4 | NewScientist | 20 July 2013

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NEPTUNE has a new moon, and its existence is an enigma. Known for now as S/2004 N1, its diminutive size raises questions as to how it survived the chaos thought to have created the planet’s moons.

Mark Showalter of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, and colleagues found the small moon as they were poring over pictures of the planet’s rings taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2009.

It was a shock because the moon seems too small to be part of the Neptunian system. The biggest moon, Triton, is 2705 kilometres across and orbits in the opposite direction to the planet’s spin. Its large size and

wonky orbit led astronomers to believe that Triton was captured by Neptune about 4 billion years ago and it destroyed any moons the planet originally had. The

New moon rising existing moons were rebuilt from the wreckage.

The new moon is 20 kilometres across. In the post-Triton chaos, such a small rock should have been swept up to become part of the neighbouring mid-size moon Proteus, or broken up by asteroids after the system settled down.

So what to call this new moon? Neptune’s other moons are named after Greek and Roman water deities, but Showalter’s team don’t have a favourite to propose: “It’s just ‘that little moon’, because S/2004 N1 doesn’t roll off the tongue.”

Thirsty power WATER or clean energy? In our increasingly water stressed world, this may become the next sticking point in the fight against climate change.

The biggest users of water are nuclear power plants, followed by fossil fuel plants. Both use water for cooling and steam to drive their turbines. But renewable and clean energy sources also need a lot of water, finds a new report from the US Department of Energy. This includes water used to drive hydropower plants and

that used indirectly, to irrigate biofuel crops or cool solar plants.

A separate report by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) says the US could cut its carbon emissions by 80 per cent by 2050 by using more nuclear energy and carbon capture and storage technology. But this strategy would need 42 per cent more water than the US’s power projections currently predict.

Water scarcity should be taken into account along with emissions when planning new power sources, says John Rogers of the UCS in Washington DC.

Bespoke miceMORE animals were used in lab research in Britain last year than there are people living in Los Angeles. UK government figures show that 4 million animals were used, a 9 per cent increase on 2011. Most of these – 3.3 million – were rodents. Some 2200 primates were used, mainly to test drug safety.

The majority of the rodents were mice, 1.77 million of which were “knockouts”: animals

–Helped over the line?–

–At least there are no cats here–

Sprinters in doping stormTHE second-fastest man in history, Tyson Gay of the US, admits he has stumbled big time. “I don’t have anything to say to make this seem like it was a mistake,” Gay was reported as saying when news broke that he had tested positive for a banned substance. The fourth-fastest man, Asafa Powell of Jamaica, also failed a dope test, as did four other Jamaican athletes.

Powell tested positive for oxilofrine – an amphetamine related to ephedrine, and developed to treat low blood pressure. What Gay took had not been revealed as New Scientist went to press. All athletes will now have a second sample tested.

Sports supplements may have been the source. “Oxilofrine is known to be available in dietary supplements,

especially those used mainly for weight loss,” says David Cowan, head of the Drug Control Centre at King’s College London. He says athletes may inadvertently take a banned chemical if they use a supplement that is either accidentally or deliberately doped. “Often labelling is poor, and we have found illegal substances in supplements,” he says.

The appeal of using stimulants is that they give an instant response, says Greg Whyte of Liverpool John Moores University, UK, who helped to set up a scheme to screen supplements. Testing regimes in sport are too weak to deter cheating, he adds. “The prevalence of doping in the best athletes in the world continues to reinforce that they are unafraid of the system,” he says.

“The tiny body seems too small to have survived the chaos thought to have created Neptune’s moons”

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with a specific gene turned off. A lucrative industry has sprung up to supply them. Phil Simmons of Sage Labs, St Louis, Missouri, a commercial supplier, estimates that the industry’s worldwide turnover is $50 million a year.

By 2016, each of the mouse’s 20,000 genes will have been turned off, if work by the International Knockout Mouse Consortium goes to plan. It has received $150 million in funding from the US National Institutes of Health and the European Union.

Cheap the mice ain’t: a bespoke knockout mouse typically costs around $45,000.

Quiet sun won’t lastTHOSE hoping the sun will save us from climate change are in for disappointment: a recent lapse in solar activity is not the beginning of a decades-long slump that might have cooled the planet.

Sunspots are the seat of solar activity and can affect Earth’s climate in a number of ways, although the extent is debated. Sunspot numbers wax and wane in a cycle that lasts 11 years or so.

The current cycle should be at its peak now. But sunspots have been scarce since 2008, leading to speculation that we are about to enter a prolonged quiet spell. The last such event coincided with the worst winters of the Little Ice Age, which began in the 16th century.

New comparisons between the ongoing maximum and historical data suggest the sun’s activity is more akin to a short series of weak cycles at the beginning of the 20th century, says Giuliana DeToma of the High Altitude Observatory in Boulder, Colorado, who presented the work at the American Astronomical Society’s solar physics meeting on 11 July.

The findings fit with a prediction made in 1933 that these minor dips occur every century. That suggests the sun will soon become more energetic, and any cooling from the brief downturn will stop.

Pollution deathsHOLD your breath. Air pollution kills more than 2 million people worldwide every year.

By using climate models to simulate what air pollution was like in 1850 and 2000, Jason West at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his colleagues have estimated its effect on death rates today. The team links ozone to about 470,000 deaths per year from respiratory disease; increases in particulates – fine particles that penetrate the lungs – are behind 2.1 million deaths from heart and

lung disease. Climate change is linked to just 3700 of these air pollution deaths (Environmental Research Letters, doi.org/m8j).

“Many of these deaths occur in Asia, where air pollution has increased markedly in recent

years,” says Frank Kelly of King’s College London. “Mortality associated with poor air quality is likely to become the world’s top environmental challenge.”

CHINA and the US collaborating in the fight against climate change? Impossible, we hear you say. And yet, after years of public stand-offs, the world’s two largest planet warmers – with 40 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions between them – last week reached a ground-breaking deal in Washington DC.

Both countries are keen on quick fixes for greenhouse gases other than CO2. They will phase out hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), used as refrigerants, and harmonise vehicle emissions standards. That will include smoke emissions from large trucks, which also damage human lungs (see “Pollution deaths”, above).

Observers said the biggest advance by the US-China Working

Group on Climate Change was an agreement to work together to find commercial uses for CO2 captured from power plants – rather than letting it loose or storing it.

“The focus on carbon capture and utilisation is important,” says Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development in Washington DC. He thinks it could push forward schemes to use CO2 in cement. “Storing CO2 in our highways and buildings is smart technology and smart business.”

The two countries also pledged to collaborate on smart power grids that can make greater use of intermittent renewable energy sources like wind and solar power.

An unexpected agreement

–A deal to smile about–

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Park on the moonAs space mining edges closer to reality, two US senators say now is the time to protect historical sites on the moon. On 8 July they introduced a bill that would turn part of the moon into a national park, safeguarding artefacts associated with the Apollo missions. Government transparency website GovTrack.us gives a 7 per cent chance the bill will be enacted.

Scottish datingArchaeologists have discovered the world’s oldest calendar in a field in Aberdeenshire, UK. Dating from 8000 BC, the calendar is actually an arc of 12 pits from which the sun appears to rise over the year. The shape of each pit seems to mimic the phases of the moon (Internet Archaeology, doi.org/m7x).

Surviving a T. rex biteA duckbilled dinosaur’s tail bone has been found in South Dakota, and embedded in it is a Tyrannosaurus rex tooth. The injury has healed, suggesting that the duckbill survived the attack, and that the T. rex was an active hunter (PNAS, doi.org/m8h).

Scan for ADHDThe first brain scanning test for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. The test uses electrodes to track specific patterns of brainwaves thought to be more prevalent in children with ADHD. According to the FDA, the method aids accurate diagnosis, although study data has not been made available.

Nightmare-liner?An empty 787 Dreamliner jet parked at London’s Heathrow airport suffered a fire that burned through part of its carbon-fibre hull on 12 July. The cause is unclear, but the UK Air Accidents Investigation Board says the plane’s lithium-ion batteries, which smouldered in two previous incidents, do not appear to be at fault this time.

For daily news stories, visit newscientist.com/news

“Mortality associated with air quality is likely to become the world’s top environmental challenge”

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