New Scientist - 10 January 2015.Bak

8/10/2019 New Scientist - 10 January 2015.Bak

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VIRTUAL CRIME SCENE3D recreations come

to the courtroom

TALKING GIBBONISHDeciphering the

banter of the apes

KILLER KITCHENIs your house

making you fat?

MOVING HEAVEN AND EARTHThe Milky Way isnt where we thought it was

HOW LONGISNOW?Your life plays out three seconds at a time

ILL SAVE MY BRAINA doctors mission to treat his own tumour

WEEKLYJanuary 10 - 16,2015

0 7 0 9 8 9 3 0 6 9 0 5

0 2

No3003 US$5.95 CAN$5.

Science and technology news www.newscientist.com US jobs in science


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New Scientist, 16 March 1972


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Take a walk onthe wild side

Which animal has the biggest mouth?

Can alligators use tools?

Could a mouse beat a scorpion in a fight?

New Scientists Anti-Zooanswers these

questions and many more. Prepare to meet

50 of the most unexpected animals known

to science the mavericks and misfits of

the animal kingdom.

Buy your copy now from all good

newsagents or digitally. Find out more at:

newscientist.com/antizoo


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10 January 2015 | NewScientist | 3

OTT Volume 225 No 3003This issue online

newscientist.com/issue/3003

News6 UPFRONT

Monarch butterfly risks extinction. Hubble

recaptures Pillars of Creation. Did AirAsia

flight stall? New antibiotic has 30-year life8 THIS WEEK

Forensic holodeck coming to courtrooms.

Earths deep inhabitants have novel

evolution. Why people drive elephants off

cliffs. Fat cells fend off invasive bacteria

10 SPECIAL REPORT

A doctors mission to save his own brain

15 IN BRIEF

Origins of crabs that look like frogs.

Volcanoes held back complex life. How

alcohol affects your immune system

Coming next weekRerunning evolutionHow to teach a fish to walk, and other stories

Multiverse shmultiverseIs physicss biggest idea a delusion?

Cover imageMatthieu Bourel

28

39

Planet-huntingfor the people

The search forexoplanets just gotmuch cheaper

8

RODWILLIAMS/N

ATUREPL.C

OM

NASA/ESA/HUBBLECOLLABORATIONSTSCI/AURA

How longis now?

Your life plays outthree seconds at a time

Talkinggibbonish

Deciphering thebanter of the apes

Technology

19 In the kitchen with a supercomputer chef.Return of the video game arcade

News

On the cover

Features

10 Ill save my brain

A doctors mission to

treat his own tumour

32 Heaven and Earth

The Milky Way has moved

39 Talking gibbonish

Deciphering ape banter

12 Virtual crime scene

3D courtroom recreations

36 Killer kitchen

Is your house making

you fat?

Opinion24 Kiwi comedown Ross Bell asks what we

can learn from New Zealands drugs debacle

25 One minute with Jeffrey ScottHow we

turned the common fly into a friend

26 Mars mission NASA chief scientist Ellen

Stofan says were 20 years away from Mars

54 LETTERS

Cancer hacking. Snooze alarm

Features28 How long is now?(see above left)

32 Moving heaven and Earth The Milky Way

isnt where we thought it was

36 Killer kitchen Is your house making you fat?

39 Talking gibbonish (see left)

CultureLab42 One per cent inspiration...Closing in on

the sources of creativity and innovation

43 Whale world Orca clan calls and dolphin

tail-walking may be clues to cetacean culture

Regulars5 LEADERIts time to take patient

participation in drug research seriously

56 FEEDBACK Eat here, get gas

57 THE LAST WORD Shell suits

44 JOBS & CAREERS

Aperture22 Thief steals fish from pelicans mouth


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VISIT

AUSTRALIA.COM/BUSINESSEVENTS/ASSOCIATIONS

FOR EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO PLAN YOUR AUSTRALIAN EVENT.

THERES NOTHING LIKE AUSTRALIA FOR YOUR NEXT BUSINESS EVENT.

This year we chose Australia for our global congress. It was an easy choice, as Australias proximity to Asia gave us the

opportunity to attract many new delegates. The program was one of the best in years. New Australian developments in

our field attracted a lot of interest and strong international research partnerships were established.

Australia is on everyones list to visit, and it lured our highest number of delegates yet. Theres no doubt theyll be talkingabout this convention for years to come.

Dr Louise Wong,

International Board Member

Big landscapesInspire big thinking


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10 January 2015 |NewScientist |5

L

2014 was a landmark year for drugdevelopment. The US Food andDrug Administration approved41 new pharmaceuticals, themost since 1996. Each of thesewill (hopefully) make theworld a slightly better place,alleviating distress andpreventing premature deaths.

But developing drugs is

excruciatingly expensive and increasingly so. The cost ofbringing a new compound to themarket is now around $2.5 billion,twice as much in real terms as itwas a decade ago.

One of the costliest partsis recruiting and retainingvolunteers to test the drug ina clinical trial. Around three-quarters of trials are delayed

Inform, educate, cure

A design for life

Its time to take patient participation in drug research seriously

by problems with this process.Most trials over-recruit by up to50 per cent to compensate, but thedrop-out rate is still so high thatonly 1 in 20 volunteers end upgenerating useful data. The result:wasted time, effort and money.

That is not for lack of patientwillingness. In 2013, the UKsHouse of Commons found that

people want to volunteer butdont know how. Only about7 per cent of people with cancerwho are eligible to participatein a trial do so, for example.

It doesnt have to be thatway. There is evidence thatvolunteers can be brought onboard and kept there by makingmore of an effort to inform themand help them to choose which

trial they would like to enter.On page 10, we report how such

knowledge can be empowering.Former doctor Stuart Farrimondis weighing up experimentaltreatment options for his braintumour to his benefit and thatof the companies behind thetreatments. He is unusually well-informed, but his story hints at

what an empowered, informedpatient group might look like.The problems with volunteer

recruitment were identified adecade ago but havent beeneradicated. It is high time theywere. Drug development costs and delays are ultimatelypassed onto the consumer. Itis in everyones interests to getrid of this unnecessary waste.

EAT clay, drink urine, go veganuntil 6 pm then eat what you like.For people trying to lose weight oreat more healthily, there is alwaysa new fad diet on the table oftenwith a celebrity endorsement.

In the unlikely event thatyoure tempted, beware. Theseparticular ones are among theBritish Dietetic Associationstop 5 worst celebrity dietsto avoid in 2015.

The list is slightly tongue-in-cheek, but it carries a seriousmessage. Although fad diets cansound plausible, there is usuallylittle evidence that they work anda risk that they could be harmful.A year ago, the BDA was warningabout biotyping and gluten-freediets. New year, same old story.

There is, of course, a provenmethod to lose weight, but it lacksnovelty and celebrity backing. In a

nutshell: eat less and move more.

If that sounds too tedious, thereis another way. It is becomingincreasingly clear that yourenvironment from the crockeryand drinking vessels you use towhere you sit in restaurants influences your eating habits.Adjusting these factors mightsound almost as faddish as eatingclay, but it is backed by mountingevidence (see page 36). It is alsoeasier to maintain than a fad diet.So not all crazy-sounding diets arenonsense. But do read the label.

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6|NewScientist |10 January 2015

DESPERATE times call fordesperate measures. A Britishnurse, Pauline Cafferkey, remained

in critical condition as we went topress this week, after contractingEbola in Sierra Leone. She isbeing treated with plasma froma former Ebola patient, which ispacked with antibodies to the

virus, and an unidentifiedexperimental drug.

She is a high-profile case, but byno means the only person beingtreated with candidate drugs:trials of two experimental drugshave now started among Ebolapatients in Liberia and Guinea,and the third will start beingorganised in Sierra Leone nextweek. This will involve the first-ever RNA-based drug to be testedagainst an infection in humans.

The drug, made by Canadianfirm Tekmira, is a shortinterfering RNA (siRNA),

ITS time to strike back. Antibioticresistance has garnered headlinesin recent years, but 2015 may be

the year we overcome it.Two new antibiotics wereannounced this week. One,teixobactin, was discoveredby screening soil for bacteriathat have evolved to kill theircompetitors. It appears to act onMRSA and the bacteria that causemulti-drug resistant TB, amongothers, by targeting a lipid ontheir cell walls.

Testing Ebola New antibiotics

OT

Because control efforts inMonrovia are working, itmight be hard to find 140patients for the drug trial

designed to stop a key virus genefrom working. With US militaryfunding, Tekmira has developedstable nanoparticles of fats andsiRNA that stop the Ebola virus

from replicating by blockinga specific gene. Intravenousdoses starting half an hour afterinfection saved monkeys fromlethal infections.

Tekmira announced on22 December that it would carryout human trials in West Africawith siRNA specifically matchedto the epidemic strain.

Peter Horby of the Universityof Oxford is leading the Liberiatrial of a conventional antiviral,brincidofovir. That began on

1 January in Monrovia, previouslya hotspot for the epidemic. Now,though, control efforts in the cityare working, and it might be hardto find the 140 patients needed.

This is good news, but we alsohave to move fast to test thesedrugs, says Horby. He is helpingset up the Tekmira trial and willlook out for further test sites inSierra Leone. They will still beneeded: despite improvementsin some areas the epidemicshows no sign of stopping.

Most existing antibiotics targebacterial proteins but these alterover time, leading to resistance.The team developing the drug atNortheastern University in Bosto

reckons that if it was used to treatpeople, it would take at least30 years for bacteria to developresistance (Nature, doi.org/x3m)

The second drug is beingdeveloped by Novartis to treatmulti-drug resistant TB (ScienceTranslational Medicine, DOI:10.1126/scitranslmed.3010597).Both drugs worked in mice andtrials are planned for teixobactin

Did AirAsia flight stall?A STALL may be behind it all. Thats

the indication from radar datarecorded during the final moments

of Indonesia AirAsia flight QZ8501,

which crashed into the Java Sea on

28 December, killing 162 people.

In the pilots last communication

before losing contact with air traffic

control, they requested permission

to climb to avoid bad weather on

their way from Surabaya, Indonesia,

to Singapore. According to data

leaked on Twitter by aviation

analyst Gerry Soejatman, the plane

seems to have been at an altitude

of 11,000 metres and climbing at

654 kilometres an hour shortly

before it crashed. This suggests

that QZ8501 was far below its typical

cruising speed by comparison, a

nearby Emirates flight was travelling

level at 932 kilometres an hour at

almost the same altitude.Further radar data tweeted

by Soejatman appears to show

QZ8501 falling out of the sky, losing

3300 metres of altitude per minute.

If accurate, the information suggests

that the pilots may have climbed too

quickly, lost airspeed and stalled in

the thin, high-altitude air before

plummeting into the sea.

Confirmation will have to wait

until recovery crews are able to

locate the planes black box data

and cockpit voice recorders, which

are thought to be resting on the

sea floor. Wreckage and many of the

bodies of passengers have already

been found, but bad weather and high

waves have slowed efforts to locate

and retrieve the black box recorders.

Still looking for the black bo

How much oil must stay buried?

WE MUST stop burning coal in just15 years time, and oil in 25, unless

we find a way to bury carbon. Thats

according to Christophe McGlade

and Paul Ekins at University College

London, who have calculated how

much fossil carbon needs to stay

underground for a reasonable chance

of avoiding dangerous climate change.

They call it unburnable carbon,

and say the most economical method

is to keep a whopping 88 per cent of

global coal reserves buried, most of it

in the US, China, India and formerstates of the Soviet Union (Nature,

DOI: 10.1038/nature14016).

What we are really talking about

here is unemittable carbon, says

Myles Allen of the University of

Oxford. If the fossil fuel industry

can crack the problem of extracting

energy without dumping carbon

dioxide in the atmosphere, then we

will be able to use as much fossil

carbon as we like. That means

using carbon capture and storage.


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HUBBLE is reprising one of itsgreatest hits. The space telescope which turns 25 this year hascaptured two dramaticallysharper views of the Eaglenebulas Pillars of Creation.

Back in 1995, Hubbles WideField and Planetary Camera 2took an iconic photograph of thenebula, revealing three towering

elephant trunks of gas and dustthat are in the process of formingstars. The columns are also being

sculpted and eroded by windsfrom nearby young stars.

Now Paul Scowen at ArizonaState University in Tempe, oneof the astronomers responsible

for that image, and his colleagueshave taken a fresh look at thenebula. They made use ofHubbles Wide Field Camera 3,installed in 2009, which hastwice the resolution of the earliercamera. It shows that the gas anddust at the pillars edges becomedenser more abruptly thanthought (above right).

The team also photographedthe region at infrared wavelengths(above left), revealing infant starsinside the gas and dust. That

should help astronomers workout whether the nebula is anefficient star-former.

Having images taken 20 yearsapart also helps us gauge howthe pillars are changing. Scowen,who presented the work this weekat the American AstronomicalSociety meeting in Seattle,Washington, says jets of gas havevisibly moved in the interim.

Hubble double

For new stories every day, visit newscientist.com/news

Save the monarch

WHAT is black, orange, stripyand at risk of extinction? The

monarch butterfly. Last week theUS government agreed to assessthe butterfly for inclusion on itsendangered species list.

Best known for massivemigrations between Mexico,the US and Canada, the butterflieshad dwindled to 35 million by

last winter, according to theArizona-based Center forBiological Diversity. Thats adrop of 90 per cent in 20 years.

Monarchs are being hit hardfrom all directions, says ErnestWilliams, who studies monarchsat Hunter College in New York. Hecites climate change and the loss ofbreeding and winter habitats as themain factors behind the decline.Many monarch biologists thinkthat the loss of breeding habitat

currently has the strongesteffect, he says. The herbicideRoundup may be the main culprit.It kills milkweed, the monarchcaterpillars only source of food.

The monarch certainlywarrants listing, says TierraCurry of the Center for BiologicalDiversity. But due to a backlog ofspecies the monarch could endup on a waiting list, she says.

60 SECONDS

Blaze in OzAustralia has been hit by the

worst bush fires in 30 years.

Temperatures soared to 44.1 C in

parts of South Australia on 2 January,

igniting fires across the state. The

flames had claimed 38 houses and

scorched more than 12,500 hectares

at the time of going to press.

It aint half hotLast year was the hottest on record in

the UK, according to the Met Office.

The average temperature was 9.9 C.

That is 1.1 C above the long-term

average and higher than the previous

record of 9.7 C set in 2006.

Rice fit to eatFor the first time since the

2011 nuclear disaster in Japans

Fukushima prefecture, the regions

rice has passed radiation tests.

Almost an entire years harvest,

360,000 tonnes, has been

checked and none of it exceeded

100 becquerels per kilogram, the

limit set by the government.

Lie still

Bad news, compulsive fidgets: yourrestlessness may be your undoing.

Researchers will present an

alternative to the polygraph lie

detector at a conference in Hawaii

this week. Its a full-body suit that

captures tiny movements, designed

to pick up liars tendency to fidget

nervously. In tests, the suit correctly

identified liars 82 per cent of the

time. A polygraph has a typical

success rate of 60 per cent.

Philae meet roverIt seems that comet-landing fever

is catching even at the highest

levels of government. The French

president Franois Hollande has

named his new dog Philae, after

the European Space Agency probe

that touched down on comet 67P/

ChuryumovGerasimenko last year.

Meanwhile, ESA is still hunting for

the real Philae, which is nestled

near a rock somewhere on the

comets surface.

Monarchs are being hithard from all directions,especially from loss ofbreeding habitat

Gas reserves

Oil v26 years left

27 years left

15 years of burning left (at current rates)

35%

88%

52%

Coal reserves

UnburnableBurnable

Vast amounts of fossil fuels will haveto stay in the ground if we are to avoid2C of warming

NASA,

ESA,

ANDTHEHUBBLEHERITAGETEAM

STSCI/AURA

More starry in the infrared (left)

IF NOBODY understands amathematical proof, does it count?Shinichi Mochizuki of KyotoUniversity, Japan, has tried toprove the ABC conjecture, a long-standing pure maths problem,but now complains that fellowmathematicians are failing toget to grips with his work.

Mochizukis 500-page paper,posted online in 2012, is extremelydifficult to follow, even for

mathematicians. In a new reporthe says that three researcherswho studied it with his help haveyet to find an error, but it will takea few more years for it to be fullyconfirmed. Some of his colleaguessay Mochizuki could help thingsalong by simplifying his notes orlecturing abroad.

Minhyong Kim of the Universityof Oxford sympathises with bothpositions. But for now, the proofstays in limbo. Its a curiousstate, he says.

Proof positive (not)

Having images taken20 years apart helpsastronomers gauge howthe nebula is changing


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Rebecca Boyle

A NEW search for our nearestcosmic neighbours is justbeginning. Under constructionnow on an Arizona mountaintop,the Minerva observatory will lookfor small worlds around bright,nearby stars. By using off-the-shelf equipment, rather thanbespoke scopes, Minerva the

Miniature Exoplanet RadialVelocity Array offers a novel andcheap way to hunt for our solarsystems closest companions.

Exoplanet science hasexploded since the first discoveryof a world outside the solarsystem in 1995. More recently,between 2009 and 2013, NASAsKepler space telescope raked inthousands of probable worlds.

But most such planets havebeen spotted from space or

with giant telescopes on remotemountaintops, which costmillions of dollars and requirerepeated observations over severalyears to confirm sightings.

By contrast, Minerva anda collection of other smallobservatories use relatively

simple off-the-shelf telescopes.That makes this planet-huntingvanguard wholly unlike marqueeobservatories such as the W. M.Keck Observatory in Hawaii andthe Kepler telescope and thatis precisely its advantage.

Were looking at a smallnumber of bright stars everynight, all the time, for years. Thatsnormally very hard, says Jason

Wright, Minervas co-investigatorand an astronomer at PennState University. Becauseweve designed this observatoryand its ours, theres no one tocompete with.

Minerva uses four 0.7-metre-

wide, 2.5-metre-tall commercialtelescopes built by a companycalled PlaneWave, which alsosells them to hobbyists for about$200,000 Amazon founderJeff Bezos bought one just beforeMinervas team. The light fromall four scopes is collected and fed

into a spectrograph, which splitsit into different wavelengthsand enables astronomers to seetiny variations in a given starsmovement with respect to Earth.Such variations show somethingorbiting the star is exerting afaint gravitational tug on it andlets astronomers determine theorbiting objects mass.

Minerva will also be able

to watch stars for brief dipsin brightness that indicatesomething crossing in front ofthem. Seeing a regular patternof dips reveals an orbiting object,such as a planet. This technique,called the transit method, isKeplers strategy, and allowsastronomers to calculate theplanets size. Combining sizeand mass gives the planetsdensity a clue to its composition.

But both methods take time,

especially for small worldsorbiting close to their stars,which Minerva will focus on.

As we get toward truly Earth-like planets and truly Earth-likeorbits, its a very tough detectionproblem, says Greg Laughlin, anastronomer at the University ofCalifornia at Santa Cruz who usesanother dedicated planet-hunter,the Automated Planet Finder.

When Minervas lead scientist,astronomer John Johnson of theHarvard-Smithsonian Center for

Astrophysics in Massachusetts,designed the observatory, hewasnt aiming for speedy science.As a graduate student at LickObservatory in southernCalifornia, he used a neglectedolder telescope to hunt forplanets over a long stretch oftime, choosing patience overprecision and observing power.

If you have high precision,more people want it. If it hascrappy precision, its probablyon an old telescope nobody cares

about, he says. Typically, themore time you have, the lessprecision. Minerva is the firstfacility to have very highprecision, and lots and lots oftime. Its an unexplored territory

Off the shelf

In other respects, Minerva isnot so unique. Its the latest in asuccession of amateur telescopesused for very big science. Gamma

T W

Brave new world-huntersExoplanet telescopes are slimming down to collect alien worlds

J.SWIFT

Minerva is the latest ina growing succession ofamateur telescopes usedfor very big science

Half of Minervas gear

NASA,

ESA,

ANDTHEHUBBLEHERITAGETEAMSTSCI/AURAESA/H

UBBLECOLLABORATION


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In this section

A doctors mission to save his own brain, page 10

Forensic holodeck coming to courtrooms, page 12

In the kitchen with a supercomputer chef, page 19

field more strategically, he says.Rather than staring at 100,000stars like Kepler, Minerva willwatch just 164 nearby targets,focusing on the ones most likelyto yield interesting worlds.

Were just driven by theidea that those planets are rightnext door. We want to chartour neighbourhood, Johnsonsays. You can find these littlegems when youre reallytargeting your search.

EYES PEELED

Pick your targets wisely

As the hunt for exoplanets

intensifies (see main story),

astronomers are dreaming upincreasingly strange alien worlds.

The latest is a double-eyeball

planet, an icy orb with a central

sea of liquid water on each side.

These planets are expected

to be rocky worlds orbiting a red

dwarf star. A red dwarfs habitable

zone the region warm enough

for liquid water to exist is so close

to the star that a planet orbiting

there is likely to have its rotation

locked due to orbital resonance.

That means the same side of the

planet always faces the star, similar

to how we only see one side of the

moon from Earth.

Previous research suggests that

water on such a planet would remain

liquid only in the centre of the side

facing the star, resembling a pupil

surrounded by an icy eyeball.

Now Anthony Dobrovolskis of

the NASA Ames Research Center in

California says worlds with an oval

orbit rather than circular could

make a double-eyeball. This orbit

changes the resonance so that

different sides of the planet face

the star on successive close passes,

forming two central seas facing in

opposite directions.

This beady-eyed world would be

bad news for life. A build-up of ice at

the poles or other cold spots could

shift its rotation axis and tilt the

entire world, says Dobrovolskis.

If there was any life on the planet,

this would be likely to cause mass

extinctions (Icarus, doi.org/x2c).

This is no longer theday of swashbucklingscientists trying to get asmany kills as possible

ray astronomers already use suchnetworks to scrutinise distantgalactic explosions, for instance.Minerva will be able to do that, aswell as observe asteroids crossingin front of stars, Wright says.

Funding has been one majormotivation to try off-the-shelftech, says Dave Charbonneau,also at the Harvard-SmithsonianCenter, who was one of the firstto build a planet-hunting systemusing commercially available

telescopes. His MEarth project hasbeen searching for small planetsorbiting red dwarf stars since2008 and has notched onediscovery so far. If you associatecost with a telescope like onenight of Keck time, or a few hoursof Hubble time that same cost

would allow you to buy yourown observatory, he says.

Astronomer Gspr Bakos atPrinceton University has been

remotely operating the HATNet(Hungarian-made AutomatedTelescope Network) project for10 years, and has publishedfindings on 56 planets.

The six HATNet telescopes areeach just 10 centimetres wide,but they function as a network.A companion project, HATSouth,has 24 telescopes spread acrossChile, Namibia and Australia. Thisprovides unprecedented coveragefor transit searches, Bakos says.The planets dont honour the

rotation of Earth, they transit attheir leisure. With a network, youcatch all the transits.

Strategic search

Meanwhile Laughlins custom-designed Automated PlanetFinder has been hunting planetsfrom a mountaintop in Californiasince last January. It has alreadybagged two exoplanet systems.Its most promising finds will be

candidates for follow-up searcheswith telescopes like the TransitingExoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS),set to launch in August 2017.

We have an opportunity toprobe these charismatic nearbystars, Laughlin says. Withoutthat ultra-high, dollar-per-secondKeck pressure on you, you canlook at things that you otherwisemight be scared to.

Since Keplers staggeringnumber of finds implied moststars probably have planets,

astronomers are increasinglyaiming for detailed planetstudies instead of just makingdiscoveries, Johnson says.

This is no longer the day ofswashbuckling scientists tryingto get as many kills as possible,he says. There is so much greatscience just sitting on the floorwith the Kepler statistics in hand,were no longer in the area ofplanet hunting. Were in the eraof planet gathering.

That means searching a smaller


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to show beyond any doubt thatit does actually work.

The NovoTTF-100A is no silverbullet though it usually onlyadds months to life, effectivelyslowing but not killing the cancer,although some users have goneon to live for more than 10 years.I would be interested to knowif it could be used for people like

me, whose tumours have not yetprogressed to a highly aggressiveglioblastoma. And while the ideaof killing cancer while I shop isappealing, the eye-watering costof 17,000 a month is less so.

Personalised vaccine

A cheaper alternative might bea personalised vaccine calledDCVax. Developed by NorthWestBiotherapeutics in Bethesda,Maryland, this approach uses

a persons own immune systemto attack their cancer.

Cancer vaccines have beentried before, but virtually all havefailed. Linda Powers of NorthWestBiotherapeutics says mostexisting attempts are trying torehabilitate immune cells thathave already been hobbled by thecancer. Her firms solution is to

rekindle a persons exhaustedimmune system by growingnew white blood cells for them.

The idea is that bone marrowcells that havent yet matured intoimmune cells are extracted froma persons blood and nurtured inthe lab into dendritic cells thearmy generals that organise therest of the brains immunesystem. Exposing these cells tobiomarkers from the personstumour primes them to seek anddestroy that particular cancer.


The finished batch of activated,educated immune cells are theninjected into the persons bloodto do their work.

And it is so far so good in earlytrials. One trial had an averagesurvival of around three years, andin some tests, a few individualshave gone on to survive morethan 10 years thats eight timesthe average of 15 months.

Applying this technique toan earlier stage glioma like minemight perhaps prevent it frommutating into a glioblastoma.And because it would be myimmune system doing the work,there are likely to be relatively few

side effects. For now Im crossingmy fingers randomised trialsfor people with glioblastoma arenow recruiting with early resultsexpected later this year.

Gene therapy

Meanwhile, Dror Harats of Israel-based VBL Therapeutics thinks hemay have devised a gene therapytechnique that could change myfuture. His strategy hits cancer

cells ability to divide by targetingtheir blood supply and starvingthem of the fuel they need.

As a tumour grows, it releaseschemical messengers that triggernew blood vessels to grow towardit, feeding its voracious appetitefor oxygen and nutrients.Through 20 years of research,Harats discovered that the cellslining these newly formingcapillaries have unique geneticfeatures that can be exploited. Histeam has genetically engineered

harmless adenoviruses to infect

the capillaries cells and inserta gene that triggers them toself-destruct.

In early human trials, thisexperimental treatment, calledVB-111, has fared remarkablywell, apart from some flu-like

symptoms. When tested on46 people with glioblastoma

for whom all other treatmentshad failed, those who receivedrepeated injections of virusparticles alongside standarddrugs survived for 18 months much higher than the averagelife expectancy for such patients,of around six months.

If these numbers hold up underrepeated testing then VB-111 willbe a landmark breakthrough,offering a longer, better qualityof life. It wouldnt work for me yet,

but could be an option once mytumour becomes a glioblastoma.But speaking personally and notas a doctor, I confess I have someirrational hang-ups about agenetically engineered viruscoursing through my blood.

Eyeing my options

As a doctor, I am encouraged thatthese treatments offer seriouspotential and as a patient, Imexcited by what they could offer

me. I would snatch anyones handoff to get a nanoparticle injectioninstead of an operation, and theanti-cancer hat could well treatmy tumour while I live a normallife, walking the dog or doing theshopping. Although none wouldcount as a cure, each of thesetreatments boasts a handful oflong-term survivors, and over thenext five to 10 years, it is possiblethat combined therapies couldturn this terminal condition intoa controllable one.

Stuarts glioma tumour

was discovered in his

frontal lobe during a

routine scan in 2008

Too sci-fi for some

For daily news stories, visit newscientist.com/news

I would snatch anyoneshand off to get ananoparticle injectioninstead of an operation


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T W

Jessica Hamzelou

GUILTY or innocent? To helpthem decide, judges and juriesare often presented with reamsof evidence: crime scene photos,medical documents or suspectedbullet trajectories all on paper.But could allowing people towatch the crime unfold from thecomfort of the courtroom lead

to more informed judgments?This may soon be possible,

thanks to the virtual realityheadset Oculus Rift. Imagineyou could transport the entirejury, the judge, the litigators everybody back to the crimescene during the crime,says Jeremy Bailenson of theVirtual Human InteractionLab at Stanford University inCalifornia. That would be thebest thing possible for any trial.

Over the last few years,investigators have begun touse sophisticated technology tocapture 3D information about acrime scene. This can range fromusing MRI and CT scanners to geta detailed picture of peoplesinjuries to using lasers to mapthe entire scene.

However, when the case gets

to court, a lot gets disregarded.We have detailed measurementsand all this 3D information, butthen we hand it over on paper,and that comes with a loss ofinformation, says Lars Ebert atthe Institute of Forensic Medicinein Zurich, Switzerland.

In some cases, 3D informationis vital. Take gun crime.Conventionally, bullet trajectories

are presented on paper. Whatyou have is a line on paper, and itsdifficult to get an idea of how itmoved in space, says Ebert. But

the second you see it in 3D, youknow where it originated, where itgoes, how close all the people andobjects are.

To allow evidence to be assessedin 3D, Ebert and his colleaguesturned to Oculus Rift, a headsetused by gamers to provide animmersive environment. Theteam entered all the informationthe police had about a particularshooting into software for thedevice. This allowed them tocreate a 3D reconstruction of the

crime, complete with bullettrajectory (Forensic Science,Medicine and Pathology, doi.org/x2s). The team call their system

the forensic holodeck after theStar Treksimulated reality device

When Ebert presented thereconstruction of the gun crimeto police officers present at thescene, they were impressed. Thesaid: wow, that was exactly whatit was like when I was standingthere and the guy was shootingme, says Ebert.

Virtual reality could also allowjudges and juries to experienceanother persons line of sight, sayBailenson, which could be useful

when figuring out if a witnesscould have seen a suspect. But thicould have an unintended effect,cautions Damian Schofield at theState University of New York inOswego, who develops digitalreconstructions. Think of amurder scene: whether you viewit from the point of view of themurderer, the victim or a thirdperson will totally change yourperception of whats happening.

Before the forensic holodeck

can be used in court, Eberts teamwill have to ensure it accuratelyrepresents 3D environments.But Bailenson thinks that virtualreality could soon play a role incourtrooms around the world:There is an arms race among bigtech firms, and there are going tobe high quality, cheap head-mounted displays very soon.

Virtual reality puts

jury in crime scene

REUTERS

Bacteria several kilometresunderground may besurviving for hundredsof thousands of years

See through their eyes-

CAN evolution happen within a

lifetime rather than over many

generations? Bacteria living beneath

the sea floor seem to be showing that

it can. Even though they are unlikely

to be reproducing and undergoing

traditional natural selection, they

carry more genetic changes than

their cousins nearer the surface.

Over the last 30 years, it has

Deep life may

add new twistto evolution

become clear that microbes survive

several kilometres underground.

But nutrient levels drop off so rapidlywith depth that these mysterious

intraterrestrials can barely function,

let alone reproduce.

To find out if they show adaptations

to living in deep environments,

Brandon Briggs at Miami University in

Oxford, Ohio, and Frederick Colwell at

Oregon State University in Corvallis

sequenced and compared genomes

of Firmicutes bacteria sampled 21, 40

and 554 metres below the floor of the

Andaman Sea. The deepest sediments

were dated to 8.76 million years old.

The results show for the first time

that bacterial genomes change with

depth: the deepest microorganismscarry more mutations than their

shallower counterparts in genes

coding for processes like cell division.

Briggs presented the findings at the

American Geophysical Union Fall

Meeting in San Francisco last month.

Its not yet clear if the mutations

help bacteria survive or are harmful.

They could indicate that the bacteria

go through many generations within

the deep biosphere, says Hans Ryat Aarhus University in Denmark.

However, there seems to be too little

energy available at such depths to

allow the microbes to reproduce.

Yet, in theory, bacteria in these

environments grow so slowly that

they may survive for hundreds of

thousands of years. So if you take

evolution in its broad sense to

mean genetic changes across

the population, then it might be

occurring even without cell division,

says Briggs. Colin Barras


15/60


For daily news stories, visit newscientist.com/news

SURROUNDED by a wall of fireand angry Tanzanian villagers,the elephants were forced off acliff some 50 metres high. Whenthe dust settled, six of the herdlay dead. The now jubilant crowd

took selfies among the carcasses.It was a violent climax to a long-simmering conflict, which sawfarmers regularly lose harvestsas protected elephants raidedtheir crops. But on that summersevening in 2009, the inhabitantsof West Kilimanjaro reachedbreaking point, says SayuniMariki at the NorwegianUniversity of Life Sciences.

Unfortunately, the incidentis far from an isolated one.People regularly risk injury and

prosecution to attack protectedwildlife. Tigers and leopards havebeen beaten to death, wolves areillegally hunted and birds ofprey fall victim to poison, toname just a few.

On the surface the motivesseem simple: protecting peopleand their property. Scratch alittle deeper though, says Mariki,and it becomes clear that theanimals are often just convenientscapegoats. The real hatred isreserved for conservationists

and government officials.Mariki arrived in West

Kilimanjaro in the aftermathof the elephant killings to find adisenfranchised and disillusionedvillage. Conservation policies had

restricted access to ancestrallands, reducing the settlementto an island in a sea of gamereserves. Locals watchedpowerlessly as private safarioperators and governmentofficials became rich from the

booming tourist trade, while their

crops were regularly destroyed.Local communities feel that

wild animals are valued morethan people by the authorities,says Miriki. Her interviews withthose involved in the slaughter,now published, reveal that killingthe elephants was as much aboutrebelling against this state ofaffairs as protecting crops andlivelihoods (Land Use Policy,doi.org/xz8). Similar motivationsappear to drive violence inBangladeshi villages plagued

by tiger attacks (BiologicalConservation, doi.org/xz9).

So what is the solution?Governments should stopimposing conservation ruleson communities and insteadinvolve them in discussions,giving them power over howwildlife protection is carriedout on their lands, says FrancineMadden of the conservation

group Human-Wildlife ConflictCollaboration.Offering local people a social

or financial stake in conservationseems to have worked in EastAfrica. Here, lion-killing Masaiwarriors have swapped spearsfor radio antennas and are nowamong the species most dedicatedguardians (Conservation Biology,doi.org/x2b).

And in the Sundarbans regionof Bangladesh a charity calledWild Team is training villagers

how to deal with tiger incursions and tiger killings are down asa result. Locals no longer feelpowerless and so are less likely totake out their frustrations on anunlucky big cat, says Chloe Inskipat the University of Kent, UK,an author of the study on tigerkillings in Bangladesh. If youdont understand these deeperlevels of the conflict, it is just likeputting a plaster on it withoutgetting to the root of the problem,she says. Jan Piotrowski

MOST of us arent fond of our flab but

perhaps its time to see it in a new

light. Fat cells may be among our first

line of defence against pathogens.

Fat has an additional role we

didnt suspect, says Jay Kolls of

the University of Pittsburgh.

Beyond physical barriers such as

skin, our main protection against

marauding bacteria and viruses is the

immune system. This is a complex

network of cells with sophisticated

weapons such as antibodies, which

recognise and destroy foreign cells

and proteins. But although many

microbes multiply rapidly, it can take

days for antibody production to ramp

up. It now seems fat cells also play a

defensive role and they respond

more speedily than many parts of

the immune system.

A team led by Richard Gallo of the

University of California, San Diego,

injected mice withStaphylococcus

aureusbacteria under the skin. Within

hours, the subcutaneous fat cells had

released a chemical called cathelicidin.

This is thought to disrupt bacterial

cell membranes and is also known to

harm viruses, although it is unclear

exactly how. Compared with these

animals, another set of mice that had

been genetically modified to have

hardly any fat cells developed much

worse infections when exposed to

the bacteria. This suggests the

cathelicidin-producing fat cells

had a protective effect.

Gallos team was also able to show

that human fat cells grown in the labsecrete cathelicidin, so something

similar may happen in people

(Science, doi.org/x2w).

But more fat does not equal more

protection. In fact, people who are

obese have a higher rate of soft-tissue

infections. Kolls thinks this might be

because obese people are more likely

to have type 2 diabetes, in which fat

cells are resistant to insulin. This may

also reduce cathelicidin production.

A little bit of fat is good too much is

not good, he says. Clare Wilson

When conservationefforts lead to slaughter

Beaten to death

Local communities feelthat wild animals arevalued more than peopleby the authorities

Celebrate yourfat its fighting

off infection


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HAD one too many? Alcohol canwreak havoc on your immunesystem from the moment youstart imbibing.

Majid Afshar, who treatstrauma patients at LoyolaUniversity Health System inChicago, wondered if alcoholconsumption might affect hispatients immune functioning,and hence their treatment.

He and his colleagues asked

volunteers to down 4 or 5 shotsof vodka within 20 minutes taking them over the drink-driving limit. They took bloodsamples from the participantsover the next few hours.

The team isolated immunecells from the samples, presentedthem with proteins found onpotentially harmful bacteria andmeasured their response. Theyfound that, at first, the immune

system ramps up, but withina few hours there is an anti-inflammatory phase duringwhich its responses are weakened(Alcohol, doi.org/xvn).

It is the first time immediateeffects of alcohol on the humanimmune system have beenobserved. If binge drinkingcan start affecting a personsimmune system and the waythey respond to illness or injury within an hour, doctors shouldtake this into account, says Afshar.

Climate change bearsdown on hapless pandas

GIANT pandas, prepare to move out. Shifting these

creatures to distant reserves may be essential if they

are to survive the likely impacts of climate change.

Pandas are well known for their pernickety bamboo

diet and lacklustre sex lives. Wild populations have been

reduced to a tiny gene pool and are under new pressure

from the explosive growth in road-building in China.

Taking these factors into account, Ming Xu of Rutgers

University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and colleagues

have modelled how pandas geographical range could be

further affected by climate change.

They found that even the most conservative scenarios,

which foresee an average of 1 C warming globally by

2100, could result in habitat suitable for pandas more

than halving by 2070 (Biological Conservation, doi.org/

xz7). To make matters worse, panda populations could

also become more fragmented. Xus analysis predicts

that the average size of panda habitats would decrease

by about 19 per cent. That means small groups, such

as the 29 animals that live in the Daxiang mountains of

south-west China, could become cut off from the rest

of the population and face a greater risk of dying out.

On the upside, Xu predicts that some areas to the

north of the pandas current mountainous homelands

could become suitable. Planting bamboo there now

could prime them for panda relocation in the future.

Booze hits immune system immediately

Volcanic iron heldback complex life

THOSE darned subsea volcanoesmessed up our arrival. The ironthey spewed out seems to havepoisoned the microbes neededto produce enough oxygen forcomplex life to take off.

Cyanobacteria can releaseoxygen through photosynthesis.Elizabeth Swanner of theUniversity of Tbingen inGermany and her colleaguesexposed modern cyanobacteriato levels of iron present in theprimordial oceans. The microbes

ability to release oxygen fell by upto 70 per cent (Nature Geoscience,DOI: 10.1038/ngeo2327).

The next logical step is to askhow this delayed the evolution ofoxygen-demanding life forms,says Swanner. Cyanobacteriaappeared 3 billion years ago,but it took another half a billionyears before oxygen levels couldsupport complex life. Swannersfinding may help to explain thelong wait.

Bright black holeblasted early Earth

LIFE on Earth could once havebeen seared by the galaxys heart.

Some black holes are ringed bydiscs of glowing hot matter, butthe one at the Milky Ways centreshines only at radio wavelengths.There is evidence that it used tobe more active, though, so Xian

Chen and Pau Amaro-Seoanefrom the Max Planck Institute forGravitational Physics in Potsdam,Germany, modelled its pastbehaviour. They found its X-rayoutput, as seen from Earth, couldonce have matched the suns.

If so, early Earth could havebeen bathed in X-rays as if hit by amodern solar flare, but for muchlonger periods. This would havedisturbed the ancient ozone layerand ionosphere, perhaps harmingearly life (arxiv.org/abs/1412.5592).


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Heart surgeonsaway? No sweat

IF YOU have a serious heart problemjust when the top surgeons are

away at a medical conference,

take heart. Their absence could

increase your chances of survival.

Harvard Medical School

healthcare policy researcher

Anupam Jena and colleagues

examined tens of thousands of

people who were admitted to

hospital with a heart attack, heart

failure or cardiac arrest between

2002 and 2011. Among the most

severe cases of cardiac arrest,

70 per cent of those admitted

when no cardiology conference was

taking place died within 30 days.

But among those admitted when

expert cardiologists were away at

meetings, the corresponding death

rate was 60 per cent (JAMA Internal

Medicine, doi.org/xzw).

The results suggest that for the

most seriously ill heart patients, the

risks of emergency interventions

such as artery widening may

outweigh the benefits, Jena says.

The findings should not lead to a

change in doctors practice without

further research, but should be

seen more as a warning signal

that very ill people sometimes

receive too many interventions.

All patients are not the same: the

risk that they can tolerate is very

different, he says. In some cases

that might mean we have to treat

patients more conservatively.

The crab that thinks its a frog

IS IT a frog? Is it a crab? One look at

a frog crab leaning forward on its

front legs explains its name, but

how these curious animals evolvedhas long been a mystery.

Ranina ranina, pictured, is the

largest and best-known of the frog

crabs. Its long, narrow body and

paddle-like limbs look uncannily

frog-like but its hard shell and 10 legs

mark it out as a crab, and a true one at

that, rather than a crab only in name

like a hermit crab. Most true crabs

have bodies at least as wide as they

are long, and they scuttle sideways.

Frog crabs, however, are slimmer

and move forward and back.

People used to think that frog

crabs were very primitive because

of their odd-looking long bodies,says Javier Luque of the University

of Alberta in Canada. Now, having

reanalysed the fossil record,

Luque has shown that they

actually evolved after what we

think of as modern crabs.

He says frog crabs evolved

their narrow bodies as they adapted

to burrowing into ocean-floor

sediments, starting about 125 million

years ago (Journal of Systematic

Palaeontology, doi.org/xzz).

THIS gas giant is rotting at thecore. According to the most

precise calculations yet, heavyelements from Jupiters coreare diffusing into its gassybody about twice as fast aspreviously thought.

Jupiter formed when rockand ice from the disc of materialaround the young sun coalesced.The gravity of this dense corethen swept up 300 Earth-massesof hydrogen and helium. Therock and ice sank to the centreof the gas giant, but it wont staythere forever. Earlier calculations

treating atoms in the core asbilliard balls found that every so

often, some of them will detachand mix into the surroundinghydrogen and helium that is,the core will dissolve like a sugarcube in water. But it was unclearhow fast that process would be.

Now, Hugh Wilson at RMITUniversity in Melbourne,Australia, has used a quantum-mechanical model to calculatehow carbon, silicon and iron three key elements in the core would diffuse into the fluid layer.His model found diffusion rates

twice those calculated by theearlier models. When the Juno

spacecraft arrives at Jupiter in2016, he says there might just bea partially eroded husk of theplanets original core (Icarus,doi.org/xwp).

Juno will give us excellent daton Jupiters gravitational field,but thats not enough informatioto work out the interior structureon its own, Wilson adds. Coreerosion may complicate analysis,so Wilson says its important topin down its rate to make senseof Junos view of Jupiters insides.

Jupiters eroding core may already be just a husk

Secret of cancersinsidious spread

TO INVADE different parts of thebody, cancer cells learn to switchbetween two modes of moving.Now we know how.

Many types of cell move aroundthe body. For example, fibroblastsmove in to help skin wounds heal,

using adhesive forces to slideforward. If the cut gets infected,white blood cells rush inpropelling themselves usingelectrostatic forces, among others.

Many invasive cancers havelearned both methods, switchingbetween them to suit theirenvironment. To find out how,Erik Sahai from Cancer ResearchUK in London looked at cellsmoving in the egg sac of fruitflies and tweaked genes to workout which proteins are important

for this. Next, he searcheddatabases to see if any of theseproteins also go awry in cancer,hitting upon a bundle called theSTRIPAK complex.

Without these misbehavingproteins, the cells are locked intothe fibroblastic mode and areless dangerous, says Sahai. Heplans to look at whether peoplewith these proteins are morelikely to have invasive cancer,work which could guide treatment(Nature Cell Biology, doi.org/xzv).

THINK

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For more technology stories, visit newscientist.com/technology

TOLOY

Cooking by numbersCould Watsons supercomputing power help Niall Firthinject somepizzazz into his cooking?

I LIKE to think Im a pretty goodcook. Im adventurous, have adecent understanding of thetechniques required and I haventpoisoned anyone yet. But I stillfind myself cooking the sametried-and-trusted favourites,using the same old ingredients.

To shake things up, I ask totest the prototype of a cookingapp that uses the brain of IBMsWatson supercomputer to inventnew dishes.

The key to the ChefWatson

app is the supercomputersability to devour large amountsof information and make linksbetween chunks of it. It hasalready proved its mettle bywinning the quiz showJeopardy!and is being used to help doctorsmake cancer diagnoses atMemorial Sloan KetteringHospital in New York. Now itis attempting to do somethingcomputers usually find difficult:using creativity to invent recipespeople will actually want to eat.

To provide the data, IBMteamed up with US recipe websiteBon Appetit. This has a databaseof more than 9000 recipes, taggedaccording to their ingredients, typeof dish and cooking style Cajunor Thai, for example. Watsoncreates a statistical correlationbetween ingredients, styles andrecipe steps in the database anduses this to work out whichingredients usually go together

and what each type of foodrequires. Thats how it knowsthat a burrito, a burger and a soupall need different elements, saysIBMs Steve Abrams. It knows aburrito always needs a wrapper ofsome sort, whereas soup alwaysneeds liquid. Thats how you dontget a runny burrito.

To use the app, the cook firsttypes in an ingredient they wantto use. Next, they decide the

amount of experimentation theywant Watson to take, rangingfrom Keep it classic to Surpriseme. Watson then offers the cook

further ingredients, styles anddishes that it thinks usually gowell with the initial ingredient.They can promote or excludeingredients by clicking the Loveit or Hate it buttons. Finally,the cook hits search, and Watsonanalyses its database to come upwith a range of basic recipes thatcan then be further tweaked tomake them more or lessexperimental.

If the cook wants to ramp it up,a database of flavour compounds

found in a wide range of foods isalso consulted and used tocombine ingredients that shouldtheoretically fit together, such asvodka and Brussels sprouts, orcauliflower and chrysanthemum.Psychological research into whatflavours people find more or lesspleasant is taken into account(PLoS Computational Biology,doi.org/fsw6fd), as is a surprisescore for combinations ofingredients: the higher the score

the less often they are found inrecipes together.As you move to the

experimental end of the scale,youre looking less at whatingredients go nicely together andmore at the flavour compoundsthat the ingredients have incommon, says Abrams. It worksout what things might go togetherthat youd never think of.

Well, thats the theory at least.

An unexpected taste sensation-

Serves 6

INGREDIENTS

450g turkey

Frozen pastry

Half a seeded, minced Thai chili

1 tsp rice flour

Dash lemongrass

Green curry paste

1 head lettuce

500g potato, chopped

13 spring onions, chopped

1 tsp vegetable oil

>

Olive oil spray

115g Gruyre, diced

100g provolone cheese

SUGGESTED STEPS

1. Cook lettuce in boiling water

2. Drain and squeeze dry

3. Heat vegetable oil

4. Add spring onions and Thai chili

and saut for about 7 minutes

5. Finely chop turkey, cheeses,

lemongrass and rice flour

6. Transfer to bowl and stir in spring

onions, lettuce and potato

7. Season with salt and pepper

8. Preheat oven to 180 C

9. Spray large baking sheet with oil

10. Stack pastry in layers and spray

with olive oil

11. Spread turkey mixture down

centre of pastry

12. Fold short sides of pastry over

filling, then roll up into log

13. Bake for about 40 minutes

14. Spoon green curry paste on the

side and serve

THAI TURKEY STRUDEL LA CHEFWATSON


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ONE PER CENT

Raking robots insta-art at the beach

No, its not alien art. A robotic beach artist has created giant

drawings in the sand. Developed by Paul Beardsley from

Disney Research Zurich and colleagues at the Swiss Federal

Institute of Technology, the wheeled robot can recreate a

drawing sent to it from a phone or tablet. It computes a path

across the sand that approximates the artwork and sets off.

A rake attached to its rear etches the pattern in the sand.

Each drawing takes about 10 minutes, and the idea is that

the robot could be controlled remotely, allowing a beach to

be turned into a digitally controlled sketchbook. It was

presented at Techfest in Mumbai, India, in late December.

After this talk, politicians will

presumably wear gloves whentalking in public

HackerJan Krissler, aka Starbug, speaking at the Chaos

Communication Congress in Hamburg. He claims to have copied

the fingerprint of a German politician from photos of her hands

Map an entire room through a keyhole

A laser imaging technique could let spies map a room in

secret. Chenfei Jin of the Harbin Institute of Technology in

China and colleagues measured the three-dimensional

shape and position of three cardboard letters in a room,

spelling HIT, by firing lasers through a 2-centimetre-wide

hole in a wall. Laser pulses bounced off walls to hit the lettersbefore passing back through the hole and scattering into a

camera, revealing the details (Optics Letters, doi.org/x2t).

10.8mThe number of smart watches that the Consumer Electronics

Association expects will be sold in 2015. The association runs

the Consumer Electronics Show, held in Las Vegas this week

building, says Simons.At the end of this month, the

first games designed specificallyfor the space will be announced.

But this cant just be a thing forbearded men in their 30s to getexcited about, says Simons. Asa public space, the NVA is alsoaimed at families and schools.Simons is excited aboutcommissioning celebrated gamedesigners, but says it is equallyimportant that a 10-year-old cancome in and program thebuildings LEDs to chase eachother around the walls.

Screen-free gamingThere are going to be a lot ofgames that people recognise,Simons says. Classic arcade gameslikePac-Mancould sit alongsideconsole hits like Tomb Raider. Butthis is as much about making, hesays. The best way to learn aboutgames isnt always to play them.Its to make them too. And thiswill be a home for that activity.

The NVA may be the most highprofile UK project to date, but

theres a big revival in arcades,says London-based game designerGeorge Buckenham.

There are at least four gamingbars in London now. That wasntthe case a few years ago. Thesame is happening in the US, withvenues like the LA Game Spaceand Barcade in New York.

Then there are events like WildRumpus, which Buckenham helpsorganise. This and other eveningevents are showcases forexperimental games, like

ROFLpillar, that use screens orcontrollers in novel ways. Manydo without screens entirely.

QuickDraw a homage to gun-slinging Westerns uses thePlayStation Move motioncontroller as a pistol in a gamewhere the fastest-drawncontroller wins. InJohannSebastian Joust, players must holdtheir Move controller as steady aspossible while trying to jostleothers into moving theirs all tothe accompaniment of J. S. Bachs

Brandenburg Concertos. Withoutthe need for screens these gamescan be set up and played almostanywhere, even outdoors.

Similarly, Searchlight designedby Hide&Seek uses MicrosoftsKinect motion sensor in a gamewhere players have to moveobjects out of the game spacewithout being caught by a rovingspotlight. It is played on the floor,again without need for a screen.

The mix of digital and physicalelements helps make games moreaccessible. Unlike in traditionalarcades, the idea is to cater forpeople who are not typicalgamers, says Buckenham. These

weird, experimental interfacesare actually a great leveller. Nomatter how experienced you are,youre still going to be doing thesame ridiculous thing and youvegot a similar chance of winning.

As Simons notes, theperformance aspect is often key.Only a handful of people can playa game at any one time, butwatching can be as fun as playing.One of the main things we look atfor Wild Rumpus is this sense of

spectacle, says Buckenham. Itshould feel like an event, a thingyou can only see there.

For example, Buckenham has

made a game calledPunch theCustard, specifically designed tobe played in public spaces. Itdoesnt really make sense other

than that, he says. He has alsomade a version of the popularconsole gameProteusthat isplayed on a trampoline. In it, youbounce around the games pretty,pixelated world like a giant rabbit.

Being able to enjoy watchingthe games even if you dontplay yourself is important, saySimons and Buckenham. One ofthe best things to hear is someonesaying, I didnt think I was intogames, but this is amazing,Buckenham says.

The weird, experimentalinterfaces are a greatleveller. Youre all doingthe same ridiculous thing


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T


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00 Month 2014 | NewScientist | 2310 January 2015 | NewScientist | 23

Stop thief!

SWOOP and its gone. Hawaiians call the

frigatebird iwa, meaning thief. The metre-long

bird evolved not only to hunt the seas, but tosteal from those that do. Here one acrobatically

grabs a piece of fish offal from the gaping jaws

of a pelican.

Wildlife photographer Michael Poliza

snapped this photo of a frigatebird living up to

its Hawaiian name off the Galapagos Islands in

October. We were at anchor and local fishermen

were offering their catch, Poliza recalls.

They were cleaning the fish and all kinds of

birds were coming by. The pelican was able to

scoop up this fish. As hes trying to swallow

which the pelican does by opening up his mouth

and jiggling around a bit the frigatebird comes

by and scoops the fish out of the pelicans mouth,

perfectly timed.

This sense of timing helps the frigatebird to

catch its other favoured prey, flying fish.

Frigatebirds cant waterproof their feathers,

so they accomplish all this without ever touching

the water, relying on agile flying. Hal Hodson

Photographer

Michael Poliza

michaelpoliza.com


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The Kiwi comedownHailed as an alternative to the war on drugs, New Zealands stalledattempt to end prohibition has lessons for the world, says Ross Bell

JUST 18 months ago, New Zealandwas the talk of the worlds druglaw reformers. It had set up asystem to allow new recreationaldrugs to gain official approval andbe sold legally. Moreover, it had

won sweeping parliamentarysupport for this the PsychoactiveSubstances Act was passed witha solitary vote against. It seemedthat a government had finallytaken the bold step towardsending prohibition.

And yet now it is far from clearthat the law will ever be usedto approve a drug. A panickygovernment amendmentmay have made it unworkable.What happened has lessons

for others seeking a better waythan the failed war on drugs tominimise the problems relatedto psychoactive substances.

The act was meant to establisha process for new psychoactivesubstances to be tested and, ifposing only a low risk of harm,approved for sale. Regulationswould cover testing, importation,manufacture and sale. Politiciansseemed to understand that lowrisk did not mean no risk.

The law was attempting to get

to grips with a market that hadbeen raging for years. Designerdrugs were emerging one after theother in a chaotic, unregulatedretail environment before beingdeclared illegal. For example,the party pills BZP and TFMPPappeared in New Zealand inaround 2000 and were bannedin 2008. No deaths had beenattributed to them and they mayhave reduced methamphetamineuse. But they were associated withbinge drinking and emergency

hospital admissions. By the timethey were banned, 1 in 5 NewZealanders had used them.

In 2005, the first in a series ofsynthetic cannabinoids reachedNew Zealand. They were

progressively outlawed, but eachtime one with a slightly differentchemical structure would pop up.Eventually, associate heathminister Peter Dunne acceptedthat this game of whack-a-molecould not continue andchampioned the new law.

The act established an interimperiod in which some productsand suppliers could apply fortemporary licences while the finalregulations were written. All thedrugs granted interim licences

in their communities. Theybecame a focus for the media.Some looked disreputable whenjournalists visited. In addition,personal stories of chaos and woereceived widespread coverage.

That these problems haddeveloped in the unregulatedmarket or were caused byproducts already removedwere of little consequence.

On top of this, an alreadyunder-resourced regulatoryauthority was sluggish to respondThe interim regime was leftcarrying more weight, and forlonger, than had been anticipatedImports could not be checked forpurity as required, and obtaining

and delivering certificates ofanalysis proved a challenge forall concerned. It became difficultto say exactly what was in someproducts the very opposite ofwhat had been intended.

Despite these problems,perhaps the real damage was donebefore the act was even passed.The early, relatively benignsynthetic cannabinoids had beenbanned for years. When the actpassed, only so-called third-generation cannabimimetics

were still legal. Their harms werepoorly understood.

In May, amid the media panic,the government rushed throughan amendment ending the interimlicensing period and removingall the drugs from sale. The actremains in place. Indeed, its ingood shape. The long-awaitedregulations for manufacturing,importing and research andproduct approvals were signed ofin July and are in force. Those forwholesaling and retailing are on

OO

were synthetic cannabinoids.At the same time, the wider

market was sharply curtailed.The number of retail outletsfor legal highs was slashed,from as many as 4000 to fewer

than 170. The number of productsfell from around 200 to fewerthan 50. There was evidencethat related hospital admissionsfell, along with reports to theNational Poisons Centre.

The purge also magnifiedattention on the remainingoutlets, largely unwelcome

All drugs are again illegaland thus back in the blackmarket. Familiar patternsof abuse are returning


27/60


Flies arent all badThe common housefly is both friend and foe it spreadsdisease but may also help us fight it, saysJeffrey Scott

OL

Jeffrey Scottis a professor of entomology at

Cornell Universitys College of Agriculture and

Life Sciences in Ithaca, New York. He researches

insect genetics, insecticide resistance and

evolutionary biology

You led recent efforts to unravel the common

housefly genome. Why is this important?

It is an insect that transmits a lot of diseases to

humans and to animals. It also rapidly evolves

resistance to insecticides, so having the genome

sequence will help us research how resistance

develops so we can try to tackle it.

Does the housefly pre-date humans?

It is not entirely clear, but it looks like houseflies

and humans co-evolved. The spread of humansfrom Africa to the rest of the world is similar to

that of houseflies, which also migrated out of

Africa. This is a species that was very much tied

to human activities: the availability of human and

animal waste provided sites for laying eggs and

larval growth. If humans died out, the housefly

would probably go too.

Tell me about the houseflys dark side.

They transmit a few hundred different diseases.

They have the ability to move a pathogen from

a source fluid to our food, for example, or directly

into our eyes. As long as the pathogen in the

source is concentrated enough, this can cause

disease. A good example is fly-transmitted

trachoma. The World Health Organization says

this is the cause of 6 million current cases of

blindness, with houseflies a major carrier. There

is an ongoing debate about whether they can

transmit the Ebola virus.

Could knowing the housefly genome help

prevent the fly-based spread of disease?

New technologies allow us to turn genes off

things like RNA interference. Potentially we could

give flies a bait containing RNA that turns off an

immune gene that protects them against one of

the diseases they carry. This would be a species

specific, environmentally safe control method.

But you also think we should appreciate

houseflies a little more?

Certainly. Theyre a nuisance and we would prefer

them not to make us sick, but they do good in the

world too. In the aftermath of the earthquake and

tsunami in the north of Japan in 2011, houseflies

were obviously a concern in terms of transmitting

diseases, but a colleague saw that they were also

very important in decomposing the mess that was

created. They are also beneficial as decomposers

of animal waste in livestock facilities. If the

massive amounts of manure generated at farming

facilities were not decomposed by fly larvae, it

would create a big environmental problem.

Could we turn any of the houseflys geneticweapons to our advantage?

Houseflies have a significant number of

antimicrobial peptides in their saliva. There has

been a longstanding practice of treating wounds

with fly larvae. This is usually done with blowflies,

but houseflies have been used as well. If you

isolate the gene that makes the antimicrobial

peptide, you could potentially make it in the

lab and produce buckets of it. The possibility

of sourcing new antimicrobial compounds from

the housefly is a real one.

Interview by Jon White

track for the second half of 2015.But one part of the amendment

has thrown a bomb into the works.It banned the use of animal

testing results, in New Zealand orelsewhere, to show that a productmet the no more than a low riskof harm standard. But a seniorMinistry of Health official saidrecently that at this point in time,it is not possible to have a productapproved without animal testing.

The idea of a law that appliessimilar testing standards to thesesubstances as any other approveddrug to ensure it is not genotoxicfor example is now broken. Allrecreational drugs are outlawed,

and thus back in the hands of theblack market. Familiar patterns ofsubstance abuse are returning tothe street and the internet is stilla broad channel for the importof untested drugs. Chances ofthe animal-testing ban beingrescinded look slight for now.

The lessons? The interim periodmay have caused more problemsthan it solved. The delay inintroducing a proper regulatoryinfrastructure was harmful. But

more than that, New Zealandsexperience has shown the perilsof attempting to regulate newpsychoactive substances withoutreviewing drug law as a whole. Thefirst synthetic cannabis product,having been on the market forfive years unnoticed and problem-free, was banned under the vague,sweeping analogue provisions ofthe countrys Misuse of Drugs Act.How different might things havebeen if that product had stillbeen around?

It makes little sense to dealwith new substances in isolation.If there is a solution to the difficultproblem of seeking alternativesto the war on drugs, it very likelylies not only in looking forward,as New Zealand attempted, butalso looking back and reflectingon the laws we already have.

Ross Bellis executive director of the

New Zealand Drug Foundation, which

aims to prevent and reduce harm from

drug use via evidence-based policies

ONE MINUTE INTERVIEW

For more opinion articles, visit newscientist.com/opinion


28/60


In the next decade, NASAs Asteroid Redirect

Mission (ARM) aims to capture an asteroid,

put it into orbit around the moon and then

send astronauts to it. Why?

The mission has critical technologies that weneed to develop for our ambition to get peopleto Mars, such as solar electric propulsion,which is a fuel-efficient way to move cargoslowly. Well need that technology to deliver

bulky supplies to Mars in advance of a crewsarrival. The astronauts cant haul much cargobecause they need to get to Mars in a smaller,faster vehicle to ensure less exposure to thehazardous space environment.

Republicans now control the US Congress and

some want to pull the plug on ARM. Whats your

message to them?

If we are going to get people to Mars in the2030s which is an important goal and onethat I think has strong bipartisan support then we need to make a convincing argumentthat we have to test new technologies in a

stepwise fashion. While I wish we could gethumans to Mars in 2025, we simply dont havethe technology, so we have got to find bite-sized, affordable chunks that we can do one ata time to get to where were going. NASA feelsstrongly that ARM is the first bite-sized chunkthat fits within a responsible budget.

When Barack Obama became president, he

switched focus from a return to the moon to

putting humans on Mars. Did you approve?

I thought that was a great move. I want to findout if theres life on Mars and the only wayI think we are going to do that is by sending

OL

Ellen Stofanis a

planetary geologist and

NASAs chief scientist.

She is an associate

member of the Cassini

mission to Saturn and a

co-investigator on the

Mars Express missions

MARSIS experiment

OO TVW

First anasteroid,then MarsWe cant put people on the Red Planetyet, but just wait till the 2030s, saysNASA chief scientist Ellen Stofan

astronauts and a laboratory there to answerthat question. When you get too focused onthe moon, you start developing all kinds oftechnologies that you actually dont need to

get to Mars.

Arent crewed missions a distraction from

the science objectives, given their added

cost and complexity?

What we can accomplish scientifically byputting scientists on the surface is huge. Andits not just about overcoming the 10 minutesit takes to relay commands from Earth to therovers on Mars its about human intuition.Im a trained geologist: I can read a landscape,I know which rocks to pick up and knock open,and when to move on to the next one. Do youknow how far the Mars rover Opportunity has

moved in 10 years? Twenty kilometres. I cango 20 kilometres in a day. OK, maybe Idmove more slowly on Mars, maybe Id onlygo 10 kilometres in a day. Robots are great,

but at this point they have nowhere near thecapability of a human. As much as I love ourrovers, a human can do in hours what it takesrobots years to accomplish.

Current Mars rovers were sent with no

experiments that would detect life directly.

Was that a mistake?

Research has shown that cosmic radiationwould sterilise the upper 2 metres of Mars ina fairly short period probably just thousandof years. We dont yet have the capability toaccess the depths where scientists are moreoptimistic there could still be extant life.


29/60


Will the next NASA rover, the Mars 2020 lander,

be able to dig down 2 metres?

It has the ability to drill, but not that deep. Weare going to be drilling to take a core sample,

but we are talking centimetres in depth,definitely not even a metre. That samplewill be cached. We will use remote sensinginstruments to look at the hole, but the coreitself will go into a container for possiblepick-up and return to Earth in the future.

Will samples of Martian soil have to wait for a

crewed mission to pick them up?

Im optimistic that we can do it sooner. Goingto Mars, landing a lot of mass on the surface,taking off, rendezvousing in orbit, returningto Earth thats the story of sending humansto Mars. Dont we want to do that in a

completely robotic way before we risk sendinghumans to do the same thing?

What types of experiments do you favour

sending to Mars to answer the life question?Chiefly a sophisticated mass spectrometerthat can not only detect whether organics arepresent, but can also identify exactly whatthey are. And imagers to look at microscopicfeatures in rock in case there could be anyfossils. We dont think the time frame inwhich life could have existed on Mars wasextraordinarily long, so we are notanticipating extremely complex life forms,but instead single-celled, perhaps multi-celledorganisms. They are going to be hard to find.

Ultimately we still need to bring backsamples to do sophisticated analysis. That also

means that when technology advances we willstill have a sample on which to perform moretests. Remember, we are still looking at moonrocks 40 years on and learning new things.

How hard will it be to get clear proof of life?

The complex thing is going to be getting thescientific community to agree that what weare seeing is real evidence of life. Thats where

the rub is going to come. People love to thinkthat scientists all agree, but in reality we like toargue. Any evidence we find is going to create

a big scientific debate, unless it looks just likelife on Earth. Thats why Im so keen onsending people to Mars. I think its going totake human sampling and analysis in situ toactually figure it out.

What are the main barriers to putting people

on Mars?

We understand from instruments on earliermissions that you would get an unacceptablyhigh dose of radiation, mostly due to cosmicradiation, on the journeys between Earth andMars. We havent figured out yet how to

completely shield people from that.Also, astronauts have to be able to get upand work when they get to Mars. We saw a crewthat returned recently after six months on theInternational Space Station. They had to behelped out of the capsule. It takes a while toadjust. How are we going to make sure thatwhen astronauts get to Mars after a journeyof at least six months they are healthyenough to work and return home? We have alot of work to do, mostly on the space stationover the next 10 years, to learn how to mitigatethe effects of microgravity on humans.

Whats your take on private projects aimingto get people to Mars in the next decade?

If someone says they can do it in the 2020s,boy do I want to see how they are doingatmospheric entry, descent and landing. Ourgoal is to land astronauts safely and get themhome, but we dont yet know how to land largeamounts of mass on the surface of Mars safely.Mars has a very thin atmosphere. You arrive atreally high speed and you have to slow yourselfdown. We are working on the technologies todo that, but were not there yet.

Interview byJon White

CHRISGUNN/NASA

I love our Mars rovers, but ahuman can do in hours whatit takes robots years to do

For more opinion articles, visit newscientist.com/opinion


30/60


WHAT is now? It is an idea that physicstreats as a mere illusion, yet it issomething we are all familiar with.

We tend to think of it as this current instant,

a moment with no duration. But if now weretimeless, we wouldnt experience a successionof nows as time passing. Neither would webe able to perceive things like motion. Wecouldnt operate in the world if the presenthad no duration. So how long is it?

That sounds like a metaphysical question,but neuroscientists and psychologists havean answer. In recent years, they have amassedevidence indicating that now lasts on averagebetween 2 and 3 seconds. This is the now youare aware of the window within which yourbrain fuses what you are experiencing into apsychological present. It is surprisingly long.

But thats just the beginning of the weirdness.There is also evidence that the now youexperience is made up of a jumble of minisubconscious nows and that your brain is

choosy about what events it admits into yournows. Different parts of the brain measurenow in different ways. Whats more, thewindow of perceived now can expand insome circumstances and contract in others.

Now is clearly a slippery concept.Nevertheless, it would be good to pin it downbecause it could tell us something about thebigger picture of how the brain tracks time.Not just that, the perception of the present isalso crucial to how we experience the world. Ifevents appear simultaneous when they arent,that has implications for our understandingof what causes what. Your sense of nowness

underpins your entire conscious experience,says Marc Wittmann at the Institute forFrontier Areas of Psychology and MentalHealth in Freiburg, Germany. Understanding

now even helps us address the question ofwhether we have free will.

We have long known that the brain containstructures that use cycles of light and dark toset its daily clock. How it tracks the passingof seconds and minutes is much less wellunderstood. At this level, there are two broadtypes of timing mechanism, an implicit andan explicit one. The explicit one relates tohow we judge duration something weresurprisingly good at. The implicit mechanismis the timing of now it is how the braindefines a psychological moment and sostructures our conscious experience.

O N C EU P O N

AT I M E

Think you live in the present? Its all an illusion createdby your brain, says Laura Spinney


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