No title

Subscribe today and get a copy of the latest New Scientist book 'Do Polar Bears get Lonely?' FREE

CONTENTS

Volume 205 No 2742

NEWS 5 6

Time to open up DNA databases UPFRONT Celebrity science gaffes, Recruiting "vyomanauts" for India's space flight programme

8

THISWEEK

COVER STORY

EDITORIAL

Before the stars Did black holes once rule the cosmos, paving the way for light and life?

Secrecy of DNA databases may be harming justice, Crystal mountains found on moon, Exotic stars may mimic big bang, No signs of virus in people with chronic fatigue, Hormones drive boys'toy preferences, Monogamy may suit men after all. Battle with ocean's red devils 11 INSIGHT Is the fish on your plate sustainable? 16 IN BRIEF Egg wh ite protection for fetuses, Pass the buck in public at your peri l

Cover image

19 TECHNOLOGY

Ablestock,com/jupiter

Automating border patrols, Artificial leaf to provide green fuel. Get gaming with your body

34

OPINION 24 Sprinting tiger As China gets set to dominate

scientific research, the west had better get its house in order, says Jonathan Adams 25 One minute with... Frank Drake, the man who made the search for aliens respecta ble science 26 LETTERS Same-sex strategies, Alcohol test 28 Consciousness, not explained We won't crack the mystery any time soon, for one very good reason, argues Ray Tal l is

Let's get physical The low-down on fitness, by the scientists who study it

FEATURES 30 Before the stars (see right) 34 Let's get physical (see right) 40 Lose the booze A pill for problem drinking is on

the horizon, but not everyone is happy about it 44 Beetle vision Night-sight secrets of the

Vl l:J Z

hu mble dung d iners

REGULARS

Coming next week Funny feelings

26 ENIGMA 48 BOOKS & ARTS The Road Joe Penhall on turning Cormac McCa rthy's post-apocalyptic novel into a movie script, plus a review of the final product 49 Personalised revolution Cheerlead ing for genetical ly ta ilored medicine - even by a wo rld- lead ing geneticist - may be mistimed 56 FEEDBACK Now sanitise you r hands 57 THE LAST WORD Speed freaks

Emotions you never

knew you had Squid invasion!

The sinister rise of the IIred devilsll

PLUS Why knowledge really is a dangerous thing

50 JOBS & CAREERS

New York, NY 10010,

USA

AUSTRALIA

Recruitment Advertising

TO SUBSCRIBE

Syndication

225 Wyman Street,

Tower 2, 475 Victoria Avenue,

Tel 781734 8770

Tel 888 822 3242

Tribune Media Services

Periodicals postage paid at

Waltham, MA02451

Chatswood, NSW 2057

[email protected]

[email protected]

International

New York, NY and other mailing

Tel 781 734 8770

Tel +51 2 9422 2555

Permissions for reuse

An annual subscription in the USA

Tel 213 237 7987

offices, Postmaster: Send address

Fax 720 355 9217

Fax + 512 9422 2533

Tel +44 20 75111210

is $154-including delivery,

email [email protected]

changes to New Scientist,

Marketing

An annual subscription in Canada

© 2009 Reed Business

PO Box 3805, Chesterfield, MO

Editorial & media enquiries

Tel 781 734 8778

is CAN$182 including delivery,

Information Ltd, England,

53005-9953, USA.

Tel 415 908 3348

Tel 781734 8770

marketing@newscientist,com

Fax 415 704 3125

jill,[email protected]

UK

Enquiries

Lacon House,

84 Theobald's Road,

201 Mission Street, 25th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105

Registered at the Post Office

Canadian subscriptions distributed by RCS International, 12182 Belden

New Scientist ISSN No, 0252 4079

as a newspaper and printed in USA

For a full list of who's who at

Ct, Livonia, MI 48150,

is published weekly except for the

by Fry Communications Inc,

Tel +44 (0) 20 7511 1202

new Scientist go to

Newsstand

last week in December by Reed

Mechanicsburg, PA 17055

[email protected]

www,newscientist,com/people

Distributed by Curtis Circulation

Business Information Ltd, England,

London, WClX 8NS

Display Advertising

Company, 730 River Road, New

Reed Business Information, c/o

Tel +44 (0)20 7511 1200

Tel 517 385 2192

Milford, Nj 07545-3048

Schnell Publishing Co, Inc., 350 Park

Fax +44 (0)20 7511 1250

joe,[email protected]

Tel 201534 7400

Avenue South, 12th Floor,

a

Reed Business Information

9January 20101 NewScientist13

dar 2010 calen

Yes! Please send me

TO ORDER

Title

__

__

copy/copies of the New Scientist 2010 Ca lendar Last Name

First Name

Address

www.mags-uk.com/ newscientistcalendar2010

Postcode Telephone

Email

I ENCLOSE A CHEQUE

payable to New Scientist for

+44 (0) 1733 385170 CARD - Please debit my :

D

Visa

D

Mastercard

D

Amex

D

Maestro (Maestro only)

Card number:

New Scientist 2010 Calendar, Lacon House, 84 Theobald's Road, London, WClX 8NS, UK

DDDD DDDD DDDD DDDD DDD DD DD DD Expiry

Signed Please allow 7 days for delivery. Order by the 10th December 2010 for delivery before Christmas.

D

Valid From

Issue No.

Date Please tick here if you subscribe to New Scientist magazine

D

Please tick here if you

Under no circumstances

do not want to receive relevant

will your details be released

information from New Scientist.

to third party companies

EDITORIAL

Time for full and frank disclosure Data hoarding must end, particularly when lives depend on the reliability of the science DNA profiling technology has improved by leaps and bounds since its potential was first glimpsed by geneticist Alec Jeffreys in 1984. But as DNA databases grow, so does the risk that coincidental matches will lead to false convictions. This week we report on the publication of a letter in Science, signed by 41 scientists and defence lawyers, demanding access to CaDIS, the US national DNA database, which is controlled by the FBI. The signatories want to test some of the underlying assumptions about the likelihood that two or more people share the same DNA profile (see page 8). Few of their arguments are new. Similar concerns were raised during the "DNA wars" of the mid-gos, by some of the same individuals who have signed the new letter. This latest request for access to the database, like previous requests, has been refused on the grounds of privacy, though the FBI did agree this week to explore ways to address some of the concerns raised in the letter. The ongoing reluctance to allow independent scrutiny of CaDIS has consistently stymied efforts to confirm the rigour of the statistics which are used to present DNA evidence in court. As a result,

the sceptics haven't gone away. And recent studies of DNA databases from several US states and Australia have prompted these concerns to surface yet again. In some ways, the Science letter raises many of the same issues as "climate-gate". If the UK's Climatic Research Unit had released its data for independent scrutiny from the outset, it would have immediately quashed suspicions of any "climate conspiracy". Unfortunately, the reluctance to share data has also hindered other fields of intense public interest. It has reduced our ability to prepare for "Like climate change and flu pa ndemic resea rch, the relia b i l ity of forensic DNA stu d ies ca n mean l ife or death"

outbreaks of diseases like bird flu, for example. Until the authorities involved in DNA profiling are transparent about how often database matches occur, scepticism will remain. And, like research into climate change and flu pandemics, the reliability of forensic DNA studies can be a life-or-death issue. In the US, at least, people have been executed largely on the basis of DNA evidence. Transparency and independent replication of results are central tenets of science, and there is no justifiable reason why forensics should be exempt from this. It must not be allowed to disregard the standards voluntarily held up by other areas of science. If the FBI has got its statistics wrong, the consequences are so profound that we need to know about it. If they are right, further research will only strengthen DNA evidence. Either way, justice wins .•

Ditch the dodgy eco-Iabels A GROWING number of supermarkets and restaurants proudly declare that the fish they sell is "sustainable" or "responsibly sourced". This is a welcome sign that consumers are exercising their marketplace muscle to stop threatened species ending up on their plates. The trouble is that no consensus exists over what these labels mean - making it hard for consumers to distinguish genuine conservation efforts from dubious practices that hide behind ambiguous phraseology (see page 11). The issue of declining fish stocks is too important to allow these initiatives to be undermined by specious or exaggerated claims, so-called "bluewashing". Only sound science will allow marine stewardship groups and governments to thrash out what constitutes a sustainable fishery.•

Get the big picture WHY is golf like red wine? Because sometimes it is good for you and sometimes it is not depending on which news stories you read. The same goes for coffee, vitamin E and more. This impression that health research is a mass of contradictory findings arises from reports of small, one-off studies. These cannot provide definitive answers: it's the totality of evidence that matters. Look at that, and it's clear that we do know the answer to the golf question, and lots of others too. So is golf good for you? You can find out on page 34.•

What's hot on NewScientist.com SPACE PHYSICS Instant Expert:

OLD AGE Monkeys listen to their

Black holes They are among the

elders Teenagers: learn from yo ur

wei rdest and most myste rious objects in the universe. Find out all a bout these cosmic vacuum cleaners with our comprehensive guide to black holes

primate cousins. Campbell's monkeys pay most attention to the ca lls of older members of the i r s pecies TECHNOLOGY Typing style

� •

2009 REVIEW Favourite

2009 REVIEW Most popular

picture ga IIenes · S ee

articles From female ejacu lation

.

carnivorous robots eager to eat insects, sna pshots from inside exp loding stars and bizarre devices from med icine's dark past in a collection of last years picture galleries

reveals stress levels A person can HEALTH Dilute disinfectant

boosts bacterial resistance

Some microbes and vi ruses become resistant to disinfectant if exposed to dilute solutions, which may be accelerating their spread in hospitals

be identified just from their typing style. A stressful environment affects keyboard rhythms too. It could provide a way to tel l if a person was forced to access, say, a bank account under duress

2009 REVIEW Top videos

D The best of our video coverage, including a tiny hovering robot, bionic pengu ins, software that can make home movies look professional, and plasma ejections from the sun

to the discovery of vampires in mass graves, read the year's most clicked-on stories. Also see the most popular space and physics sto ries - including how to get to Mars in 39 days and the best way to slice a pizza If you wou ld like to comment on line about any of the articles in this issue, you can do so by visiting the article at newscientist.com

9 January 2010 I N ewScientist 1 5

UPFRONT

Gene rice on way in China CHINA could become the first country

damage trade by contaminating

to allow the commercial cultivation of

exports, pointing out that exports

genetically modified rice, which could

account for less than 1 per cent of the

go on sale as early as next year.

country's total rice production.

Field trials of two G M varieties, called Huahui 1 and Bt Shanyou 63, are under way after they received official

poised for commercialisation,

safety clearance in November. Both

showed that they benefited poor

contain " Bt" proteins from the Bacillus

farmers and decreased their

thuringiensis bacterium to protect

exposure to harmful pesticides.

them against the rice stem borer, the most serious rice pest in China. Precisely how long the final tests

Vyomanauts a re go NOT s o long ago, people in space were either astronauts or cosmonauts. Then the Chinese gave us taikonauts. Now, another billion-strong nation with an ambitious space programme ­ India - is seeking a new breed of spacefarers: vyomanauts, according to Indian media. The tongue-twisting term comes from the Sanskrit for sky or space (vyoma, pronounced veeohma). The closest Sanskrit word to astronaut would have been vyomagami, for something that passes in the sky. The other word for an Indian spacefarer that had been bandied about was gaganaut (gagan is also Sanskrit for sky). But, "vyoma is very " I n d ia is in the process of choosing four vyoma na uts from a pool of 200 fig hter pilots"

good", says Choudury Upender Rao, a professor of Sanskrit studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. "It's an appropriate choice." 6 1 NewScientist 1 9 January 2010

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is now in the process of choosing four vyomanauts from a pool of 200 fighter pilots, P. Madhusoodanan of the Indian Air Force told DNA, a daily newspaper, this week. India's first crewed space mission is scheduled for 2015, designs for which were unveiled last year by Madhavan Nair, former chairman of ISRO. The three-person vehicle will initially carry two vyomanauts into 275-kilometre low-Earth orbit. Before this flight, ISRO will launch its second moon mission in 2013.

Previous trials of GM rice varieties in China, including the two now

Bob Zeigler, director of the non-profit International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Los

will take is not known, butJikun

Banos, the Philippines, says GM rice

Huang, director of the Center for

can deliver unique traits that are

Chinese Agricultural Policy in Beijing,

otherwise unobtainable. Farmers in

expects large-scale production in

India and the Philippines have this

Hubei province in 2011, followed by

year begun receiving a flood-tolerant

rapid commercial approval elsewhere

rice developed at the IRRI which is

in the country. He rejects the

non-GM but was developed using

suggestion that the GM varieties may

knowledge from GM studies.

at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, FOR smokers under pressure to Maryland, found that the risk of give up in 2010, it will seem like diabetes is highest straight after quitting and gradually reduces to the ultimate excuse: quitting smoking appears to increase the that of non-smokers (Annals of Internal Medicine, vol 152, p 10). risk of diabetes. Smokers are on average 30 per This is most likely because cent more likely than non-smokers quitting makes people more likely to develop type 2 or adult-onset to put on weight, which is known to increase the risk of diabetes. diabetes. Now a 10-year study of 10,892 adults has found that in The results shouldn't discourage the first six years after giving up, people from quitting, but former former smokers are 70 per cent smokers should gradually increase more likely than non-smokers to the amount of exercise they do, develop the disease. suggests Martin Dockrell of the Hsin-Chieh Yeh and colleagues UK anti-smoking charity, ASH.

Ex-smokers' risk

Sil ly celebs DID you know that meat stays in your gut for 40 years, putrefies and leads to a disease that kills you? "That is a fact," according to charity campaigner Heather Mills, one of several celebrities whose statements have been scrutinised and challenged by the charity Sense About Science in its latest "celebrity watch" review. Other celebs have been pulled up for apparently not realising that hormones are chemicals, and

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

60 SECONDS

that ovulation is suppressed by pregnancy and prolonged breastfeeding. Actress Suzanne Somers, for example, criticised the contraceptive pill "because is it safe to take a chemical every day, and how would it be safe to take something that prevents ovulation?" Actor Roger Moore, meanwhile, was taken to task for claiming that foie gras causes Alzheimer's disease, and Sarah Palin for dismissing evolution. Any readers disturbed by Mills's meaty claims can be assured that any meat protein not broken down before reaching the colon is expelled in faeces within days.

Paint soaks u p CO2

will provide extra strength and insulation, she says. How much CO2 could be removed from the atmosphere in this way has not yet been tested. Armstrong wants to adapt the technique for use underwater to

GROWING grass on your roof and other attempts to make homes carbon neutral are mere "green bling". So says Rachel Armstrong of University College London (UCL), who suggests that her smart paint can turn buildings "The paint wou l d react with into carbon sinks. carbon dioxide in th e air to Armstrong created the paint produce 'biol ime', which by dissolving salts and esters in cou ld h e l p insu late h o m es" oil droplets. Repeated coatings react with carbon dioxide in the create an artificial limestone reef atmosphere to produce calcium beneath Venice to stop the city carbonate - which is the main sinking. She will present her work constituent of limestone - and at a workshop at UCL's Bartlett alcohol. The resulting "biolime" School of Architecture next month.

Deflated galaxy We are surrounded by a flattened beach ball of dark matter, according to results presented at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington DC. The halo appears to be roughly perpendicular to the galaxy's disc of stars. "It begs the question of how our galaxy formed in its present orientation," says David Law of the University of California, Los Angeles.

Four legs old The oldest known footprints made by a four-legged vertebrate have been found in the Holy Cross mountains, Poland. The tetrapod tracks are 397 million years old, pushing back the previous record

Styrofoa m world

Troops protect chimps from lava

CALL it the polystyrene planet. This bloated exoplanet is just one of a clutch NASA's Kepler telescope has trained its beady eye on. Kepler has been scrutinising 100,000 stars since April 200g, searching for telltale dips in starlight created by planets passing in front of their host stars. During its first six weeks on the job, Kepler found five new planets, according to results presented on Monday at the American Astronomical Society's meeting in Washington DC. Kepler 7b is about 1.5 times as wide as Jupiter, though only a tenth as dense - similar to polystyrene - making it one of the most diffuse planets yet found. Heat is thought to have caused the planet to bloat, but how it did this is not yet understood. "We think this has something to do with the fact that they are all very close to their host stars... but we haven't found the smoking gun," says team member Dimitar Sasselov of the Harvard­ Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. While the new planets are inhospitably hot, mission members say finding them bodes well for Kepler's ability to detect Earth's twins.

UN PEACEKEEPERS in the Democratic

are classed as endangered because

surrounding rock is of marine origin,

Republic of the Congo (DRC) are

their numbers are dropping steadily,

hinting that our ancestors may have

using their aircraft to help protect

mainly due to deforestation,

invaded land from the sea, rather

endangered chimpanzees and other

although the Ebola virus poses

than rivers and lakes.

by around 10 million years. The

wildlife following a volcanic eruption

an added threat. In total they may

in Virunga National Park.

number as few as 76,000, all living

Spidery eyesore

in east and central Africa.

Exotic spider -handlers should wear

Nyamulagira, one of two active volcanoes inside the park, started erupting on 2January. The lava has

The UN multinational force is stationed in the DRC to protect

eye protection or risk the same fate as a hapless tarantula owner whose

moved 4 kilometres in three days­

civilians in a war that has killed

pet blasted him with a "mist" of

though luckily this has been away

5 million people. Now it is using its

barbed hairs (The Lancet, vol 375,

from major human settlements and

Indian planes and helicopters to

p 92). The hairs severely irritated his

Virunga's famous mountain gorillas.

monitor the Virunga area.

corneas and took months to clear

But 40 eastern chimpanzees on Nyamulagira itself could still be at

Richard Carroll, head of African

risk both from lava flows and abrasive

if the eruption destroys people's

volcanic ash, which is coating the

livelihoods, they will be more likely

plants they rely on for food.

to hunt or cut wood for charcoal

Eastern chimpanzees, a subspecies of the common chimp,

with steroids.

programmes for the WWF, fears that

in Virunga, increasing the threat to wildlife.

Prions 'evolve' The rogue proteins that cause brain diseases such as the human form of BSE seem able to alterthe way they fold in response to changes in their environment. The alterations, which can be passed from prion to prion, may help them to develop drug resistance (Science, 001: 10.11261 science.1183218).

Solomons shake A 3-metre-high tsunami struck the Solomon islands this week. The region, east of Papua New Guinea, experienced a series of powerful earthquakes - one at magnitude 7.2. Early reports suggested more than 1000 people had been left homeless when 200 houses were destroyed.

9 January 2010 1N ewScientist 17

THIS WEEK

For justice, share DNA databases Giving scientists access to offenders' DNA profiles is the only way to ensure their fair use in court Linda Geddes

WHEN a defendant's DNA appears to match DNA found at a crime scene, the probability that this is an unfortunate coincidence can be central to whether the suspect is found guilty. The assumptions used to calculate the likelihood of such a fluke - the "random match probability" - are now being questioned by a group of 41 scientists and lawyers based in the US and the UK. These assumptions have never been independently verified on a large sample of DNA profiles, says the group. What's more, whether some RMPs are truly as vanishingly small as assumed has been called into question by recent insights into DNA databases in the US and Australia. The group, led by Dan Krane of Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, is demanding access to CODIS - the US national DNA database, which contains over 7 million profiles - so that they can test the assumptions behind RMPs. They have outlined their arguments in a letter, which was published in Science in December (vol 326, p 5960). "The national US database is a truly enormous source of data," says signatory Larry Mueller of the University of California, Irvine (UCI). Such research could reveal if incorrect RMPs are prompting jurors and judges to attach undue weight to DNA evidence, possibly leading to miscarriages of justice. Even if these fears are not borne out, independent checks on the DNA held in large databases like CODIS are vital to maintaining 8 1 NewScientist 1 9 January 2010

confidence in DNA evidence presented in courts all over the world, the group says. Access would also allow the number of errors in CODIS to be measured. DNA evidence, considered the gold standard in forensic science, is typically used in two ways: to link a known suspect to a crime, or to find new suspects - known as a "cold hit" - by searching for a match in a DNA database of known criminals. Before a match can be sought, a profile is generated from a DNA sample by analysing specific "Offender databa ses revea l shocking d ifferen ces between what you see a n d what you wou l d expect"

locations on the chromosomes, called loci, and looking at short sections of non-coding DNA, known as short tandem repeats (STRs), which vary between individuals. An RMP is then arrived at using the estimated frequencies of these STRs, or alleles, at all the loci investigated. The more loci that are analysed at once, the more comprehensive the profile and the smaller the RMP. Labs in the US typically look at 13 loci, while UK labs tend to look at 10. One thing that researchers would like to use CODIS to verify is whether the allele frequency estimates are correct. Most of these estimates are based on data from small studies conducted during the early years of DNA forensics. But there are signs that these studies did not capture the true frequencies of certain alleles

in some populations, which could mean that the RMPs presented in court are wrong. "When you look at real offender databases you see that there are shocking differences between what you actually see and what you would expect to see," says Krane. The first clue that something might be amiss came in 2005, when limited data was released from the Arizona state database, a small part of CODIS. An analyst who compared every profile with every other profile in the database found that, of 65,493 profiles, 122 pairs of profiles matched at nine out of 13 loci and 20 pairs

matched at 10 loci, while one pair matched at 11 loci and one more pair matched at 12 loci. "It surprised a lot of people," says signatory Bill Thompson of UCI. "It had been common for experts to testify that a nine-locus match is tantamount to a unique identification." Unexpected matches Similar tests have since been conducted on the Illinois state database (of 220,000 profiles, 903 pairs matched at nine or more loci) and the Maryland state database (of the 30,000 profiles,

In this section

• Crystal mountains found on moon, page 10 • Monogamy may suit men after all, page 12 • Battling the ocean's "red devils", page 14

32 pairs matched at nine loci, and three matched on all 13 loci). One possibility is that some are duplications of the same profile in the databases - although this is not the case with the Arizona matches. Alternatively, assumptions about the frequency of alleles in populations, such as how independent these variations are of each other, might be wrong. If this is the case, access to the database is vital if these assumptions are to be corrected. "We need to learn how DNA profiles cluster by race, ethnicity and even geography," says Krane. A third possibility is that the

surprisingly high number of matches found in these databases is the result of large numbers of relatives in the database, who are more likely to have similar DNA profiles than non-relatives. This could mean that in areas of the US and other parts of the world with more closely related populations, the RMPS may need to be tweaked. So if CODIS provided new knowledge of the frequency of certain alleles in related or unrelated people, what would the subsequent adjustments of RMPs lead to? Even with such tweaks, in cases where all 13 loci are matched, the chances of it

being a coincidence will still be vanishingly small. But a 13-loci match is not always possible. If only small amounts of DNA are recovered from crime scenes, or if samples are degraded or mixed with other people's DNA, the number of loci available for comparison is often much lower than 13. This means that the statistical weight attached to a match is lower - and the probability of a coincidental match higher. "I would say 5 to 10 per cent of database searches involve evidence profiles with fewer than 10 loci and/or that are mixtures," says Mueller. For such cases, RMPs will be much higher, so tweaks to these estimates could make a big difference to how a jury interprets them. "I've been involved in cases where these are 1-in-67 or 1-in-83," says signatory Bill Shields of the State University of New York at Syracuse. "If those numbers are off by 50 per cent, then that could make a big difference to a jury." Bruce Budowle, former senior scientist at the FBI, which controls CODIS, argues that fears sparked by the Arizona database are overblown. Selecting a known suspect's profile and comparing it against a crime scene profile is a bit like taking a person whose birthday is 9 January and calculating the chance that a specific other person shares that birthday, which is about 1 in 365. The comparisons made within the Arizona database were the equivalent of asking how many people in a room share any birthday - a different statistic altogether. With just 23 people, for example, the probability that any two share any birthday exceeds 50 per cent. With 60 people, it is nearly 100 per cent. The signatories insist that this "birthday problem" can't explain all the matches, however. In 2008, Mueller developed a computer model of the Arizona database that showed that the birthday problem could account for a few, but not all of the matches (Journal of Genetics, vol 87, p 101).

Access to DNA databases is not just about preventing potential miscarriages of justice. In 2003, when Krane was given limited access to the DNA database for the Australian state of Victoria as part of the inquest into the death of a toddler, he noticed a cluster of 32 profiles that seemed to match at 17 of the 18 alleles tested for. This was odd because far fewer matched at just 16 alleles - you would expect the opposite to be the case. Krane says the most likely cause is mistakes made "We n eed to learn h ow DNA profiles cluster by race, ethn icity a n d even geogra phy"

when the samples were entered into the database, which he estimates may be present in as many as 1 in 1000 samples. Access to CODIS would reveal if it contains errors, too, which could be causing investigators searching for a cold hit to miss potential suspects. "If you have mistyped an allele or a locus, then you have a person in a database whose profile would not match his own DNA," says signatory Bicka Barlow at the San Francisco Public Defender's Office. Will the FBI grant scientists access to CODIS? Director of the FBI Laboratory, Christian Hassell, says he appreciates the concerns the Science letter raises. "We are exploring ways to investigate some of the topics," he adds. But he has turned down the request for access, citing concerns about genetic privacy. The letter's signatories point out that medical researchers who work with DNA overcome privacy issues regularly, for example by signing an agreement promising not to divulge the data and taking certain security measures. Without external scrutiny of the databases, doubts will remain, Mueller argues. "All of this... can be resolved by letting scientists have access to the data to do what they need to do." • 9 January 2010 1 NewScientist 1 9

THIS WEEK

Crystal hills speak of turbulent lunar past Rachel Courtland

SUPERMAN'S sparkling Fortress of Solitude they're not, but giant outcrops of crystals, found on the moon by India's Chandrayaan-l probe, prove that a roiling ocean of magma once engulfed the rocky body of our satellite. The moon is thought to have coalesced more than 4 billion years ago from the molten debris of an impact between the Earth and a Mars-sized object. Models suggest that heat from that impact, as well as from material compressing to form the moon, created a sea of magma that lasted for a few hundred million years. Heavy, iron-bearing minerals should have sunk through this magma to form the moon's mantle, while lighter, iron-poor minerals called plagioclases should have crystallised and floated to the surface. But it has been difficult to find direct evidence of the moon's primordial crystalline crust, as it was likely jumbled by meteoroid impacts and paved over by lava flows early in the moon's history. Until recently, the only evidence came from lunar samples collected at a few

sites by the Apollo astronauts. Last year, however, Japan's Kaguya probe spotted patches of the stuff inside a number of craters (Nature, DOl: 10.1038/ nature08317). Now, it seems Chandrayaan-l, which orbited the moon for almost 10 months until

it failed in August, found the mother lode - vast outcrops of plagioclase crystal along a mountain range inside the moon's 930-kilometre-wide Orientale basin (below). Lava has resurfaced less of Orientale than other craters of its size. In 1994, the US orbiter Clementine found regions inside Orientale that seemed to be virtually iron-free, hinting at plagioclase. But Chandrayaan-l was able to detect the light absorbed by the crystal itself. It

found that the rock containing the crystal spans at least 40 kilometres and is quite pure - less than 5 per cent of it is composed of iron-rich minerals. That is purer than a number of Apollo samples, which until now have been the primary source of information on the moon's ancient crust. "This is a game­ changer," says Paul Warren of the University of California, Los Angeles. "We now have to rethink a lot of lunar science; issues such as the way the crust originally floated over the denser melt of the magma ocean [and] the extent to which the crust was jumbled by large impacts." In an alternative to the magma theory, the moon formed with much less energy, and its surface "Th e rock conta i n i n g the crystal spans at l east 40 kilometres a n d i s q u ite pu re"

solidified quickly. In that case, plagioclase would have reached the surface in a series of volcanic events. But finding widespread, pure plagioclase suggests a more global process. "It really pretty much ties up the magma ocean part of the story," says Carle Pieters of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, who presented the Chandrayaan-l results at the American Geophysical Union meeting in December in San Francisco.•

Cores of exotic stars may mimic big bang

have argued that some supernovae

between the electromagnetic and

survive for at least 10 million years,

may leave behind even denser quark

weak nuclear forces breaks down.

the researchers calculate. But

stars, in which neutrons dissolve into

This allows quarks to turn into

Sanjay Reddy of Los Alamos National

their constituent quarks.

ghostly particles called neutrinos,

Laboratory in New Mexico says

releasing energy that props up the

they might not be stable. "The idea

Dai of the State University of New

star against further collapse. The

is interesting, but to determine if

A NEW class of star may recreate

York in Buffalo says the deaths

reactions would take place in an

this is plausible, more work is

the conditions of the big bang in

of very massive stars may lead

apple-sized region in the core

needed," he says.

to "electroweak" stars that creep

weighing about two Earths.

its incredibly dense core. Pack matter tightly enough and gravity will cause it to implode into a black hole. Neutron stars were

Now, a team led by De-Chang

even closer to the black hole limit (arxiv.org/abs/0912.0520). The cores of these stellar corpses

The stars might show up in data

If the stars do exist, their cores are the only places in the modern

as neutron stars that are heavier

universe where matter naturally

than allowed. Unlike normal neutron

returns to this primordial state, says

once thought to be the densest form

can reach the same density as that of

stars, though, their internal energy

team member Glenn Starkman of

of matter that could resist such a

the universe 10-10seconds after the

source would prevent them from

Case Western Reserve University

collapse. More recently, physicists

big bang. At that point, the distinction

cooling over time. The stars could

in Cleveland, Ohio. David Sh iga .

10 1 N ewScientist 1 9 January 2010

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

INSIGHT Smart buying alone wil l not save the world's endangered fisheries ACTRESS Greta Scacchi posed naked clutch ing a large dead cod, The upma rket London restaurant Nobu was publicly shamed for selling an endangered species of tuna, And the Pret A Manger sandwich cha in sto pped se lling sushi made from yellowfin tuna in branches worldwide, Campa igns to encourage di ners and shoppers to q uestion whether the seafood they buy is sustai nable have hit the mai nstream, thanks i n no sma l l part to The End afthe Line, a 2009 documentary about overfishing, However, the advice g iven to consumers over susta inable seafood is inconsistent at best, and at worst, misleading, " Putting too much emphasis on consumers is not an effective strategy" for prese rvi ng fisheries, saysjenn ifer Jacquet of the Un iversity of British Columbia Fisheries Centre in Vancouver, Ca nada, who is lead author of a study comparing dozens of sustainable seafood in itiatives publ ished in this month's Oryx(DOI :

1O.1017/S0030605309990470), 'T here is simply too much misla belling, too much misleading information, too ma ny i nconsisten cies and, so fa r, too few results," There is little co nsensus on what constitutes a "sustainable" fishery. Jacquet poi nts out that while most schemes agree on hig h-profile species such as the Atlantic bluefin tuna, six organisations ra nk Atlantic hali but as a species to avoid, w h i le Friends of the Sea and the Monterey Bay Aq uari um recommend it as sustai nable,j acquet identifies conflicting advice for other species including bigeye tu na, lingcod, Atlantic haddock and al bacore tuna, Fisheries researchers question the accuracy of counting methods and model ling, Fo r example, in one of the best-managed fisheries in the world - the eastern Beri ng Sea - o ne study identified 30 per cent fewer wa lleye pollock than models had predicted, sug gesting the mode l l i ng was flawed (Science, vol 326, p 1340), Even when accu rate i nformation is

No sign of virus in chronic fatigue patients in the UK THE theory that chronic fatigue syndrome could be caused by a virus that jumped from mice to humans has been dealt a blow by a British study that has found no evidence of the virus in people diagnosed with CFS. Health officials are also warning people with the condition of the dangers of dosing themselves with antiretroviral drugs. CFS affects more than a million people in the US and a quarter of a million in the UK. Its symptoms include persistent, severe tiredness, but its cause remains mysterious and contentious. The debate on its origins took

How much to put sustainable fish on my dinner table?

ava i lab le, classification usua l ly depends not just on species, but on location and fishing method, As a result, the average co nsumer could easily find the advice confusing, A wallet card produced by the Mo nterey Bay Aqua rium, for example, has 12 different entries for tuna, The study's authors fear that the inconsistency and confusion could be exp lo ited to sell products that do not meet rigorous standards, The

"We do not share the conviction that XMRV may be a contributory factor in the pathogenesis of CFS, at least in the UK," McClure's team says. XMRV is a retrovirus, and viruses of this type have a history of claims linking them to diseases about 25 at the last count - that have later been questioned.

a new turn in October, when DNA from xenotropic murine leukaemia virus-related virus (XMRV) was found in the blood of about two-thirds of 101 people with CFS, compared with just 4 per cent of healthy people (Science, "(FS websites a re abuzz DOl: 10.1126/science.1179052). The with q ueries from patients researchers, led by Judy Mikovits of on h ow to obta i n th e the Whittemore Peterson Institute a nti retroviral d r u g AZl" in Reno, Nevada, suggested that Mikovits still stands by the XMRV might be causing CFS. conclusions in her paper. She Now a second study, led by Myra McClure of Imperial College suggests that XMRV may be less London, has failed to find XMRV common in Europe and so might in blood samples from 186 people not be causing cases of CFS there. in the UK with CFS (PLoS ONE, DOl: At least one US lab is offering to test people with CFS for XMRV, 10 .1371/journal. pone.0008 519).

greenwashing that some compan ies have employed to fa lsely boost their eco-credentials "could turn into 'bluewashi ng' today", they say. They conclude that governments, not consumers, should take the lead to protect fisheries by legislating on the amount of seafood used in animal feed, for instance, "We do not argue agai nst the principle that consumers should make a point of choosing products that reflect their idea ls," adds Jacquet " However, worki ng with household consumers alone ca nnot save fish," Nic Fleming.

while websites are abuzz with reports from patients who say they have been tested and queries about how to obtain zidovudine (AZT), the antiretroviral drug used to combat HIV. In lab experiments reported last month, AZT was found to block replication of XMRV (Virology, DOl: 10.1016/ j.viro1.2009.11.013). But Richard Baker, head of the group that wrote the official UK guidelines on CFS, warns patients against taking AZT, which can have side effects. "Anyone who uses it on themselves is taking a real risk with their health," he says. Mikovits says it is unlikely to be effective against CFS. Other researchers are trying to further establish whether there is a link between XMRV and CFS. Clare Wilson and Ewen Callaway.

9 January 2010 I NewScientist 1 11

THIS WEEK

Boy toy preference driven by hormones Linda Geddes

PARENTS hoping to shield their children from sex stereotypes by giving them gender-neutral toys may be fighting a losing battle, especially if their offspring are boys. It seems that hormones released both before birth and well into the first few months of life may dictate the type of toys and play that boys are drawn to. By the age of 3, boys and girls show differences in their play preferences. Boys are more strongly drawn to balls, vehicles and construction toys than girls and tend to prefer playing with

121 NewScientist 19 Jan uary 2010

larger groups, whereas girls are more likely to prefer play with a few individuals. To what extent these differences are biologically programmed rather than a result of social pressure is hotly debated. Recent research hints that exposure to differing levels of hormones in the uterus might sway the preferences that both boys and girls have for "boy-like" toys later on. No one had looked at whether the surges in testosterone and oestrogen that boys and girls experience in the early months of life also affect behaviour. "We tend to think of early development as a time when

hormones aren't having effects," (Hormones and Behavior, DOl: says Gerianne Alexander of 10.1016/j.yhbeh.200g.08.003). The children in the experiment Texas A&M University in College Station and colleagues. were too young for these To investigate the effects preferences to translate into of these hormone surges on actual choices about how they behaviour, Alexander and her play. However, Alexander says colleagues used eye-tracking that even at the tender age of software to measure levels of 3 months, such innate visual interest in animations of a ball preferences could drive future versus a doll and a group of behaviour. The next step is to test figures versus an individual figure, in 21 boys and 20 girls aged " Boys exposed to more 3 to 4 months. The researchers prenata l testostero n e sh owed a p ro n o u n ced measured levels of oestrogen in the girls' saliva and testosterone preference for the ba ll" in the boys' and compared the lengths of their index and middle if visual preferences at 3 months fingers - a guide to prenatal predict behaviour later on. testosterone exposure. "It's a very interesting paper Girls' behaviour appeared and I think it will motivate a lot of unaffected by current or additional research," says Melissa prenatal hormone levels. Boys' Hines of the University of preferences, however, seemed Cambridge, who researches the affected by both, in slightly role of hormones in prenatal different ways. Those with higher development. If confirmed by larger groups circulating levels of testosterone had a stronger preference for of children, the results would the groups of figures over the also suggest that aspects of individuals, while those whose behaviour or even gender identity finger lengths indicated that they might be skewed by exposure to hormone-disrupting chemicals had been exposed to more testosterone in the uterus showed like phthalates or pesticides, a more pronounced preference both in the womb and early for the bouncing ball over the doll in life. Linda Geddes.

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

Monogamy and marriage may suit men after all SOME couples come together for

intense, because men would risk

love, others for money, pregnancy

diluting the value of their property

or because they're told to. Whatever

by dividing it up among too many

the reason, socially prescribed

offspring and heirs. "Having a plot

monogamy and its ultimate cultural

of land that is not big enough to

expression, marriage, may have

support your family is not clever,"

emerged because of the evolutionary

says Fortunato.

benefits that both offer. By providing men with increased

The pair modelled the behaviour of populations incorporating

assurance that their wives' children

monogamous and polygynous men

are their true heirs and women with

over two generations. They made

the confidence that their kids will

the assumption that women in early

benefit from a decent inheritance,

agrarian cultures did not provide

monogamous marriage is a win-win

much in the way of material resources.

situation, argue Laura Fortunato at

Monogamy won out over polygyny,

University College London and Marco

in terms of reliably passing resources

Archetti at Harvard University. Their view challenges theories of marriage that emphasise the role

to the most genetically related family members, so long as property remained precious, women mostly

of religion and the societal benefits

faithful and men shrewd - that is,

of keeping men from fighting over

they transferred property exclusively

women. Such theories also contend

to the children of faithful wives

that by giving up multiple wives or

Uournal of Evolution Biology,

partners, men sacrifice their interests

vol 23, p 149}. So far, real-world

for those of the group.

support for this model is anecdotal.

" But there are actually some

Fortunato suggests that the

situations where monogamous

advent and spread of agriculture

marriage is a better strategy for

about 10,000 years ago played an

men as well as for women," says

integral role in the emergence of

F ortunato, who created a

monogamy, since until then owning

mathematical model to find out

specific land was largely pointless.

how such scenarios might work. The emergence of social

Population growth and technological advances allowed farmers to grow

monogamy - where monogamy

crops more effectively, increasing the

is socially enforced and polygamy

value of land to future generations.

is forbidden - is a mystery. The

Fortunato also reckons that

Babylonian king Hammurabi prescribed it in his ancient law code around 1790 BC, though the practice probably stretches back thousands of years further. Fortunato

"Men a n d women will tend to form exclusive pa i rs wh en land is sca rce a n d its cu ltivation i nten se"

distinguishes this from pair bonding and sexual monogamy, which was

cultures adopt religions that fit their

practiced by early humans and their

monogamous or polygamous values,

ancient ancestors. She says the fact

rather than the other way around.

that many populations around the

"I think the evidence must come from

world practice some form of polygyny

archaeology and changes in marriage

is a clear indication that social

systems," she says.

monogamy is not inevitable and therefore needs explaining. Fortunato and Archetti conclude

Anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy at the University of California, Davis, says humans are flexible and

that men and women will tend to

opportunistic in other aspects of their

form socially monogamous pairs

lives, "so why shouldn't their marriage

when land is scarce and its cultivation

customs reflect this?" Ewen Callaway .

9 January 2010 1 NewScientist 113

THIS WEEK Vl LJ Z

to hide. Here in Monterey Bay, this layer lies some 500 metres below the surface, and its migration upwards could be one reason for the invasion. "As seas get warmer, there's a lot less mixing, so oxygen in the atmosphere has a harder time getting transported down," Gilly explains. But climate change is unlikely to be the whole story: removing rival predators such as tuna by fishing has also been implicated. By sunset, we have only landed the one animal that Stewart tagged and released. With darkness our fortunes begin to change, just as Gilly said they would, for this is when the squids' prey leave the oxygen-poor layer and migrate to the surface. Landing a Humboldt squid requires a line with a spiked lure called a "jig". Those we are using are fluorescent, and are charged under the Fulmar's halogen lamps before being lowered into the that they often swim in dense black waters. From here on, brute schools of at least 100 individuals. strength is needed. "When they "We've seen densities as high as jet, you really feel it; they really eight per cubic metre," says want to pull the pole right out of William Gilly, Stewart's supervisor your hands," says Field. at Stanford's Hopkins Marine Soon, my rod bends sharply, and I'm doing battle with the Station in Pacific Grove. Within a minute or so, Stewart Humboldt squid are voracious red devil. But I lose the beast by and her colleague John Field of predators that historically have letting the line go slack, so decide the US National Oceanic and inhabited the lower latitudes of to leave it to the experts. In total, Atmospheric Administration the eastern Pacific, from Mexico they bring 14 on board. One more have attached an electronic device down to Chile, apparently is tagged and released, two are to one of its fins. It's time to return venturing further north only in kept in a tank for study back in the the devil to the depths. conjunction with the disturbance lab, and others are measured, We are out on the Fulmar on of currents and sea temperatures sexed and dissected so that Field this bright December day to learn known as EI Nino. But since 2002, can study their stomach contents. about the animals' movements. Unfortunately, the squid don't When the device detaches and reveal their secrets easily: one liThe squid flashes wh ite to maroon. It's 1.5 metres long, radio tag pops off after only a day, surfaces, it should send a radio signal to reveal its location, and i n c l u d i n g the tentac les, and the other never sends the transmit data revealing how the which flail in Stewart's hair" anticipated signal. But previous animal has been migrating up and efforts have revealed that the down in the water. This is key to they have established themselves squid can cover huge distances: understanding why the Humboldt off the coast of central California. one tag surfaced off Tijuana, squid (Dosidicus gigas) has Their arrival coincided with a Mexico, after 17 days - a journey invaded the waters off central decline in Pacific hake, which are that required the animal to cover California, and how it may affect among their prey. "That's a huge over 20 miles a day. the region's valuable fisheries. commercial fishery," says Gilly. Still, the landed squid provided While the total size of the So far, radio-tagging indicates further valuable data points in the invading horde is still unknown, that the squid spend the daylight effort to monitor this marine observations from autonomous hours near the top of an oxygen­ invasion. And there was calamari submersibles and sonar indicate poor layer in which their prey try steak for anyone who wanted it. •

My struggle with the red devil Peter Aldhous

MEXICAN fishing fleets call them diablos rojos, or "red devils" - and when Stanford University graduate student Julie Stewart wrestles the first Humboldt squid aboard our research vessel, the Fulmar, in California's Monterey Bay, it becomes obvious why. This beast is angry, and has flashed from white to a deep maroon. It's nearly 1.5 metres long, including the tentacles, which flail in Stewart's hair until she can offload the catch into a cooler filled with seawater. That only gives the squid ammunition, as it can now fire a powerful jet of water and ink at anyone who strays into its sights. "Ink in your eye stings," warned Stewart earlier. She is also careful to avoid the animal's sharp beak, which can deliver a nasty bite. 14 1 NewScientist 19 January 2010

New Sc ientist video - the l ist kee ps getting longer.

Sea rc h from h u n d reds of t h e m ost a m azi ng, m i n d b l ow i ng a n d coo l est vi deos . Ta ke yo u r seat a n d prepare to be a m azed ! So w h at a re yo u wa i t i n g for? Watc h exc l us i ve v i d eos tod ay.

www. NewSc ientist.com/video

NewScientist

IN BRIEF

Ghost ga laxies haunt Milky Way

Egg whites: meringues today, baby saviours tomorrow?

to purified, treated white from chicken eggs, which they had already used to repair holes in balloons and condoms. They took discarded human amnions and stretched

THOUGH telescopes routinely spot galaxies billions of light years away, they may be missing many in our own cosmic backyard. Astronomers have bagged some extremely faint galaxies near the Milky Way in recent years, including one just 350 times as bright as the sun. But hundreds more have probably been overlooked, say James Bullock of the University of California in Irvine and his colleagues (arxiv. org/abs/0912.1873). Galaxies with less dark matter than those found to date would have weaker gravity, allowing their stars to spread out more. That would make them harder to spot amid the clutter of foreground stars in our galaxy, the team says. Beth Willman of Haverford College in Pennsylvania says this is an exciting possibility, adding that future observatories could uncover the hidden population.

each across the bottom of an open-ended glass tube, BETTER known for giving meringues and souffles their

which they then filled with human amniotic fluid. Next

texture, egg white is being tested as a sealant for the

they ruptured the membrane with a needle, and after

amnion, a membrane that surrounds developing fetuses.

30 seconds applied purified egg white. Of 21 tubes,

The amnion can rupture spontaneously, but can also

19 stopped leaking immediately. The others stopped after

tear after amniocentesis - in which a needle is used to

a second application (AmericanJournal o/Obstetrics &

extract amniotic fluid to test for genetic diseases - or

Gynecology, 001: 10.1016/j.ajog.2009.10.862).

fetal surgery. Such a breach can cause the mother's waters to break prematurely, resulting in miscarriage. Noting its stickiness and its role in protecting a

Moise had to use antibiotics to quell microbial infections caused by the procedure, which would complicate using it in the body. But as other attempts

developing chick, Ken Moise and his colleagues at the

to seal or patch amnions have been disappointing,

Baylor (ollege of Medicine in Houston, Texas, turned

the development is a positive step, he says.

Seats of emotional i ntel ligence fou n d HEAD injuries sustained by Vietnam veterans have revealed parts of the brain vital for two types of emotional intelligence. Depending on the site of their injuries, the veterans studied were poor either at "experiential" emotional intelligence (the capacity to judge emotions in other people) or "strategic" emotional intelligence (the ability to plan socially appropriate 16 1 NewScientist 1 9 January 2010

responses to situations). Led by Jordan Grafman at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Maryland, researchers gave standard tests for measuring emotional intelligence to 38 injured vets and 29 healthy controls. The 17 vets with injuries to their dorsolateral prefrontal cortex performed worse on experiential

tasks but performed normally on strategic tasks. In the other 21 vets, who had damage to their ventromedial prefrontal cortex, the situation was reversed (Proceedings of the National Academy ofSciences, DOl: 10.1073/pnas.0912568106). Damage to these regions didn't affect cognitive intelligence, suggesting that emotional and general problem­ solving tasks are handled independently in the brain.

Single lig ht wave from fi bre laser A PULSE of light so short that it contains just a single oscillation of a light wave has been produced. The flash is almost as short as a light pulse can be, according to the laws of physics, and could be used to sense a photon interacting with an electron, says Alfred Leitenstorfer of the University of Konstanz in Germany, whose team pulled off the feat. The researchers split pulses from a single fibre laser between two sets of fibres containing atoms of erbium, which amplified the light waves. Each fibre had a second stage, one stretching, the other shrinking the wavelength by about 40 per cent. The two fibres then converged, causing the light beams to interfere, leaving a cycle lasting 4.3 femtoseconds.

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

Don't pass the buck in public BULLYING bosses take note: simply witnessing people blame others is enough to set up a blame culture. "We already know that people are more likely to blame others when they themselves have been blamed - a 'kick-the-dog' kind of effect," says Nathanael Fast of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. According to his latest results, a blame attitude spreads to witnesses of a dressing-down too. "Leaders who want to prevent such a culture from spreading

Chimp's da nce sugg ests a mental g rasp of fi re CHIMPS have been reported dancing in rainstorms - and now it seems our closest relation has a "fire dance", too. A dominant male chimp performed such a dance in the face of a raging savannah fire in Senegal. Anthropologist Jill Pruetz of Iowa State University in Ames recounts that the male faced the fire with "a really exaggerated slow-motion display" before redirecting his display at chimps sheltering in a nearby baobab tree. Barking vocalisations from the male, never heard in more

than 2000 hours of monitoring the group, were also heard. Pruetz and co-author Thomas LaDuke at the East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania suggest that the chimps were cognisant enough to predict the fire's movement, retreating short distances at a time while staying calm (AmericanJournal of Physical Anthropology, DOl: 10.1002/ajpa. 21245). Other animals, in contrast, panic when fire approaches. "If chimps with their small brain size can conceptually deal with fire, then maybe we should

rethink some of the earliest evidence for fire usage," Pruetz says. The earliest confirmed evidence of controlled fire use dates to several thousand years ago but some palaeoanthropologists argue control began as far back as 1 to 2 million years ago. The chimps' responses to two fires - set for land clearance - were seen in 2006. Primatologist William McGrew at the University of Cambridge is wary of granting chimps a "conceptualisation of fire", but further work could yield interesting results, he says.

should be careful not to be seen pointing the finger," he adds. In one experiment, his team asked one group of volunteers to watch footage of California

Beetles mummified by sti ng less bees

governor Arnold Schwarzenegger blaming others for a failed strategy and another to view him accepting personal responsibility for it. When asked to write about a failure of their own afterwards, those in the first group were 30 per cent more likely to blame this failure on others than those in the second Uournal

of Experimental Social Psychology, 001: 10.1016/j.jesp.2009.10.007}. In a further, similar experiment, blame was less contagious if people wrote down values they held dear before they saw others blamed. Fast says this may have reminded them of why they made certain choices, reducing the need to defend themselves by blaming others.

IT IS not so much eternal life, more a case of instant death. Parasitic beetles that invade the hive of certain stingless bees end up entombed forever in resin. "They're stopped in their tracks, and they dehydrate and shrivel up like a mummy," says Mark Greco of the Swiss Bee Research Centre in Berne, who discovered this behaviour in a species of Australian stingless bee, Trigona carbonaria, living in the wild. To investigate this peculiar defence, Greco's team put parasitic small hive beetles, Aethina tumida, near the entrance of laboratory beehives. Guard worker bees instantly attacked the parasites, but the thick-skinned beetles had little trouble warding them off. Faced with such a resilient foe, a group of worker bees resorted to coating the beetles in a sticky mix of resin, mud and wax. From computerised tomography (CT) scans of hives taken at 5-minute intervals, Greco's team found the mummifications are completed in less than 10 minutes (Naturwissenschaften, DOl: 10.1007/s00114-00g-0631-g). The beetles rarely got very far from the entrance before being mummified.

Just when you thi n k it ca n't get colder VOSTOK Station i n Antarctica currently

Turner. After that big chill, the

holds the crown for the coldest place

temperature bounced up by

on the planet. It recorded -89.2°C on

over 20 °C in one day Uournal of

21july 1983. But it could get even

Geophysical Research - Atmospheres,

colder, with temperatures dropping

001: 10.1029/2009j0012104}.

to about -96 °C, if "perfect" cold-weather conditions prevail. john Turner of the British Antarctic

If the wind speed were lower and a similar vortex centred on Vostok, Turner reckons that the temperature

Survey and colleagues analysed the

could drop by a further 6 °C or so. But

weather conditions that brought

the researchers say that the coldest

about the record chill and found

place of all might be nearby Dome

it was caused by an unusual,

Argus, where a higher elevation

near-stationary atmospheric vortex.

could mean temperatures fall beyond

"This isolated Vostok and prevented

-100 °(, Understanding temperature

the waves of warm air that normally

swings is important for interpreting

come up f rom the ocean," says

Antarctic ice-core records, says Turner.

9 January 2010 I NewScientist 117

TECHNOLOGY

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

Smart ba l l s m a ke a bowl er bette r

Delays l oom ove r fu l l - body sca n n ers

IF YOUR tenpin bowling is a bit off-target a smart training ball might one day keep your shots out of the gutter. Sports scientist Franz Fuss of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia fitted aluminium tubes in the thumb and finger holes of a regular bowling ball. Each tube had a strain gauge at the bottom to measure and log the forces the players' fingers were applying on each shot. Ten players of differing abilities used the ball to attempt various shots. Fuss found that the strain gauge measurements from the ball enabled him to identify the characteristics of successful shots (Sports Technology, DOl: 10.1002/ jst.104). For instance, better bowlers consistently pinch the ball with much greater force immediately prior to release, to allow a faster delivery.

IN THE aftermath of the incident aboard a US-bound airliner on Christmas Day, in which a passenger attempted to detonate explosives hidden in his underwear, governments are rushing to install full-body scanners at airports, to thwart similar attacks. But their efforts could be stymied by the fact that the scanner technology has not yet been certified as fit for purpose by national governments - and manufacturers will not invest in mass production until it has. So says Colin McSeveny, a

370 Passwords banned by social networking we bsite Twitter for being too easy to guess

spokesman for Smiths Detection of Watford, UK, which makes millimetre-wave body scanners. "Politicians like Gordon Brown want to get a move on but these technologies are still in trials. They are not ready yet. They have not yet been certified by the Transportation Security Administration in the US or the European Union, for example," says McSeveny. "We're not going to make sOO of these £100,000 machines until they are certified." The issue of certifying body scanners - and their use as a primary screening method alongside metal detection is expected to be raised at the EU Transport Council when it meets this week.

"Th i s shows that existi ng GSM secu rity is in adeq uate" Com puterscientist Karsten Nohl claims a tea m he asse mbled has cracke d the e ncryption used by m a ny mobile networks, showing that eavesd roppers a re able to l isten i n to ca lls (The New York Times, 2 8 Decem ber 2009)

9 January 2010 1 NewScientist 1 19

TECHNOLOGY

Robo-g ua rds and the borders of the futu re If your nation's border allows unwanted visitors to cross with impunity and foot patrols aren't cutting it, try a network of radar, cameras and agile robots where foot patrols are being augmented with new people­ A MIGRANT makes a furtive dash sensing technologies. across an unwalled rural section Libya has an agreement with of a national border, only to be the European Union to try to confronted by a tracked robot limit the flow of immigrants from that looks like a tiny combat tank ­ sub-Saharan Africa traversing with a gimballed camera for an its borders before crossing the eye. As he passes the bug-eyed Mediterranean and entering droid, it follows him and a border Italy. To help it enforce this deal, guard's voice booms from its Libya is spending €300 million loudspeaker. He has illegally on technology for what it calls a entered the country, he is warned, "large border security and control and if he does not turn back he system", made by Selex Sistemi will be filmed and followed by the robot, or by an airborne drone, until guards apprehend him. Welcome to the European border of the not-too-distant future. Amid the ever-present angst over illegal immigration, cross-border terrorism and Paul Marks

"More than one of the g round - based robots w i l l approach people, as g ro u ps often sp l it u p"

contraband smuggling, some nations are turning to novel border-surveillance technologies, potentially backed up by robots, a conference on state security in Leeds, UK, heard in November. The idea is to scatter arrays of sensors in a border area in ways that give guards or robots plenty of time to respond before their targets make good an escape. The need to secure borders is evident across the globe, from India - which is constructing a 3400-kilometre, 3-metre-high barbed-wire and concrete border wall to close itself off from Bangladesh - to Libya, 20 1 NewScientist 1 9 January 2010

Integrati, part of Italian aerospace firm Finmeccanica. Selex says its command, control and communication technology will include all the computers and software necessary to make sense of the data gathered by a raft of different sensors on the Libyan border. Project details remain under wraps, but Selex already makes acoustic, infrared and remote-imaging sensors, which could find uses in border control. Elsewhere, the US Department

of Homeland Security, along with Boeing Intelligence and Security Systems, is fielding sensors on the border with Mexico, in an $8 billion project called the Secure Border Initiative network. SBInet will eventually comprise some 400 25-metre-high towers similar to cellphone masts and containing an array of remote­ controlled optical and infrared cameras. The towers will also carry a primary sensor designed to detect humans. This sensor is a 10-gigahertz, or "X-band", ground surveillance radar made by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) in Tel Aviv. The towers will be dotted along the US's 3000-kilometre triple-layered border fence. The radar will supplement acoustic and vibration sensors strewn around the border zone that pick up voices and footfalls, and will provide patrols with early warning of activity in the border area - as far as 10 kilometres

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

from the fence. So says Mark Borkowski, who directs the SBInet project for the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency in Washington DC. The idea is that robotic cameras will zoom in automatically on any activity detected by radar or sensors. "Then we classify the event to gauge our response: is it just a stray cow? A person? If so, are they carrying weapons or maybe drugs?" says Borkowski. "We're not foolish enough to think a fence alone will work: we know people can build ramps and cut through it." A prototype SBInet system, based on nine temporary towers, has been tested on a 45-kilometre stretch of the US-Mexico border near Sasabe, Arizona, for the past three years. Called Project 28, it had problems: the X-band radar produced too much signal clutter from the ground, making it tough to detect human activity. And the

satellite links it used took too long to send sensor data to base - so people had often disappeared by the time an alert was raised. The radar has been modified and satellite links abandoned in favour of fast ground-based microwave links, says Tim Peters, Boeing's SBInet project chief. The project moves to its deployment phase in mid-20l0, when 17 permanent towers near Tucson will be turned on. Magnetic sensors will be added to detect vehicle movements and weapons, too. CBP is also trialling Predator drones on the border to feed surveillance pictures into SBInet. IAI is a partner in the EU's Transportable Autonomous Patrol for Land Border Surveillance (TALOS) programme, which eschews static ground sensors and border walls in favour of the aforementioned bug-eyed robots - replete with human­ sensing radar - and aerial drones. TALOS is needed because the expanded 27-nation EU has a porous eastern border that it cannot afford to monitor conventionally, says Agnieszka Spronska of the Industrial Research Institute for Automation and Measurements (PIAP), based in Warsaw, Poland. PIAP is leading the la-nation TALOS consortium, which is spending €20 million on developing the architecture for a mobile network of ground robots, drones and the command centres from which they are run. "TALOS will be very scalable depending on the terrain - you can use as much of it as you need without static elements," says Spronska. More than one ground robot will approach people, she says, as groups often split up. But where does this deep­ probing 24/7 surveillance technology leave residents who are living near borders, in terms of privacy? "We protect the camera and sensor systems from any kind of illegal or unauthorised use," says Borkowski. "But it is indeed a balancing act. People are right to be asking such questions." •

Artif i c i a l l eaves cou l d be futu re so u rce of energy HIDDEN detail i n the natural world

hydrochloric acid, allowing them to

could hold the key to future sources

replace magnesium atoms - which

of clean energy. So say materials

form a crucial part of plants'

scientists who have created an

photosynthetic machinery - with

artificial leaf that can harness light

titanium (see illustration).

to split water and generate hydrogen. Plant leaves have evolved over millions of years to catch the energy

Then they dried the leaves and heated them to 500 °C to burn away most of the remaining plant material.

in the sun's rays very efficiently.

This left a crystallised titanium

They use the energy to produce food,

dioxide framework plus many of the

and the central step in the process

leaves' natural structures. Titanium

involves splitting water molecules

dioxide is commonly used in solar

and creating hydrogen ions. By mimicking the machinery plants "Mimicking the machinery use to do this, it is possible to create a miniature hydrogen factory, says Tongxiang Fan of The State Key

pla nts use to captu re sun light can c reate a m i n i hyd rog e n fa ctory"

Laboratory of Metal Matrix Composites at ShanghaiJiao Tong University,

cells to enhance their efficiency, and

China. "Using sunlight to split water

in the leaf it catalyses the splitting

molecules and form hydrogen fuel is

of water molecules.

one of the most promising tactics for kicking our carbon habit," he says. The idea is not new, but until

The leaf retained features such as the lens-like cells at its surface, which catch light coming from any

now researchers have focused

angle, and veins that help guide

on trying to modify or mimic the

light deeper into the leaf. The replicas

molecules directly involved in

also captured very fine detail,

splitting hydrogen. "We'd like to

including structures called thykaloids,

adopt an entirely different concept,

which increase the surface area

to mimic photosynthesis by copying

available for photosynthesis and are

the elaborate architectures of green

just 10 nanometres thick.

leaves," Fan says. Fan and his colleagues used

It is these features which make the artificial leaves so efficient at

several types of leaves as a template,

generating hydrogen, Fan says. The

including the grape-leaved anemone

team immersed the artificial leaves

(Anemone viti/olia). First, they

in a solution containing 20 per cent

treated the leaves with dilute

methanol - which acts as a catalyst and zapped them with near­

Plant

power

Harn essi n g a p l ant's photosynthetic

ultraviolet visible Iight. Compared with a commercially available form

mach i ne ry cou l d l ea d to a n efficient

of titanium dioxide called P25 that

way of p ro d u c i n g hyd rog e n

can be used to create hydrogen, the

Leaves a r e treated w i t h d i l ute acid to rep l ace the magnesi um

artificial leaves absorbed more than twice as much light, and gave off more

i n c h l o rophyl l's porphyrin ring

than three times as much hydrogen,

with hydrogen

Fan reports (Advanced Materials,

The leaves are treated with tita n i u m tri c h l o ride, which re places hydrogen with tita n i u m Rem a i n i n g pl ant mate ri a l i s

001: 10.1002/adma.200902039). The work is a "good beginning", says Chinnakonda Gopinath of the National Chemical Laboratory in

burned away, leaving a

Pune, India. "Complex structures

crysta ll ised tita n i u m d i oxide

found in leaves should be utilised

scaffold that preserves much of the leaves' natural structure

further for enhancement in light harvesting." Mason In man .

9 January 2010 1NewScientist 121

TECHNOLOGY

M i crosoft rea dy to make games co ntro l l ers obsolete A LONG-lived videogaming skill could be on the way out this year as Microsoft hones an add-on to its Xbox 360 console aimed at making button-studded games controllers obsolete. The device, called Natal after the city in northern Brazil, allows players to control a game using only their body movements and voice. Microsoft unveiled Natal in June 2009 at the E3 games industry expo in Los Angeles, but revealed little about how it works. Now the company has allowed New Scientist access to the device and its creators to discover more details. A player standing anywhere between 0.8 and 4 metres from Natal is illuminated with infrared light. A monochrome video camera records how much of that light they reflect, using the brightness of the signal to approximate their distance from the device and capture their movements in 3D. This means Natal doesn't require users to wear markers on their body - unlike the technology used by movie studios to animate CGI figures. Motion capture normally requires massive processing power, and paring down the

software to run on an everyday games console was a serious challenge, says Natal's lead developer, Alex Kipman. "Natal has to work on the existing hardware without taking too much hardware processing away from the games developers." Microsoft collected "terabytes" of data of people in poses likely to crop up during game play, both in motion capture studios and their own homes. Frames from the home videos were manually labelled to identify key body parts, and the data was then fed into "expert system" software running on a powerful cluster of computers. The result was a 50-megabyte software package that can recognise 31 different "We t h i n k i n p ut using existing contro l lers is a barrier. All you need to play is l ife experien ce"

body parts in any video frame. "When we train this 'brain' we are telling it: this is the head, this is the shoulder. And we're doing that over millions of frames," says Kipman. "When it sees a new image it can tell you the probability it's

seeing a certain body part based on that historical information." Natal also includes software that has a basic understanding of human anatomy. Using its knowledge that, for example, hands are connected to arms, which are attached to shoulders, it can refine its guesses about body pose to recognise where body parts are even when they are hidden from Natal's camera. "It correctly positions your hand even if it's held behind your back," Kipman says. "It knows the hand can only be in one place." That's important because during multiplayer games there won't always be a clear

Race to enter the third dimension Microsoft is not alone in trying to

its PlayStation in which players will

There is a video of BiDi in action at

add depth to the way we interact

wave a coloured wand that will be

newscientist.com/article/dn18286.

with computers. In November, Sony

tracked by a camera.

and Swiss firm Atracsys launched a

At the Massachusetts Institute of

While Microsoft's and Sony's systems are designed for

system called ICU that uses stereo

Technology, a team has modified a

applications in which people stand

cameras to track a person's

standard LCD panel to sense both

at a distance from a screen, BiDi

movements in 3D. "We cannot at

touch and 3D gestures. Their prototype

team member Douglas Lanman

present detect 'finger signs' but we

BiDi - short for "bidirectional" - was

at Brown University in Providence,

can detect the raw position of your

unveiled in December. It is made by

Rhode Island, points out that some

arms or legs," says Gaetan Marti, CEO

building cameras into the panel,

3D interactions take place in a more

of Atracsys. ICU will be used initially

which look out at the user between

restricted environment. Approaches

in interactive advertising displays,

frames and capture their movements.

like that used in BiDi are more

rather than the more demanding home entertainment market. Sony is also planning a system for

22 1 NewScientist 19 January 2010

A user can move objects both

suitable to gesturing on the go: they

by touching the screen and by using

could, for example, allow mobile

sweeping oft-screen gestures.

gaming on an iPhone-style device.

view of both players at all times. He says Natal consumes just 10 to 15 per cent of the Xbox's computing resources and it can recognise any pose in just 10 milliseconds. It needs only 160 milliseconds to latch on to the body shape of a new user stepping in front of it. The system locates body parts to within a 4-centimetre cube, says Kipman. That's far less precise than lab-based systems or the millimetre precision of Hollywood motion capture. But Douglas Lanman, who works on markerless 3D interaction at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and is not involved with Natal, says that this will likely be accurate enough for garners. Lanman is watching closely to see what kind of games Natal makes possible, and how they are received. "Will users find them as compelling as they found the Wii games? Is it important to have physical buttons? We'll know soon." Those kind of questions, and a desire to move away from the controller-focused interaction that has dominated for decades, are central to Natal, Kipman says. "We think input using existing controllers is the barrier, and by erasing that we can realistically say: all you need to play is life experience." Colin Barras.

E ve ry m o n t h O Ve r 3 m i l / io n p e op l e * v i s it WW w. N

e wSc ie n tis

t. co

m fo r th e en c e a n d te c h n o lo gy n e ws, re v i e ws , d e ve l o p m e n ts a n d op i n io n s . W hy d o n 't yo u j o i n th e m ? Vis it la tes t s c i

WWW. Ne wS

*Pu blis her's

statement (Ja nu ary 20

c ie n tis t. co 09)

m

tO d ay.

OPINION

Science heads east The coming decade will see China overtake the US as the world's research superpower, What does that mean for science, asks Jonathan Adams

SINCE its economic reform began in 1978, China has gone from being a poor developing country to the second-largest economy in the world. China has also emerged from isolation to become a political superpower. Its meteoric rise has been one of the most important global changes of recent years: the rise of China was the most-read news story of the decade, surpassing even 9/11 and the Iraq war. Yet when it comes to science and technology, most people still think of China as being stuck in the past and only visualise a country with massive steelworks and vast smoking factories. That may have been true a few years ago, but it is no longer the case. Very quietly, China has become the world's second­ largest producer of scientific knowledge, surpassed only by the US, a status it has achieved at an awe-inspiring rate. If it continues on its current trajectory China will overtake the US before 2020 and the world will look very different as a result. The historical scientific dominance of North America and Europe will have to adjust to a new world order. In the west, we are largely familiar with research systems in which money, people and output stay roughly the same from year to year. Research spending in Europe and North America has outpaced economic growth since 1945, but not by a dramatic amount. Not so with China. Data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development shows that between 1995 and 24 1 NewScientist 1 9 January 2010

f.

(

( (

2006, China's gross expenditure on R&D (GERD) grew at an annual rate of 18 per cent. China now ranks third on GERD, just behind the US and Japan and ahead of any individual European Union state. Universities have experienced similar growth. China's student population has reportedly reached 25 million, up from just 5 million nine years ago. China now has 1700 higher education institutions, around 100 of which make up the "Project 211" group. These elite institutions train four­ fifths of PhD students, two-thirds of graduate students and one­ third of undergraduates. They are home to 96 per cent of the country's key laboratories

powerhouses of Japan, Germany and the UK. Last year it exceeded 120,000 articles, second only to the US's 350,000. Compare that rate of growth with the US, where research output increased by about 30 per cent over the past decade, and it is clear that normal ideas about science management simply do not apply to China. China is also diversifying ") r its research base. A traditional industrial economy would focus its research on physical sciences , " and engineering, and our findings confirm that this is where China has been concentrating. But it is also rapidly shifting out of the old economy into new areas. China produces 10 per cent of the world's publications in engineering, computer sciences and earth sciences, including minerals. It now also produces 20 per cent of global output in materials sciences, with a leading and consume 70 per cent of position in composites, ceramics scientific research funding. and polymer science and a strong What impact has this had? presence in crystallography I recently authored a report and metallurgical engineering. analysing China's research The implications for future strengths and its patterns of industrial development are international collaboration. enormous, as China makes the The data was drawn from transition from a manufacturing Thomson Reuters, which indexes economy to a knowledge economy scientific papers from around based on research coming out of 10,500 journals worldwide. its own institutions. In 1998, China's research output Agricultural research is also was around 20,000 articles per expanding as China takes a year. In 2006 it reached 83,000, scientific approach to its vast overtaking the traditional science food demand and supply. Its relatively small share of "Ch ina's stu d ent popu lation molecular biology and related has rea ched 25 m i l l ion, areas - around 5 per cent - has u p from just 5 m i l l ion suddenly become an investment focus too. If growth in biomedical nine years ago"

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

sciences is as rapid and substantial as it has been elsewhere then China's impact on gene and protein research will be profound. An obvious word of warning needs to be made here: quantity is not the same as quality. Measuring the volume of China's scientific output is clearly both valuable and surprising but it doesn't tell us whether that research was any good. For that we turn to a useful proxy: China's scientific collaboration with other countries better known for the high quality of their science. The results here, too, are eye-opening. China is not doing science behind closed doors; its international collaborations are growing. Nearly 9 per cent of papers originating from Chinese institutions have a US-based co-author. Japanese and British co-authorship is also growing. Collaboration with South Korea and Singapore almost trebled between 2004 and 2008 and collaboration with Australia expanded too - signs, perhaps, of an emerging Asia­ Pacific regional network. So what does this all mean? Firstly, China's emergence as a scientific superpower can no longer be denied, and it is a question of when rather than if it will become the world's most prolific producer of scientific knowledge. Perhaps more importantly, China's expanding regional collaborations show that Asia-Pacific nations no longer rely on links to the European and American institutions that have traditionally led the science world. The question for the EU and the US as we enter the new decade is no longer about whether we should collaborate with China, but what we can bring to the table to ensure that China wants to collaborate with us .• Jonathan Adams is director of research

evaluation at Thomson Reuters in London, He is co-author of Global Research Report: Chino

One minute with ...

Fra n k D ra ke The founder of Proj ect Ozma kick-started the search for intelligent extraterrestrial life just 50 years ago

What gave you the inspiration to set up Project Ozma?

In 1957 1 was studying the Pleiades sta r cluster at Harvard Un ive rsity's radio obse rvatory, On one occasion we saw an added feature in the data, It turned out to be an amateur radio enthusiast near the observatory, but at the time I thought we had detected clea r evidence of another civi lisation, You feel a very strong emotion that you never feel otherwise, It's a combi nation of elation and excitement and the sense that everything we know is going to change, How optimistic were you when it all began?

In 1960, when Ozma started, every sta r in the sky could have been radiati ng signals, for all we knew, There was a cha nce we'd succeed al most immed iately. But we knew so little of the u n iverse that one could not seriously speculate,

PROFILE

Frank Drake is director of the Ca rl Sagan Center at the SETl lnstitute in Ca l ifornia, He fou nded Project Ozma, a search for intel ligent radio signa ls from Tau Ceti and Epsilon Erida n i

You kept Project Ozma secret: was that because your peers would be sceptical?

Back in 1960 it was ta boo to thi n k about extrate rrestrial life; it was something done by bad scie ntists, H owever, we were fearless, We did not feel we should be emba rrassed in any way.

o n e more signal t o that cacophony would be frosting on the cake, T here is also an argument that broadcasting could elicit an invasion.

Fifty years on, do you think we should have heard something?

Over the years, I've gotten more real istic. The equation I devised [the Drake equation] says that we're going to have to look at 10 million stars before we fi nd one that might host l ife, Even then there's no guarantee they're transmitting, or on the freq uency we're looking at. We've done a lot of searching to date but it doesn't add up to 10 m i l l ion stars, In a way what we've been doing until now is buyi ng a ticket in the lotte ry, There's no reason to think we should have succeeded yet. Should we start broadcasting in a coordinated way?

Frankly, no, A civi lisation not much more advanced than ours could build a telescope that could detect the signals we already transmit such as television, Fo r us to spend our resou rces add ing

Yes, and if that happens it might be my fault! Back in 1974 1 broadcast a signal from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, which is still the strongest signa l ever sent. That stimu lated a major outburst from the Astronomer Royal at the ti me, He was very co ncerned, What do you think an alien would look like?

Our physiology and morphology are certa inly not u nique, Humans are basically a good design: it's good to stand u pright because it frees our hands to ma nipu late tools, for instance, It's best to have the head on top, so you can see prey. Our two arms are arguably not opti mum, however, as anyone who has tried to carry groce ries from their ca r to their house will find! So my hypothetica l E T looks a lot l i ke us but h a s four arms, Then again, who knows what evo lution will lead to elsewhere? Interview by Richard Fisher

9 January 2010 1 NewScientist 1 25

OPINION LETTERS device until hours after the P 5). This begs the question of the source of human morality. You apparent drinking (when the From Stephen Wilson say that "we have no need for wearer moves into range of the Kate Douglas's article on same-sex fallacious arguments to support modem in their home), which coupling in nature (5 December, basic human rights", but what may be too late for a regular would be a non-fallacious blood-alcohol concentration test. p 49) touches on such behaviour in humans, but omits a possibility argument for basic human rights? To clarify, my suggestion was that relates to the species and not Although we could agree on that a person who claims to have the individual. a code of behaviour that would been wrongly accused of drinking produce more benefits to people should be allowed to pay for a $25 In order to replenish a human population in times of disease than harm, that would not tell us urine test for measurement of an or disaster, it is important what is right and wrong. We could alcohol biomarker, such as ethyl J that human sexual desire is logically tell someone to obey the glucuronide, or a blood test for code or be punished, but we could phosphatidyl ethanol. These collectively always "on". However, such mating behaviour is not collective adjustment in the not logically say, "you ought markers can still be measured for desirable at all times. I posit that to obey the code", because there 36 to 72 hours after blood-alcohol frequency of breeding in accordance with ecological is no justification for such a content has gone to zero. the astonishing number of ways AMS, the manufacturer of for sexual release to be achieved pressure and resource availability. statement. Any claim that our by the human body, where there This leads to better control over code of conduct is also a code of SCRAM, could facilitate the is no possibility of conception, population size, but also means morality is just another assertion. collection, freezing and shipping suggests that we have evolved a of specimens to a certified that sexual preferences and If we encountered intelligent bonds will be formed by some social survival strategy that will aliens with a different moral code laboratory. In my view, without members of any population result in some same-sex pairing. we would have to accept their a confirmatory test, the There is a wide variety of where conception can never take code as having equal status to interpretive algorithm has methods of stimulation, whether place. This is not a disadvantage our own: asserting that our code too much authority. AMS is a with a partner or without, and to the larger group, so long as is superior would involve making responsible company with a good irrelevant of that partner's gender. there are enough people who a claim of universal morality. product, but the SCRAM algorithm For example, the fact that the desire heterosexual sex. What is it about human beings can be very good without being that makes us want to say things foolproof because it is based on external clitoris is connected to a London, UK mass of erectile tissue within the like, "you ought to be good", or probability and patterns. From John Hastings body adds to the argument that "people ought to be unselfish" ? Calverton, Maryland, US sexual release without conception In your editorial you rightly state Whence comes the conviction that we are indeed tapping into has evolved for good reason. Why that we "cannot draw inferences some sort of universal code of otherwise would we grow so much about what is right from what Memory fades tissue for an unimportant issue? behaviour, that there really are happens in nature. Penguin behaviour tells you nothing about "basic human rights"? This strategy, evolved by the From Bryn Glover I was disturbed to read in Joerg human species, allows for human morality" (5 December, Whittlesey, Cambridgeshire, UK Heber's article on computer supermemories that a chip is defined as "stable" if it does Alcohol test not degrade for at least a decade Enigma N u m ber 1577 (5 December, p 40). A decade seems From Paul Marques Jim Giles's summary of the issues a disastrously short time. What Happy New Year surrounding the detection of possible use is that for one's entire RICHARD ENGLAND drinking using the SCRAM skin­ collection of family photographs monitoring anklet refers to our I have written down three 3-digit numbers which between them study of the accuracy of these use nine different digits, One of the numbers is a perfect sq uare and devices (5 December, p 44). another is a triangular number, The sum of the three numbers is 2010, Giles quotes my suggestion What, in ascending order, are the three numbers? that a person detected as having consumed alcohol be notified WIN £15 will be awarded to the sender of the first correct answer opened on Wednesday 10 February. The Ed itor's decision is promptly so he or she could have an independent alcohol final. Please send entries to Enigma 1577, New Scientist, Laco n House, biomarker test if they want to 84 Theobald's Roa d, London WClX 8 NS, o r to [email protected] dispute the SCRAM evidence. (please i nclude your posta l address), Answer to 1571 Just la dders: The starts and fin ishes of all the ladders The article then casts doubt on this idea by suggesting that the are 4-79, 9-53, 16-97, 25-89, 36-73, 49-71 and 64-83 positive detection might not be The winner Del phine Dobler of Steve nage, Hertfordshire, U K transmitted to the makers of the

Same-sex relations

26 1 NewScientist 1 9 January 2010

��--....

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

or II every book we would ever want to read or refer to", as he suggests is possible in the rest of the article? Carved stone will last forever. Ink on paper may last for millennia. Silver deposited in cellulose has proven itself over a century. If we switch wholesale to faster and more compact ways of storing information, then we will also continue to need to store that same information on long­ term back-up. It's an appealing idea that all my family's photographs may be held on a piece of plastic no bigger than my little finger, but if it means that we will be able to enjoy them until only 2020, then I'll be relying on printed copies for some time to come. Cracoe, North Yorkshire, UK

interesting, but also depressing. We should not need to pay attention to such things, and the vast majority of us will not. Urging individuals to act towards the collective good is a waste of time. People are simply too selfish or ignorant for that to be effective. The free market works; all we need to do is harness its power. We need strong price signals to be sent via a carbon tax. That would result in the targets of Reay's article - from coffee to laundry ­ becoming more expensive. People would then adjust their behaviour accordingly. Montreal, Quebec, Canada

notion of quantum psychology (Feedback, 28 November). Before becoming editor of The Psychologist, I spent a few weeks on a placement in the New Scientist offices, and I will always remember being told that you experienced a spike in sales each time the word IIquantum" appeared on the cover. I've realised I missed probably

From Andrew Jonkers Based on New Scientist articles, I fully expect airline costing to shift to lIequivalent coffee cups per passenger-kilometre" as the new measure of carbon efficiency. Carbon solutions Dave S. Reay's article tells me that a flight from Rome to London my only opportunity to put this From Richard Platt In his article IIlnconspicuous to the test in another publication. is equivalent to one year of a consumption", David S. Reay The situation made me wonder six-cup-a-day coffee habit. By suggests that IIwe can each be if there are any words that you my calculations, London to New feel have been responsible for part of the solution" to climate York is a 24-cup-a-day habit. But change if we drink fewer lattes, an actual drop in sales? in Jim Giles's special report wash our clothes less often, and IIA low-carbon future" (5 December, Birstall, Leicester, UK buy different lavatory paper p 8), I am assured my bad carbon The editor writes: (28 November, p 43). This is habits can be solved by, among dangerous tokenism. While it is other things, a 1 per cent increase • The only word we can think of true that making small sacrifices in food prices. So, assuming a is IIpotato", though our sample can cut carbon emissions, the generous £2 per cup, fixing my size for that is limited to one. problem is much bigger. carbon woes for my 24-cuP habit The unpalatable reality is that will cost me 48 pence per day, or to reduce our energy use far £175 over the year. By the magic Plane cemetary of coffee-cup equivalence, £175 enough and fast enough to make a difference, everyone in the should also assuage my guilt over From John Relph developed world needs to make that London to New York flight. I have just read Feedback's note about the strange and wonderful large, rapid and uncomfortable Why, then, does a London to cuts in their standard of living. New York flight in the low-carbon residents of the fictional island No politician will ever be elected future described in Giles's special of liZero Zero" - where the prime with a manifesto of banning most report cost £490 more than it meridian and the equator long-haul flights, car journeys does today? Think I'll stick with intersect (Feedback, 28 October). and out-of-season food, so the the coffee for now. I used to be an airline ground only energy-saving measures Bellbowrie, Queensland, Australia mechanic at London's Heathrow they mention in their speeches airport. When 747 jumbos were introduced in 1970 I heard Zero are at worst mildly inconvenient. Zero jokingly referred to by flight Tunbridge Wells, Kent, UK Quantum cover crews as the IIjumbo graveyard". From Ben Haller From Jon Sutton The navigation system in these planes used magnetic core Dave S. Reay's assessment of I was interested to see your lesser-known ways we can reduce coverage of Jonathan Rowles's memory and capacity was very limited, so flight crews had to load our carbon footprints was letter to The Psychologist on the

new waypoints during flight. Once in a while they inadvertently loaded and activated all the zeros as a waypoint and were thereafter alarmed when they headed off in an unexpected direction. Fortunately, the problem was easily corrected once checks had been performed and, like the elephants' graveyard, this jumbo graveyard remained mythical ­ no one ever ended up there. The real jumbo graveyards are of course in the south-west US, where planes are retired during economic downturns, awaiting their fate as sources of metal when the recovery comes. Teddington, Middlesex, UK

Self-heating roads From W. Ray Paul Marks's article on electrically heated roads (28 November, p 26) reminded me of an article published in your excellent magazine about an electricity­ generating road developed by the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa (10 December, p 25). Would it be possible to combine the two ideas to produce a totally self­ sufficient heated road? Liverpool, UK

For the record • The Solar Impulse was not, as we

stated, the first crewed solar aircraft to take off under its own power, rather it was the first to do so while carrying enough batteries to fly through the night on stored solar energy (5 December, p 21).

Letters shou Id be sent to: Letters to the Edito r, New Scientist, 84 Theobald's Road, London WClX 8NS Fax: +44 (0) 20 7611 1280 Email: [email protected] Include your full postal address and telephone num ber, and a reference (issue, page n u m ber, title) to articles, We reserve the right to edit letters, Reed Business Information reserves the right to use any submissions sent to the letters column of

New Scientist magazine, in any other format.

9 January 2010 1NewScientist 127

OPINION THE BIG IDEA

Consciousnesst not yet expla i ned We won't crack that mystery any time soon, argues

Ray Tallis, because physical science can only do its

wor k by discarding the contents of consciousness

MOST neuroscientists, philosophers of the mind and science journalists feel the time is near when we will be able to explain the mystery of human consciousness in terms of the activity of the brain. There is, however, a vocal minority of neurosceptics who contest this orthodoxy. Among them are those who focus on claims neuroscience makes about the preciseness of correlations between indirectly observed neural activity and different mental functions, states or experiences. This was well captured in a 2009 article in Perspectives on Psycholog ical Science by Harold Pashler from the University of California, San Diego, and colleagues, that argued: '�.. these correlations are higher than should be expected given the (evidently limited) reliability of both fMRI and personality measures. The high correlations are all the more puzzling because method sections rarely contain much detail about how the correlations were obtained." Believers will counter that this is irrelevant: as our means of capturing and analysing neural activity become more powerful, so we will be able to make more precise correlations between the quantity, pattern and location of neural activity and aspects of consciousness. This may well happen, but my argument is not about technical, probably temporary, limitations. It is about the deep philosophical confusion embedded in the assumption that if PROFILE

Ray Tallis trai ned as a doctor, u lti mately becoming professor of geriatric med icine at the Un iversity of Ma nchester, UK, where he oversaw a major neuroscience project. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Medica l Sciences and a writer on areas ra nging from co nsciousness to medical ethics

28 1 NewScientist 1 9 January 2010

you can correlate neural activity with consciousness, then you have demonstrated they are one and the same thing, and that a physical science such as neurophysiology is able to show what consciousness truly is. Many neurosceptics have argued that neural activity is nothing like experience, and that the least one might expect if A and B are the same is that they be indistinguishable from each other. Countering that objection by claiming that, say, activity in the occipital cortex and the sensation of light are two aspects of the same thing does not hold up because the existence of "aspects" depends on the prior existence of consciousness and cannot be used to explain the relationship between neural activity and consciousness. This disposes of the famous claim by John Searle, Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley: that neural activity and conscious experience stand in the same relationship as molecules of Hza to water, with its properties of wetness, coldness, shininess and so on. The analogy fails as the level at which water can be seen as molecules, on the one hand, and as wet, shiny, cold stuff on the other, are intended to correspond to different "levels" at which we are conscious of it. But the existence of levels of experience or of description presupposes consciousness. Water does not intrinsically have these levels. We cannot therefore conclude that when we see what seem to be neural correlates of consciousness that we are seeing consciousness itself. While neural activity of a certain kind is a necessary condition for every manifestation of consciousness, from the lightest sensation to the most exquisitely constructed sense of self, it is neither a sufficient condition of it, nor, still less, is it identical with it. If it were identical, then we

Consciousness in action? It is tempting to think that's what is going on - but wrong

would be left with the insuperable problem of explaining how intracranial nerve impulses, which are material events, could "reach out" to extracranial objects in order to be "of" or "about" them. Straightforward physical causation explains how light from an object brings about events in the occipital cortex. No such explanation is available as to how those neural events are " about" the physical object.

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

Biophysical science explains how the light gets in but not how the gaze looks out. Many features of ordinary consciousness also resist neurological explanation. Take the unity of consciousness. I can relate things I experience at a given time (the pressure of the seat on my bottom, the sound of traffic, my thoughts) to one another as elements of a single moment. Researchers have attempted to explain this unity, invoking quantum coherence (the cytoskeletal micro-tubules of Stuart Hameroff at the University of Arizona,

and Roger Penrose at the University of Oxford), electromagnetic fields (Johnjoe McFadden, University of Surrey), or rhythmic discharges in the brain (the late Francis Crick). These fail because they assume that an objective unity or uniformity of nerve impulses would be subjectively available, which, of course, it won't be. Even less would this explain the unification of entities that are, at the same time, experienced as distinct. My sensory field is a many-layered whole that also maintains its mUltiplicity. There is nothing in the convergence or coherence of neural pathways that gives us this "merging without mushing", this ability to see things as both whole and separate. And there is an insuperable problem with a sense of past and future. Take memory. It is typically seen as being "stored" as the effects of experience which leave enduring changes in, for example, the properties of synapses and consequently in circuitry in the nervous system. But when I "remember", I explicitly reach out of the present to something that is explicitly past. A synapse, being a physical structure, does not have anything other than its present state. It does not, as you and I do, reach temporally upstream from the effects of experience to the experience that brought about the effects. In other words, the sense of the past cannot exist in a physical system. This is consistent with the fact that the physics of time does not allow for tenses: Einstein called the distinction between past, present and future a "stubbornly persistent illusion". There are also problems with notions of the self, with the initiation of action, and with free will. Some neurophilosophers deal with these by denying their existence, but an account of consciousness that cannot find a basis for voluntary activity or the sense of self should conclude not that these things are unreal but that neuroscience provides at the very least an incomplete explanation of consciousness. I believe there is a fundamental, but not obvious, reason why that explanation will always remain incomplete - or unrealisable. This concerns the disjunction between the objects of science and the contents of consciousness. Science begins when we escape our subjective, first-person experiences into objective measurement, and reach towards a vantage point the philosopher Thomas Nagel called "the view from nowhere". You think the table over there is large, I may think it is small. We measure it and find that it is 0.66 metres square. We now characterise the table in a way that is less beholden to personal experience. Thus measurement takes us further from

experience and the phenomena of subjective consciousness to a realm where things are described in abstract but quantitative terms. To do its work, physical science has to discard "secondary qualities", such as colour, warmth or cold, taste - in short, the basic contents of consciousness. For the physicist then, light is not in itself bright or colourful, it is a mixture of vibrations in an electromagnetic field of different frequencies. The material world, far from being the noisy, colourful, smelly place we live in, is colourless, silent, full of odourless molecules, atoms, particles, whose nature and behaviour is best described mathematically. In short, physical science is about the marginalisation, or even the disappearance, of phenomenal appearance/qualia, the redness of red wine or the smell of a smelly dog. Consciousness, on the other hand, is all about phenomenal appearances/qualia. As

"Science begins when we escape our first-person subjective experience" science moves from appearances/qualia and toward quantities that do not themselves have the kinds of manifestation that make up our experiences, an account of consciousness in terms of nerve impulses must be a contradiction in terms. There is nothing in physical science that can explain why a physical object such as a brain should ascribe appearances/qualia to material objects that do not intrinsically have them. Material objects require consciousness in order to "appear". Then their " appearings" will depend on the viewpoint of the conscious observer. This must not be taken to imply that there are no constraints on the appearance of objects once they are objects of consciousness. Our failure to explain consciousness in terms of neural activity inside the brain inside the skull is not due to technical limitations which can be overcome. It is due to the self­ contradictory nature of the task, of which the failure to explain "aboutness", the unity and multiplicity of our awareness, the explicit presence of the past, the initiation of actions, the construction of self are just symptoms. We cannot explain "appearings" using an objective approach that has set aside appearings as unreal and which seeks a reality in mass/energy that neither appears in itself nor has the means to make other items appear. The brain, seen as a physical object, no more has a world of things appearing to it than does any other physical object. • 9 January 2010 1 NewScie ntist 1 29

"It's eve n poss i b l e fo r a si n g l e q u asa r to tri g g e r the fo rmati on of n ot j u st o n e, b ut m a ny g a l axies"

this indicates that the quasar jet actually gave birth to the galaxy," he says. This is a radical shift from the standard view of galaxy formation, in which galaxies came first and supermassive black holes follow (see diagram, right). Elbaz and his colleagues think the opposite is true: supermassive black holes trigger galaxy formation. In the case of HE0450-2958, they think it started off as a supermassive black hole that Naked quasar sucked in gas from intergalactic space until Yet nearby galaxies all seem to follow an it became a quasar. It kept growing until a elegant but unexplained relationship: all critical moment about 200 million years seem to have central bulges of stars about ago when its jets switched on. One of the jets 700 times as massive as the black holes at their slammed into a gas cloud 23,000 light years hearts. This relationship between galaxies and away, sending shock waves through the gas. supermassive black holes suggests that the This triggered star formation, resulting in growth of one influenced the other. Further the galaxy we now see. evidence of a link comes from the fact that star The team knew how controversial their formation and quasar activity both peaked idea would be. So before they announced around the same time, 8 to 10 billion years ago. their theory, they checked there was no So how could something so small affect a other explanation for the association between galaxy? Elbaz and his colleagues knew one way the quasar and the galaxy that its jet points towards. First they considered the idea that a supermassive black hole could punch above its weight: when it squirts out matter in two HE0450-2958 had been kicked out of the oppositely directed, thread-like jets. This is galaxy. Simulations have shown that when because the jets of matter can travel within a two galaxies merge, their central black holes whisker of the speed of light for the first few can ricochet off each other, with one ejected light years, allowing them to break out of the into intergalactic space. surrounding galaxy and travel millions of However, Elbaz points out that it would be light years into intergalactic space. To find out more about the influence of these jets, Elbaz's team began studying an SU PERMASSIVE unusual quasar called HE0450-2958 and BLACK HOLE BASICS its jets. Located 5 billion light years away, HE0450-2958 is the only known "naked Every galaxy is thought to harbour a quasar" - a supermassive black hole without supermassive black hole, ranging from a surrounding galaxy (Nature, vol 437, p 381). millions to many billions of times the mass of the sun. The black hole sucks Some astronomers have speculated that HE0450-2958 does have a surrounding galaxy, in gas to form a swirling disc of hot but that it is hidden from view by large amounts matter around it. How bright the core of a galaxy shines depends on the of dust. As dust glows at infrared wavelengths, amount of gas it contains. Galaxies Elbaz's team used the infrared instruments on the Very Large Telescope in Chile to investigate. like the Milky Way appear dormant That's when they made a startling discovery. because their diet is gas poor. In very As they looked more closely, they noticed active galaxies, the amount of gas is so vast that the core outshines the stars that the quasar's jets stabbed like a laser in the galaxy. Quasars are the most beam into a galaxy 23,000 light years away. extreme examples of active galaxies, That galaxy is rich in bright, young stars and in which the galactic core can produce is forming them at a rate equivalent to 350 suns per year, a hundred times more up to 100 times more light than the than you would expect for galaxies in that rest of its galaxy - from a volume not area. Elbaz reckons this frantic pace of star much bigger than the solar system. formation is no coincidence. "We think parent galaxies. Despite their name, supermassive black holes are very compact objects so you wouldn't expect one to hold much sway over its parent galaxy. Take the Milky Way, for example. We know it is a dense disc of stars and gas 150,000 light years wide, whereas the black hole lurking at its heart would fit inside the orbit of Mercury.

32 1 N ewScientist 1 9 January 2010

an odd coincidence if the quasar was ejected in the same direction as one of its jets. What's more, to escape a galaxy as big as the one in question - which is about the mass of our Milky Way - it would have to be kicked out at about 500 kilometres per second. Not only is there no evidence of a galaxy merger within the past few hundred million years, but the velocity of the quasar is only about 200 kilometres per second, making it too slow to be a galactic escapee. In fact, the slow speed of the quasar means that, over time, it will fall into the galaxy it apparently created. "Rather than the supermassive black hole growing in the centre of a galaxy after the galaxy has formed, a supermassive black hole creates a galaxy from outside, then later takes its place at the heart of the galaxy," says Elbaz. Astrophysicist Joseph Silk of the University of Oxford is impressed with the work. "It's definitely a new and important advance," he says. Others agree. "HE0450-2958 certainly fits the scenario for quasar-induced galaxy formation and that's what makes it so exciting," says Kevin Schawinski of Yale University. However, he cautions that it is only one example from recent cosmic history. "The epoch of massive galaxy formation and quasar activity occurs at early times," he says, "so it will be interesting to see if other systems like HE04502958 will be found in the early universe." For others, it's a leap too far. David Merritt at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York state has made detailed studies of HE0450-2958. "Elbaz's team does a good job of showing that the quasar is affecting conditions in the companion galaxy," he says. "However, it is a leap from there to the idea that the quasar is basically responsible for the companion galaxy." Undeterred, Elbaz and his team have already begun looking for other, earlier examples. The beauty of their scenario is that it does not rely on finding more naked quasars like HE04502958. "By virtue of their jets, supermassive black holes have the power to transform gas clouds into galaxies whether they are naked or deep in the heart of a galaxy," he says. He thinks it's even possible for a single quasar to trigger the formation of not just one, but many galaxies. Some quasars have jets that sweep around the heavens like a lighthouse beam - this is thought to happen when another supermassive black hole is in the process of merging with the quasar. As the jets sweep around they could awaken one sleeping gas cloud after another, says Elbaz. That would certainly explain why normal galaxies are often seen clustered near quasars. Astronomers, most notably Halton Arp at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany, and Geoffrey Burbidge of the University of California, San Diego, have claimed that this clustering is evidence that

W h i c h ca m e fi rst, g a l ax i e s o r s u p e rmass ive b l a c k h o l es? Acco rd i n g to o u r stan d a rd view of the u ni verse, ga l ax i es form first. David El baz's tea m s u ggests q uite the oppos ite

GALAXY FIRST

Gas cloud col lapses under gravity. Stars form and ignite as gas compresses

Galaxy forms

Stars end their lives in supernova explosions, leaving behind stellar- m ass black holes

Black holes in dense central star cluster merge, creating a supermassive black hole weighing m i l l ions of solar masses

Depending on the amount of gas it feeds on, the central black hole can unleash jets of matter far into space

The jet compresses the gas and unleashes a burst of star formation

Newly formed ga laxy and black hole drift together

Galaxy left with a supermassive black hole at its centre

B LACK H O LES FIRST

A bright object called a quasar, powered A passing gas cloud is za pped by a supermassive black hole, emitsjets by a jet of matter at ultra-high speeds

galaxies give birth to quasars, then eject them. "We're suggesting the exact opposite," says Elbaz. "It's quasars that give birth to galaxies." One intriguing possibility is that galaxy formation may not even require the presence of a sleeping gas cloud to be brought to life by a quasar jet. That's because such jets can eject up to 100 million solar masses of matter per year and stay switched on for a few hundred million years. This means that, in their lifetime, they may eject enough material to build a large galaxy from scratch.

maximum mass early on in cosmic history. This suggests that there was an epoch preceding galaxy formation when supermassive black holes grew and ruled the universe - the opposite to what the standard view posits. "This supports our idea," he says. Of course, if supermassive black holes did form first and then gave birth to galaxies, the $64,000 question is: where did the supermassive black holes come from? "This is the one missing jigsaw piece," admits Elbaz. While no one knows for sure, there are some ideas on the table. Observations of quasars show that monster black holes weighing Look to the clouds 10 billion solar masses formed within a billion So how can the theory of quasar-induced years of the big bang. For years, various teams galaxy formation be proved? Elbaz says we have been puzzling over how they could have should be looking for objects at an earlier grown into such behemoths so quickly. One idea is that they grew from the much stage of evolution than HE04S0-29S8 and its nearby galaxy, in particular quasars that are smaller black holes which form when a star offset from clouds of cold molecular gas - the reaches the end of its life and collapses. In a stage prior to star formation. superdense cluster of stars, several of these In fact, Elbaz thinks some such systems have black holes might merge to create a huge one already been found. "Astronomers have been that continues to grow by feeding on gas. But puzzled to find quasars offset by clouds of critics of this idea point out that there was carbon monoxide," he says. "In our scenario, simply not enough time in the first billion there is no puzzle. It makes perfect sense." years after the big bang for stellar-mass black Further support for Elbaz's theory comes holes to merge into something big enough. in the form of evidence showing that An alternative idea involves the formation supermassive black holes had reached their of single, supermassive stars, a scenario first

envisaged by the astronomers Fred Hoyle and Willy Fowler in 1963- If a star like this ever formed, it would be so massive that the heat generated by nuclear burning at its core would not be enough to oppose the gravity trying to crush it. The whole thing would collapse at once, creating a supermassive black hole. Mitchell Begelman at the University of Colorado in Boulder has studied this scenario in detail and believes that something even stranger happened (New Scientist, 16 May 2008, p 30). According to his calculations, the seeds of supermassive black holes formed inside the supermassive stars, growing at a faster rate than they could support in the void of space. Eventually, the outer layers of these curious stars explode to reveal the black hole hidden within. To test the idea, we'll have to wait for the next generation of telescopes. Hoyle famously showed that we are all made of stardust. We may soon want to add that we all come from black holes, too.• Marcus (hawn's latest book is We Need to Talk About Kelvin (Faber & Faber, 2009)

Further readi ng: "Quasar induced galaxy formation: a new paradigm?" by David Elbaz, Knud Jahnke, Eric Pantin, Damien Le Borgne and Geraldine Letawe (Astronomy and Astrophysics, vol 507, p 1359) 9 January 2010 1 NewScientist 1 33

If you wa nt to stay hea lthy yo u n eed to stay fit - b ut h ow, a s ks Clare Wi lson

Let's get physical 34 1 NewScientist 1 9 January 2010

D

OES an activity have to get you out of breath to count as exercise? Do you really have to do half-an-hour a day? Is pumping iron a good way to keep your heart healthy? These are just some of the dilemmas many of us face when working out the best way to get fit. The good news is scientists do broadly agree on the best ways to get fit, they just haven't been very good at telling us what they've discovered. "We haven't done a great job of distilling down a large number of studies and say what this means for the average person who's trying to get in shape," acknowledges Simon Marshall, a specialist in exercise and sports psychology at San Diego State University in California. Whether because of a lack of information, or because some of us are just plain lazy, most of us don't do enough exercise. One recent survey in the UK found that only a third of

What cQu nts as exercise? The standard advice is we should aim for 150 minutes a week of moderate-intensity exercise. The tricky question here is what "moderate" means. Gauging the intensity of an activity by measuring how fast it makes your heart beat is old hat. These days, metabolic rate is the preferred measure. It is usually represented in units known as the metabolic equivalent, or MET. This is the metabolic rate during the activity in question divided by the rate when sitting doing nothing. Moderate exercise is defined as anything that clocks up between 3 and 6 METs (see chart, page 36 ). Gauging your metabolic rate precisely requires having your oxygen uptake measured in a lab, but you can just look up the average MET for your chosen activity in

The Compendium of Physical Activities (bit. ly/8BZaUf). It even answers the hoary old question about golf: yes, it does count as exercise, notching up a respectable 4.5 METs if you walk round the course, or 1 MET less if you ride round in a golf buggy. Musicians may be dismayed to learn that playing the flute gets a mere 2 METs, though drummers earn a more respectable 4. Walking gets anywhere from 2 to 12 METs, depending mainly on speed and terrain. Fiona BUll, joint head of the National Centre for Physical Activity and Health at Loughborough University in the UK, says moderate intensity

adults meet the recommended goals for physical activity. Though we all know that exercise is a good thing, only recently was the extent of its influence on our health established. In the early 20th century, heart attacks were growing steadily more common in the west, and they were seen as a sinister new epidemic. It is now thought there are several explanations for this, ranging from a fall in infectious diseases enabling heart attacks to take the lead, to various changes in society that made lifestyles less healthy. A key insight into the importance of lifestyle came from a 1953 study of London bus conductors. At the time, London buses not only had a driver but also a conductor, who sold tickets to passengers after they had boarded and sat down. Most of the buses were double-deckers, so the conductors spent a lot of their day walking up and down the stairs.

The landmark study published in The Lancet (vol 265, p 1053) showed that conductors suffered half as many heart attacks as their driver colleagues. "It was the first hint that this new frightening epidemic could be linked to the way we live," said Jerry Morris, at the time an epidemiologist at the UK's Medical Research Council, who led the study. Since Morris's study, hundreds of other investigations have confirmed the benefits of exercise on the heart and circulation, as well as on almost every other systern of the body. Diseases that are prevented by exercise include stroke, cancer, diabetes, liver and kidney disease, osteoporosis and even brain diseases such as dementia and depression. So how should you go about getting fit? Over the next six pages, we have set out the latest evidence and exploded some myths along the way. Read on, and you can > decide for yourself.

means "walking purposefully". "There should be a slight elevation in your heart rate but you should be able to talk easily," she says. However, people tend to underestimate how fast they have to walk to achieve this. So last year Marshall and his colleagues came up with a way to check your pace without having to think about oxygen uptake or heart rate. They showed that for most people, 3 METs equates to about 100 steps a minute

(American Journal of Preventive Medicine, vol 36, p 410), so all you need to check your performance is a pedometer and a watch. Marshall suggests that you select a walk you often take - to work or to the shops, for example - and use the pedometer to gauge how many steps it takes. From this you can easily calculate your target time. "You can give time-based goals and weave it into your lifestyle," he says.

9 January 2010 1NewScientist 135

What's the best way

H ow m u ch, and how often?

to get fit: one long run, or seve ra l short ones?

Half-an-hour of moderate-intensity exercise at least five days a week used to be the required regime to keep fit. Now the consensus is that exercise doesn't have to be portioned out in daily doses. If you aim for 150 minutes per week you can divide it up however you like. That has to be good news for those of us who find it difficult to fit regular exercise into the daily schedule. So, if you can manage a one-hour hike and an hour of some energetic sport at the weekend, you only have to find time for another half-hour bout during the working week. "There's not compelling evidence that 150 minutes across five days is any better than across three or four," says Simon Marshall of San Diego State University. Another hot question in sports science is what is the shortest period of exercise that is worth dOing. The latest evidence suggests that three lots of 10 minutes, for example, are just as good as one continuous 30-minute bout (Sports Medicine, vo139, p 29). "Ten minutes is as far as the data takes us," says Steve Blair, who helped write the US guidelines on exercise, at the University of South Carolina, Columbia. "If you ask for my wild speculation I think five-minute bouts would be fine too, but we just don't have data yet."

Energy to burn Exercise raises yo ur meta bolie rate, A commo n way of measurin g the ill ensity of

laxerc ise is by the ratio of th e meta bol i c rate durin g exen: i se to the rate a rest. du bbed a metabolic eq uival e n (MET)

l 6

RESTING RATE

6"X 1

vacu um i ng (v igo rous )

Z

Down h i ll skii

Walking

------4 5 6 '7

3

8

L. "Mocleratr" p't(�rcl<; -I

H ow do I know if I'm getti ng fit? "Fitness" can refer to a number

muscle cells, the mitochondria,

someone's aerobic fitness is to

science lab. The only equipment

of attributes, including muscle

which release energy from glucose,

measure their V02max - the

needed for the Rockport Fitness

strength and flexibility, but is usually

increase in size and number.

maximum consumption of oxygen

Walking Test, for example, is a

used to refer to aerobic fitness,

The heart also undergoes

they can achieve during a session of

watch. Time how long it takes you

also known as cardiorespiratory or

significant changes. Ultrasound

exercise that gradually increases in

to walk a mile as quickly as possible,

cardiovascular fitness. This boils

scans show that the heart of an

intensity. Typically, the subject runs

then measure your heart rate. Plug

down to how effective the body is

athlete looks quite different from

on an accelerating treadmill while

the time and heart rate, along with

at delivering oxygen to muscle cells.

that of someone sedentary. The left

breathing through a face mask to

your age, gender and weight into

ventricle - the chamber that does

gauge the oxygen level of the air

the appropriate equation or find a

If you become more active, your body undergoes numerous changes

most of the work of pumping blood

they breathe out. The higher your

website that will do it for you - try

that boost aerobic fitness. Muscle

around the body - is likely to be much

V02max, the fitter you are.

the Brian Mac Sports Coach site at

fibres grow and are better supplied

larger, and the walls more muscular.

with blood vessels. Within the

36 1 NewScientist 1 9 January 2010

The best way of assessing

There are also ways to estimate

bit.ly/Bc7wdx - and you'll get a

V02max that don't require a sports

ballpark value for your V02max.

9

Is p u m p i n g i ron rea l ly necessa ry? Look around most gyms and you'll

their age group was around 30 per cent

probably conclude that if you don't pump

higher than for the other two-thirds ( 8M),

iron you're not doing a complete workout.

vol 337, a439}.

But is that really true? Several studies have suggested a

That link remained even after the results had been adjusted to take

link between muscle strength and living

account of the effects of aerobic fitness.

longer, but for a long time it was unclear

"The bottom line is that both strength

whether other factors were confusing

and aerobic fitness make independent

the picture. People who are muscular are

contributions to health," says Steve Blair,

more likely to be thin, aerobically fit and

one of the study's co-authors, based at

generally healthy - all features known

University of South Carolina's Arnold

to extend lifespan.

School of Public Health, who helped write

In the past few yea rs, however, some large, well-designed studies have settled the question. One study, published in

the US national guidelines on exercise. In the 2007 update of its own recommendations on exercise, the

2008, measured the muscle strength of

American College of Sports Medicine

almost 9000 American men and followed

added two episodes of strength

their health for 20 years. The death

training a week, consisting of about

rates among those whose muscle

10 repetitions of 10 strengthening

strength was in the bottom third for

exercises of all the major muscle groups.

Jogg i n g can ki l l you

10

11

12

Meta bo l lc 8'1 tJ iva I en

13

(M ET)

14

15

16

"Risk of a hea rt atta ck d u ri n g j og g i n g d oes ri se, but pa l es i nto i ns i g n ifica n ce bes i d e i ts ove ra l l l ifeti m e b e n efits"

"Look at Jim Fixx!" cry the couch potatoes, citing the celebrity runner credited with kick-starting the jogging craze in the 1970s. At the age of 52, Fixx famously dropped dead from a heart attack midway through a run. Could exercise be a killer lying in wait for the unwary? The risk of a heart attack does rise during vigorous exercise like jogging or shovelling snow. But the extent of the rise depends heavily on how accustomed you are to that exercise. For someone who is completely unfit, the risk can rise by as much as 100fold, relative to when they are resting. For someone who regularly runs five times a week, their risk while exercising roughly doubles. The lesson, says David Stensel, an exercise physiologist at Loughborough University in the UK, is to be careful when you take up exercise. He advises gradually building up the intensity and duration of your exercise sessions, and that you have a medical check-up if you are over 35 and are not

used to regular physical activity. Stensel points out that the raised risk, which lasts for the duration of the exercise and up to half an hour after it, pales into insignificance beside the overall lifetime benefits of regular exercise. Study after study has shown that keeping active lowers an individual's risk of suffering a heart attack by 50 to 80 per cent. That protective effect stays with you day and night - whether you are running a marathon or asleep in bed. There are a myriad other health benefits too. "You're far better off exercising than worrying about your risk of heart attack during exercise," says Stensel.

9 January 2010 1 NewScientist 137

Is getti ng fit easier for some people? While physical activity is an essential part of getting fit, it's not the whole story. An individual's fitness level also depends on how they respond to that activity, which is largely determined by their genes. The landmark research in this field is the Heritage family study, begun in the 1990S. US and Canadian researchers recruited 481 sedentary people from 98 families, and subjected them to a rigorous 20-week training programme. They then put them through a battery of tests. While many people's aerobic fitness improved dramatically, others showed a less marked response. The disheartening news is that about 1 in 10 showed no change whatsoever in their aerobic fitness, despite doing 45 minutes of vigorous exercise

three times a week for the final six weeks of the programme (Journal of Applied Physiology, vol 87, p 1003). The degree of response turned out to be largely down to the participants' genes. If your parents find it hard to get fit, there's a good chance you will too. "We had families where all of them were low responders and other families where they were all high responders," says Claude Bouchard, now director of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center at Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who led the study. Happily, even those whose aerobic fitness did not change had lower blood pressure and cholesterol, more normal insulin levels, and less abdominal fat. "You're never a complete non-responder," says Bouchard.

You ca n't be fat and fit Whether being overweight is an absolute bar to fitness has become one of the most hotly debated questions in exercise science. Steven Blair at the University of South Carolina is one of those who doesn't accept what might at first sight seems plain common sense - that being fat means you must be unfit. No one denies that there is a negative correlation between weight and aerobic

who were moderately obese were unfit. Blair points out that measures of aerobic fitness - the body's ability to deliver

fitness: overweight people tend, as a

oxygen to the muscles - have nothing to

group, to be less fit. This is partly because

do with the amount of fat tissue present.

a sedentary lifestyle contributes to weight gain, and partly because fat people may

In the 12 years during which the subjects were followed, Blair's study

feel discouraged from taking exercise.

found that the risk of dying was more

It can be a vicious circle.

closely linked to fitness than fatness.

In a study published in 2007 Blair

People who were fit but obese had a lower

recruited 2600 people of varying weight

risk of dying than people who were unfit

and timed how long they could run on a

but of normal weight. That's important,

treadmill before becoming exhausted, a

says Blair, because while many overweight

proxy for fitness UAMA, vol 298, p 2507).

people find it hard to get slim, they could

Among those who were mildly obese, only

still become healthier with more exercise.

a third met a common definition of being

It's a point he would like doctors to bear in

physically unfit, and only half of those

mind when advising overweight patients.

3 8 1 NewScientist 1 9 January 2010

"Wh i l e ove rwe i g ht peo p l e f i n d it h a rd to g et sl i m, they cou l d sti l l become hea lth i e r with exe rc i se"

You need to 'push fl u ids' Everyone knows the importance

The condition can even be

of keeping hydrated. Whether it's

caused by sports drinks claimed

a water bottle or a sports drink,

to be "isotonic" - meaning that

athletes and gym bunnies are rarely

they contain the same

seen without a source of fluid

concentration of dissolved

close at hand. Common advice is

substances as normal body

to deliberately drink beyond what

fluids - as they tend to contain

thirst dictates, or "push fluids",

sugar but very little salt.

to combat dehydration and keep

Cases of EAH rose in the US in the 1990s. Tim Noakes, director

some examples of advice to drink

Usually that's a waste of time,

of the exercise science and sports

"as much as possible" remain, most

and just occasionally it can be fatal.

medicine unit at the University of

advice now sets lower and upper

Exercise-associated hyponatraemia

Cape Town, South Africa, who was

limits on how much to drink. Ron

performance up to scratch.

(EAH) is a dangerous condition that

the first to describe the condition,

Maughan, a physiologist and sports

occurs when people have drunk so

blames the rise on marketing

nutrition specialist at Loughborough

much that the concentration of

activities by the makers of sports

University in the UK, says blanket

sodium in their blood falls too low.

drinks, which he says promote

guidelines are flawed because

This leads to excess water moving

overdrinking (British Journal of

people vary in how much they

into the tissues of the brain, causing

Sports Medicine, vol 40, p 567).

sweat. He recommends that people

brain swelling. Symptoms include

He also claims that guidelines issued

weigh themselves before and after

nausea, vomiting and confusion. In

by the American College of Sports

their exercise to find out how much

rare cases - 12 have been recorded

Medicine and other bodies have

they sweat, and drink enough to

worldwide - the victim has died.

been influenced by sponsorship

maintain their body weight.

Slower marathon runners, who

from the manufacturers of

tend to drink more over the several

Gatorade, formerly Quaker Oats,

hours it takes them to complete the

now PepsiCo.

course, are one group more likely

But this is overdoing it, says Noakes. Drinking to satisfy your thirst is all that is needed.

Since awareness of EAH has

"The easiest way to lower your

to develop EAH, and women seem

grown, most guidelines now warn

performance is to overdrink,

to be more at risk than men.

athletes not to overdrink. Although

not underdrink."

What if I get inju red? Pulled muscles and twisted ankles are the downside of sports and exercise. Sometimes it's hard to know whether to rest an injury, see a doctor or even push on through the pain. If you are starting a new activity, don't be put off by some aches and stiffness during the first couple of days. "There's discomfort which you get just from using parts you're not used to using," says John Tanner, a musculoskeletal physician at the Bupa Wellness Clinic in London. "If it becomes a pain and intrusive, either stop and give it a break, or get some advice on technique." Around half of regular runners and players of team sports like football get some kind of musculoskeletal injury every year. When returning to exercise after an injury, transient warm-up pain need not be a sign to stop, as long as it eases off after 5 to 10 minutes. Pain

may return on finishing the exercise, or the next morning. "But that's no bad thing if after 10 minutes it's gone again," says Martyn Speight, a musculoskeletal physician at the Wharfedale Clinic in Leeds, UK. In many sports the most common injury is a sprained ankle. It's a problem that often recurs: in the first year after an injury, the risk of suffering a repeat sprain roughly doubles compared with that for previously uninjured people. The risk can be reduced, however, by some simple home exercises using a wobbly platform known as a balance board. In July 2009, a team from the Free University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands showed that using the board for half an hour three times a week for eight weeks halves the risk of a repeat ankle sprain in the first year after injury (BMI, vol 339, b2684).

9 January 2010 1 N ewScientist 1 3 9

Ta ckl i n g a l cohol ism with a d rug is anathema to suppo rt g rou ps, but it's only a matte r of ti me befo re it beco mes mai nstrea m treatme nt, says Pete r Ald hous

i

i

I

P rescr pt on: so r ety

IF YOU'RE hoping to find out about using pills to treat alcohol addiction, the Alcoholics Anonymous website is the wrong place to look. Search there for "medication" and the closest you'll come is a warning about the dangers of turning to prescription drugs or narcotics as a substitute for alcohol. The website of the Betty Ford Center in Palm Springs, California, reveals little more. It does at least discuss one possible medication to treat alcoholism, but the drug is curtly dismissed. "Naltrexone is not a cure for alcoholism nor is it in any way a treatment," writes James West, the centre's former medical director. "The treatment of alcoholism involves a complete psychological, spiritual and emotional shift, whereby victims of the disease are released at the core of their being from the compulsion to drink." Dig through the wealth of addiction support groups online and you'll come across two responses again and again - pharmacological treatments to alcohol addiction are either ignored, or they are actively rejected as a crutch that must be abandoned. "The dogma � has been that you can't treat a chemical � addiction with another chemical," says 40 1 NewScientist 1 9 January 2010

Markus Heilig of the US National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) in Bethesda, Maryland. "It's well-meaning but naive, and in the end very destructive." That doctrine, however, is poised to crumble. Encouraged by advances in the neuroscience of addiction, positive results from clinical trials and stirrings of interest from big pharma, Heilig and his colleagues are pushing for medication to become a mainstream treatment. Today, the few drugs available to treat alcohol abuse are rarely used outside a small number of specialist centres, but NIAAA's vision is for more and better drugs to be prescribed routinely by psychiatrists and even family doctors. If they are successful, the result will be alcoholism's "Prozac moment", says Mark Willenbring, NIAAA's head of treatment and recovery research, recalling the time when Prozac revolutionised the way depression was treated following its launch in 1986. By invoking Prozac, however, he will raise both hopes and fears. While it's widely recognised that Prozac and other members of its class ­ selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) - have helped to lift the stigma

surrounding depression and greatly expanded treatment options, some analyses suggest that their benefits have been exaggerated. What's more, the pharmaceutical industry's aggressive marketing of SSRIs to ever wider groups of patients, despite evidence that they may sometimes trigger suicidal feelings, has become a major controversy. In this light, could recent advances in developing anti­ alcoholism drugs be the first tentative steps towards the medicalisation of social drinking?

A new line of attack There is no doubt, at least, that a new line of attack is desperately needed in the war against alcoholism. NIAAA's National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC) found that about 7.9 million American adults were dependent on alcohol in 2001-2002. A further 9.7 million met the criteria for alcohol abuse - frequently drinking heavily despite clear negative consequences. On the global scale, alcohol is responsible in some way - whether through drink-fuelled violence and accidents or direct medical effects - for 3.8 per cent of all deaths and 4.6

per cent of the burden of disease and disability (The Lancet, vol 373, p 2223). Then there are the knock-on social consequences of excessive drinking, including broken families, unemployment and risky sexual behaviour. Current treatment options - which often involve psychotherapy in a specialist rehab facility - have a limited reach, with less than a quarter of alcoholics in the US ever getting the help they need. "There are many people who are desperately suffering in silence," says Selena Bartlett, who works on new pharmaceutical approaches at the Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center in Emeryville, California. If they could discreetly obtain a prescription from their doctor, rather than taking the big step of signing up for rehab, perhaps more would seek help. Yet until recently, pharmaceutical companies seemed to have little interest in exploiting this market. They may have been reluctant to associate their names with the stigma of addiction. Probably more significantly, alcoholics were widely considered to be people on the poverty line whose lives had spiralled out of control, with their addiction often compounded by other

Russia Luxembourg N igeria UK Denmark Germany Spain Portugal France N etherlands New Zealand US Austra l i a Sweden Brazi l China cuba

ii

���

Oem. Rep. of the Congo

o

4

8

12

16

psychiatric problems - not the sort of patient to make dollar signs flash in the eyes of drug company executives. Yet NESARC painted a very different picture - more than 90 per cent of people dependent on alcohol don't fit this stereotype (see "Diverse drinkers", page 43 ). They include young adults whose drink-sodden social lives are spinning out of control, and older, "functional" alcoholics who mostly manage to hide an ongoing battle with the bottle. "They may be a little foggy in the morning, but they're not missing work," says Willenbring. "Their marriages aren't going to heck. They're coaching their kids' soccer teams and going to church on Sunday." Persuading people to seek help from their family doctors while they are still largely in control of their lives seems a much more realistic goal. And crucially in the US, the world's biggest market for prescription drugs, these people will have health insurance. As big pharma views these favourable demographics alongside its expiring patents and drying pipelines in other disease areas, interest is stirring. "It has changed dramatically in the past five years," Willenbring says. The available drugs for alcoholism are unlikely to be the new Prozac, however. Naltrexone, for instance, which cuts the desire to drink by blocking opioid receptors in the brain's reward system, has two major drawbacks. First, its benefits vary widely between patients, although genetic tests may help predict which people are likely to respond best to the treatment (see "Different drinkers, different drugs", page 43). Naltrexone's biggest stumbling block, however, is that it fails to treat some of the more painful aspects of abstinence. Drinking dampens the brain's response to stress ­ indeed, many heavy drinkers become hooked on alcohol for this reason alone. The result is that going cold turkey without also calming the brain's stress pathways can be a distressing experience. "People feel just terrible," says George Koob, a specialist in the neurobiology of addiction at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. "These individuals are miserable. They have panic attacks." Targeting these drink-hijacked stress pathways - often without even touching the brain's pleasure circuits - is now the hottest area in alcoholism research. In 2008 a team led by Heilig reported that an experimental drug called LY686017, made by Eli Lilly, suppressed cravings for alcohol in a small group of recently detoxified alcoholics (Science, vol 319, p 1536). The drug is known > 9 January 2010 1 NewScientist 1 41

D I F F ERENT D RI N K ERS, D I F F ERENT D RUG S Nearly a quarter-century after the launch of Prozac, there are now a number of other drugs in its class that can also be prescribed for depression. But finding the right selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor for each patient is usually a matter of trial and error, as it's currently impossible to predict which will work best. Drugs for alcoholism will face a similar hurdle, but researchers hope they can overcome the challenge using genetic tests to work out which patients will respond best to the treatments. So far, the most promising results have come from studies of naltrexone: alcoholics with a particular variant of the gene for the opioid receptor targeted by the drug appear to benefit most. Two teams, one led by Charles O' Brien of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, the other by Raymond Anton of the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, are now running trials to obtain the data needed to convince the US Food and Drug Administration that the drug's prescribing information should recommend a genetic test. "If these studies are positive there will be a labelling change based on genetics," says O'Brien. "It will be the first one in psychiatry." In the long run, O' Brien hopes it will be possible to identify a series of genetic variants to classify alcoholics into groups likely to respond well to a particular class of drug, and to highlight people Iikely to suffer adverse reactions. "Doctors will be genotyping patients and prescribing medications based on that," he says.

to block the brain's neurokinin 1 receptor, which is involved in behavioural responses to stress. Koob, meanwhile, is concentrating on the central player in the brain's stress response: corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH). Some pharmaceutical companies are already attempting to target this hormone to treat anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, meaning suitable candidate drugs are already in the pipeline. The major hurdle, however, is finding one without undesirable side effects. Besides the brain's stress and pleasure pathways, there is another possible line of attack to treat alcohol addiction, which focuses on alcohol's sedative properties. Alcohol reduces overall neural activity by boosting the inhibitory effects of the neurotransmitter GABA while damping down the excitation caused by the neurotransmitter glutamate. Prolonged heavy drinking causes long-lasting changes in the brain's sensitivity to these neurotransmitters. As a result, the brains of alcoholics suffer from excessive neural excitation without booze, which may contribute to their agitation when they go cold turkey. An existing drug called acamprosate had been considered the best hope to restore the balance between GABA and glutamate. But in a large clinical trial, it performed no better

Th e a l co h o l a b use e p i d e m i c Alcohol a buse is a s i g n ificant co ntrib utor to poor health, measured here by reg i o n as a proportion of the average n u m ber of potentia l ly hea lthy years l ost d u e to d isease, d i s a b i lity a n d d e ath

• < 0.9%

. 1.0-1.9%

. 2.0-3.9%

42 1 NewScientist 1 9 January 2010

. 4.0-7.9%

. 8.0-14.9

. 15 >

No data

than a placebo (Journal of the American Medical Association, vol 295, p 2003). So the search is on for drugs with more powerful rebalancing effects. A contender is topiramate, a drug otherwise used to treat epilepsy. In a 14-week trial involving more than 370 heavy drinkers, topiramate decreased the number of days in which the men drank more than five standard drinks, or the women consumed more than four, by about 16 per cent compared with those taking a placebo (Journal of the American Medical Association, vol 298, p 1641).

Dri nki ng plummets That may sound like a modest result, but for the patients who responded best, the effects were spectacular. "We're talking about moving from drinking a couple of bottles of wine a day to drinking about a glass," says Bankole Johnson at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, who led the trial. Importantly, these gains were achieved without first having to send the patients to a specialist detox clinic, which can cost thousands of dollars. A drug that can be prescribed to drinkers during their first visit to a doctor's office, without needing to dry out first, could remove a big barrier to treatment. With new discoveries about how to mitigate alcohol's disruption of brain circuitry coming thick and fast, Willenbring's optimism for alcoholism's Prozac moment seems justified. "There's a change taking place and I think it's largely being driven by accumulating knowledge in neuroscience," says Elliot Ehrlich, chief medical officer with Alkermes, a company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that specialises in drugs for alcoholism. Larger drug firms remain cautious, but some of the NIAAA's recent research should help persuade them that bringing alcoholism drugs to market is a challenge worth pursuing. Howard Moss, NIAAA's associate director for clinical research, took the results from a population survey on risky drinking behaviour and related them to a proprietary marketing database called PRIZM to identify who in the US could be targeted to seek help for their alcohol abuse (Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, vol 33, p 1336). The highest proportion of binge drinkers fell into a group labelled in the PRIZM database as "Cyber-Millennials" - described as "tech­ savvy singles and couples living in fashionable neighborhoods on the urban fringe". That's a key finding, because advertisers already know that these people are easily reachable: they

"Pote nti a l s i d e effects, i n pa rticu l a r, may g ive d octo rs pa use fo r th o u g ht befo re they re ach for th e i r p resc ri ption pads" read Wired, and watch the Travel Channel, MTV and pro basketball. Moss framed his research in terms of health promotion efforts. But in the US, where prescription drugs can be advertised directly to patients, the same information could be used to market pharmaceutical products. "I suspect the next alcoholism drug will be marketed direct-to-consumer," says Moss.

Mission creep

Will socia l d rinking be consid ered a medical condition one day?

Dive rse d ri n kers

E p i d e m i ologists have identified five disti nct g roups of problem drinkers in the US. The research debunks the

stereotype of the washed-up alcoholic living alone i n poverty. The majority lead outward ly successful l ives

Chronic severe Frequently have fam i l y hi story of a l cohol ism; high rates of other mental di sorders and other d rug addictions; most common type to seek cu rrent treatments

o

Average age of onset of a lcohol dependence

Young adult Low rates of other su bstance abuse a nd l ow rates of mental d i sorders; m o re than a third a re sti ll in education

I ntermediate familial Ma rried and employed; h i g h rates of depression, bipolar di sorder and d rug a buse; often have fa mily hi story of a lcoholism

Functional Well-ed ucated with stable jobs and fa mil ies; some fa mily history of a l coholism; moderate rates of depression

Young antisocial Some fa mily hi story of a l cohol ism; high rates of mental d i sorders and d rug a d d i ction

It's an idea that is ringing warning bells for critics of the pharmaceutical industry, who fear a potential for "mission creep" in how the drugs are used. "This year you'll have to drink so much to be an alcoholic; next year it will be less," predicts David Healy of Cardiff University in the UK, who has questioned the increasingly widespread use of SSRls and other drugs in psychiatry. "And then it will be: 'Hey, you drink a bit too much, so maybe you're at risk of being an alcoholic. Why don't we treat you before the problem develops?' " Even among people clearly diagnosed as alcoholics under current criteria, it's not obvious who is a suitable candidate for drug treatment. For instance, most young people with drink problems sober up with age as the responsibilities of work and family take hold. "So one would have to ask whether it's appropriate to target this group," says Kaye Fillmore of the University of California, San Francisco, who studies the social and health consequences of alcohol use. Proponents of pharmaceutical treatments for alcoholism will also face a backlash from therapists who favour a behavioural approach. Still, NIAAA officials stress that they only propose medication alongside behavioural therapy. "This is never going to be a disease where we simply prescribe a pill," says Moss. How the story unfolds will depend on the precise risks and benefits of the drugs in question. Potential side effects, in particular, may give doctors pause for thought before they reach for their prescription pad: topiramate, for example, can cause vision problems, suicidal thoughts and a potentially dangerous acidification of the blood. For his part, Willenbring is convinced it's only a matter of time before a suitable candidate emerges that trumps these doubts and warrants a Prozac-style marketing campaign. "It could be next year. It could be 10 years away. But I know it's going to happen." • Peter Aldhous is the chief of New Scientist's San Francisco bureau 9 January 2010 1 NewScie ntist 1 43

To m o rrow's ca rs wi l l see i n the da rk - th a n ks to a d u n g beetl e, H elen Ph i l l i ps i nvesti g ates

Night sight I

HAVE never seen anyone get so excited about cow dung as Eric Warrant. We are driving through the wide open landscape of the dusty Araluen valley in New South Wales, Australia, when he spies a herd of cows I umbering away from their roadside water trough. "This is perfect," he enthuses, veering his rusty pickup off the edge of the road. Before I can don my rubber gloves, he's off with his bucket, over the fence and wrist-deep in a still-warm cow pat. Not a fresh one, mind you. Best if they're an hour or two old, he says. "A bit crusty on top but still gooey inside." This was not what I expected when I set out to see this researcher's ground-breaking work developing a full-colour night-vision camera. The project, involving a close collaboration with Toyota, could one day give drivers an unprecedented view of the road ahead. Unlikely as it sounds, the project really did begin in a cow pat. I reluctantly crouch nearer and watch as Warrant's index finger chases something wriggling through the remains of yesterday's farmyard lunch. He hooks it out and gives it a wipe to reveal the brown-coloured but jewel­ like carapace of a small dung beetle. He plops the fingernail-sized beast into his bucket. "Excellent," he says, "this is exactly the species I'm after." And in he delves again. Warrant began studying dung beetles in 1985 as a PhD student at the Australian National University in Canberra, where his interest in optics soon developed into a passion for eyes. He is now at the University 44 1 NewScientist 1 9 January 2010

of Lund in Sweden, but still regularly visits his native Australia. What fascinates him most is eyes that see in near-total darkness ­ whether it is to dodge trees when flying in the jungle at night, or to spot a mate in the inky depths of the ocean. Dung beetles are particularly close to Warrant's heart because there are species of the genus Onitis that are almost identical but which fly at different times. The species that fly in daylight have eyes that are adapted to see in bright sunlight. The crepuscular Onitis

"Cow dung was not what I expected when I set out to see work on a full-colour night-vision camera" alexis, which we are hunting, is adapted for the dim light of early morning and evening. There are nocturnal species too, such as Onitis aygulus, found a little further north. "The whole genus is extremely interesting," says Warrant. "They're a closely related group where all lifestyles are represented, and they have corresponding changes in their eyes and physiology to suit different light niches." Warrant has compared these specialisations in different species of beetle, and also in bees and moths that fly at night. Now, with the help of a couple of mathematicians and Toyota's engineering experience, he has

developed a remarkable camera system. Car-makers are interested in night vision systems that might enhance safety, perhaps by monitoring a driver for signs of sleepiness or intoxication, or by scanning the road ahead for potential dangers. A few are already in use in top-of-the-range vehicles, but existing designs have some distinct drawbacks. At night there is about a billion times less light than there is during the day, and these cameras are simply not sensitive enough to make much use of it. So night -vision systems tend to rely on infrared illumination, which is invisible to our eyes. These cameras work in monochrome, and while they do reveal details we can't normally see, there is plenty of room for improvement. Jonas Ambeck-Madsen and Hiromichi Yanagihara of the Toyota Motor Europe R&D centre in Brussels, Belgium, had been looking for inspiration in nature to solve fundamental vehicle design challenges. Then, along with colleagues in Japan, they came across Warrant's work on nocturnal insects. Working with his Lund colleague Almut Kelber, Warrant had shown that nocturnal bees and moths have a remarkable ability to see the night-time world in enough detail, contrast and colour to find food and mates, escape predators and avoid crashing into things (New Scientist, 6 January 2007, p 36). "We began seeing the possibility of applying Warrant's nocturnal vision work to a novel type of vision sensor," says > Ambeck-Madsen. The aim would be to

9 January 2010 1 N ewScientist 1 45

create a camera capable of capturing a night scene in true colour, as well as being able to operate across a greater range of brightness and shadow than is possible with conventional night-vision technology. There are already plenty of ways to improve a camera's performance in dim light. Just as the pupils in our eyes become wider in the dark, it's possible to open up the aperture of a camera lens to let more light in. For still images, keeping the shutter open for longer produces a similar result by increasing the exposure time. It is also possible to build better detectors by increasing the size of the light-sensitive elements - pixels in the case of a digital camera, or grains of light-sensitive chemicals in the case of conventional film. But these modifications alone are not enough to create a practical device for seeing moving images in the dark without blurring or losing detail. What's needed is some clever image processing. And this is where Warrant's insects come in. Bees, beetles and moths have compound eyes with multiple lenses that together form a single image on an underlying array of light-sensitive photoreceptor cells. In theory these small lenses should be far worse at night vision than the larger human eye, but the way the cells in an insect's visual system process the light signals means they can make much better use of what little light is available. As light levels drop, the neuronal wiring in the insect's eye can either pool the signals from neighbouring photoreceptors or collect the signals for longer periods, Warrant says. Neither strategy is perfect: summing in time makes it difficult to detect movement while summing in space throws away spatial detail. It seems, though, that an insect's eyes can make a trade-off between the two strategies depending on how much light is available and how quickly the insect is moving relative to its surroundings.

Amazing eyes In 1999, Warrant developed a mathematical model to describe the optimal "spatiotemporal summation" strategy for any given light intensity and speed of image movement (Vision Research, vol39, p1611). However, he now believes that insect eyes are even more sophisticated than this. His early model calculated just one level of spatiotemporal summation applied to the whole visual field, but research at Lund and elsewhere suggests that there is more going on in an 46 1 NewScientist 1 9 January 2010

insect's visual system. Insects make "One part of an insect's different trade-offs for different parts of the retina can pick out details image, perhaps even optimising vision in each part independently. In theory, one region while the rest probes the on an insect's retina could sum incoming shadows for motion" photons for long periods to pick out the details of a flower head, say, while the rest could be optimised to probe the shadows for motion by increasing the number of camera. It is stored in the camera's memory photoreceptors from which signals are pooled as a rectangular array containing hundreds of thousands of numbers, each one (Journal 01 Vision, vol 9, p 1). Warrant and his team call this mechanism representing the light intensity recorded by a pixel on the camera's light detector "local adaptive spatiotemporal smoothing". It has become the inspiration for a new kind chip. The first step in the team's algorithm of digital image-processing algorithm, is a variation on a fairly standard image­ developed jointly by Warrant, mathematicians processing technique that enhances Henrik MaIm and Magnus Oskarsson, also at brightness and contrast. A typical image Lund, and engineers at Toyota Motor Europe. recorded at night will contain lots of pixels To understand how it works, imagine with very low numbers near zero and maybe a single image recorded by a digital video a few with very high numbers (around bright

Col o u r i n the d a rk A t h re e-step p rocess produces a usable v i d eo i m a g e even w h e n the l i g h t i n g is d i m

Contrast enhan cement Enhances da rker pixels more than brig hter ones to reveal a d i m image without regions of overex posure, but a lso amplifies unwanted noise

Compares brightness levels i n neighbouring pixels. Where the a l gorithm spots a boundary between l i g ht and shade it increases brightness of the pixels on the l i g ht side of the boundary and reduces it on the da rker side

Spatiotemporal noise reduction Pools i nformation i n neighbouring pixels by looki ng for correlations across each frame and between fra mes. This suppresses ra ndom noise while m i ni m ising loss of deta i l

The eye of the dung

beetle Onitus aygulus has evolved to see wel l in near-total darkness

lights}. The first step is to expand the range of the very low numbers, while compressing the range of the brightest numbers. This "non­ linear amplification" brightens those parts of the image containing most information while leaving other parts almost unaltered. This is analogous to what happens as the neural signal passes from the photoreceptor cells in an insect's retina to the next layer of processing cells, says Warrant. For an image taken in near-total darkness, this enhancement can reveal some detail, but it leaves the image grainy and speckled because any stray photons and electronic noise will also be amplified. The next step ­ spatiotemporal noise reduction - is designed to tackle this. According to MaIm it is the part most directly inspired by insect vision. It works by pooling the signals in neighbouring pixels both in space and time, while automatically looking for clues to determine the optimum amount of pooling for each part of the image. Mathematically, this is the equivalent of setting the best exposure time and pixel size independently for every spot in every frame. To do this, the algorithm compares the value stored in each pixel with the values in neighbouring pixels and looks for any continuity or correlations across the frame, as these signify real objects (see diagram). Meanwhile any signals which occur i n just one or two pixels in a single frame are most likely noise and can be removed. The algorithm also looks for patterns repeating in successive frames to spot

movement, and depending on the presence and speed of movement, it tunes the degree of temporal and spatial summation between pixels. Where an object is fast moving, summation between frames must stay low to avoid blurring, and the algorithm relies more on spatial summation within single frames. When objects are static the algorithm can pool in time and capture more spatial detail. Pooling pixels in this way comes at a price, though. "The fineness of spatial detail declines," Warrant says, "but the coarser details left can be seen much more clearly." The final step in the algorithm helps sharpen the image by restoring edges that may have been lost or blurred in the noise­ reduction processes. Sharpening is already widely used by many image-processing algorithms but the team found the process was more efficient when combined with the summation step. It compares brightness levels in neighbouring pixels, and where it spots a discontinuity between regions it uses a principle called lateral inhibition, also found in the visual system, to increase the light intensity on the bright side of the boundary, and decrease it on the darker side.

"Improving drivers' visual performance at night will be a key feature of tomorrow's car designs"

This process helps define the form of objects, even if they or the camera are moving. Their prototype algorithm was fairly slow: it had to run all night just to analyse a short monochrome video clip. But by using a model train fitted with a small video camera, they were able to precisely control motion and lighting conditions while they perfected the maths. After months of further testing, and some lively discussions, they finally came up with a streamlined version of the software that works autonomously in real time, even with dark and noisy images recorded in a real car at higher speeds. It can also adapt to the prevailing light levels automatically. This is vital: if a night-vision system is blinded by the bright lights of an oncoming vehicle it will be no use to a driver. The team originally assumed they would have to design a special processor chip to run the algorithm and this would go inside a digital video camera, MaIm says. In fact, the processing unit of a conventional PC graphics card was powerful enough to do the job, and they have managed to fine tune the algorithm to analyse images from the camera's three colour channels - red, green and blue - simultaneously in real time. Three years after starting the project, the team finally have a way of capturing full-colour moving images shot in what to human eyes is almost total darkness.

Crash prevention Ambeck-Madsen and Yanagihara are pleased with the results. The system uses a standard digital camera and microprocessor, so costs can be kept low, says Yanagihara, who is delighted at the way the collaboration has worked. The researchers are already experimenting with the device in Toyota's labs, though it is too early to say how the technology will be used in vehicles. It could form part of a display for drivers, for example, or a device that beeps a warning when it senses a pedestrian on the road ahead, or maybe even as part of an automated crash­ prevention mechanism. However the system is used, the team is sure that improving drivers' visual performance at night, when road users are more than twice as likely to be killed as they are during the day, will be a key feature in tomorrow's car designs. Who would have guessed that a cow pat could one day save your life? • Helen Ph illips is a science writer in Canada 9 January 2010 1 N ewScientist 1 47

BOOKS & ARTS

Life afte r death Joe Penhall, screenwriter of post -apocalyptic movie The Rood, talks to Michael Bond The Roadimagines a father

The Road

and son journeying through a

-

devastated world devoid of all life - except for a few gangs of increasingly desperate humans Cormac McCarthy doesn't tell us the cause of the apocalypse. What did you imagine it might be?

McCarthy told me it was some kind of environmental meltdown. He has an office at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, he loves hanging out there and a lot of his friends are environmental scientists, molecular biologists and physicists, so he's coming at it from a very scientific point of view. It's about what would happen if environmental meltdown continued to its logical conclusion: crops and animals would die, the weather would go out of control, there would be spontaneous wildfires and blizzards, you wouldn't be able to grow anything and the only thing left to eat would be tinned food and each other. But I was anxious not to quiz him too much about what happened because we wanted to preserve the mystique of it. Aside from the relationship between the father and son, the story is bleak, with almost no sense of hope. What made you think it would be suitable for the cinema?

I loved the boldness of McCarthy's supposition that when the end

•

comes it's going to be an excruciating conflation of high horror and banality. On the one hand the world will lapse into cannibalism, rape and civil war, on the other there'll be the numbing repetition of having to find food every day and worrying about replacing your shoes. Post-apocalypse films are often so concerned with the big picture that they miss the small details of what everyday existence would be like. McCarthy captured those beautifully: how you're going to be endlessly waking from dreams about your past life and mourning the things that have gone, like apples. Do you think the barbarism he

PROFILE

depicts is realistic?

Joe Penhall is an award-wi nning playwright based in Lo ndon. His credits in clude the play Blue/Orange, the television series The Long Firm, and the movie adaptation of Ian McEwan's novel Enduring Love.

I think it's a safe bet that people in that situation would turn on each other in a horrendous way, though it's a strong theme in the book that not everyone is going to lose their humanity to such a spectacular effect. The man in

4 8 1 NewScientist 1 9 January 2010

The Road struggles to hold onto his, though at times he gives in to violence and retribution, which is understandable. The boy, on the other hand, has an intrinsic faith in people and goodness. T he boy was born after the cataclysm and has known only this horror-filled, primitive world. How do you think he has managed to retain his humanity?

McCarthy thinks humanity is intrinsic, that it is not learned behaviour. His other books give the impression that he thinks inhumanity is intrinsic. Those books are about the worst, the extent of man's inhumanity. The Road is very much about the best. It seems to be very autobiographical - a clever love story about McCarthy and his son, who was eight when he wrote it - but thrown into this post­ apocalyptic landscape. The Rood, directed by John H i llcoat, opens in the UK on 8 January

our verd ict

WOULD you want to survive a disaster that wiped out virtually all life, that blocked out the sun, layered the planet in a blanket of ash and ended human civilisation as we know it? Cormac McCarthy's answer in his post-apocalyptic novel The Road is, probably yes, so long as you had someone else to live for. John Hillcoat's brilliantly shot film of the book makes much of the author's celebration of human compassion in the midst of horror, which is just as well since without it the story's backdrop would be overwhelmingly dismal. The film follows the journey of a man and his son some years after an environmental catastrophe has destroyed everything - we are never told what happened. The pair are travelling south through the abandoned and devastated US, hoping to find the good guys, people like them. Along the way they scavenge for food and try to avoid the bad guys, who won't hesitate to kill even a child for food. In this world of struggle, grim images abound: corpses of people who died in their beds, a group of terrified, starving, naked people kept in a cellar by an armed gang. The Road is appropriate to our apocalypse-fearing era, a study of human nature and the psychology of survival when there is nothing to hope for. This is what makes the appearance of a solitary beetle towards the movie's end, rising up from the boy's hands like some angel of expectation, a touch disappointing. It is hard to believe McCarthy would have stomached such sentimentality. Michael Bond.

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

A persona l ised revo l uti on This book cheers for genetically tailored medicine, but there's a catch, warns Peter Aldhous The Language ofUfe: DNA and the revolution in personalized medicine by Francis S, Col lins, Ha rperCollins, $26,99 (to be publ ished by Profile Books i n the U K in March 2010)

IN PUBLISHING, timing is king. So it's a shame for Francis Collins that his new guide to "the revolution in personalized medicine" hits shelves just as the uprising seems to be fizzling out. Collins wrote the book after having his own DNA scanned by three companies that launched competing "personal genome" services just a couple of years ago. But many early adopters ­ myself included - have been underwhelmed by the insights gained through such services, given the current state of genetic knowledge. And in an economic slump, a product costing between $400 and $2500 is a lUXUry that has proved easy for others to resist. In November, DeCode Genetics of Reykjavik, Iceland, filed for bankruptcy; even 23andMe, which is based in Mountain View, California, and backed by the deep pockets of Google, has been forced to lay-off staff. His timing may be unfortunate, but Collins is a highly knowledgeable guide to an emerging area of medicine that, in the lab at least, is still progressing with revolutionary fervour. Collins made his name as a formidable hunter of disease genes - including the first mutation tied to cystic fibrosis ­ before leading the US arm of the Human Genome Project in its race

to sequence our entire DNA code. Now he is director of the US National Institutes of Health, where we can expect him to focus the resources of this biomedical powerhouse on turning that raw sequence into medically usable information. As an introduction to the science that could one day deliver routine personalised medicine, this is an excellent book. Collins gives an impressively up-to-date treatment of the genetics of cancer, race, infectious disease, ageing, the brain and our varying responses to drugs. The narrative is strongest when he frames the issues through real stories of individual patients. But Collins also wants to provide a contemporary "user's guide", concluding each chapter

a revolution that hasn't arrived with a section entitled: "What quite yet, and I fear that his you can do now to join the enthusiasm has blinded him to personalized medicine revolution." Again, it's hard not some potential pitfalls. In his to question his timing. He offers concluding chapter, Collins presents two visions of the future: sage advice on drawing up a family health history, and getting one in which members of a nuclear family live to a contented screened for early signs of old age thanks to personalised conditions to which you are prone. But there is little on how to interpret genetic tests, and some "Th e US hea lth care system comments smack of desperation. has the u n ca n ny a b il ity to turn n ew medical tech into "Personalizing your approach to avoiding infectious diseases a vortex that sucks i n cash" includes knowing and practicing the principles of safe sex," Collins medicine and one in which tells us, leaving readers to wonder they are condemned to early graves through obesity and where the personalisation of this ignorance. His prescription for ubiquitous message comes in. I see Collins as a cheerleader for avoiding the latter involves generous investment in research, Persona l genome services may a llow the widespread adoption of us to make better health decisions electronic medical records and the reform of policies that slow the implementation of promising medical discoveries. Lobbyists for pharmaceutical and medical device companies make exactly the same point about stifled innovation, ignoring evidence that the crippling inflation in US healthcare costs is largely driven by the relentless adoption of medical technologies that frequently don't improve health outcomes. Collins does mention the need to refocus health services onto prevention, rather than remedial care. But from someone in his position, I'd have hoped for a clearer vision of how to prevent his revolution being betrayed by the US healthcare system's uncanny ability to turn new medical technologies into vortexes that suck in cash but achieve little else.• Peter Aldhous is New Scientist's San Francisco bureau chief 9 January 2010 1 NewScientist 1 49

www.NewScientistJobs.com Alaska WWAMI Professor of Biomedical Sciences ASIA N U N IV E R S ITY

Alaska's Medical School - Alaska WWAMI - invites applications for a senior level faculty in Biomedical Sciences at the Full or Associate Professor level.

The

FOR WOM E N

person who fills this position will be an outstanding researcher recognized nationally and internationally and will assist in the teaching of first-year medical students at the University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA). This is one of a suite of positions designed to stimulate continued growth and development of

..._____... biomedical sciences at the U niversity of Alaska.

Asian U niversity for Women seeks Vice Chancellor & CEO The Asi a n

U n iversity for Women, a start-up i n itiative i n Chittagong,

Bangladesh with the mission of prepa ring women of high a b i l ity a n d The Professor will provide leadership and mentorship for junior biomedical faculty at UAA. The Professor will become a leader i n the state's I N BRE Program (N IH's IDEA Network for Biomedical Research Excellence) and in the development of COBRE grants ( N IH's Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence) at UAA. I n addition, the

potential to meet society's challen ges and effect positive cha nge l oca l ly a n d t h roughout t h e world, is re newing i t s sea rch for a Vice Chancel lor. It seeks

Professor will be the liaison for Alaska's biomedical research program with the Institute of Translational

an outsta n d i n g leader with proven entre p re n e u rial a n d orga ni zational skills

Health Sciences at the Un iversity of Washington School of Medicine and will be eligible for an Affi liate Faculty

i n academia, busi n ess, government, or non-gove rnmenta l orga n i zations to

appointment at the U niversity of Washington School of Medicine. The successful candidate will be an established, funded investigator who demonstrates excellence in biomedical

lead the U n iversity as its Vice Chancellor and CEO. The i n c u m bent w i l l lead a growing and sophisticated i nternational tea m to create vi b ra nt a n d healthy

research and has experience i n teaching medical, graduate and/or undergraduate students. The incumbent will

academic and residential progra ms for st udents, oversee a sign ificant fa cil ities

be expected to teach first-year medical students at UAA and maintain a biomedical research program that is

development program, design a n d i m ple ment systems and processes for stable

supported by NIH or comparable funding agency. The successful applicant will be responsible for mentoring junior faculty at UAA, including those i n the INBRE program whose research falls under the INBRE themes of cell and molecular basis of disease, toxicology or infectious disease.

governa n ce and operations of the Un iversity, a n d lead an on-going global fu n d ra ising effort. The position ca l l s for a passio nate a n d socia l ly e m pathic leader who has exe m p l a ry orga n izational a n d com m u n i cation ski l l s a n d a

Areas of existing research emphasis include neuroscience, addictions, molecular biology, infectious diseases and environmental sciences. However, we will consider well qualified candidates in other areas, especially those with clinical translational research programs. Applicants must be able to work collaboratively i n an inter­ disciplinary environment.

deep u nd e rsta n d i ng of the needs of an academic com m u n ity a n d i ntel lectu a l co m m itment to free i n q u i ry. Experience i n b u i ld i ng a start-up i n i tiative into maturity wo uld be greatly va lued. A fa m i l i a rity with developing Asia a n d a n u nd e rsta n d i ng o f the u n i q u e c h a l l e nges of esta b l i s h i ng a tertiary academic

A competitive start-up package and salary will be provided to the successful applicant. Interested applicants should supply a curriculum vitae, a cover letter refere ncing PCN 300625, and contact information for three professional references through http://ww w.uakiobs.com .

i n stitution in such a setting wi l l bolster the in c u m bent's effective ness. The Vice Chancellor will have a sa l a ry of U S

Quick link: www.uakjobs.com/appl ica nts/Central?guickFind=68629 Contact: Ram Srinivasan, PhD, 907.786.4672, [email protected] WWAMI-Alaska's Medical School: http://biomed .uaa.alaska.edu University of Alaska Anchorage: www.uaa.alaska.edu UAA is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer. Women and minorities are encouraged to apply.

m ay be tax-exem pted i n Bangladesh.

$150,000

to

$180,000

which

I n add ition, free housing and a

com p rehensive package of benefits a re offe re d . Please d i rect nomi nations/ a p p l i cations for this position to M r. David Patti l lo, VC Sea rch Coord i nator at:

[email protected]. Additi o n a l www.asian-university.org. or

i n formation on the U niversity is ava i lable at: by e m a i l req uest.

www.asian-un iversity.org

Cell P

R

E S S

Editor, Trends i n Pharmacological Sciences Cell Press seeks t o appoint an Editor for Trends in Pharmacological Sciences be based in its Cambridge, MA office. Trends in Pharmacological Sciences is one of the leading monthly review journals in pharmacology and toxicology that covers broad range of exciting topics from molecular to behavioural pharmacology, and from current techniques to theoretical pharmacology. As the Editor of a leading international pharmacology reviews journal, you will be responsible for the strategic development and management of the content and editorial direction of the journal . As a leading biotec hnology company, Genzyme develops break­ through therapies for today's toughest medical challenges. Focused on i nnova-tion , our employees thrive in an entrepreneu rial environ ment in wh ich i n d ividuals can excel wh ile building on their d iverse strength s . We offer exc it-ing career opportu nities at every leve l , along with competitive compensation and benefits . We cu rrently have openings in the fol lowing areas: •

Process Engineering

•

Quality

•

Biotech Manufacturing

•

Information Technology

•

Research

•

Sales & Marketing

•

Materials Management

•

Finance

An E EO/AA Employer committed to a cu lturally diverse workplace.

You will b e acquiring, managing a n d developing the very best editorial content, making use of a network of contacts in academia, as well as exploiting information gathered at international conferences, to ensure the title maintains its market-leading position. You will collaborate with your Cell Press colleagues to maximize quality and efficiency of content commissioning and participate in exciting new non-journal based initiatives. The Editor will be trained and will work in the context of a highly dynamic and collaborative publishing group which includes the 14 Trends review journal titles and 12 Cell Press titles. The successful candidate will have a PhD and preferably postdoctoral training with expertise in any of the diverse pharmacology and related disciplines that the journal publishes. Good interpersonal skills are essential because the role involves networking in the wider scientific community as well as collaborations with other parts of the business . For this position, previous publishing experience is not necessary - we will make sure you get the training and development needed. This is an ideal opportunity to stay close to the cutting edge of scientific developments in the field while developing

For immed iate consideration, we encou rage all appl icants to go to our

a new career in an exciting publishing environment. Please submit a CV and cover

website and apply online.

letter describing your qual ifications, research interests, and reasons for pursuing a career in publishing. We are looking to fill the position at the earliest possible and

Ranked #5 Employer among the World's Top 20 Biotechnology & Pharmaceutical Companies www.genzyme.com/careers

50 1N ewScientist 1 9 J a n u a ry 2010

appl ications will be considered on an ongoing basis till fi lled. Visit to apply: http:// reedelsevier.taleo. net/careersection/51/jobdetai l.ftl?lang=en&job=CELOOOON. Or visit NewScientistJobs.com and search Job 10 200672100. No phone inquiries, please. Cell Press is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer, M/F/DN.

www.NewScientistJobs.com

At Monsa nto, o u r ta lented e m p l oyees a re contri buting to o u r su ccess as a global leader in biotec hnology. By del ivering exceptional results i n o n e o f t h e world's m ost i mporta nt i n d u stries - agriculture - w e a re c reating solutions t h a t i m p rove p rodu ctivity in fa rming w h i l e red u cing t h e i m pact on o u r environ ment. We a re looking for tal ented scientists i n the fol lowing fiel ds:

Biochemistry

Global Germ plasm Manage ment

Protein Sciences

Bioi nformatics /Genom ics

M ic robiology

Regulatory Sciences/Affairs

Data Management/Data Min ing

N utrient and Water Use Effi ciency

Statistical/Quantitative Genetics

Developmental Biology

Plant Breed ing and Genetics

Structural Biology

Drought/Abiotic Stress Tolerance

Plant Molec u l a r Biology

Engineering and Automation

Plant Pathology/Entomology/ Nematology

Gene Discovery/Trait Cha racterization

Plant Physiology

Gene Su ppression Technology

Plant Transformation

To learn more a bout Monsanto and our exciting career opportunities or to apply, visit o u r careers site :

www.monsanto.com/careers Monsanto is an equal opportunity employer, we value a diverse combination of ideas, perspectives and cultures.

M O N SANTO

EEOjAA EMPLOYER MjFjDjV

�,

UNC

S C H OO L O F ME D I C I

E

Faculty Positions in Cancer and Stem Cell Research Cancer Genetics

As part ofthe University Cancer Research Fund initiative, the UN C Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Carolina Center for Genome Sciences and the Department of Genetics at UNC Chapel Hill are continuing expansion with new faculty recruitment (rank open) in the area of Cancer Genetics. The successful applicant will establish a vigorous research program and contribute to on-going efforts to dissect the genetic and biological bases of cancer susceptibility and development. Priority will be placed on individuals applying systems biology approaches in relevant mouse models. Applicants should have a PhD or MD /PhD degree. Applicants should apply online at http: / /jobs.unc.edu/ 10021 65 and attach a cover letter, curriculum vitae, and a statement of research interests (maximum 2 pages). Four letters of recommendation should be sent as email attachments to: Cathy Cornett [email protected]

UNC at Chapel Hill Stem Cell Initiative The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill invites applications for academic positions (rank open) in Stem Cell Biology. These faculty positions reflect a continuing expansion of the stem cell initiative housed in the UNC Center for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine. Each successful candidate will be expected to develop a vigorous, externally funded research program based on fundamental questions related to the biology of embryoniC or adult stem cells. Specific areas include:

I): Research exploring the molecular regulation of embryonic stem cell pluripotentiality and differentiation, including genomic remodeling

and nuclear reprogramming. 2) : Active research programs focused on defining the potential of both embryonic and adult stem cells in the treatment of diseases. Applicants should have a PhD or MD/PhD degree. Applicants should apply online at http://jobs.unc.edu/ 1002061 and attach a curriculum vitae and cover letter. Four letters of recommendation (hard copy) should be sent to: Dr. Larysa Pevny, Director, Center for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine UNC at Chapel Hill 8 1 09b Neuroscience Research Bldg, Campus Box #7250 Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7250 Application deadline: open until filled.

The University ofNorth Carolina at Chapel Hill is an equal opportunity/ADA employer. Women and minorities are encouraged to apply. 9 January 2010 I N ewScientist 1 51

www.NewScientistJobs.com

o mis e of H op e. D edicate d to a Pr

Research Staff Opportunities st. Jude Ch ildren 's Research Hospital is a place where cutti ng­ edge research and revol utionary discoveries happen every day. Research efforts at 8t. Jude are d i rected at u nderstanding the molecular, genetic and chemical bases of catastrophic d iseases in childre n . Positions are avai lable a t al l levels, with t h e opportu n ity to grow with i n our hospital 's research caree r ladder. For i nformation on cu rre nt opportu n ities and to apply, please visit our Web site ,

�

www.stjude.org/jobs.

Candidates receiving offers of employment will be subject to pre-employment drug testing and background checks. Federal law

-

requires all employers to verify the identity and employment eligibility of all persons hired to work in the United States. To support this mandate,

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital ALSAC

Ranked in the Top 1 0 best places to work in academia yearly since 2005, by

•

Danny Thomas Founder

Finding cures. Saving children.

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital participates in E-Verify.

The Scientist magazine.

Named the nation's No. 1 pediatric cancer care hospital by Parents magazine, 2009. © 2009 SI. Jude Children's Research Hospital-Biomedical Communications.

An Equal Opportunity Employer and a Drug-Free Workplace

U

CG

,

Joint School of NorthCal1lrna A&T Nanoscience and Nanoengineering 5ta University· Tenure-Track Assistant or Associate Professor ofNanoscience

The Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering QSNN) is a partnership between North Carolina A&T State University and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. The Nanoscience Department of the JSNN will be hiring faculty members to carry out the JSNN mission of education, research and outreach and engagement. The positions will be at the tenure-track Assistant or Associate Professor ranks, reporting to the Nanoscience Department Head. Individuals with research expertise in the emerging areas of Nanobiology, Nanochemistry, Nanophysics, Computational Nanoscience, Nanoenvironmental Science, Nanometrology or other nanoscience fields will be given consideration. The successful candidates will be expected to develop and teach introductory and advanced graduate-level courses in nanoscience, develop a world­ class sponsored research program in their field, mentor graduate students and develop collaborations with academic, industrial and government partners. These positions will also be responsible for the day-to-day supervision of one or more of JSNN's advanced laboratory facilities. Candidates for these tenure-track Assistant/Associate Professorships should have an earned doctorate in science, a minimum of two years of post­ doctoral experience and demonstrated research experience in nanoscience. Interested applicants must submit a cover letter, a current resume with publication list, list of five references, a statement of research interests and a statement of teaching philosophy to:

James G. Ryan, Ph.D. Dean, JSNN 2901 East Lee St. Suite 2200, Greensboro, NC 27401

Salary and position are commensurate with experience and qualifications.

The University of North Carolina at Greensboro is committed to equality of employment opportunity and does not discriminate against applicants or employees based on race, color, creed, national origin, religion, gender, age, disability, veteran status, political affiliation or sexual orientation. Moreover, the University ofNorth Carolina at Greensboro is committed to recruiting and advancing women and minorities at allfaculty/stafflevels.

52 1 N ewScientist 1 9 January 2010

www.NewScientistJobs.com

J o i n o u r tea m

and m a ke a world of difference.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory ( N R E L) is the U . S . Dept of Energy's pri m a ry laboratory en ergy

for

renewa ble

effi ciency

research.

energy Demand

and for

clean energy tech no logi es is increasing at an un prece dented rate. Come j o i n us as we grow to meet this demand.

We offer ca reer

opportu nities in many fi elds:

E NG I N EERS, SCI E NTISTS, ANALYSTS, RES EARCH ERS, LEAD E RS H I p, SU PPORT AN D BUSI N ESS POS ITIONS Please see o u r website a t

nrel,gov/employment

NREL is

an equal opportunity employer and drug-free workplace.

Are you ready to make a positive, global impact? We have a place for you.

C halleng ing, cutting-edge career opportunities await you

at Pioneer Hi-Bred , a DuPont business. We are the world's lead ing source of custom ized sol utions for farmers, livestock producers, and grain and oi lseed processors. Pioneer provides access to advanced plant genetiCS i n

Wolff Harris Chair in Physiology Deportment of Physiology Otago School of Medical Sciences Division of Health Sciences University of Otago

7 0 cou ntries worldwide.

Make a difference in our world Our mission is to help farmers be more productive - and, we go to extraordinary lengths to maximize their success. At Pioneer, we ' re looking for people who bri ng new perspectives, ski lls and passion to expand our vi ew.

The University of Otago is New Zealand's oldest and most research-intensive university and has an international reputation for excellence in education and research quality.

Exciting work, opportunities to advance

The University of Otago is looking for an outstanding academic for the prestigious Wolff Harris Chair in Physiology, which was established in 1 903.

You'll work i n an environment that offers new chal lenges

The Department of Physiology is the largest of its kind in New Zealand and celebrated its 1 DOth anniversary in 2005. The Department has strong links with national and international research arganisations and laboratories.

advancement, and growth opportu nities in various parts

The Department has cantributed strongly to international biomedical research. Academic and research staff are engaged in high quality physiological research focused on the three themes of: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience; Cardiovascular and Respiratory Physiology; and Membrane PhYSiology and Ion Transport. This is an exceptional opportunity to cantribute strongly to a dynamic and stimulating academic environment for learning and scholarship. The successful appointee will have a distinguished record of research in one of the Department's areas of research interest, proven academic leadership and commitment to academic excellence. The Department of Physiology is located in Dunedin city, which is attractively situated within easy distance of mountains, lakes, fiords and coastal country of considerable natural beauty.

For further information please contact Elvira Bobekova at Academic Search International (ASI) on +64 9 379 6900 or [email protected] Applications dose on 1 February 201 0.

and recognition for you r work. Career development and of the organ ization are al l available to you at Pioneer. With our international presence and affil iation with DuPont, you have the chance to expand your career in ways you may not imagine. Join a growing organ ization and be part of the team putti ng the best of science and service to work for farmers worldwide.

C[OPON]

The miracles ofscience'·

The DuPont Oval Logo and The miracles of science™ are trademarks of DuPont or its affi Iiates. ® Registered trademarks and service marks of Pioneer Hi-Bred.

©2009 PHIl. 09-3725

9 January 2010 1 N ewScientist 1 53

www.NewScientistJobs.com

NCAR

ADVANCED STUDY

PROGRAM POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWS

The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) seeks talented ind ividuals to conduct original research in areas broadly related to atmospheric science or other research areas at NCAR, i ncl uding solar and space physics, oceanography, hydrology, energy and economics, integrated assessment, land use, new technologies, turbulence, applied mathematics and computational science, and to document that

�esearch in publications. These individuals will seek to broaden their understanding by

Interacting widely with scientists and other postdoctoral researchers at NCAR. NCAR intends to hire as many as ten new Postdoctoral Fellows. The Recruitment period will end on Monday, January 5, 201 0. ASP Postdoc positions are for one year with an opportunity to renew for a second year. Successful applicants will join the appropriate laboratories, divisions, or institutes at NCAR that best match their interests. Appointments may beg in as early as June 2010. Applicants who will not be available to begin work u ntil after January 20 1 1 should wait u nti l the 20 1 0 recruitment period, which will begin in November 20 1 0 . Requires a Ph.D. degree in atmospheric science or a related field. The fellow should not be more than four years beyond the Ph.D. degree at the start of the appointment.

?

Must have a ility to exercise considerable independent judgment and creativity. . Requires abil ity to conduct research with minimal supervision and strong communication skil ls. View detailed job description at www. ucar. edu . Applications must be received prior to Monday, January 5, 201 0. (Reference tracking code 1 0019). We value diversity. AA1EOE

54 1 NewSci entist 1 9 January 2010

University of California, Berkeley Lecturer Position in Department of Chemistry The Department of Chem istry solicits applications for a lecturer position beginning in July 2010. The appo intment is for one year with the potential for annual renewal consistent with University policies. Applicants for each � osition should send a curriculum vitae and a summary of teaching experience, and arrange to have three letters of recommendation sent to the address specified below. Please note the UC statement on confidentiality at httj2;lI-.aRo.chance.berkeleY'.eduleval ltr.htm l. The deadline for receipt of applications is March 01, 2010. Application review will begin with receipt of applications. Applications and letters of recommendation should be sent to: Lecturer Search (ID #20) Department of Chemistry, 419 Latimer Hall U niversity of California, Berkeley Berkeley, CA 94720-1460 or chemdeRt.recruit@ berkeley-.edu or Electronic subm issions preferred via Candidate self-registration at http://chem-deRt. berkeley-.edu:80ls Reg. phR?i=61

Lecturer in Organic Chemistry (10 #20) Duties of the position include teaching organic chemistry courses leading weekly reviews, supervising graduate student instructor (TA's) and student laboratory sections and providing exam support for other courses. Additional responsibilities could include the teaching of an advanced organic synthesis laboratory for chemistry majors and an independent research program involving undergraduate students. Qualifications: A Ph.D. and previous teaching experience a re required .

�

The University of California is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer.

www.NewScientistJobs.com

'.

;- . ��\ '\ '\\ I

I

\

--- '. '

.

.

\

..

\

..

,

�

. .. • .

•

r I

, .

.

,

�t

r.:

.:

'.)

'--

I

.,

...

.,.

. ,.� CO',

,I

.. � �

.

':000: "

' ......

;

.

-

II

�

. ..

. ....�

.� . la. '

,

\0 •

.

...

�.

•

•

"

,

�.

,

0'

'

I

"

-- - .

.

� ;

�

- - '.I!I(oJ'iI'� (ltll

•

.....

.

I

�"-- . �, .� ...." ..... ".

-.....

•

, (It

· r

,I ."

.\ ) �" I ..

I') . , . ..

iL. :.....,. ' . ,-.... ' � . l'

"

.

.

'•

...

.. ,

.

.r

/'C \

T

_.

,,, ,,, �.

\

I

�; . ". . .'

"

.J

....

-

1 ..

I

---y: �

--

9 January 2010 I N ewScientist 1 55

FEEDBACK

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

the network is down is another

((TV surveillance cameras are -

question, as Mel Martin points out

according to a photo that Joshua Hall

on The Unofficial Apple Weblog.

sent us from a suburb of Nottingham

AT&T is hardly unique in failing to

H �N D

SA" I�

in the east Midlands, UK - "aware

understand this problem, he writes,

and operating at this bus shelter

recalling his experience many years

location".Joshua is concerned that

ago while working at a public service

the highways department of

television station in Ohio.

Nottinghamshire council didn't

"We had pretty weak reception, and the station manager decided to do an hour-long programme to tell people how to adjust their antennas if they

inform us that it was developing self-aware security cameras. Or did they gain consciousness by accident? Their proliferation -

couldn't receive us. I tried, and failed,

hanging like bunches of electronic

to convince him that the very people

grapes in an increasing number of

we were trying to reach couldn't see

locations - certainly suggests that

the programme. My pleas fell on deaf

we should monitor their evolutionary

ears, so we did the programme and

progress with some care.

great hilarity ensued as the local press chewed us up for our stupidity."

HAVING won the 2003 Ig Nobel prize in literature, for meticulously collecting data and publishing more than 80 detailed academic reports about things that annoyed him, John Trinkaus has continued his quest, with a study published in the November/ December issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. "A number of organizations with high pedestrian traffic volume throughout the day in their buildings have installed hand sanitizing devices in the lobbies," he notes. We have them right here in Feedback Towers, too. They are, one would have thought, rather more important to medical professionals. So during the summer of last year John observed people's behaviour in "a US teaching hospital located in the suburbs of a large north­ eastern city". Of 500 people he saw passing a sanitiser, he judged 108 to be healthcare practitioners, on the basis that they were wearing

a hospital identification badge, or dressed in "seemingly hospital garb". Of these, only three (3 per cent) used the facility. Of the remaining 392 judged to be visitors and patients, 23 (6 per cent) did so. His foremost hypothesis for this astonishing laxness in the midst of a possible flu pandemic is that "These folks may have simply been in 'summer mode', thoughts of vacations and fun rather than disease and pestilence being uppermost in their minds." Further study appears to be required. It should be done soon, though, while it's still winter in the north-eastern US.

APPS on the iPhone are hot, so everybody wants to get in on the action, like AT&T, which has created an app for iPhone users on its wireless network to report problems, including service outages on said network. How you're supposed to do that when

When she bo u g ht a Transcend U S B Flash D rive 16G B1 Jacq u i Sta n l ey was p l eased to d iscover that Transcend has annou n ced lithe extension of its renowned Lifeti me Wa rra nty" 56 1 NewScientist 1 9 Jan uary 2010

CAMPAIGNING for another bridge or tunnel across the Thames river in London, blackwalltunnel.com presents meters showing the traffic flowing into and out of each portal of the existing Blackwall

tunnel. Checking the site at 5 pm on a Friday, Feedback was concerned to see huge numbers of vehicles entering the northern portal and none at all leaving the southern. What was their fate? Equally worrying, nothing was shown entering from the south, even though traffic was pouring out of the north portal. Presumably these vehicles originated somewhere even more mysterious than south London. However, as Richard Knight points out, beneath the meters is written "Accuracy +/- 90%". All may be explained.

PERUSING a catalogue that had fallen out of a magazine, Mike Steinbock was fascinated by an advert for the "1- Balance Negative Ion Necklace". His attention was not so much caught by the quackledygook about negative ions being "known to facilitate blood circulation and enhance metabolism by lifting body temperatures", as by the claim that the necklace is "made of specially designed negative ions". Would those have been designed by Oregon Scientific, the company that sells the necklaces at $39.99 each - or are we talking "intelligent chemistry" here? Mike fears the latter and worries that Oregon Scientific is trying to open a new front for creationists.

F INALLY, computer administrators at Darren Gye's place of work in Tasmania, Australia, have produced a perfect example of Malformed Acronym Syndrome (21 November). They have dubbed their new piece of software, the Fire Appliance Resource Kit, "FARKit". This, says Darren, is in fact "what we say every time it doesn't work".

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

Last word s past an d present, p l u s q u esti ons, at www. l ast-wor d .com

THE LAST WORD Speed freaks

times as much volume as a single violin: if one violin produces 70 dB, 16 produce 82 dB. Similarly, A single Formula 1 car passing silencing half of the trumpets by makes a noise of around 110 decibels. Last year I went which are obviously much louder to a Formula 1 Grand Prix and sat than violins - only reduces their near the start line, where 20 cars volume by a few decibels, which left the grid at once. The noise was explains why you need so many mind-numbing, much louder than a more violins than trumpets in an orchestra. single car, but not 20 times louder This also has implications (or 2200 decibels, an unachievable for traffic-noise control. If the figure). Why wasn't it? noise emanating from a car • There are two things here. engine is roughly the same First, the sound sources are not level as the noise from its tyres synchronised: the cars are making then there's not much point in noise independently of one reducing engine noise by more another, and so a burst of loud than about 3 dB without also power always produces roughly noise from one might coincide reducing the tyre noise. the same increase in loudness, with a drop in noise from another. Hugh Hunt no matter where you start. For these unsynchronised sound University of Cambridge, UK A rule of thumb that works pretty well for most people is that sources, the sound pressure (the air compressions that your ear an increase of 10 dB corresponds • Back in 1990, I measured sound levels at a Formula 1 Grand Prix at to "twice as loud", so 20 cars Silverstone in the UK for health passing at once would be a bit liThe decibel sca le is loga rith m ic, so th i n gs do n't and safety. I found that the sound more than twice as loud as one level from a single car passing, car to a listener such as your just a d d together: 19 extra measured in the pits, was indeed questioner - the 13 dB given by cars o n ly add about 13 d BII the first correspondent. about 110 dB. detects) increases only according The sound level varied widely This just goes to prove that the decibel is a very confusing unit of to the square root of the number throughout the race. In the first of sources. lap, all the cars passed by my Second, the decibel (dB) scale is measuring point virtually at once, liThe answers to this logarithmic: things don't just add but at the end all the cars were q u estion show that the together neatly. The increase in well spread out around the track. decibel is a very confusing the decibel level is the logarithm The difference in maximum level u n it of m easurementll of the ratio of the number of between the first lap and later laps measurement. With this in mind where the cars were spread out sources (in this example, 20/1) multiplied by 10. The 19 extra I've taken on the challenge of was variable but around 12 dB, cars add only around 13 dB, so close to what theory predicts. explaining decibels for people the noise from 20 cars will be who don't know what a logarithm Loudness to a human observer is, at bitJy /decibels. just 123 dB or thereabouts. is another matter altogether and The same is true for violins in Tony Woolf differs from recorded sound an orchestra. The 16 violins in an levels. The human ear works using Acoustic consultant orchestra produce only four London, UK ratios, so doubling the sound

Questions and answers should be concise,

New Scientist retains total editorial control

We reserve the right to ed it items for clarity

over the content of The Last Word, Send

and style, Include a daytime te lephone

questions and answers to The Last Word,

n u m ber and email address if you have

New Scientist, Lacon House, 84 Theobald's

one, Restrict q uestions to scientific

Road, London WClX 8 N S, UK, by email to

e n q u i ries about everyday phenomena,

lastword@newsci e ntistcom or visit

The writers of published answers will

www.last-word .com (please include a

receive a cheque for £25 (or U S$

postal address in order to receive payment

equ ivalent), Reed Business Information Ltd

for answers),

reserves all rig hts to reuse questi o n and

For a list of all unanswered q uestions

answer material submitted by readers in

send an SAE to LWQl ist at the above

any medi u m or format

address,

Do Polar Bears Get Lonely? Our latest coll ection serious enquiry, brilliant insight an d the hilariously unexpecte d

Available from booksellers and at www.newscientist.com/ polarbears

This week's questions RI PPLE E FFECT

This glass seems to have no ripples in it when viewed from the side, but lots when viewed from above (see photo). Why is this? Liam, age 11 Galway, Ireland J UMBO J UMP INCi

We've heard that elephants are the only quadrupeds that can't jump. Is it true? If so, why not? And if it's not true, how high can they jump? Tad and Lydia Forty Bath, Avon, UK NO SOLIDS

I made a sauce for lamb from blueberries and cassis, but made too much so put some in the freezer. It wouldn't set solid and spent a month being malleable at -7 °C. It tasted OK when we used it later. Why wouldn't it freeze solid? Tom Lyndhurst Pinner, Middlesex

Official government fuel consumption figures in MPG (Litres per 100km) for the E-Class Estate Range: Urban: 15.0 Model shown is a Mercedes-Benz E 350 CGI BlueEFFICIENCY Avantgarde Estate with optional metallic paint at £620.00, optional privacy glass at £350.00 and optional 18" alloy wheels at £775.00. Total Price:

(18.8)-38.2 (7.4), Extra Urban: 30.4 (9.3)-60.1 (4.7) , Combined: 22.1 (12.8) -49.6 (5.7) . CO2 emissions: 299-150g/km. £41,220.00 on-the-road (price includes VAT, delivery, maximum Road Fund Licence, number plates, new vehicle registration fee and fuel). Prices correct at time of going to print.