LIFE BELOW ZERO
Surviving the merciless Alaskan wilderness p60
ASIA EDITION
Vol. 7 Issue 12
SCIENCE • HISTORY • NATURE • FOR THE CURIOUS MIND
Audacious innovations
whose time has come p26
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MEET THE
RAINFOREST
GARDENER p40
WHAT YOUR
FACE SAYS
ABOUT YOU p48
THE MEDICINAL
POWER OF
MUSIC p52
LIFE STORY
Premieres 28th December. Sundays at 7.00pm (JKT/BKK), 8.00pm (SIN/HK/MAL/TW)
Told from the perspective of individual animals, this captivating series follows the journey from birth to parenthood.
Each episode focuses on one stage of life starting with those crucial árst few days and moving through the challenges
of the grown up world.
DAVID ATTENBOROUGH’S NATURAL HUNTERS OF THE SOUTH SEAS
Premieres 20th December.
CURIOSITIES S3
Premieres 2nd December.
Wednesdays at 7.10pm (JKT/BKK),
8.10pm (SIN/HK/MAL/TW)
David Attenborough reveals the most
intriguing animals he’s met during his
incomparable career.
Sundays at 4.00pm (JKT/BKK),
5.00pm (SIN/HK/MAL/TW)
Full of wonder and adventure, this
series is a personal and intimate
exploration of one of the world’s last
remaining wild places and the people
who call it home.
ATLANTIC
Premieres 23rd December.
Tuesdays at 7.05pm (JKT/BKK),
8.05pm (SIN/HK/MAL/TW)
Discover the mysteries of the Atlantic
ocean in all its moods, from its darkest
depths to its coastline and islands,
and learn about the people and
wildlife whose lives are shaped by
its rhythms.
www.bbcasia.com
BBC Earth is available in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia,
Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.
Please call your cable operator for more details or check out our website.
/BBCEarth
@BBCEarthAsia
On the cover
Vol. 7 Issue 12
NATURE
LIFE BELOW ZERO
Surviving
S
urviivin
i i g the
th me
merciless
rciless
il
Alask
Al
Alaskan
kan wilderness
ild
p60
ASIA EDITION
Vol. 7 Issue 12
SCIENCE • HISTORY • NATURE • FOR THE CURIOUS MIND
NATURE
60 Life Below Zero
Audacious innovations
whose time has come p26
40 Rainforest Gardener
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SCIENCE
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MEET THE
RA
R
A
RAINFOREST
GARDENER
GA
ARDENER p40
A
WHAT YOUR
FAC
FA
AC SAYS
FACE
ABOUT
ABO
AB
BO
OUTT YOU
OU
YOU p48
THE MEDIC
ICINALL
POW
PO
OW O
OF
POWER
MUSIC
MUS
MU
S p52
SCIENCE
48 10 Things Your Face Says About You
52 Tune In To Treatment FM
26 39 Ideas About To Change Our World
Vol. 7 Issue 12
3
Contents
Vol. 7 Issue 12
SCIENCE
SCIENCE
NATURE
SCIENCE
SCIENCE
NATURE
SCIENCE
FEATURES
4
ON THE COVER
26 39 Ideas About To Change Our World
We bring you the most incredible breakthroughs on the
horizon from floating farms to virtual therapy, and the other
breakthrough innovations that will help shape the future
ON THE COVER
40 Rainforest Gardener
Sharing a common ancestor as the emu, cassowaries
are flightless giants that pack a lethal kick and possess a
phenomenal appetite for fruit. By spreading vast numbers
of seeds, they play a crucial role in the forest
ON THE COVER
48 10 Things Your Face Says About You
Your face reveals more about you than you might think, from
how much cholesterol you have to how trustworthy you are,
and from how well you fight to whether you are the artistic
or scientific type, find out more here
26 39 Ideas About To Change Our World
ON THE COVER
52 Tune In To Treatment FM
Neuroscientists have documented other anatomical
changes with musical experience such as the surprising
medical applications of music, from speech therapy to
helping premature babies grow
ON THE COVER
60 Life Below Zero
The series that follows the lives of ordinary people
struggling to survive in the merciless Alaskan wilderness
as the oncoming winter freeze begins to take hold and
nature’s unpredictability threatens their mental and
physical strength
68 The Function Of Hormones
Imagine being able to Tweet at the speed of your
thoughts or updating your Facebook status or page just
by the mere thought of it, sounds implausible? Meet the
machines that can already read our minds
74 The Man-Made Universe
How do astronomers study the Universe, there’s no way
to conduct in-depth analysis as studies are conducted at a
distance, however some scientists have managed to create
an entire universe inside a supercomputer
Vol. 7 Issue 12
8 Snapshot
SCIENCE
78 Tech Hub
SCIENCE
60 Life Below Zero
96 My Life Scientific
A medical AI developed in China that can diagnose over
500 common illnesses and this month Bill Thompson
looks at next-gen battery technology
In our new regular feature, Helen Pilcher interviews Sir
Paul Nurse, The Royal Society’s President and Nobel
laureate explains why he nearly didn’t get into university
REGULARS
6 Welcome
A note from the editor sharing his thoughts on the issue and
other ramblings
8 Snapshot
Stunning images from the fields of science, history and nature
UPDATE
14 The Latest Intelligence
Water is found on mars so is there life as well, why NASA wants
to land a spacehopper on a comet, ten recent breakthroughs that
could have a huge impact, and new species of hominin found
23 Comment & Analysis
Why aren’t there any red bubbles?
81 Q&A
This month: what music
helps plants grow, how
spacecraft avoid asteroids
could dinosaurs survive today,
why do biscuits go soft and
does chocolate make you
happy and much more…
RESOURCE
94 Reviews
The latest, and perhaps more fascinating, books reviewed by experts
97 Time Out
Stretch your brain cells with our tricky crossword
68 The Function Of Hormones
98 Last Word
Robert Matthews on the peer review process
Vol. 7 Issue 12
5
Welc me
Send us your letters
editorial-bbcknowledge@regentmedia.sg
THE FUTURE OF THE HUMAN RACE
Our future does seem bleak doesn’t it, the
environmental damages and subsequent detriment
that we humans have wrought onto our home
planet Earth. Vast and rapid industrialisation,
blatant and excessive cultivation of natural land,
excessive and indiscriminate harvesting of our
oceans through fishing have all put us in a dire
situation if we do not find alternatives, more
environmentally sound options at that.
The last few decades have been great leaps in
terms of scientific discoveries, applications of
new technologies as well as the reengineering
of old ones to benefit all of us. As can be seen
from this issue’s cover story, we have a massive 14
pages worth of achievable ideas that range from
using the wastes in the manufacture of coffee and
converting 85% of them into biofuels, to using sonic waves to snuff out forest
fires as well as smart food labels that help to limit food wastage.
It does seem that the next decade could be the one where scientists come
up with innovative solutions to solve existing problems as well as prevent
new ones from occurring.
BBC Knowledge Magazine
Includes selected articles from other BBC specialist magazines, including
Focus, BBC History Magazine and BBC Wildlife Magazine.
SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY FUTURE
www.sciencefocus.com
www.historyextra.com
www.discoverwildlife.com
Important change:
The licence to publish this magazine was acquired from BBC Worldwide by
Immediate Media Company on 1 November 2011. We remain committed to
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SCIENCE • HISTORY • NATURE • FOR THE CURIOUS MIND
Know more. Anywhere.
Ben Poon
ben@regentmedia.sg
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We welcome your letters, while reserving the right to edit them for length and clarity. By sending us your letter you
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Experts in this issue…
Colin
Stuart
Astrophysicist, author and science
presenter Colin admits that fellow
astronomer John Gribbin is one of his science
heroes so what will he make of Gribbin’s new book?
Find out on p107.
6
Vol. 7 Issue 12
Zoe
Cormier
This month, regular contributor
Zoe looks at the beneficial
effects music can have on your mind and body
(see p52). Well, who better to ask than the author
of Sex, Drugs & Rock ‘N’ Roll?
Robert
Matthews
Currently visiting Reader in
Science at the Department
of Information Engineering, Aston University.
He proposes using students to help
scientists find why on p98.
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GIST?
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OR BRIjust
SAVAGE
a mindless psycho
is Khan more than
Was Gengh
Vol. 7 Issue 11
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ASIA EDITION
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SCIENCE • HISTO
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FOR THE CURIOUS
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LIFE B
ELOW
ing the
ZERO
mercil
ess Ala
ska
Sur viv
n wilder
ASIA ED
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Silverback
© Ellen Husain /
Films 2015
SCIENCE
• HISTOR
Y • NATU
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Vol. 7 Issu
e 12
RE • FO
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RIOUS
MIND
CONTRIBUTORS
Lilian Anekwe, Stephen Baxter, Susan Blackmore, Dean Burnett, Dallas Campbell,
Stuart Clark, Helen Czerski, Russell Deeks, John Gribbin, Alastair Gunn,
Timandra Harkness, Adam Hart, Richard Hodson, Tobias Jolly, Mun Keat Looi,
Andrew Lyons, Tim McDonagh, Bill McGuire, Robert Matthews, Gareth Mitchell,
Lisa Moses, Dale Edwin Murray, Catherine Offord, Helen Pilcher, Andy Potts,
Dean Purnell, Kate Russell, David Shukman, Matt Swaine, Bill Thompson,
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SCIENCE
Spruced-up swirls
Each spring, tendrils of brightly
coloured spruce pollen swirl over the
surface of Bavaria’s Lake Sternberg.
Unlike flowering plants, which are
typically pollinated by insects, spruce
trees rely on random wind currents
to disperse their pollen. Obviously,
this is a much less precise process,
which means that vast quantities
must be produced in order to enable
successful reproduction. As a result
much of the pollen ends up going
astray, creating large deposits of
8
Vol. 7 Issue 12
thick yellow dust as seen here.
“Pollen from spruce and pine keep
their structure in water, whereas
other pollen bursts,” says Christian
Bergmann from the German Pollen
Information Service. “Large quantities
are released when conditions are
sunny, dry and a bit windy. Every
year you often see pine and spruce
pollen in the water – even in the
Baltic Sea.”
PHOTO: PRESS ASSOCIATION
Vol. 7 Issue 12
9
NATURE
Ray of sunshine
This cute little fellow is a baby undulate
ray, an endangered fish found in the
Mediterranean and east Atlantic,
including waters around the UK. The
starry ‘eyes’ are actually the animal’s
nostrils, which it uses only for smell; it
breathes using gills (the five pairs of gill
slits are visible in this image beneath
the mouth). In contrast to its white
underside, its back is covered in a
brown and yellow pattern that blends
in perfectly with the sandy seabed.
Although just several centimetres in
length now, once fully grown this ray
could measure up to 1m and live for as
long as 23 years.
10
Vol. 7 Issue 12
“Baby undulate rays start out life
enclosed in a tough leathery eggcase.
This small capsule protects the
developing embryo, while a yolk sac
provides all the required nutrients for
it to grow,” says Cat Gordon from the
Shark Trust. “Tiny slits along the horns
of the eggcase allow oxygenated
seawater to enter the capsule and
the ray will beat its tail like a pump to
circulate it. Once hatched, the young
are fully formed, miniature versions
of the adults, ready to fend for
themselves.”
PHOTO: CAMERA PRESS
Vol. 7 Issue 12
11
HISTORY
ISS at the start of Expedition 1
On 2nd November 2000, the Expedition
1 crew of Commander William M.
(Bill) Shepherd of NASA and Flight
Engineer Sergei Krikalev and Soyuz
Commander Yuri Gidzenko of
Roscosmos arrived at the International
Space Station, marking the start of
an uninterrupted human presence on
the orbiting laboratory. Their Soyuz
capsule made contact with the aft
docking port of the station’s Zvezda
Service Module at 3:21 a.m. CST while
the two spacecraft were flying over
the central portion of Kazakhstan. A
little over one hour later at 4:23 a.m.,
the hatch leading into the Zvezda’s
living quarters was opened, signifying
the start of human occupancy of the
international complex.
Fifteen years later, 45 crewed
expeditions (so far), more than 220
people from 17 countries have
visited the station, constructed
12
Vol. 7 Issue 12
over more than 115 space flights
conducted on five different types
of launch vehicles. The station now
measures 357 feet end-to-end and
provides more liveable room than a
conventional six-bedroom house.
22 scientific investigations were
conducted during Expedition 1, while
a total of 191 scientific investigations
will be conducted during Expeditions
45 and 46. To date, more than 1,200
scientific results publications have
been produced based on over
1,760 research investigations on the
orbiting laboratory.
This photograph, dated 2nd
December 2000, shows the
configuration of the space station at
the start of Expedition 1 including the
Zarya Control Module, Unity Node,
Zvezda Service Module and Z1-Truss.
PHOTO: NASA
Vol. 7 Issue 12
13
Update
NASA’S OWN
SPACE HOPPER
Meet the Hedgehog,
NASA’s next-gen
probe for exploring
comets and asteroids
p22
THE LATEST INTELLIGENCE
p20
20
PICTURES
OF PLUTO
The latest
amazing images
sent back from
New Horizons
p21
HOARY OLD
HOMINIDS
Unknown species
of protohuman
discovered in a cave
(where else?)
T H E B I G S T O RY
SIGNS OF FLOWING WATER FOUND ON MARS:
COULD LIFE BE NEXT?
PHOTO: NASA
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter confirms that mysterious
streaks on the surface of the Red Planet are evidence of liquid
water – a vital element for life
14
14
VVoooll. 7 IIssssue
suuuee 12
12
ANALYSIS
ANAL
AN
LYSIS
YS
S
This image of Garni Crater
clearly shows the streaks
that reveal water’s presence
Lewis
Dartnelll
Astrobiologist and author of
Life In The Universe
Why is water so vital for life?
Water is a solvent used to dissolve all of
the different molecules and compounds
that life is based on. We know there
has been lots of water on Mars in the
past, but the big question has been is
it still liquid today, in the current desert
landscape of Mars? That’s why this recent
announcement is so important.
It may have a reputation of being a huge,
dusty red rock, but a new study has found
evidence of water flowing on Mars.The discovery
is likely to fuel further speculation that life could
be found on the Red Planet.
Researchers analysing data sent back by NASA’s
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) satellite
have found that a series of dark lines which streak
the Martian surface are most likely to be made by
streams of salty water trickling down the rocky
inclines. Spectroscopic analysis of these streaks,
known as recurring slope lineae (RSL), has
found them to contain hydrated minerals called
perchlorates, a type of salt that has previously been
detected in Martian soil.
The streaks darken and widen during warmer
months before fading during cooler spells.This
is thought to be due to the salts lowering the
freezing point of the liquid brine, just as putting
salt on roads here on Earth causes ice to melt more
rapidly, allowing it to flow during warmer spells.
“Our quest on Mars has always been to ‘follow
the water’ in our search for life in the Universe,
and now we have convincing science that validates
what we’ve long suspected,” said NASA’s John
Grunsfeld. “This is a significant development, as
it appears to confirm that water, albeit briny, is
flowing today on the surface of Mars.”
It is as yet unclear where the water comes
from, but the researchers say it’s likely to form a
shallow flow just beneath the surface. “When most
people talk about water on Mars, they’re usually
talking about ancient water or frozen water,” said
researcher Rich Zurek. “Now we know there’s
more to the story.This is the first spectral detection
that unambiguously supports our liquid waterformation hypotheses.”
It is theorised that water is needed for life
to develop, as it provides a medium in which
organic compounds can mix with one another
in a so-called primordial soup to produce simple
organisms. From these basic building blocks, more
complicated plants and animals can then evolve.
“It took multiple spacecraft several years to
solve this mystery, and now we know there is
liquid water on the surface of this cold, desert
planet,” said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for
the Mars Exploration Program. “It seems that
the more we study Mars, the more we learn
how life could be supported, and where there
are resources that could potentially support life
in the future.”
Why is it important that the
water is liquid?
If you have a solid, then nothing can move
around – it’s all locked in place. If you
have a gas, things are too hot and moving
around so fast that they don’t interact
together. A liquid is the perfect in-between
state, where things can move around but
they are still held quite closely so they can
interact with each other lots, and so you
can have the kind of chemical reactions
that drive life.
What should we look
for next?
Water is the essential biosolvent, but
for life to exist you also need complex
chemistry. All life on Earth, and what we
suspect will be life on other worlds, is
organic, or carbon-based, life. Carbon is
extremely good at sticking to itself and
to other atoms. It’s also ideally suited to
building up these great big architectures,
these complex scaffolds of molecules, that
we see make up things like DNA, proteins
or lipids. These are the things that all life
on Earth is made from.
1895
1953
1972
2006
American astronomer
Percival Lowell
observes what he
believes are canals
built by intelligent life
forms on Mars. Later
observations found it
was an optical illusion.
Stanley Miller and Harold
Urey create amino acids,
the building blocks for
proteins, by mixing water,
ammonia, methane and
hydrogen in a flask and
passing an electrical
current through it.
NASA’s Mariner 9
space probe sends
back images of the
surface of Mars
showing riverbeds,
canyons and
evidence of water
erosion.
The Mars Global
Surveyor takes
photographs of
gullies, seemingly
formed by water that
must have been
flowing in very
recent times.
This might disappoint some people, but
we aren’t talking about anything more
complex than perhaps some particularly
hardy bacteria. These would be similar to
the kinds of life we find surviving in the
harshest environments here on Earth – socalled ‘extremophiles’. No one is looking
for green bug-eyed monsters!
Vol. 7 Issue 12
15
PHOTO: NASA X2, ISTOCK X2
What sort of life might we
ever expect to find on Mars?
Timeline
A history of Martian biology
Update
THE LATEST INTELLIGENCE
PATENTLY OBVIOUS
with James Lloyd
Inventions about to change your world
Reduce risk
with a ring
There’s still a lot of stigma
around sexual health. Hoping
to change that is Hoope – a
ring-like device that allows
anyone to test themselves
for STIs, wherever they are.
Once fitted over the thumb,
a needle collects a pinprick
of blood, while electrodes are
said to block the sensation of
pain. A ‘lab-on-a-chip’ then
tests for syphilis, gonorrhoea,
trichomoniasis and chlamydia.
The results are displayed in the
Hoope app, which provides
data on the infections and
locations of nearby clinics.
Patent pending
Pothole patrollers
Ka-dunk. There goes a pothole.
Potholes are the scourge of
many motorists, causing wheel
damage, bumpy journeys and
even accidents. Now, Google
wants to turn your car into a
roving pothole reporter, using
onboard, vertical movement
sensors to detect when your
car hits a divot in the road.
The system will upload this
data, along with the car’s GPS
S
location, to a central server.
Here, it could be used to create
te
maps of pothole-ridden areas
– a useful resource for routeplanners and local councils.
Patent number:
US 9,108,640
PHOTO: MARC BOULAY, MORGAN TURNER/BROWN UNIVERSITY
Climate-controlled cribs
Sometimes, no matter how cosy your bed, it can be really hard to
get comfy. One minute you’re shivering, the next you’re sweating
like a sheep in a sauna. Why can’t someone invent a climate
control system for beds?
Well, now they have. The BedJet works by creating a cushion
of air between the lower bed sheet and the top sheet or duvet.
This lifts up the top sheet slightly, allowing air to circulate to either
warm you up or cool you down. Perfect for those who suffer from
night sweats.
The temperature is controlled via a Bluetooth-connected app,
while acoustic damping technology means that it doesn’t sound
like you’re sleeping in a turbine. The BedJet, which fits any sized
bed, will also make adjustments during the night, helping you
reach the lower body temperature needed for deep sleep, before
waking you up in the morning with a gentle warming. Maybe it’s
finally time to get rid of granny’s old electric blankets…
Patent number: US 20150121619
Things are getting hot
between the sheets
16
Vol. 7 Issue 12
Bunostegos means
knobbly [skull] roof.
These bumps are not
dissimilar to those
seen on a giraffe’s
head
Pala
Pa
laeo
eont
ntol
olog
og
gy
gy
First known animal to
walk on all fours
This ani
This
anima
mall is Bun
Bunos
oste
tego
gos
g s
akokanensis,
akok
ak
okan
anen
ensi
siss tthe
he eearliest
arlilies
ar
estt known
know
kn
own
n
creature to stand on all fours.
It was previously thought that
all pareiasaurs, the group of prereptiles to which
B. akokanensis belongs, were
sprawlers – animals whose limbs
jutted out from the
sides of their bodies like
modern-day lizards.
Now, analysis of a set of
260-million-year-old fossils
found in Niger in 2003 and
2006 has determined that the
animal stood upright like a cow
or a hippo.
“A lot of the animals that
lived around the time had a
similar upright or semi-upright
hind limb posture, but what’s
interesting and special about
B. akokanensis is the forelimb,
in that its anatomy is sprawlingpreecluding
l d andd seemingly
l
dirrected
d underneath
d
h its
ody – unlike
bod
l k anything
h g
elsse at the
h time,” saidd
Walking
i upright
i
would
alloow B. akokanensis to
wallk further between
meals, helping it survive
in aaridd co
conditions
d o s
rese
sear
arch
cher Mor
orga
rre
g n Turner.
Spec
Sp
ecif
ific
icalllly the animal
animal’ss
Specifically,
shoulder joints faced down so
that the humerus, which runs
from the shoulder to the elbow,
pointed directly down.
The findings that matter most,
however, are all in the forelimbs.
According to Turner, four
observations make the case that
the creature stood differently to
all the rest, with the legs entirely
beneath the body. They also had
less mobile elbow joints.
During the time that
B. akokanensis lived, Niger
was an arid place where plants
and water sources were scarce.
Walking upright on all fours has
shown to be a more efficient
posture than sprawling and
may have enabled the animal to
endure longer journeys between
meals, Turner said.
Monkeying around
SHUKMAN
with NASA’s latest bot DAVID
The science that
th
ha
att matters
matters
RoboSimian could be used in Earth-bound
missions as well as space exploration.
Watch it in action at bit.ly/RoboSimian
stressing that although the robot
is unusually robust and versatile,
its two on-board computers
give it pretty limited processing
power – it’s certainly a long
way, they say, from anything that
could think or act remotely like
a human being.
In fact, the lab is a good
place to come for some balance
in the furore over whether
robots equipped with artificial
intelligence will inevitably
WHO’SS IN
THE NEW
WS?
Bill G
Gates
Microsoft
M
coco-founder
a d world’s
and
richest man
rich
What did he say?
Gates is urging governments
around the world to pool money
into research in renewable energy
technologies on the same scale as
the Manhattan Project or the Apollo
Moon missions.
How much money is he
talking about?
Tens of billions of dollars.
overtake and then destroy us.
Such are the difficulties of
creating synthetic intelligence
that might be comparable to
human brainpower, and motors
that are small but powerful and
batteries that last more than a
few hours, that the threat of a
robot army seems too distant to
take seriously.
But whenever we filmed the
RoboSimian being put through
its paces, we found ourselves
Hang on. Why doesn’t he put
his money where his mouth is?
Actually, he has. So far he
reckons he has invested over
US$1 billion into companies
researching green technologies
and intends to double this over the
next five years. He has also said
that private investors could stand
to make a killing if they back the
right companies.
keeping a sharp eye on it. And
one of the NASA team was
always on hand with a killswitch. Just in case, they said. As
I left, I wondered what safety
measures a future film crew
would need if they were close to
a robot that was far smarter than
RoboSimian.
DAVID SHUKMAN is the BBC’s Science
Editor. @davidshukmanbbc
So what kind of projects
is he picking?
He seems particularly interested
in solar chemical power, which
uses a process similar to
photosynthesis to make hydrogen
fuel from water and sunlight.
He’s also keen on high-altitude
wind power, which uses kite-like
structures to tap the energy of
jet streams.
Vol. 7 Issue 12
17
PHOTOS: NASA/JPL, MICROSOFT
Stepping into the robotics
lab at NASA’s Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in California
takes you into a world of
extraordinary inventiveness.
Facing us, between workbenches
crammed with laptops, soldering
irons and spools of cable, was a
bundle of technology the size of
a small dustbin: a highly versatile
machine called the RoboSimian.
Named for the agility and
adaptability of a monkey, this
robot is meant to serve as
an emissary on missions too
dangerous for people – entering
anything from the wreckage of
a gas plant to the smouldering
aftermath of a radioactive
accident to the unknown terrain
of an alien world.
To manoeuvre over debris, its
four legs descend to provide a
crawling motion. To roll across
a smooth surface, the robot
morphs into a shape that uses
wheels. And to drive a car, it
extends its limbs into a standing
posture so it can slip behind
the wheel of the vehicle.
Watching it go through
these transformations is a little
unnerving.The movements are
extremely slow but the twists,
turns and elevations are executed
so smoothly that the machine
gives an impression of effortless
self-confidence.
The engineers running it keep
Update
THE LATEST INTELLIGENCE
DISCOVERIES
S
10
Photosynthesis
record broken
The technique will help plant breeders
identify the most useful plants, thereby
speeding up the process of crossbreeding. The researchers linked a set
of RNA molecules in corn seedlings to
properties that are expressed later on in
the plant’s growth.
Sound wave
brain control
A 17-year record for efficiency in
a f
artificial
photosynthesis
y
has been
beaten. The new record efficiencyy
o 14 per cent is close to the level
of
a which
at
hi h iit would
ld b
be commercially
i ll
viable to use solar energy
g to split
water into oxygen and, more
importantly, hydrogen ffuel.
The ability to activate cellls in the brain,
T
h
heart
and
d muscles
l withou
i h ut damaging
other cells would be a huge medical
advance.
been ac
achiev
ad a ce It’s
s bee
eved in the
nematode by Salk Institutte researchers,
using
i g ultrasonic
l
i sound
d wa
aves, and could
one day
y work in the huma
an brain.
VVol
Vol.
ooll. 7 IIs
Issu
sssue
suue
ue 12
12
Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak is getting closer and
closer to becoming a reality
Sun-tracking
solar cells
Solar panels that follow the Sun
capture much more energy than
those that lie permanently flat. The
bulk and weight of conventional
tracking motors, however, makes
them unsuitable for most roofs.
Now the University of Michigan has
harnessed the Japanese paper-cutting
art of kirigami to design lightweight
solar strips that bend when flexed,
capturing 36 per cent more energy
than flat panels.
The device
i
that changes
g
solar energy to
h d
hydrogen
18
A super-thin ‘cloak’ has been used to
conceal objects in visible light. The
cloak is microscopic in size, but its
developers at Berkeley Lab believe
it could be scaled up to hide bigger
objects. Its surface is made of socalled metamaterials that re-route
reflected light waves in a way that’s
not seen in natural materials. The cloak
is 80 nanometres (80 billionths of a
metre) thick and made of ‘bricks’ of
gold nanoantennas. The technology
could in future be used in 3D displays.
Predicting
plant size
Wouldn’t it BE great to know exactly how
big your potted plant will grow when it’s
just a seedling? A new method developed
at Belgium’s VIB Institute does just that.
It’s based on the principle that a particular
set of genes is associated with the size
to which a leaf will eventually grow.
PHOTO:
P
O O VIB, XIANG
G ZHANG
G GROUP/UC
G O
/ C BERKELEY, GETTY
G
X2, AARON
O LAM
MOUREUX,
RIKEN
BRAIN SCIENCE INSTITUTE, SALK INSTITUTE, M MAY
R
Y
U U
Now you
see it…
How caffeine
affects sleep
Coffee wakes you up – fact. But now it’s
been shown that caffeine affects the human
circadian clock. Drink a double espresso
(or the equivalent) three hours before
sleep, and your body clock is delayed
by 40 minutes. The discovery will help
understanding of sleep disorders and may
help treat jet lag.
Wearable
energy sensor
MagnifiSense is a prototype wearable
device that calculates your carbon
footprint by measuring how much
you use cars, buses and household
devices. Its sensors detect and record
the electromagnetic radiation given off
by motors and electronics.
A new wearable can track your carbon footprint
The science
diet
The best way of losing weight
and keeping healthy may be to
listen to your gut. The first steps
towards a personalised diet
based on the bacteria in your
digestive system have been
taken at Sweden’s Chalmers
University of Technology. The
diversity of bacteria and other
microorganisms in your gut –
known as the gut microbiome –
varies enormously from person
to person. In the Swedish study,
patients with low diversity of
bacteria had improved blood
chemistry on the diet.
If you want to toughen glass, take some tips from a tardigrade
Water
bear glass
Tardigrades, or water bears, are
microscopic creatures that can withstand
extremely hot and cold temperatures, and
even the vacuum of space. When they dry
out, they survive by coating themselves
in glassy molecules to remain in a state of
In future, dietary
advice may
be tailored to
your individual
microbiome
suspended animation. This property led
University of Chicago scientists to discover
a new type of glass with an ordered
alignment of molecules. The discovery
could improve the efficiency of LEDs, solar
cells and optical fibres.
See-through
brains
Google ‘transparent mouse’ and you’ll
see photos of a see-through rodent.
Now it’s possible to see through
tissue in an animal brain, thanks to
the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in
Japan. The technique allows brain
structures to be studied under a
microscope. It’s been used to create
3D images that have shown how
plaques form
inside the brain
of a mouse with
Alzheimer’s
disease.
A new
technique
offers the
prospect of
better brain
imaging
Vol. 7 Issue 12
19
Update
THE LATEST IN
NTELLIGENCE
E
SPACE
Spectacular new images of
Pluto released
It may now be almost five billion kilometres away from Earth,
but NASA’s New Horizons probe is still delivering the goods.
The craft captured a wealth of images when it flew past the
dwarf planet in July and is continuing to beam data back to
scientists on Earth via a satellite downlink.
NEW HORIZONS UP CLOSE
E
REX: measures
atmospheric composition
LORRI:
telescopic camera
PHOTO: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI X4
Images taken by the LORRI camera show Pluto’s
surface in detail, down to a resolution of 270m.
The peaks shown in this image,
also taken by Ralph, reach
3,500m into the skyline, making
them similar in height to the Pyrenees.
The smooth areas on the right are
thought to be glaciers. Backlighting,
provided by the Sun, highlights
the hazy layers of the
dwarf planet’s scant
atmosphere.
20
Vol. 7 Issue 12
Ralph:
R p visible and
infrared imager
g
This incredibly d
detailed shot was
created by piecin
ing together blue,
red and infrared images from the
Ralph
camera and
R
nd then enhancing the
colours. It shows the staggering variety
in the dwarf plane
et’s geology. Scientists
have dubbed the la
arge, flat plain (centreright)
the ‘Sputnik P
g
Platform’.
EVOLUTIO
O U ION
ON
Human family tree
gets another branch
While exploring a remote network of
crevices in South Africa’s Gauteng
province, caver Steve Tucker stumbled
upon a hoard of bones.
After being recovered and analysed
as part of an international collaboration
involving the University of Colorado,
the University of Witwatersrand and the
National Geographic Society, the fossils
were found to belong to a previously
undiscovered human ancestor. The
species was named Homo naledi, which
comes from the word for ‘star’ in the
local Sesothothe language.
H. naledi stood at just 1.5m in height
and had an orange-sized brain when
fully grown. “The only thing similar we
know of are the so-called ‘hobbits’ of
Flores Island in Indonesia,” explained
the University of Colorado’s Charles
Musiba.
The researchers have yet to determine
how old the fossils are or exactly where
H. naledi fits into the human family
tree. Initial studies suggest that their
small brains and body size most closely
resemble H. erectus, the oldest known
early humans. However, there are also
similarities with Australopithecus,
ancestors of modern humans that died
out two million years ago.
“This raises many questions,” Musiba
said. “How many species of human
were there? Were there lines that
simply extended outward and
then disappeared? Did they
co-exist with modern humans?
Did they interbreed?”
Vol. 7 Issue 12
21
Discoveries
The robot’s shape allows
it to travel on unstable
surfaces without falling
over
It hops around by
spinning and braking
internal flywheels
S ACE
SPAC
SP
CE
E
Meet the comet-exploring ‘Hedgehog’
PHOTO: NASA/JPL X2, KYOTO UNIVERSITY
NASA researchers have created a
bouncing rover that could be used
to explore comets and asteroids.
Nicknamed ‘Hedgehog’, thanks
to its unique spiky design, the
rover can move in any direction
and is better equipped to cope
with low gravity and rough,
unpredictable terrain than
conventional wheeled rovers.
The robot is being jointly
developed by teams from NASA’s
THEY DID WHAT?!
Apes shown
‘horror movies’
What did they do?
Researchers at Kyoto University
showed two films to six chimps and
six bonobos. In the first film, a person
22
Vol. 7 Issue 12
Jet Propulsion Lab and Stanford
University. It consists of a cubeshaped body with eight spiky
corners. It moves by turning to
face in the desired direction, then
spinning and rapidly braking
internal flywheels.The force of
rapid deceleration makes the robot
‘leap’ or ‘hop’ forward.
“The geometry of the
Hedgehog spikes has a great
influence on its hopping trajectory.
We have experimented with
several spike configurations and
found that a cube shape provides
the best hopping performance.
The cube structure is also easier
to manufacture and package
within a spacecraft,” said Stanford’s
Benjamin Hockman.
The prototypes have been tested
in low-gravity conditions aboard
NASA’s C-9 aircraft and both
were able to move around in sandy,
dressed in an ape suit leaps out from
one of two doors. In the second, a
person picks up a toy hammer and
bashes the ape. They used eye-tracking
to see what was holding the apes’
attention and then played them the
films again, 24 hours later.
door from which they’d seen the ape
character jump out. In the second
video, they stared at the hammer, even
though it was put in a different place.
What did they find?
When watching the first video again,
the apes’ eyes were trained on the
Why did they do that?
This proves that apes can store
and retrieve info in their long-term
memories. This allows them to
anticipate upcoming events based on
previous experiences.
rocky and icy environments.
The teams are currently
developing the bot’s ability to
work independently, enabling it
to perform tasks without needing
constant instructions from Earth.
Their idea is that an orbiting
mothership would relay signals
to and from the bot, similar to
how NASA’s Mars Curiosity
rover communicates via satellites
orbiting the Red Planet.
Honest. This is serious science
Comment & Analysis
Why aren’t there any red bubbles?
Bubbles float about at the mercy of the wind but it’s the
laws of physics that prevent them from turning red
A
“Pink looks like a
colour but it isn’t in
the rainbow – our
brains have made it
up as a way
of dealing with red
plus violet”
thins a bit more, the red and the violet waves
cancel each other out, which leaves you with
lots of green. Green is a single wavelength, a
real colour from the rainbow. And as the film
thins further, there’s a point where there’s lots
of red and green together (they’ve rippled
approximately twice each) but no blue,
so you end up seeing yellow.
We only see colours when the soap film is
very thin – a thickness of just one or two
wavelengths of light. So there are only a
limited number of combinations of colours
that we can see. Red by itself just happens not
to be one of them. So no red bubbles for me.
It can be unsatisfying when the answer to a
question is ‘that’s just the way it is’, but I
don’t mind it in this case because it’s
universal. Every single soap bubble obeys the
same rules; it doesn’t matter how you make it,
where you make it or what you make it with.
Sometimes it’s reassuring to see the
fundamental rules of the Universe at work.
Pink and green bubbles are just the way the
Universe rolls.
DR HELEN CZERSKI is a physicist, oceanographer
and BBC science presenter whose most recent
series was Super Senses
Vol. 7 Issue 12
23
ILLUSTRATOR: ANDREW LYONS
soap bubble is almost like a magic
pill for making people smile.
They’re easy to create, beautifully
spherical, innocent and airy with a hint of
unpredictability. And they’re colourful. But
once you’ve watched them for a while, you
notice something strange. The shifting swirls
gliding over the surface are pink and green,
sometimes with streaks of yellow and
occasionally blue. But where are the other
colours? What about red and purple, brown
and orange? What makes a bubble so selective?
Possibly the only thing about bubbles that
has consistently been disappointing to
generations – other than the fact you can’t
catch them – is that you can’t change the
colour of a bubble by adding food dye.
There’s just not enough of it: a typical soap
bubble is so thin that it only has a few
milligrams of water in it. The minuscule
amount of dye in there can’t absorb enough
of the flood of light passing through to make
any difference.
But it’s this skinny film that gives a bubble
its colour. That curved outer surface is
reflective, and so is the inner surface. Light
behaves like a wave in situations like this. So
just like ripples on a pond, those two reflected
waves add together, either to reinforce each
other or cancel each other out. The light
reflected off the interior has travelled further
and it may or may not line up with the light
reflected off the exterior on its way out of the
bubble. If the wave reinforces itself, lots of the
colour corresponding to that wavelength will
escape to be seen.
So far, so good. Lots of colours could be
produced this way. But where’s my red bubble?
The ripples of light waves spreading out
from the bubble have all the colours of the
rainbow. But we don’t see those colours
individually, because often the same thickness
of soap film will give us a few different
colours together. It just so happens that the
thickness that gives us lots of red also gives us
lots of violet. But we only see a single colour:
pink. The violet wave will have rippled four
times before coming back out while the red
one will have rippled three times, but they’re
both back where they started as they leave the
bubble. Pink looks like a single colour but it
isn’t in the rainbow – our brains have made it
up as a way of dealing with red plus violet.
If the soap film forming the bubble’s surface
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SCIENCE
ILLUSTRATOR: ANDY POTTS / PHOTO: NEWSPRESS X2, ISTOCK
FROM FLOATING FARMS TO VIRTUAL THERAPY, WE BRING YOU
THE INCREDIBLE INNOVATIONS
THAT WILL SHAPE OUR FUTURE
26
Vol. 7 Issue 12
“THE ONLY THING we can be
sure of about the future is that
it will be absolutely fantastic.”
These were the words of Arthur
C Clarke, delivered during a
1964 episode of BBC Horizon
broadcast from the World Fair.
He was right. Even as the
planet’s outlook becomes bleaker
with the looming threat of climate
change, humans search for smart
solutions to the world’s problems.
Hundreds of great ideas come
across our desks every week at
Focus, but here we’ve handpicked
the very best of them to paint a
picture of how your world might
look like tomorrow.
Your next car could be
powered by a two-litre
bottle of ammonia
YEARS AWAY
THE HYDROGEN
STATION
01
Toyota’s hydrogen-powered car goes on
sale this year. Mirai boasts zero emissions,
unless you count harmless water vapour. But
hydrogen cars are likely to remain expensive
because, for safety reasons, hydrogen gas
must be stored in heavy-duty, high-pressure
tanks. So scientists at the UK’s Science and
Technology Facilities Council (STFC) have
been busy developing a low-cost method of
extracting hydrogen from ammonia. A twolitre bottle of ammonia would provide enough
hydrogen for a typical family car, and could be
stored at low pressure.
02
COFFEE
POWER
The world’s appetite for coffee has rocketed
in recent years, with a coffee
shop seemingly on every corner. But what
do you do with all the waste produced
during the coffee-making process?
Entrepreneur Arthur Kay’s big idea is to
use his company, bio-bean, to turn 85 per
cent of that waste into biofuels for heating
buildings and powering transport. It has
big potential – according to Kay, London’s
coffee industry alone creates over 200,000
tonnes of waste every year, the same
amount produced in a year by the
UK’s big seven supermarkets.
WHAT PROBLEM NEEDS TO BE
B
SOLVED MOST URGENTLY?
While microchips have become 10,0
000
times more powerful since the mid1980s, battery capacity has increase
ed
by barely 10 per cent. Yet batteries are vita
al
for everything from mobile tech to the sola
ar
economy. Anyone who comes up with
cheap, stable, rechargeable battery with
hefty capacity will make out like a
bandit – and help save the planet.
Waste products from
coffee-making can be
turned into biofuels
YEARS AWAY
ROBERT MATTHEWS
Focus science consultant
Vol. 7 Issue 12
27
SCIENCE
03
COMPUTERS
MADE OF WATER
Computers work by firing electrons
around silicon circuits, but engineers at
Stanford University have built a functioning
computer that uses water droplets
instead of electrons. It’s hoped that the
idea could be used to manipulate matter,
perhaps leading
YEARS AWAY
to miniature labs
capable of carrying
out thousands of
controlled reactions.
PHOTO: HYPERLOOP X2, SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY, WORLD VIEW ENTERPRISES, BBC
04
SPACE
DRONES
Unmanned probes are effectively space
drones, but now NASA has challenged
designers to develop a conventional drone
to work inside a space station, navigating
with no ‘up’ or ‘down’. The winning design,
ArachnoBeeA, would use cameras and tiny
beacons to manoeuvre
its way around. How
YEARS AWAY
popular drones would
be in such a confined
space is a different
question.
05
SUGAR-FUELLED
PLANES
Air travel is bad news for the environment,
and that’s only likely to get worse if we
continue to power planes with fossil fuels.
However, a team at the Energy Biosciences
Institute in Berkeley, California has come
up with a new way to create aviation fuel
from sugarcane. The system takes waste
from sugar factories – ethanol, acetone and
butanol – and converts it into jet fuel. The
research is being funded
YEARS AWAY
by BP, which is investing
in similar work for fuelling
our cars.
28
Vol. 7 Issue 12
Hyperloop could get you from
San Francisco to Los Angeles
in 35 minutes, compared to
7.5 hours by train
06
760MPH
TRAINS
We all hate commuting. Imagine, instead,
your train carriage hurtling down a tunnel
at the same speed as a commercial jet
airliner. That’s the dream of PayPal, Tesla and
SpaceX founder Elon Musk. His Hyperloop
system would see ‘train’ passengers travel
A test site for the
Hyperloop system has
already been selected
at up to 760mph through a vacuum
tube, propelled by compressed air and
induction motors. A site has been chosen
with the goal of starting test runs in two
years. Once
YEARS AWAY
built, the loop will
ferry passengers
between San
Francisco and LA.
08
07
CRISPR
The idea of
‘designer babies’
has attracted
a lot of negative
attention, but geneediting technology is undoubtedly a big
step forward. A technique called Crispr
(Clustered, Regularly Interspaced, Short
Palindromic Repeat) targets unhealthy
strands of DNA within a mutated immune
cell and replaces them with healthy ones.
Scientists hope that, once reintroduced
to the body, the cell will be able to better
fight off infection and disease.
The work done on T-cells (the immune
cells responsible for battling pathogens)
could be used in a whole new field of
medicine: the technique has applications
for the treatment of viruses, cancer
and even HIV. There are already several
companies in the medical arena that are
putting modified
T-cells back into
YEARS AWAY
patients, so the new
technique has the
potential to move
forward very quickly.
THE AI
SCIENTIST
Cut off a flatworm’s head, and it’ll
grow a new one. Cut it in half, and you’ll
have two new worms. Fire some radiation
at it, and it’ll repair itself. Scientists have
wanted to work out the mechanisms
involved for some time, but the secret has
eluded them. Enter an AI coded at Tufts
University, Massachusetts. By analysing
and simulating countless scenarios, the
computer was able to solve the mystery of
the flatworm’s regeneration in just 42 hours.
In the end it produced a comprehensive
model of how the flatworm’s genes allow it
to regenerate.
Although humans still need to feed the
AI with information, the machine in
this experiment was able to create a
new, abstract theory independently – a
huge step towards the development
of a conscious
computer, and
YEARS AWAY
potentially a
landmark step in
the way we carry
out research.
09
SPACE
BALLOON
If you want to take a trip into space,
your quickest bet might be to take
a balloon. The company World View
Enterprises wants to send tourists into
the stratosphere, 32km above Earth, on
hot air balloons. Technically passengers
won’t reach ‘space’ (which is defined as
100km above sea level), but this altitude
is high enough to witness the curvature of
the Earth, just as Felix Baumgartner did
on his space jump. The balloon flew its
first successful test flight in June, and the
company will start
YEARS AWAY
selling tickets in 2016
– at the bargain price
of just US$113,535
per person!
What new gadget are you
most excited about?
Virtual reality. I demonstrated it on
Tomorrow’s World in the 1980s when
it was in its absolute infancy, so it’s
extraordinary to see the way it’s now being
used : gaming, scientific visualisation,
education, fashion, healthcare. The
technology is becoming more and more
affordable and much more accessible, so it
will be fascinating to see what happens over
the next five years.
MAGGIE PHILBIN
Tech reporter and former
Tomorrow’s World presenter
Vol. 7 Issue 12
29
SCIENCE
Dirt, a US citizen science project, is
CROWD-SOURCED From
asking people to send in soil samples from
ANTIBIOTICS
their gardens. The DNA of microorganisms
13
10
BREATHALYSER
CARS
The US National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration has developed devices that
can monitor alcohol levels by sniffing a driver’s
breath or scanning the blood in their fingertips
via the steering wheel,
immobilising the car
YEARS AWAY
if levels are too high.
Drivers using the system
could be offered lower
insurance premiums.
Swallowing seawater is part of surfing.
But now the scientists behind a new
initiative called Beach Bums want to
swab the rectums of surfers, to see if this
water contains the key to developing new
antibiotics. They’re searching for antibiotic
resistant bacteria known as superbugs: by
studying the samples from the surfers, they
hope to learn more about these potentially
dangerous organisms in the hope of
producing new drugs to combat them. And
this next generation of antibiotics could
also come from a unlikely source. Drugs
within the samples will then be sequenced
to discover specific genes, and within
them, proteins that could be used to
create new antibiotics. Scientists hope to
discover previously unknown biosynthetic
systems that create antibiotic molecules,
identify those molecules and use them to
create new drugs.
The project’s
already underway,
YEARS AWAY
so a whole new
class of antibiotics
could be dug
up tomorrow!
A NEW APPROACH
TO DEMENTIA
PHOTO: SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY, CORBIS, THE GUARDIAN SYNDICATION, BBC
11
Around 850,000 people in the UK live with
dementia. Patients have trouble remembering
recent events, despite recalling things that
happened decades ago. Having this pointed
out can be upsetting, so the Butterfly
Household Model of Care takes a different
approach: it lets patients act out their
memories, even providing
props and clothes that
YEARS AWAY
remind them of their
younger selves. Ovver
e 100
100
alre
r ad
re
d
y
care homes have al
dy
adopted the mode
el..
12
VIAGRA
FOR WOMEN
Now approved by the US Food and
d Drug
g
Administration, flibanserin looks sett to
become the first in a new class of drugs
d g
for improving female sexual desire. Though
gh
a’,
it’s been dubbed ‘the female Viagra
flibanserin works rather differently: Viagra
V ga
works by boosting blood supply to the
penis, while flibanserin acts on sero
oto
tonin
rain
in.
in
receptors in the bra
i
Its makers say itt
YEARS AWAY
increases sexua
al
satisfaction, but cr
crit
ittic
i s
question the drug’
ug’
gs
tive
vene
ve
ness
ne
s .
ss
safety and effectti
30
Vol. 7 Issue 12
The next generation of antibiotics could be lurking behind the petunias in your garden
What scientific or technological
advance worries you the most?
Although I’m sure that drones can do
lots of exciting and useful things, I
think it would be a huge shame to fill
the sky with them. Even now, we really
don’t appreciate the sky enough – it’s
the last great expanse of free and open
space in our society. Drones are a fairly
insidious technology – their numbers will
grow slowly until they’re everywhere.
They’re also going to reflect the
huge, ongoing battle between
security and privacy.
DR HELEN CZERSKI
Experimental physicist and BBC presenter
14
INTERNET
FOR EVERYONE
After Tesla and SpaceX, PayPal founder Elon
Musk is turning his attention back to the
internet: he’s awaiting permission to send
almost 4,000 small satellites into low-Earth
orbit that would beam back a high-speed
wireless signal to everyone on the planet.
And things are moving
fast: Musk hopes to
YEARS AWAY
launch a series of test
satellites in 2016, with a
view to completing the
project by 2020.
15
SMART FOOD
LABELS
UK homes throw away 30 to 50 per cent
of what we buy from supermarkets, says a
2013 report by the Institution of Mechanical
Engineers. The report claimed we’re guided
by ‘use by’ and ‘best before’ dates on food
packaging, which are kept conservative
because they are driven by shops’ desire
to avoid legal action. An invention called
‘Bump Mark’ could change all that. Originally
developed for blind people, it’s a label that
starts out smooth to the touch but gets
bumpier as food decays. And since it
decays at the same rate as any proteinbased food within, it’s
far more accurate than
YEARS AWAY
printed dates.
16
PERSONALIT
ALITIES
S
FOR ROBO
S
OBOTS
Google has obta
btained a patent on
robot personaliti
ities, reminiscent of
the ‘Genuine Peop
ople Personalities’ of
robots in The Hitchhik
hiker’s Guide
G
To The
Galaxy. Owners could h
have a personality
y
automatically chosen to m
match their
needs, or select one based o
on a fi
fictional
character or even a loved one.. Al
Although
h gh
ciously
iously
the patent was announced suspiciously
close to April 1, it does exist (US Pate
atent
8,996,429), and with our natural tendency
ency
to anthropomorphism it
seems a likely development.
YEARS AWAY
17
VIRAL
RA HISTORY
S O
LOO TEST
S
BLLOOD
Everyy time yo
you’r
ou’’re infected
f
with a virus, your
y r
body dispatc
che
es a
ntibodies to fight
ches
antibod
fig it, which
remain in you
ur blo
lood
o st
od
stre
ream
am lon
long
g af
afte
the
e
bloodstr
fterr th
virus
vi
v
has bee
en
e defeated.
f
Now,, a device
called
d VirSca
VirScan
an is being trialled at Harvard
Medical School that can
ca analyse
lyse a single
g
drop
d and
ect
p off blood
a detec
ct antibodies ffor 1,000
virus strains, telling doc
doctor
octors off any virus you’ve
e e had.
had It
I could
ever
transform
diagnosis,
f
YEARS AWAY
as doctors
d
currently
ly
have
a e to
o test
es for
specific
fi viruses..
Vol. 7 Issue 12
31
SCIENCE
18
US$4.50 PAIN-FREE
TATTOO REMOVAL
19
SELF-DRIVING
TRUCKS
We’ve almost got used to the idea of
driverless cars before we’ve even seen one
on the roads. The truth is, you might well
see a lot more driverless trucks – after all,
logistics make the world go round. They’ll
be cheaper to run than regular rigs, driving
more smoothly and so using less fuel.
Computers never get tired or need comfort
breaks, so they’ll run longer routes. And
they could drive in convoys, nose-to-tail, to
minimise wind resistance. Companies like
Mercedes and Peloton are already exploring
these possibilities, and if the promised gains
materialise, freight companies could upgrade
entire fleets overnight. On the downside,
it could put drivers instantly out of work,
and even staff at the truck stops set up to
service them, but many
YEARS AWAY
companies have said
the trucks will still need
a human passenger to
ensure their cargo is safe.
20
US soldiers in California have been
putting on Oculus Rift virtual reality
headsets as part of their PTSD therapy.
The virtual experience takes the soldiers
back to the battlefield from the safety
of the sofa, helping them tackle their
anxieties in a controlled space. A similar
technique has been used to treat victims
of sexual assault and motoring accidents.
Meanwhile, a lab at the Pompeu Fabra
University has managed to treat a form of
partial paralysis using VR. The pilot study
helped stroke patients regain movement
using a special gaming system. Patients
played a game where they picked up a
ball, and the actions of their virtual limbs
were tuned to the nerve signals in the
paralysed side of their
YEARS AWAY
body. Even just a
10-minute session led
to patients using their
paralysed side more.
Alec Falkenham is pioneering a new method of tattoo removal
Got a tattoo that you now regret? There
may soon be a gentler, cheaper alternative
to laser removal. PhD student Alec
Falkenham in the US has worked out
how to harness a property of your body’s
own immune system. He’s developed a
cream that delivers drugs to white blood
cells called ‘macrophages’ (Greek for ‘big
eaters’), causing them
YEARS AWAY
to release the ink they
took up in order to
protect your skin during
the tattooing
th
i g process.
PHOTO: BRUCE BOTTOMLEY/DALHOUSIE UNIVERSITY,
PELOTON, CAMERA PRESS, SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY, GETTY
Dri
riiver
v lesss truc
r ks cou
c ldd soo
oonn be
be tran
t an
anspoorting
i g goo
goods
ds aro
r und
ndd the
the coun
ou try
tr
What ide
ea currently in
n development has
st potential?
the mos
p
?
purpose handheld med
dical device that can plug into a
A multip
d
mobile phone and carry out blood, urine and saliva tests would
uge b
breakthrough.
ould
be able
detect conditions
be a hug
k h gh IIt wo
o
ld b
bl to d
di i
nd diabetes, potentially saving
such as malarria, typhoid, anaemia an
n
es in regions
without ea
asy access to medical facilities.
millions of live
g
a
PROF DANIELLE GEORGE
G
E
Radio frequency eng
gineer and presenter of the ‘How T
To Hack Your Home’ Christmas lecturess
32
Vol. 7 Issue 12
VIRTUAL
THERAPY
Augmented reality can be used
to create a kind of sat-nav for
neurosurgeons
AUGMENTED
REALITY SURGERY
21
Brain surgery can often be a step in
the dark for surgeons, because the
networked nature of the brain means
the scalpel is never far from damaging
vital areas. The solution could lie
in augmented reality. Canadian
company Synaptive Medical is
working on the concept of augmented
reality surgery, where images of the
operation are overlaid with visuals that
map out structures within the brain.
While a surgeon is operating, a robot
magnifies the region, displaying what
it sees on a video screen. Combining
this view with complex, colour-coded
images from MRI scanners, the robot
gives the surgeon
a far more
YEARS AWAY
defined route into
the area in which
they intend
to operate.
22
CARBON CAPTURE
FORESTS
A simple way of removing CO2 from the
atmosphere is being pioneered by scientists
at the University of Hohenheim, Germany.
They’ve been carrying out trials of the
jatropha plant, which absorbs and stores
large amounts of CO2. Jatropha grows in arid
environments, and the
scientists now have
YEARS AWAY
pe
p rmission to ‘carbon
far
f rm’ 10,000 hectares
off a coastal region in
Sa
Saudi Arabia.
23
SLEEP IN A
PETRI DISH
Up to 30 per cent of us have trouble
sleeping, but help may be at hand. A
team at Washington State University has
identified the smallest set of neurones in
our brains responsible for sleeping, grown
a tiny group of these cells in the lab and
induced them to fall
YEARS AWAY
asleep and wake up.
Their work could help
to unravel the science
of sleep disorders.
24
SHAPE-SHIFTING
BATTERIES
Experimental batteries are under test
based on a very light foam made from
tree cellulose, which could be shaped into
almost any form. The foam is coated with
thin layers of copper hexacyanoferrate
and carbon nanotubes to form the
battery’s electrodes.
The approach could
YEARS AWAY
produce batteries
that are flexible,
malleable and have a
high capacity.
Vol. 7 Issue 12
33
SCIENCE
Sergio Canavero hopes
to attempt a human
‘head transplant’ soon
YEARS AWAY
26
HOLIDAY
BY AIRSHIP
27
WATER
FROM A BOX
If you’ve heard of the Hindenburg disaster,
you’ll probably question the advisability
of firing up massive passenger balloons
filled with flammable gas. But modern
airships are filled with helium rather than
hydrogen, and can fly for thousands of
kilometres while burning less fuel than an
aeroplane. The UK-built Airlander 10 is
actually a hybrid, using helium to provide
60 per cent of its lift, while the rest is
provided by its wide, wing-like hull. The
first airships have been given government
grants to investigate whether they could
replace long-haul
freight trucks and
YEARS AWAY
cargo ships, but the
company also has
more ambitious plans
for tourism.
25
HUMAN HEAD
TRANSPLANTS
An Italian neurosurgeon intends to attempt
the first human head transplant by 2016.
In reality it’s a body rather than a head
transplant, replacing a failing frame with
a new one. In fiction, such a move is the
stuff of horror stories, but Sergio Canavero
believes it is possible. No successful animal
transplants with long-term survival have
yet been made because of the difficulty of
connecting up the spinal cord, but Canavero
has suggested improvements in the process
using a special blade and polyethylene
34
Vol. 7 Issue 12
750 million people worldwide have no access
to safe drinking water. To solve this problem,
researchers at the University of the West
of England are working with Portsmouth
Aviation engineers to manufacture shipping
container-sized boxes
that can be plugged
YEARS AWAY
into contaminated water
sources to produce
18,000 litres of clean
water an hour.
glycol, a polymer used in medicine as
well as in everything from skin cream to
the conservation of the Mary Rose. This
compound can help start growth in spinal
cord nerves, though there would still be
many problems to overcome to ensure the
brain stays alive and in control of the body.
Other experts say Canavero is wildly
optimistic. They point out that there
would have to be far more animal
experimentation, which many consider
unethical, before any human trial. But we
can at least expect improved ability to
repair damaged spinal cords over the next
decade, restoring body function to some
spinal injury patients.
A device that
transforms
contaminated water
into clean water would
change lives
Could the once-derided
airship be about to
make a comeback?
One day, you might go to the doctor and get
an on-the-spot diagnosis for your stomach
bug simply by breathing into a machine.
This electronic nose would ‘sniff out’ disease
molecules on your breath - no need for a
stool sample. Such
breathalyser-like
YEARS AWAY
devices already
exist, and are in
development for
tuberculosis.
29
DROWN FOREST
SOU
FIRES IN S
OUND
Forest
Fo
st fi
fires co
coul
uld
d one
e da
dayy be dea
ealt
lt witth by
d on
dr
ones
o e
es that
at wo
woul
ou
uld
ul
dd
dire
rec
ct lou
o
oud
d no
nois
ois
ises
ses
e at the
th
he
t ee
tr
e s be
elow. Sin
nce sou
und iis ma
made
de up of
p esssu
pr
ure
e waves
es,, it can
es
n be us
used
e to diisrup
upt
up
p
g
th
he ai
a r su
s rrrou
ound
ndin
nd
ing
g a fir
fire,
fi
e ess
ssen
ss
ential
n al
ally
ly cut
utti
ting
ng
o f th
of
he su
supp
plyy of oxyg
gen
n to th
he fu
uel
e . At
A th
he
e
riig
ght fr
gh
f eq
que
ency,
y the fire sim
mply dies
es
so
out,, as
rese
s ar
se
a ch
c ers at George
G g Ma
M son
n Un
U iv
iver
errsi
sity
ty
in Virgi
irrgi
gini
g ni
nia
a recently demonst
stra
r te
ed wi
w th
t eir so
th
s ni
n c ex
exting
ngui
gu sher. Ap
ppa
p re
r nt
n ly, bass
ss
frreq
eq
quenc
nciess wo
nc
w rk best.
PHOTO: MASSIMO BREGA, GETTY X2, DARREN REYNOLDS/UWE
28
SNIFFING
OUT DISEASE
YEARS AWAY
Vol. 7 Issue 12
35
SCIENCE
30
FLOATING
FARMS
Floating farms seem like an idea whose time
has come. The UN predicts there will be two
billion more people in the world by 2050,
creating a demand for 70 per cent more
food. By that time, 80 per cent of us will be
living in cities, and most food we eat in urban
areas is brought in. So farms moored on
the sea or inland lakes close to cities would
certainly reduce food miles. But how would
they work? A new design by architect Javier
Ponce of Forward Thinking Architecture
shows a 24m-tall, three-tiered structure with
solar panels on top to provide energy. The
middle tier grows a variety of veg over an area
of 51,000m2, using not soil but nutrients in
liquid. These nutrients and plant matter would
drop into the bottom layer to feed fish, which
are farmed in an enclosed space. A single
Smart Floating Farm measuring 350 x 200m
would produce an estimated 8.1 tonnes of
vegetables and 1.7 tonnes of fish a year. The
units are designed to bolt together, which is
handy since we’ll need
YEARS AWAY
a lot of them: Dubai,
for instance, imports
11,000 tonnes of fruit
and veg every day.
PHOTO: JAVIER PONCE, ROBERT BOSTON, DAVID BAILLOT/UC SAN DIEGO
THE BLACKEST
EVER PAINT
31
Solar energy is our best option for filling
in the void left by depleting fossil fuels,
and a new kind of solar energy plant is
popping up across Spain and the Middle
East. Concentrated solar power (CSP) uses
mirrors or lenses spread over a large area
to focus sunlight on onto a much smaller,
central collecting area. The problem with
some early CSP technology, however, is
that the collector materials waste a lot of
energy because they can’t absorb it all. So
how do you make a really energy-absorbent
material? Make it really, really black! That’s
exactly what scientists at the University of
California San Diego
are doing: their new
YEARS AWAY
nanoparticle-based
coating mops up 90
per cent of the energy
that hits it.
36
Vol. 7 Issue 12
Testing new
ultra-absorbent
coatings in
the lab
32
A PAINKILLER
MADE OF LIGHT
About 10 per cent of the world’s
population suffers from long-lasting pain.
Whether it’s back pain or a condition like
arthritis, it can have a devastating impact,
making sleeping, working and even the
simplest daily activities complete agony.
While the mainstay of treatment for
chronic pain is opioid drugs like morphine,
these drugs are addictive and have
unpleasant side effects due to the body’s
receptors for them being located in areas
besides those where the pain occurs.
Researchers at Washington University
in St Louis, Missouri are searching for
better ways to target chronic pain. Michael
Bruchas’s team has fused light-sensitive
proteins with opioid receptors to create
hybrid molecules that can be activated - in
mice - with light from LED implants. For
now, he says, it’s more about exploring
how pain signalling actually works. In the
future, however, gene therapy approaches
could be used to produce light-activated
Floating farms located close
to big cities could reduce
food miles considerably
33
COMPUTERS THAT
SEE YOUR PAIN
Children can’t always explain how much
pain they’re in, so health workers use
pain scales, such as a series of faces
showing different expressions. Now, US
researchers have developed computer
software that rates pain levels from facial
expressions. In
tests, computers
YEARS AWAY
were as good
as nurses and
parents at rating
pain severity.
34
YOUR BRAINPRINT
AS A PASSWORD
Could your brainwaves function as your
computer password? A team at Binghamton
University, New York, looked at the way
volunteers’ brain signals changed as they
read a list of acronyms. Each person reacted
differently enough for the system to predict
who was reading the
list with 94 per cent
YEARS AWAY
accuracy. In future, a
honed version of this
idea could verify who
is sitting at a PC.
Brainwaves could
be utilised as your
computer passwords
proteins in specific nerve cells and direct
their interactions with pain networks
using light.
Alternatively, the implants could switch
on light-sensitive drugs that would only
be activated in the painful region. “So
you could have this implant in your spinal
column and then we’d be able to shut
off the pain response
locally there,”
YEARS AWAY
says Bruchas.
Pain receptors could be
genetically modified to
respond to light
What film idea w
would y
you
e true?
like to see come
rue?
Iff we’
e’re
re ttal
alki
king
ng a
abo
bou
bo
u
ut
tech
te
c no
ch
nolo
logi
lo
g ess ttha
gi
ha
at re
ely
e
lyy o
on
n
curr
cu
rrren
entt so
s lilid
d sc
scie
ienc
nce
nc
e, time
ttim
me
e,
mach
ma
ac
chin
ch
ines
in
es
e a
are
re
e ou
out
o
ut. I th
ut
hin
nk
I’’d lilike
ke
e any g
gad
a ge
ad
that
a rrel
at
eliie
el
iies
es
get th
o the
on
the wei
eird
rdne
rd
ness
ne
s and p
ss
pow
ower of
ow
q an
quan
qu
antu
tum
tu
m ph
phys
ysic
ys
i s,
ic
s so a workin
rk
kin
ng
qu
antu
tu
um co
comp
mput
mp
uter
er or, bet
ette
terr st
stilililll,l,
quan
a qu
q an
a tu
um te
tele
lepo
le
port
po
rter
rt
er.. Al
er
Alth
tho
th
ough
ou
g I
cert
ce
ainl
nlyy wo
nl
woul
u dn
ul
dn’t
’t tur
u n myy nos
ose
e
c rtai
up
p at a tr
trav
aver
av
ersa
s bl
sa
b e Lo
Lore
rent
re
n zi
nt
zzia
zian
an
wo
orm
mho
hole
le
e, lil ke w
we
e sa
saw
w in
Inte
ters
rste
telllllar.
th
f lm In
the fi
P OF JIM
PRO
JIM
M AL-KHA
ALL-KHA
KHALIL
L I
LIL
ysic
Physic
Phy
sicss prof
prof
r e
ess
sor and BB
BBC
C pres
present
senter
ne
Vol. 7 Issue 12
37
SCIENCE
35
NASA BUYING
SPACE SHIPS
Despite the explosion of the unmanned
SpaceX rocket heading for the International
Space Station in June, commercial flights
are expected to play an increasingly
significant role in the US space
programme. NASA has commissioned
Boeing to provide a manned flight in
2017, and expects also to use SpaceX.
US space technology has always been
built commercially – the Space Shuttle, for
instance, was constructed by Rockwell
International – but off-the-shelf launches
by commercial enterprises seem set to
become increasingly common.
YEARS AWAY
36
The future of spaceflight is probably private
THE FOUR-DAY
WORKING WEEK
It turns out working less might mean more
work gets done. A raft of studies have shown
that with less time to work, less time is wasted
– there’s less absenteeism and, in most cases,
greater productivity. A more compact working
week has also been shown to encourage
employees to stay with companies for longer,
and works as a recruitment tool. A shorter
working week could even reduce global
carbon emissions, with fewer commuters
clogging the roads on certain days. In 2000,
a 35-hour working week was introduced in
France, and despite
later revisions, our
YEARS AWAY
neighbours across
the Channel still work
far fewer hours than
we do.
37
PLEISTOCENE
PARK
PHOTO: NASA/BOEING X2, CORBIS, GETTY
Russian scientist Sergey Zimov hopes to
recreate a 12,000-year-old environment in
a wildlife park for herbivores like wild horse
and bison, with extinct megafauna like
mamm
ma
mmot
mm
oths
hs rep
eplace
ced
oder
e n hyb
hybr
hy
b id
br
ds.
s.
th
l ce
d byy mod
Zimo
Zi
movv wi
mo
will study
h imp
mpac
mp
actt of tthe
ac
he a
ani
nima
ni
mals
ma
ls on
y the
e viro
en
ronm
ro
n e
en
ent
nt a
an
nd c
clim
cl
ma
ate.
onm
38
Vol. 7 Issue 12
A lump
luumpp ooff aeeroogel
geel
baalaancced
ed on a flo
flowe
wer,
we
er,,
d mo
demo
de
mons
nsstr
trat
atin
at
inng ju
justt hhow
ow
w
lilig
igh
ght
ht th
the
he mate
materi
ma
rial
ri
ial
al iiss
38
EEXTRA
XTTRA
X
SENS
NSES
Huma
m ns hav
a e lon
n
ng loo
o ked fo
or wa
ays
y to help
thos
th
ose deprrived off a sense – Brrai
aille ffo
or th
t e
b in
bl
nd,
d sig
ign
g langua
g age
ag for the
h dea
eaf.
ea
f And
now, neuro
oscie
i nt
n ist Da
D vid
d Ea
E gleman
a
o
h d
has
design
igned
d a vesst that
h
co
o
onverts sound
ds iinto
vibr
b at
a iions whi
hich
vib
h the
h wearerr
c
ca
can
a ffeel
e . Voices and
o
othe
ot
h r ambient sounds
are picked
d up by
y the
w
wearer’s
’ sma
mart
r phone,
h
which
hi h th
then usess an
ap
pp to transsfferr the
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ooth.
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YEARS
S AWAY
39
NEAR-PERFECT
INSULATION
There
e are two things the majority of
peop
ple in the Western world own:
a refrrigerator and a mobile phone.
And a
aerogels could revolutionise the
manu
a ufacture of both.
An aerogel is a material that’s full of
tiny
i h
holes. Made by extracting all the
liquid from a gel, it can be up to 95 per
cent p
pores. Those pores are so small be een 20 and 50 nanometres - that
betwe
gas m
molecules can’t squeeze through
them.
h
As a result, aerogels can’t transport
heat, making for a material with incredible
i
insula
lating properties.
Alth
hough the first silicon aerogels were
develo
d loped decades ago, early versions
were s
so brittle you could crush them
betwe
een your fingers. But as Mary Ann
Meado
or of the NASA Glenn Research
Center in Cleveland, Ohio explains, a new
breed of polymer-based aerogels is now
being developed that are far stronger, and
that could be useful in everything from
re-entry materials for spacecraft to common
kitchen appliances.
“If you want a higher efficiency refrigerator,
one way to do it would be to increase the
amount of insulation you use, but that
would make the refrigerator bigger or the
inside smaller,” says Meador. “Replacing
conventional insulation with an aerogel will
allow you to put maybe five times as much
insulation in the same gap.”
The unusual electrical properties of
aerogels also make them suitable as
lightweight antennae for mobile phones,
satellites and aircraft.
YEARS AWAY
Vol. 7 Issue 12
39
NATURE
Scan this QR Code for
the audio reader
40
Vol. 7 Issue 12
It’s the male cassowary
that takes responsibility for
parenting, here showing a
chick what’s good to eat
on the rainforest floor. He
will stay with the young for
at least nine months
PHOTOS: CHRISTIAN ZIEGLER
A flightless gian
nt with
ha
lethal kick, the southern
cassowary has a pro
odigious
s
appetite fo
or fruit. By
spreading
g vast num
mbers
of seeds, it pla
ays a crucia
al
role in its forestt home, says
s
Dominic Couzens
Vol. 7 Issue 12
41
NATURE
Cassowaries are able to pack
a serious punch with their
feet, and their sharp claws can
cause deep punctures
ABOVE: The
cassowary
inhabits the
oldest surviving
rainforests on
Earth and would
look perfectly
at home in
Jurassic Park
42
ew would describe birdwatching as hair-raising.
The risk to life and limb is limited, and seldom
likely to invoke a frisson of fear. Unless, that is,
you are looking for a cassowary.
If you don’t believe me, listen to this report of one
encounter. “The hairs on the back of my neck went
up and I almost imperceptibly sensed a presence on
the trail behind me. Barely had I realised that it was
a cassowary than it, too, became aware of me and
charged, head down. I leapt up in the air with my arms
akimbo screaming and yelling so that it quickly turned
tail, but I was very shaken and decidedly nervous during
the remainder of my time along that transect.”
That isn’t your usual birding experience. But then
the cassowary isn’t your usual bird. More than anything,
it is huge.The largest of the three species, the southern
cassowary stands up to 1.8m tall, is covered in shaggy
black plumage that could be mistaken for fur and has the
chunky body of a scrum-half.The neck is long and blue,
a pinkish wattle hangs down from the neck and there is
a horny helmet, or casque, on the head (see box, p46).
The legs are enormous, with three toes – the foot of the
female can measure more than 22cm from the heel to the
tip of her middle toe – and the inner toe of each foot has
a 10cm claw. Overall, it has the demeanour of one of the
smaller, malign dinosaurs you see in the movies.
“New Guineans don’t believe they are birds, but think of
them as a different class of animal, and I tend to agree with
F
Vol. 7 Issue 12
them,” says David Bishop, a researcher in Australasia with 38
years’ experience who runs David Bishop Bird Tours, after
recalling the encounter described above.
But are cassowaries actually dangerous? There are many
reports of them chasing people, though this is mainly out of
curiosity, especially in places where they are used to humans
or are even offered food.Yet the birds can turn unpredictable
when they feel hunted or threatened. Cassowaries are able to
pack a serious punch with their feet, and their sharp claws can
cause deep punctures to the flesh.There has been one human
fatality recorded from Australia (in 1926, two brothers tried to
bludgeon a cassowary with clubs, and came off worse) and
an unknown number from the island of New Guinea.
Male birds
incubate the
lurid green
eggs for over
40 days
Young birds stroll
past Cassowary
House in Kuranda
A parent’s long,
almost fur-like
feathers make a
snug shawl
for this chick
“We are all taught to be ‘cass-o-wary’ so as to be
aware of the potential danger,” commented Trish
and Andrew Forsyth, who together run Daintree
Birdwatching in the Queensland Wet Tropics. “Most
encounters involve just quietly watching this beautiful
bird picking up a fruit, completely oblivious to or
ambivalent about our presence. When they turn and
walk away, they just disappear into the trees, despite
their great size.”
Chicks have
striped down
to provide
camouflage
Vanishing act
Melting into and out of the forest seems to be a cassowary
trademark, mentioned by many observers. Some people
are spooked by it, while others are spellbound. “They are
so elegant and quiet as they float through the forest, despite
their impressive size, like forest spirits,” says photographer
Christian Ziegler, who took the photographs here. “You
really feel that this is their home, the habitat they are
perfectly adapted for.”
If there is one notable feature about cassowary ecology,
it is the intimate relationship this giant bird has with
its rainforest habitat.The link is thought to be almost
unimaginably ancient.The rainforests of Queensland
are the oldest in the world, dating back in an unbroken
evolutionary chain to the time when the southern
continents were linked together in the super-continent
Gondwana (see box, pg44).They have grown here for
some 100 million years. Cassowaries, too, arise from
Single parent
absent mothers
In cassowaries it is always the male that builds the nest,
incubates the eggs and looks after the hatched young for about
nine months, or sometimes over a year. Females, meanwhile,
remain with the mate until hatching and then depart, sometimes
mating immediately with another male.
“Parental care is usually thought to be a function of
which sex manages to get its way in terms of maximising its
reproductive success,” says scientist David Westcott. “The
ultimate trade-off in cassowaries is unknown, but possibly it
revolves around females gaining the opportunity for laying more
eggs each season and for males to be able to obtain access
to females. Males can exert some control over paternity by
ensuring that a female is escorted when she is receptive.”
Vol. 7 Issue 12
43
NATURE
The ancient forests
of gondwana
Scientists have deduced the great age of
Gondwana’s rainforests partly due to the
extraordinary number of primitive plants
found in them. In the Queensland Wet
Tropics, for example, no fewer than 12 of the
19 most primitive families of flowering plants
occur, an exceptionally high percentage.
Overall, there are 3,000 species of vascular
plants in the area, of which 576 species –
including two entire plant families – are found
nowhere else on Earth. Two-thirds of all
Australia’s ferns occur here, as well as twofifths of its conifers and a fifth of its cycads
(ancient, slow-growing plants that look
much the same as they did in the Jurassic
period). The region’s plants also include
some that are related to the fossil forerunners
of eucalyptus, a group that later came to
dominate the continent.
ancient stock.They are related to the other large flightless
birds of the world – the ostrich, emu, rheas and kiwis, as
well as the extinct moa of New Zealand and elephant
bird of Africa – part of a group called the Palaeognathae
(which also includes the South American tinamous, which
can fly).They differ from all other birds in details of their
skeleton and palate, including the lack of keel on the
sternum, and there is some evidence that the earliest
forms ran around in the Cretaceous period, in the time of
the dinosaurs.
Nobody knows when exactly the cassowaries arose, but
there is no doubt that they are antiques in the rainforest
décor.They are not, however, gathering dust in any
ecological corner. In fact, their function is critical as the
primary dispersers of the fruits and seeds of the forest.
By a quirk of evolution, they are the largest animals
in the habitat. In contrast with every other landmass,
Australasia lacks all the usual large herbivores or
omnivores that might
compete with cassowaries,
as well as any large predators
that might eat the birds
or their eggs. There are
kangaroos, but none
approach the size of these
large birds; indeed one of the
main competitors, the musky
Their function is
critical as THE
primary dispersers
of the fruits and
seeds of the forest
44
Vol. 7 Issue 12
rat-kangaroo, is smaller than a cat, and a cassowary
could kick it if it so wished. There are no native cows,
antelopes or primates.
This leaves the cassowary as the undisputed star of the
dispersal game. It is the rainforest harvester, feeding on a
wide variety of plants – at least 238 species of nuts and
fruits are recorded in the diet – and the rainforest planter,
spattering seeds abroad within its copious dung. Its appetite
is startling. One of its party tricks, so to speak, is to swallow
bananas whole, skin and all.
Walking tall
“The average cassowary spends much of its day walking
and looking for fruit,” says David Westcott, a scientist at
the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research
Organisation, who has been studying the birds for many years.
“When fruits are abundant they don’t have much trouble, but
at other times they will travel a lot, searching for fruiting trees
or visiting trees they know of.”
A cassowary will typically walk 20 –30km in the course
of a single day. One study suggests that, on average, a seed
that enters a cassowary gut will be moved 337m.
Westcott’s research has shown that cassowaries have
distinct favourites, and that they are particularly fond of
fruits that are reliable. Species that fruit year-round are
found in dung in much higher proportions than would be
expected by their abundance, even during the peak season
This youngster has outgrown its
baby stripes and is now gaining
tough, shaggy body feathers
like those of adults
Vehicles pose a
serious threat –
and roads also
fragment habitat
Cassowaries
roam widely,
sometimes in
open areas
Birds and plants have
inhabited the Queensland
rainforests for millions of
years, and grown sweetly
co-dependent
when there are plenty of other species on offer. Studies
have also uncovered a definite preference for very large
fruits, taking a much higher proportion than would be
expected by random fruit-eating.
On the whole, though, it is the variety that is most
striking. And that is good for the health of the forest as
a whole, because it means that many species are spread
liberally.The Queensland Wet Tropics Management
Authority estimates that 70 –100 plant species may lean
heavily on cassowaries to disperse them.
It isn’t just a question of physical dispersal, either.
Passing through the gut of a cassowary helps many
seeds to germinate. “In some cases it’s the increased
temperature,” says Westcott. “In others it’s the chemical or
physical damage done to the seeds’ exterior that promotes
germination, or the bacterial activity that the seed is
exposed to in the gut, or the dung.”
Birds and plants have thus inhabited the Queensland
rainforests for millions of years, and grown sweetly codependent. But not everything in the cassowary-planted
garden is rosy.The beautiful relationship has begun to
be soured by interference from outside.
It is human interference, of course.When is it not?
For a start, the Queensland rainforests have shrunk to
about a quarter of their original size, though these days
a healthy acreage lies inside protected national parks. In
many areas, the bird is under pressure.
Vol. 7 Issue 12
45
NATURE
Within a few hours
of hatching, chicks
are able to walk and
feed themselves
These young chicks have a
‘proto-wattle’ on the neck
and a horny area where their
casque will grow
Fancy headgear
casques
Sue Gregory runs Cassowary House guest lodge near Kuranda in
Queensland with her husband Phil.Their garden have been, for many
years, the most reliable place on the planet to see a wild cassowary, but
it’s no sanctuary. “There’s a high threat from feral dogs,” she says. “We
had two of our chicks killed by a rogue pet dog a couple of years ago
down in the adjacent suburbs.”
Another potential problem is feral pigs, descended from escaped
or released domestic animals and classified as a pest in Queensland.
The pigs not only compete with the birds for food, but they could also
destroy their exposed nest sites. And some cassowaries have recently
been found to be suffering from avian influenza, perhaps because they
are under stress from the nearby human population.
But where a significant population occurs near people, roads are
the greatest problem, as Sue Gregory confirms: “Roadkill is a major
cause of mortality.” A study by Christopher Kofron for the Queensland
Parks and Wildlife Service revealed that, of 110 recorded cassowary
deaths between 1986 and 2004, 55 per cent were caused by vehicle
strikes. According to the Queensland Department of Environment and
the Garners Beach Cassowary Rehabilitation Centre, there were 104
cassowary deaths from vehicle strikes between 1992 and January 2014.
The roads themselves
also fragment the
cassowaries’ habitat,
interfering with their
territories and foraging
routines.
Despite its official
listing as endangered in
It would be a disaster
IF QueenSland’s
Charismatic avian
‘dinosaur’ disappeared.
46
Vol. 7 Issue 12
The cassowary’s casque is a horny extension on top of
its head that may be 17cm tall. It is somewhat spongy
in texture and covered by a layer of keratin. But what
is it for? Nobody is quite sure.
Female cassowaries are dominant, so the fact that
they have larger casques, and that the structures take
three years or more to develop,
suggests that their size might reflect
status. But there are also other
theories. When cassowaries run
through forests they may do
so head down, leading to the
possibility that the casque
acts as a shock absorber
against low branches
and foliage. Another
possibility is
that it might be
used for turning over soil, though few
observations of feeding support this.
An intriguing new idea is that a casque
might be used in vocal communication,
detecting the very-low-frequency
booming sounds cassowaries make
which are barely audible to humans.
Australia, however, many cassowary watchers feel the bird
will be around 50 years from now, with the proviso that,
as the Gregorys put it, “The state doesn’t start messing
with national-park boundaries and inappropriate usages,
something we sadly can’t take for granted these days”.
It would be a disaster if Queensland’s charismatic avian
‘dinosaur’ were to disappear, not just for the bird but for the
forest, which would suffer a huge loss of biodiversity. And the
birding would become a great deal tamer.
DOMINIC COUZENS is a writer and birder who visited Queensland
to watch cassowaries in 2007 and survived to tell the tale.
Visit www.birdwords.co.uk for more information.
SCIENCE
10
THINGS YOUR
FACE SAYS
ABOUT YOU
The eyes may be the window to your soul but your face, features and complexion
give away all sorts of information about you. Christian Jarrett investigates
PHOTO: GETTY X3, OLIVER GARROD/UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW, DEANS CARDS X3/DEANSCARDS.COM, SHUTTERSTOCK
1
How much
cholesterol you
have
“Mirror, mirror on the wall,
who’s the fittest of them all?”
Asking this very question
might become a commonplace occurrence
following the announcement this summer that
a mirror is in development that will assess the
e
health of anyone who looks into it.
The Wize Mirror is being developed by
researchers from seven European countries,
coordinated by the National Research
Council of Italy. The device uses five compact
cameras and a 3D scanner to measure facial
skin tone, the amount of fat on the face and
facial expressions. It also analyses breath.
Based on this data, the mirror estimates
factors such as cholesterol levels, glucose
levels, anaemia, weight gain and stress. If
you’re looking a little run-down, the idea is
the mirror will provide you with tailored health
advice to get fit again.
Right now, the mirror is still only at a
prototype stage. For a more immediate
estimate of your longevity, find some old
photos of yourself and see if you’re smiling.
A recent analysis of baseball photos in a 1952
register found that of the players who’d since
died, those pictured with a genuine smile had
lived to age 80, on average, compared to an
average age of 73 among the non-smilers.
How trustworthy you are
We routinely make
assumptions
about each other’s
traits based on
facial appearance.
Sometimes these inferences
are made quickly, suggesting
that we can gather significant
clues in a split second.
Generally, faces that are
babyish (think less pointy,
with a high forehead) are
rated as more trustworthy.
Other face-based character
assumptions appear at first
to be tied to specific facial
features, but the reality
is more complicated. For
example, there’s evidence
that men with brown eyes
are perceived to be more
dominant than men with blue
eyes. But when a blue-eyed
man dons brown contact
lenses, this does nothing to
increase how dominant he
appears to strangers. This
2
Baseball players who smiled
on their photos lived longer
than those who didn’t
“Men with brown
eyes are perceived
to be more
dominant than
men with
blue eyes”
48
Vol. 7 Issue 12
suggests there’s something
else about brown-eyed men
that creates an impression of
dominance.
There’s some recent
evidence that we can
overcome the personality
signals given off by our
static facial structure, simply
by pulling the right facial
expressions. Psychologists
call this ‘social camouflaging’
and it was demonstrated in a
study published last year by
researchers at the University
of Glasgow. An animated face
morphed to look optimally
untrustworthy based on its
basic structure was rendered
trustworthy by programming it
to pull a facial expression that
involved raising the lips and
cheeks. “Social camouflage of
dominance and trustworthiness
is probably commonplace in
everyday interactions,” the
researchers explain.
Brown-eyed men are viewed as more dominant than their blue-eyed friends
What mood you’re in
3
muscles in the face. The researchers then presented
Since Charles Darwin first compared
participants from a Western or an East Asian background
the emotional displays of humans
with these avatars showing random combinations of
and animals, it’s been argued by
facial muscle movements, and the participants had to
many experts that humans exhibit
say when they recognised one of the six basic
six basic emotions via six
emotions. There were differences in how the
core facial expressions:
Westerners and East Asians responded – for
happiness, surprise,
example, the East Asians were a lot less
fear, disgust, anger
consistent in how they categorised some
and sadness.
emotions (especially surprise, fear, disgust
No-one disputes
and anger), and saw movements of the
that facial movements convey what
eyes as more important for interpreting
we’re feeling, but there is some debate
emotional intensity.
over the cultural universality of the
Quoting Darwin, the researchers say:
emotional expressions.
“Although some basic facial expressions
At the recent Royal Society Face Facts
such as fear and disgust originally served as
exhibition, researchers from the University
an adaptive function when humans ‘existed in
of Glasgow presented their evidence
a much lower and animal-like condition’, facial
that the interpretation of emotional facial
expression signals have since evolved and
expressions is not, in fact, universal. They
diversified to serve the primary role of
used a unique 3D computer system
emotion communication during
to create digital avatars that could
East Asian people tend to rely more on eye
movements when interpreting expressions
social interaction.”
independently manipulate all 42
4
“No-one
disputes
that facial
movements
convey what
we’re feeling,
but there
is some
debate over
the cultural
universality of
the emotional
expressions”
How well
Ho
ell
y fight
you
fi t
The shape off your
T
y
fface
is related to your fighting
g
g
prowess – if you’re a man.
Psychologists
P h l gi made
d this
hi
discoveryy in 2014 after
analysing photographs
off over 200 mixed martial
artists in the Ultimate Fig
ghting
gC
Championship
(UFC). Male fighters with faces that were widerr
relative to their length te
ended to win more fi
fights,
and the association held
d even after
f ffactoring
g out
the influence of body sizze. The result chimes with
past research linking fac
cial width with aggression.
What’s more, it seems w
we iintuitively
ii l k
know that
h
this facial characteristic is a marker of pugilistic
g
earchers manipulated
prowess. When the rese
p
fighters’ photos to make
e their ffaces appear
wider, this led observerss to rate the fighters
g
as
more deadly.
acial cue to fi
fighting
Another temporary fa
ability is a smile. Acrosss the
h animal
i l kingdom,
ki gd
iit’s
’
be used as a signal
common for a smile to b
g off
submission. Consistent with this, a 2013 study
of UFC fighters publishe
ed in the journal Emotion
miled at a p
pre-match
found that those who sm
y to lose the ensuing
face-off were more likely
confrontation. “Smiles a
appear to play a unique
W
Who’ll
win this fight?
g ? The
role in physical confronttations, as a sign
g of
o
odds
are on the guy with
i
thee wider
de face…
ace
a person’s reduced phyysical dominance,”
the researchers say.
VVol.l 7 Issue
I
12
49
SCIENCE
If you concentrate
on someone’s mouth
movements, you’ll
have more success
in deciphering their
emotional state
What you’re reacting to
PHOTO: GETTY, UC SAN DIEGO SCHOOL OF MEDICINE, UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM, SHUTTERSTOCK
5
Do you think you could tell what had just
happened to someone from a short, silent
video of their facial reaction? Specifically,
could you tell whether they’d been told
a joke, heard a sad story, received a
compliment or been made to wait for five
minutes?
This is exactly the challenge that University
of Nottingham psychologists gave their participants for a
study published in 2012, which they say was a more realistic
test of the way we interpret each other’s facial expressions
than simply naming the emotion on display. The participants
averaged around 60 per cent accuracy – not great, but if
they’d just guessed each time, their accuracy would only
have been 25 per cent. Accuracy was especially high (90 per
cent on average) for recognising when someone had been
made to wait.
In general, participants who were more accurate tended
to focus more on the mouth region. The researchers say:
“From observing just a few seconds of a person’s reaction,
it appears we can gauge what kind of event might have
happened to that individual with considerable success.”
Whether you’re arty or scientific
6
Many of us have a side of
our face that we prefer, and
that we turn to face the
camera for photos. However,
an analysis of thousands of
university academics’ homepage photos
suggests there’s more to this than
vanity. Engineers, mathematicians and
chemists more often posed with their
right cheek forward, while arts scholars
and psychologists more often posed
with their left cheek showing. There was
also a gender difference, with female
academics more likely to display a
greater amount of their left cheek.
The research, led by Owen Churches
at the University of South Australia
(incidentally, his web photo shows more
right cheek) says that the findings were
consistent with past work suggesting that
more emotionally expressive people tend
to pose with the left cheek on display, and
that naive observers assume right-cheek
posers are more scientific.
“Academics be warned,” the
research concluded. “We present
ourselves to our students and
colleagues in our profile pictures, and
the way we do so may reveal more
about ourselves than we think.”
“There was a gender difference, with
female academics more likely to display
a greater amount of their left cheek”
50
Vol. 7 Issue 12
What lifestyle you lead
Some people certainly seem to have
more ‘lived-in’ faces than others.
This year, researchers at the Chinese
Academy of Sciences elaborated on
this principle, reporting that they’d used
computer imagery to generate 3D models of over
300 people’s faces (aged 17 to 77), and that they’d
used these models to look for correlations between
specific facial features and age. For example, older
people tended to have wider noses and more
sloping eyes. Some people had faces that were
‘young’ for their age based on these markers, with
any two people of the same chronological age
differing by around six ‘face years’ on average.
Facial age correlated more strongly with objective
markers of health, such as cholesterol levels, than
with chronological age – showing that a person’s
lifestyle is indeed written in their face.
7
8
In the picture on the left the boy is suffering ongoing pain, on the right he is suffering transient pain – the
difference in his facial expression is clearly visible
How much
pain you’re in
It’s often difficult for people to
articulate their pain, especially
children. Thankfully, researchers at the University of
California recently announced that they’ve created
a computer algorithm that decodes videos of
children’s changing facial expressions to determine
how much pain they’re in. The algorithm was tested
on children aged five to 18 who were recovering
from appendix surgery, and its estimates of their
pain correlated well with their self-reports – better,
in fact, than the estimates made by nurses.
An advantage of this technique is that it could
provide a continuous measure of a patient’s
pain. Scheduled assessments, by contrast, can
miss those times when a patient is suffering the
most. Moreover, the computer program is not
biased by a patient’s age, gender or ethnicity, and
could be used for children who are too young to
communicate how much pain they’re in.
What you eat
10
While participants could not distinguish politicians’ affiliation,
their perceptions were then used to create ‘perfect’ Labour and
Conservative MPs (pictured on the left and right respectively)
9
Your sexuality
Your face gives away a lot – but not your
political leaning. Researchers tested this in
2011 when they asked 19 subjects to look
at the faces of 90 unfamiliar backbench male British
MPs and to say whether they were from the Labour or
the Conservative party (using a rating scale to show
how confident they were in their guesses). The results
showed the participants were unable to judge the MPs’
affiliations from their faces. MPs with beards or glasses
were excluded in case these were used as cues.
Sexual orientation is another matter. Research from
2008 by Tufts University found that a 50 millisecond
glimpse of 90 men’s faces was enough for undergrad
students to judge their sexuality (homosexual or
heterosexual) with an accuracy of 57 per cent, which is
superior to chance. “The rapid and accurate perception
of male sexual orientation may be another symptom of
a fast and efficient cognitive mechanism for perceiving
the characteristics of others,” the researchers say.
If someone has an orange
glow, it’s tempting to
assume they’ve been
spending too much time
on a sunbed. In fact, a
person’s diet – specifically
the consumption of
carotenoid-rich fruit and
veg such as carrots – can
also affect their skin in
a similar way, making it
appear more yellow. In
2014, psychologists from
the University of Leeds and
the University of St Andrews
showed that faces made
more yellow through diet
were rated more attractive
by observers than the same
faces with an equivalent
suntan. It’s thought that skin
turned yellow through diet is
attractive because it’s a sign
the person is in good health.
Low carotenoid
High caroteno
id
Low melanin
High melanin
CHRISTIAN JARRETT is a psychologist and the author of Great Myths Of The Brain
Vol. 7 Issue 12
51
ILLUSTRATOR: DANNY ALLISON
SCIENCE
Scan this QR Code for
the audio reader
52
Vol. 7 Issue 12
TUNE IN TO
TREATMENT FM
Music moves us to tears and drives us to dance. But as well as affecting our
moods, it can also have a positive impact on our health. In fact, the more we
learn about the power of music, the more applications we discover for it, as
Zoe Cormier explains…
usic is medicinal. You might expect a
statement like this to come from someone
in a drumming circle, a chanting crystal
healer or sleazy record-label executive. But the idea
that music can be used to heal the mind is increasingly
grounded in scientific evidence – not theory.
Recent studies show how people coping with
Parkinson’s can learn to walk more easily when
rhythms assist their gait. Other research suggests
autistic children find social interactions become
easier when accompanied by music, and that less
anaesthetic is required when music is played to
spinal surgery patients. Perhaps most astoundingly,
premature babies gain weight quicker when they can
hear music.
Scientific studies – ranging from investigations
of the brain at a cellular level, to psychiatric
assessments of schizophrenics, to linguistic scores
in stroke patients – are all leading to the same
conclusion: music isn’t just a form of entertainment,
it is evolutionarily significant. And the more we
learn about the impact of music on the brain, the
more we understand how it can be employed as a
therapeutic intervention.
M
So much to learn
“I originally trained as a music therapist but when
I went into practice 15 years ago, I found that so
little formal research had been done on how or why
it works,” says Prof Christian Gold of the Grieg
Academy Department of Music at the University of
Bergen in Norway. Gold studies how music therapy
can help people with a wide variety of conditions,
ranging from learning disabilities to schizophrenia
and dementia. “I had planned to go back into
clinical practice after spending a few years in research
but 15 years later, I’m still researching. There’s just
so much to learn.”
Perhaps the most familiar notion of the power of
music is the claim that listening to Mozart is good
for your brain. But that only tells half the story.
Listening to classical music (or any kind of music,
for that matter) does have quantifiable impacts on
aspects of cognition, such as visual puzzle solving.
However, everything you do – solving puzzles,
playing sports, painting landscapes – has an impact
on your brain.
But nothing seems to anatomically, chemically
and beneficially alter your brain the way music
can. The grey matter, which is the outer layer of
the brain that contains the synapses – the ends of
the neurones where signals are relayed – thickens
with musical training. Furthermore, the cerebellum,
which is the wrinkly bulb at the back of the brain
that’s crucial for balance, movement and motor
control, is bigger in pianists.
Neuroscientists have documented many other
anatomical changes that come with musical
experience but the most profound is thought to be
the fact that the corpus callosum – a band of nerve
fibres that connect the left and right hemispheres
to each other – thickens. No-one is quite sure what
helping the two sides of the brain to communicate
with each other accomplishes, but 20 years after this
discovery, nobody has found anything else that
does this.
Vol. 7 Issue 12
53
PHOTO: PRESS ASSOCIAITON, SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY,
LEBRECHT MUSIC & ARTS, FLPA, ISTOCK
What’s more, MRI scans and EEG
recordings show that playing – or even just
listening to – music engages almost every region
of the brain. From top to bottom, front to back,
every part of the brain is involved in the process.
The newest parts of the brain, such as the frontal
cortex, which is associated with higher thinking,
tune in. Older structures in the middle, such as
the hippocampus (crucial for memory formation)
and the amygdala (central to fear and emotion),
are also stimulated by the sound. As are even
older parts of the brain, such as the cerebellum.
Even the brainstem, the most prehistoric part,
responds to music – but not to spoken language.
As far as we know, nothing engages as
many parts of the brain as music, which suggests
that it might have played an important role in
our evolution.
Lost for words
What came first: language or music?
Neuroscientists – including Steven Pinker – once
54
Vol. 7 Issue 12
WHY MUSIC MAKES
US TINGLE
Sound can cause physical
reactions in powerful ways
Purring cats relax us and explosions shock
us. But music can do something even more
extraordinary: exhilarate us. And it’s only in
the last 15 years that neuroscientists have
Get tingles up your spine
been able to reveal why. For one, listening to music
when listening to Nickelback?
Thank
dopamine for that – just
can stimulate ancient parts of the brain involved in
don’t tell anyone about it
reward and pleasure. But more importantly, a complex
sequence of events result in the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine by
a part of the brain called the nucleus accumbens. The nucleus accumbens
releases this pleasure chemical in response to sex, drugs and music, but not to
random noises. Once flushed into the bloodstream, dopamine can make tingle
us from the top of our heads to the tips of our toes. What’s more, music also
triggers the release of other neurotransmitters such as endorphins, serotonin
and vasopressin. Music is an auditory chemical cocktail – with no hangover.
BEATS FOR BEASTIES
Do animals make music? It’s a difficult to
t say for certain. Many
animals use complex
p
forms of communication, but does that
q
qualify
y as music?
MICE
A study published earlier this year in the journal
Frontiers In Behavioral Neuroscience found
that male mice ‘sing’ in ultrasonic frequencies
(sounds too high for our ears to detect) to
attract females. What’s more, the researchers
from Duke University found that the rodents
produce more complex calls to attract females
they have never met but whom they have
sensed by smelling traces of their urine.
Composer Vissarion
Shebalin lost language, but
still wrote five symphonies
thought that language was the crucial skill on the
CV of the human brain and the characteristic that
set us apart from other animals. He called music
‘auditory cheesecake’ – meaning that we like
structured noises because they exploit the same
networks in our brains that are built to process
grammar, prosody and other speech patterns.
But not only does music engage parts of the
brain that are not stimulated by language, it is
possible to be musical and completely non-verbal.
Aphasia – the loss of speech comprehension or
production – frequently occurs following a stroke
and can leave many people unable to speak and
thus feeling isolated and depressed. Yet often those
who can’t speak can still appreciate and create
music. The most famous example of this is the
Russian composer Vissarion Shebalin (1902-1963)
who developed aphasia after a series of strokes.
He couldn’t speak, yet he could still craft entire
symphonies, completing his fifth and final one just
three months before his death.
Worldwide, 15 million people suffer strokes
every year and speech difficulties are one of
the most common outcomes. Therapists in the
1940s began developing a technique known as
melodic intonation therapy – using melodies
and singing to help stroke victims regain
“MRI and EEG scans
show that playing - or
even listening to – music
engages almost every
region on the brain”
GIBBONS
Most animals vocalise in some way. But to
be considered musical, scientists argue, the
animals need to display vocal learning: they
must have to learn how to sing in a specific
way throughout their lives. Gibbons certainly
do: male and female pairs duet loudly every
morning to defend their territory. And it’s a skill
they have to learn: a 2013 study described how
gibbon mothers teach their daughters to sing.
WHALES
Until 1967, humans had no idea that whales
make complex songs with phrases, repetitions
and codas. Now we know that whale songs
change over time and vary between populations,
indicating that whales have culture. We can also
use whale song to identify new species. This year,
in Marine Mammal Science, scientists described a
recording from Antarctica, which could be from a
species of beaked whale unknown to science.
NIGHTINGALES
If any species of animal produces ‘true music’,
it’s most likely to be a bird: no other class of
creatures produce sonic compositions that are
so varied – or so sweet. Birds use songs to
defend territory, attract mates, practise riffs and
show off. In 1924 a nightingale spontaneously
joined cellist Beatrice Harrison for the world’s
first outdoor broadcast for an impromptu duet.
(Listen here: bit.ly/1MKTuG7)
COCKATOOS
It’s undeniable that animals create complex,
meaningful noises. But do they have rhythm?
Neuroscientist Ani Patel claimed only humans can
keep a beat. And he was proved wrong. Snowball
– tested in his lab – bopped to Michael Jackson,
Backstreet Boys and Queen in perfect time,
even when the tempo was sped up or slowed
down. The cockatoo became the first animal
immortalised in a scientific paper for his groove.
Vol. 7 Issue 12
55
Research suggests that autistic
children find social interaction easier
when accompanied by music
speech. The idea made sense; after all, young
children learn the alphabet through song and
‘motherese’ – the sing-song language that parents
coo to their babies that is found in every culture on
Earth. Neuroscientists theorised in the 1970s that
when a stroke damages areas in the left hemisphere
of the brain that are crucial for language – in
particular, Broca’s area – musical training can cause
regions on the undamaged right hemisphere to take
on the task of producing speech instead.
Since then countless studies have documented
how music can aid speech recovery. The
highest profile example of this is probably US
congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. She was shot
in the head in 2011 but survived the attempted
assassination. She credits music therapy for helping
her regain the ability to read, write and speak.
“Although it’s still an open question over what
aspects of music are important – rhythmic or
melodic – there is growing evidence that melodic
intonation therapy can help people with aphasia,”
says Dr Teppo Särkämö of the University of
Helsinki. Through examining MRI scans of stroke
patients he has shown not only that music aids
in language recovery, but actually induces visible
changes in a variety of brain structures after just six
months of treatment.
In 2008, Särkämö found that of 54 stroke patients,
those given musical recordings improved in their
linguistic capacities to a greater degree than patients
given audio books. Music aided language recovery
better than language itself.
“One of the things that makes music so interesting
is that it’s pleasant but at the same time cognitively
demanding,” says Särkämö. “This is one of the few
ANCIENT MUSIC
PH
HOTOS: PRESS ASSOCIAITON, GETTY, CORBIS, STR NEWS / REUTERS
SCIENCE
56
THE WORLD’S
OLDEST
INSTRUMENT
The 43,000-year-old Divje
Babe flute is one of the
oldest human creations ever
found. It’s an 11cm-long
piece of a bear’s femur, with
two fingertip-sized holes
spaced 3.5cm apart. Due to
its similiarity to modern wind
instruments, it was dubbed
the ‘Neanderthal flute’ by
the archaeologists who
found it in Slovenia in 1995.
Reconstructions indicate it
could play the musical scale.
Vol. 7 Issue 12
Vol
THE WORLD’S OLDEST
AUDITORIUM
UD
THE WORLD’S
OLDEST SONG
Prehisttoric cave art in Arcy-sur-Cure,
e, dated to 30,000 years old, is visually
France
imp
presssive. But to add to this, acoustic
l is shows that the scenes depicting
analys
bison, horses and hunting were frequently
p
d in subterranean areas that have the
painted
b
best ac
coustic properties for resonance and
rreverbe
beration. This suggests they were used as
the bac
ckdrop to musical performances, like an
ornamented concert hall.
A Sumerian hymn
(pictured right), inscribed
onto clay tablets in
Mesopotamia and
recovered in Syria in the
1950s, has been estimated
to be 3,400 years old,
making it the oldest written
song. However, to call it
the ‘oldest song’ is a bit of
a misnomer: epic ballads
were passed on orally for
thousands of years before
the invention
of writing.
therapeutic interventions we have that is both soothing
as well as challenging.”
Music can also be used to help patients who have
never been able to speak in the first place, such as
people with Rett syndrome. “Because they don’t tend
to speak at all, we struggle to understand what they may
be thinking or feeling,” says Gold, whose own research
has measured how music stimulates the brainstems
of people with Rett syndrome. “This seems to be an
important indicator of the effects that music therapy
may be having on them – relaxation or excitement.”
Severe impairments such as Rett sysndrome are not
the only childhood conditions that music therapists
target: 12 per cent of clinical work with autistic
children in the UK involves music in some way, most
commonly in helping them interact with others.
“It makes sense because music is ultimately
about social interactions,” says Gold. “In musical
communication, if you improvise with somebody,
there are subtle adjustments you have to make
when you interact with them. Those social exchanges
are the most important part of most forms of
music therapy.”
Humans are social creatures that require social
contact. Few experiences can be more isolating than
the impairments of ageing, so it’s not surprising that this
is one of the oldest and most established areas of
research in music therapy.
The effects of music
therapy continue
to surprise
T WORLD’S
THE
OLDEST SHEET
O
MUSIC
M
En
ngraved onto a marble
olumn in Turkey by the
co
ancient
n
Greeks around
100AD,
the Seikilos Epitaph
10
(pictured right) is the oldest
musical score
complete
o
known.
kn
Older fragments
of sheet music have been
recovered but only this piece
rettains the melody and lyrics,
including
this sentiment:
c
you live, shine/Have
“While
W
no grief at all/Life exists only
while.”
a short
s
THE WORLD’S OLDEST
XYLLOPHONE
This a
ancient instrument is made from crafted stones
hat
make a resonant noise when struck, and has been
th
at m
d
da
ated to between 2500BC and 8000BC. In one French
c
ca
ave system, however, there could be an even older
‘‘x
xylophone’.
p
Ochre markings placed on stalagmites
a
ap
ppear
a to pinpoint spots that produce different notes
wh
hen struck. What’s more, the pillars are dented on the
marks
s, and around them lie shards of bone, presumably
c
ch
hipped
p off prehistoric drumsticks.
VVol.
ol 7 Issue 12
1
57
SCIENCE
PHOTOS: FOZI DESIGN, SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
Take, for example, the tremors and mobility
problems that come with Parkinson’s: “People
with disorders that cause tremors tend to fall. Though
medication can help with the tremors, there is little
that can be done to help them regain the ability
to walk,” says Prof Simone Dalla Bella from the
University of Montpellier. With metronomes and
percussive instruments, he studies how melodic
gait therapy can help Parkinson’s sufferers walk
more steadily. Similar to the way that soldiers learn
to march to a drumbeat, Parkinson’s sufferers can
improve their walking with the help of a rhythm.
“The fascinating thing about this therapy is that
the benefits are not confined to gait – we also see
improvements in things like motor control,” says
Dalla Bella. “Patients who are given auditory cue
training, for example, can greatly improve in their
perception of and ability to produce speech.”
The mechanism by which music helps Parkinson’s
patients appears to lie in a region of the brain called
the nucleus accumbens. This is the same region that
releases dopamine – the neurotransmitter associated
with pleasure – in response to chemical stimulants
like drugs, or physical stimulants like sex.
Parkinson’s is characterised by an impairment of
the connections between a cluster of brain structures
called the basal ganglia and other regions due to a lack
of dopamine. So it makes sense, says Dalla Bella, that
if music can trigger the release of dopamine in that
region, it would be helpful.
Lost Chord’s founder Helena
Muller helps dementia patients
to enjoy live music
Parkinson’s causes parts of the brain to degenerate
58
Vol. 7 Issue 12
Musical memories
Of all the afflictions of old age, none could be more
isolating than Alzheimer’s: memories are left behind,
loved ones are forgotten and whole identities are
gradually lost. More than 25 million people in the
UK are affected, by knowing somebody who has
dementia.
“We don’t have a cure for Alzheimer’s and there is
no cure on the horizon: we need to work on ways to
make the sufferers’ lives, and the lives of their carers,
easier,” says psychologist Dr Victoria Williamson of
“People regularly describe the Lost Chord memory
cafes as their lifeline. People can revert back to
being a couple again rather than carer and person
with dementia. The benefits gained by the people
with dementia is immeasurable. To observe people
who are withdrawn and isolated come out of their
shell and engage by singing and dancing is tangible,
powerful and emotional for all to see,” says the
Alzheimer’s Society.
“The choir at the Lost Chord memory cafe is one
of the few things that makes him smile,” says Marion
Jones, whose husband has severe Alzheimer’s.
The deep hold that music can have in our
memories is perhaps best exemplified at events like
the Lost Chord memory cafes. Even when people
with advanced-stage dementia can’t remember the
names of their children, they can recall lyrics from
the songs of their childhood. Recent neurological
studies have verified and scrutinised this, with
important findings.
“Patients who are given
auditory cue training,
for example, can greatly
improve their ability
to speak”
the University of Sheffield, author of You Are The
Music. “Music is not a pill or a vitamin or a cure,
but it can provide powerful support, alleviating real
symptoms like depression and anxiety. There is no
reason not to invest in providing music to as many
people living in care homes as possible.”
After spending many years in the lab studying
musical memory, Williamson began working with
the charity Lost Chord. Lost Chord was set up in
1999 by Helena Muller to provide live music in
residential care homes for people with dementia.
“It is important that we work to provide live
music to people in care homes, and not simply
give them iPods to sedate them,” says Williamson.
“Why would an isolating condition be alleviated by
an isolating device?”
This brings us back to what music, ultimately, is:
a form of social navigation via sound. As it involves
so many ancient brain regions, and can be used in
so many therapeutic ways, is music something we
are ‘hardwired’ for?
“I used to think so – but the more I learn about
music, the more I think it’s not something we
inherited: I think it is an invention. Yes, our brains
are pre-programmed to be able to produce music.
But music didn’t make us – we made it,” says
Williamson. “We began making music because
it fulfilled so many useful purposes: communication,
social bonding, teamwork, sexual attraction. It’s
a ball we just can’t put down. This is the best
invention we ever came up with.”
ZOE CORMIER is a freelance science writer and author
of Sex, Drugs & Rock ‘N’ Roll: The Science Of Hedonism
Vol. 7 Issue 12
59
DANNY DAY © BBC WORLDWIDE 2015
A cabin on
Erik Salitan’s
property in
Wiseman, AK
Life
Below Zero
The icy adventures continue for the series’ hardy characters,
racing to prepare for their survival as the oncoming winter
freeze begins to take hold in Alaska
Vol. 7 Issue 12
61
DANIEL ESPY © BBC WORLDWIDE 2015
NATURE
Andy Bassich
prepares his
dogs to go
mushing near his
home in Calico
Bluff, AK
he Life Below Zero series follows the stories
of hard-working people living off the grid
miles from the nearest road. With temperatures
plummeting and limited daylight, it’s a battle to secure the
last of available resources.
Nature’s unpredictability threatens the mental and
physical strength of these Alaskans as they seek to protect
the future of their remote livelihoods. To survive the
bitter cold they must stay ahead by building, acquiring
essential food sources, and gathering from the land before
the dark winter takes hold. It’s time to put the summer of
preparation to the test as the battle to survive the extreme
winter months begins.
Erik and his new wife Martha return to their home in
Wiseman after a summer of guiding to hunker down,
survive through the winter and maintain their subsistence
lifestyle. After a year of financial hardships, Sue struggles
with her future in Kavik as she stocks her freezer and deals
with the resurgence of an old injury. And with newly
inherited land, the Hailstones plan for their future with
hopes of expanding their remote hunting, trapping and
fishing grounds.
Andy and Kate battle the harsh and changing landscape
on the Yukon River as they continue to work towards
sustaining an efficient life in the bush. Meanwhile, Glenn
relies only on himself to maintain his primitive remote
lifestyle by securing his most basic needs. If these Alaskans
don’t plan it right, they might not make it to spring.
T
62
Vol. 7 Issue 12
Q&A with Sue Aikens If it hurts, don’t think about it
Sue lives 500 miles from the nearest city and 80 miles from
the closest road. She is the warden of Kavik River Camp
that she also calls home. She has been in Alaska for 30 years
and loves to share the unique experience of her camp with
people during hunting season.
What does your diet consist of?
My diet is pretty varied. In winter I eat meat and fish that
I have harvested. Fresh veg and fruit are not possible from
September through June of the following year so I eat frozen or
dehydrated fruit and veggies. I use shelf stable milk products
or dehydrated. I eat what I want, when I want, and seldom
ask myself if it will make my booty look fat in my jeans.
Why did you decide to move to such
a remote location?
I had been known for living remotely and off the grid in
other capacities and this was a move facilitated by an offer to
manage the camp, by the then owner and old friend.
What prompted you to become involved
with Life Below Zero?
I had been on other shows and one of the creators of this
show had worked with me then and thought I would
be a good mix for the show.
DANNY DAY © BBC WORLDWIDE 2015
The landscape
surrounding Erik
Salitan’s home in
Wiseman, AK
NATURE
What was it like having the crew around when
you are used to a lot more time on your own?
I view it like a slumber party over sleepover. We play,
have fun, and get to tell real life ghost stories and explore...
what’s not to love? If I feel overwhelmed with human
attention I put myself in time-out and give myself a break.
This has been a great adventure! I tend to have a child-like
enthusiasm for life and this is “Show and Tell” on a large
scale. I like to share
How dangerous are the conditions in which you live?
BELOW: One of the
foxes that lives near
Sue’s home in Kavik
River Camp
I suppose from a Lower World perspective there are a
large amount of dangers here. Nature and its weather
are probably foremost on the danger list. -80F and 80
mph winds in winter for months on end while living
in a tent is fraught with what some people would call
life-threatening conditions. There are many top predators
that live here and are admittedly higher on the food chain
than I am. I accept this. Simple things can be a huge
I have enjoyed most that there is a way that I can have my
children and grandchildren see what I do from the safety of
their own lifestyles. They can now “see” me forever with
the click of a button. I don’t know that I have felt surprised
by much. I am inspired by the crews and what they have
done and where they have been in their lives.
What is the most common question you get asked
about your life - and what’s the answer?
JARED STEYAERT © BBC WORLDWIDE 2015
Question: Don’t you get lonely out there? I would go nuts!
Answer: No I do not live from an emotional place. I do not
allow myself the luxury of negative emotions or I would go
bushy too fast. I register that I live alone, but I do not feel
lonely there is a difference. And… I never said I wasn’t a few
eggs shy of a dozen lol...
WAYNE SHOCKEY © BBC WORLDWIDE 2015
What have you enjoyed most about the process of
making the show? What’s surprised you?
Glenn Villeneuve
checks his progress
on the tree in
Chandalar, AK
64
Vol. 7 Issue 12
disaster if you forget them. Not having your tools in a
place where you can find them in the dark may mean you
are exposed to severe conditions too long and may forfeit
a few digits. Old Mick Dundee had Crocs... I have bears.
Has anything ever happened to make you question
your choice of habitat?
Getting attacked and laying here for 10 days waiting for help
was an eye opener... but I didn’t question my desire to be
here... it did however make me question my ability to be
here and react to the same threat without hesitation. I passed
the challenge and have not exhausted the exploring avenues
so here I remain.
A lot of people couldn’t imagine living where you do
(the cold, the lack of access to conveniences, the
dangerous conditions). What are a couple of reasons
why you wouldn’t change it for anything?
I would not say I wouldn’t change it for anything. I leave
the door to life’s opportunities wide open. One day there
ABOVE: Hunt or be
hunted. Steal some
basic suvival tips
from the Alaskan
inhabitants
well could be a shiny new thing that grabs my attention and
off I will go to explore something new. But for now... I am
content. I like my solitude and not having anyone up my
backside to conform. If I get hurt, or die from my choices...
it is just that. A life well lived and on MY terms... not some
politician or peer pressure to “fit the mould” There is great
personal satisfaction in being able to feed myself, and play
with foxes and watch the Northern lights knowing that I am
King in my Castle.
For much of the year, you live by yourself. How long
did it take to get used to that solitude?
Even in pre-school and Kindergarten when asked what I
want to be when I grow up... my answer has always been
Lighthouse Keeper. I have always craved extreme isolation.
Living alone isn’t for everyone - what do you like
about it?
I wear what I like, eat what I want, when I want.
People come in the months when I accept visits, and
Vol. 7 Issue 12
65
DANNY DAY © BBC WORLDWIDE 2015
NATURE
then they go away. It is like having people over
for a holiday meal. They come, you visit, share
and laugh, and then they go home again. I am constantly
challenged by my environment and abilities. That is
exciting to me. I don’t find it a pleasing challenge to
do a 9-5 lifestyle and under someone else’s vision of
rules. Who doesn’t want to be happy or content when
they grow up?? Not sure that I want to get out of
Kindergarten yet... they have naps and snacks, what’s not
to love? Growing up seems highly over-rated.
Where do you get your strength from?
My personal Will to survive and thrive and explore;
exceed all that which I have come up against to surpass
it. Until that happens... it comes from within. I suppose
we all have boundaries... I just keep blasting mine to
shreds and moving on. Until I say I cant... what other
people say doesn’t matter. I am the only reflection I am
guaranteed to see in the mirror every day of my life, so I
had better like that person and make sure it is someone
I can be proud of. I also get it from my children and
grandchildren. Their ability to bless and feel comfortable
with me wanting to be a forever 5-year-old explorer,
gives me strength and courage to live life with a childlike
sense of wonder.
Besides your work and chores, how do you pass
the time?
I read, write, paint, play games, play with foxes,
explore.... Chores and such to occupy a lot of time. Snow
is the gift that keeps on giving out here... but there is an
endless horizon of things to see and experience.
66
Vol. 7 Issue 12
ABOVE: Another
cabin on Erik
Salitan’s property
What do you think would surprise most people about
what your life is like?
I don’t know what each individual would find surprising,
that is part of his or her journey. What will they each as
individuals find charming or abhorrent? Most people have a
hard time comprehending that I do not desire for a spouse
or partner. I already have the t-shirt and coffee mug on that
one... Aside from that, maybe most surprising is that it gets
in the 80-100F ABOVE range in summer!
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Life Below Zero follows the lives of ordinary people
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It’s a race to prepare for survival, as the oncoming winter
freeze begins to take hold and nature’s unpredictability
threatens the mental and physical strength of our hardy
characters living off the grid, miles from the nearest road.
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Vol. 7 Issue 12
67
SCIENCE
THE FUNCTION OF
HORMONES
BY TOM IRELAND
These clever chemicals circulate through our blood, regulating our
physiology and behaviour. But it took a long time for people to accept that
these molecules have such an enormous impact on our bodies
oday, the word ‘hormone’
is commonly used and well
understood. We might say
we are feeling hormonal, or take
hormones to prevent, say, diabetes or
pregnancy. Teenagers, especially, are
known for being troubled by their
‘raging’ hormones.
These amazing chemicals, secreted
into our blood by special organs called
endocrine glands, control almost
everything our body does – from
our growth and development to our
impulses and mood, from how often we
sleep to how quickly our heart beats.
There are even hormones that regulate
our hormones.
Yet until the start of the 20th
Century, most scientists had no idea
hormones even existed, let alone how
they worked. The more visible systems
of the body, such as the skeleton,
muscles and major organs, had been
known since ancient times. However,
hormone glands were only just being
found by anatomists by the 19th
Century, and what they did remained a
complete mystery for some time.
PHOTO: GETTY, SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
T
68
Vol. 7 Issue 12
Despite this complete lack of
understanding, humans have been
unwittingly manipulating hormones in
both animals and people for centuries.
There is some evidence that ancient
Chinese people were extracting
hormones from urine for medicinal
purposes as far back as 200BC. In Italy
from the 16th to the 18th Centuries,
opera singers known as castratos had
their testicles removed before puberty
to ensure their voices didn’t drop,
producing a unique high-pitched
voice in adulthood. And for thousands
of years, farmers have castrated male
animals to reduce aggression.
Weird science
Domenico Annibali was castrated as a youngster and
became an international opera star in the 18th Century
But it took a series of crude and
controversial experiments in the
Victorian era to kick-start the discovery
of hormones and our understanding
of how they actually work. Many of
them still involved doing strange things
with testicles.
Over the course of around 100
years, the new field of ‘endocrinology’
– as the study of hormones is called –
revolutionised science and medicine,
and many common disorders of the
endocrine system could suddenly be
diagnosed and treated.
The story begins in 1849, with
a German scientist called Arnold
Berthold and several castrated
cockerels. Berthold noticed that
> IN A NUTSHELL
Testosterone, pictured here
under a polarised light
microscope, is mostly
produced by the testes.
Even before hormones were
discovered, it was
understood that removing
the testes of youngsters
would impact the
development of adult male
characteristics.
Scan this QR Code for
the audio reader
Vol. 7 Issue 12
69
SCIENCE
when cockerels had their testes
removed early in life, in adulthood
they failed to develop typically male
characteristics, such as a large red comb
and wattle.
In what is now recognised as the
first endocrinological experiment,
Berthold transplanted severed testes
back into the birds’ bodies. The birds
soon started to develop the traits of
uncastrated cockerels, including the
characteristic plumage and aggressive
mating behaviour. The transplanted testes
also redeveloped their own blood supply.
The experiment suggested that whatever
was causing the male characteristics was
THE KEY
EXPERIMENT
Vol. 7 Issue 12
PHOTO:WALTER WESTLEY RUSSELL 1926/UCL ART COLLECTION 5673, , NIM/WIKI COMMONS, SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY, GETTY X3
A respected physiologist called CharlesÉdouard Brown-Séquard began a series
of outlandish experiments, most of which
involved injecting himself with liquid
squeezed out of crushed animal testicles.
In 1889, at the age of 72, he announced
that he had reversed his own ageing by
injecting the ‘testicular juice’ of dogs and
guinea pigs.
The effects Brown-Séquard experienced
were almost certainly placebo. His injections
would have contained little testosterone
and would have been quickly broken
down by his body. Yet Brown-Séquard
went on to claim that almost any ailment
could be cured by testicular juice. The
Ernest Starling and William Bayliss wanted to prove that hormones regulate
the function of organs. While controversial, their experiments set endocrinology
on the right path
In 1902 Ernest Starling and William Bayliss
were studying the nervous system’s
control of digestion at University College
London. They were looking in particular at
the duodenum – the part of the small
intestine located immediately after the
stomach. When gastric acid enters the
duodenum, the pancreas releases
pancreatic juice.
At the time, hormones were barely
understood. A large number of scientists
still thought that vital organ functions, such
as the release of pancreatic juice, were
controlled by the nervous system. To test
this, Starling and Bayliss cut away all of the
nerves in the pancreas and the duodenum
of an anaesthetised dog. They found that
pancreatic juice was still produced when
acid passed through the duodenum.
They suspected that the duodenum was
producing something that was entering the
bloodstream and acting
on the pancreas. To prove it, they scraped
some tissue out of the duodenum, added
acid, ground it up with sand, then filtered
the mixture and then injected it into the
dog’s blood. The dog’s pancreas began to
produce pancreatic juice almost
immediately. Since there was a chance
they did not dissect all of the nerves in the
pancreas and duodenum, this second
experiment proved it was an agent in the
blood that stimulated the production of
pancreatic juice, not nerves.
The pair called the substance released
by the duodenum ‘secretin’ and later went
on to find it in all vertebrates.
70
being emitted from the testes and into
the bloodstream.
Despite the significance of Berthold’s
findings, his results went largely unnoticed
at the time – it would be another half
a century before scientists returned to
his work and progressed his ideas.
Other scientists theorised that ‘internal
secretions’ might be affecting the function
of various organs, but the scientific
community just couldn’t comprehend
that chemicals in the blood could have
such wide-ranging effects on the body.
Towards the end of the 19th Century,
the study of these mysterious glands and
their functions went somewhat off-piste.
Ernest Starling depicted during his experiment on pancreas function that led to the discovery of the hormone secretin
news of his story led to a bizarre fad for
such injections, and by the end of 1889
thousands of physicians were administering
them, while chemists began selling ‘miracle
cures’ made from various animal fluids.
Fortunately, as more robust experiments
with glandular extracts continued,
endocrinology soon got back on track.
In 1891, George Redmayne Murray
announced he had managed to cure the
medical condition myxedema. Now
recognised as untreated underactivity of
the thyroid gland, the condition caused
alarming swelling of the hands and eyes.
Murray’s treatment involved injecting
extracts from the thyroid glands of sheep.
Like Brown-Séquard, he simply chopped
up the animals’ tissues and squeezed the
juice out, straining the murky fluid through
a muslin sheet before injecting it straight
into his patients. Unlike Brown-Séquard’s
potions, Murray’s extract did contain high
levels of thyroid hormones.
It would be many years before the
thyroid’s role in regulating metabolism
and growth was understood, yet the
treatment worked – making it the first
effective application of endocrinology in
conventional medicine.
By 1895 George Oliver and Edward
Albert Schäfer had shown that injecting
extracts of the adrenal glands and pituitary
glands into animals raised their blood
pressure. It was further proof that secretions
released by glands could create important
effects elsewhere in the body.
Dark paths
Despite mounting evidence of an internal
chemical control system, the British Medical
Association was still reluctant to accept
the idea. The prevailing wisdom since
ancient times was that the nervous system
controlled the body’s functions, and it was
difficult for people to accept that this might
not be the case.
This incomplete understanding led
endocrinology down dark paths. In the
early 1900s, thousands of men (including
the poet WB Yeats) had a vasectomy-like
procedure known as ‘the Steinach’ after
the Austrian physiologist Eugen Steinach,
who said tying off the testicles could reduce
ageing and increase sexual vigour.
Tragically, from the late 1800s to the
early 1900s, hundreds of thousands of
healthy women had their ovaries
removed – often by force – in the
CAST OF
TERS
CHARACTERS
Charles-Édouard
Brown-Séquard
(1817-1894)
Brown-Séquard wa
as a
distinguished scien
ntist
from Mauritius who
o
made many great
contributions to
medicine and our
understanding of
the nervous system.
However, he derailed
hormone science by
injecting himself with
the juice of animals’
testicles and making
wild claims about how
it made him feel.
Harvey Cushing
(1869-1939)
Cushing was
an American
neurosurgeon and
pioneer of brain
surgery. He was first
to describe various
disorders of the
pituitary gland and
even experimented
with pituitary gland
transplants.
Five innovative scientsts who helped us
u de sta d how
understand
ho hormones
ho o es work
Arnold Berthold
(1803-1861)
Berthold was a
German
physiologist
G
and zoologist.
He studied the
organs and sexual
characteristics of
various animals,
but it is his work on
castrated cockerels
that is remembered
ass the first experiment
in the field of
endocrinology.
Ernest Starling
(1866-1927)
Starling was the
English physiologist
who coined the
term ‘hormone’ in
1905. Along with
his brother-in-law
William Bayliss, he
made a number of
contributions to the
study of hormones.
Their experiment to
extract secretin is a
classic.
Rosalyn Yalow
(1921-2011)
was an American
physicist awarded the
Nobel Prize in 1977 for
the development of the
‘radioimmunoassay’
technique. It measured
minute amounts of
hormones in blood
or tissue samples.
Although the tool
revolutionised all areas
of biochemistry, Yalow
refused to patent
the technique.
Vol. 7 Issue 12
71
SCIENCE
TIMELINE
Once scientists had established the significance of
glands, it didn’t take long to get to grips with hormones
The height of the
craze for ‘castratos’
– male opera singers
castrated before
puberty. Giuseppe
Aprile (pictured) was
one such singer.
1849
1905
1700S
Arnold Berthold’s famous
experiment on cockerels
reveals that the testes
play a key role in the
development of male
characteristics, even when
severed from the nervous
system.
George Redmayne
Murray cures
myxedema patients
using extracts from
the thyroid glands of
sheep.
1891
Ernest Starling uses the term ‘hormone’
to describe the chemical messengers
g
that are rapidly being discovered..
PHOTO: GETTY X2, ISTOCK X2, JAMES LIND LIBRARY, SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
1915
Harvey Cushing starts his work on the
pituitary gland and establishes it as the
‘master gland’ that keeps many other
metabolic processes synchronised.
1921
Insulin therapy for diabetics is
developed by Frederick Banting and
Charles Best. Banting is awarded a
Nobel Prize two years later
– he shares his money with Best.
Along with Roger Guillemin
and Andrew Schally,
Rosalyn Yalow is awarded
a Nobel Prize. Yalow’s
‘radioimmunoassay’ allowed
Guillemin and Schally to
precisely measure tiny
amounts of pituitary hormones
in the blood.
72
Vol. 7 Issue 12
1977
mistaken belief that it could prevent
moodiness, hysteria, insanity and
other conditions in later life.
To move on from these barbaric and
crude ideas required a more thoughtful
approach than the ‘mash up a gland and
see’ method. Thankfully, in 1902, a
defining experiment was conducted by the
physiologist Ernest Starling and his brotherin-law William Bayliss. The two were
known to be compulsive experimenters,
and they proved that chemicals in the
blood could change how an organ behaves
independently of the nervous system.
Having become known for this work,
Starling was invited to give a series of
lectures to the Royal College of Physicians
in 1905. Here, while describing the
chemical agents he and his peers had been
studying, he used a word he had apparently
made up the night before while dining
with a scholar of Greek poetry. That word
was ‘hormone’, based on the ancient Greek
word for ‘I arouse’, or ‘I excite’, and the
term stuck.
From here, advancement in
endocrinology began to gather pace. In
1921 Frederick Banting and Charles Best
discovered insulin, the hormone that
tells the body to absorb sugar from the
bloodstream. The pair’s elegant experiment
would lead to a treatment that still saves
millions of lives.
Before Banting and Best’s discovery,
those with diabetes often succumbed to
a slow and painful death at a young age.
Type 1 diabetics do not produce enough
insulin, meaning the sugar from the food
they consume remains in their blood
instead of being absorbed into their tissues
for energy.
The pair started by removing the
pancreas of a dog. The dog quickly became
diabetic, indicating that the pancreas had a
key role in the disease.
The majority of tissue in the pancreas
secretes digestive juices, but the pair believed
the organ had another function. In another
dog, they tied up the pancreatic duct with
string, causing the digestive juice-producing
cells of the pancreas to wither and die.
Ingeniously, what it left them with was
just the cells of the pancreas they wanted
to experiment on; these are now known as
pancreatic islets.
After extracting the secretions from just
these cells, they injected it into the diabetic
dogs. Their blood sugar levels quickly
returned to normal levels.
NEED TO KNOW
A handy glossary of terms for
understanding endocrinology
1 ADRENALINE
Adrenaline is one of the most
familiar hormones and is famed for the
‘buzz’ it gives when released during
frightening or exciting moments.
2 ENDOCRINE SYSTEM
Humans have at least 80 known
hormones and 10 hormone-producing
glands. The release of hormones, their
effects, and their interaction with each
other is known as the endocrine system.
3 HOMEOSTASIS
Hormones play a key role in the body’s
constant maintenance of a stable internal
environment, known as homeostasis.
4 HORMONE
Hormones are chemicals released by
the body to control processes including
digestion, metabolism, respiration,sleep,
reproduction, mood and growth, to name
a few. They travel through the blood and
bind to specific receptors on the target
cell, triggering a change in cell function.
5 HPA AXIS
This stands for the hypothalamic–
pituitary–adrenal axis, a complex system
including the hypothalamus, the adrenal
and pituitary glands, and many hormones.
Drug discovery
A year later, after working out how to
purify their mixture, they injected their first
human patient. Soon, they were personally
injecting entire wards of diabetic children,
who quickly roused from their deathly stupor
to the amazement of their families. Within
two years of Banting and Best’s discovery, a
pharmaceutical company called Eli Lilly was
making enough insulin, produced from animals
such as oxen, to treat all the diabetics in North
America. By the 1960s, the hormone was
being created synthetically without the need
for animals.
Modern endocrinology was now in
full swing, and there were many major
Seen through the gaze of a transmission electron micrograph, a colour-enchanced cell (orange) in the pituitary
gland can be seen secreting hormones (light green)
breakthroughs throughout the rest of the
century. Many of them came thanks to
the ability to measure minute quantities
of hormones circulating in the blood.
Such precise measurements would be
impossible without a technique called
the ‘radioimmunoassay’, developed by an
American physicist Rosalyn Yalow.
Yalow was awarded the Nobel Prize
in 1977 alongside the endocrinologists
Roger Guillemin and Andrew Schally.
Her technique, which uses specially
designed antibodies to bind to biological
molecules of interest, allowed Guillemin
and Schally to measure minute
concentrations of pituitary hormones in
the blood.
The work was vital in understanding
the pituitary gland’s role as a regulator
of other hormone glands. Sometimes
known as ‘the master gland’, the pituitary
links the brain’s hypothalamus region
with the rest of the endocrine system.
It is a crucial connection between the
outside world, our senses, and the body’s
chemical response system.
According to endocrinologist and
author Dr Saffron Whitehead, Yalow’s
radioimmunoassay and the development
of high-resolution imaging are what
have driven almost all of the advances in
modern endocrinology over the last 50
years.
“The ability to do immunoassays has
revolutionised endocrine research and
diagnostics. For the first time levels of
circulating hormones could be accurately
measured,” she says.
Today, our understanding of hormones
has grown immensely – scientists have
discovered around 80 human hormones
to date, and we now know that more
tissues than just the endocrine glands
produce hormones. Work is ongoing
to unravel the complex relationships
between hormones and the great
problems of our era like obesity,
cardiovascular disease, depression, and
ageing. Understanding the link between
our genetics and our hormonal system
will also keep endocrinologists busy for
years to come.
Whitehead believes there are still many
more hormones to be discovered. “I
think we will find that as well as being
secreted into the bloodstream, there are
hormones that act locally, between cells.”
Today, endocrinology is at the cutting
edge of the life sciences – using modern
lab techniques and computer modelling
to understand the immensely complex
biochemical systems that keep us alive.
But modern science owes much to the
physicians from the Victorian era, who
first conducted those early and gloriously
grisly experiments.
TOM IRELAND is managing editor of The Biologist, the
Society of Biology’s magazine
Vol. 7 Issue 12
73
SCIENCE
Scan this QR Code for
the audio reader
THE
UNIVERSE
Deciphering space is tricky – after all, you can’t shove a planet in a
petri dish. But as Colin Stuart reveals, a new computerised cosmos
could revolutionise astronomy as we know it
74
Vol. 7 Issue 12
stronomy is unique among the
sciences as it is conducted at a
distance. Geologists can go out
in the field to study rocks face-to-face and
even bring them back to the laboratory for
further analysis. The same goes for biologists,
palaeontologists and chemists – they’re all very
hands-on. But what if your area of interest lies
in galaxies and how they evolved to form the
structure of the known Universe? What do
you do then? You can’t haul a galaxy down
to Earth for closer inspection and telescopes
A
only provides a snapshot of what they
were like at for a brief moment. For a
group of astronomers based in Durham
and Leiden, in the Netherlands, the answer
is to build a replica of the Universe in a
supercomputer.
Their brainchild is the EAGLE
(Evolution and Assembly of GaLaxies and
their Environments) project. This virtual
reality universe consists of an enormous
cosmological cube measuring more than
300 million light-years on each side,
“It is incredible how much
a simulated galaxy in EAGLE
looks like the real thing”
Prof Richard Bower, EAGLE team member
enough to contain around 10,000 galaxies
like our own Milky Way.
To construct it, the team went right back
to a time before the first galaxies, and even
the first stars, formed. Three main players
governed the evolution of our Universe at
this time: dark matter, normal (baryonic)
matter and dark energy. Dark matter acted
as an invisible scaffold around which the
structure of the Universe developed. Dense
regions of dark matter created gravitational
dimples into which more and more normal
matter flowed as the Universe aged. This
material was drawn together to form stars,
which then coalesced to form galaxies. Dark
energy is the unseen force that tries to resist
dark matter’s natural desire to clump together
over large distance scales.
Previous computer simulations of how
the interaction between these processes form
galaxies haven’t always worked. “They
tended to produce galaxies that were
Gases in the
Universe as seen
with EAGLE – red for
the hottest, blue
for the coolest
Vol. 7 Issue 12
75
SCIENCE
THE
COM U
EAGLE
simulation
showing star
locations within
a galaxy
far too big and therefore a Universe
with far too many stars in,” says Prof
Richard Bower, part of the EAGLE team
at Durham University. So using the latest
data on those three key ingredients from
missions like the European Space Agency’s
Planck satellite wasn’t enough, the EAGLE
simulation also had to factor in the latest
thinking on how galaxies evolve from youth
to maturity.
Doing this required modelling of how
exploding stars and marauding black holes
affect the development of the structure
of the galaxies in which they reside.
Translating all these aspects into a suitable
computer code took Bower and his team
three years, but the time-consuming work
didn’t end there. Running that code
through the DiRAC-II supercomputer to
create the simulated universe took more
than a month and a half of solid computing
time. But the results were remarkable. “It
is incredible how much a simulated galaxy
in EAGLE looks like the real thing,” says
US$
the initial
i i i l co
ost
of the
he Dirac-I
ac II
supercomputer with
ih
a furth
her £
£15m for
upgrad
ades in
i 2012
20 2
4,
core prrocessors h
had
d
to run fo
or over
o e a month
o
and a half
alf to b
build
ild the
h
simula
ated
ed universe
u e se
53,7 GB
of RAM
(Random Access
A
Memory)
y)
PHOTO: ISTOCK X2, JAMES SMITH/THE GURDON INSTITUTE, GETTY
2.4 PETABYTES
of storage, more than
double the amount
used to create
the movie Avatar
The EAGLE
simulation needed
serious power to
build it, which was
provided by the
DiRAC-II
76
Vol. 7 Issue 12
12
TH
most powerful
supercomputer in the
UK (as of 2012)
Are we living in
a simulation?
NASA’s
Voyager 1 probe
entered interstellar
space in 2012
on its continuing
journey
Bower. “I give talks in which it takes people
five minutes to twig that they’re looking at a
simulated image rather than a real one.”
Star system
An accurate computer counterpart to
the real Universe is a powerful tool. You
can take any galaxy and hit what Bower
describes as “the big red button” to
travel back in time and follow the
evolution of that galaxy from its
earliest days, revealing how it ended
up in its present state. Theories
for galaxy evolution that do not
match what EAGLE shows can be
discarded. It also has the ability to
clear up mysteries. When astronomers
use telescopes to look at distant
objects, they’re looking into the past,
seeing light that has been trekking across
space for billions of years to get here and
bringing information about what its source
was like at that time. It’s a well-established
fact that the early Universe contained many
red and very compact galaxies. But these
red galaxies seem to have disappeared as
the Universe evolved because we don’t see
them any more. This vanishing act is also
seen in the EAGLE simulation. Unlike with
telescopes, astronomers using EAGLE can
wind the clock back and keep tabs on these
galaxies to see what happened to them.
It turns out that in most cases these small
red galaxies merge with galaxies that are
much bigger than they are. “EAGLE is
telling us something important about
the Universe that we couldn’t know
any other way,” says Bower.
The simulation is also shedding
light on a long-standing mystery
surrounding the rate at which stars
form in galaxies. When astronomers
look out into the Universe they notice
that galaxies bigger than the Milky
Way have very little star formation,
whereas galaxies smaller than ours seem
to be making new stars at a relatively
impressive rate. It has long been suspected
that this has something to do with our
galaxy’s central black hole. The bigger
the galaxy, the more rapidly the black
Vol. 7 Issue 12
77
SCIENCE
Inside eagle
hole forms, which doesn’t lead to a
lot of stability for star formation. In
smaller galaxies, the black hole seems to
grow at a more sedate pace, giving stars time
to form. Yet the reason why black holes
grow faster in larger galaxies was unclear.
Now, by looking at the simulated galaxies in
EAGLE, researchers can see exactly what is
going on.
“The simulation
is shedding
light on a
long-standing
mystery
surrounding the
rate at which
stars form”
As larger galaxies contain a lot more
material, gas near the centre is prevented
from flowing outwards. With the rich supply
of food this extra material provides, the
black hole is able to gorge more effectively.
“This shuts down star formation in the
galaxy,” says Bower. “Understanding this
process is a huge step forward in
our knowledge.”
After using the simulation to travel back
in time to provide some valuable insights,
the team are now setting their sights on
the future – using EAGLE to see what lies
in store for our Universe. This is a much
trickier task than going backwards, however.
And to understand why, we need to return
to the key players in the evolution of the
Universe: dark matter and dark energy.
As the Universe has been expanding,
78
Vol. 7 Issue 12
Here is the Universe
on the largest scale
from within the
EAGLE simulation.
You can see
the tentacle-like
filaments of normal
matter strung out on
an invisible scaffold
of dark matter. As
the Universe aged,
normal matter was
drawn towards the
dark matter until
it coalesced into
stars, then galaxies.
The simulation created all types of galaxies, not just grand spirals
like the Milky Way. Astronomers classify galaxies according the
Hubble ‘tuning fork’ diagram, pictured below. It shows elliptical
galaxies on the left, lenticulars in the middle and the spirals to the
right. Galaxies within EAGLE also followed this pattern.
The EAGLE simulation
encompasses 10,000 galaxies
similar to our Milky Way,
contained within a volume
that’s 300 million light-years
wide on each side. The large
image on the left shows one
of these beautiful galactic
analogues with its bright
centre of old, yellow stars and
sweeping dust lanes picked
out by bright, young blue
stars. The smaller image is a
computer graphic of our own
Milky Way.
“The effect of dark energy is that
it increases the computing time
required to run the calculations”
Prof Richard Bower, EAGLE team member
and the galaxies have been moving further
and further apart, the collective force of
dark matter has been gradually dwindling.
The strength of dark energy, however,
has remained constant throughout the
Universe’s history. This means that there
came a time when the attractive strength
of dark matter dropped below that of
repulsive force of dark energy. At this point
the expansion of the Universe began to
accelerate. It is this acceleration that makes
modelling the future in EAGLE difficult.
“The effect of dark energy is that it
increases the computing time required
to run the calculations,” says Bower.
And that makes it almost a prohibitively
expensive project.
However, Bower and his colleagues are
hopeful they can find a way to do it. They
are already working with Intel, the American
computer-chip manufacturer, to incorporate
their next generation of processors. If they
There is far
more dark matter
(top left) in the
simulated universe than
visible matter (bottom
right), just as in our
own Universe
can get the maximum efficiency out of
the new chips, it should provide a tenfold
increase in the speed of their calculations.
Bower’s team is also looking to upgrade
the supercomputers and that will lead to a
further increase in the computing power at
their disposal. They could then boost the
size of the simulation from the 10,000 Milky
Way-like galaxies it currently contains to
30,000. With a much larger set of galaxies,
they could begin to do serious statistical
analysis to determine how rare a galaxy like
ours really is.
Crazy project
Yet Bower wants to go even further, with
what he describes as his “crazy project”.
He’d like to use EAGLE to see just how
special our Universe is. For many years
astronomers have encountered a ‘finetuning problem’. When you look at the
fundamental constants of the Universe – the
strength of gravity, the amount of dark
energy and so on – everything seems eerily
balanced. Say there was more dark energy.
That would have accelerated the expansion
of the Universe at a much earlier time,
leaving dark matter no chance to gather all
the normal matter into stars and galaxies.
How come with all of the values these
cosmological parameters can have, they seem
to be just right to give rise to a Universe
capable of supporting life?
One answer is that our Universe isn’t the
only one. If there were other Universes, and
the parameters were set slightly different in
each one, then of course we’re going to find
ourselves in the Universe with the right
combination for stars, galaxies, planets
and people. We could hardly live in one
with the wrong settings. Bower hopes
to use EAGLE to discover exactly
how changing these initial conditions
affects how a universe turns out,
once again providing an insight into
how we came to be.
In many ways, the success of
the EAGLE project represents a
watershed moment. It marks the
point at which supercomputers
have become as important to
astronomers as telescopes.
COLIN STUART is an astronomy writer and coauthor of The Big Questions In Science
Vol. 7 Issue 12
79
SCIENCE
THE FUTURE OF GADGETS
TECHHUB
ON THE HORIZON
AI DOCTOR
Digital diagnoses
are coming to a
desktop near you
usa.baidu.com
80
Vol. 7 Issue 12
ick of waiting so long
to see a doctor that you
get better before you
find out what’s wrong with you?
Well, now there’s a solution –
for patients in China, at least.
Baidu is a Chinese web
services company that operates
Chinese-language equivalents
of Google and Wikipedia, but
it also runs research projects in
both Beijing and Silicon Valley.
Recently, it launched an app that
can diagnose patients’ medical
S
problems and put them in touch
with a local GP.
But what makes Baidu’s
AskADoctor software different
to the existing contact-a-GP
websites and apps, such as
ask-a-doctor.co.uk (a separate
enterprise to Baidu’s new scheme)
or onlinedoctor.lloydspharmacy.
com, is that there’s no medical
practitioner at the other end of
the line. Instead, your condition is
diagnosed by artificial intelligence
(AI). And it’s an AI with voice-
recognition capability, which
means patients don’t have
to painstakingly type their
symptoms out or select them
from a series of checklists.
Baidu’s researchers have
built a system that can deal
with spoken Mandarin – no
easy feat considering that it’s a
tonal language – but can also
cross-reference what it hears
with the vast health records
that the company has on
file to arrive at a suitable
TECHOMETER
WHAT’S HOT
HA HA AND
How we laugh online has
been making the headlines
recently after researchers at
Facebook looked into the
ways its users show their
appreciation of humour. To
the relief of English teachers
everywhere, simply typing
the words ‘ha ha’ was by far
the most popular method –
appearing in 51.4 per cent
of the posts where laughter
was expressed on the social
network. Laughter emojis
(such as
) were the
next most popular method,
popping up in 33.7 per cent
of the posts examined.
Baidu is a web services company in China that is looking to make headway in the world of artificial intelligence
network ‘learns’ to spot particular groupings
within the data and can draw conclusions
when those groupings appear. For example,
the Google Brain learnt to recognise cat
videos after being exposed to a selection
of 10 million random YouTube clips. But
in the case of Baidu’s AskADoctor, speech
and symptoms are being used to identify
particular medical conditions.
Baidu hopes that the AskADoctor app is
the first step in a journey that will eventually
lead to a medical robot. But Baidu is a
commercial enterprise and ultimately needs
to make a profit to survive. AskADoctor may
not be staffed with GPs that have to be paid,
but like existing online medical services it
does charge patients for putting them in
touch with a local medical practitioner (aska-doctor.co.uk offers a free seven-day trial,
after which it starts charging a subscription
fee of US$30-per-month).
Could Baidu’s system be the key to
delivering David Cameron’s election
promise of seven-day access to a GP?
Perhaps, but if you can’t pay for it will you
be left loitering in the waiting room?
LOL
The irritating text-speak
abbreviation for ‘laughing
out loud’ has fallen out
of favour, if Facebook’s
survey is anything to go
by. LOL appeared in just
1.9 per cent of posts on
the social network during
the last week of May 2015.
The world hasn’t stopped
wasting time at work
by sharing clips of cats
falling over or wearing
silly hats but, according
to Facebook, we’re
acknowledging them in
ways that are
less annoying.
READER POLL
Would you trust an AI doctor?
83%
No – I’d prefer to
wait for a proper
GP appointment
17%
RUSSELL DEEKS is a freelance science
and technology journalist
PHOTO: GETTY
diagnosis. It’s said the system can
identify over 500 different diseases,
which comprise 90 per cent of the most
common medical problems in China.
Once a diagnosis has been reached, the
system will put the patient in touch with
a local doctor who can confirm the result
and prescribe the relevant treatment. While
Baidu’s AskADoctor is currently a desktop
app, work is already underway on creating
a smartphone and tablet version for health
help on the go. It’s hoped the software
will help to ease the pressure on China’s
stretched healthcare system.
AskADoctor is the one of the first
creations to come out of Baidu’s ‘deep
learning’ branch. In this research area,
computers are programmed to behave
like brains and infer things through
recognising patterns. The man heading
up Baidu’s work on artificial intelligence
is Chief Scientist Andrew Ng, who is a
Stanford professor and one of the specialists
who worked on the Google Brain before
being hired by the Chinese company in
2014.
Developing a deep-learning system
relies upon building a neural network of
computers and providing it with a vast
amount of data to process. In doing so, the
WHAT’S NOT
Yes – I’d
trust them with
my medical
details
Vol. 7 Issue 12
81
SCIENCE
THE NEXT BIG THING
BETTER BATTERIES
PHOTO: NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE ILLUSTRATOR: ANDREW GIBBS
Tapping into the biggest power source in the Solar System
In his remarkable sciencefiction novels about an
advanced civilisation called the
Culture, Iain M Banks solves the
problem of fuelling a starship by
using limitless energy from The
Grid, a fictional field between
our Universe and a mirroring
antimatter one. It’s a nice idea
but in the real world we have to
make do with more traditional
methods of generating and
distributing power.
As many have pointed out,
there’s more than enough
energy arriving from the Sun
every second to fuel our needs
but capturing it in a useful
form is a challenge. Currently
we rely on a million-year-long
process of compressing organic
remains into coal and oil to
make fuel, a method that’s
both inefficient and causes
unwelcome climate changes.
But we are on the verge
of a transformation in our
relationship with energy –
partly because of the increasing
efficiency with which we can
convert light into electricity
but also due to developments
in battery technology.
Electric-car maker Tesla
got a lot of attention this
year with the launch of its
FROM THE LAB
‘Powerwall’ battery systems,
offering an alternative to the
existing electricity grid. At
the Intersolar conference in
June,Tesla’s JB Straubel argued
that falling battery costs and
improvements in solar panels
mean we’ll soon be able to
generate, store and deliver
electricity more cheaply than
with current fossil fuel systems.
But we won’t do this with
existing battery technology.
The main reason is that
conventional batteries are just
too complicated and bulky. A
lithium-ion battery like the
one in your laptop isn’t just a
collection of chemicals but a
complex machine with builtin safety systems to contain the
highly reactive chemicals that
store the energy.
A promising direction for
battery technology seems
to lie in solid-state devices
such as the Sakti3 battery,
which has been getting some
publicity thanks to a US$15m
investment by the domestic
appliance manufacturer Dyson.
This doesn’t mean that
incremental improvements
in Li-ion technology won’t
matter, or that we won’t be
using lithium-based batteries
These devices use an electric current
to control air as it passes over a
surface – in other words, a way to
improve a vehicle’s aerodynamics.
WHY ARE THEY IMPORTANT?
Due to its shape, a truck is about as
aerodynamic as a brick so a lot of
energy goes into pushing the air out
of its path. Shaped body panels,
Vol. 7 Issue 12
for many years.The basic
physics of batteries is still
being uncovered and turning
a promising discovery in the
lab into something that can be
manufactured and shipped to
consumers is a long, complex
and error-prone process.
But just as flat-screen
technology replaced the
bulky cathode-ray tube
monitors of the last century,
once we see a reliable solidstate battery, I think it will
replace today’s best efforts
relatively quickly and provide
the basis for the zero-carbon
energy systems that we so
desperately need if we are to
avoid the worst consequences
of two centuries of profligate
use of fossil fuels. It’s either
that or we find a way to tap
into The Grid.
BILL THOMPSON
contributes to
news.bbc.co.uk and
the BBC World Service
Plasma actuators
WHAT IS IT?
82
Improvements in batteries and solar technology would make our cities greener
spoilers on the roof of the cab and
tails for the trailers can improve a
truck’s aerodynamics – and in doing
so increase its fuel efficiency and
reduce its running costs – but
they add weight and can make it
difficult to maintain the vehicle and
to load/unload its cargo. Plasma
actuators can do the same job
without adding extra weight or
inhibiting the truck’s use.
HOW DO THEY WORK?
The actuators (made out of a pair of
asymmetrical electrodes) are built into
the truck’s bodywork. When a current
is passed between them a layer of
plasma is formed that can be used to
adjust the direction and speed of the
air flowing over it and lower the wind
resistance. They also glow, so trucks
driving at night would give off an eerie
purple light.
Keep on truckin’: Plasma actuators
could have haulage applications
YOUR
QUESTI0NS ANSWERED
BY OUR EXPERT PANEL
&
SUSAN
BLACKMORE
Susan is a visiting
psychology
professor at the
University
of Plymouth. Her
books include The
Meme Machine
DR ALASTAIR
GUNN
Alastair is a
radio astronomer
at the Jodrell
Bank Centre for
Astrophysics at
the University of
Manchester
ROBERT
MATTHEWS
After studying
physics at Oxford,
Robert became a
science writer. He’s
a visiting reader in
science at Aston
Universityy
U
GARETH
MITCHELL
Starting out
as a broadcast
engineer, Gareth
now writes and
presents Digital
Planet on the BBC
World Service
LUIS
VILLAZON
Luis has a BSc in
computing and an
MSc in zoology
from Oxford. His
works include
How Cows Reach
The Ground
editorial-bbcknowledge@regentmedia.sg
Could we grow plants
without sunlight?
PHOTO: REX
Yes. At the Stockbridge Technology Centre in North
Yorkshire (pictured), scientists are using the principle that
plants do not need all the colours in the spectrum to
grow. The researchers have selected specific
wavelengths of blue and red light suitable for
plant growth. In distinctly psychedelic
lighting conditions, the LED
brightness and colour are
tweaked to optimise the taste
and size of produce. GM
Plaants love to go clubbing –
Purrple Rain is their favourite songg
Vol. 7 Issue 12
83
&
In Numbers
$33.31
was the amount of money that astronaut
Buzz Aldrin was reimbursed for his travel
expenses on the Apollo 11 mission to
the Moon back in 1969
What’s the difference between
a psychopath and a sociopath?
Hannibal would
do anything to try
and lose weight
What gives people a
lovely singing voice?
PHOTO: GETTY X2, ALAMY, KOBAL COLLECTION, SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
The general range of sounds that can
come out of your mouth is affected by
the size of the vocal folds, the strength
of your diaphragm and the shape of the
chambers in your sinuses. But making
this sound beautiful seems to be largely
a question of training. At the basic level
you must be able to hear a note in your
head and reproduce it accurately with
your voice. The difference between being
able to hold a tune and having a genuinely
beautiful singing voice is to do with the
thousands of tiny and mostly unconscious
muscle contractions that subtly adjust
the resonant properties of your airway in
response to the emotions you feel as you
sing. This is the same with any musical
instrument. Being born with a wide finger
span helps when playing the piano, but
the rest is learning the subtleties of timing
and pressure on the keys. LV
The two conditions are often treated
as the same, but psychiatrists identify
important differences. Both disregard
laws, customs and the rights of others
and feel no guilt or remorse for their
behaviour. Both can be violent, although
not all are. Sociopaths, however, are
also disorganised, impulsive and volatile
and can rarely hold down a job. They
appear very disturbed and their crimes
are usually spontaneous. By contrast,
many psychopaths lead relatively normal
lives, manipulating people and mimicking
emotions they cannot feel themselves.
Their crimes are usually meticulously
planned. There is some evidence that
psychopathy is inherited while sociopathy
is due to childhood trauma or neglect. SB
Does eating locally produced honey help
alleviate hayfever?
Anna Netrebko: nice
set of sinus chambers
84
Vol. 7 Issue 12
No. The myth is that local pollen
in honey can desensitise the allergic
reaction, but there’s no evidence
to support it. A 2002 study at the
University of Connecticut compared
locally-produced, unfiltered honey,
with nationally-produced, filtered
honey and honey-flavoured corn
syrup. In double-blind trials, there
was no difference between the three
in reducing hay fever symptoms. The
pollen in honey is nearly all the heavy,
flower pollen that doesn’t cause hay
fever. The pollen that sets your nose
running is much lighter and comes
from grasses and trees that bees
don’t visit. LV
Why don’t we sneeze in
our sleep?
Even if an insect crawled across your nose,
you probably wouldn’t sneeze while dreaming
Climate change reseacher
monitoring CO2 levels
over a forest canopy
Have we made any difference to
climate change yet?
Quite possibly – but not in a
good way. The principal drivers of
climate change are greenhouse
gases that trap the Sun’s heat.
The most important of these is
carbon dioxide (CO2), produced
by human activities such as energy
generation and transportation.
The good news is that 2014 saw
CO2 emissions from the energy
sector remain static, suggesting
the message about fossil fuels
is finally getting through. The
less good news is that in May
the total amount of atmospheric
CO2 exceeded the highest
level recorded since scientific
measurements began in 1958.
Perhaps most concerning of all
is the fact that even if emissions
of all greenhouse gases ceased
entirely tomorrow, any warming
would still persist for many
centuries. That’s partly because
CO2 lingers in the atmosphere for
several centuries after release, and
partly because the oceans are slow
to respond to global warming but
are also just as sluggish to react to
any cooling. RM
During REM sleep (the phase where
dreams take place), your muscles are
paralysed so that you don’t thrash around
and hurt yourself. This paralysis extends
to reflex muscle contractions, so you can’t
sneeze while you are dreaming. In nonREM sleep your muscles are free to move
again but the trigeminal motor neurones
responsible for triggering a sneeze are still
suppressed. It is just about possible to
sneeze during this non-REM sleep, but the
exertion will normally wake you up. LV
Could we create a
breathable atmosphere
on Mars?
Various ideas have been proposed,
many involving the release of chemicals
into Mars’s atmosphere to trap the Sun’s
heat, triggering a greenhouse effect.
This might then make Mars suitable for
bacteria or plants capable of turning
carbon dioxide into oxygen. So, it may be
possible – but don’t hold your breath. RM
Computer artwork of
terraformed Mars
Vol. 7 Issue 12
85
&
TOP
TEN
STRONGEST ANIMAL BITES
(BY POUNDS PER SQUARE INCH – PSI)
AVERAGE HUMAN BITE IS 162PSI
1. Nile crocodile
Bite force: 5,000psi
Distribution: Sub-Saharan
Africa
2. Saltwater crocodile
Bite force: 3,700psi
Distribution: India, Southeast
Asia, Australia
3. American alligator
What caused the Big Bang?
The Big Bang is the moment
that space and time (or ‘space-time’) came into
existence. Before the Big Bang there was no space or
time. So, it is actually meaningless to ask what caused the
Big Bang to happen – there was no Universe in which that cause
could have existed. This might seem like a bit of a cheat, but there
are other good reasons to suppose a cause for the Big Bang might not
exist. Quantum physics has shown us that some events have no cause
at all. Things can happen randomly, spontaneously, and for no particular
reason. This unpredictable and ‘causeless’ nature of the Universe is
experimentally verified but has nothing to do with our inability to
observe correctly – it is a fundamental property of the Universe.
So, although there may have been a cause for the Big
Bang that we are unaware of, modern cosmology
fin
ness nor
nor
o rre
equi
eq
uire
ress one
one.
on
e A
G
neither defines
requires
AG
Bite force: 2,125psi
Distribution: Southern USA
4. Hippopotamus
Bite force: 1,800psi
Distribution: Sub-Saharan
Africa
5. Jaguar
Did you know?
The heaviest ever pumpkin weighed
1,054kg and was grown by
Switzerland’s
Meier
in 2014
Fibre optics canBeni
be used
to transmit
light and telecommunications
Bite force: 1,500psi
Distribution: Southwestern
USA, Central America, South
America
6. Bull shark
Bite force: 1,350psi
Distribution: Warm coastal
areas, rivers and lakes
worldwide
7. Gorilla
PHOTO: ISTOCK X13, GETTY, SCI ENCE
C PHOTO
O O LIBRAR
RY, REX
Bite force: 1,300psi
Distribution: Forests
of central Africa
8. Polar bear
Bite force: 1,200psi
Distribution: Arctic Circle
9. Grizzly bear
Bite force: 1,160psi
Distribution: Canada
and USA
10. Hyena
Bite force: 1,100psi
Distribution: Sub-Saharan
Africa
86
Vol
ol. 7 Issue
Iss 12
Why do we cover ourr mouthhs
when startled or shoccked??
Not to prevent our souls leaving our
bodies, as some traditions would ha
ave
hs
it. The gasp which causes our mouth
ast,
to open when we are shocked is a fa
deep in-breath that evolved to provid
de
p
a quick burst of extra oxygen to help
es
deal with startling events. This make
the mouth vulnerable, so covering it
may be a protective gesture. It is also
a way of concealing our emotions fro
om
others, to avoid showing that we are
e
afraid, shocked or disgusted. Many
experts say that the response is learrned
d
as a form of politeness but, like manyy
other gestures, this behaviour is seen
across various different cultures. So the
asis,
but
reaction may have some inherited ba
i b
in modern times it may often just be a way
y
of hiding the fact that you were startled by
nothing more serious than a fly, or sh
hocked
by what your friend said. SB
D n’t wo
Don
wor
w
oorryy,
y, hheer
soouul is safe
so
afee
af
Can an organ be transplanted
more than once?
Yes. Sometimes patients will receive
heart or liver transplants but die anyway
within a few weeks. In very rare cases,
the donated organ was still healthy
enough to be worth re-transplanting
to a new patient. In 2012, a 27-year
old man from the US received a
kidney transplant but then had it
removed again two weeks later
because the disease he was
suffering from was damaging the
kidney. Doctors rescued it in
time and gave it to a 67-year
old man instead, and returned
the first patient to dialysis
treatment. LV
Why do we have
wisdom teeth?
We evolved from hominids that had
longer jaws for chewing raw meat and
plants. Extra molars are an advantage, but
they don’t emerge until adulthood. This
gives the jaw time to grow large enough to
accommodate them. As teeth are widest
at the top, spaces between them can also
emerge as the molars start to wear down.
The new teeth at the back encourage the
remaining teeth to shuffle up and close the
gaps. We don’t need wisdom teeth any
more, nor do we have enough room for
them. But dentistry offers a quicker fix
than evolution. LV
Scar tissue is a major
reason why a lot of organs
can’t be transplanted twice
Why do toothpaste and orange juice
taste so horrible together?
The taste buds on your tongue are
covered in proteins that act as receptors for
food particles. When in contact with food
and drink, these receptors send a message
to your brain, evoking one of the five taste
sensations: sweetness, sourness, saltiness,
bitterness, or umami.
When you brush your teeth, the toothpaste
releases a foaming agent called sodium
lauryl sulphate (SLS). This SLS interferes with
the proteins that line the membranes of taste
cells in the mouth. This impairs the tongue’s
ability to taste sweet flavours, replacing them
with an unpleasant, bitter sensation. The
SLS also destroys bitterness-suppressing
phospholipids, allowing the bitter taste to
take over, resulting in the unique and horrible
flavour you experience when you sip orange
juice. Focus
How fast can
a housefly
fly?
Not as fast as you think. They manage
just 7km/hr – a brisk walking pace.
They seem faster because they are very
acrobatic and hard to catch. The fastest
flying insects are dragonflies, with a top
speed of 56km/hr (35mph). LV
In Numbers
2
Brazilian frog species have venomous
spines around their skull. They are the
first known venomous amphibians
Vol. 7 Issue 12
87
&
Can stars collide?
PHOTO: NASA/HUBB
BLE SPACE
S C TELESCOPE,
SCO
ALAMY, GETTY,
G
SCIENCE
SC
C PHOTO
O O LIBRARY X2, ISTOCK
S OCK
In general, distances between stars
are so vast that it is unlikely that any two
will ever meet and collide. But in some
places, notably in globular clusters,
stars can be crowded together
much more tightly and may well
collide with each other. Many
clusters contain very large, hot
stars known as ‘blue stragglers’,
which should have detonated
as supernovae billions of years
ago. Astronomers think these
t
fformed
d more recently
tly as th
stars
the
result off collisions and mergers
of normal stars. It is also probable
h stars collide
llid in
i other
h star-rich
i h
that
l
h as the
h centrall regions
i
places
such
o
of galaxies. Some binary stars can
coa
esce as o
e sstar
a reaches
eac es the
ee
d of its
s
coalesce
one
end
f expands and consumes its
life,
p
t
AG
partner.
ig
Based purely on the physical strength
g
of bone and muscle,, it has been calculated
o
thatt lland
th
d animals
i l off att lleastt 100 ttonnes and
d
possibly as much as 1,000 tonnes ought
to be able to support their own weight and
move around. That’s much bigger than
even the largest dinosaur (Argentinosaurus
probably weighed 80 tonnes at most), but
88
Vol. 7 Issue 12
Whhip it all you
y
wantt,
t it will sstill
ttaste
t the
he same
sa
Why does Marmite
go pale when it’s
stirred repeatedly?
The collidingg Antennae
Galaxies spark
rapid
p
p
sstar
a formation
o a o
i
g ?
that’s
other
cut in fi
first.
a s because o
e limits
s cu
s The
e
largest
animal to have ever lived is the blue
g
whale.
h l At 180 tonnes,
t
it already
l d has
h to
t eatt
1.5 million calories a day. Blue whales eat
krill, which is one of the most abundant
food sources in the ocean. Even so, about
half the global population of krill is eaten
every year by whales, seals and fish. A
M
Marmite
i looks
l k dark
d k because
b
any light
li h
entering
e
g it is likely to be absorbed by
m
molecules of the stuff, and thus prevented
Stirring
ffrom escaping
g again.
g
g it introduces
a
air-filled
ed ca
cavities
es that
a increase
c ease the
ec
chances
a ces
o
of the light
g avoiding
g absorption and
managing
m
g g to escape. Whipped Marmite
c
can g
generate so many bubbles that it
turns
tu
s white.
e RM
Argentinosaurus, the biggest
i
dinosaur,
i
iis still
i dwarfed
f by
the
h blue
bl whale
h le
single
g freak blue whale that was double
the normal size could still probably
y fi
find
enough
h ffood
d tto sustain
t i it
itself.
lf B
Butt if allll
blue whales grew this big, the population
would need to be smaller and they would
reproduce even more slowly than they
do now, making them more vulnerable
to extinction. LV
What is the probability of me being me?
The DNA of any two strangers never differs
by more than 0.1 per cent. But that still gives
around 10 million locations in your DNA that
can vary.
But genetic variation isn’t the only thing that
makes you unique. Identical twins share the
same DNA and yet they aren’t the same person.
Each of us is also shaped to some degree by
everything that happens to us after we are born.
If you were born an hour later, some of those
experiences would have been different for you.
And it’s not just you – everyone you have ever
met would also need to have been born at the
right time and place so that they would grow up
to interact with you and produce the memories
you currently carry in your mind.
Remember that big snowstorm when you
were a child? That memory is part of who you
are too. Think of the chaotic sequence of
events that led to that storm occurring
on that particular day. Now multiply it
by the chances that your mother got
distracted at exactly the right moment
for you to get lost in the department
store that time. When you combine the
odds of all of these thousands of formative
experiences that define you, the probability of
ending up with ‘you’ is effectively zero. LV
In Numbers
33,000
protein-coding genes are present in
the genome of the California two-spot
octopus. In comparison, humans have
fewer than 25,000
Why does spicy food taste hot?
The active ingredient in chilli peppers is capsaicin, one
of several related compounds called capsaicinoids that
bind to vanilloid receptors inside the mouth and on the
tongue. These receptors detect heat and send a signal
to the brain about temperature. So it is an accident of
nature that capsaicin activates them, tricking the brain into
responding to spicy food as though it were hot. You might
think we ought to avoid such foods rather than enjoy them
but they may serve many functions. Capsaicinoids are
known to increase energy and reduce appetite; they also
increase salivation, making it easier to eat bland food such
as plain rice. Another theory is that the pain of hot chillies is
a kind of benign masochism. The ‘heat’ reduces other pain
by inducing the release of endorphins, which are the body’s
natural painkillers, and gives a sense of wellbeing. SB
Magnified image of
capsaicin, the
irritant in chillis
Vol. 7 Issue 12
89
&
What determines the
speed of an object
orbiting our planet?
Is it really possible to control a robot
with your mind?
Objects captured by the Earth’s
gravitation typically have elliptical orbits.
The mean orbital speed of the object
depends only on the Earth’s mass and the
semi-major axis (half the longest diameter)
of the object’s orbit. However, the orbital
speed changes depending on where in the
orbit the object is. It will be greatest when
closest to Earth and least when furthest
from Earth. AG
“You will be my
friend, Mr Robot”
Satellites will orbit
fastest when they’re
close to the Earth
Yes it is. The USA’s Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has a
brain-controlled prosthetic arm for upper
limb amputees. As the user thinks about
various movements, the arm picks up
the responding brain signals that appear
in the remaining nerves at the site of the
amputation. With incredible dexterity, the
user can remove a letter from an envelope
and even move eggs from one box to
another. But away from government-
funded research projects, hobbyist and
engineer William (Chip) Audette in Vermont
controls a small toy robot using his
brainwaves. He’s using open hardware
called OpenBCI where electrodes on his
head pick up brainwaves. The level of
control is crude but is proof that advances
in EEG technology, machine learning and
robotics really are ushering in an age where
we can control devices through the power
of thought. GM
PHOTO: ISTOCK X4, SPLASH/CORBIS, GETTY, ALAMY
Do people in a coma dream?
Patients in a coma appear
unconscious. They do not respond to
touch, sound or pain, and cannot be
awakened. Their brains often show no
signs of the normal sleep-wakefulness
cycle, which means they are unlikely
to be dreaming. Yet many people who
have recovered from comas report
dreams into which something of the
outside world penetrated. Others
recall nightmares that seemed to go
on and on. Whether they dream or
not probably depends on the cause of
90
Vol. 7 Issue 12
the coma. If the visual cortex is badly
damaged, visual dreams will be lost; if
the auditory cortex is destroyed, then
they will be unable to hear dreamed
voices. If the cause is damage to brain
areas such as the reticular activating
system, which controls the sleepwakefulness cycle, normal dreams
cannot occur but other dream-like
states might. The term ‘coma’ covers
many conditions. Until we understand
them better, it is hard to say which
ones can include dreams. SB
Why does helium
change your voice?
Sound travels faster through
a lighter gas than a heavier one.
This is because the individual gas
molecules have less mass and
can therefore move more quickly
in response to the pressure
changes of the sound wave.
The speed of sound in helium is
almost three times faster than in
air. This changes the resonant
In Numbers
17
frequency of yo
our
throat so that hiigh
h
frequencies sou
und louderr
than low ones. If you
y
inhale a gas tha
at iis d
denserr
than air, such a
as sulphur
l h
hexafluoride, th
he sound
travels at just 39 per cent off
its speed in air and
d your voice
i
sounds deeper.. LV
Can we find where MH370 crashed, now that
wreckage has washed up?
By examining the tides and currents of
the Indian Ocean, it is possible to identify the
general whereabouts the MH370 plane, but
its exact location may remain a mystery.
Mapping the route by which the
wreckage must have reached the island
of Reunion (pictured), researchers have
concluded that the plane hit waters off
the west coast of Australia. Australian
authorities are therefore searching these
waters, spanning the investigation across
60,000km2 of sea.
Furthermore, the washed-up wing
debris is currently being examined for
additional clues, using the multitude of
barnacles and microorganisms attached
to its surface. These can be analysed to
determine which part of the sea the plane
landed in, as well as the time taken for the
wreckage to reach Reunion. By applying
this time to the routes of ocean currents
and gyres, it may be possible to build a
more accurate picture of where the debris
came from. Focus
facial expressions have been recorded
in horses by scientists at the University
of Sussex. Dogs manage 16, while we
have 27
Is arachnophobia
a
l rned or an instinct?
lea
Both. Overall rates of arachnophobia
are around 5 per cent, although a milder
fear of spiders is reported in up to onethird of the population. More women
than men fear the arachnids, even in
countries that have no dangerous spiders.
Arachnophobes may scream or have
panic attacks on seeing a spider, and
judge spiders as bigger and closer than
they are, so increasing their fear. There
are good reasons why arachnophobia
might be inherited. We evolved over
millions of years in Africa. Here, many
spiders are venomous and avoiding them
could be useful. But this does not prove
the case, and excessive fear might even
be counter-productive. Children tend to
fear spiders if their parents do, but this
need not be genetic. Like many mammals,
we learn preferences and fears from
our parents at a young age. Watching a
parent react with terror to a spider in the
bath could instil fear in the child. So this
makes it hard to know how much of this
fear is learnt or inherited. SB
“Please don’t
fear us!”
Vol. 7 Issue 12
91
&
When does the difference between
mean and median matter?
PHOTO: SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY, GETTY, ALAMY ILLUSTRATION: ACUTE GRAPHICS
Does a human heart
have a finite number
of beats?
Yes. At an average of 80 beats per
minute, most of us will manage less than
four billion beats in our lives. But you don’t
die because you run out of heartbeats –
you run out of heartbeats because you die.
Among mammals, the number of
heartbeats over the lifespan of different
species is fairly constant. So hamsters’
hearts beat 400 times a minute and they
live for about four years, which is 840
million beats, and an elephant manages
35bpm for 35 years, or about 640
million beats total. Those numbers are
similar, but that’s just because animals
with faster heart rates are also smaller
and more at risk from predation and
starvation. Their lifespans have evolved
to compensate for this by reprod
ducing
g
early and often – they ‘live fast, die
d
epair
young’. Heart muscle can only re
itself very slowly, so eventually every
heart will wear out but not after a specific
p
number of beats. LV
In Numbers
7,000
blood donations are taken in the
e UK
K
every day, and one in four of us will need
ne
eed
ee
ed
ed
a tranfusion at some point in ourr lives
92
Vol. 7 Issue 12
Use the mean value with
care – it can skew data
We all remember those boring maths
lessons where the teacher droned on
about the difference between the mean
of a set of data, and the median. Yet the
difference can be vital to understanding
some controversial issues. For example,
the latest official statistics show that
men working full-time in the UK get paid
on average around 17 per cent more
than women. But that figure masks the
impact of the relatively small proportion
of men who get paid colossal amounts.
Whenever data is seriously skewed
like this, the median becomes far more
representative of what’s ‘typical’ than
the mean, as it’s the value which splits
the data exactly in two, with 50 per cent
being above the median and 50 per
cent below. In the case of pay, taking
the median shrinks the gender gap
among those in full-time work by around
one-third, but its effect on part-time pay
statistics is even more dramatic. While
the mean says that men working parttime get around 5 per cent more than
women, the median figures reverses this,
showing that men typically get paid 5 per
cent less than female counterparts. RM
How
w long is a jiffy?
For physicists, a jiffy is how long
F
light ttakes to travel a distance of one
femto
f
ometre, which is a millionth of a
millio
onth of a millimetre. That means that
there
h e are about three hundred thousand
billion
n billion jiffys in a second. A jiffy also
has
h a
an electrical meaning. It is the length
off a ssingle cycle of alternating current. In
the U
UK’s 50Hz system, a jiffy is thus onefiftiet
fif h of a second. GM
HOW IT WORKS
SMART CAP
Researchers at the University of California,
Berkeley have designed a 3D-printed
‘smart’ bottle cap that lets you determine
whether milk has turned sour – without
needing to give it a sniff. This is the first
time that working electronic components
h ve b
have
been
een incorporated
inco
orp
rporat
p
into a 3D-printed
device.
device
v ce The specialised
specia se cap
p can
n be
ep
placed
l ced
laced
onto
o ordinary milk
k orr juice cartons to
o
inductive reader, to measure the
e rate of
bacterial growth.
ech
d be
In future, this technology
could
var
ariety of packaging.
embedded in a wide variety
“You could imagine a sscenario where
ph
you can use your cellphone
to check the
freshn
fre
fr
esh
hn
od
d wh
whi
ille it’s still on the
freshness
of food
while
store
st
tore
e shelves,”
sh
shel
he ve
es, says
ay tthe
he study’s senior
author Liwei
Lin.
auth
iwei L
in.
establish when a liquid has gone off. The
main body of the cap is made from plastic
polymers, with a conductive silver tube
hidden inside. Electronics fitted to this
tube turn it into a fully functioning circuit.
When a carton is quickly inverted, milk
enters the circuit’s capacitor,
pacit
citor
ito
or becoming
trapped
trap
pp inside.
ins
Electrical
a ssignals
al
i nal
ig
als in
i the
th
liq
liquid
quid a
are
re analysed
analysed
d in
i real-time
real tim
me u
using
sing
si
ng an
n
1
Spiral inductor
Top electrode
The 3D-printed smart cap is fitted with an
inductor and capacitor, to form a resonant
circuit. It’s then screwed on to a milk carton.
2
When milk is left at room temperature,
bacterial growth increases, which causes a
change in the liquid’s electrical properties.
3
When the carton is turned upside down,
a drop of milk becomes trapped in the cap,
allowing the circuit to test its properties.
Bottom electrode
Milk
Bottle
4
A reader wirelessly detects the changes
then alerts you as to whether the milk is
still fresh enough to consume or stale.
Resource
A feast for the mind
Hardback
The Evolution
Of Everything
Paperback
MEET
M
E E T THE
T
AUTHOR
Matt Ridley
4th Estate
Though I’ve never met him, I feel like I
know Matt Ridley pretty well. My first
interaction with him was back in the
mid-1980s, when he was the wunderkind
science editor of The Economist. I’d ring
him up whenever I thought I had a piece
he’d print, and soon twigged my chances
were greatly enhanced by having some
contrarian line about a controversial
issue widely believed to have an ‘obvious’
solution. Simples.
Actually, it wasn’t. I soon realised how
hard it is to free oneself from conventional
thinking, and spot flaws in what everyone
‘knows’ is the right answer. But blowing
up sacred cows comes naturally to
Ridley, and he went on to build an
award-winning writing career out of
it. Originally trained as a zoologist, he’s
made a speciality of exploring the wider
implications of Darwinian evolution. Now
he’s combined his two passions with his
most ambitious book to date, in which he
seeks to do “for every aspect of the human
world a little bit of what Charles Darwin
did for biology”.
Specifically, he wants us to see past the
view that our world is replete with the
results of human intention, and notice
instead how so much has simply evolved
into being.
“I came away
enlightened,
challenged, and
somewhat in awe
of an author able
to write so lucidly”
Matt
Ridley
What’s the idea behind your book?
It’s that evolution – incremental, gradual
selective change that produces complexity
and order without a plan – is something that
applies to much more than just biological
systems. It explains how language evolves,
and how society and technology changes.
T
d
To ddo thi
this, Ridl
Ridley moves bbeyond
what he describes as the ‘Special Theory
of Evolution’ to the ‘General Theory’.
According to this, the processes of random
events, trial and error and
cross-fertilisation that are normally
associated with the natural world also
explain much that is held to be the
product of human intervention.
Those who bracket evolution with
‘nature, red in tooth and claw’ might be
expecting the result to be an explanation
of why the world is so awful. But here
Ridley plays his contrarian card.Through
a host of examples in fields ranging from
psychology and technology to politics and
finance, he makes the case that – broadly
speaking – the world is evolving into a
better state despite human intervention,
rather than because of it.
Or at least, he attempts to.While I’m
sympathetic to Ridley’s aim and his
conclusion, much of his evidence feels
handpicked or partial. His free-market zeal
also breaks through his claims a little too
often for my liking. Even so, I came away
enlightened, challenged, and somewhat in
awe of an author able to write so lucidly
about so much.
ROBERT MATTHEWS is Visiting Reader in Science
at Aston University, Birmingham
94
Vol. 7 Issue 12
How does technology evolve?
If you look at how new technologies emerge,
we give far too much credit to inventors.
Twenty-three people independently came
up with the idea of the incandescent light
bulb – it was the next inevitable step based
on what had happened before. There are lots
of ideas out there: some get chosen, some
get dropped and the result is an incremental
change in technology.
You also say that morality is an
evolutionary process…
I argue that the idea of evolution pre-dates
Darwin, and is really an Adam Smith
idea. His 1759 book The Theory Of Moral
Sentiments says that morality evolves
because people calibrate their actions
against other people’s reactions. Morality
emerges from below rather than being forced
down our throats from above. If you look at
the history of morality, priests and teachers
are actually catching up with what people
are saying – that’s still very clear today with
things like the toleration of homosexuality.
What can this tell us about the world?
There’s a long tradition of trying to look
for the causes of things and define who
achieved what. But there’s another tradition
that got buried, which says that these things
emerge. There is order and complexity in
the world, but it doesn’t need an orderer or
a complexifier. To me, that’s one of the most
wonderful ideas.
Four Ways To Click
Rewire Your Brain For Stronger,
More Rewarding Relationships
Dr Amy Banks with Leigh Ann Hirschman
Allen & Unwin
Why Does Asparagus Make
Your Wee Smell?
And 57 Other Curious Food And
Drink Questions
The Shark And The
h A
Albatross
Travels With A Camera To
The Ends Of The Earth
John Aitchison
Andy Brunning
Profile Books
This book argues that human
relationships are vital for good health
and are the product of four dedicated
brain areas. This allows you to ‘rewire’
your brain to improve relationships. As a
neuroscientist, this sets off alarm bells.
Despite being an often engaging read
with supposedly laudable aims, Four
Ways To Click seems deeply cynical.
Brain regions of frightening diversity
are cast as being for relationships
only, and claims are ‘backed up’ with
neuroscientific findings as if they’re
proof, rather than complex and
uncertain properties of the brain still
subject to much research.
Alarmingly, much time is dedicated
to stressing the importance of human
relationships, only for them to then
be reduced to little more than basic
behaviours. It’s apparently a simple
matter of doing certain actions to make
your brain better at relationships, like
rearranging a room to get more space.
Early in this book, it says that human
relationships are highly complex and not
a simple process produced by a select few
brain regions. Depressingly, the rest of the
book assumes the exact opposite.
Orion Books
Let’s get the spoiler out of the way first:
thiols are what asparagus is broken down
into when we digest it. But did you
know these compounds are also found
in skunk spray? And that not everyone
produces asparagus-stinky urine? (In fact,
43 per cent of people do.)
It’s these sorts of questions that Andy
Brunning aims to answer. Using that
ever-popular topic of food and drink,
Brunning offers an entertaining insight
into the real chemical reactions behind
everyday mysteries, like why bacon smells
so good, and why coriander tastes soapy.
Each chapter offers a clear explanation
with quirky factoids and colourful
infographics. But some chapters are
bogged down with chemical names more
than others, and the infographics are not
always enlightening. Many just parrot the
text, rather than adding any particularly
new insight.
Why Does Asparagus Make Your Wee
Smell? is a solid coffee table book to flick
through. It’s not going to change your
world, but it’ll definitely make you think
next time you’re in the kitchen.
High on the list of enviable career
paths is that of the wildlife cameraman.
What other profession takes you to so
many exotic locations and offers a front
row seat for the world’s greatest natural
wonders? Few are better placed to
explain the challenges of filming animals
in the wild than John Aitchison, who for
20 years has travelled to every continent,
for series such as the BBC’s Frozen
Planet and Life Story.
As a straight travelogue,The Shark
And The Albatross feels a little disjointed.
But at its best, it explains what goes
into capturing very specific scenes in
incredibly harsh environments. For
example, there is the trip to Svalbard
where Aitchison struggles with the need
to carry a gun in case the polar bears
he’s come to film turn on him, and his
negotiations with Chinese bureaucrats
to film Siberian cranes. Aitchison excels
at highlighting the lives of animals and
explaining the conservation challenges
they face, whether it’s the sharks and
albatross that give the book its title, or
penguins, tigers and the elusive Canadian
lynx. A must-read for fans of the BBC’s
natural history programming.
DEAN BURNETT is a neuroscientist who lectures
at Cardiff University
MUN-KEAT LOOI is a science writer and co-author
of The Big Questions In Science
MATT SWAINE is a keen naturalist and the
editor of BBC Wildlife magazine
13.8
The Most Important Fact In
The Search For The Theory Of
Everything
John Gribbin
Icon Books
Cards on the table: I’m a John Gribbin fan. His
books helped inspire me to study physics.
So I was excited to read his latest offering
– 13.8: The Most Important Fact In The Search
For The Theory Of Everything. The ‘13.8’ refers
to our Universe’s age in billions of years, and
much room is given to the question of whether it
had an origin at all. With much historical colour,
Gribbin recounts the fight between the Steady
State and Big Bang models. This is followed by
details of the cosmological chiselling that led to
modern calculations of its age.
While these parts are great, I can’t help but
feel a little let down. The blurb and subtitle
promise a book on how this quest for the
Universe’s true age is the key to the Holy Grail
of physics – a ‘theory of everything’ – that
combines General Relativity and quantum
theory. After some introductory passages
explaining how quantum theory accounts for
how stars are powered, and how long they
shine, the ‘Holy Grail’ is never mentioned again.
This, unfortunately, makes the claim that this is
a landmark book more than a little hollow.
COLIN STUART is a science writer and
co-author of The Big Questions In Science
Vol. 7 Issue 12
95
SCIENCE
MY LIFE SCIENTIFIC
SIR PAUL NURSE
The Royal Society President and Nobel laureate explains to Helen Pilcher why he
nearly didn’t get into university
ILLUSTRATION: DANNY ALLISON
When I was a kid, I remember seeing Sputnik 2
shooting across the sky. I chased it down the road in my
pyjamas pointing it out to everyone. It made me think about the sky
and the world around me. Nowadays I have telescope on the roof of
the Royal Society in London.
Eight years ago I found out that the person I thought
was my sister was actually my mother. She had me
illegitimately when she was 19 so the family decided to keep it secret. I
was brought up by my grandparents and thought they were my parents.
I found out by accident when I was applying for a Green Card. It was
a bit unsettling but I know that everyone did what they thought was
best for me and I had a very happy childhood.The irony is that I’m a
geneticist but I had my own genetics kept from me.
ways of finding the genes that control cellular division in yeast, then
showed that the same genes existed in mammals. I realised that the same
fundamental processes control cell division in almost all living things.
It was a genuine eureka moment. I’m also proud of setting up Cancer
Research UK. It’s one of the biggest cancer research organisations in
the world.
I’ve lived in lots of different places but I like London
best. It’s where I was brought up. It’s vibrant. I go to the theatre
a lot. If I wasn’t a scientist I think I’d like to be a theatre director.
I’d be no good as an actor. I’d never remember my lines and I’d
probably ham it up.
I potter around Oxford on my Triumph Bonneville, a
classic-looking motorbike. But I’m also a pilot and co-own a
glider. I was recently flying in the Pyrenees.
My presidency at the Royal Society finishes this year.
I’ve really enjoyed my time there but it’s time to move on. I’m still a
practising scientist – unusual for someone at my level – so I’ll carry
on running my lab, and I’m boss of the Francis Crick Institute, a
huge collaborative medical research institute that’s being built in
King’s Cross, London.
I had trouble getting into university. Back then you had to
have a language and I failed my French O Level six times. Eventually
Birmingham let me in anyway.
I think that I’m a curious and busy person. It worries me
that I get tangled up in doing too many things and that I don’t do
enough of them properly. I think it’s possible that people find me a
little tiring.
Having a Nobel Prize is very satisfying but I’m really
proud of the work I did that led up to it. I worked out
HELEN PILCHER is a science writer and comedian. She tweets from @Helenpilcher1
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Time Out
Crossword No.183
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21
24
26
28
29
31
34
36
38
39
40
41
42
Gold river is source of perfume ingredient (9)
Designed pool with gap to escape (8)
Wise men include graduate and soldier (4)
Tooth lets detectives capture American head of personnel (6)
Block me returning to pub, then leave (7)
Small image of digital protection (9)
Three sons displaying difference (9)
Resistance in opportunity for growth (7)
Get air-conditioning into medical assessment (6)
Living unit becomes place of confinement (4)
After a walk, spies trouble at the top (8)
Purely mechanical to prohibit gold like this (8)
Point copper towards betting (4)
Learnt to play the horn (6)
Try hand at running outlet (7)
Saucy picture provides prototype (9)
Shyness – it affects integration (9)
Opposite of trendy poetry (7)
Fat wall to crumble (6)
Second kind of cloth (4)
Annoying situation united feeble person and garden pest (8)
Making of cheese into a new container first (9)
DOWN
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
11
16
19
20
22
23
25
26
27
30
31
32
33
35
36
37
Comic set turned out to be superficial (8)
Old king to turn twice to a palm (6)
Old mate managed to get union into balance (8)
Leaflike structure may set lip off (6)
Happy to sprinkle oil on island flowers (8)
Wellington’s ride to the capital (10)
Heard talk of dessert ingredient (7)
Clear out European timber (6)
Comfort at the desk (7)
British spice used to add muscle (6)
Finally doesn’t finish a book (5)
Drink of character, say (3)
Heather, or another woman (5)
Felt hand move with hesitation (6)
A ventricle somehow is only fixed at one end (10)
Seed vessel starts to bear uncanny resemblance (3)
Braids unfortunately get caught, having a rough surface (7)
Freedom to move some distance from the Equator (8)
Husbands have space next to river for coop (8)
Time has confused county and city (8)
Modernise at university, taking degree (7)
Expose defence group turning evil (6)
Ali is worried about key glass component (6)
Drink to liveliness (6)
SOLUTION TO
CROSSWORD
180
Vol. 7 Issue 12
97
The Last Word
Students could put an end to false scientific claims once and for all
uestioning authority is all part
of growing up – and one of the
foundations of science. It’s crystallised
in the motto of the Royal Society: Nullius in
Verba. Roughly, “Take nobody’s word for it”.
By giving us the tools like the experimental
method to question what we’re told, science
has freed us from all kinds of twaddle peddled
by authority figures. Without it, we’d still be
in thrall to Aristotle and friends, who thought
diseases are caused by bad air and the Sun orbits
the Earth.
Yet there’s a growing feeling in the research
community that science could be doing a
better job of questioning its own authority.
The suspicion is that the pressure on
researchers to produce something – anything
– is leading to a lot of junk being published
and going unchallenged.
When new research is submitted to a
journal, its claims undergo peer review.
But that’s usually just a check of the claims’
logic and whether the researchers have
made their case. Attempts to replicate them
independently only come later. Or more
likely, never: of the hundreds of thousands of
scientific papers published every year, around
30 per cent are never cited again, let alone
have their claims replicated.
The reasons for this are understandable.
While scientists recognise the need for
replication, most are too busy to spend time
checking others’ work. As
a result, it’s usually only the
most dramatic claims that get
replicated. But worryingly, they
often fail the test. Remember
those stories about faster-thanlight neutrinos from researchers
at CERN a few years back?
Or that amazingly simple way
of making stem cells unveiled
last year by Japanese scientists?
These headline-grabbing
claims were quickly debunked
once others tried to replicate them. All of which makes you wonder
about the trustworthiness of the other, less eye-catching claims out
there. Some of them have been put to the test and the results aren’t
encouraging. An ongoing attempt to replicate the results of 100 studies
in psychology is said to have vindicated fewer than 40.
Small wonder, then, that there is mounting concern about the
reliability of scientific research and great deal of soul-searching about
how to tackle it. If hard-pressed, professional scientists can’t – or won’t
– take on replications, who can?
Q
ILLUSTRATOR: DEM ILLUSTRATION
“While scientists
recognise the need
for replication,
most are too
busy to spend
time checking
others’ work”
98
Vol. 7 Issue 12
There is one intriguing solution currently doing the rounds: why
not use replications as science projects for students? Some researchers
argue that only graduate students can be trusted to do a good job but
others are already using replications as an introduction to what real
research is like.
I’d go further. Given proper supervision, I don’t see why some
replications couldn’t be turned into school or even public projects. Is it
true, for example, that people walk more slowly after being exposed to
words associated with old age – as one study recently claimed? Or that
we make better choices when presented with around half a dozen
options rather than 20?
Trying to replicate such claims would convey more about doing
science than any number of boring lectures. And it could make a real
contribution by casting light on the reliability of the original research.
This is surely a golden opportunity for official bodies such as the Royal
Society to show they’re serious about getting people engaged with real
science. After all, they’re keen to encourage the public to use science
to question authority figures – aren’t they?
ROBERT MATTHEWS is Visiting Reader in Science at Aston University, Birmingham
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