an elephant

outside the horizon

speed of lig ht, violating

falls into a black hole, she will

sim ultaneously, when i n reality

Einstein's theory of relativity.

see it approach the black hole's

no s i n g l e observer can ever

If it vanished from the

event horizon, at which point it

see both at once. In other

u n iverse, it would be violating

is inci nerated by the Hawking

words, for physics to make

a fundamental tenet of

radiation, which sends it

sense, you must restrict your

q u a ntum mecha nics. This

streaming back towards her as

description of the u niverse to

conundrum became known as

a sad, scrambled heap of ashes.

what a single observer can see.

the black hole i nformati o n loss

Meanwhile, Bob, who falls i nto

It's a profo u ndly different

paradox (New Scientist,

the black hole a l ong with the

approach from the old idea that

elephant, sees the elephant

we can describe the entire

2B October 2006, p 36).

The answer comes from the idea known as the holographic

cross the horizon safe ly, and

universe from an observerless,

live happi Iy for some time

God's-eye-view.

princi ple, w h i ch says that

before h itting the singularity i n

the physics inside a region of

the black hol e's core.

space-time is equivalent to the

area of illumination becomes. In other words, there is a clear relationship between areas on your future boundary and distance from your starting point. In a similar way, a particular area on the boundary of the multiverse is associated with a particular time inside it. What is so powerful about this approach is that it sidesteps the problem Einstein raised about time being relative to different observers. Here the boundary tells you which bubble universes existed at a particular time. Knowing this, you can start comparing universes and calculating the probability of finding one with a particular value of dark energy, for instance. As Bousso studied this measure, something astonishing came into focus. The global measure he had discovered using the holographic representation of the multiverse and its future boundary turns out to be exactly equivalent to the causal patch measure he had already derived by simply considering what a single observer can see. The two dramatically different approaches turned out to be two different ways oflooking at the same underlying reality: one considers an ensemble of possible histories for a single observer; the other, the entire infinite history of an infinite number of disconnected bubble universes.

The lesson from the

Ta lking about t h e m u ltiverse as if it can all be directly

According to the holographic

observed at once, Bousso says,

physics on the regio n's

principle, both stories must be

leads to an even greater

boundary. You can t h i n k of a

true. But how can the elephant

nonsense than trying to

black hole as equivalent to a

be in a heap of ash es outside

sim ultaneously describe

hot gas of ordi nary particles

the horizon and alive and well

what's happening inside and

o n the boun dary of the

inside the black hole? It

outside a black hole horizon.

"That was really stunning," says Bousso. "It was amazing to me when I realised that the two measures reproduce the exact same probabilities." Their equivalence turns out to be extremely useful, as weaknesses in one measure are strengths in the other, and vice versa. "They are like two people on crutches holding one another up," Bousso says. So while in the causal patch measure your answers depend strongly on the universe in which your observers start out, the global measure does not suffer from this ambiguity. In the multiverse, bubbles beget bubbles beget bubbles, so that initial conditions are quickly lost in the crowd and no longer matter when it comes to calculating probabilities. In fact the global picture actually defines what the starting vacuum for the causal patch approach should be. On the other hand, while the global picture suffers from the problem of "duplicate information" (see "What black holes can teach us", above), Bousso's causal patch measure successfully circumvents this. The implications might be immense. The two equivalent measures have not only provided a prediction for dark energy in our own universe that closely matches

observations, they were both inspired in different ways by the holographic principle. This suggests that the holographic principle is profoundly significant, and could lead us to a theory of quantum gravity - the long-sought theory of everything that mirrors the dynamics of the multiverse. "By thinking about the measure problem, we seem to be learning, perhaps unexpectedly, about another, equally deep mystery, namely how to formulate the quantum gravity theory ofthe multiverse," says Bousso. Even Ellis is impressed by Bousso's results, if not exactly sold on the multiverse. "It is a useful and intriguing kind of consistency test based in fascinating but speculative physics," he says. And there is another far-reaching consequence. IfBousso's eqUivalence holds, then not only can the resulting measure be used to make real, testable predictions, they can also make calculations in the multiverse without ever referring to unobservable universes lurking beyond our cosmic horizon. Everything we need to know about the multiverse might be right here in our own universe. • Amanda Gefter is an editor in New Scientists Opinion section, based in Boston 6 March 2010 1 NewScientist 1 31

The island of South Georgia, deep in the South Atlantic, was once a whaling station

A

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ISLANDS go, you would be hard pressed to find one more remote. Deep in the southern Atlantic Ocean sits South Georgia, a haven for wildlife in the midst of ferocious seas. Over 30 million birds of31 species breed here and a further 50 species have been spotted. It is home to grey-headed albatrosses, northern giant petrels, white chinned petrels, Antarctic prions, halfofthe entire population of macaroni penguins and most of the planet's population of the South Georgia blue-eyed shag.

But it is not as idyllic as it sounds. Under the surface lurks a menace that is slowly ripping the ecosystem apart: rats. The rodents were stowaways on sealing and whaling ships that visited the island until the mid-20th century. When the hunters stopped coming, the rats were left to their own devices along with a small population of reindeer that had been brought for food and now roam wild. Without natural predators, the rat population has swollen to many million, eating their way through tens of millions of ground-nesting

birds' eggs and chicks in the process. As a result, the island's endemic wildlife is under threat, and its only songbird, the South Georgia pipit, is on the brink of extinction. Now the South Georgia Heritage Trust (SGHT) is going to fight back. In what will be the largest mass extermination ever attempted, the SG HT plans to poison every rat on the island. "The difference between success and failure is the survival of two rats on the entire island," says Tony Martin, project manager of the SGHT Habitat Restoration

Programme. "We don't have to get rid of most or even 99.9 per cent of the rats -we have to eradicate 100 per cent." Absolute eradication is the only option because rats breed rapidly. They can live for around two years, achieve sexual maturity at two months old and are able to produce seven litters of 8 to 10 offspring a year. Female rats reach menopause at around 18 months. Even in the harsh climate of South Georgia, a sexually mature female is likely to have around four litters a year. If just one couple >

sized chunks, each of which has a higher chance of being successful, with minimal risk of re-invasion between operational seasons", says Springer. "But the clock is ticking as the glaciers are retreating:' As they melt, rats will be able to invade the entire island, making their eradication impossible - it is unfeasible to treat such a large area in one hit. The sooner the rat catchers get to work, the better. So how will the rats be killed? The idea is to liberally sprinkle toxic cereal pellets over the rat-infested regions from a helicopter. The poison of choice is brodifacoum, an anticoagulant that finds its way to the liver where it interferes with the synthesis of clotting factors that help stop bleeding. Symptoms kick in a few days after consumption, and victims die slowly of internal haemorrhaging.

South Georg ia's residents i nclude

(clockwise from top) king pengui ns, reindeer, pipits, and albatrosses

8ad death

IIlf the progra m m e wipes out a l l th e rats, the popu lation of pip its sho uld b e the fi rst to recove r' survive, it will only take a few years before the island is overrun again (see diagram, right). SGHT's eradication plan, costing £7 million, has been put before the UK government, which administers South Georgia as an overseas territory. lfit gets the stamp of approval, the first wave of attack should begin in February 2011. But what chance does the scheme have of working? And what might go wrong? More than 300 islands worldwide have successfully removed their rodent pests. While that is an encouraging sign, it is worth bearing in mind that South Georgia is a very different proposition. Stretching to a length of 120 kilometres, it is about eight times as big as the largest island that has been tackled so 34 1 NewScientist 1 6 March 2010

far. Its isolated location means the operation will be a logistical nightmare. "Getting a ship, helicopter, pilots, staff, bait and equipment there is not straightforward or cheap," says Keith Springer, head of the Macquarie Island Pest Eradication Project in Tasmania, Australia, who has been advising the SGHT on its rat removal plan. "The weather will also place constraints on spreading the bait by helicopter:' On top of this, South Georgia is uninhabited, covered in glaciers (see map, opposite), and heavy snowfall in the winter would conceal the poison. The presence of glaciers is a double-edged sword for the project. They act as natural barriers that confine rats to specific areas, which "means the job can be tackled in bite-

"It is a nasty way for the rats to die," admits Martin. "But these rats are eating their way through the young of millions of birds, who also die in a nasty way - the rats eat them alive. I have no doubt it's justifiable to kill invasive predators that are wiping out native wildlife." Brodifacoum has been chosen as it is extremely toxic - a few micrograms is all it takes to kill a rat. Yet its use is controversial. Ifbrodifacoum accumulates in the food chain, it could kill a wide range of species, including the very birds the programme is trying to save. The main concern is that some birds, particularly the pintail duck, may eat the baited cereal, says Martin. This fear is justified: when rats were eradicated from Motuihe Island in New Zealand, 60 per cent of the waterfowl also died. What could make it worse this time round is that the proposed time of baiting­ February - is when the ducks are at maximum stress because they are moulting and cannot fly, so may be more likely to eat the cereal bait. SGHT is hopeful this won't happen. In tests, they found that captive ducks avoided eating

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W H E RE TH E RATS ROAM T h e rats l ivi n g o n South Georgia a r e a menace t o the i n d i g e n o u s w i l d l ife. Fortunately, glaciers confin e them to distinct areas ofthe island, making eradication feasible

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FR tGATE ISLAND, SEYCHELLES, 1996 219 heEtares Halted as the endangered S eyche l les magpie robin suffered from secondary poisoning. A second attempt in 2000'was successful as magpie robins were held in captivity d uri n g the eradlcation

1965 hectares A n u m ber of species were

poisoned but populations have now recovered. Improved s ubsequent survival rates for stitch birds and saddl ebacks

the pellets, perhaps because oftheir size and blue colour. To be on the safe side, they plan to monitor duck populations by attaching radio transmitters to a random sample of 15 birds from across the island. "If we find the transmitters attached to bones then things will be worse than anticipated and we would need to rethink," says Martin. A secondary way of ingesting the poison would be to scavenge the carcasses of poisoned rats, says Martin. Fortunately for the birds, most rats are likely to die in their burrows, out of harm's way, because the poison makes them sensitive to light. Pete McClelland of New Zealand's Department of Conservation is optimistic that the impact will be low. "Given that not all the rats on South Georgia will be eradicated at once, the birds will not all be put at risk at the same time. I would be confident that any species in any 'block' will soon recover as birds from the neighbouring blocks move in. This is one major advantage South Georgia has over smaller islands where whole populations and species are put at riskat once." This is what

I

CAMPBELL ISLAND, NEW ZEALAND, 2001

•

KAPITI, NEW Z EALAND, 1995

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•

,

11,300 hectares Largest successful operation to date. The endemic flightless teal has been reintroduced, endemic pipits and snipe have self­ i ntroduced from predator-free outlying islets, and seabirds are recolonising HAWEA ISLAND, NEW Z EALAND, 1986 9 hectares Successful. Bait stations were bird­ proof 50 n o non-rat casualties

went wrong in the rat eradication programme on Fregate Island in the Seychelles in 1996, which was halted on the first attempt when the endangered magpie robin suffered secondary poisoning (see "Other eradication projects", above). Despite McClelland's optimism, Martin concedes there is a chance the programme on South Georgia could fail. "We could fail for several reasons: by using inadequate bait, or because our landscape is more complex than any island treated up until now, or simply because South Georgia is so large," he says. Should any individual areas be left with any rats after baiting, they would have to be baited again, and more thoroughly, before the glaciers melt. "If we make a mistake in one area, then by definition we will have failed." No one knows how long South Georgia has got until its glaciers disappear. But what is clear is that if they do melt before the rats have been eliminated, the entire island will be a rat free-for-all, and the days of native birdlife will be over. Crucially, for the mission

to succeed, the South Georgia government will have to agree to kill, or remove, all ofthe 2000 reindeer living on the Island. This is because they could eat the bait, killing them and reducing the amount of poison available for the rats. "I believe it will be impossible to get rid of the rats if the reindeer were to remain," says Martin. To get round this problem, the reindeer will have to either be shipped out to the Falkland Islands, or shot. If the programme wipes out all the rats, the population of pipits should be the first to recover, says Martin. "They are the equivalent of a canary in a coal mine. It would be astonishing ifthey didn't come back to many times their existing numbers," he says. Not all species will recover so quickly: longer­ lived bird species could take decades. Even so, the consensus is that once the rats are removed, millions of birds will eventually return to South Georgia, making it a bird's paradise once more. • Sanjida O'Connell is an editor in New Scientist's Opinion section 6 March 2010 1 NewScientist 1 35

D

EEP

in your lungs, there's a battle raging. It's a warm, moist environment where the ever-opportunistic bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa has taken up residence. If your lungs are healthy, chances are the invader will be quickly dispatched. But in the mucus-clogged lungs of people with cystic fibrosis, the bacterium finds an ideal habitat. First, the microbes quietly mul tiply and then they suddenly switch their behaviour. A host of biochemical changes sticks the population of cells together, forming a gluey biofilm that even a potent cocktail of antibiotics struggles to shift. Microbes like P. aeruginosa were once thought of as disorganised renegades, each cell working alone. Microbiologists like Thomas Bjarnsholt, who is battling to understand how P. aeruginosa causes chronic infection in people with cystic fibrosis, now know otherwise. They are up against a highly organised army, using a sophisticated communication system to coordinate its behaviour. But it's Bjarnsholt's latest discovery that o � reveals microbes' gift for language : the

36 1 NewScientist 1 6 March 2010

Our bod ies are chock-full of chatty microbes that are also eavesdropping on us, Time to turn the ta bles, says Hayley B i rch

Bu gg in g your bu g s

bacteria aren't just talking amongst themselves, but also quietly listening in on signals sent by their human host. So when a cavalry of white blood cells arrives to repel the invading bacteria, the entrenched biofilm senses their presence, and launches a coordinated counterattack (Microbiology, vol 155, p 3500). The microbes release deadly compounds called rhamnolipids, which burst the white blood cells, killing them before they can even take aim, says Bjarnsholt, who is at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. Examples like this belie the notion that bacteria are sim pie, silent loners. Over recent decades, many species of bacteria have been shown to be in constant communication with each other. But now an even more sophisticated picture is emerging, one in which bacteria not only receive signals from each other, but also intercept them from the cells oftheir plant or animal hosts, including us. These communication skills seem to offer invading bacteria quite an advantage on the battlefield. But they are also drawing the a ttention of researchers looking for new ways

to fight microbes. If these "cross-kingdom" IIBacteria d onl j u st l i sten signals are indeed widespread, then intercepting or subverting them would offer i n on each oth er, but a lso a whole newway oftackling infection, not only on the i r plant or a n i m a l in cystic fibrosis, but also in a wide range of other diseases. Such an approach would hosts - i n c l u d i ng usll simply block the signals prompting the bunch. But it wasn't until the early 1990s, with bacterial army to mobilise, rather than trying to wipe it out as antibiotics do. Bacteria would the discovery that ALHs are produced by many then no longer be forced to evolve drug species of microbe, that it started becoming resistance to survive, potentially bringing to clear that quorum sensing was common an end the scourge ofthe superbug. throughout the bacterial kingdom. And this signalling isn't all friendly chatter, some Bacteria communicate using chemical Signals, releasing and receiving signalling bacteria intercept and break down the signals from other species, or even release signals to molecules in a process known as quorum trick others into changing their behaviour. sensing. In its simplest form, bacteria use quorum sensing to keep track of their But in a research review published in neighbours. Some bioluminescent bacteria, August 2009, Steve Atkinson and Paul for example, light up when their population Williams, microbiologists at the University of Nottingham in the UK, brought home just exceeds a threshold size (journal of Bacteriology, vol 104, p 313). how widespread these signalling networks are: they reach far beyond the humble bacteria Studies of the phenomenon in 1970 discovered that bioluminescent bacteria were into other kingdoms, including plants, fungi, using molecules called N-acyl homoserine and our own (journal of the Royal Society lactones (ALHs) to coordinate this behaviour­ Interface, vol 6, p 959). As Atkinson puts it, an early hint that bacteria are a talkative "There's a war going on out there." >

6 March 2010 1 NewScientist 1 37

IIlf cross- kingdom signals are widespread, th en i nterce pting them wo u ld offer a whole n ew way of tac k l i n g i nfectio nll Take Candida albicans, the yeast that causes thrush infections. This organism likes the same warm, moist habitats as P. aeruginosa and the two battle it out in a bid to colonise their human hosts, deploying quorum-sensing signals as weapons against each other. The yeast fires off signals that trick the bacterium into slashing production of one of its armaments - a reactive chemical called pyocyanin, which makes life particularly uncomfortable for the yeast. The bacterium, meanwhile, produces signals that keep the yeast's growth in check, preventing it from transforming itself from a single-celled yeast into a branching, multicellular fungus. Then there's our own immune system's battle to preventP. aerug inosa making itself at home in our lungs. Bjarnsholt is hunting for the signal P. aeruginosa uses to "listen out" for white blood cells, and ways to block it. He doesn't think ofthe bacteria as being physically aware of their hosts. To them, the signals they detect are just foreign compounds they have to fend off. But it's certainly a far more sophisticated take on the host-pathogen relationship than we're used to, notes Atkinson. "Rather than the pathogen just piling into the host cell and taking over its DNA, it's about signal production, interception - and maybe even coercion of the host to do something that it wouldn't normally do:'

love the friendly bacteria which line our guts, helping to keep nastier bugs at bay. Microbes don't just make themselves at home in the intestines, however. They're in your mouth, up your nose, and covering your skin, all the while releasing a cacophony of quorum­ sensing Signals. Atkinson thinks our own cells exploit this same signalling system to monitor and cajole our personal population of microbes, just as they eavesdrop on and manipulate us. In other words, we don't passively host this bacterial colony, but actively engage it in conversation. We've evolved together, he says. "We have to consider that we're intrinsically linked." Sperandio, who is studying how bacteria sense and respond to human stress hormones like adrenalin, agrees. "I think that if you consider how much we interact with microbes, it's not surprising that you're going to have some chemical signalling. Just consider in your intestine, you have 10 times more

Microbe management This coercion might even extend to including bacteria that can modify the way our bodies work, says Vanessa Sperandio, a microbiologist working on quorum sensing at the University ofTexas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. "It's a little out there," she admits, "but there are some good examples. Kids who have certain bacterial infections can be very com pulsive about touching their mouths, which helps the spread. I think we're going to start seeing lots of examples like that." Many ofthe early examples of cross­ kingdom communication that Atkinson and Williams catalogued are less than congenial, but there is also good evidence for cooperative interaction between bacteria and their hosts, says Atkinson - particularly between ourselves and our microbiome, the huge population of bacteria that live in us and on us. These days we're all well acquainted with the millions of microbes lining our insides. Yogurt adverts have taught us nothing if not to 38 1 NewScientist 1 6 March 2010

Bugs get everywhere ­ Staphylococcus l i kes to live u p your nose

bacterial cells than you have your own." Picking out these chemical signals from the maelstrom of molecules that swirl in our gut is proving to be a bat tie, but that's exactiy where some ofthese cooperative signals have been spotted. Take those friendly gut bacteria, for example, and in particular one that goes by the name of Bacillus subtilis. Not a natural gut bacterium, B. subtilis has long been used as a probiotic agent in food. Though its health­ boosting properties were not well understood, some have suggested it gently stimulates the immune system, priming it for action against less friendly bugs. Then in 2007 a team led by Eugene Chang at the University of Chicago suggested a route by which these bacteria could influence the health of intestinal cells - a route involving quorum-sensing molecules. The team discovered that a certain B. subtilis signalling molecule, known as competence and sporulation factor (CSF), is detected by

Meet you r microbiome Say hello t o the b i l l ions o f bacteria that call you home Nose

Mass of microbes 109 Typical resident Streptococcus

human gut cells (Cell Host & Microbe, vol 1, p 299). Chang thinks of this signal detection as a kind of " bacteriostat" mechanism: our cells are monitoring CSF as a way of detecting and adapting to important changes in the gut flora.

(racking the code "The idea is that when quorum sensing molecules are secreted, it usually signals some change in the balance of the bacterial population," says Chang. So by listening for signals, our cells can adjust to these changes. In this case, the detection ofCSF causes our cells to fire up the production of molecules called heat shock proteins, protective molecules known to hel p cells maintain crucial machinery during times of stress ­ from temperature extremes to toxins. Perhaps the most intriguing evidence for the importance of monitoring our

microbiome comes from the gut's CSF receptor itself. This receptor was previously thought to be a simple nutrient transporter, despite being found in even the furthermost reaches ofthe intestine, where most nutrients would already have been absorbed. Its blueprint is encoded in a region ofthe human genome in which mutations are associated with inflammatory bowel disease. This suggests that without these receptors, we're unable to maintain a normal, healthy gut. Such examples suggest cross-kingdom signalling has medical im plications far beyond infectious diseases. Several other illnesses, including Crohn's disease and some cancers, have been linked to imbalances in the species of bacteria that live in our guts. Sperandio suggests that any number of illnesses could be associated with your balance of bacteria, and that these illness might be tackled using signal interference. But with so many bacteria - hundreds of different species can inhabit your skin alone ­ how can we begin to master this chemical language to examine its medical potential? Is there a better way to spot these signals than to pick them out one by one? Pieter Dorrestein and his team at the University of California, San Diego, and Paul Straight at Texas A&M University in College Station, have been developing a tool that could accelerate efforts to crack the code of microbial communication. The team is using an imaging system based on mass spectrometry to detect swathes of signals at the same time. They grow their bacteria on a stainless steel plate, and use a laser to vaporise their signalling molecules, feeding these into a mass spectrometer to catalogue the molecules present. As proof of principle, Dorrestein and Straight have mapped the interactions between two species of soil-dwelling bacteria (Nature Chemical Biology, vol S, p 88S). Even in this simple case, the instrument detected as many as 100 different signalling molecules fired off by the two bacteria, only 10 of which the team managed to match to known molecules. Despite the huge scale ofthe problem, the team is already starting to translate their work into inter-kingdom studies, probing the interactions between bacteria and cells of the human immune system. By imaging cross-talk between different species, they even hope to identify inhibitors for Staphylococcus aureus, the hospital superbug that has evolved to defend itself against whole groups of our most effective antibiotics.

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The method should provide food for thought for Bjarnsholt, who has yet to find any serious candidate compounds for signal­ blocking inP. aeruginosa infections in people with cystic fibrosis. His best bet for a drug lead is an extract of garlic, although the active component that interferes with the signal remains unknown. He thinks it will be a few years yet before quorum sensing inhibitors come into their own. "I don't think it's just around the corner- there's got to be a lot more research," he says. But when it comes to fighting drug resistance, the more targets we go after the better, he adds. We need to target signalling, biofilm formation and classical biological processes like bacteria cell wall formation, all at once. Whatever the potential for medical advancement, the growing recognition of cross-kingdom signalling has a more immediate philosophical implication: we're going to have to start changing the way we think about microbes. Bacteria aren't just isolated cells, or even isolated populations, but multi-species communities that communicate with each other and, crucially, us. We are, almost certainly, more intimately connected with the bacteria that inhabit us than we ever would have believed. "We'd be naive to believe that we exist in splendid isolation from all other organisms," says Atkinson. "We've thought that way for too long." . Hayley Birch is a freelance science writer based in Bristol, U K 6 March 2010 1 NewScientist 1 39

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BU GHRAIB and Guantanamo Bay: two names that have become synonymous in many people's minds with torture and abuse of human rights by American interrogators. When Barack Obama entered the White House in January 2009, he set out to erase the stain such practices have left on America's image. The High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group established later that year has as one of its stated aims to interrogate without brute force and to employ "scientifically proven" techniques - though without saying what these might be. lt seems like a noble goal. but on closer inspection it raises a host of questions. Can science validate interrogation techniques ­ and if so, how? What is the effect on the human mind of coercive interrogation that stops short of physical torture? And, crucially, are there any interrogation techniques that can be shown to be both effective and humane? In the past, the US military used a set of 19 approved interrogation methods laid down in the Army Field Manual 2-22.3, which explicitly prohibits threats or coercion. Following the attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001, the George W. Bush administration decided that this should change. So, after legal consultations, new ways to apply pressure on people under interrogation were drawn up. For several years they remained secret, but more recently we have acquired a pretty good idea of the techniques interrogators used at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the US base at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere. Take, for example, the treatment log of Mohamed al-Kahtani, made public in March 2006. This revealed that for weeks on end he faced a daily routine of just 4 hours of interrupted sleep, prolonged stress positions, blaring music, extremes of temperature, and various humiliations - including being treated like a dog, and a mock birthday party at which he was shown puppet shows of himself engaging in sexual acts with Osama bin Laden. The technique known as waterboarding, in which the subject experiences the sensation that they are drowning, was also common. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who has claimed responsibility for planning the 9/11 attacks, was subjected to waterboarding more than 180 times in March 2003 alone. Do any or all of these amount to torture? The 1984 UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading 40 1 NewScientist 1 6 March 2010

Treatment or Punishment is somewhat vague. It differentiates between torture -" any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental. is intentionally inflicted on a person" - and " cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" (C!DT). This distinction may reflect the notion that inserting needles under someone's fingernails or pulling out their teeth is in some way worse than, say, blindfolding and hooding, forced nudity, isolation, humiliation, forced stress positions, or deprivation of sleep or light. Yet the UN convention is clear: both torture and C!DT are illegal. And maybe the distinction is unimportant anyway, as there appears to be little to choose between them in terms of the long-term ill-effects they cause to their victims.

Torture by another name? For the past decade, Metin Basoglu, director of the Istanbul Centre for Behaviour Research and Therapy in Turkey, has been a key figure in investigating the psychological damage inflicted by physical torture and C!DT. From studies of hundreds of survivors of coercive interrogation by a variety of regimes around the world, Basoglu has arrived at a clear-cut answer. "The most common psychiatric condition after torture and harsh interrogation techniques is post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), followed by depression and other anxiety disorders," he says (see "A tortured mind", page 42). As part ofhis studies, Basoglu has compared the effects of physical torture and C!DT. A 2007 study carried out with Maria Livanou ofthe Institute of Psychiatry in London and Cvetana Crnobaric ofthe Zvezdara Clinical Centre in Belgrade, Serbia, involved structured interviews with 279 survivors of torture and C!DT. The interviewees were asked about their experiences, and to rate the severity of their subsequent feelings of distress and helplessness. Each was also given a clinical assessment of their mental health. Three­ quarters of them had experienced PTSD since their ordeal. At the time they were assessed, 56 per cent had PTSD, 15 per cent had some other anxiety disorder, and 17 per cent had depression (Archives ofGeneral Psychiatry, vol 64, p 277). The psychological impact of C!DT and physical torture was almost indistinguishable. Basoglu was not particularly surprised by these findings. What matters, he says, is the

Cruel, i n h u m a n a n d degrading treatment

is i l le g a l u nder the U N convention o n torture

Can there be effective interrogation without harmful coercion? Dan Jones assesses the evidence

uncontrollability, unpredictability and stressfulness of the procedures as perceived by the victim. This was already apparent from an earlier study of 55 Turkish political activists who had been subjected to an average of 23 different types of torture, which found that only 33 per cent of them had the symptoms of PTSD. He believes this relatively low figure reflects the fact that they were likely to have been more mentally prepared to face coercive interrogation than the average detainee. This preparedness provides a sense of control over

the torture experience, and so reduces the distress it causes, he says. Last year, Basoglu discovered that the trauma associated with C!DT has two further aspects that increase its psychological impact (American Journal ofOrthopsychiatry, vol 79, p 135). His study of 432 torture survivors from Turkey and former Yugoslavia revealed that when several techniques are applied at the same time - such as hooding while forced to stand naked in a stress position - the effects of each one compounds the effects of the others.

In addition he discovered that C!DT has a cumulative impact overtime, fuelled by the sense of helplessness that it engenders. This means that it makes little sense to ask whether any specific CIOT amounts to torture, Basoglu says, because the overall impact cannot be judged separately from the context in which it is administered. The same study revealed that people who had been subjected to C!DT were at greater risk of developing long-term mental health problems than those who had been subjected > 6 March 2010 1 NewScientist 1 41

Desp ite p rotests from human rights groups, torture is sti l l common i n m a ny countries

to physical torture alone. Basoglu suggests that this might be because torture stimulates the victim's body to release pain-relieving opioids, and this process is triggered more rapidly with repeated exposure to pain. Victims often report that the anticipation of torture is worse than the torture itself, during which they describe a general numbing of the body. Another explanation rests on the unconscious psychological strategy of "cognitive dissociation". Normally, a threat triggers the fight-or-flight response, but since neither of these options is available to someone being interrogated, their mind attempts to escape the situation by dissociating itselffrom what is going on. The victim's emotions, thoughts, sense of self and memory, which in normal life are integrated into a coherent experience, become strangely separated (New Scientist, 19 May 2009, p 40). This may be a useful strategy when dealing with short-lived, intense physical pain, but it is

potentially disastrous as a response to the prolonged and cumulative torment of CIDT. In people who have been subjected to physical and sexual abuse as children, the dissociative experiences induced by repeated trauma can lead to a general tendency to dissociate in everyday life. Chronically traumatised victims often feel a sense of detachment from the self, and experience internal states and reality in an unreal or distorted way. Dissociation is a strong predictor of PTSD, and at the extreme can lead to amnesia and identity disorders such as multiple personality disorder. If coercive and traumatic treatments can cause such lasting psychological damage, moves to clean up military interrogation techniques are clearly justified on moral grounds. But there is another reason for rejecting the sort of C!DT used at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay: these techniques are probably not a very effective way of gaining accurate information.

The idea that coercive interrogation works rests on an untested and largely unsupported framework, says Shane O'Mara, director of the Institute ofN euroscience at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. On the face ofit, the coercive model for interrogation seems like common sense: there is information that the interrogator wants to know and the subject holds but doesn't want to give up. The interrogator applies some pressure to break down the defences put up by the subject, who then spills the desired information. "You see this model repeatedly in movies and TV series such as 24," says O'Mara. Whether it reallyworks like that is questionable, however. "Everything we know shows that the ability to accurately retrieve information is severely impaired under conditions of extreme stress," 0' Mara says. Studies on soldiers, for instance, have shown that manipulating sleep, food and temperature produces severe effects on memory, even when people are willing to give up information. In a recent paper, O'Mara outlined the problem (Trends in Cognitive Sciences, vol 13, p 497). Both torture and C!DT flood the brain with stress hormones such as cortisol and the catecholamines, with potentially profound effects. Three regions are especially affected: the hippocampus, which is important in retrieving long-term memories; the amygdala, which forms part ofthe fear network; and the frontal lobes. Disturbances of these regions are likely to kick in during coercive

A TORTURED M I N D Post-traumatic stress disorder

dreams, an inabil ity to recall

responses, and has extensive

is the most common

i m portant aspects of the

connections to the h i ppocampus and amygdala.

psychological i l l · effect of

trauma, and heightened

torture and other forms of

anxiety and fear. "Reminders

coercive i nterrogation. PTSD

of tra uma often elicit

has been l i nked with abnormal

flashbacks that are

people who have developed

changes i n two brain areas:

experienced in the here and

PTSD after being tortured,

increased activity in the

now, not as past events in a

EI bert and colleagues detected

amygdala, which has a

different place, and therefore

abnormal slow-wave activity

In one ofthe fi rst neuroimaging studies of

well- esta blished role in fear

cause g reat d istress," says

in the frontal co rtex - a marker

responses; and shri nkage of

neu ropsycho log ist Th omas

of disrupted neural function

the h i p pocampus, which is

Elbert of the University of

(Psychological Science, vol 17,

crucial for the storage and

Konstanz in Germany.

retrieval of long-term

Some of these problems

memories. These changes help explain

p 82S). This offers an explanation of the difficulties

may also result from changes

torture survivors have in

i n the brain's frontal co rtex,

articulating their experiences

common features of PTSD,

which contains regions that

and in extinguishing the fear

The worst p a rt of h a rs h

including recurrent. intrusive,

process language and

response conditioned by the

interrogation is not the

d i stressing flashbacks and

modulate emotional

trauma they have suffered.

physical pa i n but the h e l p l essness

42 1

NewScientist 1 6

March

2010

interrogation, particularly if such questioning continues for weeks or months. In addition, prolonged stress could also lead to the creation offalse memories based on information and supposed facts presented by the interrogator. This phenomenon, known as confabulation in psychiatric jargon, is also found in people with frontal lobe disorders. "These people are not consciously making stuff up or trying to lie," says a'Mara. "But they have difficulty discriminating between genuine memories and those that don't bear any relationship to events they have experienced. Though the occurrence of confabulation in torture victims is more speculative, it's a marked possibility."

T h i s may not constitute

torture but the lasting psychological damage cou l d b e even wors e

The science of persuasion A former US military interrogator in Iraq, who goes by the pseudonym Matthew Alexander, confirms a'Mara's view. "There's an erroneous mentality that for interrogation to be effective you have to somehow weaken the resistance of the detainee, physically or psychologically," he told New Scientist. "I never saw harsh techniques work. Every time they were used, the detainee would clam up as they were scared that anything they said would make that pressure increase:' The abama administration's High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG) is su pposed to set a change in direction. Last month, Dennis Blair, the Director of National Intelligence, told the House Intelligence

ITh e i d ea that coercive i nterrogation works rests upon an untested and largely u n supported fram eworkll Committee that the HIG will conduct research into ways to interrogate suspected terrorists that are legal and humane. Fine ideals, but there's a lot to do. According to Randy Borum of the University of South Florida in Tampa, whose research interests include the psychology of terrorism, there is little evidence so far on the effectiveness of particular interrogation techniques. Alexander says the same: "We have a lot of anecdotal evidence, but not much of a scientific basis." Borum believes that one way forward may be to learn from social psychology and negotiation theory, both ofwhich can provide insights into ways to achieve resolution using influence and persuasion rather than coercion. For instance, a key lesson from studies of negotiation is that success depends on tailoring your approach to the circumstances. "It offers a better understanding of what kinds oftechniques and approaches are most likely to work for

what kinds of people, for what kinds of outcomes, in what kinds of circumstances," he says. Meanwhile, social psychologists have shown that pressuring people to change their minds often produces precisely the opposite of the desired effect: it makes them more resistant to change. There may be non­ coercive ways to address resistance, says Borum, which could be applied to an interrogation setting. Alexander sees the merit in this approach. "Taking knowledge from other fields and applying it to interrogation is very important," he says. It is clear that there is a pressing need to gain a better understanding of the psychology of interrogation, to replace the coercive techniques that have been used in the past. "In the long term, we don't stop terrorist attacks by doing these things," says Alexander, "we actually create more." . Dan J o nes is a freelance writer based in Brighton, U K

6 March 2010 1 NewScientist 1 43

BOOKS & ARTS

For more reviews and to add your comments, visit www. NewScientist.com/books-art

Go i n g to extremes A travelogue with a difference visits Earth's bleakest lo cations to pro be th e mysteries of the cosmos

The Edge of Physics: A journey to Earth's extremes to unlock the secrets of the universe by Anil Ananthaswamy, Houg hton M iffli n Harcou rt/Duckworth, $25/£16.99 Reviewed by D a n Fa l k

WHEN science was young, the experiments were THE [HE OF simple and the P H Y S I C S breakthroughs came easily - or so it seems in hindsight. Think of Galileo rolling a ball down an inclined plane, or aiming a simple tube, with a lens at each end, at the night sky. Or picture Michael Faraday discovering electromagnetic induction just by tinkering with a battery, an iron ring and some coils of wire. Times have changed, and these days it takes a lot more work to shift a paradigm. For one thing, ground­ breaking discoveries in physics are now typically made by teams rather than individuals. And, as we strive to peer more deeply into space or further inwards to probe the make-up of matter, we have been forced to build larger and more complex instruments. The scale of experiments has grown from table-top-sized to building-sized - even city-sized. Moreover, these experiments are often located in some of the remotest places on Earth. From these isolated outposts, men and women work under harsh conditions to collect the data that will, perhaps, change the way we conceive of the universe. Anil Ananthaswamy, a science journalist and consultant for New

Scientist, has been to more of these

lonely locations than just about anyone, and in The Edge ofPhysics he weaves a remarkable narrative that combines fundamental physics with high adventure. The story takes him from the giant telescopes atop the Chilean Andes to a dark-matter detector deep in a defunct Minnesota iron mine, to the neutrino observatory known as lceCube, whose optical sensors have been placed up to 2.5 kilometres below the surface ofthe perpetually frozen South Pole. Ananthaswamy carefully explains the science relevant to each of these sites, dipping into history where needed to flesh out the background. Ultimately,

though, it is the remote, sprawl. The penultimate chapter unforgiVing locations that anchor finds Ananthaswamy at the Large Hadron Collider, built in a tunnel the story. "These magnificent telescopes and detectors can that straddles the France­ Switzerland border. The LHC has work only in the most extreme settings," he writes. "Their surreal received enough press in the past few years for it to have become environments are the unsung characters in this unfolding story - venues rarely appreciated "Experiments take place in isolated outposts and often overlooked." The two sites that bookend the where scientists work under harsh conditions " story are, perhaps, the most familiar. We begin at the mount practically a household name; Wilson observatory in California, where Edwin Hubble first deduced even so, as the author reminds us, it is the largest single science that the universe is expanding. experiment ever devised by At the time, mount Wilson was a pristine, dark-sky site from our species, and if we are lucky it may tell us if the universe is where astronomers could probe made of tiny strings or contains the heavens. Today it lies at the edge of Los Angeles's urban hidden dimensions. Readers might be less familiar with the Baikal Deep Underwater Neutrino Telescope, which rests in the frigid waters of Lake Baikal in Siberia, looking for meagre flashes of light that tell of collisions between neutrinos and molecules of water. The observatory is run on a shoestring, with only one lUxury: the traditional Russian banya, or sauna, where " naked men sit in an outbuilding, chuck water on hot stones to raise steam, and beat each other with leafy twigs and branches of birch". The Edge ofPhysics is really two stories in one: a travelogue that takes the reader to some of the most desolate places on our planet, and a survey of the most urgent problems in physics and cosmology, from dark energy and string theory to multiple universes. Ananthaswamy is a worthy guide for both journeys . • Dan Fall <'s l atest book is In Search of

NASA bal loons flown from Antarctica

Time ( N ationa l M a ritime M useum,

study radiation at the edge of space

London, 2009)

44 1 NewScientist 1 6 March 2010

6 March 2010 1 NewScientist 1 45

TH E INSI DER

Building a way out of disaster As the d ust settles i n Ha iti, H e l e n Thomson finds o ut h ow e n g i neers a re worki n g to p revent o r m iti gate damage wh en ea rthq u a kes stri ke

UN headquarters and vast numbers of homes. IN THE middle ofthe night I was woken by shutters banging against the window. Suddenly A month on, and engineers have travelled to the country to investigate the damage and try my bed began to sway, gently at first, but gradually increasing until it was shaking to learn from the experience. Engineers are key to preventing disasters of this scale, says violently from side to side. No sooner had Sarada Sarma, senior research fellow at I grasped what was happening and tried to shelter under a table than the rocking Imperial College London. "We need to assume there will occasionally be earthquakes bigger subsided and everything went silent. It was my first earthquake. than we are expecting. We cannot stop structures failing, but we can make sure that Luckily, at a mere 6 on the Richter scale it they fail safely," he says. "We can pinpoint the was not strong enough to cause more than damage in different parts of the structure - for minor damage to the structures around me example, the columns should not fail, let the in Athens, Greece, let alone kill anyone. Last beams fail instead. If the beams fail, people month, however, Haitians were not so fortunate, experiencing their worst quake in will have time to get out." 200 years. Hundreds of thousands of people That seems to be the consensus: protection died, and most buildings within 20 kilometres not prediction. Given the complexity of tectonic plate activity, the pros pect of of the epicentre were severely damaged or destroyed, including the presidential palace, developing technology that can predict the exact timing of an earthquake is remote, Sarma says. "We can say 'yes, there will be an earthquake, yes, it will be this big', but we can't O n the u p say when it will happen. The only prediction Civil e n g i neers enjoy a steady rise in annual income over most ofthe i r working lives we can make is to look at the statistical UK AVERAGE £51,899 probabilityofforces acting on structures, and then design buildings that do not fall down." { 25 � So where can an aspiring engineer go to 25-29 _ specialise? Sarma points to Imperial College 30-34 London, where engineers are focusing their £37,195 efforts above and below ground, studying soil 35-39 £45,520 mechanics to predict the behaviour of soils in 40-44 earthquakes, and looking at the behavioural collapse of structures. And University College 45-49 London is offering an MSc in earthquake 50-54 1111 engineering and disaster management. 55-59 If you prefer to study outside the capital, the University of Bristol has a strong shake 50-55 table, says Sarma, where engineers can >55 ••••• discover how models behave in a simulated

i

•••••••••••

m.

46 1 NewSci entist 1 6 March 2010

earthquake. The University of Oxford also boasts a first-class earthquake research centre, and if you look deep underground at the University of Cambridge, you'll find the Turner centrifuge, the largest of its kind in the UK. This can accelerate payloads to 1509, allowing researchers to model loads and pressures experienced during quakes. G LO BAL GOOD

You don't even need to stick to one university: the UK's top earthquake research centres at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Bristol are more than willing to share. With help from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the three universities have set up a collaboration to share facilities and data. This year, with funding from the European Commission, they have joined with a host of other universities and research institutions to form a project called Seismic E ngineering Research

To search for career opportunities go to www.NewScientistJobs.com

goes based on experience, language requirements and specialisms needed." The team looks at a wide variety of variables, including the number of people involved in an earthquake, the geology of the area, historical seismicity, data on magnitude, the structural behaviour of engineered and non-engineered buildings, and how the foundations of buildings perform. "We also link up with local institutions that guide us around the area and use satellite information to see where the major damage has occurred," says Rossetto. Sadly, the team's findings often highlight the fact that structures have not met local building regulations. Both Sarma and Rossetto have seen the damage caused by bad construction. "The buildings are designed to be safe by engineers, but the construction just doesn't follow the "The prospect of d eveloping technology to pred ict the exact timing of a quake is remote"

design. They cut corners or don't think certain bits are necessary," says Sarma. "It's not just in developing countries, it happens all over." If you feel passionately about this aspect of quake prevention, a policy role in government or in an NGO may be for you. "As an engineer you can turn your knowledge into policy to help enforce building laws to ensure that people build to the design," says Sarma. But earthquake safety is not all about engineering, says Rossetto. "After earthquake disasters, everyone says it's the buildings that kill people. While this is true, it's also the precautions people take which determine Infrastructures for European Synergies (SERIES). After the worst q u ake in 200 years, e n g i n eers h ave whether they survive or not:' After many Connected via grid systems and cloud trave l led to H a i t i to try to learn from the experi ence missions to earthquake zones, Rossetto was computing to collate data in real time, SERIES surprised to discover that while many research sites will be able to pool information in when buildings are stressed way beyond inhabitants have little confidence in the and participate in common experiments normal, says Rossetto. Lectures, conferences integrity of the buildings around them, they across Europe. "The idea is to harness their and the networking opportunities they afford do little to protect themselves. She is now combined capabilities to test something larger will also help an engineer interested in trying to identify some of the psychological than could be dealt with in a single lab," says earthquake research: check conferences run drivers behind this inertia. Teaming up with Martin Williams, professor of engineering at by the Institution of Civil Engineers. Other psychologists, Rossetto is exploring how to organisations such as RedR, a disaster relief the University of Oxford. design buildings to fit how people really charity, and Engineers without Borders offer If you prefer industry to academia, behave when earthquakes occur. "If people advice and opportunities to help with research are more likely to run to the stairwell than engineers are des perately needed by nuclear projects abroad. plants, says Sarma, because any damage hide under a table like they've been told, then If getting your hands dirty appeals, you there could be catastrophic. Less safety-critical maybe we strengthen the stairwell," she says. might want to follow Rossetto and join the wind farms need earthquake engineers too, Talking to other disciplines is the new Earthquake Engineering Field Investigation says Tiziana Rossetto, head of the Earthquake direction for earthquake engineers, says Rossetto. "You might have to collaborate with Team, which is operated through the and People Interaction Centre at University Institution of Structural Engineers and a psychologist or a meteorologist, but the way College London. organises field missions for earthquake So can any engineer turn their hand to to succeed is having the openness and engineers and students. "When an earthquake humility to accept help," she says. • earthquake studies? Yes, but it helps to be happens," says Rossetto, "you can apply to be familiar with the specialist software that part of the team. The committee decides who explores the non-linear processes that set Helen Thomson is New Scientists careers editor 6 March 2010 1 NewScientist 1 47

OPPORTUNITIES IN MARINE SCIENCE

Marine Biogeochemistry Technician The Center for Coa sta l M a rg i n Observation & Prediction (CM OP), a m u lti­ institutional NSF Science a nd Technology Center hosted a t Oregon Hea lth

& Science U n iversity, seeks a fullti m e M a rine Biogeochemistry Technician at its Beaverton, Oregon location. The successful candidate will join an interdisciplinary team of researchers whose collective focus is the integrated understanding of physical, chemical and biological processes of coastal margin environments. The primary duties a re to m a inta i n a nd deploy biogeochemical instrum ents including in situ nutrient ana lyzers a nd advanced instrumentation to measure microbes and gene expression i n the environment. Qualifications include a M .S. in a related field, such a s chemistry, engineering, m icrobiology or oceanog raphy, p l u s 3 years relevant experience, including working with advanced ana lytical instrum entation a nd l a boratory a nd analytical sk ill s. For more information about the center and this job opportun ity, visit www.stccmop.org. To Apply: Please send cover letter and curriculum vitae to Professor Antonio

Baptista, c/o [email protected].

OREGON � iii

H EALTH &SC I EN C E

Mari ne Sc ientists

UN IV ERSITY

Change can't happen if we see things just one way. That's why diversity is important to who we are. We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer.

For more j obs

in

marine scie nce visit GORDON C O LLEGE

Assistant or Associate Professor of Marine Microbiology The Department of Biology at Gordon Col lege invites applications for a ten u re­ track position to begin with the fall semester of 2010. The successful cand idate will have a Ph.D. and a strong commitment to scholarship, teaching, and mentoring of undergrad uate students. The Biology Department offers outstanding colleagues­ faculty who are committed to excellence-and motivated students eager to engage in research and professional activities with facu lty. Principal teaching responsibil ities include marine science and microbiology, with additional teaching in non-majors science, general biology and the summer marine biology institute. Otherresponsibil ities include coord inating the marine science program and being in charge of our research boat. The department is housed in the new Ken Olsen Science Center. Gordon College is a member of the elite Annapolis Group, a consortium of the nation's leading liberal arts institutions and among the premiere Christian liberal arts col leges in the cou ntry. Gordon offers excellent academics, a strong sense of community and an atmosphere of open intel lectual inquiry and personal responsibilitywith i n the framework of Christian faith. Gordon College is located in a classic New England town on Boston's North S hore. For more information, please visit ourweb page at www.gordon.edu. Application review will begin immediately and continue until the position is filled. Please submit letter of app lication, CV, statement of plan ned future research, a sample of scholarly writing, and statement of educational phi losophy.

Applications can be emailed to: cathy.thiel [email protected] or sent via U.S. maii to Dan Russ, Academic Dean, 255 Grapevine Road, Wenham, MA 01984.

48 1 NewScie ntist 1 6 March 2010

www. N ewSc ientistJ obs.com

OPPORTUNITIES IN MARINE SCIENCE

D ive in and discover you r futu re at Woods Hole Oceanographic I nstitution . We offer a variety of positions in Scientific, Techn ical, Eng in eeri n g and Post Doc stud ies. Our ben efits include generous vacation ti me, flexible sched u li n g , fam i ly s i c k days, c h i l d care s u bsidy a n d much more .

It's ti me to take the pl unge and beg i n you r voyage with us today! For more inform ation or to apply, ch eck out o u r new career center: hUp:/Ij obs.whoi.edu

Women a n d minority candidates are strongly encouraged to apply. WHOI i s a n equal opportunity employer. M/FIDN

6 M arch 2010 1 NewScientist 1 49

NewScientist Jobs

Incorporating ScienceJobs.com To apply online visit www. NewScientistJobs.com

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For m o re i nfo rmation visit

NewSc i entistjobs.com job 1 0 :

1400706406

CHEMISTRY

Fo r m ore information visit

NewScientistj o bs.com job 10:

BioMedical Research ( US) MA - Massachusetts

Scientific Information Analysts - Polymer, Inorganic, Organic, & Organometallic Chemical Abstracts Service

Virologist to joi n an

PhD Research Scientist - Senior Scientist / Principal Scientist - protein purification

BioMedical Research (US)

interdiscipl inary group dedicated

Pfizer U S

literature, including patents and

The Infectious Diseases department

PhD scientistfor Antifungal Research

is looking for a talented and highly

N ovartis I n stitutes for

motivated Cell Biologist/Molecular

OH - Ohio We have full-time positions available in analysis of the world's chemical

MA - Massach usetts

to drug discovery in the area of

MA - Massach usetts

journals, for b u ilding the CAS

The I nfectious Disease research

respiratory viruses,

Initiating and conducting mass

databases, Specific responsibilities

team at our research headquarters

For m o re information visit

spectrometry (MS) experiments

include reviewing of documents

on recombinant and endogenous

and indexi ng chemical concepts,

proteins including contri buting to

structures, and reactions in a

in Ca mbridge, MA is looking for a motivated PhD scientist to

52 1 NewScientist 1 6 March 2010

NewSci entistjobs.com job 1 0 :

1400706387

www.NewScientistJobs.com

Postdoctoral Fellow Positions Immediate opening for Postdoctoral Fellows. Should have experience in molecular biology, cell biology and possess knowledge of cancer biology. High motivation is absolutely required. The positions will be supported by a prestigious Era of Hope Scholar Award from

D O D Breast Cancer Research Program. Project focuses on characterizing and targeting replication stress response defects in breast cancer. We will use cutting-edge technologies to identify gene signature and biomarkers associated with defective

Otago Ph D 00 ml Sc holars h i p s 20 1 0

OTAGO

Department of Phys iolog y, U n iversity of Otago Dunedin, New Zealand

replication stress response for diagnostic imaging, prevention, and treatment of breast

Cardiovascular & Respiratory Physiology

cancer.

.:. Role of nitric oxide and carotid bodies i n acute myocard ial infarction

Applicants should have a strong background in molecular biology, cell biology, genetics, and cancer biology.

(Assoc ProfPat Cragg & Dr Daryl Schwenke)

.:. Reflex control of renal sympathetic nerve activity in obese rats (Drs Ged Davis & Daryl Schwenke)

Please send curriculum vitae, statement of career interests, and contact information for three references to: Shiaw-Yih Lin, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Tenured The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center Department of Systems Biology, Unit 950 South Campus Research Building II

P. O. Box 301429 Houston, TX 77230-1429 E-mail: [email protected]

.:. Muscle blood flow and neuromuscular fatigue during exercise (Dr Simon Green) .:. Mechanisms linking inflammation and cancer (Dr Paul Hessian)

Cellular & Molecular Neuroscience .:. Ce ntral regulation of pregnancy (Dr Colin Brown) .:. Age-related loss of muscle mass (Dr Phil Sheard)

Membrane & Ion Transport .:. Cell specific expression and regulation of cr and HCOj transporters in the small intestine (Assoc Prof Grant Butt) .:. Functional role of SNARE i nteractions with the Ca 2+ signaling machinery (Drs Steven Condliffe & Ruth Empson)

Making Cancer Hi·(, M. D. Anderson Cancer Center is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, religion, disability, or veteran status except where such distinction is required by law. All positions at TI,e University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center are security sensitive and subject to examination of criminal history record information. Smoke-free and drug-free environment.

.:. Determination of anterograde trafficking of epithelial potassium channels (Dr Kirk Hamilton & Assoc Prof Fiona McDonald) Full scholarships are available from the Department of Physiology (stipend, fees, conference and research expenses). Candidates with a good degree in biomedical science or related subjects are invited to apply before 9 April 20 I o.

See our website for the full list of available projects and app licati on details http://www.otago.ac . nzlphysiology

Postd octora l Fel low i n Ca ncer Systems Biology Postdoctoral position at M icrosoft Research N ew Engl a n d in Cambri dge, MA, to work on a joint project with the Computation a l Biology Center at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, and Politecnico di Torino University, Ita ly.

BloodCenter ofWisconsin, an i nternational ly recognized leader in vascular biology, thrombosis and hemostasis, immunobiology, transfusion medicine and stem cell/hematopoiesis research, is seeking outstanding candidates to till NIH-funded Post-doctoral Training Grant positions at its Blood Research Institute (BRI). The BRI provides state-of-the-art facilities, and offers an excellentenvironmentfor scientifi c interaction and interdisciplinary collaboration. Opportunities are availablewith BloodCenter investigators in the following areas:

The project goa l is to apply tech n i q u es from statistical physics, a n d newly

Richard H. Aster, M D - Pathogenesis a immunedisoroers affecting blood cells

developed algorithms, to analyze a rich set of genomic, epigenetic,

Bonnie Dittel, PhD - Regulation ofT cell mediated inflammation inthe central nervous system

molecu l ar profi l i n g and patient data from several extensive clinical studi es, incl u d i ng The Cancer Genome Atlas.

This position represents a u n i que

opportu nity to develop and apply new comp utational methods to problems such as the discovery of ca nd idate markers for early scre ening or disease prognosis, the u n de rstanding of cancer pathogenesis and the development of personalized therapies.

Deep expertise in algorithm development

or statistical physics, and demo nstrated creativity i n biological research required. This position might be especially suitable fo r a recent P h . D. from an interdisciplinary graduate program that empha sizes strong q u a ntitative

Joan

C. Gill, MD - Moleculardiversity oftheimmune response to FactorVll1 in patients with hemophilia

Jack Gorski, PhD - Molecular genetic analysis ofT cell repertoires Cheryl Hillery, MD- Mechanisms of vaso-occl usion in sickle cell disease Subramaniam Malark:annan, PhD- Signaling through NKG2D receptor Laurent Malherbe, PhD - R�ulation ofT helper cell fate during the irnmune response Alan Mast MD, phD - Molecular and cellular biology of tissue factor pathway i nhibitor

Ilobert Il. Montgomery, MD- Molecular and cellular biology ofvon Willebrand factor and platelet glycoprotein Ib Mictlael W. Mosesson, MD - Fibrin formation and its role in angiogenesis; mectlanisms of ttlromboptlilia in dysfibrinogenemias

Debra K. Newman, PhD - Signal transduction pathways that r�ulate blood cell activity Peter J. Newman, PhD -Cell adhesion and Signaling receptors in vascular cells

Demin Wang, PflD- Cytokine receptor and B cell receptor signaling

skills together with cell, developmental or cancer biology. The position is

Ilenren Wen, PhD -T cell signal transduction and T cell development

initially for two years a n d is based in Ca mbridge, MA, at Microsoft Research

Hartmut Weiler, PIlD- Blood coagulation biology

N ew England, but will require freq uent travel to M S KCC in N ew York, and occasional travel to Torino, Italy.

Gilbert c. W il ite, II, MD- Integrin biology and

signaling mechanisms in platelets

Magdalena Wodnicka, PhD - Small G protein signaling in vascular cells

Because these positions are funded throu gh an NI H Tra ining G rant, only American citizens or permanent residents

To be considered for employment for post-doctorate opportu n i ties, you w i l l require your CV, your publ ications l i st, a research statement, and at

are el igible to apply. Alternate funding may be available for other candidates. Qualified appl icants should send curriculum vitae, a brief description of recent research, and the names and teleptlone numbers of three references to: Gilbert

C. W h ite, II, M.D.

least three letters of recommendation. To express your inte rest i n applying,

Director, Blood Research Institute

contact [email protected], Business M a nager of M icrosoft Research,

P.O. Box2178

BloodCenter ofWisconsi n

N ew England.

M icrosoft

Research 6 M a rch 2010 I NewScientist 1 53

www.NewScientistJobs.com

production envi ronment. Fo r more i nformation visit

NewScientistj obs.com job 10:

1400712698

Sr Principal Scientist ­ Aggregated Singleton for Automated Purification (ASAP)

Protein Mass Spectrometry Research Associate

understanding and a pplying

Function i ndependently with a high

the peri dynamic theory of solid

degree of sales proficiency. Develop

Novartis Institutes for

mechan ics, This will include

superior product and disease state

BioMedical Research ( US)

development of mathematical

knowledge and effectively educate

MA - Massachusetts

models for solid deformation and

and engage healthcare professionals

Analytical Sciences collaborates

failure, and their relationsh ip with

in dialogue about clin ical evidence,

across a l l platforms to

molecular scale and nanoscale

approved i n dications, and product

comprehensively characterize

behavior,

efficacy/safety profiles to support

molecules ranging from traditional

Fo r m ore i nformation visit

small molecules to novel

Pfizer U S

biotherapeutics and their effects in

C T - Connecticut

biological systems, A core function

Lead the implementation and

is also to apply new technologies

execution of Aggregated

to benefit the Nova rti s research

Singleton for Automated

community.

Pu rification (ASAP) using an established autopurification workflow in Groton Analytical

For m o re information visit

NewSci entistjobs.com job 1 0 :

1400706558

NewScientistj o bs .co m job 10:

1400704839

on-label prescribing for appropriate patients, Fo r more i nformation visit

NewScientistj obs.co m j o b 10:

MATH & IT

1400707474

Strategic Scientist-Applied Mathematics/Statistics (OOlDP)

Technical Sales Specialist - Eastern and Central Pennsylvania

Chemistry. Lead optimization of the

M onsanto

Thermo Fisher Scientific (US)

ASAP workflow for efficiency and

MO - M issouri

PA - Pennsylvania The Technical Sales Specialist (TSS) is

efforts to expand the

Research Associate

The accepted candidate willjoin

scope of samples that ca n be purified.

Pioneer H i - Bred

the emerging field of IT systems

responsible for selling the ful l Thermo

lA - Iowa

informatics leveraging theirtraining

FisherScientific Genomics portfolio

Fo r more i nformation visit

The successful candidate will work

to play a key role i n defining and

which i n cludesABgene (PCR), Open

closely with a supervisorto assist

del ivering breakthrough science

Biosystems (shRNA, cDNA and ORFs)

in the development, evaluation and

in high throughput R&D business

and Dharmacon (si/miRNA) branded

deploymentof new markers, The

platforms (Breeding, Breeding

products and services,

NewScientistj obs.com job 10:

1400708745

CLINICAL Medical Director (MD)

successfu l candidate will also play

Technology, Biotechnology and

a role in targeted resequencing

Compliance) for Monsanto,

projects for SNP discovery and

Fo r m ore i nformation visit

ha p lotype dete rm i nati on,

NewScientistj o bs.com job 10:

For m o re information visit

1400706009

1400707276

SALES

legal, regulatory and l i ke) as such

Research Scientist

developments may implicate or

Pioneer H i - Bred

Gen entech CA - Ca l ifornia Stays a breast of internal and

NewSci entistjobs.com job 1 0 :

external developments (scientific, cl i n ical, commercial, competitive,

otherwise impactthe product

lA - Iowa

Pharmaceutical Sales Specialist - CVAS- Fort Myers; FL

pipeline and portfolio within the

Work with product development

AstraZeneca US

assigned therapeutic area(s),

scientists and breeders to

Fo r more i nformation visit

identify lines that represent the genetic diversity of elite

NewScientistj obs.com job 10:

1400705978

breeding germplasm. Facilitate the collection of sou rces, sampli ng, and genotyping of these lines, In itiate

Epigenetics Research Associate/Scientist (BS/MS) N ovartis I n stitutes for BioMed ical Research (US) MA - Massach usetts

deep re-sequencing strategies for genomic analysis, For m o re information visit

NewSci entistjobs.com job 1 0 :

1400707282

Proficiency in the use of cu rrent molecu lar biology tech n iques and clon ing strategies, site-di rected

ENGINEERING

mutagenesis, construction of design and use of various

Post Doc - Computational Mechanics of Materials R&D

expression vectors" Experience i n

Sandia National Laboratories

reporter systems, and the

mammalian cell culture

NM - New Mexico

working with multiple cell lines is a

Participate in continued

must.

development and application

Fo r more i nformation visit

of innovative new methods

NewScientistj obs.com job 10:

1400704984

54 1 NewScientist 1 6 M arch 2010

for comp utational mechanics of materials, Responsible for

FL - Florida

Fo r more i nformation visit

NewScientistj obs.co m j o b 10:

450686631

www.NewScientistJobs.com

t

CANADIAN B LOOD SERVICES

POSTDOCTORAL POSITIONS in PHARMACOLOGY S NEUROSCIENCE

Ca nad i a n Blood Services it's in you to give Postdoctoral Fel lows h i ps Canadian Blood Services (CBS) is accepting applications for Postdoctoral Fellowships (PDF) to work with our affiliated Research & Development groups across Canada. CBS has active research programs within transfusion science emphasizing p latelets, stem celis, plasma proteins, infectious disease, epidemiology and clinical transfusion practice. App licants should have a Ph.D. or M.D. degree and a strong research background. This two·year award includes a salary and research al lowance, and the possibility of a one-year renewal. Candidates must select and contact a CBS affiliated scientist to serve as the Postdoctoral Fel lowship supervisor. CBS also supports a G raduate Fel lowship Program and a Summer Internship Program. Info rmation, forms and a list of

CBS affiliated scientists are available

Ontario,

K I G 4J5,

&

Develo pment,

1 800

Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa,

and nicotine. Fellows can work with faculty members in several basic

sdence dep artments induding Pharmmlo gy, Microbiology H Immunology,

Anatomy H Cell Biology. Physiology, and Psychology. Examples of research

recepto rs; molecular and b e havioral effects of p sychostimulants. opioids. cannabinoi ds, and nicotine; neurobiology of addictive behaviors; cross­ talk b etween opioid and c h em o kine receptors; novel o p ioid analgesics with

Canada.

Please note that the 20 1

Severa I p ostd octora I p o sitions are ava ilable i n the Cente r fo r S ubstance Abuse

R 8 S 8 arch at Temple University School of Medic ine to ca rry out interd isc iplinary rmarch on drugs of abuse induding opioids, p syc h o stimulants, c a nnabinoids.

interests indude the molecular pharmacology of opioid and cannabinoid at

www.blood.ca. and from the R&D Office ([email protected]. Canadian Blood Services, Resea rch

Temple University School of Medicine

0 campaign will not accept on-line applications. Candidates

are encouraged to respond by hard copy.

peripheral actions; neu roprotective effects of cannabinoid ligands; o pioid effects on HIV infectivity; and effects of drugs of abuse o n immune fu n ction.

PDF Application deadline: July 2, 20 1 0.

body temperature and analge sia Detailed research program d escriptions can b e found on our web site, www.temple.edu/medicine/csar.

MAYO

CLINIC

riJ-fil V

Pharmacogenomics Bioinformatics Fellowship.

Candidates sho uld have a Ph.D. and/or M.D. with experience in p harmaco logy.

The Pharmacogenomics Laboratory at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine is

n eurobiology, cell biology, immuno logy. or molecular b iolo gy. Please send

seeking a postdoctoral fellowwith a Ph.D., M.D. or M.D.-Ph.D. degree for a position

resume, statement of research i nterests, and names of three references to

as a "Pharmacogenomics Bioinformatics" fellow. This laboratory is part of the NIH-

Dr. Ellen Unterwald. Tem ple University School of Medicine, Department

sponsored Pharmacogenomics Research Network (PGRN) and our studies involve

very large datasets that include genomic, transcriptomic and metabolomic data, as well as both cell line-based and clinical drug response phenotypes. This bioinformatics position would prepare a candidate for an academic faculty position or a position in the pharmaceutical·biotechnology research industry.

of Pharmacoillgy, 3420 N. Broad Street, Philadelphia. PA 1 814D Ilr ellen.unterwald�temple.edu. Temple University is an Em!AA employer and strongly encourages applications from women and minorities.

Mayo Clinic College of Medicine is a not·for-profit organization that integrates research with clinical practices and education in multi·campus environment. Mayo offers an attractive benefit package. Salary will be determined by the candidate's experience. Applications, including curriculum vitae and bibliography, swnmary ofpast accomplishments, and 3 signed reference letters, should be sent to:

1

Research i n Germany

1 1 200 First Street SW 1 Rochester, MN U.S.A. 55905

Richard WeinshilboUffi, M.D. Mayo Clinic Department of Molecular Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics

Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung I Foundation

Email: Weinshilboum. [email protected]

The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation enables highly-qualified scientists and scholars of all nationalities and fields to conduct

osu

extended periods of research in Germany in cooperation with academic hosts at German institutions. Fellowships are awarded solely on the basis of the applicant 's academic record, the quality

Omg�.�� Our

l a b oratory

and feasibility of the proposed research and the candidate's investigates the

mechanisms

by

which

chemicals

and

nano particles interact with a nd adversely affe ct early li fe stage deve l o pm e nt . O u r group primarily uses zebra fish as a vertebrate model to ide ntify t he m o le c u la r pathways that a re perturbed by exposures that ultimately lead to lasting funct i o n a l deficits. The candidate m u st have a P h . D . degree in molecu l ar biology, biochem istry or a related fi e l d . Experienc e with g e n e expressio n a nalysis, quantitative

international publications. The Humboldt Foundation particularly welcomes applications from qualified, female j unior researchers. H umboldt Research Fellowship for Postdoctoral Researchers •

•

oral commu nication ski l ls are essential. The p roj ects involve the use of high assessments, and transg enic a n i ma l use and production. Salary will be based on

H umboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers •

training and research interests, career goals, a CV, representative papers, and three letters of recommendation to:

For scientists and scholars who have completed a doctoral degree within the past twelve years

University g u idelin es for postdoctoral fellows. To apply for this position, please e-mail a cover letter d e scribi n g previous

Allows for a stay of 6-24 months in Germany; applications may be submitted at any time; monthly stipend of2250 EUR

PCR, automation, and bioinformatics are p referred. Effective written and throughput in vivo screening, g l obal g e n e expression analysis, behavioral

For scientists and scholars who have completed a doctoral degree within the past four years

•

Fellowships may be divided into a maximum of three visits lasting three months or longer; applications may be submitted at any time; monthly stipend of2450 EUR

Robert L. Tanguay

Additional allowances are available for accompanying family mem­

Department of Environmental and Molecular Toxicology, Oregon State University

bers, travel expenses, and Gennan language instruction.

1007 ALS, Corvallis, OR 97331 E-mail: robert. [email protected]

www . h u mboldt-fo u n dation .de 6 M a rch 2010 I NewScientist 1 55

FEEDBACK

For more feedback, visit www.NewScientist.com/feedback

of a page from the Higher Nature

CONGRATULATIONS to the UK's

catalogue promoting "we l l being

Public Finance magazine for its

produ cts". The ones shown are a l l

use of two wildly disparate units of measurement in one sentence. Amanda Randall draws our attention to a curious headline in the magazine's 12 February edition: "LGA wants quangos to be condemned to the pasta". Even those who know that LGA stands for Local Government Association and that quangos are quasi­ autonomous governmental organisations will find this statement puzzling. The article that follows explains all, after a fashion: "Did you know that ifyou spelled out the names of the 790 quangos in England and Wales in alphabet spaghetti it would stretch the length Of10 London buses?" But what, we ask, is the conversion factor?

said to contain energy resonance. Take the Personal Stabi liser "energy resonance pendant": "This elegant, h i g h· g rade vacuum t u be pendant contains a strip of 24ct gold encoded

•

•

with energy resonance, to b u ild and maintain a powerful e n e rgy screen

,

arou nd the i n dividual, to nourish balanced emotional and physical e n e rgy ... Comes with a cotton cord

•

for tying a ro u n d the neck."

50� LE.S� fA1

Perhaps even more remarkable is the Bio-pulser d ri n k/food mat. It is: "A gold-leafed, hand-crafted gneiss stone mat charged with energy resonan ce. Place under wine or a plate of food to vita lise, i m provi ng taste and qual ity. . . can also be placed

ON 30 January, we reported on the fat content of Cadbury's Mini Rolls. Now Rod Costigan sends us his thoughts about another Cadbury product, Fry's Turkish Delight. The packaging of this" exotic taste sensation" boasts that it is "60 per cent less fat', and always has been". Rod says he often sees these "less fat" claims on food packaging and wonders whether they are comparing themselves with another product or just an old version of the same one. He has tended to assume the latter but this would mean "always has been" makes no sense. Then Rod took note of the asterisk, and soon found a corresponding asterisk and an upside-down note on the edge of the Turkish delight pack. This revealed that the point of comparison is per gram of "the average of leading chocolate bars". Rod finds this disappointing. He points out that Fry's Turkish Delight is mainly a Turkish­ delight-type of substance, as you would expect - so, even though it is coated in a thin layer of chocolate, surely the proper

benchmark should be Turkish delight, not chocolate. But perhaps "contains more fat, and always has done" (in comparison with pure Turkish delight) doesn't have quite the right ring to it . Nevertheless, Rod likes the idea that chocolate might become the fat content benchmark for the whole food industry. A pork chop, for example, might boast that it has "10 per cent less fat' ['than chocolate], and always has done". Then again, if you can choose any benchmark you like, why not choose fat itself? In which case you could advertise a pork chop as " 50 per cent less fat* ['than fatl, and always has been." Now that US giant Kraft has taken over Cadbury, perhaps these products will start to display fat content information that makes more sense.

under c u ps, glasses, plants or pets' water bowls." Unfortunately, "energy reso n a n ce" doesn't come cheap. The pendant costs £51.60 and the mat £77.90.

PARENTS of children aged 7 are best advised to avoid a certain play area in Camden, London, Isabel Mauricio tells us. A sign outside reads: "This playground is designed for children of the following age groups: Toddlers aged up to 6 years, who must be supervised by a responsible adult. Juniors aged 8-14 years." Isabel wonders if they have discovered a rare local space-time discontinuum phenomenon, or an equally rare biological phenomenon, the net result of which is an age-specific black hole or triangle into which 7-year­ olds disappear.

FINALLY, some peo ple have a l l t h e l uck. N o t only did A l a n Bird receive a B&Q dampness testing meter as a Christmas present, but it had an unexpected and potenti a l ly very useful property. As we l l as being able to detect ris i n g and penetrating damp in foundations, walls, floor

IT IS with m ixed fee l i n g s that we

WE ARE all used to prices going up

a n n o unce an a d d ition to the

from time to time, but Paul Brown

checking the dryness of su rfaces

ever ·expa n ding lexicon of q uack·

says he was a bit flabbergasted by

prior to papering, ti ling, painti n g

the "Importa nt Message" he received

o r vanishing".

babble. It is "energy resonance". Bri an Bu rford sends us a copy

and timbers, it is "suitable for

when he started the process of buying a USB card reader on Amazon.

A sig n near where N e i l l J o n es l ives

It sai d : "Please note that the price of

You can send stories to Feedback by

Integral S i n g l e Slot USB xD Card

email at [email protected].

a n n o u n ces: "Concrete Works."

Reader has i ncreased from £0.50 to

Please include your home add ress.

£110.6B since you placed it in you r

Th is week's a nd past Feed backs can

N e i l l finds this reassuri n g to know

Shopping Basket."

be seen on our website.

56 1 NewScientist 1 6 March 2010

Last wo rd s past a nd present plus q uestio ns, at

TH E LAST WORD

Bee alert When I was wandering around my garden one evening I noticed a European honeybee hanging strangely from a Iilly-pilly flower,

On closer inspection I saw a well­

camouflaged spider holding the bee in place and a numbe r of small flies covering its body (see photo, below), I can understand the spider's role in all this, but what are the flies doing?

www.last-wo rd .com

crop for other bees to concentrate and further metabolise, ultimately making honey. The bee the questioner saw has been ambushed by the spider. During the struggle with the spider, or as a result of muscular contractions in response to the spider's venom, the bee's crop has ejected its payload, which has seeped over its body. It is probably the sweet scent of the partially metabolised nectar that has attracted the flies : the ones in the photograph look like fruit flies of the Tephritidae family. The mouthparts offlies like these are unlikely to allow them to drink nectar directly from the lilly-pilly flowers, but they can still take advantage of this improm ptu sugary meal. The spider has probably had

A honeybee will typically visit up to 500 flowers on each nectar-foraging trip. Foraging bees store nectar in a swollen region in the oesophagus called the crop or honey stomach, which can swell with nectar to fill a major proportion ofthe insect's abdomen. As the crop fills with nectar, enzymes act on the complex sugars it contains, breaking "On return to the hive the them down to simpler sugars. bee will regurg itate the contents of its honey crop On returning to the hive, the bee will regurgitate the contents of its so others can make honey"

•

to stay with the bee for some time to make sure it is immobilised, giving the flies time to congregate on its body. The flies are too small to be of interest to the spider, so they are in no danger. Peter Scott Hove, East Sussex, UK

This week's questions MODERN REMAI N S

I work as a wildlife tour guide in the Scottish Highlands so I travel widely in remote corners of the northern Highlands and islands. On two occasions in late 200g I have come across a pile of odd objects (see photos, right) scattered on the ground. The first time was on a remote island in the Orkneys; the second was a few weeks later at an altitude of around goo metres in the Cairngorm mountains. Had they been near a road or habitation I would probably have dismissed them as just some sort of household electronic debris, but in both cases they were miles from anywhere. The pile I found in the Cairngorms was at least a 2-hour walk from any road, track or building. They appear to have a burnt and pitted charcoal-like solid centre encased in a hard, plastic-like cover. The ones in the Cairngorms also had some small charred battery-like cylinders with them. Can anybody suggest what they are, and why they ended up in such unexpected locations?

WIPE -CLEAN SURFACE

What gives chestnut mushrooms their brown colour? The colour can be wiped away, leaving what looks like a standard white mushroom. Barry Strong Manchester, UK SOU N D RETA I L

Is there any evidence that piped music in shops, pubs and similar establishments increases sales? I avoid such places even if that is inconvenient or involves extra cost.

D. G. Shotton John Poyner Nethy Bridge, Highland Region, UK Havant, Hampshire, UK

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