No title

CO NTE NTS

Volume 205 No 2755

NEWS 5 6

Sense at last on gene patents UPFRONT Pig sushi diabetes treatment. Drilling for climate votes

8

THIS WEEK

COVER STORY

EDITORIAL

Enter the matrix

Brai n-zapping depression therapy suggests "circuit board" view of mind, Our viral origins, Ageing alters stress reactions, Mathematics of carvings reveals long-lost language, Did magnetic poles once sit at equator? Life and death at the bird feeder 14 IN BRIEF Close cal l with death leaves its mark on DNA. "It's not fair!" in chimp-speak

The simple idea at the root of reality

17 TECHNOLOGY

Ai rborne detector spots graves, Avatars' lying eyes, The interactive projection is on the wall

OPINION

The Age of the Old

22 Is whaling back? The world is poised to let

commercial whaling restart, How did we get here, ask Mark Simmonds and Sue Fisher 23 One minute with ... Simon Singh on his ongoing court challenge to chiropractic 24 LETTERS Solving duality, Vivid motion 26 The Age of the Old (see right)

Fewer babies, more oldies­ is that such a bad thing?

FEATURES 28 The random matrix (see right) 32 Peel and power Nanomaterials are set to make

solar power cheaper and more flexible than ever 34 Dangerous DNA Behavioural genetics on trial

TRAVEL SPECIAL Wonder lust Having visited some of the world's most exotic and fasci nating destinations, New Scientist writers recommend their favourites in our eight-page pull-out supplement

REGULARS

Coming next week

24 ENIGMA

The day the Earth exploded

38 BOOKS &ARTS

39 40 48 49

Interview Why evolutionary biologist E, 0, Wilson has turned novelist Gallery The world's oldest living things Reviews Climate dystopia, Psychiatry's tricky future, Rethinking middle age FEEDBACK Yummy negative-calorie diets THE LAST WORD Strange world ofUluru

42 JOBS & CAREERS

How a megad isaster s hap ed the cou rse of human evolution

Quasar time teaser Events seem to be unfolding faster

PLUS A qua ntu m twist on cold h a rd cas h

than expected in far-off quasars

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10 April 2D10 I NewScientist 1 3

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Take off needn't mean time off. Particularly when flying in a Business Class that boasts one

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EDITORIAL

Sense at last on gene patents A c o urt ru l i n g that genes a re n ot patenta b l e cou ld s i g n a l the end of a 20-year a bs u rd ity WHO owns your genes? The argument has raged for decades. As long ago as 1991 there was an outcry when the US National Institutes of Health attempted to patent partial sequences emerging from the early stages of the human genome project. At the time, many patent lawyers believed that such attempts would be futile: they argued that genes are discoveries, not inventions, and so cannot be patented. How wrong they were. The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued patents on genes and other DNA sequences covering up to 40 per cent of the human genome. The argument justifying such patents maintains that isolating a gene upgrades it from a discovery to an invention. This tenuous claim has been accepted by the USPTO for the past 20years. The European Patent Office also grants gene patents, though with stricter limitations. Now a US federal court has ruled that patents on two breast cancer genes are invalid (see page 6), accepting the argument that genes should not be patented. The patents are owned by Myriad Genetics and cover variants of two genes,BRCAl andBRCA2, that make women highly susceptible to breast and ovarian cancer. Ownership of the patents has allowed Myriad to secure a near monopoly on diagnostic

tests for these gene variants in the US. This one ruling doesn't invalidate other gene patents, and it may not in anycase survive a legal challenge. Even so, opponents of gene patenting hope that it signals the beginning of the end of a practice that they have long argued stifles innovation. They are right. Applied properly, patents protect inventors' rights to be rewarded, while enabling others to improve on their innovations. Without such a system there would be little incentive to invest in research. In that context, patents are a good thing. Gene patents do not, however, achieve this goal. "The patents are d efended on the tenuous grounds that iso lat ing a gene makes it an invention"

Numerous analyses, most recently in the journal PLoS Medicine (vol 7, p elOo0208), have concluded that they actually inhibit biomedical innovation. In another damning analysis, one of Myriad's patents on BRCAl was found to be so broad that it covers genetic sequences found in 80 per cent of all human genes (Genomics, DOl: 1O.1016/j.ygeno.2010.03.003). Anybody working 0 n any of these genes is technically in breach ofthe patent. Myriad has not enforced it, but it shows what can happen when you allow discoveries to be patented. We need a global agreement that genes as such are not patentable. This should allow genuine inventions reliant on genes to be patented, while putting end to the situation we are in now, in which a system that is supposed to encourage innovation is doing exactly the opposite.•

Brain electrodes bring hope of revolution HAVING electrodes im planted in your brain is a drastic measure, but for many people with Parkinson's disease, deep brain stimulation offers a new lease of life. Tens ofthousands have been successfully treated, and DBS is now being lined up to treat depression and alcohol dependence. Given how much misery and death these cause, let's hope DBS is as successful here as for Parkinson's. DBS could have an even more profound impact on mental health. Mental illnesses are normally diagnosed using checklists of symptoms, but many psychiatrists would like to move towards biologically based diagnosis instead. With DBS research helping to pin down the brain networks affected in depression, such diagnoses are coming closer. Psychiatry needs a revolution. DBS could help spark it. •

Bird tables on trial FEEDINGwild birds has become a nearuniversal pastime in backyards and on balconies around the world. But now comes evidence that this can spread disease among the very creatures it is supposed to benefit. Will bird tables go the way of another simple pleasure - throwing bread to ducks, which is increasingly frowned upon for causing a disease called angel wing? Next month a conference in London will weigh up the pros and cons - and thankfully it's mostly good news for feeding garden birds (see page 12). Millions of squirrels will be mightily relieved.•

What's hot on NewScientist.com VIDEO New Scientist TV

I:tI Among our videos this week: a simulation reveals how the Achi lles tendon gives humans the ability to run more efficiently than any other primate; a lab-based tsunami simulator improves our understanding of their destructive force; and how i njecting crayfish with fluorescent dye shows that males get turned on by urine NEUROSCIENCE Time Lords' discovered in California

The discovery of a new form

of synaesthesia suggests that 1 human in 50 has the power of perceiving the "geography of time" TECHNOLOCiY Be energy smart - keep up with the Joneses

Governments have seized upon smart meters as the favoured method of reducing domestic energy consumption. Initial studies are suggesting that consumers are unswayed by projected cost savings but will copy a neighbour's energy­ efficient behaviour

ZOOLOCiCiER Rotting corpses keep

How d o you deal with squatters w h o keep stealingyourfood? The golden silk orb-weaver spider has resorted to a gruesome strategy thieving squatters happy

blowing a single crater in the North American ice sheet, the debris would have fil led the sky with a series of megatonne-scale explosions B UMPOLOCiY Moderate stress

With five months to go before she gives birth to her first baby, Linda Geddes launches a weekly column looki ng atthe science of pregnancy

might boost fetal brain SPACE Did a comet swarm strike North America 13,000 years ago? Add a new suspect to the list of what might have kil led off the ice-age megafauna of North America - a barrage of debris from a disintegrati ng comet. Rather than a giant comet

For breaking news, video and online debate, visit newscientist.com

10 April 2010 I NewScientist 15

UPFRONT

Drilling for climate votes PRESIDENT Barack Obama opened

production would increase by only

to drilling for oil and natural gas last

7.4 per cent by 2030. It also found

week, triggering speculation that

the additional drilling would reduce

he was seeking to lay fertile ground

the cost of a gallon of gasoline at the

to pass his climate bill. A prior effort to expand offshore

deposits found off Pacific coast

challenged in court on environmental

states which will not be opened to

grounds and later scrapped by Obama.

drilling under Obama's plan. But

The new plan promises stronger

deposits found in waters off Alaska

environmental safeguards.

would likely yield roughly the same

It will allow commercial drilling

amount, says Joseph Romm of the

operations in the eastern Gulf of

Center for American Progress, a

Mexico to be expanded, and supports

left-leaning think tank.

Atlantic states and in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas north of Alaska. A 2009 study by the US Department

ULTRA-pure samples of a radioactive gas could soon make it harder for nations to carry out nuclear tests in secret. A global network of monitoring stations constantly samples the air for signs of underground nuclear tests. One thing the stations look for is the radioactive gas xenon-133. Nuclear explOSions produce an excited form called xenon-133m, in which the atomic nucleus is boosted to a higher­ energy state, but it is not known exactly how sensitive detectors are to this form because there has been no way to make pure samples of xenon-133m with which to test them. Now Kari Perajarvi of the "Creat i ng pure samples of t he gas prod uced by nuclear tests will make m o n itoring more rel iab le"

Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority in Helsinki, Finland, and colleagues have solved the problem. The team placed a cloud of xenon-133 atoms inside a 6 1 NewScientist 110Aprii 2010

pump by just $0.03 by 2030. The figures include extraction from large

drilling by George W. Bush in 2008 was

ex ploratory drilling off southern

Nuke-test s niffer

off the lower 48 states, domestic oil

vast swathes of US coastal waters

"The only reason to do this is to get Republican votes for a climate bill," Romm says, referring to the cap-and-trade legislation which

of Energy found that if offshore

the US Senate is expected to discuss

drilling were allowed in all waters

in coming weeks.

magnetic trap and then jolted No to gene patents do not qualify as patentable inventions, the court said. "The it with oscillating electric and magnetic fields. This pushed out NATURE belongs to all of us. That human genome, like the structure was the idea underlying a ruling of blood, air or water, was the unexcited form, leaving only by a New York court last week, discovered, not created," Chris the excited form behind (Applied which declared that patents on two Hansen, an attorney with the Radiation and Isotopes, vol 68, p ACLU, said after the ruling. 450). The work could make nuclear genes linked to breast cancer are invalid. The landmark decision The patents that were monitoring with air samples casts doubt on the future of patents challenged cover variants of more reliable. But James Acton of the Carnegie Endowment for on 2000 other human genes. two genes, BRCAl and BRCA2, The American Civil Liberties International Peace in Washington which help predict a woman's Union (ACLU), which brought the chances of developing breast DC says the gas may stay trapped cancer. Myriad Genetics of Salt below ground if there are no cracks case, said the victory would prevent holders of gene patents for it to seep through, making Lake City, Utah, which owns the from cashing in on monopolies patents and has developed tests on-site visits - not currently over molecules such as DNA. that identify women at risk, says required by international law Because they occur in nature they it will challenge the ruling. a better approach.

Storm warn ing THE most powerful geomagnetic storm since December 2006 struck the Earth on Monday, a day earlier than expected. On 3 April, the SOH 0 spacecraft spotted a cloud of charged particles called a coronal mass ejection (CME) shooting from the sun at 500 kilometres per second. This velOcity suggested the front would reach Earth in roughly three days. "It hit earlier and harder than forecast," says Doug

For daily news stories, visitwww.NewScientist.com/news

Biesecker of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado. Fortunately, the storm was not intense enough to interfere strongly with power grids or satellite navigation, but it did trigger dazzling auroras in places like Iceland (pictured). Such storms highlight the uncertainty in the arrival times of CMEs, which can easily be 15 hours off predictions, Biesecker says. Better modelling of the solar wind, which can accelerate CMEs en route to Earth, could reduce the uncertainty.

Plant poison

60SECONDS

time -possibly as it interfered with photosynthesis (EnVironmental Science and Technology, vol 44, p 1610). Green says this could hinder their survival, as wild insects can contain 10 times more cadmium than he tested.

CARNIVOROUS plants may seem able to swallow anything, but if the wrong insect comes their way they can get food poisoning. Humans release the toxic metal cadmium into the environment by burning waste and fossil fuels. "Pitcher pla nts a bsorb the toxic metal cad m i u m from It accumulates in many species, i nsects, which could h inder including insects. To see if this affected the plants, their surviva l" lain Green of Bournemouth However, not all pollutants University in the UK fed white­ seem to be harmful. Similar tests topped pitcher plants European blowfly larvae laced with the metal. showed the plants could regulate The plants absorbed the cadmium, the uptake of copper, which can be toxic to plants in high doses. making their shoots shrink over

A matter of opinion Science writer Simon Singh can now defend the I ibel case brought against him by the British Chiropractic Association. This follows a ruling last week by the Court of Appeal in london that words he used in an article criticising chiropractic were expressions of opinion. not fact (see page 23). The case could speed changes in British libel law.

Lightweight babies Babies born with two common gene variants are around 110 grams lighter at birth than others. The im pact of the genes is roughlyequivalentto the mother smoking four or five cigarettes per day during the third

Peer review or go THE editor of a journal which publishes controversial medical ideas claims he has been told that he will be fired unless he agrees to make the journal peer-reviewed. /lMedical Hypotheses is the last of the non-peer-reviewed journals in the mainstream scientific literature," says Bruce Charlton, the editor facing the ultimatum. /IT hey are going to sack me on 11 May unless I unconditionally accept the changes to the journal." Elsevier, which also publishes New Scientist, is demanding the changes after it withdrew two controversial papers that Medical Hypotheses published last year, one of them questioning whether HIV causes AIDS. Following an internal review, Elsevier ordered Charlton to introduce peer review and to devote extra attention to potentially controversial articles. Charlton says that peer review would undermine the spirit of the journal, which is to challenge prevailing dogma. At present, Charlton alone decides what to publish. Rob Heller, a spokesman for Elsevier, says the company has acted ethically towards Charlton but, /las owner of the journal, we have every right and obligation to make the final decision on the editorial policies of the journal".

Is 'pig sushi' OK for diabetics?

trimester of pregnancy (Nature

Genetics, 001: 10.1038/ng.567).

IT MIGHT not be kosher. but the

causes blood glucose levels to yo-yo.

prospect of widespread animal-to­

which can lead to cardiovascular and

Glass ceiling in space?

human transplants is getting closer.

nervous system complications.

Wednesday marked the largest ever

Four more people with diabetes will

lCT's treatment uses islet cells

soon be implanted with high doses

taken from pigs to replace the cells

three female astronauts aboard the

of living pig cells in a seaweed coat.

missing from a person with diabetes.

shuttle Discoveryjoined Tracy

Several people in New Zealand

The pig islets are surgically implanted

Caldwell Dyson, who was already

gathering of women in space. as

and Russia with type 1 diabetes

into a patient's abdomen. from where

living on the International Space

have already received the "pig sushi".

they secrete insulin throughout the

Station. With nine men currently in

known as Diabecell. and now New

body. To avoid immune rejection.

space. women are still outnumbered.

Zealand company living Cell

the pig cells are coated in alginate.

Technologies (lCT) has received

a substance found in seaweed that

approval from the country's health

prevents immune-system cells from

authorities to begin phase II human

recognising the alien islets.

trials of the implants. Type 1 diabetes occurs when

Elliott says there are not enough human islet cells available

insulin-producing cells in the

to treat the 20 to 30 million people

pancreas called islets are destroyed.

who suffer from diabetes type 1

People with the disease must have

worldwide. so porcine islets are

daily insulin injections. but this

the best alternative.

Giantvegetarian lizard A spectacular new species of monitor lizard has been discovered in previously unexplored forests on the island of luzon in the Philippines. Measuring 2 metres long. Varanus bitatawais covered in bright yellow spots and eats fruit. unlike its 3-metre-long carnivorous relative the Komodo dragon (Biology Letters. DOl: 10.1098/rsbI.2010.0119).

Coral oil peril Oil fuel leaking from a Chinese bulk carrier was forming a thin sheen on the sea around the Great Barrier Reef as New Scientist went to press. The vessel. which had 975 tonnes of fuel on board. was about30 kilometres off course when it grounded on the reef. Initia I assessments showed the ship was scraping across the reef's coral. causing further damage.

10 April 2010 1 NewScientist 17

THIS WEEK

Electric switch fixes brain circuits

symptoms of bipolar disorder mental illness as a condition affecting an interconnected and Tourette's syndrome (see network rather than arising from table, right). It was recently approved by the US Food and chemical imbalances in specific regions. "The brain works on Drug Administration to treat a circuit board," says Helen obsessive compulsive disorder. Mayberg of Emory University in Meanwhile, firms that manufacture DBS devices are Atlanta, Georgia, whose team is lifting the veil on DBS. looking to get the technique An u n d ersta n d i n g of h ow d eep bra i n sti m u lation approved to treat depression, for DBS involves continually works is c ha n g i n g our view of menta l i l l n ess delivering high-frequency pulses which it seems to work well. In of weak current to a particular 2005, Mayberg's team showed Now brain imaging of people region via stimulators that are that DBS could help people with Ewen Callaway undergoing deep brain stimulation surgically inserted into the brain. a type of depression thought DEEP brain stimulation has long (DBS) to treat depression is Although invasive, it works so well to be completely untreatable. been psychiatry's black magic: revealing the mechanism behind for Parkinson's disease and other movement disorders that it is stick electrodes into a region these effects - and who it will Instant response now mainstream, with tens of linked to mental illness, deliver and won't work on. The crucial rapid pulses of weak current, and discovery is that DBS seems to thousands of patients im planted. The researchers implanted the voila! Crippling symptoms of tune an array of brain regions, not stimulators into the subgenual In the last decade, researchers depression, obsessive compulsive just the area around the electrode. have tested DBS on a variety of area, which is involved in emotion, disorder and even substance This once fringe treatment is other conditions. It has proved in six severely depressed patients abuse are eased. now creating a new view of forwhom all other treatments effective at reducing some

81 NewScientist 1 10 April 2010

In this section • Our viral origins, page 10 • Mathematics of carvings reveals long-lost language, page 11 • Life and death at the bird feeder, page 12

had failed, including several types of antidepressant drugs and electroconvulsive therapy. Four reported vast improvements (Neuron, vol 45, p 651). The region was selected because brain imaging studies had shown it to be hyperactive in many people with depression. Most researchers thought that DES worked by silencing activity in that area. This would explain why so many patients responded as soon as their stimulators were switched on: many said the operating room looked brighter than when they had gone in, for example, a sign of a changed outlook on life. It was as if "something painful had suddenly stopped", Mayberg said at a recent lecture on her work at the Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology.

That wasn't the whole story, however. PET scans revealed that while DES damped down activity in the subgenual area as expected, other regions appeared affected too, particularly parts of the nearby prefrontal cortex, which is involved in decision­ making and evaluating emotions. "We got lucky," says Mayberg. "It worked, but probably not for the reason we thought." So why does DES work? Thomas Schlaepfer at University Hospital in Bonn, Germany, says that the brain is increasingly seen as not just a collection of regions but also as consisting of multiple networks, which can become "misconnected" in mental illness. DES "retrains these dysfunctional networks", he says. His own recent work on 10 patients with treatment­ resistant depression supports this notion. His team used DBS on the nucleus accumbens, an area involved in assessing pleasurable stimuli that is known to behave abnormally in depression (Biological Psych iatry, 001: 1O.1016/j.biopsych.200g.0g.013). PET scans of seven of the patients revealed that the implant didn't seem to affect activity in the nucleus accumbens itself, but instead suppressed the subgenual area - also called Brodmann's area 25 - just as with Mayberg's team (see diagram, left). It also had reverberations in parts of the prefrontal cortex. "There are clear connections between area 25 and the nucleus accumbens," Schlaepfer says. He suspects that the three areas are part of a brain network that his and Mayberg's teams both tapped into. The experiments also raise the question ofwhy DES doesn't work in everyone. While all of Schlaepfer's patients felt their lives had improved a year after having the stimulator implanted ­ be it returning to work, taking up a hobby or making new friends ­ some fared much better than others. Mayberg noticed similar variation in 20 depressed people

Signs of success Deep brain stimulation is being tested in a wide range of psychiatric disorders Obsessive compulsive

Tourette's syndrome

Bipolar disorder

45+

30+

N12

Subgenual area

Thalamus.

Subgenual area

and nu cl eus

nucl eus

accumbens

accumbens.

disorder Patients

45+

l

Depression

tested Brain region Internal capsule. subthalamic

targeted

nucleus. nucleus

accumbens

Success rate About 50% of patients respond

I

globus pallidus 50 to 60% of

patients respond

Most patients respond; 30-90%

reduction of symptoms

About 60% of

patients respond

she treated with DBS, and 12 treated for bipolar disorder. "From a practical point ofview you've got to figure out who you're going to offer this to," she says. That's where Mayberg's most recent results, which she presented at the MIT lecture, come in. To see if there were any pre-existing differences in the brains of DBS responders and non-responders, which might predict who should go to the trouble of getting a DBS implant, Mayberg's team turned to functional MRI, which allows you to see which regions light up at the same time - indicating that they are "connected". In depressed patients who went on to respond to DES, a part of their prefrontal cortex tended to light up in conjunction with the

the treatment can be offered to a greater number of severely depressed patients. The technology could have much wider implications. The National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland, is launching an initiative soon to encourage researchers to describe mental illnesses as disorders of networks rather than by how they make people feel - part ofa broader shift across neuroscience. DBS is helping to map these networks, says Thomas Inset, director ofthe institute. "For us not to understand the parts ofthe brain involved in mental illness is really unacceptable," he adds. For now, the initiative is only aimed at researchers, but Insel hopes the brain networks idea will be taken up by doctors too. "Th e brain consists of Insel and Mayberg hope that a better understanding of how multiple networks. w h ich can become 'misconnected' brain regions form networks will improve doctors' ability to match in mental illness" drugs and therapies to patients. subgenual area. This did not It could even lead to drugs that happen in non-responders. In target specific networks. these patients, the amygdala, Mayberg also has her sights on which is involved in fear and other the nascent field of optogenetics, emotions, tended to be connected in which individual neurons are turned off and on with to the subgenual area - not the case in responders. pulses of light. Its use in mental Mayberg cautions that the illness would demand a much better understanding of the results are preliminary, but circuits, which DBS studies she thinks she may be onto something. "If this pans out in could help provide. Ultimately, the specificity of optogenetics larger numbers, there's a total dissociation between the two might allow researchers to make groups," she says. The ability far more subtle changes to brain to predict who will and won't networks. "That's my dream," benefit from DBS should mean Mayberg says .• lOApril 2010 I NewScientist I 9

THIS WEEK

Giant virus shows its prowess DNA into the nuclear DNA of the cells they infect and let their host do the hard work of THE world's largest known replication for them (see virus just got bigger, and analysis of its genome supports the diagram). In contrast, the controversial idea that giant mimivirus constructs a massive viruses shaped the cells of all "factory" within the cell, where millions of new viruses, animals and plants. Armed with almost 1000 genes, or virions, are produced. These eventually burst out from the the mimivirus is a monster compared with classic viruses dead host cell to spread and such as HIV or the flu virus, infect other cells. The only other which seldom have more than viruses that replicate outside the 10 genes. Jean-Michel Claverie of nucleus are poxviruses, but even they rely on the nucleus to the Structural and Genomic replicate some of their DNA. Information Laboratory in In order to create the virus Marseilles, France, has performed factory, the mimivirus appears the first analysis of its genetic machinery, identifying which of to steal some of the host cell's the mimivirus's genes are switched resources. Claverie found that on during each stage of infection. the virus has a gene that codes for a protein which carries ATP He found that the virus has the molecule that stores energy 75 more genes than previously thought. Crucially, Claverie's in a form that cells can use. It is study reveals that the also equipped to scavenge amino acids - the building blocks of mimivirus uses its own genes proteins -from its host, thanks and proteins to orchestrate its to genes that make proteins replication (Genome Research, DOl: 1O.1101/gr.102582.lOg). which transport amino acids. Claverie found that these Classic viruses insert their Andy Coghlan

genes are activated when the Ageing makes mimivirus first invades a cell. He believes they are used to set up repeated stress the virion factory, which then allows the mimivirus to replicate harder to handle without help from the host cell's G R U M PY old people may be bad­ own nucleus. In fact, the factory tempered because their brains react is so large it was originally d ifferently to chronic stress. At least mistaken for a nucleus. that's what happens to elderly rats. Claverie says the mimivirus's Elderly humans are more independence supports the theory that giant viruses gave rise vulnerable to stress than their to the nuclei that package up DNA youthful counterparts. "There is more in all plant and animal cells. Philip low-level anxiety and depression," says Nancy Pachana of the University Bell of Macquarie University in of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. Sydney, Australia, who first put To i nvestigate why, Hi rotaka Shoji forward the theory, agrees. "This paper shows the ability of viruses of the National Centre for Geriatrics to completely take over cells," "The brain's ability to he says. "This is one of the key damp down the release aspects of my theory." of stress hormones may Abraham Minsky of the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, be redu ced w ith age" Israel, says the results su pport and Gerontology in Obu, Japan, put his own team's recent study showing that the mimivirus lives 3-month-old and 24-month-old rats under stress by placing them i nside in a cell's cytoplasm entirely independently oft he host nucleus. a wire-mesh container for 1 hour every day for two weeks. Before this But David Moreira of the treatment began, the two sets of rats University of Paris-South, had similar levels of the stress France, remains unconvinced. h o rmone, corticosteron e . All the He argues that the mimivirus rats had h i g her levels ofthe hormone owes its enormous size to its ability to "pickpocket" genes from after two weeks, but the old rats had significantly more. The old rats also the eukaryotic cells it infects. showed i ncreased activity in areas "This paper does not alter my of the bra i n associated with anxiety view," he says.• and decreased activity i n reg i on s l i nked with contro l l ing emotions

No nucleus required

(Behavioural Brain Research, 001:

Unlike classic viruses. the giant mimivirus can replicate without u sing the host cell's nucleus Virus infects cell

Viral genes invade cell's nucleus

Newviruses made by nucleus escape cell

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1O.1016/j.b br.2010.03.025). Shoji suggests that ageing may re duce the brai n's ability to damp down the release of corticosterone

CELL'SDNA � � � � �

in response to repeated stress. When another group of rats were put in the cage just once, for a n hour, stress

NUCLEUS

hormone levels were similar in old and young rats, suggesting that ageing Mimivirus enters cell. and uses its

Virion factory

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own genes to make a virion factory

makes virions

to i nfect other cells

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stress rather than one-off episodes. Chris Krageloh of the Auckland

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• •••• VIRIONS

University of Tec hno logy, New Zealand, says it i s difficult to compare lab rats with humans . Physical and mental exercise can p rotect the human brain, but lab rats don't have equivalent stimuli, he says.

10 1 NewScientist 1 10 Apri l 2010

Wendy Zukerman .

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Mathematics of carvings reveals lost language ELABORATE symbols and ornate depictions of animals carved in stone by an ancient people have given up their secret - to mathematics. Statistical analysis reveals that the shapes are a forgotten written language, and the method could help interpret other enigmatic scri pt, or even analyse animal communication. Conventional statistical methods for analysing scri pts calculate the entropy or "orderedness" ofthe symbols: Shakespeare's prose would have a higher entropy than Egyptian hieroglyphs or Morse code, for example. However, such analysis only works for datasets large enough to capture most of the vocabulary in a language. To overcome this problem, Rob Lee of the University of Exeter, UK, and colleagues have devised a way to compare small undeciphered scri pts against known texts. The team compared symbols created by the Picts - an Iron Age society that flourished in northern Britain from the 4th to the 9th centuries AD - with over 400 known texts. They standardised the texts by calculating their ratio of paired characters to single characters.

Magnetic poles may once have been at equator

They then inserted this term into a two-stage calculation. The first stage measures repetition: Pictish proved much less repetitive than pictorial scripts and codes, indicating that it was a written language, rather than religious imagery or heraldic arms as has been speculated in the past. Next, Pictish symbols were contrasted with texts analysed at the level of whole words, and found to be comparable to a modern language with a small vocabulary (Proceedings ofthe Royal Society A, 001: 10.1098/ rspa.2010.0041). "It's equivalent to the language used in the 'Janet and John' learning-to-read books," says Lee. The meaning of the Pictish words remains a mystery, but the team suspect the stones are memorials to the dead. Similar, contemporary stones carved in Old English and Latin have been found across the UK. Katherine Forsyth, an expert in Pictish symbols at the University of Glasgow, is delighted. It confirms her own suspicions, she says, "but uses a rigorous and context-free method to do so". Ra jesh Rao of the University of Washington in Seattle is also

Lee and colleagues now plan to analyse other enigmatic symbols, such as the " cup and ring" marks from the northern UK and Bronze Age petroglyphs from Scandinavia. They think the technique could also be adapted to study animal communication, assessing how much dolphins can convey in their whistles, for exam pIe. Kate Ravilious •

of the Earth's magnetic field, to i nfer

impossible clip. Thatspeed is also too

(Earth & Planetary Science Letters,

the rocks' ori g i nal latitude and to

fast to be explained by a phenomenon

001: 10.1016/j. epsI.2010.02.03B).

trace continental motions over the

called true polar wander, i n which the

past bill i o n years.

Earth's entire crust and mantle

generated by the motion of molten

reorient, moving a d ifferent

iron flowing around a superhot, solid

But d o i ng this for rocks in North America and eastern Europe is

DID the Earth's magnetic poles once lie

enthusiastic. Last year he used entropy analysis to study the undeciphered script ofthe ancient Indus valley civilisation and concluded that it was a written language (Science, 001: 1O.1126/science.1170391). By applying the new technique, he has confirmed they represent words rather than heraldic or political symbols.

turning up a conundrum. I n both

geographic region to the north pole. Instead, Alexandra A brajevitch at

The planet's magnetic field is

iron core. Changes in the thickness, viscosity and cond uctivity of the

near the equator? That could explain

regions, there appear to be rocks that

Kochi University in Japan and Rob Van

outer core in the past co u l d have led

puzzling changes in the magnetism

were at the equator at some points

der Voo of the University of M i chigan

to convection patterns that caused

of rocks millions of years ago.

between 550 and 600 mi llion years

i n Ann Arbor suggest the magnetic

the magnetic pole to tilt.

ago and near the poles for other parts

pole itself shifted by 90 degrees,

of this time period .

so that it l ined up along the eq uator

The Earth's magnetic poles are a l igned along roughly the same axis as its rotati onal poles. Geo logists

says an equato rial pole is possible but

That would imply that the ancient

have assumed this was also true in

conti ne nts sped across the surface at

the past, so they use volcanic rocks,

more than 45 centimetres a year -

which when they formed took on an

twice as fast as the top speed of plate

i m print of the d i rection and strength

tectonics - then returned at a sim ilarly

David Stevenson of the California Institute of Te chnology in Pasadena

"There appear to be rocks that m oved from the poles to the equator several times in 50 m i llion years"

says it is not clear what would cause the field to point at a single longitude long enough to leave a magnetic sig nature i n the rocks.

Jeff Hecht.

10 Apri l 2010 I NewScientist 1 1 1

THIS WEEK

mortality effect," says Robinson, "but it's only in one or two species. We're safely feeding another 30 or 40." Other research shows that feeders help birds to survive the winter, and then to produce more young that have higher survival rates. Mike Toms at the BTO says that simple measures like regularly washing feeders with clean water can reduce infection rates. He has also found that mesh or metal­ frame feeders are less likely to spread disease than feeders with a single point of access. There is another piece of good news in the data to be presented at the conference. Opponents of feeders claim they get birds hooked on "junk" food. But by feeding tits food laced with a causing birds to starve, and has radioactive marker, then killed about a fifth of the UK's analysing blood and claw greenfinches. In 2007 alone, around 500,000 died, according clippings, Stuart Bearhop of the University of Exeter, UK, and to Rob Robinson ofthe British colleagues have shown that only Trust for Ornithology (BTO). a tiny fraction oftheir winter food Scott McBurney of the came from feeders. University of Prince Edward in two waves of diseases among Andy Coghlan Island, Charlottetown, in Canada songbirds, mainly finches (see The results are echoed in EACH year, millions of people map). Since 1994, an epidemic of will report at the London meeting findings from Darryl Jones of an infectious eye disease called stack their garden bird feeders that trike reached Canada in 2007. Griffith University in Nathan, mycoplasmal conjunctivitis, with seeds and nuts to help birds There are also preliminary reports Queensland, Australia, which show that Australian magpies survive the winter. But as valuable which began in poultry, has wiped of cases in the US. This suggests out 60 per cent of house finches as they are to many species, for a with easy access to feeders still the two outbreaks could overlap, minority of songbirds in Europe fed their chicks mainly grubs and in the eastern US. Undernourished with devastating consequences and North America bird feeders worms dug from the ground. for finch populations. and unable to see properly, they fall easy prey to predators. appear to be a death trap. "Most birds still eat a largely None of this means that natural diet, and the food provided Little is known about the impact Experiments by Andre Dhondt of we should throw out our bird is just a snack," he says.• ofbird feeders on wild populations, Cornell University in Ithaca, New feeders. "This is the first big York, show that the birds pick up and some ornithologists liken the Mycoplasma gallisepticum them to a global experiment in Bird plagues manipulating nature. "We should bacterium from making contact Bird feeders are helping spread two diseases among finches. have a huge amount of data, but with feeders as they peck at seeds. It's unclear how the "trike" plague reached North America The disease has just reached we don't," says jim Reynolds of HOUSE FINCH CONJUCTIVITIS GREENFINCH'TRIKE" California, and has spread to other the University of Birmingham in ij'MMla n us East Coast I 20% dead in the UK species such as the American "House finches w ith goldfinch. A new and more mycoplasmal conjunctivitis virulent strain has emerged in North Carolina. " It spreads much can't see properly and fa ll faster, and the eye infections are easy prey to predators" ? more severe," says Dhondt. 2009 ' In the UK, a feeder-related the UK. Reynolds will be speaking 997 2007 r 2 ;:;--disease has been affecting at a conference in London next l ' --1 L995 ( month, which for the first time \ 2006 greenfinches since 2005. - 1994 \. 2009 will examine the pros and cons Trichomoniasis, or "trike", is offeeding wild birds. related to a disease thought to 1997 1995 have killed some Tyrannosaurus The conference will hear that bird feeders have played a key role rex. It triggers throat swelling,

Garden feeders spread diseases

5,

12 1 NewScientist 1 10 April 2010

Fordaily news stories, visitwww.NewScientist.com/news

Time slows down for no quasar WHY do d istant galaxies seem to age

group. "To my amazement, the [light

at the same rate as those closer to us

signatures] were exactly the same,"

when big bang theory predicts that

he says. "There was no time d i lation

ti me should appear to slow down at

in the more distant objects."

greater distances from Earth? No one

So what's going on? Hawkins

can yet answer this new q uestion,

classes possible explanations as

but one controversial idea is that the

"wacky" or "not so wacky". The wacky

galaxies' light is being bent by

ideas i nclude the possibil ity that the

i ntervening black holes that formed

u n iverse is not expandi ng, or that

shortly after the big bang. Space has been expanding since

q uasars are not at the distances i ndicated by the red shifts of thei r

the big bang, stretc hing light from

l i g ht - a n i d ea that has previously

d i stant objects to longer, redder

been d iscredited.

wave lengths - a process called "red

Among the not-so-wacky theories

shift". The expansi on means that

is the idea that the brightness

d i stant events appear to occur more

variations are not caused by the

slowly than those nearby. For

q uasars themse lves but by the

example, the interval between l i g ht

gravitational d i stortion of bodies

pu lses leaving a faraway object once

about the mass of a star floating

per second should have le ngthened

between Earth and the quasars.

by the time they reach Earth because space has expanded during their trip. Supernovae show this "time d i lation" in the speed at which they

But this explanation raises its own problems. If all of the quasars in the study are "microlensed" in this way, that wo u l d suggest there are a huge n u m ber of these i nvisible lensing

"The lack of a time d elay in light signatures from quasars could be due to primord ial black holes"

objects floating around - enough to account for all of the universe's dark matter. The best cand idates, says Hawkins, would be black holes formed shortly after the big bang.

fade - far-off explosions seem to dim

If these exi st, they could have a

more slowly than those nea rby. But

similar mass to the su ggested lensing

when M i ke Hawkins of the Royal

objects. ''This is a controversial

Observatory in Edinburgh, U K, looked

suggestion," says Hawkins. "Most

at light from q uasars he found no

physicists favour dark matter

ti me di lation (Monthly Notices of the

consisting of hitherto undiscovered

Royal Astronomical Society, i n press).

subatomic particles rather than

Quasars are galaxies so bright they can be seen across most of the

primordial black hole s." Scott Gaudi of Ohio State

u n iverse. Using observations of

U n iversity in Columbus says this

nearly 900 quasars made over

explanation does not square with

periods of u p to 28 years, Hawkins

microlensing observati ons of the

compared patte rns in the light

Milky Way, which suggest that no

between quasars about 6 b i l lion light

more than 20 per cent of the galaxy's

years from us with those at 10 billion

dark matter halo can be made up of

l i g ht years away.

massive, compact objects such as

All q uasars are broadly similar,

primordial black holes. The black

and their light is powered by matter

hole idea wo u l d get a boost if q uasars

heating up as it swirls into the giant

that are definitely microlensed -

black holes at the galaxies' cores. So

identifiable as the lenses produce

one would expect that a brightness

mUltiple, yet slightly d ifferent,

variation on the sca l e of, say, a month

images of the q uasar - show the

i n the closer group wo uld be stretched

same l i g ht signature as those in

to two months in the more di stant

this study.

Marcus Chown • 10 A p r i l 2010 I NewScientist 1 13

I N BRIEF

Clock is ticking for undersea volcano

prevalence over a 27-day cycle. As the sun takes 27 days

Mysterious 'night sh ining' clouds have a solar controller

to rotate around its axis, the team suggest a link Uournal

THE comings and goings of noctilucent or "night shin ing"

light Earth receives from the sun explains the link.

clouds in the extreme upper atmosphere may be l i nked

The su n's emissions of UV l i g ht are not uniform, so as

to the sun's rotatio n .

it rotates UV-bright regions move in and out of view

of Geophysical Research, 001: 1O.1029/2009jd0123S9).

A VOLCANO under the Mediterranean could collapse any time, causing a tsunami that would swamp southern Italy. But that timing is impossible to predict. Enzo Boschi of the National Institute for Geophysics and Volcanology in Rome, Italy, used remote sensing to peek at the internal structure of the active Marsili seamount. He found that parts of the steep flanks are made of particularly unstable rock, likely weakened by hot fluids. This means a local earthquake or eruption within Marsili would be sufficient to cause the seamount's flank to collapse, triggering a tsunami that would strike the coast of southern Italy (Geophysical Research Letters, 001: lO.102g/2009GLo41757). Bill McGuire of University College London says it's impossible to say when the volcano might eru pt, though no one will be surprised if it does.

The researchers suspect that the amount of ultraviolet

Noctil ucent clouds appear about 80 kilometres above

of Earth. In creased UV l i ght may break down water

the Earth in each hemisphere's summer. Their extent and

molecules in the upper atmosphere, reducing cloud

brightness varies over days, weeks and years, but no one

formation, says James Russell of Hampton University

knows why.

in Virginia, who was not involved in the study.

Now Charles Robert of the University of Bremen, Germany, and colleagues think they have a n answer. By

However, the su n's rotation does not expla i n all the variations seen, says Russel l . An observed lo ng-term

measuring changes in the light reflected from the clouds,

increase in the number of these clouds may be due in part

they found that the clouds appear to wax and wane in

to the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, he says.

Laser 'punch' could boost fusion power

It would strike the surface of the fuel rather than penetrating it. This would create a layer of HOW do you create efficient fusion laser beams into heat and then power with fewer rad ioactive plasma from ionised gas, which X-rays, which will compress a by-products? Start it off by using pellet of deuterium and tritium would generate a thermonuclear a laser to generate the equivalent to force the nuclei together. shock wave that ripples through of a seismic wave. Now Heinrich Hora at the the fuel, promoting com pression Nuclear fusion - creating energy University of New South Wales (Energy & Environmental Science, by fusing together light nuclei, in Sydney, Australia, and 001: 1O.1039/bgo4609g). such as hydrogen - could begin at colleagues propose that using the This process would use less the National Ignition Facility (NIF) mechanical punch of a laser could energy, says Hora. What's more, in California this year. To kick­ be a better approach. They suggest fewer neutrons would be start the reaction, the plan is to using a "flat-faced" laser pulse; produced, reducing the number of radioactive isotopes formed. convert energy from high-power ordinary pulses are pointed. 14 1 NewScientist 1 10 April 2010

Resistant cancer not a life sentence DRUG-resistant tumours might be made vulnerable again. It seems reversible changes to the DNA scaffold might underlie drug resistance in some cancer cells. Jeffrey Settleman of the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center in Charlestown and his colleagues treated tumour cells with cancer drugs. A small subset survived. But placing these "resistant" cells temporarily in a drug-free environment was enough to reverse the resistance: "offspring" of these cells were once again killed by the drugs. Resistance seemed to be due to enzyme-driven changes in the protein scaffold that DNA wraps around. Impeding the enzyme could stop resistance (Cell,D01: lO.1016/j.cell.201o.02.027).

For new stories every day, visitwww.NewScientist.com/news

Fiddler crabs love their neighbours A FRICAN fiddler crabs will put their claws on the line to help defend their neighbours from an intrude r ­ but only because i t suits them. Defence coalitions ought to be common in the wild, says M i chael Jennions of the Australian National U n iversity i n Canberra, but in practice they have o n ly been seen i n two fiddler crab species, and European rock pipits. Jennions and colleagues tethered "intrud er" crabs next to the burrows of two established crabs, then

Justice for all - if I get a grape, so should my partner other groups of chimps showed CHIMPS recognise unfairness, behaviourist at Georgia State even when it involves individuals University in Atlanta, and her no sensitivity towards unfairness other than themselves. This sense colleagues trained captive chimps directed at others. Perha ps of unfairness towards others may to exchange tokens for a food Brosnan's animals rejected their reward, then tested how same-sex "undeserved" grapes in part be a rudimentary form ofthe pairs of chimps reacted to various because they sat right next to social justice that characterises levels of reward. As expected, human societies. their less fortunate partner and In earlier studies several apes, chim ps were more likely to reject may have feared retaliation for monkeys and even dogs responded a boring carrot when their partner their windfall, the researchers negatively when they received a got a yummy grape for the same suggest. meagre reward for the same task token. Surprisingly, the chimps But the chimps' awareness of that earned others a more lavish were also more likely to reject a the mistreatment of others as pay-off. But none of these animals grape if their partner only got a well as themselves also lays the apparently recognised unfairness carrot (Animal Behaviour, DOl: groundwork for complex social 1O.1016/j.anbehav.2olO.02.019). interactions more like those of directed at others. Sarah Brosnan, a primate In previous experiments, human groups, they note.

released them. The neighbouring crabs formed all iances that sign ificantly increased their chances of repelling the intruder. Alliances were strategic. In most cases, crabs

A little stress may boost fetal brain

with burrows would only assist their neighbour if they were bigger than both the intruder and the neighbour, and had a good chance of win ning. "The best explanati on i s better the devil you know;' he says. "By retaining a familiar neighbour you don't have to re-neg otiate territorial boundaries." Crabs with unfamiliar neighbours had more border disputes than those that knew their neigh bours, and when attacked by intruders, were less l i kely to form territorial coalitions. "If you lose your neighbour it i s likely to be to a larger neighbour, that is going to need more territory;' says jennions. Plus, larger fiddler crabs get the females, he adds.

HIGH stress during pregnancy is bad news, but it turns out that moderate stress might boost fetal brain development. Studies in rodents suggest that stress during pregnancy inhibits neural growth, while the children ofwomen who lived in war zones during pregnancy have a higher risk of developing schizophrenia. To investigate the effects of moderate stress in humans, Janet DiPietro and her colleagues at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, examined 112 healthy pregnant women living in the US three times during their third trimester. They asked the women about their stress levels and recorded fetal movements. They also examined the babies two weeks after birth. Women who reported higher stress levels during pregnancy had babies that moved around more in the worn b. After birth, these babies scored higher on a brain maturation test, although they were more irritable. More active fetuses had better control of body movements after birth. The stress hormone cortisol plays a role in brain maturation, which may hel p explain the result (Ch ild Development, vol 81, p 115).

Brush with death leaves mark on DNA SOME lizards escape predators by

The changes were observed by

shedding their tail, butthe experience

Mats Olsson of the University of

appears to leave its mark. After losing

WOllongong i n New South Wales,

their tail, lizards end up with damaging

Australia, and colleagues when they

changes to their DNA.

measured the telomeres of wild sand

The parts affected are the telomeres - stretches of DNA that cap the ends of chromosomes. Telomeres naturally shorten as cells divide, and

lizards, Lacerta agi/is (Biology Letters, 001: 10.109B/rsbl.2010.0126). The team found that telomere length was especially affected i n

shortened telomeres are associated

larger males, compared with females

in h u mans with the effects of ageing.

or smaller males. Olsson suggests

The shortened telomeres found i n lizards that had losttheirtail i n a brush

that this is because larger males live more stressful l ives than other

with a p redator add to the evidence

lizards: they engage in more contests

that environmental stress produces

for female partners and are more

negative effects by erod ing telomeres.

likely to be attacked by predators.

10 A p r i l 2010 I NewSci entist 1 15

For da ily technology stories, visit www.NewScientist.com/technology

TECH N O LOGY

Millipede has lasti ng memory

High flyers to get beer on tap

A MILLIPEDE that can still remember where it was punched a decade later offers the prospect of increased digital storage. In 2002, IBM developed a punch­ card system, known as Millipede, using a thin polymer sheet with nanoscopic holes to provide a simple way to store binary data. It can store hundreds of gigabytes of data per square centimetre. However, the polymer reverts to its pre-punched form over time, losing data in the process. Now researchers at IBM's Zurich Research Laboratory in Switzerland have clocked the rate of data loss. They have calculated that at 85 °C - a temperature often used to assess data retention - it would lose just 10 to 20 per cent of information over a decade, comparable to flash memory (Advanced Functional Materials, 001: 1O.1002/adfm.200g02241).

A BREWING trick could enable cask ales to be served on trains, aircraft and cruise shi ps. Ale normally takes two days to settle after each jolt, but British brewer Marston's has developed a cask beer that can be poured a minute after the barrel has been moved. Cask ale continues to ferment in the barrel. A collagen called isinglass is usually added to tum the yeast into a gel-like mass, but while this clarifies the beer, it takes a long time to settle at the bottom of the barrel. Richard Westwood, who is the brewing director at Marston's in

The width, i n nanometres, of the world's sma l l est superconductor, created by a team at Ohio University

Wolverham pton, is patenting the Fast Cask method of in-barrel fermentation that doesn't need time to settle. The beer is first fermented in a large vessel, then a vacuum device removes clumps ofyeast before the beer is decanted into barrels. Powdered alginate, an extract of seaweed, is poured over yeast to form gel-like beads, which are then added to the barrel. The porous beads let fermentation continue, but the alginate makes the mass sink immediately, Westwood says. So the beer is quickly ready to drink. The Campaign For Real Ale, a UK-based beer enthusiasts' group, says it is considering whether the technique would meet its " real ale" standards.

IITouch screens h ave ta ke n away the sense of touchll Marcus Rosenthal of Artificial Muscle i n S u n nyvale, California, says his company has devi sed a new kind of touchscreen which pushes back on the u ser'sfi ngerto replicate the sensation of typing on a keyboard (SanJose Mercury News, 28 March)

10 April 2010 I NewScientist 1 17

TECHNOLOGY

Hidden g raves spotted by ai rborne ima g i n g Mass burial sites that have stayed secret for d eca d es cou l d be exposed by changes i n veg etation too s u btle to be seen by the n a ked eye variations in the intensity of light of various wavelengths reflected by vegetation on the ground. The THIS is not your average pet precise pattern of intensities has cemetery. The elephants, zebras been found to reflect changes and buffalo buried in a Canadian safari park are notable for more caused by nutrients released into the soil as bodies decompose. than their size: they are also When searching for clandestine yielding new methods for graves, investigators traditionally detecting mass graves from the air. The technique, which searches look for signs of disturbance on for signs of chemical changes the ground, or dig small test in the vegetation growing on trenches to identify the most likely grave sites, could ultimately help area. "From personal experience, I know it's possible to miss remains police and human rights investigators locate human by a few centimetres, then realise remains years after the bodies it later and have to come back," says Andre Costopoulos of have been disposed of. McGill University in Montreal. Known as hyperspectral imaging, the technique analyses Costopoulos is a member ofa a range of visible and infrared team of forensic archaeologists wavelengths as its scans terrain who have been putting from the air. Cameras mounted on hyperspectral imaging to the test a light aircraft or helicopter detect in a search for animal carcasses Linda Geddes

Und erg round h eat betrays d ecaying flesh So much for stone cold dead.

you can't pick it up with i nfrared,"

Writhing masses of maggots can

says Hanson. But h i s team has

raise the temperature of decaying

now found that as the maggots

flesh to around 30 O( - and that heat

congregate i nto a mass, they

signature could provide a telling clue

can raise the temperature inside

i n the hunt for hidden corpses.

deer carcasses to 28 to 30°C.

Ian Hanson at the University of Bournemouth, UK, and his colleagues have been using thermal

This takes around five days, depending the weather. When maggots do colonise a

i maging to help detectthe bodies

body, the heat they generate can

of deer carcasses laid out i n l i ght

be detected by i nfrared cameras

woodland. "In many dead bodies

mou nted on police helicopters,

yolive got a maggot mass of several

Hanson has found. This could provide

kilograms feed i n g away i n side, and

a new tool for ide ntifying bodies

they l i ke it warm," says Hanson. "The police view has been that

i n the underg rowth. "Once the maggot mass has developed there's

once a body has reached the same

a window of opportunity to find

temperature as its environment,

the bodies agai n," says Hanson.

18 1 NewScientist 1 10 April 2010

buried at Pare Safari in nearby Hemmingford, Quebec. "Even quite substantial remains within an acre can be hard to find," Cos topoulos says. The team's technique could prove useful to investigators looking for victims of war or genocide who have been buried "We dug a test p it w h ere the park's owner told us he had buried the elephant, but the elephant wasn't there"

in mass graves. They often do not know where to start their search, and so have to depend on possibly unreliable tip-offs from local people. Satellite imagery and pictures from reconnaissance aircraft have been used to show soil disturbance, vegetation being cleared - even bodies on the ground awaiting burial - but such images are not always available. The McGill team was originally called in by Pare Safari to help hunt for the remains of an elephant, which the park wanted to exhume and piece together for an educational exhibit. "We dug a test pit where the park's owner told us he had buried the elephant, but the elephant wasn't there," says Costopoulos. It took several weeks of digging to locate it. Margaret Kalacska, another member of the McGill team, was already investigating how plants are affected by the com position of the soil they grow on. "Plants are living systems, and any changes in water content or the soil chemistry are going to affect how they reflect light," she says.

To see whether the chemicals released by decomposing corpses had an effect, the team took samples of soil and vegetation from known grave sites and from random points across Parc Safari's half-hectare burial field. They found differences in the chlorophyll content of leaves, and identified the spectroscopic signatures in light reflected by the leaves and soil that might be used to identify similar differences from the air. They then flew over the safari cemetery, recording images of the ground using two sensors

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

which between them could scan all the visible wavelengths and short-wavelength infrared. These images showed clear differences between areas that were known to contain animal remains- some of them decades old - and those that did not. It also picked up sites that a ppeared to contain buried animals, but whose location had not previously been recorded. Kalacska presented the team's findings in February at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS) annual meeting in Seattle. The team hopes to

go back to the site to confirm whether what appear to be previously unrecorded grave sites really do contain animal remains. The technique has great potential, says Ian Hanson, a forensic archaeologist at the University of Bournemouth, UK, who has investigated mass graves in Iraq and Bosnia. "Some of these animals were buried around 20 years ago, so you could take new imagery over areas where bodies were buried 20, 30,40years ago and discover things that no one has ever been able to find before." This could be particularly useful in detecting older mass graves, he says. A related method that is currently being developed by the FBI detects living humans, and recently dead bodies lying on the ground, by recognising the chemical signature of human skin. It could be used when trying to locate and rescue people who are lost or missing, and to track down fugitives. Kerri McLoughney ofthe FBI Counterterrorism and Forensic Science Research Unit in Quantico, Virginia, and her colleagues fitted a helicopter with a hyperspectral camera covering visible and infrared wavelengths in the range 400 to 2350 nanometres to see whether skin signatures could be spotted from the air. They then flew it over a specially prepared site where human and animal remains at various stages of decomposition had been scattered on the ground, and where there were also a number of live human volunteers. The signals it picked up showed a clear distinction between living human skin and the skin of long-dead humans and animals. McLoughney says the technique could be combined with visual aerial searches and thermal imaging to pinpoint individuals in a landscape. "We hope it will enable us to find so much more than we can currently," says McLoughney, who also presented her results at the AAFS.•

Mo lten m eta l batteries to be reservo i r fo r clean energy A BATTERY able to match the output

battery reverses the process

of those used in cell phones from

and releases el ectrons to provide

1/20th of their electrode area may

power. Once heated up to its

have you dreaming of more talk time.

operating tem perature, the battery

But putting it in yo u r poc ket would be a bad i d ea - it's full of molten metal. Instead, its inventors hope it

generates enough heat on its own to keep the l i q uids molten. A sma l l p rototype provided u p to

will provide much-n eeded storage

20 times as much current as a l ithium­

capacity for el ectricity grids.

ion battery - the kind used i n portable

Grid-scale batteries would boost effi ciency by allowing solar energy

devices and electric cars - from the same area of el ectrode, says team

to be used at night, for example, or excess power from a n u clear plant to be stored for later. Engi neers led by Donald Sad oway at the Massachu setts Institute of

"A battery the size of a shipping container cou ld deliver a megawatt of electricity"

Tec hnology were inspired by the way aluminium i s smelted using

member Luis Ortiz. The materials

electricity. They c reated a similar

used are much cheaper than lithium

but reve rsible process that can either

(New Scientist, 12 December 2009,

consume or release energy. Their batteries are s i m ply tanks f i l l ed with three separate layers of liquid at 700 DC thatfl oat on top of one

p 23), making scal i n g to up to grid scale feasible, he says. "Cost-effective storage is the holy grail of the electricity grid," says

another: the top one i s molten

Matthew Nordan, a specialist in clean

magnesium, the bottom antimony and

technology at venture-capital firm

the one i n between a salt conta i n i ng

Venrock in Cambridge, Massachusetts,

magnesium antimonide, a dissolved

who has not invested in the technology.

compound of the two metals. When the battery i s being charged,

The M IT team calcu lates that a battery the size of a shipping

magnesium antimonide i n the middle

container could del iver a megawatt

layer breaks down into the pure

of el ectricity - enough to power

elements and so the upper and lower

10,000 100-watt l i g ht b u l bs - for

layers deepen. Discharging the

several hours.

David C. Holzman .

10 Apri l 2010 1 NewScientist 1 19

TECHNOLOGY

If an avata r l ies, you ca n te l l by its eyes ARE you being lied to online? first group's answers. Some Spotting when someone is telling avatars had eye movements that the truth could soon become mirrored those of the original easier, thanks to avatars that volunteers, while others had can mimic our real-world no eye movement at all. The eye movements. volunteers were asked whether Most virtual worlds, such they believed the avatars were as Second Life, are populated being truthful or lying. by avatars with static or pre­ On average, the participants were able to identify 88 per cent programmed gazes. One way to make interactions feel more realistic is to reproduce a person's eye movement on their avatar, say William Steptoe of University College London and colleagues. Now they have found this makes it easier to spot whether an avatar is telling the truth. The researchers asked 11 volunteers personal questions, such as to name their favourite book, and told them to lie in some of their answers. During the interviews, the volunteers wore eye-tracking glasses that recorded their blink rate, direction and length of gaze, and pupil dilation. A second group of 27 people then watched a selection of clips of avatars as they delivered the

The sea rch e n g i n e that hacks into secretive forums

oftruths correctly when the avatars had eye movement, but only 70 per cent without. Spotting lies was harder, but eye movement helped: 48 per cent accuracy com pared with 39 per cent w ithout. Steptoe will present the results at the 2010 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Atlanta, Georgia, next week. It is unclear exactly how the eye movements hel p. The eye­ tracking glasses did show that people tended to hold the gaze of the interviewer for longer

when telling the truth than when lying. "Perhaps they were overcompensating," says Steptoe. What's more, their pupils dilated more when lying - something previous studies have linked with the greater cognitive load required for deception. "This is one of a small handful ofcues that you can't control," says Steptoe. Enhancing expressive features such as eye movement could eventually make avatar-mediated communication feel more trustworthy than online video, because only relevant visual cues need to be displayed, says Steptoe. "This means you can emphasise certain behaviours." The technology could help in business meetings held in virtual environments, or to enhance communication between people with social phobias, where face­ to-face interaction can seem daunting, says Steptoe. Ralph Schroeder of the University of Oxford says the work is "a big step forward" in virtual communication. This work is "unique in showing that if you give an avatar eyes that blink and move, people will treat them in a highly real way", he says. Richard Fisher .

computer on which it is runn ing.

29 restricted forums, conta i n i ng

The software also d isguises its

about 13 million messages i n tota l .

i ndexing activity by making it look

O n o n e forum, i t tookjust 3 9 minutes

l i ke the traffic generated by users

to index 29,016 posts made over

browsing the forum. What's more,

a six-week period.

THE dark corners of cyberspace are

fend off such software. Screening out

it can attempt to sign up for

being i l lumi nated by indexing

all traffic from IP addresses belonging

membership on forums that require

conversations on these forums to

software that can reach into

to well-known search engines is one

registration, though it has to seek

build an overview of the l i n ks

secretive websites that are normally

way to do this.

help from Che n's team if unusual

between participants. He suggests

inaccessible to search engines. This

The dark web can provide a haven

could allow search engines to cover

for extremist groups to exchange

online forums lurking within the

ideas, says Hsi nchun Chen, director of

"dark web", and provide insights

the artificial intellige nce la boratory at

into what is being said by groups

the University of Arizona in Tucson. So

who would rather keep their

Chen and his team devised software

conve rsations secret.

to access and index protected online

Conventional search engines use programs called spiders or web crawlers that scuttle around the internet and index what they find.

i nformation is asked for. To help it

Chen's team is now analysing the

this may be useful in identifying prominent members.

"The software disgu ises its indexing act ivity to look like traffic generated by users browsing the forum"

The impressive thing about Chen's forum crawler is the way it combines h u man guidance and a utomated web searches to catalogue dark web forums, says Denis Roy, a spokesman

forums Uournal of the American

i ndex text i n languages other than

Societyfar Information Science and Technology, 001: 1O.1002/asi.21323).

English it uses Google Translate,

he says, i s to "find the right blend of

Google's o n l i ne translation engine.

the least possible number of humans

One of the tricks deployed by

Unl ike a regular web crawl er,

for Yahoo. "The name of the game,"

and machines" to perform this

However, many websites are

Chen's software is to regularly change

Chen's software looks only at sites he

i ndexing of restricted websites

protected by security restrictions that

the apparent IP address of the

has specified. It has compiled data on

efficiently.

20 1 NewScientist 1 10 April 2010

Shehryar Mufti .

S PAC E SC H OO L U K 20 1 0 Space School UK and Senior Space School UK will be celebrating a 1 2th successive year at the University of Leicester this summer. These residential courses are a unique opportunity for students, aged 1 3 - 1 5 and 1 6- 1 8 , to learn more about Space Exploration

from

the

experts .

No

prior

knowledge is required, and we welcome all students willing to j oin in the varied activities . The primary theme of Space School 2 0 1 0 i s again Space Exploration, covering current and planned missions to the Moon and Planets, with intelligent robots and humans. For further details and an application form see our web site www. spaceschooluk. org or contact:

Buzz Aldrin on the Moon: courtesy NASA

Dr Tracey Dickens, Space School UK Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Leicester Leicester LE I 7RH e-mail : spaceschool phone:

@star.le. ac .uk

0 1 1 6 252 5635

�

U K S PAC E AGENCY

supporting individual excellence

OPINION

Oh no, not aga i n T h e wor l d is poised to cave i n to d e m a n ds for a resu mption of commerc i a l w h a l i n g, H ow d i d it c o m e t o t h i s, ask Mark Simmonds a n d S u e F isher IN 1986, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) implemented a moratorium on commercial whaling. Many people believed that this would save the whales and end forever the industrial slaughter that had decimated entire species. Not so. A proposal before the IWC could lead to the resumption of commercial whaling as early as next year. Ifit passes- and there is a real chance that it will ­ one ofthe greatest conservation successes of our time will be wiped out. Even with the moratorium in place, hundreds of whales are still killed every year. This is because the IWC allows mem bers to make unilateral objections to its decisions. Norway objects to the moratorium and hunts minke whales commercially. The IWC also allows nations to grant themselves "special permits" for research. japan exploits this provision for commercial ends through so-called "scientific whaling" in the north Pacific and the Southern Ocean - even though the IWC has designated the area as a sanctuary. Iceland left the IWC in 1992 but rejoined 10 years later with a controversial "reservation" to the moratorium. It, too, continues to hunt commercially. The three whaling nations now kill around 1600 whales a year. This is a source of conflict at the IWC. One indicatorofthe scale of the conflict is the remarkable expansion of the IWC from 41 members in 1986 to 88 today, as pro-Whaling nations recruit allies to their cause and anti-whaling 22 1 NewScientist 1 10 April 2010

Its draft proposal was published in March; a revised version is expected to be voted on at the IWC annual meeting in Agadir, Morocco, in june. At the core of the proposal is a lo-year suspension ofthe moratorium. This would legitimise japan, Norway and Iceland's whaling, allowing them to carry on hunting whales commercially without recourse to special permits or objections. Negotiations are now underway to set quotas for the species that will be commercially hunted: humpback, sperm, minke, sei, fin and Bryde's whales. The package has some fine "trimmings", including an aspiration that the Iwe will focus more on conservation and environmental matters­ something that many would say it should do anyway. Its backers also emphasise that it will reduce the number of whales being caught by nations follow suit to maintain was the humiliating defeat that it japan, Iceland and Norway. suffered in 2002, when ja pan and parity. Neither side is close to In truth, the suspension of the moratorium would be a huge securing the three-quarters its allies blocked its proposal to step backwards. Opponents, majority needed to make binding renew the Alaskan Inupiat's including our organisation, decisions, but the whaling nations "subsistence quota" of bowhead have enough votes to prevent believe the deal would richly whales. The US got its quota in their opponents from tackling 2007, but the suspension of reward the whaling nations for their self-allocated quotas. hostilities was short-lived. their intransigence over the years It was against this background in 2009, the "peace" and risks too much. Without exception, conservation bodies that in 2007 the US, historically negotiations moved to a new level. Chile, the new IWC chair, led oppose the package, calling it a an anti-whaling nation, took the chair of the IWC and initiated a plan to "save whaling, not whales". a group of12 countries, including peace process. Its proposal japan, Iceland and the US, in a Even if a reduction in series of meetings behind closed contained nothing substantially whaling is achieved in the short different from previous attem pts doors to thrash out a compromise. term, we believe this will be at the cost oflegitimising commercial to find a compromise. What "Negotiations are now whaling, leading to a proliferation differed, however, was the under way to set quotas im petus that the US's leadership of international trade in whale for sperm. minke. sei. fin gave. Many believe that the US's products which, in turn, will motivation for pursuing a deal and Bryde's w hales" stimulate more hunting.

Comment on these stories at www.NewScientist.com/opinion

Other problems include loopholes that would still allow whaling under objection or special permit. There are fears that the lifting of the moratorium will embolden nations like South Korea, which have expressed the desire to resume whaling, to exploit them. The proposal also accepts whaling in the Southern Ocean sanctuary and lacks a sound scientific basis for determining quotas. At the time ofwriting, the fate of the deal is unclear, particularly as the European Union, which holds enough votes to defeat it, is in disarray over its internal decision-making. Unless the 25 EU members of the [WC can reach consensus (which is virtually impossible) they will probably have to abstain. EU nations might like to recall that whales are entirely unsuitable for sustainable use, being long-living, slow-reproducing animals, which are incredibly expensive to monitor adequately. Whaling is also irredeemably inhumane. Overall, the package is a good deal for the whalers and a poor deal for the whales. If the proposal is defeated, it won't necessarily mean a return to the status quo. It is likely that Australia will proceed with plans to take Japan to the International Court of Justice over its whaling in the Southern Ocean sanctuary. Other diplomatic and NGO-led efforts to persuade Japan, Norway and Iceland to cease whaling will continue and we believe that change will ultimately come from within. Public opinion in these countries is changing, demand for whale meat is in decline, and the whaling industries are heavily subsidised. The moratorium is beleaguered, but it is still the best hope for an end to whaling. •

One min ute with ...

S i m o n Si n g h The science writer bei n g sued for l i bel by British c h i ropractors gives h is response to his successful a ppea l

How did what you have written upset the chiropractors?

I asked whether they should be treating children with col i c, ear infections or asthma, and whether spi nal manipulation can actually do any good. I merely pointed this out in an article in The Guardian newspaper, a n d two years laterwe are still fighting a li bel action against me by the British Chiropractic Association (BCA). W hat has changed, now that the appeal court has overturned the ruling by a judge last year thatthe wording you used implied thatthe BCA was being dishonest?

The article was not about calling them dishonest, so I'm glad that's now put to one side. Now we can argue in court whether my statement was a fair one, and honestly held. What is the significance of this ruling for the way science is reported and discussed?

What s really important is that English libel law damages the ability of scientists to tell and read the truth. At present, journals will not publ ish certain papers forfear of being subject to legal action, and will not withdraw bad papers forthe same reason. It's in the interests of everyone who reads New Scientist to support reform of these laws, something that I and others are fighting for. '

Can New Scientist's readers help?

I have spent 1 mill ion minutes fighting my case. It will take your readers 1 minute to sign up to our campaign by going to www.libelreform.org/sign. So far we have got 45,000 signatures, including the Astronomer Royal, the Poet Lau reate a n d Ricky Gervais.

Simon S i n g h is a science journalist and author. Two years ago, he was sued for what he says were fair criticisms of chiropractic. Last week, he won a court decision in London that allows him to continue defending his case

Was it all worth it, considering it has cost you

£200,000 and two years of disrupted work?

If I had known it would take two years, I might not have embarked on it. But I refuse to apologise for an article that I believe to be fair, accurate and in the public interest. So two years on I'm sti ll fighting the case, and it could lastfor another two years. Having won this round in court, are you off to celebrate?

I had a baby son 10 days ago, so my only celebration will be with a bottle feeder. Incid entally, he has a j umpsuit which says "Keep l i bel laws out of science".

The BCA is now considering whether to continue its legal action in the light of this

Mark Simmonds is the international director of science for the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society. Sue Fisher is the director of policy for WDCS North America and leads the WDCS's anti-whaling programmes

PROFILE

I noticed a chiropractor just down the

ruling. Do you think you can prevail if they

road. Will you be popping in for a session

take it forward?

with your son?

I've a lways thought there's a chance, and after today's rul ing we might have a higher than SO per cent chance of winning.

If my child gets colic, he will definitely not be going to a chi ropractor. Interview by A ndy Coghlan

10 March 2010 I NewScientist 1 23

OPINI ON LETTERS

Jurgen Habermas (born in 1929) has long argued that knowledge arises from interaction between From Paul Wilson people. George Herbert Mead Ani! Ananthaswamy repeatedly suggests that "the brain" (1863-1931) argued that mind itself broadcasts information to a global arises from such interaction, workspace, but makes no attempt rather than the other way around. It is far from surprising that the to define which area (or areas) social and individual processes of the brain are doing the ofthe mind would mimic, or broadcasting (20 March, p 38). Something is, he writes, resolving perhaps mirror, each other, and conflicts in the data before comes as no surprise to those of broadcasting it. us who question the assumption Surely we have here a that each of us has, or is, a potential solution to the "hard" fundamental single selffrom philosophical problem of which all else proceeds. consciousness - the need for an London, UK integrated sensory landscape to be conscious of, and the need for something else to be conscious of Lies we tell ourselves it -the necessary duality that must From Miroslav Hundak comprise consciousness. Perhaps Ray Tallis implies that science the filtering and broadcast will never be able to explain functions alluded to produce the consciousness through objective continuous "video" screen of our observations and measurements integrated landscape, while the because that is contrary to the global workspace (awareness) is subjective nature of the conscious doing the watching. experience (9 January, p 28). Kelvedon, Essex, UK That does not stand up. Conscious experiences can vary From Steve Wilson The idea that consciousness is the a great deal following changes to a person's state of mind elicited by product of interaction between drugs, mental illness or brain different areas ofthe brain may have begun with Bernard Baars in injury, for example. This indicates that consciousness must be 1983, but German philosopher

Duality solved?

Enigma Num ber 1590

Return to starter R I CHARD ENGLAND

If we take the three-digit number 999 and write it in words as NINE HUN DRED AND NINETY-NINEwe can see that its fou r elements have 4, 7, 3 and 10 letters. If we multiply 4 x 7 x 3 x 10 we get 840, which is WIN £15 will

some way away from the 999 that we started with. I i nvite you to fi nd a three-digit number such that if you multiply together the number of letters in each of its four elements you getthe number that you started with. What is that three-digit number?

be awarded to the sender of the fi rst correct answer opened on Wednesday 12 May. The Editor's decision is final. Please send entries to Enigma 1590, New Scientist, Lacon House, 84 Theobald's Road, London WClX 8NS, or to [email protected] (please i ncl ude your postal address). Answerto 1584 Trisquare: The nu mber is 29 The winner George Bruce of Edinburgh, U K

24 1 NewScientist 1 10 Apri l 2010

controlled by physical properties Missing methane of the brain. Some parts of the brain are From Maarten van der Burgt used to interpret other people's The greenhouse gas methane is actions and calculate how that getting the attention it deserves other person will act. When we (20 February, p 38). Having worked for over 30 years in the oil do this we in effect create a simulation of someone else industry, I am surprised how little a someone else who may or may attention is paid to flared and not be real. But if our brain can vented "associated gas", which simulate someone else, then includes methane. This may be as little as 2 per cent ofthe energy surely it can try to simulate itself. It can then interpret the actions of leaving oil wells (28 June 2008, p 22) or as much as 10 percent, as the simulated self - and this may be just the first step in a reported in Modern Power Systems. "recursive" chain of simulation The lower figure may be correct in and interpretation. the US, where most of the Samobor, Croatia associated gas is sent to natural gas pipelines. But methane emissions are, for obvious reasons, downplayed by all Moving pictures governments and operators; and unfortunately only the operators can supply real data. About 20 per cent of this associated gas enters the atmosphere as methane due to incomplete combustion in flares and venting: 43 million tonnes per year, corresponding to 1300 million tonnes per year carbon dioxide equivalent. Akersloot, The Netherlands

From John Morton The idea that vivid motion can be portrayed by bodies in unstable positions rather than by blurring (20 March, p IS) is well known to us comic-book geeks. When Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created Superman in the late 1930S, they included a cape in his costume as a way of suggesting movement. Comic book artists have used a billowing cape ever since. It is less a Ja panese cultural issue than a comic book issue, although it may be no coincidence that comics are popular in Japan. If you go to a fine bookshop and look at the graphic novel section you'll see outstanding exam pies of bodies in unstable positions, caught "in the moment" and conveying an unmistakeable sense of motion. Pontypridd, Glamorgan, UK

Quake and doom From Eric Neumayer, Department ofgeography, London School ofEconomics Helen Thomson reports on how earthquake engineers can learn from talking to other disciplines (UK edition, 6 March, p 46). They will find it useful to know which countries may have no quake­ proof building regulations, or fail to enforce what they do have. Recent interdisciplinary research into what determines the death toll from major earthquakes, undertaken jointly with Philipp Keefer, an economist with the World Bank, and Thomas Plumper, a political scientist at the University of Essex, U K, finds that earthquake mortality is systematically higher in countries where quakes are rarer. The effect

TRIN ITY TEST SITE "ground zero" of the nuclear arms

most ofthe "tri nitite", the glassy

race. Aside from a bus that runs

green radioactive mi neral formed by

first nuclear explosion

between the blast site and a historic

the blast. Have no fear: you absorb

turned 4 hectares of sand

ranch house where the bom b's

fourto 10 times as much radiation

into glass and signalled the

plutonium core was assembled,

during a five-hour flight as you do on

AT 15 secondsto 5.30 am on

,..

16 july 1 945, the world's

start of the atomic age. It

visitors have to fend for themselves.

happened at the Trinity site i n

There's no crater left today, just

the jornada d e l Mue rto desert of southern New Mexico. Irs hard to imagine a more isolated,

a one-hour visit to the Tri nity site.

julian Smith

a 2-metre lava-rock obeli sk, a few historical photos on a chain-link

WHERE: 200 ki lometres south of

fence and a single stump of the steel

Al buquerque, New Mexico (see bit. ly/LTKKk for more informati on)

desolate spot. Yet the site, part of the

firing tower that held the bomb,

White Sands missile range, is open

which was code-named "the gadget".

WHEN: Open to the public on the first

two days each year to pilgrims to this

The government has cleaned up

Saturday in April and October

SOUDAN MINE

SEVEN h u ndred metres below the mountai nous terrain of Soudan, Minnesota, lurks part of one of the most important experiments in particle physics. A unique box of tricks designed to detect neutrinos beamed from Fermilab, about 725 kilo metres away in Batavia, I l l i nois, is buried here. This sensitive experiment is sited deep down in this old iron mine to shield itfrom the "noise" of cosmic rays raining down on the Earth.

N eutrino physics inspired G ianetti's massive mural iv 1

NewScientist 1 10 April 2010

STAR CITY An unassu ming home (above ) fo r u n ique space memorabilia

EVER since Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space in 1961, all Soviet and Russian cosmonauts have trained at the Gagarin Cosmonauts Training Centre at Star City. It was a highly guarded military facility during the Soviet era, and even in the mid-1990s red tape made it a nightmare to visit. Nowadays, several companies make life easy by offering guided tours. Compared to the slick NASA vi sitor centres, Star City, with its Khrushchev-era buildings, has a fascinating raw authenticity. The highl ight is undoubtedly the training facilities, where you will see the giant tank where cosmonauts p ractise space walks under water, a mock-up of the M i r space station and a centrifuge that exposes budding cosmonauts to accelerations of up to 8 g. Star City also has a museum showcasing spacesuits, charred descent capsules and assorted Gagarin memorabilia, including the YG 1 number plate of the Rol l s-Royce that drove him past ecstatic crowds in London three months after his first space flight. You can also visit a replica of Gagari n's office, contai ning a book which crews still make a point of signing

I visited the mine to see the

in 20th-century neutrino physics,

before every launch. If you're l ucky, you might even bump into

experiment for myself. Delving

from Wolfgang Pauli's theoretical

this far down into the Earth's crust

insight that neutrinos should exist

a cosmonaut. I gotto meet Sergei Avdeyev,

is a haunting experience. And the

to crucial neutrino experiments

who clocked up nearly 12,000 Earth orbits

MINOS neutrino detector - 6000

humming away today.

and 750 days aboard the Mir space station.

tonnes of steel and plastic - is a sight to behold, towering above

If art helps you contemplate the spirit of science, this may well be

l i ke something from the lair of a

the most bizarre place you' l l ever

James Bond villain.

do it.

Anil Ananthaswamy

For the brave of heart, some tour operators can also arrange a spell in the centrifuge or flights which simulate weightlessness.

Hazel Muir

But there's another reason to WHERE: An hour's d rive north-east of

come here. Far less well known

WHERE: The mine is a short

butjust as im pressive is the

drive from M i n neapolis. You

Moscow (www.gctc.ru/eng)

mural adorning one of the walls.

can organise a tour with the

WHEN: Open all year, except at weekends

By Joseph Gian netti, this

Soudan Underground M i ne State

and on official Russian holi days. Permits are

modern-day cave painting,

Park services

required to visit, so contact a tour operator

B metres high and 18 metres

WHEN: 8etween the Memorial

well in advance. Be warned that winter

wide, is an impressionistic

Day weekend (end of May) and the

temperatures can plummet below -20 DC

celebration of the advances

end of September

10 Ap ri l 2010 I NewScientist I v

LIVE THE DRY LI FE

STRETCHING 2000

so as to minim ise contact

ki lo metres along Afri ca's

with the scorch i n g sand.

Atlantic coast, the Nami b desert is one of the driest and most inhospitable places on the planet. Yet life here has adapted i n remarkable ways. Among the residents is the dancing white lady spider

It often lies i n a m bush

Peri n g uey's adder often l ies in am bush, buried in the sa nd

buried i n the sand, with only its eyes and the tip of its tail exposed. If spiders and snakes send shivers up your spine, seek out the tenebrionid beetle

(Onymacris

burrows i nto the sand with its webbed "spade feet" and licks dew off its own large eyeballs. Tracking down any ofthese

plana). It harvests the morning fog

creatures req uires serious detective

(Carparachne aureoflava), which

by doing a headstand i nto the wind,

work, so hiring a guide is advisable.

flips onto its side and performs

so that tiny droplets condense onto

Gaia Vince

cartwheels to escape predators.

its waxy wing-cases and roll down

Then there's Peringuey's adder

its carapace i nto its mouth. Finally

(Bitis peringueyl), a mesmerising

there's the translucent palmato

Swakopmund, Namibia

snake which moves by sidewinding

gecko (Pachydactylus range/), which

WHEN: All year

WHERE: Tours can be arranged in

WISH LIST UN DERWATER ALEXANDRIA I T WAS one of

ago, following a series of

the original

devastati ng earthquakes

seven wonders

and tsunamis.

But tourists might yet get

of the world: a 135-metre-tall

to walk amid the sphinxes

l ighthouse that dominated the

and statues that lie beneath

Egyptian port of Alexandria in

the waves. UN ESCO and the

300 Be. Nea rby, around the

Egyptian Ministry of Culture

time of Christ, would have

are planning a feasibility study

been Cleopatra's palace and

for an underwater museum,

other monuments.

allowing vi sitors to view these

You'd be hard-pressed to

ancient treasures in situ.

gaze upon these wonders

I've dreamed of visiting

today: the city and l i ghthouse

Atlantis, and this is probably as

were submerged in the

close as I'm ever going to get.

Mediterranean 1600 years

Li nda Geddes

HESSDALEN LIGHTS

Now humans are gone, the wolves have moved in

FOR ALL the rugged beauty

in the 19BOs, Norwegian and Italian scientists set up an

in the forests

automated observatory to keep

and mountains of

permanent watch on the valley.

the Hessdalen val ley,

Yet despite this and regular

Norway, it might be better

visits by research teams, it

to be here after dark - when

wasn't until September 2006

you just might catch a glimpse

that they recorded a floating

of the area's mysterious

light that could n't be expla ined

light show.

away as a star, planet. aircraft

For over a centu ry, locals

or meteor. Experiments

have reported seei ng bl inking

followed to ascertain its

and spiralling balls of light that

chemical make-up, but the

appear from nowhere and

jury is sti l l out. I want to visit

hang, ghost-like, in the air.

Hessdalen and judge for

Prompted by a flurry of reports

myself. Ben Crystall

HEAVENLY SPRITES FORGET the

the Colorado Rockies, which

flickering bolts

offer a clear view across the

of l ightning sent down by thunderstorms. They

pla i n s of Kansas and Nebraska. When there's a storm in the distance, let your eyes adapt to

are nothing compared with

the dark and then look towards

displays high above the clouds,

it. Shield your eyes from the

where towering red lights

lightning and focus on a region

known as sprites shoot up to

at four or five times the height

the edge of space. Though

ofthe cloud tops.

they are short-lived, with a bit of l uck you can catch sight of

Now be patient - sprites typically appear every 5 or 10

them with the naked eye - and

min utes. And while they are

I'd love to try.

red, your eyes may perceive

Sprite-hunters should head for a high ridge, for example, in

them as orange, or even white or green. Ben Crystall

10 April ZD10 I

NewScientist I v i i

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

is stronger in richer than in poorer countries, which can expect to save many more lives by tackling undernourishment, infectious diseases and other problems than by preparing for earthquakes. Countries with corrupt regimes, authoritarian regimes with non­ institutionalised ruling parties and young, fragile democracies have fewer incentives to take action and are therefore less likely to enact and enforce appropriate regulations, even where earthquakes are frequent. London, UK

Myriad multi verses From David Doshay Your 6 March cover bears the claim: "Touching the multiverse­ first hint that it really exists". But it is almost three years since you reported Anthony Aguirre's work with his graduate student Matthew Johnson: they calculated that we might be able to observe the large-scale signature of other bubble universes in the cosmic microwave background radiation (12 May 2007, p 12). Such a signature, sometimes called the "axis of evil", is in fact observed. Saratoga, California, US The editor writes: • The significance of Ralph

Bousso's work is in the conclusion that it may be used to make "real, testable predictions" which can then be confirmed, or falsified, by new observations (6 March, p 28). Aguirre showed that the multiverse is compatible with the already observed "axis of evil" ­ just a s Laura Mersini-Houghton showed it is compatible with the already observed giant void (24 November 2007, p 34).

Jute what we need From Brian Wood I was pleased to see a discussion of green clothing (13 March, p 37). Is it time to revisit fibres such as

sisal and jute? The jute plant grows remarkably well on marginal land. But traditional "retting" to free the fibres from the polysaccharide matrix they are bound to is terribly polluting

and (for jute) binds metal ions to the fibres that make them darken. Methods for mechanical removal of the fibre from the central "stick" have been developed but are not currently economic. Should we develop the technology to revitalise this fascinating and sustainable crop, perhaps to create better cultivars of the plant? Lenzie, Lana rksh ire, UK

End is not nigh From Ronald Barnes I can assure Max Whisson that the Large Hadron Collider will not precipitate a catastrophe (13 March, p 27). How can I be so sure, when I have had nothing to dowith the LHC? My confidence is based upon the fact that every day the Earth is bombarded by cosmic rays, and some of these have energies many orders of magnitude greater than anything the LHC can produce. This has been going on for millions of years without anything catastrophic happening. Watlington, Noifolk, UK

Immortal, invisible From Maggie Hamand As someone with a first degree in biochemistry and an MA in

theology, I am always fascinated by debates about religion and science. I was dismayed, however, to read that belief in God is equated with belief in "supernatural beings" (6 March, p 3). In Christian theology God is not seen as an object of our consciousness, and therefore cannot be described as a "being" or as a "thing". God is held to be both beyond being (transcendent) and being itself (immanent). As far as I am aware Judaism, Islam, and indeed Buddhism and Hinduism have similar doctrines. It is human to constantly reify things which are abstract - as scientists do when talking about particles and black holes - or which are divine: but this should be resisted if we are to truly understand things. London, UK

surprising was that fathers of families had an even lower survival rate than male crew. The group with the highest survival rate were female passengers travelling first class. London, UK

Titanic survival

From Simon Birnstingl Can I anticipate demand for a 1030 prefix and suggest "valot" ? This would allow 1057, ifit becomes necessary, to be a "hellavalot". Upper Beeding, West Sussex, UK

From Peter Smith The matter of survival on the Titanic is considerably more complex than you suggested (6 March, p 5). Some years ago I let undergraduate students on a

Massive multiples From Keith Atkin I was interested to read of the 20,000 supporters for an extended prefix system, advocating the prefix "hella" for 1027 (6 March, p 5). A set of additional prefixes above "yotta" and below "yocto", including nava (N) for 1027 and sansa (S) fOr l030, was proposed as long ago as 1994 by Victor Mayes (Quarterly TournaI ofthe Royal Astronomical Society, vol 35, p 569). Sheffield, UK

The editor writes: • Feedback noted another

competing proposal: harpi for 1027 and grouchi for 1030, leaving the other Marx brothers available for future use (4 December 2004) .

For the record • The Carbon Reduction in B u i l dings consortium's principal i nvestigator is Kevin lomas, professor of b u i l d i ng sim ulation at loughborough

quantitative methods course loose on data from the survivors list, with the research hypothesis: "Women and Children First?" Beyond doubt, women and children were preferentially treated. Perhaps surprisingly, male passengers in second class had a statistically significant lower survival rate than males in third class, even taking into account ages. Even more

U n iversity (20 March, p 7),

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10 A p ri l 2010 I NewSci entist 1 25

OPINI ON TH E B I G I DEA

The shock of the old N o o n e expected i t to happen so q u i ckly, a n d ce rta i n ly n ot everywhere

-

b u t Homo sapiens is a g e i n g fast Th is is n o

bad thi ng, arg u es Fred Pearce

USHI OKUSHlMA is the oldest resident of Ogimi, the most elderly community in Ja pan ­ the country where the average age is higher than anywhere else in the world. At 108, she still takes to the floor for traditional Japanese dances. Afterwards she dabs a little French perfume behind her ears and sips the local firewater. Okushima was born when Japan had only recently seen offthe shogun warlords. If an ageing population is on the way, she is not a bad advert forwhat we have in store. The land ofthe rising sun has become the land ofthe setting sun with staggering speed. As recently as 1984, Japan had the youngest population in the developed world, but by 2005 it had become the world's most elderly country. Soon it will become the first country where most people are over 50 years old. This is partly because Japanese people live longest : men can expect to reach 79 and women 86. It is also partly because the Japanese have almost given up having babies: the fertility rate is just 1.2 children per woman, far lower than the 2.1 needed to maintain a steady population. The rest of the world is following Japan's example. In 19 countries, from Singa pore to Iceland, people have a life expectancy of about 80 years. Of all the people in human history who ever reached the age of 65, halfare alive now. Meanwhile, women around the world have half as many children as their mothers. And ifJapan is the model, their daughters may have halfas many as they do. Homo sapiens is ageing fast, and the implications ofthis may overwhelm all other factors sha ping the species over the coming decades - with more wrinklies than pimplies, more walking frames than bike stabilisers, more slippers and pipes than bootees and buggies, and more grey power than student power. The longevity revolution affects every country, every community and almost every household. It promises to restructure the economy, resha pe the family, redefine politics and even rearrange the 26 1 NewScientist 1 10 Apri l 2010

geopolitical order over the coming century. The revolution has two aspects. First, we are not producing babies like we used to. In just a generation, world fertility has halved to just 2.6 babies per woman. In most of Europe and much of east Asia, fertility is closer to one child per woman than two, way below long­ term replacement levels. The notion that the populations of places such as Brazil and India will go on expanding looks misplaced: in fact, they could soon be contracting. Meanwhile, except in a handful of AIDS-ravaged countries in Africa, people are living longer everywhere. This is frightening, even for rich nations. In Germany, France and Japan, there are fewer than two taxpaying workers to support each

"Ageing may overwhelm all other factors shaping our species in the years ahead" retired pensioner. In Italy, the figure is already fewer than 1.3. Some predict that the world will face a wave of "ageing recessions". But could there be an upside? I believe so. Fiip the coin of ageing and what dowe see? In 1965, The Who sang: "Hope I die before I get old." Today, those who survived drugs binges, fast cars, or bad marriages, are older, but often still rocking and making more use of condoms than colostomy bags. Mick Jagger (born 1943) is nobody's idea of a dependant. And Tina Turner took to the stage in London, dancing in heels and a microskirt in her 70th year. Non-celebrities also remain active, assertive and independent as they age. They fill library and seminar halls once crammed with callow youths. They run picket lines - or marathons. Far from being a weight round society's neck, many ofthem look like a new human resource waiting to be tapped. Millions of the middle­ class retired continue working at everything from lucrative consultancies to teaching literacy or finally finishing that PhD. They are

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

In one generation, Japan has gone from being the youngest developed countrytothe oldest

often more valuable than the young workers the demographers imagine are supporting them: in fact, the growing number of society's most qualified, most experienced individuals is potentially a huge demographic dividend. In future, old people will be expected to stay in the formal economy for longer. The idea of a retirement age was invented by Otto von Bismarck in the 1880s, when as chancellor of Germany he needed a starting age for paying war pensions. He chose the age of65 because that was typically when ex-soldiers died. But today in developed countries, and soon in poorer ones, women can expect nearly 30 years of retirement, and men 20 years. There is a deal to be done: longerworking in return for more, and more powerful, legislation to outlaw the ageism that blights the working lives of many inl�te middle age. The old will . . also expect a society that does not margmaiIse them; they will consider it a right to live in homes, cities and workplaces redesigned to meet their physical requirements. Some worry that an older workforce will be less innovative and adaptable, but there is evidence that companies with a decent proportion of older workers are more productive than those addicted to youth. This is sometimes called the Horndal effect, after a Swedish steel mill where productivity rose by 15 percent as the workforce got older. Age brings experience and wisdom. Think what it could mean when the Edisons and Einsteins of the future, the doctors and technicians, the artists and engineers, have 20 or 30 more years to give us. Of course, many older people do need healthcare, but many others are fit, competent and self-sustaining. Across Europe, typically only one retired person in 20 lives in a care home. In the UK, oho million over-65s, just 300,000 live in care homes (that's about 3 per cent). So the majority of Europe's elderly resemble Okushima in Japan. They are the councillors and counsellors, the social secretaries and neighbourhood wardens, the carers of other elderly people, and even PROFILE

Fred Pearce is a New 5cientist consultant His books include Confessions of an Eco-5inner and The Last Generation, This essay is based on his latest Peoplequake, published by Eden Project Books ( The Coming Population Crash, Beacon Press, in the US), He turns S9 this year

the political and social campaigners and agitators - the glue that holds busy societies together. Far from impoverishing societies, says John Maclnnes, a demographer at the University of Edinburgh, UK, all the evidence is that "mass longevity facilitates affluence". The "silver market" is huge. You have only to watch US network television to see the constant advertising aimed at the elderly, from Viagra and holidays to equi pment and leisure wear. Oldies have savings and cash from selling large houses they no longer need. The money is available for purchases and investment - and ultimately for their children. But this is not fundamentally about economics or retirement. It is about society's zeitgeist, its social wellsprings. The cultural historian Theodore Roszak at California State University, East Bay, once took me to task over

"In developed countries, women can expect nearly .

30 years of retirement

"

an article on the threat of ageing societies: "Ageing," he wrote, "is the best thing that has happened in the modern world, a cultural and ethical shift that looks a lot like sanity!' At 50, we do not expect to act or feel as we did at 20 - nor at 80 a s we did at 50. The same is true of societies. What will it be like to live in societies that are much olderthan any we have known? We are going to find out, because the ageing ofthe human race is one ofthe surest predictions of this century. Ifthe 20th century was the teenage century, the 21st will be the age of the old: it will be pioneered by the ageing baby boomers who a generation ago took the cult of youth to new heights. Without the soaring population and so many young overachievers, the tribal elders will return. More boring maybe, but wiser, surely. The older we are, the less likely we are to be hooked on the latest gizmos and the more we should appreciate things that last. We may even reduce pressure on the world's resources by consuming less, and by conserving our environment more. We must especially hope for that, because unless the boomers can pay reparations for youthful indiscretions with the planet's limits then we may all be doomed. The 20th century did great things. We should be proud that for the first time most children reach adulthood and most adults grow old. But after our exertions, perhaps we need to slow down a bit. Take a breather. Learn to be older, wiser and greener. Doesn't sound so bad, does it? Here's to U shi Okushima. • lO April 2010 1 NewScientist 1 27

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It explains everything from atom ic n uclei to how to send l i g ht through opaque objects, Does random matrix theory point to a deeper law of natu re, asks Mark B u chanan

S

UPPOSE we had a theory that could explain everything. Not just atoms and quarks but aspects of our everyday lives too. Sound impossible? Perhaps not. It's all part of the recent explosion of work in an area of physics known as random matrix theory. Originally developed more than 50 years ago to describe the energy levels of atomic nuclei, the theory is turning up in everything from inflation rates to the behaviour of solids. So much so that many researchers believe that it points to some kind of deep pattern in nature that we don't yet understand. "It really does feel l ike the ideas of random matrix theory are somehow buried deep in the heart of nature:' says electrical engineer Raj Nadakuditi of the U niversity of Michigan, Ann Arbor. All of this, oddly enough, emerged from an effort to turn physicists' ignorance into an advantage. In 1956, when we knew very little about the internal workings oflarge, complex atomic nuclei, such as uranium, the German physicist Eugene Wigner suggested simply guessing. Quantum theory tells us that atomic nuclei have many discrete energy levels, like unevenly spaced rungs on a ladder. To calculate the spacing between each of the rungs, you would need to know the myriad possible ways the nucleus can hop from one to another, and the probabilities for those events to happen. Wigner didn't know, so instead he picked numbers at random for the probabilities and arranged them in a square array called a matrix. The matrix was a neat way to express the many connections between the different rungs. It also allowed Wigner to exploit the powerful mathematics of matrices in order to make predictions about the energy levels.

Bizarrely, he found this simple approach enabled him to work out the likelihood that any one level would have others nearby, in the absence of any real knowledge. Wigner's results, worked out in a few lines of algebra, were far more useful than anyone could have expected, and experiments over the next few years showed a remarkably close fit to his predictions. Why they work, though, remains a mystery even today. What is most remarkable, though, is how Wigner's idea has been used since then. It can be applied to a host of problems involving many interlinked variables whose connections can be represented as a random matrix. The first discovery ofa link between Wigner's idea and something completely unrelated to nuclear physics came about after a chance meeting in the early 1970S between British physicist Freeman Dyson and American mathematician Hugh Montgomery. Montgomery had been exploring one of the most famous functions in mathematics, the Riemann zeta function, which holds the key to finding prime numbers. These are numbers, like 2, 3, 5 and 7, that are only divisible by themselves and 1. They hold a special place in mathematics because every integer greater than 1 can be built from them. In 1859, a German mathematician called Bernhard Riemann had conjectured a simple rule about where the zeros of the zeta function should lie. The zeros are closely linked to the distribution of prime numbers. Mathematicians have never been able to prove Riemann's hypothesis. Montgomery couldn't either, but he had worked out a formula for the likelihood of finding a zero, if you already knew the location of another one nearby. When Montgomery told Dyson of > 10 April Z010 1 NewScientist 1 29

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3 7 - - ' 83 - 2 6 ' - - - - - 6 7 ' this formula, the physicist immediately recognised it as the very same one that Wigner had devised for nuclear energy levels. To this day, no one knows why prime numbers should have anything to do with Wigner's random matrices, let alone the nuclear energy levels. But the link is unmistakable. Mathematician Andrew Odlyzko of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis has computed the locations of as many as 102J zeros ofthe Riemann zeta function and found a near-perfect agreement with random matrix theory. The strange descri ptive power of random matrix theory doesn't stop there. In the last decade, it has proved itself particularly good at describing a wide range of messy physical systems.

Universal law? Recently, for example, physicist Ferdinand Kuemmeth and colleagues at Harvard University used it to predict the energy levels of electrons in the gold nanoparticles they had constructed. Traditional theories suggest that such energy levels should be influenced by a bewildering range of factors, including the precise shape and size ofthe nanoparticle and the relative position of the atoms, which is considered to be more or less random. Nevertheless, Kuemmeth's team found that random matrix theory described the measured levels very accurately (arxiv.org/ abs/0809.0670). A team of physicists led by Jack Kuipers of the University of Regensburg in Germany found equally strong agreement in the peculiar behaviour of electrons bouncing around chaotically inside a quantum dot ­ essentially a tiny box able to tra p and hold single quantum particles (Physical Review Letters, vol 104, p 027001). The list has grown to incredible proportions, ranging from quantum gravity and quantum chromodynamics to the elastic properties of crystals. "The laws emerging from random matrix theory lay claim to universal validity for almost all quantum systems. This is an amazing fact," says physicist Thomas Guhr ofthe Lund Institute ofTechnology in Sweden. Random matrix theory has got mathematicians like Percy Deift of New York University imagining that there might be more general patterns there too. "This kind of thinking isn't common in mathematics," he notes. "Mathematicians tend to think that each of their problems has its own special, 30 1 NewScientist 1 10 April 2010

distinguishing features. But in recent years we have begun to see that problems from diverse areas, often with no discernible connections, all behave in a very similar way." In a paper from 2006, for example, he showed how random matrix theory applies very naturally to the mathematics of certain games of solitaire, to the way b uses dump together in cities, and the path traced by molecules bouncing around in a gas, among others. The most important question, perhaps, is whether there is some deep theory behind both physics and mathematics that explains why random matrices seem to capture essential truths about reality. "There must be some reason, but we don't yet know what it is," admits Nadakuditi. In the meantime, random matrix theory is already changing how we look at random systems and try to understand their behaviour. It may possibly offer a new tool, for example, in detecting small changes in global climate. Back in 1991, an international scientific collaboration conducted what came to be known as the Heard Island Feasibility Test. Spurred by the idea that the transmission of sound through the world's oceans might provide a sensitive test of rising temperatures, they transmitted a loud humming sound near Heard Island in the Indian Ocean and used an array of sensors around the world to pick it up. Repeating the experiment 20 years later could yield valuable information on climate change. But concerns over the detrimental effects ofloud sounds on local marine life mean that experiments today have to be carried out with signals that are too weak to be detected by ordinary means. That's where random matrix theory comes in. Over the past few years, Nadakuditi, working with Alan Edelman and others at the Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology, has developed a theory of signal detection based on random matrices. It is specifically

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properties of very large, random matrices. Their result allows you to calculate how much correlation between data sets you should expect to find sim ply by chance. This makes it possible to distinguish truly special cases from chance accidents. The strengths of these correlations are the equivalent of the nuclear energy levels in Wigner's original work. Bouchaud's team has now shown how this idea throws doubt on the trustworthiness of many economic predictions, especially those claiming to look many months ahead. Such predictions are, of course, the bread and butter of economic institutions. But can we believe them? To find out, Bouchaud and his colleagues looked at how well US inflation rates could be explained by a wide range of economic indicators, such as industrial production, retail sales, consumer and producer confidence, interest rates and oil prices. Using figures from 1983 to 2005, they first calculated all the possible correlations among the data. They found what seem to be significant results - apparent patterns showing how changes in economic indicators at one moment lead to changes in inflation the next. To the unwary observer, this makes it look as What comes up are some strange if inflation can be predicted with confidence. this is a promising approach, it also points to But when Bouchaud's team applied possibilities not suggested by other analyses. hidden dangers. As more and more complex The matrices revealed that there should be data is collected, the number of variables being Marcenko's and Pastur's mathematics, they got a surprise. They found that only a few of studied grows, and the number of apparent what Mosk calls "open channels" - specific these apparent correlations can be considered kinds of waves that, instead of being reflected, correlations between them grows even faster. real, in the sense that they really stood out With enough variables to test, it becomes would somehow pass right through the almost certain that you will detect correlations from what would be expected by chance alone. material. Indeed, when Mosk's team shone Their results show that inflation is predictable that look significant, even ifthey aren't. light with a carefully constructed wavefront through a thick, opaque layer of zinc oxide only one month in advance. Look ahead two paint, they saw a sharp increase in the months and the mathematics shows no Cu rse of dimensionality predictability at all. "Adding more data just transmission oflight. Still, the most dramatic applications of doesn't lead to more predictability as some Suppose you have manyyears' worth of economists would hope," says Bouchaud. figures on a large number of economic random matrix theory may be yet to come. In recent years, some economists have "Some of the main results have been around for indices, including inflation, employment and decades," says physicist Jean-Philippe Bouchaud stock market prices. You look for cause-and­ begun to express doubts over predictions effect relationships between them. Bouchaud made from huge volumes of data, but they of the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, France," are in the minority. Most embrace the idea and his colleagues have shown that even if but they have suddenly become a lot more that more measurements mean better these variables are all fluctuating randomly, important with the handling of humun gous predictive abilities. That might be an illusion, the largest observed correlation will be large data sets in so many areas of science." and random matrix theory could be the tool enough to seem significant. In everything from particle physics This is known a s the "curse of and astronomy to ecology and economics, to separate what is real and what is not. collecting and processing enormous volumes dimensionality". It means that while a large Wigner might be surprised by how far his amount of information makes it easy to study idea about nuclear energy levels has come, of data has become commonplace. An and the strange directions in which it is going, economist may sift through hundreds of data everything, it also makes it easy to find from universal patterns in physics and sets looking for something to explain changes meaningless patterns. That's where the random-matrix approach comes in, to separate mathematics to practical tools in social in inflation - perhaps oil futures, interest what is meaningful from what is nonsense. science. It's clearly not as simplistic as he rates or industrial inventories. Businesses In the late 1960s, Ukrainian such as Amazon.com rely on similar initially thought. • mathematicians Vladimir Marcenko techniques to spot patterns in buyer M a rk Buchanan is a writer based in the UK. His latest and Leonid Pastur derived a fundamental behaviour and hel p direct their advertising. While random matrix theory suggests that book is The Social Atom (Bloomsbury) mathematical result describing the key 10 April 2010 1 NewScientist 1 31

E

LECTRICITY from sunlight: bright hope for the future, or false dawn? Solar power has its share of detractors who'd go for the latter. Photovoltaic cells are too expensive, they say, requiring huge amounts of material and energy to make. And they are inefficient, too, converting at best about 20 percent ofthe incoming solar radiation into usable power. So, the sceptics say, solar cells are only ever likely to be a small, disproportionately expensive part of our future energy mix. In the temperate, oft-cloudy climes of much of Europe and North America, satisfying the population's electricity needs with photovoltaics alone would mean plastering something like 5 to 15 per cent ofthe land surface with them. Such criticisms might be tempered by a new generation of solar cells about to flop off the production line. Slim, bendy and versatile, they consume just a fraction of the materials ­ and costs- of a traditional photovoltaic device. They could be just the fillip solar power needs, opening the way to a host of new applications: solar-charged cellphones and laptops, say, or slimline generators that sit almost invisibly on a building's curved surfaces or even its windows. Photovoltaic cells have traditionally presented renewable-energy enthusiasts with an unenviable choice. Iflow cost and flexibility are the watchwords, inefficiency is the price to must be converted into charge carriers such as pay: the best flexible solar cells, made from electrons, to be extracted from the wires and fed into a power grid. Here, the internal crystal thin films of amorphous silicon or organic structure ofthe nanowires is crucial. Any polymers, convert barely 10 per cent of solar imperfections form "potholes" into which radiation into power. That makes them unsuitable for all but low-power gizmos such as electrons fall, impeding their movement and solar cells for backpacks. For higher efficiency, limiting the cell's overall efficiency. The silicon you need crystalline silicon, which absorbs of normal solar cells is particularly prone to light less readily than its amorphous cousin, imperfections, so lavey and his colleagues have been experimenting with an alternative but does so over a much broader range of semiconductor, cadmium telluride. The wavelengths. Making a solar cell that is 20 per cent efficient takes thick, expensive slabs of the stuff, as seen in today's rooftop solar cells. Marrying efficiency with low cost requires "Conventional solar ce lls thinking outside the box, or at least outside force an unenviable cho ice the plane. Traditionally, solar cells consist on renewables enthus iasts: ofa single flat layer of a light-absorbing semiconductor. An alternative currently being flexibil ity or efficiency" explored is to replace this layer with a film of vertically grown nanoscale semiconductor resulting cells are economical in their use of material, but, much like amorphous silicon wires (Nano Research, vol 2, p 829). Light gets cells, convert only about 6 per cent ofthe solar trapped in this forest ofnanotrees, bouncing radiation into usable power. between the individual nanowire trunks (see That low conversion is partly due to a weak diagram, opposite). "That optimises light point in the vertical design: the tips of the absorption," says Ali lavey, who is pioneering these new materials at the University of wires cover only a few per cent of the cell's sun­ California, Berkeley. facing surface, so much of the light hitting the cell passes through unabsorbed. In February Absorption alone is not enough: the light 32 1 NewScientist 1 10 April 2010

this year, Harry Atwater and his colleagues at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena reported a solution to this problem. They used microscale silicon rods slightly thicker than lavey's nanowires, and poured a polymer containing light-reflecting nanoparticles into the spaces between them. The polymer scatters unabsorbed light back onto the rods and this, combined with a silver reflecting layer at the bottom of the device, allows the cells to absorb up to 85 per cent of incoming light. Still, losses - chiefly from imperfections in the crystal structure of the microrods - drive the overall efficiency below the 20 per cent achieved by the best crystalline silicon cells (Nature Materials, vol 9, p 239). So why the fuss, ifthese devices are no more efficient than what went before? The key is that although these cells are merely as efficient as conventional devices, they use only about a hundredth of the material. What's more, they are highly flexible: grown on a bed of silicon, Atwater's microrod arrays can sim ply be peeled off and stuck pretty much wherever you want. "They could even be integrated into buildings, as components that match the sha pe ofrooftiles," says Atwater. He has started up a company, Alta Devices, to

Solar tech nology that's ahead of the curve

do just that, and has recently received research funding from the US Department of Energy. John Rogers and his colleagues at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are at a similar stage. They make solar cells by using a rubber stamp to pick up a conventional cell structure etched onto a silicon substrate and imprint it onto a flexible polymer surface (NatureMateriaIs, vol 7, p 907). The efficiency of the resulting cells is a respectable 12 per cent, although Rogers thinks they can do

markedly better with tweaks such as adding fluorescent molecules to capture the light coming through the sides of the device. His cells also have a unique selling point: by spacing cell features more widely on the polymer substrate, the cells can be made virtually transparent. That makes power­ generating windows a distinct possibility. Rogers, too, has set up a company, Semprius, to commercialise his technology, and has installed about a dozen modules for

Catch i n g the l i g ht The fi rst step to efficient slim line solar cells is d es ig n i n g a

3D a rc hitectu re that maximises the amount

of sunlightthat can be converted to electricity using a minimum of material LIGHT

Light·reflecting nanoparticles

Semiconductor wires

Reflective silver layer nanowire architecture can

power-generation companies across the world to test their long-term performance. Another target in the works is vehicle-top cells that generate electricity for music systems, GPS or even air conditioning­ lending a whole new meaning to the word "sunroof". The US Department of Defense is also supplying funds for Rogers' work, with a view to equipping special operations troops with lightweight, efficient solar cells. Other teams are exploiting the bumper light-harvest that comes when solar cells are sprinkled with a little stardust. This takes the form of gold or silver nanoparticles that quiver with electronic resonances known as plasmons when light hits them, focusing it onto the absorbing semiconductor film (NatureMaterials, vol 9, p 205). Plasmonic nanostructures can also be designed to bend the incoming light so that it travels along the surface of a device, rather than through it. A slimline layer of silicon 100 nanometres deep can then attain a light­ harvesting efficiency usually only achieved with cells several thousand times as thick. "Absorption in 100 nanometres of silicon is negligible, but ifyou turn the l ight by 90 degrees then it is a different story altogether," says Albert Polman at the Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, who designs such cells.

Material wants Since the first modern photovoltaic cell was demonstrated in 1954, solar-cell efficiency has been increased mainly by slowly improving the purity ofthe materials used - a strategy with inevitably diminishing returns. Alternative materials often contain scarce elements such as tellurium, indium and selenium, so any technology that reduces the amount of material needed to harvest the sun's power has an obvious appeal. Driving costs down also makes the technology more accessible to developing economies, many ofwhich boast abundant sunlight but limited cash. It is crunch time for these new technologies as they start to be implemented in real-world applications. Taking small-scale designs up to the realm of square metres is not trivial, and big breakthroughs in solar power have been heralded before. Yet with theirwinning combination of economy, efficiency and flexibility, this latest generation of solar cells might allow proponents of solar technology to silence its critics at last. •

absorb as much sunli g ht as a silicon crystal 100 times thicker

Joerg Heber is an editor at Nature Materials 10 April 2010 I NewScientist 1 33

The story of one gene epitom ises popular m isconceptions about how o u r D NA shapes us, But i t c a n a lso teach some crucial lessons, says Ed Yang

O

been linked to human aggression - and MAOA ur tale begins two decades ago, when seemed to be responsible for a history of a group of Dutch women set out to violence stretching back five generations. find an explanationfor the antisocial In the following years, evidence poured in behaviour ofthe males in their family. As well as having learning difficulties, these men and to bolster the connection betweenMAOA and aggression. Then, in 2004, journalist Ann boys were prone to outbursts of aggression Gibbons sealed the link by givingMAOA the and were racking up a list of serious offences, headline-friendly label "warrior gene". The including arson, attem pted rape and murder. Suspecting that the behaviour might be moniker stuck, raising the profile ofMAOA, and at the same time fuelling misconceptions hereditary, the women approached geneticist Hans Brunner at the University Hospital in about how our behaviour is affected by our genetic make-up. Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Eventually, in Unravelling the interaction between genes 1993, he tracked down the culprit: a defunct variant of a gene called monoamine oxidase A, and behaviour is one of the toughest tasks in biology. The publication ofthe entire human or MAOA, located on the X chromosome. Understandably, the announcement created genetic code, a decade ago, dispelled any illusions that having the genetic blueprint of a sensation. It was the first time a gene had

our species would give a clear insight into our nature. Instead, what became clear is that we have far fewer genes than anyone imagined, and that understanding how these shape us as individuals is going to be a colossal task. Genes simply make proteins. So for behavioural geneticists the question is how, when and why they influence our behaviour. Clearly, this involves a com plex tango between genes and environments. Working out the exact steps is devilishly difficult, and conveying the findings to those without a scientific background is just as problematic. The mis-selling ofMAOA is a salutary lesson in what can go wrong. It provides four key messages for anyone trying to get to grips with the interplay between genes and behaviour.

Lesson 1 A catchy name is bound to be misleading The so-called "warrior gene" is actually just a molecular garbage collector. It encodes a protein that breaks down some of the brain's signalling molecules when they have outlived their usefulness - including serotonin, noradrenalin and dopamine. If it slacks on the job, the build-up ofthese neurotransmitters leads to abnormal moods and behaviour. The gene comes in several varieties, distinguished primarily by their levels of activity. Because it is found on the X chromosome, females may have two different forms, while males have just one. Brunner's aggressive Dutchmen had a rare and completely inactive variant. The so­ called low-activity variant, or MAOA -L, has a slightly shorter than usual promoter - the region that controls the gene's activity - and so produces less protein. Another common variant, MAOA-H, is more active. 34 1 NewScientist 1 10 April 2010

Like the defunct version ofMAOA found in the Dutch family,MAOA-L, is associated with violence and aggression. Last year, Kevin Beaver from Florida State University, Tallahassee, found that boys who carry MAOA-L were more likely to join gangs, and those who did were four times more likely to use wea pons in a fight (Comprehensive Psychiatry, vol 51, p 130). Headlines proclaimed that "gang culture may be due to warrior gene" and that "boys who carry the gene are likely to be dangerous, violent and carry wea pons". But this kind of deterministic thinking is wrong­ headed.MAOA-L is actually very common: a third of white people have this version and most ofthem have nothing to do with gangs. Besides, aggression is not the only behaviour associated withMAOA and, moreover, problem behaviours are not just associated with

underactive versions of the gene. MAOA-H has been linked with risky financial choices, such as playing the lottery and not buying insurance. Low-activity variants, meanwhile, are im plica ted in numerous other traits including depression, anxiety, attention­ deficit hyperactivity disorder, anorexia, schizophrenia, neuroticism, pathological gam bling, smoking and alcoholism. While some of the findings are questionable, MAOA's reach is likely to be extensive because the brain signalling molecules it helps break down have a wide range of roles. In a recent Taiwanese study, for example, highMAOA activity was implicated in gout, a painful condition caused by uric acid building up in the blood. The link is not obvious, but MAOA affects levels of dopamine, and dopamine affects the kidneys' ability to remove

The so-called "warrior gene· has been � nked with many traits, from gun carrying to gout

The MAOA gene can certainly i nfluence our behaviour, but it is no puppet-master"

uric acid (Human Genetics, vol 127, p 223). Although MAOA can certainly influence our behaviour, it is no puppet-master- if anything, it is just one of many different strings. Other genes, includingMAOB and COMT, affect the creation, use and breakdown of the same neurotransmitters. It is highly likely that these genes work together to affect our behaviour, and genetic studies are starting to reveal the dalliances between these dancing partners. For exampIe, one found that women with MAOA-L are more l ikely to become depressed while pregnant, but only if they also carry a low-activity version of COMT. At the very least, the "warrior gene" tag typecasts MAOA in a role that is just part of its repertoire. Behaviours are not simple traits like eye colour, and to label them as such will inevitably mislead.

>

Lesson 2 Nature and nurture are inextricably linked MAOA is not a gene "for" aggression. Instead, certain carriers may be more aggressive in certain situations. Brunner reported that the men in his Dutch family mostly became aggressive when afraid, frustrated or angry. A recent study suggests this may be because people with low-activity variants ofMAOA are more likely to overreact to threats or challenges that other people would shrug off. Rose McDermott of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, asked volunteers to play a game against an anonymous partner who would split a pot of money between them. If they were unsatisfied with their share they could, at a small cost, punish their partner by administering an unpleasantly spicy sauce. Although MAOA-L carriers were always slightly more likely to dole out the sauce, the big difference in aggression between them and others came as a reaction to their partner taking the lion's share ofthe loot (Proceedings ofthe National Academy ofSciences, DOl: 10.1073/pnas.0808376106). The discovery that MAOA-L-related aggression appears mostly as a reaction to certain circumstances is perhaps not surprising, since this is how most aggression manifests itself. However, the clearest sign yet that the gene is no ruthless determinant of behaviour came in 2002 when Avshalom Caspi and Terrie Moffitt of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, published their findings about a sample of 442 men from New Zealand who they had followed from birth. A third of these men carried theMAOA-L variant. Now, aged 26, this group was indeed more likely than the others to have developed antisocial disorders and violent behaviour­ iftheir mothers smoked cigarettes while Aggressive be haviours but only ifthey had been poorly treated pregnant with them. The list goes on. Likewise, l i n ked with the MAOA or abused as children. Moffitt and Caspi Beaver found that MAOA-H carriers were more gene can be quashed by concluded that the so-called "warrior gene" good parenting likely to commit fraud, but only if they hung affects a child's sensitivity to stress and around with delinquent peers. trauma at an early age. Childhood trauma So environments can set the degree to "activates" bad behaviour, but in a caring environment its effect is quashed. which genes make their presence felt, creating Since then, similar interactions between the stage upon which genes express themselves. nature and nurture have become part and The stage-set can also affect the action of parcel oftheMAOA story. Carriers ofMAOA-L genes. Smoking, for example, can reduce the are more likely to show delinquent behaviour activity ofMAOA regardless of which variant "If vio lence is wra pped ifthey were physically disci plined as children. someone has. And there is evidence from mice up in someone's DNA, that a fatty diet can do the same. Genes may They are also more likely to be hyperactive in the law might come down be able to influence our behaviour, but our late childhood if their first three years were even harder on them" behaviour also influences our genes. stressful, and to develop conduct disorders 36 1 NewScientist 1 10 April 2010

Lesson 3

The link between MAOA-L and aggression has so fa r only been shown in white men

Beware of reinforcing stereotypes With MAOA being billed as an architect of aggression, it was perhaps just a matter of time before it became linked with a racial stereotype. That happened in 2006 at the 11th International Congress of Human Genetics in Brisbane, Australia. There, Rod Lea from the ESR Kenepuru Science Centre, Porirua, New Zealand, presented unpublished results showing that 56 per cent of the 46 Maori men he had tested carried MAOA-L - almost twice as many as in white populations. Based on an even smaller sample of17 men, he also concluded that MAOA was recently shaped by natural selection, and thatMAOA-L may have given Maoris an advantage in the war-filled period when they were colonising Polynesia. The media could not resist a story connecting the so-called "warrior gene" with a group of people historically perceived as fearsome warriors and who were often now involved in domestic violence. Headlines such as "Warrior gene blamed for Maori violence" soon followed and, as you might expect, Maori communities and geneticists were outraged. Lea tried to set the record straight in interviews in the days following the media furore, and later in an article in the New Zealand Medical Journal. He pointed out that his sample sizes were small. And he said that the goal of his research was actually to improve the health of New Zealanders by looking for genes that would affect their risk of alcohol or tobacco addiction. Other scientists made it clear that the association between MAOA-L and aggression is based solely on studies with white men and that Lea had never researched this link in Maoris. But it was too late, the media circus had moved on. It is a classic example of how easily genetic findings can be taken out of context, and how carefully they must be framed. As far as we know, many populations have a similar level of MAOA-L carriers to Lea's sample of Maoris, but it would be ludicrous to say that all Mricans, Pacific Islanders, Japanese and Chinese men are twice as likely to be violent as Caucasians. In fact, one ofthe few studies onMAOA-L and aggression to look beyond white males found no link in non-white Americans (Biological Psychiatry, vol 60, p 684). The Maori case study highlights the risk of extrapolating results from behavioural genetics, particularly from one ethnic grou p to another.

could argue that ifviolence is wra pped up in someone's DNA, the law should come down even harderon them because they are likely to reoffend. Farahany agrees. "Defence attorneys are starting to realise that it may not be in their client's best interests to raise this evidence because prosecutors have seized on this double nature to denigrate the defendant's character:' she says. Farahany also believes that behavioural genetics should never be used to determine whether a defendant is guilty or innocent. It is about "explanations, not justifications", adds Beaver. Most experts agree that finding someone has a variant of a gene associated with crime no more removes their guilt than discovering they were abused as a child. Far better, says Moffitt, to consider a defendant's family history, which combines information from all their genes, together with environmental and social factors. The story ofMAOA so far is not pretty, Genes do not but ifwe learn these four lessons, we might d ictate behaviour yet harness the potential that behavioural genetics offers. Once we move beyond genetic MAOA has been used by the media to condemn determinism, the nature/nurture dichotomy and simplistic generalisations, the discovery a race, so it is ironic that it has also been used of genes related to mental or behavioural by a judge to offer leniency to an individual. disorders can only improve our knowledge In November 2009, Abdelmalek Bayout, an of ourselves. It will also help us make better Algerian immigrant living in Italy, was jailed decisions. For example, adoption agencies for murdering a man called Walter Perez who had mocked him for wearing kohl might want to place children with theMAOA-L gene with particularly stable families. If a eye make-up. purported link between MAOA and alcoholism Bayout's history of mental illness got him holds up, people with certain variants might a soft nine-year sentence. The defence team choose to become teetotal to avoid the risk managed to reduce this by a further year on appeal, arguing that carrying the MAOA-L gene of addiction. And perhaps we could tailor predisposed Bayout to violence. This is the effective criminal rehabilitation programmes to the variant of MAOA and other crime­ first time that behavioural genetics has related genes a prisoner has. affected a sentence in a European court. But For Moffitt, the best defence against the it is not the first instance oflawyers trying the future misuse of genetic information is a "my genes made me do it" defence, which is "more realistic, nuanced understanding of now the subject of heated debate. "In principle, I'm not opposed to the use the causes of behaviour, in which some genes' of behavioural genetics in criminal cases for effects depend on lifestyle choices that a re affecting sentences," says Nita Farahany from often under human control". This view is echoed by Beaver. "We could look at how to Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee. mani pulate the environment to affect genetic A report by the British N uffield Bioethics predispositions," he says. "It's a way to harness Council agrees, noting that judges could reasonably use genetic information in the this type of information and use it in a very same way as any other information about a progressive and humane fashion." • defendant's background. It won't necessarily Ed Yong works for Cancer Research UK in London work in the defendant's favour, however. "It really does cut both ways:' says Beaver. You and blogs at Not Exactly Rocket Science

Lesson 4

10 April 2010 1 NewScientist 1 37

BOOKS & ARTS

Of a nts a n d men Why wou l d E. 0, W i lson write a novel? H e tel ls Sam Kea n that h e hopes Anthill a bout -

m i l ita nt a nts and the coupled fate of h u ma n s and natu re - w i l l spa rk a conservation revol ution They are praying, hoping for divine intervention, and it doesn't make sense. It's one ofthe tragedies of existence. Did you worry that adhering to scientific accuracy would u ndermine the drama of the story?

Quite the reverse: it enriches the context. You have said that To Kill A Mockingbird influenced everyone

in the American South. How did it influence you?

W h y did you feel your novel, Anthill, had to be written?

This is the first time anyone has written about the lives of ants from their point of view. And I think this is the first novel set in the American South that pays close attention to the environment. I have made the environment, the treasured habitat that Raphael Semmes Cody fights to save, a character in the book.

"Most novelists present nature in terms of human emotion, I wanted to d evelop it as it really is" Herman Melville's Moby Dickpaid obsessive attention to whales. Is Anthill doing anything different?

There's a huge difference between a species and an ecosystem. The ecosystem is vastly more difficult to characterise, both accurately and in sufficient literary detail to You have said you wanted the book be interesting. We are on the cusp to lay out nature as it is. Why? of inaugurating detailed journeys Over go per cent of novelists into the world of natural history present nature simply in terms of as a part of fiction. its impacts on human emotions. I wanted to develop in vivid detail Should readers infer from the ants the living environment -which is in the story something about what it is to be hu man? so important for the fate ofthe What I wanted to address were human characters - as it really is. the countless wars and conflicts That's something really new in between societies. We have a this novel, and I hope it takes. 38 1 NewScientist 1 10 April 2010

powerful propensity to be territorial and respond quickly with aggression to territorial invasion. I wanted the attentive reader to make the comparison with the ants and their countless wars. But the original ant colony, after being attacked, spent a night trapped by its attackers and couldn't comprehend what was happening. The ants experienced i nstinctual fear, but they didn't understand their fate, like humans under siege might.

There are many great tragic times when people are caught in a similar situation to those ants. For example, the Christians trapped in the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople in 1453 as the Ottoman Turks closed in. They don't realise they are going to die.

It gave me a new instrument to promote the conservation ethic so badly needed in the South, which is still a frontier region in its psychology and attitudes. To Kill a Mockingbird came out at precisely the right time to serve as a literary impetus for the civil rights movement. People in the South have destroyed the long­ leaf pine savannah ecosystem that once covered 60 per cent ofthe land. But as I illustrate in the novel, there is a burgeoning conservation movement, so I have given them a heroic role. In that sense, I hope this will be my equivalent of To Kill a Mockingbird. What can fiction achieve in a scientific age?

People respect non-fiction. They give you prizes for non-fiction. But people read novels. PROFILE

Entomologist Edward O. W i l son is Pellegrino University Research Professor at Harvard University and twice winner of the Pulitzer prize for general non-fiction. Anthill is published this month by W. W. Norton

For more galleries, visit www.NewScientist.com/gal ieries

Photography: Rachel Sussman

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See more of Sussman's photos on NewScientist.com at bit.ly/aOd l]Y

10 April Z010 1 NewScientist 1 39

For more reviews and to add your comments, v isit www.NewScientist.com/books-a rt

BOOKS & ARTS

Stormy outlook Eve n envi ron m en ta l ists d on't ta ke th is blea k a v i ew of th e con sequences of c l i m ate cha n g e

Climate Wars: Thefight for survival as the world overheats by Gwynne Dyer,

One World, £12.99 Reviewed by Fred Pearce

WHEN a climate scientist forecasts that global warming will trigger mega­ famines, floods of refugees and *,�P;m':;;;iiI ; ....1III.I.:I .. 1I:.II.:u.. geopolitical meltdown, we may fear that they have a myopic world view. When a security specialist says the same thing, we should start to wonder. Gwynne Dyer has been a lecturer on international affairs for two decades. In elimate Wars he eloquently explores the "grim detail" of how governments will grapple with a challenge unprecedented since before there were governments. You won't find this stuffin any I PCC report. In particular, Dyer offers eight scenarios of climate40 I N ewScientist 1 10 April 2010

induced human catastrophe over the next half century that draw on war games developed in the US Pentagon and elsewhere. He takes a grim view of where climate is going. Reasonably so, given that when the UN climate change convention was agreed back in 1992, greenhouse gas emissions were rising by 1 per cent a year, and now, almost two decades and a hell of a lot of talking later, they are rising by 3 per cent a year. Events may soon be taken out of our hands; before long, there will probably be "megatons of methane" belching out of thawing Arctic permafrost, making any reductions in carbon dioxide emissions close to irrelevant. So what does Dyer think will happen? During the 201OS, Russia and NATO go head-to-head over control of the ice-free Arctic, and China implodes as millions starve in droughts. During the 2020S, cyclones kill millions in Bangladesh, while the US builds

a "big fence" to keep out starving Mexicans. In the 2030S, India and Pakistan conduct a six-day nuclear war over a hydroelectric plant on the parched river Indus, whose water they are su pposed to share. It leaves half a billion dead. By the 2040S, Canada is selling the contents ofthe Great Lakes to California, and the European Union collapses in the face of millions of refugees escaping from North Africa. Only the UK sits smug behind its wide moat, with a still equable climate. It makes for a good read, but do I believe it? Not at all. Dyer's view of both humanity and climate is too mechanistic and his view of politics too militaristic. The world is far stranger, and the future will be far odder, than anything imagined in a war studies seminar based on the predictions of climate modellers. We know less than we think. But as an insight into what the military strategists imagine is going to ha ppen as a result of climate change, this book is truly terrifying.

No si lver b u l let Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic buffets, psychiatric drugs, and the astonishing rise of mental iffness in America by Robert Whitaker, Crown, $25

Reviewed by Druin B u rch

PSYCHIATRY is widely considered to be a success, able to treat mental illness using drugs to correct chemical KOll.t.l!!.. � �!!!· "t\ f,1I. imbalance s in the brain. Yet, since the advent of psychiatric drugs, rates of mental illness have shot up and the supposed imbalances, thought to be the cause of mental illness, have been shown not to exist. Whitaker wants us to believe psychiatry itself is to blame, and that scientific incompetence and corrupting self-interest have prevented reliable assessments

of mental disorders and treatments alike. The author's belief that we could have got it so wrong seems far-fetched. Up close, however, his arguments are worryingly sane and consistently based on evidence. They amount to a provocative yet reasonable thesis, one whose astonishing intellectual punch is delivered with the gripping vitality ofa novel. Whitaker manages to be damning while remaining stubbornly optimistic in this enthralling and frighteningly persuasive book.

Reth inking middle age The Secret Life of the Grown- up Brain: The surprising talents of the middle-aged mind by Barbara Strauch,

Viking, $25.95 Reviewed by Cl int Witchalls

MIDDLE age begins around G R OW N - U P 40 and ends BRAIN ----...- somewhere around 65. It is a period marked by existential crises, ...... � '.UUOH '-------' empty nests and lost keys. But Barbara Strauch­ herselfmiddle-aged - is not convinced it is so bad. In The Secret Life of the Grown-up Brain, she proceeds to unravel such myths about those middle years. Strauch revisits the source of our wrong-headed thinking. For example, "empty nest syndrome" is based on flimsy research involving a mere 16 subjects, all of whom had married in their teens, had few or no friends and had no interests outside the home. No wonder they were depressed when their kids left. Other myths that haven't stood up to scientific scrutiny include inevitable cognitive decline, middle-age misery and the mid -life crisis. It seems we have constructed a narrative ofthe middle years based on scant evidence. As someone in early middle age, I found Strauch's book alluring and uplifting. Tho Socr• • Llr.

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to ensure that Trends in Cell Biology m a i ntains its ma rket-leading position. This is a n exciting and challenging role that provides a n opportunity to stay close to the cutti ng edge of scientific advances while developing a new career away from the bench. Yo u will work in a highly dynamic and collaborative publishing environment that includes 14 Trends titles and 12 Cell Press titles. You will also collaborate with your Cell Press colleagues to maximize quality a n d efficiency of content commissioning and participate in exciting new non­ journa l based initiatives. The m i n i m u m qualification is a P h D in a re l evant discipline, and post-doctoral tra in ing is an advantage, Previous publishing experience is not n ecessary ­ we will make sure you get the training and development you n e ed. Good interpersonal skills are essential because the role involves networking in the wider scientific community a nd colla boration with other parts of the busi n ess,

�

CANADIAN BLOOD SERVICES Postdoctoral Fellowsh i ps

Ca nad ia n Bl ood Services it's in you to give

Canadian Blood Services (CBS) is accepting applications for Postdoctoral Fell owships

n

(PDF) to work with our affiliated Research & De ve l o p me t g roups across Canada. CBS has active research programs within transfusion science emphasiz in g p latelets, stem cells, 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 possib i l ity 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 Graduate Fellowship Program and a Summer Internship Program.

To a pply, please submit a cv and cover l etter describing your qualifications,

Information,

research i nterests, current salary and reasons for pursuing a career in

www.blood.ca. and from the R&D Office ([email protected]). Canadian

publishing at:

Blood Services, Research

http://reedelsevier.ta leo.net/ca reersection/51/jobdetail.ftl?la ng=en&job=CElOOOOS

No phone inqui ri es, p l ease. Cell Press is a n Equal Opportunity Employer. Applications will be considered on an ongoing basis until the closing date of Friday, April 30th.

42 1 NewScientist 1 10 April 2010

Ontario,

forms

K I G 4J5,

and

a list of

&

CBS

affiliated

Development,

1 8 00

scientists

are

available

at

Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa,

Canada.

Please note that the 20 1 0 campaign will not accept on-line applications. Candidates are encouraged to respond by hard copy.

PDF Application deadline: July 2, 2010.

www.NewScientistJobs.com guiding the department regarding research, faculty mentorship and development, and graduate and professional education, For m o re inform ation visit NewScientistjo bs.com job 10:

1400741809

Director, Florida Institute of Oceanography

Development Scientist

We are seeking a highly motivated,

The University of South Aorida (USF) invites applications and n omination s for the position of Director of the Florida Institute of Oceanography (FlO), The ideal director will provide the vision to lead coastal oceanographic research i n Florida to the forefront of the national and international stage. USF is especially interested in candidates who demonstrate strategic lea dership that is visionary, innovative and entrepreneurial. The mission of the FlO is to ( I ) provide a diverse and collaborative statewide forum addressing problems

i n dependent and productive team

the SUS and throughout Florida; (3) anticipate and plan for future infrastructure needs; (4) facilitate, promote and support coll aborati ve

player for a development scientist

ocean-related research and education statewide; and (5) develop and strengthen networks that enable timely identification of oceanographic research opportunities and distribution of research results and other information to the general public, natural resource

Cell S i g n a l ing Techno logy MA - Massachusetts

of concern in coastal oceanographic research and education; (2) leverage and integrate existing physical and intellectual resources within

position, Job responsibilities i nclude

management agencies and local, state and national policymakers,

developing innovated research tools in cell signa ling, cancer research and other disease models,

In line with the service mission of the FlO, the Director will be expected to work to provide opportunities for the member institutions and their faculties, to maintain close contact with the member institutions through regular visits and to take advantage of opportunities to serve o n state and federal commissions, committees and panels relevant to the FlO mission.

Minimum qualifications: For consideration, candidates must possess a doctoral deg ree in a discipline related to oceanography or marine

For m o re inform ation visit

science and at least five years of administrative experience that includes facilities operations, program-building, and fund-raising. In addition, candidates must demonstrate a vision for oceanographic research, u nquesti onable integrity, and a high level of energy. Preferred qualifications: The successful candidate will be a recognized leader, both nationally and internationally; will have demonstrated broad and diverse experience to reco gnize coming trend s i n oceanography ; will demonstrate success in budget planni ng , financial management, and supervision of personnel; and will possess effective organizational and communications skills,

NewScientistjo bs.com job 10:

1400745204

This is a 12-month full-time administrative appointment. A faculty appointment may be considered for an appointee with appropriate academic credentials and accomplishments. The an ticip ated appointment date is August 1 , 2010. The salary will be in ternationally competitive with excellent fringe benefits, USF values campus diversity and encourages members of historically underrepresented groups to apply,

Master Sched u ler (II-IV)

A

Pfizer US

full position announcement and application instructions may be accessed at: https:llemployment.usf.edu.

USF is an EO/AA/EA I nstitution . For disability accommodations contact Ms. Desiree Woroner at [email protected] at least five working

MA - Massachusetts

days in advance of need,

UNIV ER SITY OF­

Using appl icable Taylor&- SAP toolsl functionality, PP/OS, R3, Event

SOUTH FLOR IDA

Viewer, etc), convert planned orders to process orders for all productionl shop-floor activities, Release

•

process orders in accordance with

TAMPA ' ST, PETERSBURG ' SARASOTA - MANATEE ' POLYTECHNIC

production plan/schedule and re­

The successfu l a p plicantwill be

C A - Cal ifornia

NewScientistjo bs.co m j ob 1 0 :

schedule as required,

part of a dynamic, innovative team,

This individual will provide strategic

1400745205

For m o re inform ation visit

focusing on the development of novel n ucleic acid based

di rection to the p roject from a POM

NewScientistjo bs.com job 10:

1400747274

therapeutics,

project di rection, The individual

Post Doctoral Fellow

Fo r more i nfo rmation visit

will have close interactions and

Thomas Jefferson Un iversity

NewScientistj obs.co m job 1 0 :

colla borations with peers with in

PA - Pennsylvania

1400744354

POM as well as other partner lines

The post doc will perform basic ani

Medical Director (MD)

perspective as well as on overall

Genentech

to ensure optimum prosecution

or clinical research in regu lation

CA - California

and p rogression of the project and

of human platelet activation

The Biomarker I Experimental

i m pact of collective AOM E data on

including physiological and

the project

biochemical assays i n the exvivo

accountable to set up and deliver

Pathways Assay Development Scientist(BSI MS)

For m o re information visit

and in vitro setti ng, As part of the

project related Biomarker (BM) and

N ovartis I n stitutes for

NewScientistjo bs.co m job 10:

responsibi lities for this job, the

1400741866

postdoc will be responsible for

Medicine Leader (BEML) will be

Personalized Healthcare (PHC)

BioMedical Research (US)

strategy with in the oncology

MA - Massachusetts

perpari ng platelets from human

disease area,

The scientist will assume a

blood, physiological experime nts

For m o re inform ation visit

hands-on scientific role in a

NewScientistjo bs.com job 10:

multidisciplinary team responsible

1400746580

for developing and utilizing small molecule screening tech nologies to

Post Doc - Biological Nano­ composites

(platelet aggreagation, secretion, flow chamber), biochemical

NM - N ew M exico

experiments (SOS-PAGE, weste m blotting, flow cytometry

Sandia National Laboratories

identify and characterize potential

Responsi ble for modifying enzymes

and immunocytochemistry),

Oligonucleotide Chemist

lead compounds,

for e n hanced performance

data presentation, manuscript

Pfizer US

Fo r more i nfo rmation visit

in nanoscale environments;

preparation, and grant preparation,

MA - Massachusetts

NewScientistj obs.co m job 1 0 :

characterizing the interfacial

Fo r more information visit

We are seeking an oligonucleotide

1400741932

chemistto join the Oligon ucleotide Therapeutic Unit (OTU) at Pfizer's

i nteractions of biological and

NewScientistjo bs.co m j ob 1 0 :

synthetic components; and a pplying

1400742534

energy-dissipative self-assembly

Cambridge South location as part of a team focused on oligomer production and analy tical chemistry

,

PDM Research Project Representative (RS-R6)

processes to construct new

Pfizer U S

For m o re information visit

nanocomposite mate rials,

Postdoctoral fellowship in Molecular Virologyl Cell 10 April 2010 I NewScientist 1 43

www.NewScientistJobs.com Biology

Develop and i m p lement an agreed

must have the ability to interact

Ch i ldren s Hospita l of Pittsburgh

marketing plan forthe portfolio

with h i ghly inter-disciplinary teams

PA - Penn sylvania

working alongside the Product

of CINT scientists and external

A postdoctoral fellowship is

Ma rketing team.

Users,

'

available to study (i) mTOR and AKT

For m o re information visit

Fo r m ore i nformation visit

signaling pathways in normal and

NewSci entistjobs.com job 1 0 :

NewScientistj o bs.com job 10:

leukemic B-cells i n an EBV model of

1400744988

1400745203

B-Iymphogenesis (ii) manipu lation

1400746472

C H E M I STRY Senior Associate Scientist (R2) - Liquid Store Pfizer US CT - Co n n e c ti c ut

of the u b iquitin/proteasome system

Operate various laboratory

by EBV proteins in latent and lytic

Research Assistant

infection,

Pioneer H i - Bred

Strategic Partnership Manager Immunology

store, and distribute solvated

Fo r more i nformation visit

WI - Wisconsin

Gen entech

samples - l iquid handlers, container

NewScientistj o b s.com job 10:

Support ourequipment research

CA - Ca lifornia

handlers, sealers, labelers, readers,

1400745190

associate by learning howto

The I m munology Strategic

Use local and enterprise applications

manage and operate the yield and

Partnerships Manager is responsible

fortracking and maintain ing

n u rsery planters, the spray coup and p u l l type sprayer, the combines and

for developing the Thought Leader

inventory - MatTrack, GCM, Titian

Strategic plan for the therapeutic

Modules, ATK, PVC among

otherJanesville research equipment

areas assigned, i ncluding objectives,

others,

Ma nage seedtreatmentfrom

strategies and in itiatives,

For m o re i nformation visit

mixing of chem icals, to adjustment

Fo r m ore i nformation visit

NewSci entistjobs.com job 1 0 :

1400747280

POSTDOCTORAL POSITION IN NEUROBIOLOCiY, Washington University School of Medicine Department of Anatomy and

and cleaning of seed treaters, to

NewScientistj o bs.com job 10:

N eurobiology, Washington

1400745371

U n iversity School of Med icine,

management of the temp staff assigned to actual treating,

St Lou i s

For m o re information visit

MO - M issouri

NewSci entistjobs.com job 1 0 :

Using transgenic mouse models

1400741872

automation systems to receive,

CLI N I CAL Occupational Nurse (0019N) Monsanto

and a combination of biochemistry,

Tenure-Track Investigator Position in Patient Based Research of HIV Infection

cell biology and cutting edge in vivo

N ational Institutes of Health

A leader in site sponsored

NE - Nebraska

( N I H) - National Cancer Institute

ES&H activities with specific

( NCI)

accountability for implementation

molecular pathways implicated in

Senior Researcher in the Center for Cienes, Environment, and Health

M D - Maryland

the immed iate response of neu rons

National jewish H ealth

Current areas of research i nclude

and management of the Monsa nto Occu pational Medici ne

to injury,

CO - Colorado

the origin and consequences of H IV

(OM) Fundamental Requirements

Fo r more i nformation visit

The Senior Researcherwill be

genetic diversity, evolution of drug

NewScientistj o b s.com job 10:

responsible for overseeing h igh­

resistance, persistence of infection

Defined p re-placement. periodic, retu m to work, fitness for duty,

1400744660

throughput gene expression

desp ite effective therapy, and

and exit medical examinations

and genotyping work in the

related topics, Candidates for the

Managementof health care

Center. Strong background in

position should have an MD.lPh.D.

providers, assessment of medical

Process Eng ineer

high-through put ge nomics work

or M.D.; ABIM certification in Internal

examination results, and necessary

Pfizer US

with a particular emphasis on

Medicine and Infectious Diseases

follow u p

MA - Massach usetts

the use of robotics is a must In

Fo r m ore i nformation visit

For m o re i nformation visit

The successful candidate will

addition, appl icants should have a

NewScientistj o bs.com job 10:

NewSci entistjobs.com job 1 0 :

ensure ti mely investigations of

proven record of performing gene

1400743955

1400741234

u nexpected data and trends with

expression and/or genotyping

the guidance of a supervisor and/or

assays, i ncluding troubleshooting

group leade� Individual will assist in

and instrument mai ntenance,

providing project updates th rough

For m o re information visit

fluorescence microscopy imaging techniques we will analyze the

BUSIN ESS

project meetings and seminars,

NewSci entistjobs.com job 1 0 :

Marketing Internship - New Scientist

Fo r more i nformation visit

1400744026

N ew Sc ientist

Research Associate (OOlBN) Monsanto OH - Ohio The successful candidate should

NewScientistj o b s.com job 10:

MA - Massach usetts

have a working knowledge of

1400744368

New Scientist is looking to employ

the biology of plant growth,

an enth usiastic student for a

development, and yield. Other

summer intemship with in the

Product Manager

Soft, Biological, and Composite Nanomaterials Scientist

Marketi ng Department in our

major responsibilities are periodical supervision of temporary

Thermo Fisher Scientific (US)

Sandia National Laboratories

Waltham, MA office, The program

labor crews and becoming

CO - Colorado Understand the market for current

NM - New Mexico

is 35 hours perweek and offers

proficient at data entry, Excellent

Responsible for conducting

a stipend. The work level is

commun ication skills, interpersonal

and future portfolio by interrogating

forefront basic research in the

geared towards a current college

abilities a nd attention to deta i l will

market reports, visiting customers

assembly, functionality, and

student interested in marketing,

be requi red to effectively fu nction in

and companies and events and

integration of biD-inspired

comm u n i cations, busi ness

the h igh-performance team-based organization,

by mon itoring competitor activity.

nanomaterials into both composites

development publishing, or science

Analyze product portfolio sales

and systems, Research resides at

comm u n i cation,

For m o re i nformation visit

trends and pricing to identify areas

the intersection between materials,

Fo r m ore i nformation visit

NewSci entistjobs.com job 1 0 :

for improvement or strategic focus,

biology, chemistry, and physics,

NewScientistj o bs.com job 10:

1400741186

4 4 1 NewScientist 1 10 April 2010

www.NewScientistJobs.com

At Monsanto, ou r talented employees are contri buting to our success as a global l ea d e r in biotech nology. By d e l ivering exceptional results i n o n e o f t h e world's most i m portant i n d u stries - agri culture - we are creating solutions t h at improve prod u ctivity i n farming w h i l e reducing t h e i m pact on o u r environment. We are looking for talented scientists in the following fie l d s :

Biochemistry

Global Germplasm Ma nagement

Protein Sciences

Bio informatics/Genomics

Microbiology

Regulatory Sciences/Affairs

Data ManagementjData Mining

N u trient and Water Use Efficiency

Statistical/Quantitative Genetics

Developmental Biology

Plant B reed ing and Genetics

Structural Biology

DroughtjAbiotic Stress To lerance

Plant Molecular Bio logy

Engineering and Automation

Plant Pathology/ Entomology/Nematology

Gene Discovery/Trait Characterization

Plant Physiology

Gene Suppression Technology

Plant Transformation

To learn more about Monsanto and our exciting career opportunities o r to apply, visit our careers site:

www. monsanto.comjcareers Monsanto i s an equal oppo rt uni ty employer, we value

a diverse c ombination of ideas, perspectives and cultures.

M O N S AN T O

E EO/AA E M PLOYER M/F/D/V

Staff Opportunities - St. Jude Children's Research Hospital The St. Jude Children's Research Hospital - Washington University Pediatric Cancer Genome Project is an unprecedented effort aimed at understanding the genetic origins of childhood cance rs

.

The Computational Biology Department at St . J ude Children's Research Hospital wil l have a lead role in analyzing data generated from sequencing the genomes of more than 600 childhood cancer patients

(www.pediatriccancergenomeproject.org) .

As part of the project, the

Computational Biology Department has new and exciting opportunities for individuals with expertise in bioi nformatics, computer science or related fields.

Bioinformatics Research Scientist (Job number 1 8228) Associate Research Scientist (Job number 1 8229) For specific job requirements and to apply, visit our Web site,

www.stjude.org/jobs.

www.stjude.org/jobs

I

Ranked in the Top 10 best places to work in academia yearly since 2005.

Named the nation's No. 1 pediatric cancer care hOspital by Parents magazine, 2000

An Equal Opportunity Empl{)yer - © 2009 St. Jude Children's Research H{)spiral

10 A p ri l Z D 10 I N ewScientist 1 45

www.NewScientistJobs.com

B i o l og i ca l Sc i e n ces. G e n et i cs. E n g i n ee ri n g . Tec h n o l ogy. A field as wide a n d d iverse as biotechnology req u i res a publ ication as wi de and diverse as New Scientist. Recruit for your ope n opportun ities i n our B iotech nology Feature in the May 1 issue of New Scientist.

Reservat i ons m ust be rece ived by A p r i l 2 1 , 2 0 1 0 . E ma i l N S S a l es@ N ewSc i e nt i st . co m Ca l l 7 8 l . 73 4 . 8 7 7 0 Fax 7 2 0 . 3 5 6 . 9 2 1 7

NlewScientist Jobs 46 1 NewSci entist 1 10 April 2010

www.NewScientistJobs.com Maribel, Patient

Our For more t h a n 3 0 years, G e n entech h as been at the forefro n t of the b i otec h n o l ogy i n d ustry, u s i n g h u m a n genet i c i nfo rmation to d ev e l op nove l med i c i n es for ser i o u s a n d l i fe-th reaten i ng d i seases. To d ay, G e n entech i s among t h e wor l d 's l ea d i ng b i otech com pan i es , w i th m u l t i p l e t h era p i es on t h e m a rket for c a n c e r a n d other serious m ed i c a l con d i t i o n s . P l ease take t h i s opportu n i ty to l earn a bout G e n e ntec h , wh ere we bel i eve that our e m p loyees are our most i m portant asset. G e n e ntech 's research orga n i za t i o n features wo r l d - renowned s c i e n t i sts who a re some of the most prol i f i c i n t h e i r fields a n d in the i n d u stry. G e n entech resea rc h e rs h ave cons i stent l y p u b l i s hed i n prest i g i o u s peer-revi ewed jou r n a l s a n d h ave sec u red a p prox i m ate l y 7 ,400 c u r rent, non-expi red patents wor l d w i d e (with about 6 , 2 50 more pend i ng). Genente c h 's resea rch orga n izat i o n com b i nes the best of the academ ic a n d corporate wor l d s , a l l ow i n g resear c h ers not o n l y to pursue i m porta n t s c i entific q uest i o n s but a l so to watch a n

CAUSE

is Maribel and her allergic asthma.

G e n e nte c h Postd o cto ra l Progra m T h e G e n entech Postdoctoral Progra m is desi gned to c reate a v i bra n t a n d s u p port ive envi ro n me n t f o r rigoro u s s c i e n t i f i c t ra i n i ng. T h e pr i m ary a i m o f t h e program i s to t ra i n postdocs to co n d u ct researc h o f t h e h i ghest poss i b l e q u a l ity, to p u bl is h res u lts in to p-t i er j o u r n a l s a n d to t ra n si t i on to i nd e p e n d e n t s c i e n t i f i c i nvestigators , both i n academ i a a n d i n d u st ry. As a G e n entech Postdoctoral R esearc h Fe l l ow, you w i l l f i n d you rs e l f co l l aborat i n g w i t h wor l d - c l ass sc i e nt i sts bot h at t h e c o m p a n y a n d beyond G e n e n te c h 's wa l ls . O u r fe l l ows h i ps typ i ca l l y l a st fou r yea rs a n d offe r t he c ha n ce t o d o c utti ng-edge resea rc h i n an i n s p i red , p u rposefu l a n d resou rce- r i c h e n v i ro n me n t . T h ro ug h o ut t h e progra m , yo u wi l l be e n c o u raged to p u bl i s h a n d prese n t t h e p rogress a n d res u l ts of y o u r work bot h i nter n a l ly a n d a t externa l s c i e n t i f i c confere n c es . A s o u r m a n y Post d octo ra l P rogram a l u m n i c a n attest , t h e p rogram offers a n u n rivaled o p port u n i ty to p u t you rsel f at the forefront of s c i e n c e . C o n s i st e n t l y recogn i z e d as o n e of t h e top com p a n i es to w o r k f o r i n t h e U n i ted States, G e n e n tech offers em p l oyees o n e of t h e m ost com pre h e n s ive benef i ts programs i n t h e i n d ustry. For m o re i n form a t i o n o n t h e progra m a n d to read c om m e n tary from c u rrent a n d past postdocs, p l ease v i s i t p ostd ocs.gene.com. For a com plete l i st i n g o f c u rre nt postdoc o p port u n i t i es a n d to a p p l y, p lease v i s i t

careers.gene.com. G e n e ntec h i s a n eq u a l o p port u n i ty e m p l oyer.

i d ea m ove from the l a boratory i n to d evelopment a n d out i nto the clinic.

• •

In October 2009, Genentech was named "top employer in the biopharmaceutical industry" by Science Mal!azine.

Science 2009 TOP EMPLOYER

Genentech A Member of the Roche GroutJ

10 Apri l 2010 I NewScientist 1 47

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

FEEDBACK

in Dublin, Ireland. It seems to take allergy caution to a new, all-inclusive leveL It also provi des a surprising i nsight i nto what tomato ketchup is made of these days. The packet warns: "A llergy Advice: May contain Nuts, Pea n uts, Sesame Seeds, Cele ry, Wheat, Barl ey, Fish, Eggs, Soybeans, M i lk, Sulphites and Cereals containing Gl uten". Is this, Stuart wonders, the tomato ketchup secret recipe?

WHEN Hilton Selvey told us about an email he had received promoting a "negative calorie" diet that supposedly means the more you eat, the more weight you lose, he added he was worried that if he followed this diet and ate too much he would eventually disappear in a puff of smoke. We had a look around, and found that a famous web search engine lists 392,000 pages containing the words "negative calorie foods". Typical ofthe claims they make are the ones at negativecaloriediet.com, which states: "The Negative Calorie DieFM is based on more than 100 negative calorie foods requiring your body to BURN more calories than the actual calorie content ofthe food itself! This results in your body burning the remaining stored fat as its new source of energy because it no longerfeels hungry or starved." We are then told we can order this d iet as an eBook, along with various "bonus" downloads, for $47. Could this be rubbish? Is the

whole concept of negative calorie foods a myth? Yes indeed. In its page on the topic "lovely little Wikipedia" notes that a negative calorie food "is purported to require more calories to be digested than it provides". It goes on to say, bluntly: "While this concept is popular in d ieting guides, there is no scientific evidence that any of the foods claimed as negative calorie foods are such." New Scientist agrees. Celery is commonly cited as being "negative" in this way, but digesting it actually requires only a small proportion of its calorie content. Another scam bites the dust.

THE state legislature of South Dakota recently passed a resolution basically ordering schools to "teach the controversy" on climate change. Those who felt this indicated a certain lack of intellectual finesse on the part ofthe legislators responsible were hardly reassured by the wording oftheir resolution, which insisted that teachers must tell students about the "variety of climatological, meteorological, astrological, thermological, cosmological, and ecological dynamics that can effect world weather phenomena". Astrological effects on the weather? Come on, guys.

continue to keep our prices low:' Peter Fyfe confesses to "taking a pedant's pleasure in leaving my tray on the table to ensure prices remain low". Meanwhile, in the UK, John Parry tells us that the University of Hertfordshire is well known for its leading position in robotics and computer science, so he was initially im pressed last week by a new sign in the students' refectory saying "This is a selfclearing restaurant". A little observation soon revealed that it means, just like the old notice, "Please put your plates and cutlery on the trolley."

AN EMAIL from Facebook arriving i n Tina Bayley's Googlema i l account i nformed her that a friend had written on her "wa l l". Google's keen algorithms h e l pf u l ly suggested that she may we l l be interested i n other types of wall such as Hadri an's Wall, concrete walls or wal l s made of bricks and mortar. "It's a n i ce try," she says, "but I'm q u ite happy with my electronic one."

SEVERAL readers noticed two i nspiring sentences in the London free newspaper Metro last month. An article on the contraceptive pill assured: "Taking the p i l l cuts the long-term risk of dyi ng from any serious i l l ness including cancers and heart disease, new research suggests.

ALLERGIC reacti o n s can make people

Women who take the contraceptive

seriously i l l, so al lergy warn i ngs

are 12 per cent less l i kely to d i e

are A Good Thing even if they

compared with those who never have."

sometimes seem unnecessary, l i ke

Sarah Fellows asks: "If the entire

the notorious "may contain nuts"

female population began taking the

warn ing on packets of nuts. Stuart

p i l l, would a lucky 12 per ce nt of us

Neilson, however, sends us a photo

become i m mortal? We think this kind

of a packet of tomato ketchup

of side effect would surely be worth

di scovered by his dau ghter Mel ina

i nvesti gating further and can't

FINALLY, when Alan Bailey's stainless steel vacuum flask stopped keeping things warm, he took it back under warranty to his local Kmart store. They ha ppily replaced it, telling him that "the vacuum must have leaked out".

und erstand why pharmaceutical companies have not caught on to it."

The care instructions for a fo rma l j a cket fro m o n l i n e store AS DA D i rect state: "Mac h i n e Washa b l e, D ry Clea n Only" 48 1 NewScientist 1 10 Apri l Z010

A SIGN in the cafe of Ikea's store in Sydney, Australia, reads: "By taking your tray to a tray station, we can

You can send stories to Feedback by email at [email protected]. Please include your home address. This week's and past Feedbacks can be seen on ourwebsite.

Last words past and present, plus questions, at www.last·word.com

TH E LAST WORD

Life o n Uluru Some decades ago I was travelling around Australia and was lucky enough to climb Uluru. Pools on top of the rock had been produced by recent rain and, curiously, in many of them strange aquatic invertebrates were present (see photo). This specimen is sitting in my camera lens cap, which has a diameter of 62 millimetres. lt looks like an ancient trilobite. Why and how was it on top of the famous, massive rock, and what is it? What happens to the creatures when the short·lived puddles dry up? • The animal pictured is a shield

shrimp, Triops australiensis. They are crustaceans in the class Branchiopoda - meaning "gill­ legged" - a nd this term reflects the fact that they use their legs for breathing as well as for motility. Their external morphology a ppears to have remained unchanged for 220 million years or more, and one species, Triops ca ncriformis, has been claimed by some to be the oldest extant animal species. They occur in bodies of fresh or slightly salty water that periodically dry out, such as ephemeral lakes, farm dams, ditches and even puddles left after rain. The eggs ofthese animals have a very strong shell and are resistant to drying out. In some species, a period of desiccation is actually necessary for the creature's development. The eggs can tolerate freezing and temperatures up to 80 DC, and

may remain viable for 25 years. In some species, hatching may take up to a year following exposure to suitable conditions, but in T. a ustraliensis it usually takes several weeks at most. Once hatched, development from egg to adult may take only a further few weeks in summer tern peratures. The animals have a lifespan of up to three months, and adults reach about 35 millimetres in length. The shrim ps feed on microscopic organisms, aq uatic worms, other shrimp species, frogs' eggs and larvae, decom posing vegetation and other detritus, and sometimes even moulting individuals of their own species. The small size and the robustness of the eggs allow them to be carried on the wind for hundreds of kilometres from

(Triops cancriformis) is currently known to exist in only two locations, the New Forest and the Solway Firth. Visitors to the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust Centre at Caerlaverock, Dumfriesshire, can view this species in the visitor centre. Triops is typical of ephemeral, Triops has three eyes and closely resembles its Triassic ancestors from 220 m i llion years ago"

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or temporary, wetlands, and can survive drying to persist for up to 30 years as eggs or cysts. The eggs • I bought a packet of desiccated shield shrim p eggs (Triops at Caerlaverock were collected to provide a safety net for the australiensis) on the internet for population in Scotland, where they my boyfriend's 30th birthday. As the species name suggests, shield persist in one tern porary pond shrim ps have three eyes: two which has been created by cattle compound eyes and one naupliar trampling around a fence post. eye - a sim pie median eye, first Emma Hutchins, Head ofReserves appearing in the larval stage. They Ma nagement closely resemble their Triassic Sally Cordwell, Head ofPublic Relations ancestors, which existed around 220 million years ago. Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust Blown around with the red Slimbridge, Gloucestersh ire dust, eggs eventually settle in crevices and grooves - even This week's on the top of the great rock­ questions where they may remain viable for EAR WHACKS up to 10 years. I guess that means my boyfriend has an excuse for Why does having something pushed into my ear make me not hatching them yet. cough? Kate Hutson School ofEarth and Environmental Oliver Pilkington Ilkley, West Yorkshire, UK Sciences University ofAdelaide, Australia WAXED O U T

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Triops species are found on most continents but are rare in the UK, where the tadpole shrimp

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their pools of origin, and it is probably this mode of transport that would have delivered the eggs to the top ofUiuru. It is also possible that the eggs might have been carried up in mud caked on a visitor's boots. Although in this instance such a method of transport is essentially innocuous, it is nevertheless a salient reminder ofthe need to ensure that all clothing and equipment is cleaned before moving from one ecosystem to another. Harko Werkman Woodbridge, Ta sma nia, Australia

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What is earwax for? Ady Ambler London, UK