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VIRTUAL CRIME SCENE3D recreations come
to the courtroom
TALKING GIBBONISHDeciphering the
banter of the apes
KILLER KITCHENIs your house
making you fat?
MOVING HEAVEN AND EARTHThe Milky Way isnt where we thought it was
HOW LONGISNOW?Your life plays out three seconds at a time
ILL SAVE MY BRAINA doctors mission to treat his own tumour
WEEKLYJanuary 10 - 16,2015
0 7 0 9 8 9 3 0 6 9 0 5
0 2
No3003 US$5.95 CAN$5.
Science and technology news www.newscientist.com US jobs in science
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New Scientist, 16 March 1972
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Take a walk onthe wild side
Which animal has the biggest mouth?
Can alligators use tools?
Could a mouse beat a scorpion in a fight?
New Scientists Anti-Zooanswers these
questions and many more. Prepare to meet
50 of the most unexpected animals known
to science the mavericks and misfits of
the animal kingdom.
Buy your copy now from all good
newsagents or digitally. Find out more at:
newscientist.com/antizoo
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10 January 2015 | NewScientist | 3
OTT Volume 225 No 3003This issue online
newscientist.com/issue/3003
News6 UPFRONT
Monarch butterfly risks extinction. Hubble
recaptures Pillars of Creation. Did AirAsia
flight stall? New antibiotic has 30-year life8 THIS WEEK
Forensic holodeck coming to courtrooms.
Earths deep inhabitants have novel
evolution. Why people drive elephants off
cliffs. Fat cells fend off invasive bacteria
10 SPECIAL REPORT
A doctors mission to save his own brain
15 IN BRIEF
Origins of crabs that look like frogs.
Volcanoes held back complex life. How
alcohol affects your immune system
Coming next weekRerunning evolutionHow to teach a fish to walk, and other stories
Multiverse shmultiverseIs physicss biggest idea a delusion?
Cover imageMatthieu Bourel
28
39
Planet-huntingfor the people
The search forexoplanets just gotmuch cheaper
8
RODWILLIAMS/N
ATUREPL.C
OM
NASA/ESA/HUBBLECOLLABORATIONSTSCI/AURA
How longis now?
Your life plays outthree seconds at a time
Talkinggibbonish
Deciphering thebanter of the apes
Technology
19 In the kitchen with a supercomputer chef.Return of the video game arcade
News
On the cover
Features
10 Ill save my brain
A doctors mission to
treat his own tumour
32 Heaven and Earth
The Milky Way has moved
39 Talking gibbonish
Deciphering ape banter
12 Virtual crime scene
3D courtroom recreations
36 Killer kitchen
Is your house making
you fat?
Opinion24 Kiwi comedown Ross Bell asks what we
can learn from New Zealands drugs debacle
25 One minute with Jeffrey ScottHow we
turned the common fly into a friend
26 Mars mission NASA chief scientist Ellen
Stofan says were 20 years away from Mars
54 LETTERS
Cancer hacking. Snooze alarm
Features28 How long is now?(see above left)
32 Moving heaven and Earth The Milky Way
isnt where we thought it was
36 Killer kitchen Is your house making you fat?
39 Talking gibbonish (see left)
CultureLab42 One per cent inspiration...Closing in on
the sources of creativity and innovation
43 Whale world Orca clan calls and dolphin
tail-walking may be clues to cetacean culture
Regulars5 LEADERIts time to take patient
participation in drug research seriously
56 FEEDBACK Eat here, get gas
57 THE LAST WORD Shell suits
44 JOBS & CAREERS
Aperture22 Thief steals fish from pelicans mouth
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VISIT
AUSTRALIA.COM/BUSINESSEVENTS/ASSOCIATIONS
FOR EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO PLAN YOUR AUSTRALIAN EVENT.
THERES NOTHING LIKE AUSTRALIA FOR YOUR NEXT BUSINESS EVENT.
This year we chose Australia for our global congress. It was an easy choice, as Australias proximity to Asia gave us the
opportunity to attract many new delegates. The program was one of the best in years. New Australian developments in
our field attracted a lot of interest and strong international research partnerships were established.
Australia is on everyones list to visit, and it lured our highest number of delegates yet. Theres no doubt theyll be talkingabout this convention for years to come.
Dr Louise Wong,
International Board Member
Big landscapesInspire big thinking
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10 January 2015 |NewScientist |5
L
2014 was a landmark year for drugdevelopment. The US Food andDrug Administration approved41 new pharmaceuticals, themost since 1996. Each of thesewill (hopefully) make theworld a slightly better place,alleviating distress andpreventing premature deaths.
But developing drugs is
excruciatingly expensive and increasingly so. The cost ofbringing a new compound to themarket is now around $2.5 billion,twice as much in real terms as itwas a decade ago.
One of the costliest partsis recruiting and retainingvolunteers to test the drug ina clinical trial. Around three-quarters of trials are delayed
Inform, educate, cure
A design for life
Its time to take patient participation in drug research seriously
by problems with this process.Most trials over-recruit by up to50 per cent to compensate, but thedrop-out rate is still so high thatonly 1 in 20 volunteers end upgenerating useful data. The result:wasted time, effort and money.
That is not for lack of patientwillingness. In 2013, the UKsHouse of Commons found that
people want to volunteer butdont know how. Only about7 per cent of people with cancerwho are eligible to participatein a trial do so, for example.
It doesnt have to be thatway. There is evidence thatvolunteers can be brought onboard and kept there by makingmore of an effort to inform themand help them to choose which
trial they would like to enter.On page 10, we report how such
knowledge can be empowering.Former doctor Stuart Farrimondis weighing up experimentaltreatment options for his braintumour to his benefit and thatof the companies behind thetreatments. He is unusually well-informed, but his story hints at
what an empowered, informedpatient group might look like.The problems with volunteer
recruitment were identified adecade ago but havent beeneradicated. It is high time theywere. Drug development costs and delays are ultimatelypassed onto the consumer. Itis in everyones interests to getrid of this unnecessary waste.
EAT clay, drink urine, go veganuntil 6 pm then eat what you like.For people trying to lose weight oreat more healthily, there is alwaysa new fad diet on the table oftenwith a celebrity endorsement.
In the unlikely event thatyoure tempted, beware. Theseparticular ones are among theBritish Dietetic Associationstop 5 worst celebrity dietsto avoid in 2015.
The list is slightly tongue-in-cheek, but it carries a seriousmessage. Although fad diets cansound plausible, there is usuallylittle evidence that they work anda risk that they could be harmful.A year ago, the BDA was warningabout biotyping and gluten-freediets. New year, same old story.
There is, of course, a provenmethod to lose weight, but it lacksnovelty and celebrity backing. In a
nutshell: eat less and move more.
If that sounds too tedious, thereis another way. It is becomingincreasingly clear that yourenvironment from the crockeryand drinking vessels you use towhere you sit in restaurants influences your eating habits.Adjusting these factors mightsound almost as faddish as eatingclay, but it is backed by mountingevidence (see page 36). It is alsoeasier to maintain than a fad diet.So not all crazy-sounding diets arenonsense. But do read the label.
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New Scientist ISSN 0262 4079 ispublished weekly except for the lastweek in December by Reed BusinessInformation Ltd, England.
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DESPERATE times call fordesperate measures. A Britishnurse, Pauline Cafferkey, remained
in critical condition as we went topress this week, after contractingEbola in Sierra Leone. She isbeing treated with plasma froma former Ebola patient, which ispacked with antibodies to the
virus, and an unidentifiedexperimental drug.
She is a high-profile case, but byno means the only person beingtreated with candidate drugs:trials of two experimental drugshave now started among Ebolapatients in Liberia and Guinea,and the third will start beingorganised in Sierra Leone nextweek. This will involve the first-ever RNA-based drug to be testedagainst an infection in humans.
The drug, made by Canadianfirm Tekmira, is a shortinterfering RNA (siRNA),
ITS time to strike back. Antibioticresistance has garnered headlinesin recent years, but 2015 may be
the year we overcome it.Two new antibiotics wereannounced this week. One,teixobactin, was discoveredby screening soil for bacteriathat have evolved to kill theircompetitors. It appears to act onMRSA and the bacteria that causemulti-drug resistant TB, amongothers, by targeting a lipid ontheir cell walls.
Testing Ebola New antibiotics
OT
Because control efforts inMonrovia are working, itmight be hard to find 140patients for the drug trial
designed to stop a key virus genefrom working. With US militaryfunding, Tekmira has developedstable nanoparticles of fats andsiRNA that stop the Ebola virus
from replicating by blockinga specific gene. Intravenousdoses starting half an hour afterinfection saved monkeys fromlethal infections.
Tekmira announced on22 December that it would carryout human trials in West Africawith siRNA specifically matchedto the epidemic strain.
Peter Horby of the Universityof Oxford is leading the Liberiatrial of a conventional antiviral,brincidofovir. That began on
1 January in Monrovia, previouslya hotspot for the epidemic. Now,though, control efforts in the cityare working, and it might be hardto find the 140 patients needed.
This is good news, but we alsohave to move fast to test thesedrugs, says Horby. He is helpingset up the Tekmira trial and willlook out for further test sites inSierra Leone. They will still beneeded: despite improvementsin some areas the epidemicshows no sign of stopping.
Most existing antibiotics targebacterial proteins but these alterover time, leading to resistance.The team developing the drug atNortheastern University in Bosto
reckons that if it was used to treatpeople, it would take at least30 years for bacteria to developresistance (Nature, doi.org/x3m)
The second drug is beingdeveloped by Novartis to treatmulti-drug resistant TB (ScienceTranslational Medicine, DOI:10.1126/scitranslmed.3010597).Both drugs worked in mice andtrials are planned for teixobactin
Did AirAsia flight stall?A STALL may be behind it all. Thats
the indication from radar datarecorded during the final moments
of Indonesia AirAsia flight QZ8501,
which crashed into the Java Sea on
28 December, killing 162 people.
In the pilots last communication
before losing contact with air traffic
control, they requested permission
to climb to avoid bad weather on
their way from Surabaya, Indonesia,
to Singapore. According to data
leaked on Twitter by aviation
analyst Gerry Soejatman, the plane
seems to have been at an altitude
of 11,000 metres and climbing at
654 kilometres an hour shortly
before it crashed. This suggests
that QZ8501 was far below its typical
cruising speed by comparison, a
nearby Emirates flight was travelling
level at 932 kilometres an hour at
almost the same altitude.Further radar data tweeted
by Soejatman appears to show
QZ8501 falling out of the sky, losing
3300 metres of altitude per minute.
If accurate, the information suggests
that the pilots may have climbed too
quickly, lost airspeed and stalled in
the thin, high-altitude air before
plummeting into the sea.
Confirmation will have to wait
until recovery crews are able to
locate the planes black box data
and cockpit voice recorders, which
are thought to be resting on the
sea floor. Wreckage and many of the
bodies of passengers have already
been found, but bad weather and high
waves have slowed efforts to locate
and retrieve the black box recorders.
Still looking for the black bo
How much oil must stay buried?
WE MUST stop burning coal in just15 years time, and oil in 25, unless
we find a way to bury carbon. Thats
according to Christophe McGlade
and Paul Ekins at University College
London, who have calculated how
much fossil carbon needs to stay
underground for a reasonable chance
of avoiding dangerous climate change.
They call it unburnable carbon,
and say the most economical method
is to keep a whopping 88 per cent of
global coal reserves buried, most of it
in the US, China, India and formerstates of the Soviet Union (Nature,
DOI: 10.1038/nature14016).
What we are really talking about
here is unemittable carbon, says
Myles Allen of the University of
Oxford. If the fossil fuel industry
can crack the problem of extracting
energy without dumping carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere, then we
will be able to use as much fossil
carbon as we like. That means
using carbon capture and storage.
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10 January 2015 |NewScientist |7
HUBBLE is reprising one of itsgreatest hits. The space telescope which turns 25 this year hascaptured two dramaticallysharper views of the Eaglenebulas Pillars of Creation.
Back in 1995, Hubbles WideField and Planetary Camera 2took an iconic photograph of thenebula, revealing three towering
elephant trunks of gas and dustthat are in the process of formingstars. The columns are also being
sculpted and eroded by windsfrom nearby young stars.
Now Paul Scowen at ArizonaState University in Tempe, oneof the astronomers responsible
for that image, and his colleagueshave taken a fresh look at thenebula. They made use ofHubbles Wide Field Camera 3,installed in 2009, which hastwice the resolution of the earliercamera. It shows that the gas anddust at the pillars edges becomedenser more abruptly thanthought (above right).
The team also photographedthe region at infrared wavelengths(above left), revealing infant starsinside the gas and dust. That
should help astronomers workout whether the nebula is anefficient star-former.
Having images taken 20 yearsapart also helps us gauge howthe pillars are changing. Scowen,who presented the work this weekat the American AstronomicalSociety meeting in Seattle,Washington, says jets of gas havevisibly moved in the interim.
Hubble double
For new stories every day, visit newscientist.com/news
Save the monarch
WHAT is black, orange, stripyand at risk of extinction? The
monarch butterfly. Last week theUS government agreed to assessthe butterfly for inclusion on itsendangered species list.
Best known for massivemigrations between Mexico,the US and Canada, the butterflieshad dwindled to 35 million by
last winter, according to theArizona-based Center forBiological Diversity. Thats adrop of 90 per cent in 20 years.
Monarchs are being hit hardfrom all directions, says ErnestWilliams, who studies monarchsat Hunter College in New York. Hecites climate change and the loss ofbreeding and winter habitats as themain factors behind the decline.Many monarch biologists thinkthat the loss of breeding habitat
currently has the strongesteffect, he says. The herbicideRoundup may be the main culprit.It kills milkweed, the monarchcaterpillars only source of food.
The monarch certainlywarrants listing, says TierraCurry of the Center for BiologicalDiversity. But due to a backlog ofspecies the monarch could endup on a waiting list, she says.
60 SECONDS
Blaze in OzAustralia has been hit by the
worst bush fires in 30 years.
Temperatures soared to 44.1 C in
parts of South Australia on 2 January,
igniting fires across the state. The
flames had claimed 38 houses and
scorched more than 12,500 hectares
at the time of going to press.
It aint half hotLast year was the hottest on record in
the UK, according to the Met Office.
The average temperature was 9.9 C.
That is 1.1 C above the long-term
average and higher than the previous
record of 9.7 C set in 2006.
Rice fit to eatFor the first time since the
2011 nuclear disaster in Japans
Fukushima prefecture, the regions
rice has passed radiation tests.
Almost an entire years harvest,
360,000 tonnes, has been
checked and none of it exceeded
100 becquerels per kilogram, the
limit set by the government.
Lie still
Bad news, compulsive fidgets: yourrestlessness may be your undoing.
Researchers will present an
alternative to the polygraph lie
detector at a conference in Hawaii
this week. Its a full-body suit that
captures tiny movements, designed
to pick up liars tendency to fidget
nervously. In tests, the suit correctly
identified liars 82 per cent of the
time. A polygraph has a typical
success rate of 60 per cent.
Philae meet roverIt seems that comet-landing fever
is catching even at the highest
levels of government. The French
president Franois Hollande has
named his new dog Philae, after
the European Space Agency probe
that touched down on comet 67P/
ChuryumovGerasimenko last year.
Meanwhile, ESA is still hunting for
the real Philae, which is nestled
near a rock somewhere on the
comets surface.
Monarchs are being hithard from all directions,especially from loss ofbreeding habitat
Gas reserves
Oil v26 years left
27 years left
15 years of burning left (at current rates)
35%
88%
52%
Coal reserves
UnburnableBurnable
Vast amounts of fossil fuels will haveto stay in the ground if we are to avoid2C of warming
NASA,
ESA,
ANDTHEHUBBLEHERITAGETEAM
STSCI/AURA
More starry in the infrared (left)
IF NOBODY understands amathematical proof, does it count?Shinichi Mochizuki of KyotoUniversity, Japan, has tried toprove the ABC conjecture, a long-standing pure maths problem,but now complains that fellowmathematicians are failing toget to grips with his work.
Mochizukis 500-page paper,posted online in 2012, is extremelydifficult to follow, even for
mathematicians. In a new reporthe says that three researcherswho studied it with his help haveyet to find an error, but it will takea few more years for it to be fullyconfirmed. Some of his colleaguessay Mochizuki could help thingsalong by simplifying his notes orlecturing abroad.
Minhyong Kim of the Universityof Oxford sympathises with bothpositions. But for now, the proofstays in limbo. Its a curiousstate, he says.
Proof positive (not)
Having images taken20 years apart helpsastronomers gauge howthe nebula is changing
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Rebecca Boyle
A NEW search for our nearestcosmic neighbours is justbeginning. Under constructionnow on an Arizona mountaintop,the Minerva observatory will lookfor small worlds around bright,nearby stars. By using off-the-shelf equipment, rather thanbespoke scopes, Minerva the
Miniature Exoplanet RadialVelocity Array offers a novel andcheap way to hunt for our solarsystems closest companions.
Exoplanet science hasexploded since the first discoveryof a world outside the solarsystem in 1995. More recently,between 2009 and 2013, NASAsKepler space telescope raked inthousands of probable worlds.
But most such planets havebeen spotted from space or
with giant telescopes on remotemountaintops, which costmillions of dollars and requirerepeated observations over severalyears to confirm sightings.
By contrast, Minerva anda collection of other smallobservatories use relatively
simple off-the-shelf telescopes.That makes this planet-huntingvanguard wholly unlike marqueeobservatories such as the W. M.Keck Observatory in Hawaii andthe Kepler telescope and thatis precisely its advantage.
Were looking at a smallnumber of bright stars everynight, all the time, for years. Thatsnormally very hard, says Jason
Wright, Minervas co-investigatorand an astronomer at PennState University. Becauseweve designed this observatoryand its ours, theres no one tocompete with.
Minerva uses four 0.7-metre-
wide, 2.5-metre-tall commercialtelescopes built by a companycalled PlaneWave, which alsosells them to hobbyists for about$200,000 Amazon founderJeff Bezos bought one just beforeMinervas team. The light fromall four scopes is collected and fed
into a spectrograph, which splitsit into different wavelengthsand enables astronomers to seetiny variations in a given starsmovement with respect to Earth.Such variations show somethingorbiting the star is exerting afaint gravitational tug on it andlets astronomers determine theorbiting objects mass.
Minerva will also be able
to watch stars for brief dipsin brightness that indicatesomething crossing in front ofthem. Seeing a regular patternof dips reveals an orbiting object,such as a planet. This technique,called the transit method, isKeplers strategy, and allowsastronomers to calculate theplanets size. Combining sizeand mass gives the planetsdensity a clue to its composition.
But both methods take time,
especially for small worldsorbiting close to their stars,which Minerva will focus on.
As we get toward truly Earth-like planets and truly Earth-likeorbits, its a very tough detectionproblem, says Greg Laughlin, anastronomer at the University ofCalifornia at Santa Cruz who usesanother dedicated planet-hunter,the Automated Planet Finder.
When Minervas lead scientist,astronomer John Johnson of theHarvard-Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics in Massachusetts,designed the observatory, hewasnt aiming for speedy science.As a graduate student at LickObservatory in southernCalifornia, he used a neglectedolder telescope to hunt forplanets over a long stretch oftime, choosing patience overprecision and observing power.
If you have high precision,more people want it. If it hascrappy precision, its probablyon an old telescope nobody cares
about, he says. Typically, themore time you have, the lessprecision. Minerva is the firstfacility to have very highprecision, and lots and lots oftime. Its an unexplored territory
Off the shelf
In other respects, Minerva isnot so unique. Its the latest in asuccession of amateur telescopesused for very big science. Gamma
T W
Brave new world-huntersExoplanet telescopes are slimming down to collect alien worlds
J.SWIFT
Minerva is the latest ina growing succession ofamateur telescopes usedfor very big science
Half of Minervas gear
NASA,
ESA,
ANDTHEHUBBLEHERITAGETEAMSTSCI/AURAESA/H
UBBLECOLLABORATION
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10 January 2015 |NewScientist |9
In this section
A doctors mission to save his own brain, page 10
Forensic holodeck coming to courtrooms, page 12
In the kitchen with a supercomputer chef, page 19
field more strategically, he says.Rather than staring at 100,000stars like Kepler, Minerva willwatch just 164 nearby targets,focusing on the ones most likelyto yield interesting worlds.
Were just driven by theidea that those planets are rightnext door. We want to chartour neighbourhood, Johnsonsays. You can find these littlegems when youre reallytargeting your search.
EYES PEELED
Pick your targets wisely
As the hunt for exoplanets
intensifies (see main story),
astronomers are dreaming upincreasingly strange alien worlds.
The latest is a double-eyeball
planet, an icy orb with a central
sea of liquid water on each side.
These planets are expected
to be rocky worlds orbiting a red
dwarf star. A red dwarfs habitable
zone the region warm enough
for liquid water to exist is so close
to the star that a planet orbiting
there is likely to have its rotation
locked due to orbital resonance.
That means the same side of the
planet always faces the star, similar
to how we only see one side of the
moon from Earth.
Previous research suggests that
water on such a planet would remain
liquid only in the centre of the side
facing the star, resembling a pupil
surrounded by an icy eyeball.
Now Anthony Dobrovolskis of
the NASA Ames Research Center in
California says worlds with an oval
orbit rather than circular could
make a double-eyeball. This orbit
changes the resonance so that
different sides of the planet face
the star on successive close passes,
forming two central seas facing in
opposite directions.
This beady-eyed world would be
bad news for life. A build-up of ice at
the poles or other cold spots could
shift its rotation axis and tilt the
entire world, says Dobrovolskis.
If there was any life on the planet,
this would be likely to cause mass
extinctions (Icarus, doi.org/x2c).
This is no longer theday of swashbucklingscientists trying to get asmany kills as possible
ray astronomers already use suchnetworks to scrutinise distantgalactic explosions, for instance.Minerva will be able to do that, aswell as observe asteroids crossingin front of stars, Wright says.
Funding has been one majormotivation to try off-the-shelftech, says Dave Charbonneau,also at the Harvard-SmithsonianCenter, who was one of the firstto build a planet-hunting systemusing commercially available
telescopes. His MEarth project hasbeen searching for small planetsorbiting red dwarf stars since2008 and has notched onediscovery so far. If you associatecost with a telescope like onenight of Keck time, or a few hoursof Hubble time that same cost
would allow you to buy yourown observatory, he says.
Astronomer Gspr Bakos atPrinceton University has been
remotely operating the HATNet(Hungarian-made AutomatedTelescope Network) project for10 years, and has publishedfindings on 56 planets.
The six HATNet telescopes areeach just 10 centimetres wide,but they function as a network.A companion project, HATSouth,has 24 telescopes spread acrossChile, Namibia and Australia. Thisprovides unprecedented coveragefor transit searches, Bakos says.The planets dont honour the
rotation of Earth, they transit attheir leisure. With a network, youcatch all the transits.
Strategic search
Meanwhile Laughlins custom-designed Automated PlanetFinder has been hunting planetsfrom a mountaintop in Californiasince last January. It has alreadybagged two exoplanet systems.Its most promising finds will be
candidates for follow-up searcheswith telescopes like the TransitingExoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS),set to launch in August 2017.
We have an opportunity toprobe these charismatic nearbystars, Laughlin says. Withoutthat ultra-high, dollar-per-secondKeck pressure on you, you canlook at things that you otherwisemight be scared to.
Since Keplers staggeringnumber of finds implied moststars probably have planets,
astronomers are increasinglyaiming for detailed planetstudies instead of just makingdiscoveries, Johnson says.
This is no longer the day ofswashbuckling scientists tryingto get as many kills as possible,he says. There is so much greatscience just sitting on the floorwith the Kepler statistics in hand,were no longer in the area ofplanet hunting. Were in the eraof planet gathering.
That means searching a smaller
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to show beyond any doubt thatit does actually work.
The NovoTTF-100A is no silverbullet though it usually onlyadds months to life, effectivelyslowing but not killing the cancer,although some users have goneon to live for more than 10 years.I would be interested to knowif it could be used for people like
me, whose tumours have not yetprogressed to a highly aggressiveglioblastoma. And while the ideaof killing cancer while I shop isappealing, the eye-watering costof 17,000 a month is less so.
Personalised vaccine
A cheaper alternative might bea personalised vaccine calledDCVax. Developed by NorthWestBiotherapeutics in Bethesda,Maryland, this approach uses
a persons own immune systemto attack their cancer.
Cancer vaccines have beentried before, but virtually all havefailed. Linda Powers of NorthWestBiotherapeutics says mostexisting attempts are trying torehabilitate immune cells thathave already been hobbled by thecancer. Her firms solution is to
rekindle a persons exhaustedimmune system by growingnew white blood cells for them.
The idea is that bone marrowcells that havent yet matured intoimmune cells are extracted froma persons blood and nurtured inthe lab into dendritic cells thearmy generals that organise therest of the brains immunesystem. Exposing these cells tobiomarkers from the personstumour primes them to seek anddestroy that particular cancer.
10 January 2015 |NewScientist |11
The finished batch of activated,educated immune cells are theninjected into the persons bloodto do their work.
And it is so far so good in earlytrials. One trial had an averagesurvival of around three years, andin some tests, a few individualshave gone on to survive morethan 10 years thats eight timesthe average of 15 months.
Applying this technique toan earlier stage glioma like minemight perhaps prevent it frommutating into a glioblastoma.And because it would be myimmune system doing the work,there are likely to be relatively few
side effects. For now Im crossingmy fingers randomised trialsfor people with glioblastoma arenow recruiting with early resultsexpected later this year.
Gene therapy
Meanwhile, Dror Harats of Israel-based VBL Therapeutics thinks hemay have devised a gene therapytechnique that could change myfuture. His strategy hits cancer
cells ability to divide by targetingtheir blood supply and starvingthem of the fuel they need.
As a tumour grows, it releaseschemical messengers that triggernew blood vessels to grow towardit, feeding its voracious appetitefor oxygen and nutrients.Through 20 years of research,Harats discovered that the cellslining these newly formingcapillaries have unique geneticfeatures that can be exploited. Histeam has genetically engineered
harmless adenoviruses to infect
the capillaries cells and inserta gene that triggers them toself-destruct.
In early human trials, thisexperimental treatment, calledVB-111, has fared remarkablywell, apart from some flu-like
symptoms. When tested on46 people with glioblastoma
for whom all other treatmentshad failed, those who receivedrepeated injections of virusparticles alongside standarddrugs survived for 18 months much higher than the averagelife expectancy for such patients,of around six months.
If these numbers hold up underrepeated testing then VB-111 willbe a landmark breakthrough,offering a longer, better qualityof life. It wouldnt work for me yet,
but could be an option once mytumour becomes a glioblastoma.But speaking personally and notas a doctor, I confess I have someirrational hang-ups about agenetically engineered viruscoursing through my blood.
Eyeing my options
As a doctor, I am encouraged thatthese treatments offer seriouspotential and as a patient, Imexcited by what they could offer
me. I would snatch anyones handoff to get a nanoparticle injectioninstead of an operation, and theanti-cancer hat could well treatmy tumour while I live a normallife, walking the dog or doing theshopping. Although none wouldcount as a cure, each of thesetreatments boasts a handful oflong-term survivors, and over thenext five to 10 years, it is possiblethat combined therapies couldturn this terminal condition intoa controllable one.
Stuarts glioma tumour
was discovered in his
frontal lobe during a
routine scan in 2008
Too sci-fi for some
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I would snatch anyoneshand off to get ananoparticle injectioninstead of an operation
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T W
Jessica Hamzelou
GUILTY or innocent? To helpthem decide, judges and juriesare often presented with reamsof evidence: crime scene photos,medical documents or suspectedbullet trajectories all on paper.But could allowing people towatch the crime unfold from thecomfort of the courtroom lead
to more informed judgments?This may soon be possible,
thanks to the virtual realityheadset Oculus Rift. Imagineyou could transport the entirejury, the judge, the litigators everybody back to the crimescene during the crime,says Jeremy Bailenson of theVirtual Human InteractionLab at Stanford University inCalifornia. That would be thebest thing possible for any trial.
Over the last few years,investigators have begun touse sophisticated technology tocapture 3D information about acrime scene. This can range fromusing MRI and CT scanners to geta detailed picture of peoplesinjuries to using lasers to mapthe entire scene.
However, when the case gets
to court, a lot gets disregarded.We have detailed measurementsand all this 3D information, butthen we hand it over on paper,and that comes with a loss ofinformation, says Lars Ebert atthe Institute of Forensic Medicinein Zurich, Switzerland.
In some cases, 3D informationis vital. Take gun crime.Conventionally, bullet trajectories
are presented on paper. Whatyou have is a line on paper, and itsdifficult to get an idea of how itmoved in space, says Ebert. But
the second you see it in 3D, youknow where it originated, where itgoes, how close all the people andobjects are.
To allow evidence to be assessedin 3D, Ebert and his colleaguesturned to Oculus Rift, a headsetused by gamers to provide animmersive environment. Theteam entered all the informationthe police had about a particularshooting into software for thedevice. This allowed them tocreate a 3D reconstruction of the
crime, complete with bullettrajectory (Forensic Science,Medicine and Pathology, doi.org/x2s). The team call their system
the forensic holodeck after theStar Treksimulated reality device
When Ebert presented thereconstruction of the gun crimeto police officers present at thescene, they were impressed. Thesaid: wow, that was exactly whatit was like when I was standingthere and the guy was shootingme, says Ebert.
Virtual reality could also allowjudges and juries to experienceanother persons line of sight, sayBailenson, which could be useful
when figuring out if a witnesscould have seen a suspect. But thicould have an unintended effect,cautions Damian Schofield at theState University of New York inOswego, who develops digitalreconstructions. Think of amurder scene: whether you viewit from the point of view of themurderer, the victim or a thirdperson will totally change yourperception of whats happening.
Before the forensic holodeck
can be used in court, Eberts teamwill have to ensure it accuratelyrepresents 3D environments.But Bailenson thinks that virtualreality could soon play a role incourtrooms around the world:There is an arms race among bigtech firms, and there are going tobe high quality, cheap head-mounted displays very soon.
Virtual reality puts
jury in crime scene
REUTERS
Bacteria several kilometresunderground may besurviving for hundredsof thousands of years
See through their eyes-
CAN evolution happen within a
lifetime rather than over many
generations? Bacteria living beneath
the sea floor seem to be showing that
it can. Even though they are unlikely
to be reproducing and undergoing
traditional natural selection, they
carry more genetic changes than
their cousins nearer the surface.
Over the last 30 years, it has
Deep life may
add new twistto evolution
become clear that microbes survive
several kilometres underground.
But nutrient levels drop off so rapidlywith depth that these mysterious
intraterrestrials can barely function,
let alone reproduce.
To find out if they show adaptations
to living in deep environments,
Brandon Briggs at Miami University in
Oxford, Ohio, and Frederick Colwell at
Oregon State University in Corvallis
sequenced and compared genomes
of Firmicutes bacteria sampled 21, 40
and 554 metres below the floor of the
Andaman Sea. The deepest sediments
were dated to 8.76 million years old.
The results show for the first time
that bacterial genomes change with
depth: the deepest microorganismscarry more mutations than their
shallower counterparts in genes
coding for processes like cell division.
Briggs presented the findings at the
American Geophysical Union Fall
Meeting in San Francisco last month.
Its not yet clear if the mutations
help bacteria survive or are harmful.
They could indicate that the bacteria
go through many generations within
the deep biosphere, says Hans Ryat Aarhus University in Denmark.
However, there seems to be too little
energy available at such depths to
allow the microbes to reproduce.
Yet, in theory, bacteria in these
environments grow so slowly that
they may survive for hundreds of
thousands of years. So if you take
evolution in its broad sense to
mean genetic changes across
the population, then it might be
occurring even without cell division,
says Briggs. Colin Barras
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SURROUNDED by a wall of fireand angry Tanzanian villagers,the elephants were forced off acliff some 50 metres high. Whenthe dust settled, six of the herdlay dead. The now jubilant crowd
took selfies among the carcasses.It was a violent climax to a long-simmering conflict, which sawfarmers regularly lose harvestsas protected elephants raidedtheir crops. But on that summersevening in 2009, the inhabitantsof West Kilimanjaro reachedbreaking point, says SayuniMariki at the NorwegianUniversity of Life Sciences.
Unfortunately, the incidentis far from an isolated one.People regularly risk injury and
prosecution to attack protectedwildlife. Tigers and leopards havebeen beaten to death, wolves areillegally hunted and birds ofprey fall victim to poison, toname just a few.
On the surface the motivesseem simple: protecting peopleand their property. Scratch alittle deeper though, says Mariki,and it becomes clear that theanimals are often just convenientscapegoats. The real hatred isreserved for conservationists
and government officials.Mariki arrived in West
Kilimanjaro in the aftermathof the elephant killings to find adisenfranchised and disillusionedvillage. Conservation policies had
restricted access to ancestrallands, reducing the settlementto an island in a sea of gamereserves. Locals watchedpowerlessly as private safarioperators and governmentofficials became rich from the
booming tourist trade, while their
crops were regularly destroyed.Local communities feel that
wild animals are valued morethan people by the authorities,says Miriki. Her interviews withthose involved in the slaughter,now published, reveal that killingthe elephants was as much aboutrebelling against this state ofaffairs as protecting crops andlivelihoods (Land Use Policy,doi.org/xz8). Similar motivationsappear to drive violence inBangladeshi villages plagued
by tiger attacks (BiologicalConservation, doi.org/xz9).
So what is the solution?Governments should stopimposing conservation ruleson communities and insteadinvolve them in discussions,giving them power over howwildlife protection is carriedout on their lands, says FrancineMadden of the conservation
group Human-Wildlife ConflictCollaboration.Offering local people a social
or financial stake in conservationseems to have worked in EastAfrica. Here, lion-killing Masaiwarriors have swapped spearsfor radio antennas and are nowamong the species most dedicatedguardians (Conservation Biology,doi.org/x2b).
And in the Sundarbans regionof Bangladesh a charity calledWild Team is training villagers
how to deal with tiger incursions and tiger killings are down asa result. Locals no longer feelpowerless and so are less likely totake out their frustrations on anunlucky big cat, says Chloe Inskipat the University of Kent, UK,an author of the study on tigerkillings in Bangladesh. If youdont understand these deeperlevels of the conflict, it is just likeputting a plaster on it withoutgetting to the root of the problem,she says. Jan Piotrowski
MOST of us arent fond of our flab but
perhaps its time to see it in a new
light. Fat cells may be among our first
line of defence against pathogens.
Fat has an additional role we
didnt suspect, says Jay Kolls of
the University of Pittsburgh.
Beyond physical barriers such as
skin, our main protection against
marauding bacteria and viruses is the
immune system. This is a complex
network of cells with sophisticated
weapons such as antibodies, which
recognise and destroy foreign cells
and proteins. But although many
microbes multiply rapidly, it can take
days for antibody production to ramp
up. It now seems fat cells also play a
defensive role and they respond
more speedily than many parts of
the immune system.
A team led by Richard Gallo of the
University of California, San Diego,
injected mice withStaphylococcus
aureusbacteria under the skin. Within
hours, the subcutaneous fat cells had
released a chemical called cathelicidin.
This is thought to disrupt bacterial
cell membranes and is also known to
harm viruses, although it is unclear
exactly how. Compared with these
animals, another set of mice that had
been genetically modified to have
hardly any fat cells developed much
worse infections when exposed to
the bacteria. This suggests the
cathelicidin-producing fat cells
had a protective effect.
Gallos team was also able to show
that human fat cells grown in the labsecrete cathelicidin, so something
similar may happen in people
(Science, doi.org/x2w).
But more fat does not equal more
protection. In fact, people who are
obese have a higher rate of soft-tissue
infections. Kolls thinks this might be
because obese people are more likely
to have type 2 diabetes, in which fat
cells are resistant to insulin. This may
also reduce cathelicidin production.
A little bit of fat is good too much is
not good, he says. Clare Wilson
When conservationefforts lead to slaughter
Beaten to death
Local communities feelthat wild animals arevalued more than peopleby the authorities
Celebrate yourfat its fighting
off infection
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HAD one too many? Alcohol canwreak havoc on your immunesystem from the moment youstart imbibing.
Majid Afshar, who treatstrauma patients at LoyolaUniversity Health System inChicago, wondered if alcoholconsumption might affect hispatients immune functioning,and hence their treatment.
He and his colleagues asked
volunteers to down 4 or 5 shotsof vodka within 20 minutes taking them over the drink-driving limit. They took bloodsamples from the participantsover the next few hours.
The team isolated immunecells from the samples, presentedthem with proteins found onpotentially harmful bacteria andmeasured their response. Theyfound that, at first, the immune
system ramps up, but withina few hours there is an anti-inflammatory phase duringwhich its responses are weakened(Alcohol, doi.org/xvn).
It is the first time immediateeffects of alcohol on the humanimmune system have beenobserved. If binge drinkingcan start affecting a personsimmune system and the waythey respond to illness or injury within an hour, doctors shouldtake this into account, says Afshar.
Climate change bearsdown on hapless pandas
GIANT pandas, prepare to move out. Shifting these
creatures to distant reserves may be essential if they
are to survive the likely impacts of climate change.
Pandas are well known for their pernickety bamboo
diet and lacklustre sex lives. Wild populations have been
reduced to a tiny gene pool and are under new pressure
from the explosive growth in road-building in China.
Taking these factors into account, Ming Xu of Rutgers
University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and colleagues
have modelled how pandas geographical range could be
further affected by climate change.
They found that even the most conservative scenarios,
which foresee an average of 1 C warming globally by
2100, could result in habitat suitable for pandas more
than halving by 2070 (Biological Conservation, doi.org/
xz7). To make matters worse, panda populations could
also become more fragmented. Xus analysis predicts
that the average size of panda habitats would decrease
by about 19 per cent. That means small groups, such
as the 29 animals that live in the Daxiang mountains of
south-west China, could become cut off from the rest
of the population and face a greater risk of dying out.
On the upside, Xu predicts that some areas to the
north of the pandas current mountainous homelands
could become suitable. Planting bamboo there now
could prime them for panda relocation in the future.
Booze hits immune system immediately
Volcanic iron heldback complex life
THOSE darned subsea volcanoesmessed up our arrival. The ironthey spewed out seems to havepoisoned the microbes neededto produce enough oxygen forcomplex life to take off.
Cyanobacteria can releaseoxygen through photosynthesis.Elizabeth Swanner of theUniversity of Tbingen inGermany and her colleaguesexposed modern cyanobacteriato levels of iron present in theprimordial oceans. The microbes
ability to release oxygen fell by upto 70 per cent (Nature Geoscience,DOI: 10.1038/ngeo2327).
The next logical step is to askhow this delayed the evolution ofoxygen-demanding life forms,says Swanner. Cyanobacteriaappeared 3 billion years ago,but it took another half a billionyears before oxygen levels couldsupport complex life. Swannersfinding may help to explain thelong wait.
Bright black holeblasted early Earth
LIFE on Earth could once havebeen seared by the galaxys heart.
Some black holes are ringed bydiscs of glowing hot matter, butthe one at the Milky Ways centreshines only at radio wavelengths.There is evidence that it used tobe more active, though, so Xian
Chen and Pau Amaro-Seoanefrom the Max Planck Institute forGravitational Physics in Potsdam,Germany, modelled its pastbehaviour. They found its X-rayoutput, as seen from Earth, couldonce have matched the suns.
If so, early Earth could havebeen bathed in X-rays as if hit by amodern solar flare, but for muchlonger periods. This would havedisturbed the ancient ozone layerand ionosphere, perhaps harmingearly life (arxiv.org/abs/1412.5592).
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Heart surgeonsaway? No sweat
IF YOU have a serious heart problemjust when the top surgeons are
away at a medical conference,
take heart. Their absence could
increase your chances of survival.
Harvard Medical School
healthcare policy researcher
Anupam Jena and colleagues
examined tens of thousands of
people who were admitted to
hospital with a heart attack, heart
failure or cardiac arrest between
2002 and 2011. Among the most
severe cases of cardiac arrest,
70 per cent of those admitted
when no cardiology conference was
taking place died within 30 days.
But among those admitted when
expert cardiologists were away at
meetings, the corresponding death
rate was 60 per cent (JAMA Internal
Medicine, doi.org/xzw).
The results suggest that for the
most seriously ill heart patients, the
risks of emergency interventions
such as artery widening may
outweigh the benefits, Jena says.
The findings should not lead to a
change in doctors practice without
further research, but should be
seen more as a warning signal
that very ill people sometimes
receive too many interventions.
All patients are not the same: the
risk that they can tolerate is very
different, he says. In some cases
that might mean we have to treat
patients more conservatively.
The crab that thinks its a frog
IS IT a frog? Is it a crab? One look at
a frog crab leaning forward on its
front legs explains its name, but
how these curious animals evolvedhas long been a mystery.
Ranina ranina, pictured, is the
largest and best-known of the frog
crabs. Its long, narrow body and
paddle-like limbs look uncannily
frog-like but its hard shell and 10 legs
mark it out as a crab, and a true one at
that, rather than a crab only in name
like a hermit crab. Most true crabs
have bodies at least as wide as they
are long, and they scuttle sideways.
Frog crabs, however, are slimmer
and move forward and back.
People used to think that frog
crabs were very primitive because
of their odd-looking long bodies,says Javier Luque of the University
of Alberta in Canada. Now, having
reanalysed the fossil record,
Luque has shown that they
actually evolved after what we
think of as modern crabs.
He says frog crabs evolved
their narrow bodies as they adapted
to burrowing into ocean-floor
sediments, starting about 125 million
years ago (Journal of Systematic
Palaeontology, doi.org/xzz).
THIS gas giant is rotting at thecore. According to the most
precise calculations yet, heavyelements from Jupiters coreare diffusing into its gassybody about twice as fast aspreviously thought.
Jupiter formed when rockand ice from the disc of materialaround the young sun coalesced.The gravity of this dense corethen swept up 300 Earth-massesof hydrogen and helium. Therock and ice sank to the centreof the gas giant, but it wont staythere forever. Earlier calculations
treating atoms in the core asbilliard balls found that every so
often, some of them will detachand mix into the surroundinghydrogen and helium that is,the core will dissolve like a sugarcube in water. But it was unclearhow fast that process would be.
Now, Hugh Wilson at RMITUniversity in Melbourne,Australia, has used a quantum-mechanical model to calculatehow carbon, silicon and iron three key elements in the core would diffuse into the fluid layer.His model found diffusion rates
twice those calculated by theearlier models. When the Juno
spacecraft arrives at Jupiter in2016, he says there might just bea partially eroded husk of theplanets original core (Icarus,doi.org/xwp).
Juno will give us excellent daton Jupiters gravitational field,but thats not enough informatioto work out the interior structureon its own, Wilson adds. Coreerosion may complicate analysis,so Wilson says its important topin down its rate to make senseof Junos view of Jupiters insides.
Jupiters eroding core may already be just a husk
Secret of cancersinsidious spread
TO INVADE different parts of thebody, cancer cells learn to switchbetween two modes of moving.Now we know how.
Many types of cell move aroundthe body. For example, fibroblastsmove in to help skin wounds heal,
using adhesive forces to slideforward. If the cut gets infected,white blood cells rush inpropelling themselves usingelectrostatic forces, among others.
Many invasive cancers havelearned both methods, switchingbetween them to suit theirenvironment. To find out how,Erik Sahai from Cancer ResearchUK in London looked at cellsmoving in the egg sac of fruitflies and tweaked genes to workout which proteins are important
for this. Next, he searcheddatabases to see if any of theseproteins also go awry in cancer,hitting upon a bundle called theSTRIPAK complex.
Without these misbehavingproteins, the cells are locked intothe fibroblastic mode and areless dangerous, says Sahai. Heplans to look at whether peoplewith these proteins are morelikely to have invasive cancer,work which could guide treatment(Nature Cell Biology, doi.org/xzv).
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TOLOY
Cooking by numbersCould Watsons supercomputing power help Niall Firthinject somepizzazz into his cooking?
I LIKE to think Im a pretty goodcook. Im adventurous, have adecent understanding of thetechniques required and I haventpoisoned anyone yet. But I stillfind myself cooking the sametried-and-trusted favourites,using the same old ingredients.
To shake things up, I ask totest the prototype of a cookingapp that uses the brain of IBMsWatson supercomputer to inventnew dishes.
The key to the ChefWatson
app is the supercomputersability to devour large amountsof information and make linksbetween chunks of it. It hasalready proved its mettle bywinning the quiz showJeopardy!and is being used to help doctorsmake cancer diagnoses atMemorial Sloan KetteringHospital in New York. Now itis attempting to do somethingcomputers usually find difficult:using creativity to invent recipespeople will actually want to eat.
To provide the data, IBMteamed up with US recipe websiteBon Appetit. This has a databaseof more than 9000 recipes, taggedaccording to their ingredients, typeof dish and cooking style Cajunor Thai, for example. Watsoncreates a statistical correlationbetween ingredients, styles andrecipe steps in the database anduses this to work out whichingredients usually go together
and what each type of foodrequires. Thats how it knowsthat a burrito, a burger and a soupall need different elements, saysIBMs Steve Abrams. It knows aburrito always needs a wrapper ofsome sort, whereas soup alwaysneeds liquid. Thats how you dontget a runny burrito.
To use the app, the cook firsttypes in an ingredient they wantto use. Next, they decide the
amount of experimentation theywant Watson to take, rangingfrom Keep it classic to Surpriseme. Watson then offers the cook
further ingredients, styles anddishes that it thinks usually gowell with the initial ingredient.They can promote or excludeingredients by clicking the Loveit or Hate it buttons. Finally,the cook hits search, and Watsonanalyses its database to come upwith a range of basic recipes thatcan then be further tweaked tomake them more or lessexperimental.
If the cook wants to ramp it up,a database of flavour compounds
found in a wide range of foods isalso consulted and used tocombine ingredients that shouldtheoretically fit together, such asvodka and Brussels sprouts, orcauliflower and chrysanthemum.Psychological research into whatflavours people find more or lesspleasant is taken into account(PLoS Computational Biology,doi.org/fsw6fd), as is a surprisescore for combinations ofingredients: the higher the score
the less often they are found inrecipes together.As you move to the
experimental end of the scale,youre looking less at whatingredients go nicely together andmore at the flavour compoundsthat the ingredients have incommon, says Abrams. It worksout what things might go togetherthat youd never think of.
Well, thats the theory at least.
An unexpected taste sensation-
Serves 6
INGREDIENTS
450g turkey
Frozen pastry
Half a seeded, minced Thai chili
1 tsp rice flour
Dash lemongrass
Green curry paste
1 head lettuce
500g potato, chopped
13 spring onions, chopped
1 tsp vegetable oil
>
Olive oil spray
115g Gruyre, diced
100g provolone cheese
SUGGESTED STEPS
1. Cook lettuce in boiling water
2. Drain and squeeze dry
3. Heat vegetable oil
4. Add spring onions and Thai chili
and saut for about 7 minutes
5. Finely chop turkey, cheeses,
lemongrass and rice flour
6. Transfer to bowl and stir in spring
onions, lettuce and potato
7. Season with salt and pepper
8. Preheat oven to 180 C
9. Spray large baking sheet with oil
10. Stack pastry in layers and spray
with olive oil
11. Spread turkey mixture down
centre of pastry
12. Fold short sides of pastry over
filling, then roll up into log
13. Bake for about 40 minutes
14. Spoon green curry paste on the
side and serve
THAI TURKEY STRUDEL LA CHEFWATSON
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ONE PER CENT
Raking robots insta-art at the beach
No, its not alien art. A robotic beach artist has created giant
drawings in the sand. Developed by Paul Beardsley from
Disney Research Zurich and colleagues at the Swiss Federal
Institute of Technology, the wheeled robot can recreate a
drawing sent to it from a phone or tablet. It computes a path
across the sand that approximates the artwork and sets off.
A rake attached to its rear etches the pattern in the sand.
Each drawing takes about 10 minutes, and the idea is that
the robot could be controlled remotely, allowing a beach to
be turned into a digitally controlled sketchbook. It was
presented at Techfest in Mumbai, India, in late December.
After this talk, politicians will
presumably wear gloves whentalking in public
HackerJan Krissler, aka Starbug, speaking at the Chaos
Communication Congress in Hamburg. He claims to have copied
the fingerprint of a German politician from photos of her hands
Map an entire room through a keyhole
A laser imaging technique could let spies map a room in
secret. Chenfei Jin of the Harbin Institute of Technology in
China and colleagues measured the three-dimensional
shape and position of three cardboard letters in a room,
spelling HIT, by firing lasers through a 2-centimetre-wide
hole in a wall. Laser pulses bounced off walls to hit the lettersbefore passing back through the hole and scattering into a
camera, revealing the details (Optics Letters, doi.org/x2t).
10.8mThe number of smart watches that the Consumer Electronics
Association expects will be sold in 2015. The association runs
the Consumer Electronics Show, held in Las Vegas this week
building, says Simons.At the end of this month, the
first games designed specificallyfor the space will be announced.
But this cant just be a thing forbearded men in their 30s to getexcited about, says Simons. Asa public space, the NVA is alsoaimed at families and schools.Simons is excited aboutcommissioning celebrated gamedesigners, but says it is equallyimportant that a 10-year-old cancome in and program thebuildings LEDs to chase eachother around the walls.
Screen-free gamingThere are going to be a lot ofgames that people recognise,Simons says. Classic arcade gameslikePac-Mancould sit alongsideconsole hits like Tomb Raider. Butthis is as much about making, hesays. The best way to learn aboutgames isnt always to play them.Its to make them too. And thiswill be a home for that activity.
The NVA may be the most highprofile UK project to date, but
theres a big revival in arcades,says London-based game designerGeorge Buckenham.
There are at least four gamingbars in London now. That wasntthe case a few years ago. Thesame is happening in the US, withvenues like the LA Game Spaceand Barcade in New York.
Then there are events like WildRumpus, which Buckenham helpsorganise. This and other eveningevents are showcases forexperimental games, like
ROFLpillar, that use screens orcontrollers in novel ways. Manydo without screens entirely.
QuickDraw a homage to gun-slinging Westerns uses thePlayStation Move motioncontroller as a pistol in a gamewhere the fastest-drawncontroller wins. InJohannSebastian Joust, players must holdtheir Move controller as steady aspossible while trying to jostleothers into moving theirs all tothe accompaniment of J. S. Bachs
Brandenburg Concertos. Withoutthe need for screens these gamescan be set up and played almostanywhere, even outdoors.
Similarly, Searchlight designedby Hide&Seek uses MicrosoftsKinect motion sensor in a gamewhere players have to moveobjects out of the game spacewithout being caught by a rovingspotlight. It is played on the floor,again without need for a screen.
The mix of digital and physicalelements helps make games moreaccessible. Unlike in traditionalarcades, the idea is to cater forpeople who are not typicalgamers, says Buckenham. These
weird, experimental interfacesare actually a great leveller. Nomatter how experienced you are,youre still going to be doing thesame ridiculous thing and youvegot a similar chance of winning.
As Simons notes, theperformance aspect is often key.Only a handful of people can playa game at any one time, butwatching can be as fun as playing.One of the main things we look atfor Wild Rumpus is this sense of
spectacle, says Buckenham. Itshould feel like an event, a thingyou can only see there.
For example, Buckenham has
made a game calledPunch theCustard, specifically designed tobe played in public spaces. Itdoesnt really make sense other
than that, he says. He has alsomade a version of the popularconsole gameProteusthat isplayed on a trampoline. In it, youbounce around the games pretty,pixelated world like a giant rabbit.
Being able to enjoy watchingthe games even if you dontplay yourself is important, saySimons and Buckenham. One ofthe best things to hear is someonesaying, I didnt think I was intogames, but this is amazing,Buckenham says.
The weird, experimentalinterfaces are a greatleveller. Youre all doingthe same ridiculous thing
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Stop thief!
SWOOP and its gone. Hawaiians call the
frigatebird iwa, meaning thief. The metre-long
bird evolved not only to hunt the seas, but tosteal from those that do. Here one acrobatically
grabs a piece of fish offal from the gaping jaws
of a pelican.
Wildlife photographer Michael Poliza
snapped this photo of a frigatebird living up to
its Hawaiian name off the Galapagos Islands in
October. We were at anchor and local fishermen
were offering their catch, Poliza recalls.
They were cleaning the fish and all kinds of
birds were coming by. The pelican was able to
scoop up this fish. As hes trying to swallow
which the pelican does by opening up his mouth
and jiggling around a bit the frigatebird comes
by and scoops the fish out of the pelicans mouth,
perfectly timed.
This sense of timing helps the frigatebird to
catch its other favoured prey, flying fish.
Frigatebirds cant waterproof their feathers,
so they accomplish all this without ever touching
the water, relying on agile flying. Hal Hodson
Photographer
Michael Poliza
michaelpoliza.com
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The Kiwi comedownHailed as an alternative to the war on drugs, New Zealands stalledattempt to end prohibition has lessons for the world, says Ross Bell
JUST 18 months ago, New Zealandwas the talk of the worlds druglaw reformers. It had set up asystem to allow new recreationaldrugs to gain official approval andbe sold legally. Moreover, it had
won sweeping parliamentarysupport for this the PsychoactiveSubstances Act was passed witha solitary vote against. It seemedthat a government had finallytaken the bold step towardsending prohibition.
And yet now it is far from clearthat the law will ever be usedto approve a drug. A panickygovernment amendmentmay have made it unworkable.What happened has lessons
for others seeking a better waythan the failed war on drugs tominimise the problems relatedto psychoactive substances.
The act was meant to establisha process for new psychoactivesubstances to be tested and, ifposing only a low risk of harm,approved for sale. Regulationswould cover testing, importation,manufacture and sale. Politiciansseemed to understand that lowrisk did not mean no risk.
The law was attempting to get
to grips with a market that hadbeen raging for years. Designerdrugs were emerging one after theother in a chaotic, unregulatedretail environment before beingdeclared illegal. For example,the party pills BZP and TFMPPappeared in New Zealand inaround 2000 and were bannedin 2008. No deaths had beenattributed to them and they mayhave reduced methamphetamineuse. But they were associated withbinge drinking and emergency
hospital admissions. By the timethey were banned, 1 in 5 NewZealanders had used them.
In 2005, the first in a series ofsynthetic cannabinoids reachedNew Zealand. They were
progressively outlawed, but eachtime one with a slightly differentchemical structure would pop up.Eventually, associate heathminister Peter Dunne acceptedthat this game of whack-a-molecould not continue andchampioned the new law.
The act established an interimperiod in which some productsand suppliers could apply fortemporary licences while the finalregulations were written. All thedrugs granted interim licences
in their communities. Theybecame a focus for the media.Some looked disreputable whenjournalists visited. In addition,personal stories of chaos and woereceived widespread coverage.
That these problems haddeveloped in the unregulatedmarket or were caused byproducts already removedwere of little consequence.
On top of this, an alreadyunder-resourced regulatoryauthority was sluggish to respondThe interim regime was leftcarrying more weight, and forlonger, than had been anticipatedImports could not be checked forpurity as required, and obtaining
and delivering certificates ofanalysis proved a challenge forall concerned. It became difficultto say exactly what was in someproducts the very opposite ofwhat had been intended.
Despite these problems,perhaps the real damage was donebefore the act was even passed.The early, relatively benignsynthetic cannabinoids had beenbanned for years. When the actpassed, only so-called third-generation cannabimimetics
were still legal. Their harms werepoorly understood.
In May, amid the media panic,the government rushed throughan amendment ending the interimlicensing period and removingall the drugs from sale. The actremains in place. Indeed, its ingood shape. The long-awaitedregulations for manufacturing,importing and research andproduct approvals were signed ofin July and are in force. Those forwholesaling and retailing are on
OO
were synthetic cannabinoids.At the same time, the wider
market was sharply curtailed.The number of retail outletsfor legal highs was slashed,from as many as 4000 to fewer
than 170. The number of productsfell from around 200 to fewerthan 50. There was evidencethat related hospital admissionsfell, along with reports to theNational Poisons Centre.
The purge also magnifiedattention on the remainingoutlets, largely unwelcome
All drugs are again illegaland thus back in the blackmarket. Familiar patternsof abuse are returning
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Flies arent all badThe common housefly is both friend and foe it spreadsdisease but may also help us fight it, saysJeffrey Scott
OL
Jeffrey Scottis a professor of entomology at
Cornell Universitys College of Agriculture and
Life Sciences in Ithaca, New York. He researches
insect genetics, insecticide resistance and
evolutionary biology
You led recent efforts to unravel the common
housefly genome. Why is this important?
It is an insect that transmits a lot of diseases to
humans and to animals. It also rapidly evolves
resistance to insecticides, so having the genome
sequence will help us research how resistance
develops so we can try to tackle it.
Does the housefly pre-date humans?
It is not entirely clear, but it looks like houseflies
and humans co-evolved. The spread of humansfrom Africa to the rest of the world is similar to
that of houseflies, which also migrated out of
Africa. This is a species that was very much tied
to human activities: the availability of human and
animal waste provided sites for laying eggs and
larval growth. If humans died out, the housefly
would probably go too.
Tell me about the houseflys dark side.
They transmit a few hundred different diseases.
They have the ability to move a pathogen from
a source fluid to our food, for example, or directly
into our eyes. As long as the pathogen in the
source is concentrated enough, this can cause
disease. A good example is fly-transmitted
trachoma. The World Health Organization says
this is the cause of 6 million current cases of
blindness, with houseflies a major carrier. There
is an ongoing debate about whether they can
transmit the Ebola virus.
Could knowing the housefly genome help
prevent the fly-based spread of disease?
New technologies allow us to turn genes off
things like RNA interference. Potentially we could
give flies a bait containing RNA that turns off an
immune gene that protects them against one of
the diseases they carry. This would be a species
specific, environmentally safe control method.
But you also think we should appreciate
houseflies a little more?
Certainly. Theyre a nuisance and we would prefer
them not to make us sick, but they do good in the
world too. In the aftermath of the earthquake and
tsunami in the north of Japan in 2011, houseflies
were obviously a concern in terms of transmitting
diseases, but a colleague saw that they were also
very important in decomposing the mess that was
created. They are also beneficial as decomposers
of animal waste in livestock facilities. If the
massive amounts of manure generated at farming
facilities were not decomposed by fly larvae, it
would create a big environmental problem.
Could we turn any of the houseflys geneticweapons to our advantage?
Houseflies have a significant number of
antimicrobial peptides in their saliva. There has
been a longstanding practice of treating wounds
with fly larvae. This is usually done with blowflies,
but houseflies have been used as well. If you
isolate the gene that makes the antimicrobial
peptide, you could potentially make it in the
lab and produce buckets of it. The possibility
of sourcing new antimicrobial compounds from
the housefly is a real one.
Interview by Jon White
track for the second half of 2015.But one part of the amendment
has thrown a bomb into the works.It banned the use of animal
testing results, in New Zealand orelsewhere, to show that a productmet the no more than a low riskof harm standard. But a seniorMinistry of Health official saidrecently that at this point in time,it is not possible to have a productapproved without animal testing.
The idea of a law that appliessimilar testing standards to thesesubstances as any other approveddrug to ensure it is not genotoxicfor example is now broken. Allrecreational drugs are outlawed,
and thus back in the hands of theblack market. Familiar patterns ofsubstance abuse are returning tothe street and the internet is stilla broad channel for the importof untested drugs. Chances ofthe animal-testing ban beingrescinded look slight for now.
The lessons? The interim periodmay have caused more problemsthan it solved. The delay inintroducing a proper regulatoryinfrastructure was harmful. But
more than that, New Zealandsexperience has shown the perilsof attempting to regulate newpsychoactive substances withoutreviewing drug law as a whole. Thefirst synthetic cannabis product,having been on the market forfive years unnoticed and problem-free, was banned under the vague,sweeping analogue provisions ofthe countrys Misuse of Drugs Act.How different might things havebeen if that product had stillbeen around?
It makes little sense to dealwith new substances in isolation.If there is a solution to the difficultproblem of seeking alternativesto the war on drugs, it very likelylies not only in looking forward,as New Zealand attempted, butalso looking back and reflectingon the laws we already have.
Ross Bellis executive director of the
New Zealand Drug Foundation, which
aims to prevent and reduce harm from
drug use via evidence-based policies
ONE MINUTE INTERVIEW
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In the next decade, NASAs Asteroid Redirect
Mission (ARM) aims to capture an asteroid,
put it into orbit around the moon and then
send astronauts to it. Why?
The mission has critical technologies that weneed to develop for our ambition to get peopleto Mars, such as solar electric propulsion,which is a fuel-efficient way to move cargoslowly. Well need that technology to deliver
bulky supplies to Mars in advance of a crewsarrival. The astronauts cant haul much cargobecause they need to get to Mars in a smaller,faster vehicle to ensure less exposure to thehazardous space environment.
Republicans now control the US Congress and
some want to pull the plug on ARM. Whats your
message to them?
If we are going to get people to Mars in the2030s which is an important goal and onethat I think has strong bipartisan support then we need to make a convincing argumentthat we have to test new technologies in a
stepwise fashion. While I wish we could gethumans to Mars in 2025, we simply dont havethe technology, so we have got to find bite-sized, affordable chunks that we can do one ata time to get to where were going. NASA feelsstrongly that ARM is the first bite-sized chunkthat fits within a responsible budget.
When Barack Obama became president, he
switched focus from a return to the moon to
putting humans on Mars. Did you approve?
I thought that was a great move. I want to findout if theres life on Mars and the only wayI think we are going to do that is by sending
OL
Ellen Stofanis a
planetary geologist and
NASAs chief scientist.
She is an associate
member of the Cassini
mission to Saturn and a
co-investigator on the
Mars Express missions
MARSIS experiment
OO TVW
First anasteroid,then MarsWe cant put people on the Red Planetyet, but just wait till the 2030s, saysNASA chief scientist Ellen Stofan
astronauts and a laboratory there to answerthat question. When you get too focused onthe moon, you start developing all kinds oftechnologies that you actually dont need to
get to Mars.
Arent crewed missions a distraction from
the science objectives, given their added
cost and complexity?
What we can accomplish scientifically byputting scientists on the surface is huge. Andits not just about overcoming the 10 minutesit takes to relay commands from Earth to therovers on Mars its about human intuition.Im a trained geologist: I can read a landscape,I know which rocks to pick up and knock open,and when to move on to the next one. Do youknow how far the Mars rover Opportunity has
moved in 10 years? Twenty kilometres. I cango 20 kilometres in a day. OK, maybe Idmove more slowly on Mars, maybe Id onlygo 10 kilometres in a day. Robots are great,
but at this point they have nowhere near thecapability of a human. As much as I love ourrovers, a human can do in hours what it takesrobots years to accomplish.
Current Mars rovers were sent with no
experiments that would detect life directly.
Was that a mistake?
Research has shown that cosmic radiationwould sterilise the upper 2 metres of Mars ina fairly short period probably just thousandof years. We dont yet have the capability toaccess the depths where scientists are moreoptimistic there could still be extant life.
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Will the next NASA rover, the Mars 2020 lander,
be able to dig down 2 metres?
It has the ability to drill, but not that deep. Weare going to be drilling to take a core sample,
but we are talking centimetres in depth,definitely not even a metre. That samplewill be cached. We will use remote sensinginstruments to look at the hole, but the coreitself will go into a container for possiblepick-up and return to Earth in the future.
Will samples of Martian soil have to wait for a
crewed mission to pick them up?
Im optimistic that we can do it sooner. Goingto Mars, landing a lot of mass on the surface,taking off, rendezvousing in orbit, returningto Earth thats the story of sending humansto Mars. Dont we want to do that in a
completely robotic way before we risk sendinghumans to do the same thing?
What types of experiments do you favour
sending to Mars to answer the life question?Chiefly a sophisticated mass spectrometerthat can not only detect whether organics arepresent, but can also identify exactly whatthey are. And imagers to look at microscopicfeatures in rock in case there could be anyfossils. We dont think the time frame inwhich life could have existed on Mars wasextraordinarily long, so we are notanticipating extremely complex life forms,but instead single-celled, perhaps multi-celledorganisms. They are going to be hard to find.
Ultimately we still need to bring backsamples to do sophisticated analysis. That also
means that when technology advances we willstill have a sample on which to perform moretests. Remember, we are still looking at moonrocks 40 years on and learning new things.
How hard will it be to get clear proof of life?
The complex thing is going to be getting thescientific community to agree that what weare seeing is real evidence of life. Thats where
the rub is going to come. People love to thinkthat scientists all agree, but in reality we like toargue. Any evidence we find is going to create
a big scientific debate, unless it looks just likelife on Earth. Thats why Im so keen onsending people to Mars. I think its going totake human sampling and analysis in situ toactually figure it out.
What are the main barriers to putting people
on Mars?
We understand from instruments on earliermissions that you would get an unacceptablyhigh dose of radiation, mostly due to cosmicradiation, on the journeys between Earth andMars. We havent figured out yet how to
completely shield people from that.Also, astronauts have to be able to get upand work when they get to Mars. We saw a crewthat returned recently after six months on theInternational Space Station. They had to behelped out of the capsule. It takes a while toadjust. How are we going to make sure thatwhen astronauts get to Mars after a journeyof at least six months they are healthyenough to work and return home? We have alot of work to do, mostly on the space stationover the next 10 years, to learn how to mitigatethe effects of microgravity on humans.
Whats your take on private projects aimingto get people to Mars in the next decade?
If someone says they can do it in the 2020s,boy do I want to see how they are doingatmospheric entry, descent and landing. Ourgoal is to land astronauts safely and get themhome, but we dont yet know how to land largeamounts of mass on the surface of Mars safely.Mars has a very thin atmosphere. You arrive atreally high speed and you have to slow yourselfdown. We are working on the technologies todo that, but were not there yet.
Interview byJon White
CHRISGUNN/NASA
I love our Mars rovers, but ahuman can do in hours whatit takes robots years to do
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WHAT is now? It is an idea that physicstreats as a mere illusion, yet it issomething we are all familiar with.
We tend to think of it as this current instant,
a moment with no duration. But if now weretimeless, we wouldnt experience a successionof nows as time passing. Neither would webe able to perceive things like motion. Wecouldnt operate in the world if the presenthad no duration. So how long is it?
That sounds like a metaphysical question,but neuroscientists and psychologists havean answer. In recent years, they have amassedevidence indicating that now lasts on averagebetween 2 and 3 seconds. This is the now youare aware of the window within which yourbrain fuses what you are experiencing into apsychological present. It is surprisingly long.
But thats just the beginning of the weirdness.There is also evidence that the now youexperience is made up of a jumble of minisubconscious nows and that your brain is
choosy about what events it admits into yournows. Different parts of the brain measurenow in different ways. Whats more, thewindow of perceived now can expand insome circumstances and contract in others.
Now is clearly a slippery concept.Nevertheless, it would be good to pin it downbecause it could tell us something about thebigger picture of how the brain tracks time.Not just that, the perception of the present isalso crucial to how we experience the world. Ifevents appear simultaneous when they arent,that has implications for our understandingof what causes what. Your sense of nowness
underpins your entire conscious experience,says Marc Wittmann at the Institute forFrontier Areas of Psychology and MentalHealth in Freiburg, Germany. Understanding
now even helps us address the question ofwhether we have free will.
We have long known that the brain containstructures that use cycles of light and dark toset its daily clock. How it tracks the passingof seconds and minutes is much less wellunderstood. At this level, there are two broadtypes of timing mechanism, an implicit andan explicit one. The explicit one relates tohow we judge duration something weresurprisingly good at. The implicit mechanismis the timing of now it is how the braindefines a psychological moment and sostructures our conscious experience.
O N C EU P O N
AT I M E
Think you live in the present? Its all an illusion createdby your brain, says Laura Spinney
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