BBC Knowledge AE 2016 (Vol. 8 Issue 1)

Contents

Vol. 8 Issue 1

NATURE

SCIENCE

SCIENCE

SCIENCE

NATURE

HISTORY

SCIENCE

NATURE

FEATURES

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28 Sweet & Low Imagine this, a world where food is scarce and you have to use your own body to stockpile them. That is what honeypot ants do and besides feeding their colonies, they are a sweet treat for Native Americans as well as Aborigines in Australia ON THE COVER

35 All By Myself You may have watched Ridley Scott’s The Martian on the silver screen, we examine the effects of extreme isolation on the human psyche and find out it concerns much more than the basic needs of food, oxygen and hydration

42 The War Without An End The brutality of a war doesn’t end with a truce or a victory as this article proves, despite a victory accorded to the allies on 8th May 1945, survivors of the war enact their own brand of revenge against German speakers throughout Europe

28 Sweet & Low

ON THE COVER

48 Nature’s Nightmare Animals Forget vampires, mummies and zombies, these animals are the epitome that the truth or reality is weirder and stranger than fiction, we feature some of nature’s truly living, breathing monsters ON THE COVER

52 Real Life Superhumans Many scientists have always believed that we humans have yet to unlock our true potential, meet the Native Mexicans, Buddhist monks and Thai nomads that seem to possess amazing Superhuman abilities ON THE COVER

56 Why We Want To Believe The increase in documentary-dramas on television are a good indication of their increasing popularity. From JFK to chem-trails, why do conspiracy theories have such a grip on our collective imaginations? ON THE COVER

64 Beating Mass Extinction With evidence suggesting we’re on the brink of a sixth mass extinction, showing that Earth is experiencing the beginnings of an extinction event at least as large as the one that killed the dinosaurs what can we do to prevent it?

74 Pangolins Under Pressure They have survived for over 80 million years through a unique defense mechanism by rolling up into a ball with their keratin scales as protection. However they are highly sought after in many parts of Africa and Asia hence they’ve been called, the most traded mammal on the planet Vol. 8 Issue 1

8 Snapshot

SCIENCE

81 Into The Future

SCIENCE

56 Why We Want To Believe

96 My Life Scientific

Stephen Baxter is a science fiction writer who has written over 40 books and in this new column he discusses why buildings of the future may not look like buildings at all

Meet Uta Frith, Emeritus Professor of Cognitive Development at University College London, who also chairs the Diversity Committee at the Royal Society

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 Earth may be one of the first planets of its kind, anywhere, could a drug replace the gym, we’re all going to die (in about 14 million years or so), Lab-grown organoids could replace animals in drug tests

23 Comment & Analysis The surprising link between bathroom doors and violins

81 Q&A This month: what dust is made of, can cockroaches live without their heads, whether black holes rotate, why turtles cry, does music affect our heart rate, and much more…

RESOURCE 94 Reviews The latest, and perhaps more fascinating, books reviewed by experts

97 Time Out Mind games for the brain

74 Pangolins Under Pressure

98 Last Word Robert Matthews takes a closer look at ‘breakthroughs’ Vol. 8 Issue 1

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Welc me

 Send us your letters

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NO MAN IS AN ISLAND The above is a quotation by John Donne and what it means is quite simply, no human being can thrive alone. We are social beings hence we need to be in the company of others to progress, to socialise and to a large extent, to survive. If you caught Ridley Scott’s The Martian, it bears a scant similarity to Robert Zemeckis’ 2000 movie Cast Away, where an executive Chuck Noland played by Tom Hanks, is the sole survivor of a crashed flight, and learns how to survive on an island where he remains for years, accompanied by only his handmade volleyball friend, Wilson. In the movie The Martian, astronaut Mark Watney played by Matt Damon gets left behind on Mars, and is presumed dead after a fierce storm. With only a small amount of supplies, he has to use his wits and spirit to find a way to survive on the hostile planet. Getting stuck alone on a planet such as Mars can have serious effects; exposure to its ionising radiation can harm the central nervous system and cause brain damage. Whilst sleep deprivation coupled with isolation is also responsible for a weakened immune system making the astronaut more prone to infection by common viruses and microorganisms, plus the time spent in micro gravity can alter vision as well as impair balance. And these are just some of the known dangers, there remains a large amount of uncertainty for our first trip to Mars, and it all boils down to having astronauts that have the mental capacity and gumption to just get on with it no matter what happens.

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 making a magazine of the highest editorial quality, one that complies with BBC editorial and commercial guidelines and connects with BBC programmes. The BBC Earth television channel is available in the following regions: Asia (Cambodia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan)

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BBC Knowledge Magazine provides trusted, independent advice and information that has been gathered without fear or favour. When receiving assistance or sample products from suppliers, we ensure our editorial integrity and independence are not compromised by never offering anything in return, such as positive coverage, and by including a brief credit where appropriate.

Experts in this issue… Dr Alex Kumar As a doctor, well-travelled explorer, and expedition medic on Antarctic missions, Alex was perfectly qualified to discuss the effects of isolation on p35.

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Matt Swaine Matt is a former Editor of BBC Wildlife Magazine and is a fan of all animals – but even he struggled to love some of the gruesome real-life monsters he researched on p48.

Kath Nightingale Science writer Kath donned her cape and mask to find out more about the tribes that have successfully tapped into superhuman powers. Be amazed on p52.

Rob Brotherton Rob is an academic specialising in the psychology of conspiracy theories. On p56, he looks at the reasons why so many of us believe in them.

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SCIENCE

Crystal pools To the casual observer, the colourful strips of these potash ponds appear to be giant sections of stained glass, nestled among the canyons of Utah’s rugged, red landscape. The potash evaporation ponds form part of a mine that extracts potassium compounds from the rock deep below. “Wells are drilled into the salt beds beneath the site and hot water is used to dissolve the salts and transport them to the surface,” says Daniel Hall from the Utah Division of Water Quality. “The brine is then deposited into the evaporation ponds.” After 300 days under the hot sunshine, the crystals are taken away and processed for a variety of uses, including agriculture and beer brewing. Blue dye is added to the water, which gives the ponds their colour. Blue absorbs more solar radiation and therefore speeds up the evaporation. These vivid pools are fast becoming an intriguing attraction in what is known as Canyon Country. PHOTO: LORAINELTAI/FLICKR

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NATURE

Lost world A unique ecosystem lies hidden from view, 290m beneath the Earth’s surface. This 16.47-acre sinkhole is concealed in the misty mountains of Xuan’en County, in China’s Hubei province. The sinkhole formed when water dissolved the soluble underlying rock. As well as sinkholes, this process can create caves and underground streams. With light and water constantly trickling in, this miniature world is able to sustain a variety of plants, insects and birds, whose isolation could lead to the formation of new species. “What matters for speciation to progress is the balance between isolation and the strength of natural selection for adaptation to the special conditions in the sinkhole, such as low light,” explains the University of Sheffield’s Prof Roger Butlin. “There would also have to be a large enough population in the sinkhole for natural selection to be effective, relative to chance effects like genetic drift.” PHOTO: BARCROFT MEDIA

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HISTORY

Celebrating 20 years of SOHO After 20 years in space, ESA and NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO, is still going strong. Originally launched in 1995 to study the sun and its influence out to the very edges of the solar system, SOHO revolutionized this field of science, known as heliophysics, providing the basis for nearly 5,000 scientific papers. SOHO discovered dynamic solar phenomena such as coronal waves, solar tsunamis and sun quakes, and found an unexpected role as the greatest comet hunter of all time, reaching 3,000 comet discoveries in September 2015. This “Best of SOHO” image by the observatory’s LASCO C2 coronograph from 8 November, 2000, shows what appears to be two coronal mass ejections (CMEs) heading in symmetrically opposite directions from the sun. A

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304Å image from SOHO’s Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT) taken on the same day has been superimposed over the dark disk which blocks the sun so that the LASCO instrument can observe the structures of the corona in visible light. CMEs, which are huge, fast-moving clouds of electricallycharged solar material that contain embedded magnetic fields, can cause geomagnetic storms when they collide with Earth’s magnetic field, causing it to shimmy and shake. The ability to connect the effects of geomagnetic storms like auroras, GPS and communication disturbances, and geomagnetically induced currents, which can put a strain on power grids—to events on the sun has brought the idea of space weather into the mainstream. PHOTO: ESA/NASA/SOHO

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Update PLASTIC UNFANTASTIC We need the oceans, so why are we letting them become a plastic soup?

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THE LATEST INTELLIGENCE

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SUGARY COMET It’s spewing out alcohol! Christmas has come early…

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T H E B I G S T O RY

MOST EARTH-LIKE PLANETS

ARE YET TO BE BORN

PHOTO: NASA

According to data from the Hubble Space Telescope and Kepler, Earth may be one of the earliest habitable planets in existence

The Universe may continue to pump out planets for billions of years

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he Earth may be one of the earliest habitable planets ever to form, researchers from the Space Telescope Science Institute have found. Scientists surveying data collected by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the planet-hunting Kepler space observatory have found that when our Solar System

T

NEW SPECIES FOUND Weird creatures, including a blue-eyed frog and a walking fish

The Kepler mission is looking for planets around other stars in the Milky Way

GOOD MONTH/ BAD MONTH It’s been good for: WEIGHTLIFTERS Pumping iron twice a week may help keep your brain young. A team at the University of British Columbia has found that those who worked out with weights had less agerelated brain shrinkage than their peers.

THE FOLLICLY CHALLENGED

Although the formation rate is much slower today, the sheer volume of leftover gas means that the Universe will continue to pump out stars and planets for hundreds of billions of years. “There is enough remaining material after the Big Bang to produce even more planets in the future, in the Milky Way and beyond,” added coinvestigator Dr Molly Peeples. The Universe’s last star is not expected to burn out for another 100 trillion years, providing enough time for countless numbers of Earth-like planets to form in habitable zones.This is perhaps bad news for those hoping to come into contact with alien life forms, but it does offer us one advantage: we are able to use powerful telescopes such as the Hubble Space Telescope to peer deep into the Universe allowing us to track its birth all the way back to the Big Bang. We’re lucky to live at this point in the Universe’s history. Observational evidence for the Big Bang and cosmic evolution – encoded in light and other electromagnetic radiation – will be all but erased in a trillion years due to the runaway expansion of the Universe. This will make it incredibly difficult for far-future civilisations to figure out how the Universe began and evolved.

Timeline A history of exoplanet research 1992

1999

Astronomers Aleksander Wolszczan and Dale Frail track down PSR1257+12b, which is the first planet ever discovered outside the Solar System.

David Charbonneau (right) and Greg Henry independently observe HD209458 b, the first transiting exoplanet. It is the first exoplanet known to have an atmosphere.

2001 Astronomers from Geneva University find HD28185 b, the first exoplanet found to be in the so-called habitable zone around a star where liquid water can exist.

2009 NASA’s Kepler mission launches to survey a region of the Milky Way with the goal of discovering Earth-like planets orbiting other stars.

It’s been bad for: DOTING FATHERS Any father is likely to beam with joy upon hearing their baby blurt out ‘dada’ for the first time. But their pride is misplaced, a study from the University of Missouri has found. The babies aren’t calling for their fathers but are instead listening to the sound of their own voice.

MEAT LOVERS Next time you are reaching for that bacon butty or sausage bap you might want to think twice. A report released by the World Health Organization claims that eating just 50g of processed meat a day, less then one average sausage, can increase the chance of developing colorectal cancer by 18 per cent. However, the overall risk of developing cancer due to the consumption of processed meat still remains small,, theyy said.

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PHOTO: NASA X2, ISTOCK X2

came into being 4.6 billion years ago, only 8 per cent of the habitable Earth-like planets that will ever form existed. The overwhelming majority – a whopping 92 per cent – of the planets are still yet to be born and will not appear until long after our Sun burns itself out in around six billion years’ time. “Our main motivation was understanding the Earth’s place in the context of the rest of the Universe,” said study author Dr Peter Behroozi. “Compared to all the planets that will ever form in the Universe, the Earth is actually quite early.” For a planet to be considered habitable, it has to orbit its parent star at a distance that could allow liquid water to exist on the surface – not so close that it boils away, and not so far away that it freezes. Based on data from Kepler’s planet survey, the researchers predict there are currently around one billion Earth-sized planets in the Milky Way and 100 trillion in the observable Universe. Data from the Hubble Space Telescope shows that 10 billion years ago the Universe was making stars at a much faster rate than it is now. However, only a small proportion of hydrogen and helium gas, the elements needed to form a star, was used.

If you hanker after the days when you had a head of luscious hair, you may be in luck. A Columbia University team has found that rapid hair growth can be triggered in mice them that by giv by giving iving n th ng heem m dru drugs ggss tha th hat ha at iinhibit nhhi nhi h bit hibit biit ce bi ccertain erta rtain ttainn eenzymes en enz nnzzym yme ymes mes w within itith tthhin hinn the th their heiirir ha hhairr ffollicles. hai oll icl ooll iccles. cles. es. es s

Update

THE LATEST INTELLIGENCE

1 MINUTE EXPERT Meson f0(1710) What’s that? A new first-person shooter, perhaps? Way off. It’s an exotic particle proposed as a candidate for the elusive ‘glueball’ by scientists at Vienna University of Technology.

So what’s a glueball? It’s a particle made up entirely of gluons – elementary particles that help to bind quarks together to form protons and neutrons. Its existence was first proposed by physicists Murray Gell-Mann and Harald Fritzsch in 1972.

Okay. What makes them so elusive? Glueballs are so unstable that they can only be detected indirectly by searching for evidence of their decay patterns. This means that researchers must look for the signature particle trails they leave behind as they break down. The team has proposed a mechanism forr this decay process.

So now they have found them, we can break out the champagne, right?

PHOTO: TU WIEN, ISTOCK X2

Not just yet. While there is strong evidence that the team have got their sums right, the theory is going to be tested further in experiments carried out by the TOTEM and LHCb detectors at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider in the coming months.

A glueball is made up of gluons

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One day, could drugs offer all the benefits of pounding the pavements?

MEDI ME MEDICINE DICI CINE NE

Could we create ‘exercise in a bottle’? We all know that working out is good for us but sometimes the sofa and a bag of crisps are just too inviting. A team at the University of Sydney has found that drugs could potentially be created that mimic the effects of exercise. “Exercise is the most powerful therapy for many human diseases, including Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and neurological disorders,” explained research leader Prof David James.

“However, for many people, exercise isn’t a viable treatment option.This means it’s essential we find ways of developing drugs that mimic the benefits of exercise.” The researchers analysed muscle biopsies from four untrained, healthy males following 10 minutes of high intensity exercise.They found that activity triggered more than 1,000 molecular changes within the muscle. Most traditional drugs target

individual molecules, but the exercise blueprint shows that for any drug to mimic exercise it will need to target multiple molecules at the same time. “We believe this is the key to unlocking the riddle of drug treatments to mimic exercise,” James said. “Our data clearly show the complexity of the response: it is not one thing, but rather the drug will have to target multiple things. Our research has provided the roadmap to figure this out.”

NEUROSCIENCE NEUR NE UROS OSCI CIEN ENCE

Dream on… and off… and on… Sweet dreams could be a mere flip of a switch away. A team at UC Berkeley has devised a method of sending mice into REM sleep in seconds. The scientists inserted an ‘optogenetic switch’ into group of nerve cells in the medulla, a part of the brain that regulates functions such as breathing, heart rate and blood pressure. They then shone lasers at targeted areas of the brain to activate and deactivate it. REM (rapid eye movement) sleep is the dream state characterised by activation of the cortex, an area of the brain connected to memory, thought and consciousness, and paralysis of the skeletal muscles. “People used to think that this region of the medulla was only involved in the paralysis

of skeletal muscles during REM sleep,” said lead author Yang Dan. “What we showed is that these neurones triggered all aspects of REM sleep, including muscle paralysis and the typical cortical activation that makes the brain look more awake than in nonREM sleep.” The discovery will help researchers understand the complex process of sleep and dreaming in the brain, and could lead to new therapies, the researchers said. “Many psychiatric disorders, especially mood

disorders, are correlated with changes in REM sleep, and some widely used drugs affect REM sleep, so it seems to be a sensitive indicator of mental and emotional health,” said researcher Franz Weber.

All tuckered out from experiments

The price of plastic bags

The science that matters Plastic waste at Labuan Bajo in eastern Indonesia

creatures at the bottom of the marine food chain. Research suggests that a person eating an average amount of seafood would consume about 11,000 plastic particles every year.That may be harmful – or not. Other toxins in seafood, such as heavy metals, may be far more threatening.We cannot be sure. And this brings to me to some good news.When I first reported

WHO’S IN TH THE HE NEWS? Lee Harvey Oswald The gunman who shot JFK

Hang on. Didn’t he die in 1963? He did. But conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination of President John F Kennedy have proved more difficult to kill off. So are there any new developments? There are. Wearers of tinfoil hats have long claimed that a famous black and white photograph of Oswald holding

on the threat of plastic waste seven years ago, it seemed to land as a bombshell for many people. Now there’s far greater awareness of the potential impact of marine plastic. And there’s also been a huge increase in scientific engagement. Plastic waste is a menace that not only concerns oceanographers and conservationists but also biologists, chemists and toxicologists. If we’re to understand the true scale of the

a 6.5mm Carcano rifle, the same model used to shoot Kennedy, was faked. They cite inconsistencies in the shot’s shadows and the fact that he looks to be off-balance. Oswald himself also claimed that the picture was a fake. What’s the verdict? Computer scientists at New Hampshire’s Dartmouth University

threat to marine life, and ultimately to us, we need a sustained and concerted research effort. In the meantime, the priority has to be to try to stop yet more plastic getting into the oceans in the first place. Just a thought next time you’re offered a bag.

DAVID SHUKMAN is the BBC’s Science Editor. @davidshukmanbbc

used 3D modelling techniques to accurately recreate and analyse the photo. They found that although Oswald was standing at an unusual angle in the picture, his posture would still have been stable. The lighting and shadows were also found to be consistent with the light source. To find out more, listen to an In Short clip at bbc.in/1GRZsPP Vol. 8 Issue 1

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PHOTOS: GETTY X2

At a resort in Turkey, the beach closest to our hotel was spotless but a neighbouring stretch of sand was almost covered with pieces of plastic. Bags, bottles, ropes and other items lay heaped on the shoreline and turned a potentially beautiful spot into a dump. Just offshore, I filmed more plastic bobbing on the swell.The experience was pretty shocking because – like an iceberg – the majority of waste drifts unseen below the waves. I used the shots in a report on the BBC’s News at Six marking the recent introduction of a US$8 charge for bags in England.The editors were appalled at the scene. The latest estimate is that some eight million tonnes of plastic are added to the oceans every year and that creates two big threats. For a start, the stuff accumulates. Plastic has become central to our lives because it is so durable, but this means that much of it lasts. The second problem is that flimsy pieces of plastic, such as bags, get broken up into millions of tiny fragments and what happens to them is now the subject of urgent research. Studies at Plymouth Marine Laboratory and the University of Exeter have shown that so-called microplastics are ingested by

DAVID SHUKMAN

Update

THE LATEST INTELLIGENCE

DISCOVERIES THAT WILL SHAPE THE FUTURE

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Migraine breakthrough

Abnormal activation of a cluster of neurones may cause migraines

PHOTO: C BICKEL/SCIENCE TRANSLATIONAL MEDICINE, ROB FELT, VIPUTHESHWAR SITARAMAN, FLORIDA ATLANTIC UNIVERSITY, TRILITE, RUVID, AMY BETZ/KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY, MINORU TAKASATO, MARCO TRIPODI

Abnormal activation of a cluster of brain cells called the ‘trigeminovascular system’ is believed to be responsible for causing migraines. The cluster relays sensory information, including pain signals, but which part of the nervous system triggered it was unknown. Now, an international team has treated migraines in rats by targeting cells deep inside the brain. The scientists used a compound to block PAC1 – a receptor protein – but so far it has only been applied directly to the brain, rather than intravenously.

Self-destructing circuit James Bond’s gadget supplier Q would be proud of this: an electrical circuit that disappears after one day, leaving no trace of its original purpose. Georgia Institute of Technology designed it by depositing carbon atoms on graphene – the ‘miracle material’ that’s also a form of carbon. The atoms initially form a circuit but gradually move out of position. The speed of this change depends on the temperature and specially designed structures on the surface. In addition to espionage there are medical applications: different patterns of atoms could trigger the release of drugs into a patient’s bloodstream.

Andrei Fedorov created the Bond-like circuit

Lab-grown kidney cells

HIV detector A fast, cheap way of diagnosing infectious and autoimmune diseases such as HIV and rheumatoid arthritis has been developed at the University of Montreal. A ‘machine’ made of DNA can recognise a specific antibody – binding to it and creating a signal by generating light – within five minutes. The DNA machine binding to antibody

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Anti-frost surface Frost plays havoc with travel plans, covering your car windows and delaying flights. But now a surface has been created by engineers at Kansas State University that prevents frost forming at temperatures down to -6°C. It’s ‘biphilic’, repelling water in some areas and attracting it in others, which delays the freezing of the droplets.

Lab-grown kidneys suitable for transplants are some way off. But scientists at Murdoch Children’s Research Institute have grown a kidneylike structure from stem cells. It could be used for testing drugs, researching diseases and supplying kidney cells for medical treatments.

Droplets forming on a biphilic surface at -4°C

Microbe ‘fingerprints’ Crimes could be identified from microbes in the air. We all have bacteria living on us, but the combination varies. University of Oregon scientists told 11 people apart simply by sampling the air around them.

You’re gonna need a bigger screen…

Your bacterial ‘aura’ is unique

Robotic finger A 3D-printed robotic finger that looks and feels like a human appendage could be the future of prosthetics. It is made of shape memory alloy (SMA) that flexes and extends when it’s heated and cooled by an electric current.

This finger could revolutionise prosthetics

Three-dimensional billboard 3D is back again. At Vienna University of Technology, researchers have perfected a 3D display requiring no glasses. Its pixels, dubbed ‘Trixels’, combine red, green and blue lasers and moveable micro mirrors. The image changes as the mirrors sweep from left to right across your field of view,

Self-repairing material Imagine how useful a selfrepairing material would be. It could be used in parts for cars, planes and spacecraft to help prevent catastrophic failures, and medical implants that break inside a human body could simply heal themselves. Such a material, which is capable of rejoining itself in less than 15 seconds if cut with scissors, has now been developed. Scientists at the University of Alicante say that the flexible, transparent resin is even able to heal itself underwater, retaining its original shape in the process.

creating a 3D picture by giving each eye a different perspective. The system is capable of playing 3D movies or serving up eye-catching adverts on gigantic billboards. Its makers say the technology is ready for commercial partners to take it forward.

Personalised education Everyone’s brain cells – neurones – form a unique pattern of connections, according to research by Yale scientists. They identified 126 individuals from brain scans taken as they performed a variety of tasks, producing a ‘fingerprint’ called a connectivity profile. The profiles could be used to predict how logical you are, how ow good at solving problems, ms, and could even be used to tailor educational courses. Very good, but give us a call when you’ve made an entire dinner set from the stuff

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Update

THE LATEST INTELLIGENCE

SPACE

Do asteroids cause mass extinctions? Yikes! it seems comet and asteroid showers may be causing mass extinctions on Earth in an alarmingly regular cycle. But before you start to panic, the good news is that another one isn’t due for around 14 million years. Through studying the age and regularity of impact craters over the last 260 million years, researchers in the USA have discovered a strong correlation between mass extinction events and an increased number of asteroid strikes. What’s more, they found the two events occur in regular intervals of around 26 million years.

“This cosmic cycle of death and destruction has without a doubt affected the history of life on our planet,” said New York University’s Dr Michael Rampino. The cycle has been linked to the periodic motion of the Sun and planets through the dense mid-plane region of the Milky Way. It is thought that gravitational effects of the Oort comet cloud that surrounds the Sun may trigger asteroid showers in the inner Solar System during this time, with some of them striking Earth.

Asteroids and comets appear to strike Earth in regular cycles

BIOLOGY

Cheap ‘mini-brains’ could reduce animal testing

PHOTO: GETTY

It’s good news for the scarecrow from The Wizard Of Oz: researchers at Brown University have developed a method of growing functioning ‘mini-brains’. The little brain balls can’t think like real grey matter, but they do produce electrical signals and form their own neural connections, making them a suitable replacement for animals in drug testing. To produce the brains, the team isolated cells from a small sample of living tissue taken from a rodent and placed them into tiny spherical moulds about 3mm across. The tissue began

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growing within 24 hours and formed complex 3D neural networks in two to three weeks. They can live for upwards of one month. Thousands of the tiny organoids can be made from a small tissue sample, and they cost just US$24 each to produce. “We think of this as a way to have a better in vitro [in the lab] model that can maybe reduce animal use,” said researcher Molly Boutin. “A lot of the work that’s done right now is in twodimensional culture, but this is an alternative that is much more relevant to the in vivo [real life] scenario.”

SPACE

Comet found to be spewing out alcohol

THEY DID WHAT?! Cadaver arms used to ‘throw punches’ What did they do? University of Utah researchers attached the arms of male cadavers to a pendulum and

“We’re finding molecules with multiple carbon atoms. So now you can see where sugars start forming, as well as more complex organics such as amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, or nucleobases, the building blocks of DNA,” she added.

swung them into a force-detecting pad to emulate the throwing of a punch. Why did they do that? They wanted to test the theory that the human hand evolved to enable males to engage in fights over women. The idea comes from the fact that we have shorter palms and longer, stronger, more flexible thumbs compared to other apes.

PHOTO: FABRICE NOEL/NASA, HOFFMAN-KIM LAB/BROWN UNIVERSITY, UNIVERSITY OF UTAH

It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘booze cruise’: researchers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center have found that Comet Lovejoy is spraying vast amounts of alcohol into the cosmos. The team found 21 organic molecules on the comet in total, including ethyl alcohol and glycolaldehyde, a simple sugar. Lovejoy was pumping out up to 500 bottles of wine’s worth of alcohol per second. This is the first time ethyl alcohol has been observed in a comet and the discovery is further evidence that comets may have been a source of the complex organic molecules necessary for the emergence of life. “The result promotes the idea that comets carry very complex chemistry,” said researcher Stefanie Milam. “During the Late Heavy Bombardment 3.8 billion years ago, when many comets and asteroids were blasting into Earth, life didn’t have to start with just simple molecules like water, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen.

What did they find? After testing hundreds of punches, they found that humans are able to strike with double the force when using a clenched fist rather than an open-handed strike. The hand could have evolved due to improvements in manual dexterity while also providing a benefit for those engaging in fisticuffs. Human hand: evolved for fighting?

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Update

THE LATEST INTELLIGENCE

PATENTLY OBVIOUS with James Lloyd Inventions and discoveries that will change the world d

Fragrant flavours

Calming computers

Drinking water might be better for us than fruit juice or fizzy pop, but sometimes our taste buds yearn for something with a little more flavour. The Right Cup is a scented vessel that tricks your brain into thinking you’re drinking flavoured water. The fruity scent – choose from lemon-lime, orange, mixed berry or apple – is added to the plastic cup during manufacturing, and your brain mistakes the scent for flavour. This approach means you’re not consuming any sugars or chemical preservatives. Patent pending

The next time you’re sitting at your computer, quietly seething as it does exactly what you didn’t tell it to do, let Bill Gates sort it out. Microsoft is patenting a system that detects when you’re stressed out and helps to calm you down. It might detect your ire by measuring the pressure you exert on your keyboard, listening for expletives, or recognising the tell-tale features of an angry face. It would then try to soothe you – perhaps adjusting your room’s lighting, or telling you it’s time to take a walk. And breathe… Patent pending

It’s a dog’s life

PHOTO: DOGSTAR, ISTOCK

We’ve been living with man’s best friend for thousands of years, but we still struggle to understand our canine friends. We often assume that a dog’s wagging tail is a sign of unbridled excitement (“yay, walkies!”), but it can also signal fear (“keep that Rottweiler away from me!”) or aggression (“this is my manor, sunshine, so do one”). Now, New York company DogStar has created a device that it hopes will translate your dog’s emotions. TailTalk is a small, unobtrusive sensor that fits around the dog’s tail, converting its wagging into a happiness rating that’s displayed on the accompanying app. The device is based on sound science, with research showing that dogs tend to wag towards the right when experiencing positive emotions, and towards the left when feeling anxious or upset. The app will use this information to create an emotional diary for your dog, revealing exactly what makes Rover rejoice or Fido feel frightened. Provisional patents issued

Can a wearable device reveal your dog’s mood?

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NEUROSCIENCE NEUR NE UROS UROSCIENC OSCI CIEN E CE

Remote-controlled roaches Here’s something that’s unlikely to make it to the top of many Christmas lists: cockroaches that can be controlled with a joystick. A team at Case Western Reserve University inserted tiny electrodes into the part of the insects’ brains that respond to antennal and visual stimuli. They then recorded the neuronal activity and filmed the insects’ movements. By making statistical links between movements and spikes in neuronal activity, they were able to figure out the signals associated with the insects walking at different speeds and changing direction. They then passed electrical currents through these same electrodes, turning the insects into remote controlled roaches. Similar experiments in the past worked by stimulating the

Experiments on cockroaches may help us learn more about motor function in all animals’ brains

insects’ antennae, rather rath her than neurones inside the brain. “It’s like a joystick on the animal,” said researcher Joshua Martin. “We can control its direction and alter its speed.” The team believes that similar processes may exist in other animals. “It is highly likely that descending motor control such as this also resides in all legged animals, including us,” lead author Roy Ritzmann said. “So this kind of study, with the technical advantages that insects afford researchers, can help us to understand how movement is controlled in complex environments.” The cockroach’s control system could also prove to be a useful model for building self-driving cars and robots that can manoeuvre around obstacles on their own, or for controlling drones, the researchers said.

MATERIALS

Charging ahead with the future

Winner in under-21 category: Emily Clements

Scientists at Stanford designed this flexible aluminium-ion battery

Though the battery only generates around two volts of electricity, which is around half that of a typical lithium-ion battery, the researchers are confident they can improve on this. “Improving the cathode material could eventually increase the voltage and energy density,” said Dai. So how are aluminium-ion batteries better than lithium-ion? Despite its overall advantages, lithium-ion has its drawbacks. It’s delicate and needs a protection circuit to maintain safe operation, which limits the peak voltage of each cell during charge and prevents the cell voltage from dropping too low on discharge. Lithium batteries, as well as standard alkaline ones, are toxic and must be disposed of with care. Billions of small lithium batteries power the assortment of gadgets that we can’t live without.

Replacing them with aluminium batteries would eliminate the environmental risk. Since the aluminium-ion battery weighs more than a lithium-ion one, and since at the moment it doesn’t have enough power to keep a phone running, it’s improbable for it to be in any device for the time being. Perhaps, in the near future, science will catch up with the idea. Perhaps the aluminium-ion battery may be deployed on the electricity grid one day. It might be the perfect fit to provide balancing and reserve power to the electric grid, in essence buffering the ever-present gap between supply and demand.This application requires high-power batteries with the capability to charge and discharge many times without failing. In 1859, the French physicist Gaston Planté invented the

first rechargeable battery. It was based on lead acid, a system that is still used today. The very first attempt to develop the Li-ion battery pack began in 1912 by an engineer named GN Lewis, but it wasn’t until the 1970s that the first non-rechargeable lithium battery packs became commercially accessible. In the past hundred years we have transformed everything. Technology is advancing faster than ever. In the last 50 years we have achieved things that many thought impossible just a couple of hundred years ago. Everything has a battery these days – but today’s battery is a toxic hazard. Maybe the aluminium-ion battery will be the eco-friendly, cheap to produce, high performance future of batteries. EMILY CLEMENTS is 14 years old and is currently a student Vol. 8 Issue 1

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PHOTO: MARK SHWARTZ/STANFORD UNIVERSITY

Sick of waiting for your mobile phone to charge? A team of researchers from Stanford University think they’ve found a solution: they’ve created an aluminium-ion battery that can charge up your phone in just 60 seconds. The team of researchers, led by chemistry professor Dr Hongjie Dai, has developed a battery that offers many significant advantages over the conventional lithium-ion batteries used in many gadgets and today’s electric vehicles. Let’s take a look at what makes the Stanford aluminium-ion battery such an important breakthrough. The aluminium-ion battery is flexible.The Stanford team placed the aluminium anode and graphite cathode, along with an ionic liquid electrolyte, inside a polymer-coated pouch.The battery is supple, but it is also non-flammable – you can find evidence of the team drilling a hole through the pouch to demonstrate that it doesn’t catch on fire. And even more impressive is that the power lingers for a few seconds after the hole is made. It’s also relatively inexpensive and more environmentally friendly than typical AA and AAA batteries. “Millions of consumers use 1.5-volt AA and AAA batteries. Our rechargeable aluminium battery generates about two volts of electricity.That’s higher than anyone has achieved with aluminium,” said Dai. “We accidentally discovered that a simple solution is to use graphite, which is basically carbon. In our study, we identified a few types of graphite material that give us very good performance,” he added. “The electrolyte is basically a salt that’s liquid at room temperature, so it’s very safe,” explained Stanford graduate student Ming Gong.

WRITING COMPETITION

Update

THE LATEST INTELLIGENCE

Channa andrao

Leptobrachium bompu

PHOTO: WWF/FLICKR/R GOGOI & S BORAH/LIANG ZHANG/RAMKI SREENIVASAN CONSERVATION INDIA

Protobothrops himalayansus

Musa markkui

Elachura formosa

NATURE

Six-year survey discovers over 200 new species A blue-eyed frog, a bejewelled snake and a walking fish are among the new species discovered in the Eastern Himalayas, an area that covers parts of northeast India, Bengal, Nepal, Bhutan and Tibet. 24

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The findings come in a report published by the WWF following a six-year survey of the region’s biodiversity.The species found include 133 plants, 39 invertebrates, 26 fish, 10 amphibians, one bird, one reptile

and one mammal. Among them were Leptobrachium bompu, a frog with strikingly blue eyes and black vertical pupils; Channa andrao, an air-breathing snakehead fish that can survive on land for up to four days and

can cover quarter of a mile by wriggling over wet ground; and Protobothrops himalayansus, a lance-headed pit viper that is so gem-like it could pass as a carefully crafted piece of jewellery.

Comment & Analysis A squeaky hinge is intriguingly similar to an instrument reaking doors. I wish I’d thought of them as musical instruments earlier in my life. I’ve spent just over three decades viewing them as distracting or annoying, when I could have seen them as interesting entertainment. But I realised the other day that the creak of a door has a lot in common with the purr of a cello. It started when a friend came to stay for a week. After a two-day internal battle between politeness and torment, they informed me that one more squeak of the bathroom door would cause the final and irrevocable loss of the last of their marbles. I was so used to the noise that I didn’t really hear it any more, but when I stopped to listen, I could see their point. I applied the appropriate unguent, and acoustic calm was restored. But it set me wondering about how a small hinge could make such a loud noise. The sound from a musical instrument is the acoustic signature of its structure. One part of it is set vibrating (by plucking it or hitting it or blowing air down it) and the rest of the instrument is there to connect that vibration efficiently with the air around it. Once the air starts to vibrate, the vibrations have to travel, so they spread out into the surroundings, and we detect them as sound. In the case of the squeaky door, the initial vibrations come from the way that the hinges move. It’s one of those nice scientific ideas where the name says it all – it’s called the ‘stick-slip’ phenomenon. Friction, the resistance of two surfaces to move over each other, is stronger when those surfaces aren’t moving. So you push until you overcome that strong resistance, but once it’s moving, it moves very quickly because the friction for moving objects is lower. If the push doesn’t keep up, the object will stop moving again, and everything goes back to being stationary. Therefore as I pushed on the creaking bathroom door, the hinges were moving in very quick small jumps, and each jump gave the hinges a kick. The hinges started a regular vibration with a frequency that depends on the jump spacing. The more frequent that the jumps are, the higher the pitch we hear. The door moves faster when we first start to push and then slows down when it’s nearly open, which is why door creaks start off at a high pitch and then turn into a low drone. So far, so good. But why does this tiny process make

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“I don’t know whether anyone has ever tried playing tunes on creaking doors, but maybe someone should have a go” such a loud noise? What I realised when I thought about it (sadly, only after the door had been silenced) was that the reason it’s so loud is the door itself. It’s acting as an amplifier, just like the body of a cello does. When the cello strings vibrate, they force the rest of the instrument to vibrate too, and that cello body is the

perfect shape (large and flat) for pushing on the air. That’s why string instruments all have a body – it transfers the vibrations to the air. And the door is doing the same thing for the hinges. The sticking-slipping hinges force the door to vibrate, and it’s the door that pushes on the air, efficiently transmitting sound energy to the rest of the room. Adding the door as an amplifier turns the hinge into a musical instrument. I don’t know whether anyone has ever tried playing tunes on creaking doors, or even introducing a whole new section to the orchestra, but maybe someone should have a go. Sadly, my bathroom door won’t be joining the chorus. But at least my houseguests will be happy!

DR HELEN CZERSKI is a physicist, oceanographer and BBC science presenter whose most recent series was Super Senses

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ILLUSTRATOR: ANDREW LYONS

Don’t be annoyed by a squeaky door – it’s behaving just like a musical instrument

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NATURE

here are about 30 species of honeypot ants in the world, named for a very specific behaviour. Some of the colony’s worker ants prepare for hard times by storing food in their sisters. The workers feed these special sisters, known as repletes, until their abdomens swell. The feeding continues until they’re so swollen that all they can do is hang from the ceiling of their nest in diaphanous, golden rows. Then, when the hard times arrive and everything above ground is dry and inedible, the worker ants come back to the repletes and beg for food. Drop by drop, the honeypots regurgitate the sugar they’ve been storing. The practice has evolved repeatedly in regions where food is predictably scarce for part of the year. The other thing that occurs repeatedly in these regions is that humans discover these sugar-loaded ants and eat them. They’re delicious, a ball of sugar with a subtle texture imbued by six tiny legs. In the desert of the south-west USA honeypot ants are eaten by Native Americans. But it’s in Australia that honeypot ants, and specifically the red honey ant Melophorus bagoti photographed here, are most valued. The insects were discovered there in the time before corn syrup and sugar cane, and became a treat worth some work. The technique involves finding a nest among the roots of mulga trees and tracking a returning ant to the entrance. Once you have, use a stick to figure out the direction of the nest’s first tunnels, then start digging, probing with your stick each time you reach a new turn. Dig down the central tunnel until you come to a large chamber where, hanging from the ceiling, you’ll see the honeypots. Pop a few in your mouth. Savour the texture and the exotic sensation of the wiggling legs before you bite down and let the sugar pour through your mouth.

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PHOTOS BY ERIC TOURNERET French photojournalist Eric has spent roughly a quarter of a century travelling the world taking pictures that have appeared in publications such as Paris Match and National Geographic Traveller. Known for his striking images of the world’s honeybees and the plight they face, he’s also shed new light on the honeypot ants of Australia. http://thebeephotographer. photoshelter.com

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THE LOCATION Timor Sea Darwin NORTHERN TERRITORY

AUSTRALIA MacDonnell Ranges Alice Springs Uluru

MacDonneli RANGES, AUSTRALIA The honeypots dwell about a metre underground in hidden nests throughout the driest parts of the country. These particular ants have been photographed in the MacDonnell Ranges, a series of mountains 644kmlong, to the west of Alice Springs, in the heart of one of the regions of Australia that is most sacred to Aboriginal people.

An Aboriginal woman and her daughter dig up a honeypot colony, which can be located by the discoloration of the soil due to formic acid. A century ago the ants were one of the few sweet foods available in the outback. Now less nutritious corn syrup and cheap sweets dominate diets.

FAR LEFT All insects have external skeletons. But in honeypot ants the skin between the segments of the exoskeleton is stretched so taut with the volume of the honey that it becomes transparent – a body through which the entire world appears to be delicious and gilded LEFT When children run after ice-cream vans they recreate the ancient experience of the hunt for subtler sweets in the form of ant bottoms, bee combs or berries, a joy composed of equal parts sweetness and the pleasure of discovering something rare

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NATURE

ABOVE The honeypots wait for the hard times when food is scarce, and all that can sustain the colony until the return of the rains is the sweet and necessary sugar that they’ve dutifully stored RIGHT Honeypot ants are just one of the many biological treasures hidden in the thorny scrub of the outback where riches abound for those who take the time to look for them. The ants build their nests under mulga trees Acacia aneura on whose twigs lives a psyllid insect that produces a honeydew in exchange for protection from the ants

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The behaviour of these smallbrained insects often seems to embody characteristics we wish were more apparent in ourselves, such as a selflessness on behalf of the community and the ability to plan ahead in order to replace scarcity with plenty. Of course when times are really hard ants have also been known to eat their offspring – but then no society is perfect.

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NATURE

ABOVE When sweets were very rare – the first explorers to land in Australia described it as a place without berries or fruits – this handful of honeypot ants would have been priceless LEFT Honeypot ants remain part of Aboriginal culture as a symbol of both the treasures of the desert and the rich knowledge of that biodiversity held by Aboriginal people long before European colonists ever reached Australia’s shores

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SCIENCE

All by myself

The film “The Martian” explores whether the Red Planet could ever support human life. But Chris Hall says it’s not just food, air and water that astronauts will have to worry about ark Watney is having a pretty bad sol*. After his team’s living habitat and vehicles endured several hours of intense buffeting from a 110mph sandstorm, NASA gave the order to abort their mission and return to Earth. In the process, a communications array shattered, sending an aerial spearing into Watney’s side, ripping out his bio-monitor in the process. Knocked unconscious by the fall, he has just awoken with a gasp. Within minutes, he will realise the staggering and unthinkable truth. PHOTO: 20TH CENTURY FOX/PICSELECT.COM

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Scan this QR Code for the audio reader

*(In case you’re wondering, a sol is a Martian day)

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PHOTO: ESA X2, NASA/VISIBLE EARTH X2, NASA/JPL X2, 20TH CENTURY FOX/PICSELECT.COM X3

SCIENCE

He has been left for dead; the only man on Mars. He has at least four years until a rescue mission could arrive, and only has facilities designed to last 31 days. So begins The Martian, Ridley Scott’s space survival thriller. Understandably, the film focuses heavily on the practical elements to Watney’s survival. But he must also combat a far more insidious danger: extreme isolation. The psychological hazards of his situation are tremendous. “So what? This is unrealistic Hollywood sci-fi,” you might think. But the truth is, any Mars mission opens up the possibility of exposing men and women to psychological effects beyond anything ever experienced, even in Earth’s most inhospitable conditions.

Dr Alex Kumar near Antarctica’s Concordia base

All alone The damaging effects of spending extended periods of time cut off from society, isolated from necessities and enduring levels of sensory deprivation have been recognised for centuries, if not fully understood. It was said of St Anthony the Great, a monk and hermit, that “the devil fought [him] by afflicting him with boredom, laziness, and the phantoms of women”. These days, we have a slightly better understanding of the human mind, but reliable, consistent data on the way people react to the stressors of isolation can still be

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Compare the conditions across our planet and Mars

VG (A )

AVERAGE SURFACE TEMP TEMPERATURE RANGE ATMOSPHERIC PRESSURE MAX WIND SPEED ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION GRAVITY LENGTH OF YEAR

-63°C

14.6°C

20°C TO -153°C

58°C TO -89.2°C

6 MILLIBARS

1,013 MILLIBARS AT SEA LEVEL

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96% CARBON DIOXIDE, 1.9% ARGON, 1.9% NITROGEN

78% NITROGEN, 21% OXYGEN, 0.9% ARGON, 0.04% CARBON DIOXIDE

3.0M/S2

9.8M/S2

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hard to come by. Those who have spent large amounts of time alone involuntarily, be they prisoners on death row, castaways, or victims of circumstances, are rarely representative of society. And astronauts, who do give us reliable information, are rigorously selected from an already minuscule crop of resilient and capable high achievers. If humans are to travel to Mars – a journey that, at the best estimates, would take at least seven months in each direction – we need to be sure that the first crew can cope with what’s ahead. British expedition medic Dr Alexander Kumar has seen first-hand, and experienced, the effects that extreme isolation can have on the mind, spending 11 months at Concordia research station in Antarctica. His findings are being used by the European Space Agency (ESA) as it plans manned Mars missions. “One of the first things to think about is adapting to your new surroundings. If I’m on a country walk in England and I drop my glove, I pick it up again. If my glove comes off in Antarctica, I could lose my hand. It’s the sort of weather where your iPhone headphone cables snap in half.” It’s not just the obvious harshness of the polar environment, but the knock-on effects that weigh on the mind. Throughout the winter months, Antarctica’s research stations are unreachable by any means. This subjects

“If I get appendicitis during the winter, I have two choices. I either cut myself open and take it out, or I give up and die” Dr Alexander Kumar, British expedition medic

the team, which was 13 members strong during Kumar’s stay, to what researchers in the field call ‘high levels of autonomy’; when communication off-base might be limited, and problems must be tackled with whatever materials are at hand. Kumar expresses it starkly: “If I get appendicitis during the winter, I have two choices. I either cut myself open and take it out, or I give up and die.” There are other physical stressors in Antarctica that are detrimental to one’s psychological well-being. Unlike the Arctic, it is a high-altitude desert, 3,800m above sea level. Residents at the research stations are exposed to chronic hypobaric hypoxia – the same low levels of oxygen that athletes actively seek out at high-altitude training camps.

Antarctica’s Concordia research base regularly experiences temperatures below -80°C in winter

In The Martian, Mark Watney has to try to stay alive in a harsh and isolated environment

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AN R TA CT IC A

-47°C

11°C

17.5°C TO -89.2°C

38.5°C TO -27.2°C

1,000 MILLIBARS AT SEA LEVEL

1,013 MILLIBARS AT SEA LEVEL

199MPH

173MPH

78% NITROGEN, 21% OXYGEN, 0.9% ARGON, 0.04% CARBON DIOXIDE

78% NITROGEN, 21% OXYGEN, 0.9% ARGON, CARBON DIOXIDE

9.85M/S2 (INCREASE CLAIMED AT SOUTH POLE)

9.8M/S2

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SCIENCE

Ernest Shackleton’s team dine together during the Endurance mission in June 1915

PHOTO: ESA X3, GETTY X3

Lose your mind “It can be good and bad for you; good in the short term, like for athletes,” explains Kumar. “But mountaineers regularly report trouble sleeping. That’s not great on an expedition, but it’s short-lived. You try struggling to sleep for a year and it’s very simple. You lose sleep, you lose your mind.” Throw in the permanent darkness of a winter at the South Pole, and you have a powerful set of circumstances acting on the mind. “It puts you through a washing machine of time. Your circadian rhythms

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are freewheeling,” Kumar says. Even hearing about the effects is frightening. People become depressed, and exhibit symptoms of schizophrenia. They lose awareness of who they are, and hear and see things that aren’t there. “I had terrible nightmares,” Kumar admits. “Your dreams muddle things. It’s easy to become disorientated. Time becomes jumbled – your concepts of past, present and future can become confusing.” Darkness can also distort your short-term sense of time. French speleologist (cave expert) Michel Siffre spent two months living in Right: Members of the Endurance mission worked well as a team, thanks in part to Shackleton’s leadership skills

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Mars500 simulated a mission to Mars, isolating the sixmember crew for 520 days

darkness under an alpine glacier; when he emerged, it took him five minutes to count what he thought was 120 seconds. Others have reported an adjustment in circadian rhythms to a 36-hour period of activity followed by 12 hours of sleep. “You are experiencing chronic sensory deprivation,” says Kumar. “fMRI tests have shown that people who have undergone this kind of extended isolation experience significant shrinking of the brain’s hippocampal area.” What does the hippocampus do? It controls memory, among other things.

“You try struggling to sleep for a year and it’s very simple. You lose sleep, you lose your mind” Dr Alexander Kumar, British expedition medic

Left: During the Mars500 experiment, the crew walked on simulated Martian terrain and conducted experiments Vol. 8 Issue 1

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SCIENCE

HOW SPACE TRAVEL AFFECTS YOUR BODY Astronauts can suffer from serious health issues

HEAD Extended time living in microgravity can impair balance, and can even alter your vision. Emotional isolation has been shown to be a significant risk factor for Alzheimer’s, obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, neurodegenerative diseases and cancer.

UPPER TORSO Vertebrae separate slightly without gravity to compress them. Astronauts can gain up to 5cm in height, and report back pain as a result.

LIMBS Relieved of the need to walk around, the muscles in the legs can waste away. In turn, this affects balance and increases the risk of tendonitis.

LOWER TORSO Astronauts experience motion sickness, nausea and dizziness in the early days of spaceflight.

WEAKENED IMMUNE SYSTEM Isolation and sleep deprivation have been shown to result in a weaker t-lymphocyte system. Astronauts are more prone to infection by common viruses and microorganisms.

BONE LOSS Living in a zero-g environment causes the body to excrete calcium and phosphorus, depleting bone strength and causing osteoporosis. A Mars mission would equate to a lifetime’s worth of bone depletion.

NERVE DAMAGE Prolonged exposure to ionising radiation can harm the central nervous system, cause cataracts, and can even increase the risk of heart disease, cancer and brain damage.

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According to Kumar, you find yourself recalling things you have no right to be able to remember – the look of a stranger’s face that you walked past on the street, years ago. “We don’t yet know whether these changes are reversible or not – no-one’s had long enough to find out. We need another 20 to 30 years,” adds Kumar.

Unknown dangers

On one trip, Valeri Polyakov stayed on board the Mir space station for over 14 months

expedition. “Shackleton chose a wide selection of people and realised the importance of keeping them functioning as a team throughout; sometimes doing odd things like organising a haircut for everyone during a difficult spell. His crew never dispersed like Scott’s when things got hard. And at the end, after they’d had to walk from the abandoned Endurance, he asked if anyone wanted to go back. They all did!” According to Kanas, at least one major orbital preparation would be necessary before feeling confident in launching a Mars mission. “My advice would be that we need to put people into a space station orbiting the Earth and simulate the seven-month journey. You would artificially delay their communications and accurately mimic their level of autonomy and activities. Then you launch them from orbit to the Moon, get them to land, poke around at some rocks, and return to the orbital module. Then you gradually phase them back into Earth time.” This would also be a chance to observe return trip behaviour, which Kanas believes is potentially the most dangerous time of the trip. “If people’s work is done, and they’re waiting to get home to analyse samples, the boredom factor could be huge on that return leg.” Earth-based projects like Mars500 have had their critics, but they are a good start. And

“No-one has ever experienced what it’s like to look on the Earth as a tiny blue speck in the sky” Prof Nick Kanas, psychologist and NASA adviser

our awareness of these issues speaks to a willingness to treat psychological factors as seriously as the physiological and the technological in the run-up to a Mars launch. In the words of Kanas, “By the time we’ve figured out how to get to Mars, we will have figured this out. It’s absolutely doable.”

CHRIS HALL is a science and technology journalist who has written for Esquire, Men’s Health and GQ

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PHOTO: 20TH CENTURY FOX/PICSELECT.COM, GETTY

The bad news for any would-be Watneys is that these are just the dangers we know about. Certain elements of a Mars voyage, even if you could remove the obvious psychological stress of knowing there is no way to return to Earth, would be completely new to the human psyche. Valeri Polyakov spent 438 days in space, which is the longest time of any astronaut or cosmonaut so far. His mood and cognitive abilities were monitored throughout. The results showed that, aside from periods of adjustment at the beginning and end of the mission, his moods remained stable. However, certain skills were affected more than others, notably visual-motor skills, which were tested by his ability to line up a randomly unstable cross-hair with a marked target using a joystick. But even Polyakov’s experience is incomparable in several ways. Psychologist and NASA adviser Prof Nick Kanas says one of the major unknowns is ‘Earth-out-of-sight’ syndrome. “No-one has ever experienced what it’s like to look on the Earth as a tiny blue speck in the sky. We don’t know what it will do to people to be deprived of that connection with all that’s important to them, to have that sensation of immense distance.” So what can be done to prepare for spending time in isolation? And how can we get to a point where we’re comfortable sending people into the unknown? Preparation isn’t the key, says Kumar. “You can’t really train for it. But you need to be the right kind of person: you just have to get on with it. You want people who are sociable introverts – happy working alone but able to get along with each other. Some people are more hardy than others, psychologically, and it’s not always connected to physiological toughness. We’re still working out what makes the ideal astronaut – there is no gold standard psychiatric test.” Mars One aims to put people on the Red Planet by 2025. Prof Raye Kass, from the project’s advisory team, highlights the importance of teamwork and leadership, citing the example of Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic

End of World War II HISTORY

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THE WAR WITHOUT AN END On 8 May 1945, Allied nations celebrated VE Day with elation – but, as Keith Lowe reveals, in much of Europe conflict was far from over 7

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In pictures: the grim fallout from war 1 Danish women accused of fraternising with Nazis are rounded up in 1945 2 Partisan fighters arrest suspected fascists in Rome, 1946 3 On the ground lie victims of the Croatian nationalist Nazi-backed Ustasha regime, 1945 4 Germans expelled from Czechoslovakia register at a transit camp, 1946 5 French patriots crop the hair of a suspected Nazi collaborator, c1945 6 A Nazi collaborator is marched through the streets of Louvain by the Belgian Resistance in 1944 7 Soviet troops march through liberated Vilnius, Lithuania, in 1944 8 Greek refugees shelter in a colony in Verroia in 1948, driven from their homes by military action against communists 9 Dutch patriots round up suspected Nazi collaborators in Nijmegen, 1944 10 A Belgian former Gestapo informer is identified at a German transit camp, 1945

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Postwar savagery n the summer of 1945, a train carrying refugees pulled out of a station in what’s now Slovakia, heading for Germany. Its passengers were German speakers being expelled from the country – in the wake of the Second World War, Czechoslovakians no longer wanted such people living in their midst. When the train passed through the town of P erov in Moravia it was brought to a halt. The head of the local militia, a man named Karol Pazúr, forced everyone to disembark, claiming he wanted to carry out a search for former Nazis hiding among the passengers. When they stepped down from the train, Pazúr and his men lined them up and shot them all. The dead included 71 men, 120 women and 74 children. The youngest victim was just eight months old. The slaughter at P erov was just one example of the many mass killings perpetrated all over Czechoslovakia in the wake of the war. According to Czech historians, during the summer of 1945 between 25,000 and 40,000 German speakers were killed in acts of revenge (though many German historians claim a considerably larger number). Perhaps the most notable fact about the P erov massacre is that its protagonist was one of the very few Czechs ever to be arrested for such crimes. At his trial, Pazúr was asked how he could possibly justify the killing of the children. He is reported to have answered: “Well, what was I supposed to do with them after we’d killed their parents?” Nevertheless, after a brief spell in prison, Pazúr was pardoned. He promptly began a new career as a member of the communist secret police. When we now look back to the end of the Second World War, we seldom give much thought to what happened next. In our collective memory, VE Day was a moment of pure celebration, when crowds “During the across the world summer of gathered to rejoice 1945, between the end of violence. But for many in 25,000 and Europe, VE Day 40,000 German did not bring speakers were peace. For German communities all killed in acts of over the continent revenge across it merely marked Czechoslovakia” the beginning of a new nightmare in which vengeful populations sought personal retribution for the wrongs that had been inflicted on them by the Nazis.

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The political and ethnic tensions and urge for revenge that smouldered during the Second World War erupted after German surrender ILLUSTRATION BY TOM JAY

GERMANY

Fatal revenge At the end of the war, 6–8 million foreign forced labourers were set free within Germany. Over the following months they ran amok, looting shops and taking revenge on civilians, causing a crisis of law and order across the country. Meanwhile, some 12 million ethnic Germans were expelled from other parts of Europe and forced to travel to Germany. The cruelty and hardship they suffered during their odyssey claimed half a million lives.

FRANCE AND ITALY

Resistance is volatile After the liberation of both countries, 10,000 collaborators in France and 20,000 Fascists in Italy were summarily executed. Resistance movements refused to give up their weapons, and in 1948 continuing violence by communists led to a state of emergency being declared in both countries. Law and order was restored only by employing draconian measures such as mass arrests.

THE BALTIC STATES

The price of liberation By the end of the war the Red Army ‘liberated’ Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia and subsumed those countries into the Soviet Union. The populations regarded this action as a new occupation, and hundreds of thousands took to the forests from where they waged a guerrilla campaign against Soviet troops that lasted until the mid-1950s, claiming tens of thousands of lives. They were finally defeated by a counter-insurgency campaign that saw the guerrilla army infiltrated and entire communities deported to Siberia or Kazakhstan.

UKRAINE AND POLAND

Brutality at the border Between 1944 and 1947, Poles and Ukrainians waged a savage war across their borderlands in which more than 100,000 civilians were slaughtered. A series of population exchanges in 1946, during which more than 2 million people were forced from their homes, failed to bring the violence to an end. Eventually the Polish government resorted to the mass deportation of all Ukrainian speakers from their south-eastern borderlands and their dispersal throughout other parts of the country. Though brutal, ‘Operation Vistula’ was a success, and by 1948 the conflict was over.

YUGOSLAVIA

Mass executions For over a week after the official ceasefire was signed in May 1945, soldiers of the German army continued fighting in Yugoslavia. They were captured in mid-May and slaughtered en masse by Yugoslav Partisans over the following weeks. Croatian and Slovenian troops were also captured, with around 100,000 killed in a series of mass executions. Political and ethnic violence continued in many parts of the country until the communists established total control in 1946.

GREECE

Descent into civil war Through 1944 into 1945 a breakdown in relations between the British Army and communist partisans resulted in several months of violence. A ceasefire was called in February 1945, and the communists agreed to lay down their arms in return for a comprehensive purge of collaborators from the Greek security forces. However, rightwing militias refused to disband, instead continuing to hunt down communists all over the country. By 1946 Greece had descended into civil war. It has been estimated that over the next three years around 700,000 people were displaced and up to 150,000 killed. Vol. 8 Issue 1

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Hundreds of thousands of German-speaking civilians were snatched from their families and made to work as slave labourers in eastern European farms and factories. Some were even put to work clearing minefields until strong complaints from the Red Cross put an end to the practice. Hundreds of thousands more were interned in prison camps – in some cases the same camps from which Jews and political prisoners had only recently been liberated – before being expelled from their countries of residence forever. Between them, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia expelled some 12 million German speakers in the three years following the war. It was probably the greatest forced migration in history. At least 500,000 of these migrants are now believed to have died during their long and arduous journey. Germans were “The expulsion of not the only people German speakers who were subject to such revenge. from eastern Anyone who had Europe sparked fought for the ‘wrong’ side, or probably the who was thought greatest forced to have been a little too friendly with migration the enemy during in history” the war, was also targeted. In northern Italy, some 20,000 people were summarily executed by their own countrymen because of their support for the Fascist regime. In Holland and Denmark, women accused of sleeping with German soldiers were stripped, shaved and paraded naked through their towns. In clandestine prisons set up in France by former members of the Resistance, suspected collaborators were subjected to various forms of sadism, including mutilation, rape, enforced prostitution and every kind of torture imaginable. French doctors at Drancy detention camp, for example, complained that former collaborators were being subjected to beatings, burns to the soles of the feet and prolonged electric shocks to their genitals. One French newspaper lamented the fact that members of the Resistance were repeating some of the most heinous crimes of the Gestapo. “What was the point in triumphing over the Barbarians,” it asked, “if only to imitate them and become like them?”

Ethnic violence Some of the worst violence that flared in the aftermath of the war occurred in those areas of Europe where the Nazis had deliberately 46

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Presidents Aleksander Kwa´sniewski (left) of Poland and Leonid Kuchma of Ukraine join hands at a 2003 reconciliation event

pitted one ethnic group against another. In Yugoslavia, for example, the Nazis and the Italian Fascists had installed a puppet government run by Croatian ultra-nationalists. This government, the Ustasha regime, spent much of the war persecuting and murdering ethnic Serbs. Naturally, the Serb resistance repaid them in kind; once the war was over, Croatian soldiers and officials were mercilessly hunted down. In the town of Maribor, in Slovenia, tens of thousands of Ustashas were captured while attempting to flee into neighbouring Austria. They were slaughtered on an industrial scale and piled into anti-tank ditches, or thrown into deep ravines and left to rot. Even the most conservative estimates claim that 50,000 to 60,000 Croatian nationalists were killed in this locality alone, and tens of thousands more were killed in other massacres all over Slovenia and northern Croatia. The Second World War opened up a Pandora’s box of ethnic conflict in Yugoslavia that was impossible to close once the war was over. According to Yugoslav intelligence reports in July 1945, “chauvinistic hatred” between different ethnic groups was universal. Serbs who returned to one village after the war are reported to have asked their fellow villagers: “Why don’t you kill all Croats? What are you waiting for?” Similar sentiments were expressed by Slovenes and Bosnian Muslims. Tragically, these hatreds would be revived almost 50 years later when the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s sparked similar attempts at genocide. Another ethnic conflict opened up along the borderlands of Poland and Ukraine at around the same time. When the Nazis arrived here in 1941 they enlisted Ukrainian ultra-nationalists to help them carry out the Holocaust. Having eradicated the nation’s Jews, however, these ultra-nationalists then took it upon themselves to start eradicating the nation’s Poles. Using methods they had

learned from the Nazis, they torched villages and rounded up whole populations before shooting them. Once again, Poles reacted in kind, and a war raged between these two ethnic populations until the end of 1947. “While I never saw one of our men pick up a baby or a small child with the point of a bayonet and toss it onto a fire,” remembered one Polish partisan, “I saw the charred corpses of Polish babies who had died that way. If none of our number did that, then it was the only atrocity that we did not commit”. To their credit, today’s Polish administration has had the courage to face up to what happened 70 years ago. In 2002 Aleksander Kwa´sniewski, the Polish president at that time, publicly apologised for some of the worst excesses that were carried out on the Polish side. However, tensions between the two communities linger to this day.

Civil war It was not only ethnic differences that pitted people against each other in 1945. Political differences could be just as deadly. Poles not only killed Germans and Ukrainians during and after the war, they also killed fellow Poles whose political beliefs differed from their own. In the same way, Greeks killed Greeks, Danes killed Danes, and Italians killed Italians. Our popular image of the French Resistance battling valiantly against the Nazi occupier ignores the uncomfortable fact that the vast majority of Resistance activity during the war was not directed at Germans at all but at fellow French people. This political unrest

continued long after the liberation: as late as 1948, French communists were still blowing up trains – not in the pursuit of liberation, but in the name of revolution. At the heart “Almost every of such violence was a battle for country in political soul Europe suffered the of Europe. The bloodshed; in defeat of the Nazis had left a political some places vacuum in many the fighting was countries, which worse than during extremists of all kinds rushed the war itself” forward to fill. So vicious were their skirmishes that the American officials who came to Europe at the end of the Second World War worried openly that the entire continent was about to descend into a new Europe-wide civil war. Liberated peoples, wrote the US assistant secretary of state Dean Acheson towards the end of the war, “are the most combustible material in the world”. If political stability were not restored throughout Europe as soon as the war was over, all that would follow would be “frustration”, “agitation and unrest”, and eventually “the overthrow of governments”. One of the most tragic episodes of postwar politics in Europe was beginning to unfold as Acheson wrote. In Athens, which owed its liberation as much to communist partisans as to British troops, a quarrel had broken out over who was going to govern Greece after the war. The last trickle of expelled Germans leave Poland’s western territories c1951, near the climax of what was probably the greatest forced migration in history

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The British appeared to want to reinstall the king, and dragged their heels over punishing even the most openly fascist collaborators. The communists, meanwhile, refused to lay down their weapons until they saw concrete evidence of a comprehensive purge. The stand-off came to a head during a demonstration in Athens at the very end of 1944. As a crowd gathered in Syntagma Square, shots were fired – it has never become clear by whom – and around a dozen demonstrators were killed. In indignation, the communists once again took up their arms and the whole country quickly descended into chaos. So began a civil war that would last, on and off, for another five years. When the violence was finally brought to an end in 1949, more than a million people had been displaced, and perhaps 150,000 killed. The political polarisation fomented during this time would last for decades, and is still evident in Greece today.

The war without end Some of these events are better known than others, but what is very rarely appreciated is how widespread the continuing violence was after 1945. Almost every country in Europe suffered some kind of bloodshed, and in some places the fighting was worse than it had been during the Second World War itself. Our ignorance of this violent and chaotic time stems partly from our desire to believe in the myth of VE Day. It is much more comfortable to imagine that the war came to a neat conclusion than it is to acknowledge the messy and morally ambiguous events “‘Europe,’ that followed. The wrote a New Cold War also has a role to play: after all, York Times almost 50 years journalist, ‘is in a for western Europe was condition which cut off from most of the regions in no American which these events can hope to took place. Hence, comprehend’” stories that Poles and Czechs still remember as if they were yesterday do not always spring readily to western minds. But the problem runs much deeper. Over the decades we have adopted a fairly unsophisticated view of the Second World War – one that does not always have room for the many local complexities that characterised it. We tend to regard the war simply as a clash between the Allies and the Axis, without giving a thought to the many other conflicts that were raging at the same time. Because

British and American troops stopped fighting on 8 May 1945, we imagine that everyone else did likewise. Europe in 1945 was a much more complicated place than that. The New York Times journalist Cyrus Sulzberger summed up the situation in an article written at the end of the war. “Europe,” he explained, “is in a condition which no American can hope to comprehend. Virtually every ancient hatred has been revived with new intensity. Frenchman, Italian, Russian, Pole, Czech, Serb, Greek, Belgian, Netherlander, Rumanian – each in his own way hates the German with a personal frenzy. “But worse, and not to be ignored, is that hatred, renewed by the present war, of Greek for Bulgar, Serb for Croat, Rumanian for Hungarian, Frenchman for Italian, Pole for Russian, which has developed among many population groups basically and broadly united in the final effort to crush their common German enemy. And worst of all is that fratricidal hatred of Greek for Greek, Frenchman for Frenchman, Serb for Serb and Pole for Pole, based on differing social and political conceptions fostered and encouraged by chaos and unleashed by the war.” These people killed one another irrespective of what was going on between the Allies and Nazi Germany. And when the Germans surrendered in May 1945 they saw no reason to stop. Many of the tensions that exist around Europe today owe as much to this postwar period as they do to the war itself. When Serbs and Croatians clash at football matches, their fans call one another ‘Chetniks’ or ‘Ustashas’ – the names of the opposing political groups that massacred one another in 1945. When the Czech government refused to sign the EU’s Lisbon Treaty in 2009, it was for fear that German expellees might mount legal claims for wrongs done to them in the aftermath of the war. And in the 2015 Greek elections, communists and ultra-nationalists were once again painted as bogeymen, even while antidebt demonstrators were burning effigies of Swastikas. The Second World War certainly did not come to an end in May 1945. It took many more years for the remnants of violence to fizzle out. But its memory – and the effects of the events that followed it – still haunts us today.

KEITH LOWE is the author of Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II (Viking, 2012)

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NATURE

PHOTO: PHOT PHO PH P HOT HO H OT O TO O:: IJACK ISTOCK STOC STO S ST TOC TO T OC O CGOLDFARB, KX X2 X2, 2, J JA JAMES A ME MES M ES E SEMANUELE SMIT SMI SM S SMITH/THE MIIIT M T H/T H/TH / T H EBIGGI GU G GURDON UR RDO RD DO D O NSTEVE IINSTITUTE, IN NS N ST TITU TIT TI ITU IIT TU T U TE TE, T E , GE GETT GET G GETTY ET ET TT TY PHOTO: X4, JONES/PHOTOSHOT, ALAMY, GIL WIZEN X2, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CHANNEL

You ou might i h ht see a lot l t off Fred Freddie F ddi die and and Jason J on yo your our television elevision screens during this Halloween. But they’ve they’v got nothing hing on these real-life monsters, says Matt Swaine Swa

EYE-POPPING SNIPER TEXAS HORNE HORNED LIZARD

The noxious chemicals in the lizard’s blood may come from its diet of venomous ants

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Phrynosoma cornut cornutum | SOUTH USA AND M MEXICO The fact that any animal an has ocular auto-hemorrhaging as part of its arsenal of defences shows just how inventive evolution can be. A number of species of horned lizards have developed the ability to bleed from their eyes, to deter wouldbe predators. Bloo Blood-filled sinuses within the eye socket swell swe up and rupture, allowing the lizard to shoot a stream of blood up to 1.5m. Apart from startling their attackers, the th blood apparently tastes very unplea unpleasant and is enough to send would-be pr predators into retreat.

SLIMER’S TWIN

Velvet worm: soft-skinned, hard as nails

VELVET WORM Peripatoides novaezealandiae | NEW ZEALAND This particular specimen is just one of many species of velvet worm occupying the southern hemisphere, and it’s hard to beat their hunting technique. Step one: locate invertebrates at night using sensitive antennae. Step two: use specially modified limbs either side of the head to fire a glue-like slime that immobilises prey. Step three: inject saliva that starts to digest the prey’s insides. Step four: suck out the innards like an insect milkshake.

PIT MONSTER

The animal uses its five sensory antennae to detect prey

BOBBIT WORM

PHOTO: PHOT PHO PH P HOT HO H OT O T O: O : IISTOCK STO S ST TOC TO T OC O CK X X2 X2, 2, J JAMES SMITH/THE GURDON INSTITUTE, U TE, T GETTY

The bobbit worm lurks on the bottom of warm oceans

Eunice aphroditois | INDO-PACIFIC SEAS Like the Return Of The Jedi’s infamous sarlacc monster on Tatooine, the bobbit worm buries itself underground and awaits its prey. Five highly sensitive antennae alert it to approaching victims and, when triggered, it can pounce with such speed that it is reputedly capable of slicing a fish in half. The worm, which can grow up to 3m long, then drags its prey into its burrow. In the words of C-3PO: “In his belly you will find a new definition of pain and suffering…”

FACE HUGGER EPOMIS BEETLE

Epomis beetle larvae feed almost exclusively on amphibians

Epomis species | MIDDLE EAST Epomis beetle larvae use an ‘eat-meI’m-helpless’ display to lure hungry frogs and salamanders to their deaths. A larva dodges the amphibian’s tongue and attaches itself to its head with hook-like fangs. From here, it paralyses and then digests its victim within hours. On the very odd occasion that a frog manages to get one in its mouth first, the larva is either regurgitated or spat out before launching its own attack. The amphibian never comes off on top – the epomis beetle has a 100 per cent strike rate.

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NATURE

Often, the dead ants are found with their jaws clamped to a leaf

Another attractive trait: hagfish may swim into dead or dying fish to eat them from the inside out

The remains of an unfortunate ant, with Ophiocordyceps unilateralis sprouting from its head

GUNGE SPRAYER

PHOTO: ALEX WILD, ANAND VARMA, FLPA X2, DR DAVID BLACKBURN, NGS IMAGES X2, JOHN HALLMEN, GETTY, ANNELIES LEEUW

HAGFISH Myxini class | TEMPERATE SEAS Where do you start with hagfish? Their four hearts? Or that they are the only animals with a skull but no other bones? Actually, it’s their self-defence strategy that’s the standout feature. Glands running down the body create thick goo that is thought to clog the gills of potential predators. When an attacker grabs a hagfish, a billowing cloud is released, forcing the would-be predator to drop it and retreat.

BODY SNATCHER ZOMBIE FUNGUS

Researchers and photographers are not immune to the ‘charms’ of the fulmar

Ophiocordyceps unilateralis | TROPICAL FORESTS Spores from this fungus can quickly take control of an ant’s mind and an outbreak can wipe out an entire colony, so other ants will dump an infected insect far from the nest. Disorientated, the victim will start clambering through its the forest, until it reaches an exposed location and dies. It then becomes a shell for the fungus to grow, with tendrils eventually erupting from the ant’s head and body. When the fungus is mature, spores burst forth and infect any ant in the vicinity. There are over 400 species of mindcontrolling fungi, each adapted to parasitise and control the brain of a particular species of invertebrate.

PROJECTILE PUKER NORTHERN FULMAR

“If threatened on its nest, the fulmar spews a bright orange jet of this fishy concoction” 50

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Fulmarus glacialis | N ATLANTIC AND N PACIFIC The little girl from The Exorcist has nothing on these seabirds. The first part of their stomach, the proventriculus, holds an oil that is both an energy-rich food for their chick and a defence against avian predators. If threatened on its nest, the fulmar spews a bright orange jet of this fishy concoction up to 3m. If this noxious vomit lands on the predator’s feathers, it can affect their waterproofing, potentially resulting in a lingering death.

When they are breeding, the male frogs develop hair-like extensions, which help them absorb oxygen from the water while they care for their eggs

Once the jewel wasp larva has eaten the internal organs of the cockroach, it pupates inside the shell of its body, later emerging as an adult

BONE BREAKER HAIRY FROG Trichobatrachus robustus | CENTRAL AFRICA Like Wolverine with his adamantium claws, this frog can break its own bones and force the ends out through its hind toes to create highly effective claws. How does it work? A chunk of collagen forms a bond between the claw and a small piece of bone at the tip of the frog’s toe. When the animal is under threat, it contracts a muscle so the claw breaks away from the bony tip and cuts through the toe. The frogs are a delicacy in Cameroon, where hunters use long spears to kill them. The Naegleria fowleri amoeba can be found in unchlorinated swimming pools

MIND MELTER BRAIN-EATING AMOEBA Naegleria fowleri | WARM FRESHWATER Planning on taking a dip in warm, stagnant water? Then the Naegleria fowleri amoeba is the perfect reason to invest in a nose clip. It tends to feed on bacteria, but it is attracted to chemicals that nerve cells use to communicate. It enters the human body through the nose, then travels along the olfactory nerves and into the skull, where it feeds on the brain. Diving and waterskiing in infected water represent a big risk… so stick to something safer, like tiddlywinks.

ZOMBIE NURSERY MAID JEWEL WASP Ampulex compressa | SOUTH ASIA, AFRICA AND THE PACIFIC ISLANDS The paraphernalia of parenthood can seem overwhelming, but all an expectant jewel wasp needs to raise her young is her very own zombie cockroach. She lays an egg on the hapless insect and her little one then hatches out and starts feeding on its own living larder, until eventually pupating inside the cockroach’s empty shell. The jewel wasp female administers two precisely delivered doses of venom to enlist the assistance of this ghoulish wet-nurse. The first injection to the ’roach’s thoracic ganglion renders it paralysed; the second to its brain blocks receptors of the neurotransmitter octopamine, inhibiting the creature’s escape reflex. After chewing off half of each of the cockroach’s antennae, the wasp leads its walking pantry to its burrow.

MATT SWAINE is a former Editor of BBC Wildlife and now writes about nature and the outdoors

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SCIENCE

MEET THE

REAL-LIFE SUPERHUMANS

PHOTO: CATERS NEWS, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC IMAGES

These people have tapped into the biology of their bodies to unleash the true power of our species. Katherine Nightingale explores what scientists are learning from them

‘Iceman’ Wim Hof increases his body temperature using meditation

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COLD RESISTANCE HIMALAYAN MONKS

Up in the climes of the Himalayas, there are tales of monks who use breathing and meditation to raise their body temperatures to the extent that they can dry wet sheets wrapped around their bodies, casting off steam into the freezing air. Researchers from the US and Singapore have investigated these claims by measuring the monks’ core (armpit) and peripheral (finger) temperatures. During the measuring, they asked them to use the breathing techniques either with or without the meditation.The researchers found that while the breathing could raise

UNDERWATER VISION MOKEN NOMADS

Our eyes are adapted to a life on land, which means we can only see blurry shapes when we swim underwater without goggles. But children in a tribe of sea nomads – the Moken – who reportedly learn to swim before they can walk, can see well enough to collect shells, sea cucumbers and clams from the seabed. There are around 2,000 to 3,000 Moken living in the Andaman Sea, off the coasts of Myanmar and Thailand. Researchers at Lund University in Sweden estimate that Moken children

body temperature, adding the meditation increased it to that seen in a typical fever. ‘Iceman’Wim Hof, pictured left, has used similar techniques to the monks to achieve the world record for longest ice bath (one hour, 52 minutes and 42 seconds) and has even run a marathon in the Arctic Circle wearing just a pair of shorts. So what might be the benefit of being able to boost your own body temperature? Adaptation to cold environments is an obvious one, but higher body temperatures are also linked to better cognitive performance and improved immunity.

A Moken tribesperson swims with a turtle; they are eaten, but also revered

have more than twice the underwater visual clarity of European children, even though their sight on land is the same. They focus underwater by constricting their pupils and changing the shape of the eye’s lens.The researchers found that European children can be trained to see just as well as the Moken. It’s difficult to tell whether Moken children learn this better vision from a young age or whether evolution has played a role, so we might all be able to see a little better beneath the waves if we put our minds to it. Vol. 8 Issue 1

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EXTREME RUNNING TARAHUMARA TRIBE

Barefoot running has recently become a trend. But the Tarahumara, who live in northwest Mexico, have been doing something similar for generations, even inspiring books on the topic.They have wowed the world with their ability to run up to 320km (200 miles) in two days, wearing traditional sandals. Their word for men, Rarámuri, means something along the lines of ‘those who run fast’. No-one really knows why they have seemingly superhuman athletic prowess. It could be because they have traditionally lived far apart from each other, so running between settlements became necessary for communication. Their diet, which is predominantly made up of beans, corn and vegetables, probably also plays a role.They drink home-brewed beer, and also a mixture of water, lime, chia seeds and sugar.This concoction is jammed with omega-3, fibre, protein and antioxidants. In general,Tarahumara people have low cholesterol levels, and low rates of heart disease and diabetes. But as the rocky canyon paths are replaced by roads, fast food is starting to creep in, and rates of obesity and high blood pressure are growing.

Runners will complete ultramarathon distances into their 60s

PHOTO: NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC IMAGES, MATTHEW KARSTEN, PHOTOSHOT, BRUNO KELLY

“THE SENSATION FROM ONE STING IS SAID TO BE AS BAD AS BEING HIT BY A BULLET” The ants are sedated before being woven into the gloves

PAIN TOLERANCE SATERÉ-MAWÉ TRIBE

What’s more painful than the most painful insect sting known to man? Being stung by lots of those insects at once… for 10 minutes.That’s what adolescent boys of the Sateré-Mawé tribe in the Brazilian Amazon do up to 20 times before they are considered to be men. The ritual involves threading 100s of unconscious bullet ants (Paraponera clavata) – stings pointing inwards – into ‘gloves’ made of palm leaves. As the ants wake up, the boy inserts his hands, receiving hundreds of stings in which the ants inject a venom called poneratoxin into his skin. Poneratoxin blocks communication between the nerve cells, causing paralysis and immense pain throughout the body that lasts for up to 24 hours.The bullet ants are so-called because the sensation from one sting is said to be as bad as being hit by a bullet. But there is a fine line between paralysis and pain, and studies in rats have suggested that poneratoxin could be used as a painkiller. It’s also being investigated as an insecticide, so the Sateré-Mawé may have alerted the world to a useful chemical. 54

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FREEDIVING BAJAU NOMADS

A man strides across the ocean floor, harpoon in hand, looking for prey. In one breath, he has swum to a depth of 20m to hunt. He is a member of the Bajau, a group of sea nomads who live off the coasts of eastern Indonesian, the Philippines and eastern Malaysia. When you’re harvesting your food and livelihood from the seabed, you want to spend as much time as possible each day beneath the waves. Bajau divers spend around five hours a day submerged, diving to average depths of around 8m – but up to 30m – for minutes at a time, with only short periods between dives.They make various physiological adaptations, including the ‘diving response’ which slows the heart, and diverts blood to the heart, brain and working muscles, eking out the oxygen from the pre-dive breath.The spleen also contracts, forcing extra oxygen-carrying red blood cells into the bloodstream. The Bajau aren’t the only ones who show this ability. Other groups, such as the Japanese Ama, dive to greater depths, and the sport of freediving sees competitors reach depths of up to 100m. Maybe there’s a diving ability in all of us just waiting to come out. Bajau rupture their eardrums to make diving easier

KATHERINE NIGHTINGALE is a freelance science writer with an MSc in molecular and cellular biology

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WHY WE WANT TO BELIEVE 56

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Diana’s death, the Moon landings, Kennedy’s assassination… For every historic event there is a fantastic conspiracy theory to go with it. Robert Brotherton reveals why they capture our imaginations

id NASA really land on the Moon in July 1969? Is global warming actually a hoax? Who really shot JFK? Depending on who you ask, these sorts of questions can lead down a dark rabbit hole, to a place where nothing is quite as it seems and No one can be trusted. Welcome to the world of conspiracy theories. The term ‘conspiracy theory’ is thrown around so freely that it seems like everyone knows what one is, yet a precise definition is difficult to pin down. Nobody is denying that conspiracies do happen in the world, and so telling conspiracy theory and legitimate history apart “is inherently about line-drawing and judgment,” explains Mark Fenster, a law professor at the University of Florida and author of Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy And Power In American Culture. “We

D

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HOW TO SPOT A CONSPIRACY THEORY ARE THE CONSPIRATORS UNUSUALLY LY EVIL?

PHOTO: THE SIXTH FLOOR MUSEUM AT DEALEY PLAZA X5, NASA X4, ALAMY X6

Real-life conspirators tors to rs ttend e d to hhave en avee re av rrelatively ela l ti t ve v ly limited, mundane amb ambitions. villains mbit i ioonss. Th Thee villai a ns ooff prototypical conspiracy pir irac a y th ac ttheories, eori eo ries ess, ho hhowever, weeve ver,r have their sights se higher. least sett high hi igh g er er.. Att tthe hee vvery e y le er eas a t they tend to be pathologically ath thol olog oggic ical ally ly uunconcerned nccon once ceernedd with the liberty and well-being ndd w e l-be el l--be bein inng of ttheir heir he ir fellow humans; att wo worst, hell-bent wors rst, rs t, tthey h y ar he aaree he hell llll-b -ben -b e t en on world domination. ioon. n

define certain claims as conspiracy theories based on the kinds of explanations they use and stories they tell, as well as by the interpretive leaps they take and the evidence upon which they relay.” Whether you believe them or not, everyone loves a good conspiracy theory (note the return of The X-Files to our screens this winter) and the best ones are hard to ignore. So what makes them so appealing and why do some endure than others?

Fact or fiction? A typical conspiracy theory alleges wrongdoing on an enormous scale, and charges the conspirators with an almost superhuman ability to plan, predict and control events. And while the label is generally applied to claims that critics think are patently false, the relationship between conspiracy theory and truth is far more nuanced than that. The best conspiracy

AND UNUSUALLY COMPETENT? While W hi e th hil thee be bbest-laid st-laidd plans of o mice and men of ooften t n te awry, villains conspiracy go awr go w y, the he vil lla lains of o your typical co onspiracy ttheory th heo e ryy sseem eem m too have no suc such ch troubl trouble. le. Their convoluted with barely co onv nvol o ut uted ed sschemes chem ch e es e aalways lway ayys pl pplay ayy oout u w ut itth ba bare reely a hhi hitch itc t h – al aalthough t ou th ough gh the they heyy do hhave a e a co av conv convenient n en e ient ntt habit enough ha abi bitt off lleaving eavi ea avi ving n jjust ng u t en us enou ouugh cclues ough l es lu e ffor orr tthe hee aastute sttut utee conspiracist co ons nspi p ra raci c st ci s ttoo pi pick ck uupp on on.

The Kennedy assassination, 9/11 and the Moon landings are three favourite topics of conspiracy theorists 58

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theories are unproven by design, claiming to reveal unknown truths, while simultaneously acknowledging that definitive proof is just out of reach. As Fenster puts it, conspiracism is “an active, endless process that continually seeks, but can never fully arrive at, a final interpretation.” Pretty much every noteworthy event spawns some conspiratorial murmurs, which you can find in the online world’s darker recesses (like page two of a Google search). The internet itself is often blamed for the rise of conspiracy theories. “No doubt, the internet allows information to travel faster and farther than before, but the availability of information does not in and of itself spread beliefs,” says Joe Uscinski, a political scientist at the University of Miami. “Thousands of websites push conspiracy theories, but none of these are highly trafficked compared to mainstream websites.” But the internet has also been good for spreading criticism of conspiracy theories.

Uscinski and co-author Joseph Parent surveyed 3,000 internet articles mentioning conspiracy theories for their 2014 book American Conspiracy Theories. They found that more than half of the sites portrayed the theories in a negative light – often accompanied by words like ‘fantasy’, ‘bizarre’ and ‘debunked’. It is also worth noting that conspiracy theories pre-date the internet by several thousand years. They have been a popular preoccupation since at least as far back as ancient Athens and Rome. The internet is just the latest in a long line of technologies, from language to the printing press to Twitter, that feed upon our endless hunger to share and consume various ideas.

Tinfoil hats Where there are conspiracy theories, there must surely be conspiracy theorists. The term might bring to mind an image of a small

“The term might bring to mind an image of a group of dedicated internet warriors with a flare for tinfoil couture” group of dedicated internet warriors with itchy caps-lock fingers and a flare for tinfoil couture. But conspiracy theorists are not as rare as you might think. According to a 2012 YouGov survey of more than 1,700 British people, just under a quarter said they believe Princess Diana was assassinated. A further 13 per cent said they weren’t sure. In a 2015 YouGov

CAN IT BE PROVEN FALSE? PROVE Coons Conspiracy C n pi p racy cy theorists face a they are sspecial sp ecial ch cchallenge: ha studying stu st udyi ud ying ngg ssomething o that iss aactively ctiv ct ivel iv elyy trying to avoid el dete de detection. tect te ctio ct ioon. n. If there really was a conspiracy coons nspi pira pi ra as good as they tth heyy ssay, ayy, then of course we would not woul wo uldd nno ul o be able to prove Note unfalsifiability, it. it t. No N te that te t lilike ke tthe h other warning he ssigns si gnns hhere, is not a sure gns sign that sign si th a claim is false – bu bbutt it i is good reason scepticism. fforr sc fo

IS IT UNPROVEN? Why don’t pe people eop o lee claim m tthat hat Wa W Watergate t rgate te theories? or Iran-Contra aare re cconspiracy onspirracy theories s? Because we kno know ow th tthey e hhappened. ey appe ap pene nedd. TThere here he eree is not much Conspiracy no ot mu m ch mystery tthere. heree. Co Cons nspi ns pira pi racy ra cyy ttheories heor he orie or iees aaree al ar all abou about o t fostering doubt and speculat speculation, a ion, n, flflipping ippin ipp ingg co cconventional nvention nv onal wisdom on o its t head, and nd ppurporting urpporting ng ttoo uncove er hitherto unkno n wn no w truth hs. uncover unknown truths.

IIS S IT BASED ON ANOMALY HUNTING? Rather than building a cast-iron case out of objective evidence, conspiracy theories are an exercise in ‘anomaly hunting’. They pick holes in the ‘official story’ and speculate about how the connections between these dots might trace the outline of a conspiracy.

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PHOTO: GETTY, NASA ILLUSTRATOR: PAUL TYSALL

“When something big happens, we are wired to assume that something equally big must have caused it”

Conspiracy theorists claim the Twin Towers were intentionally brought down in a controlled demolition

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poll, 18 per cent of Brits said they think global warming is a hoax, and over half – 52 per cent – agreed that ‘officials of the European Union are gradually seeking to take over all lawmaking powers in this country.’ Overseas, at least half of US citizens thought their government was not telling the whole truth about the 9/11 attacks, according to polls conducted between 2004 and 2007 by Zogby International, Scripps Howard and CBS/The New York Times. In a more recent 2014 Rasmussen poll, a quarter of Americans said they were convinced that the Bush administration deliberately allowed the attacks to happen. And it is not just in the West, either. In Russia, conspiracy theorising is a national pastime. In much of the Middle East, according to historian Daniel Pipes, it is a way of life. Part of the appeal is undoubtedly that conspiracy theories are fun. Richard Hofstadter, an early and influential conspiracy

scholar, wrote that buying into a conspiracy theory signals that you are “a member of the avant-garde who is capable of perceiving the conspiracy before it is fully obvious to an as yet unaroused public.”

WHY WE BELIEVE But we do not tend to believe things just for the fun of it. For us to really believe something, it has to seem plausible. And, contrary to tinfoil-hat-based stereotypes, the latest psychological research suggests that conspiracy theories are not a deviation from normal thinking. Rather, a handful of quirks in how our brains operate might lend conspiracist claims some intuitive plausibility. One such quirk of reasoning is called the proportionality bias. When something big happens – the public assassination of a president, say – we are wired to assume that something equally big must have caused it. It is unsatisfying to think one

THE MOST PERSISTENT CONSPIRACY THEORIES Four iconic events continue to fascinate conspiracy theorists, despite the fact that the false claims surrounding them have been disproved with science

MOON LANDINGS

GLOBAL WARMING

KENNEDY ASSASSINATION

One classic Moon landing conspiracy claims that the flag Buzz Aldrin planted on the lunar surface should not have waved. However, the flag had a metal arm to make it stick out, and it only flapped while Aldrin was wiggling the pole into place. Theorists claim that the absence of stars in the dark lunar sky proves that the photographs were taken on a film set. Yet the exposure on the cameras was intentionally calibrated for the brightly lit lunar surface, so it could not pick up the faint stars.

A few cherry-picked soundbites from the Climategate emails – the hacked emails of scientists at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit – were taken by some globalwarming- deniers as evidence of a plot among scientists to manipulate climate data. Yet several inquiries found no evidence of wrongdoing. The fact remains that many independent lines of evidence converge on the conclusion that Earth’s climate is getting warmer and we are partly to blame.

The ‘magic bullet theory’ asserts that the bullet that hit JFK in the back then exited through his throat, before wounding Governor Connally in the shoulder, wrist, and thigh would have had to pull off some impossible gymnastics to do all that damage. The theory neglects the fact that JFK’s seat was higher than Connally’s, and inset. Accounting for the difference in positions, the bullet’s path traces a straight line originating from the Texas School Book Depository.

9/11 As evidence that the Twin Towers were brought down in a controlled demolition, conspiracy theorists pointed to puffs of smoke that appeared to erupt a few floors ahead of the collapse, as if they were explosive ‘squibs’ taking out structural columns. Ignoring the implausibility of secretly rigging the towers with the amount of explosives that would be required, the ‘squibs’ are actually windows being blown out as collapsing floors above displaced the air and smoke beneath. Vol. 8 Issue 1

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CONSPIRACY THEORIES THAT TURNED OUT TO BE TRUE MK-ULTRA Documents came to light in the 1970s revealing that the CIA had been trying to develop the ability to influence and control people’s minds. The project, MK-Ultra, used hypnosis and LSD, and illegal experiments on citizens. We will likely never know the full extent of it, since many of the documents were destroyed.

THE MAFIA

otherwise unremarkable loner could stumble out of bed, pick up a gun, and change the course of history. Jan-Willem van Prooijen, a psychologist at VU University Amsterdam and lead researcher on a recent proportionality study, explains that: “this psychological bias often leads people to endorse conspiracy theories following highprofile events, such as a terrorist strike or the death of a celebrity. Many people render the official accounts for such events as unsatisfactory, and conclude that ‘there must be more to it than this.’” Another of our brain’s foibles is that whenever something happens we assume that somebody (or something) probably meant for it to happen. Karen Douglas, a University of Kent psychologist, says this bias (hypersensitive agency detection, or HAD, in technical lingo) “has been used to explain why people believe in the existence of spirits and gods, and why people are religious or superstitious. HAD

helps people make sense of ambiguous events.” Three studies published earlier this year – including one led by Douglas – suggest that the bias might also incline some people towards conspiracy theorising. “By definition, conspiracy theories assume purpose, agency and intentionality,” Douglas explains. Rather than thinking the US government dropped the ball on 9/11, for instance, our gut might tell us that they deliberately allowed the attacks go ahead, or even planned the whole thing. And then there is confirmation bias, which can make us cling to our beliefs regardless of the evidence. A 1995 study by Clemson University psychologist John McHoskey used the Kennedy assassination as a test case. McHoskey first had people rate their agreement with conspiracy and lone gunman theories of the assassination. Then he had them read a deliberately ambivalent packet of evidence for and against conspiracy. Finally,

At the Apalachin Meeting in 1957, around 100 Mafia members gathered together to discuss their business and operations when they were raided by police. The extent of the criminal underworld was finally uncovered, forcing the FBI and the US government to admit the criminal organisation’s existence to the general public for the first time.

TUSKEGEE SYPHILIS STUDY In 1932, the US Public Health Service studied untreated syphilis in poor African-Americans in Alabama. For the next four decades, health workers documented the effects without telling the patients what the study was about or whether they had syphilis. When penicillin was discovered to be an effective cure in the 1940s, it was withheld from the subjects.

NSA AND PRISM Recently, the NSA has been collecting massive amounts of data about innocent citizens’ whereabouts, phone calls and internet habits in the course of its efforts to keep tabs on threats to national security. There has been relative lack of outrage. Perhaps conspiracy theories have made us so used to the idea of being spied on that it barely registers as news. Lee Harvey Oswald was the sniper who killed JFK, but conspiracists claim there may have been another gunman

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“Conspiracy theories that tap into our deepest fears and darkest prejudices are cause for concern”

Psychologist Jan-Willem van Prooijen, seen here with a tinfoil hat, says that proportionality bias makes us more likely to believe conspiracies surrounding high-profile events. Interestingly, tinfoil hats were first introduced as a way to prevent mind interference in Julian Huxley’s 1927 story, The Tissue-Culture King

Left: Princess Diana was captured on security camera on her final evening in Paris

trivial curiosity, a bit of harmless fun, or maybe even as a valiant defence against potential scheming. And for many conspiracy theories, that might be the case. But some conspiracy theories have a dark side. The fact that some people believe Elvis is alive probably should not keep anyone awake at night, but conspiracy theories that tap into our deepest fears and darkest prejudices are cause for concern.

Damaging consequences

Above: Mohamed Al Fayed, father of Diana’s partner Dodi, has always insisted there was a plot to kill her

Researchers have only just begun to quantify the risks of widespread conspiracism, and the results are concerning. Dan Jolley, a psychologist at Staffordshire University, has been at the forefront of this research. He claims that his studies have highlighted some of the potential damaging consequences of conspiracy theories. “In recent research, we have shown that belief in, or mere exposure to, conspiracy theories influenced people’s likelihood of engaging in politics, taking action against climate change, and having a child vaccinated. Our research to date highlights the alarming impact that conspiracy theories may have on important societal issues.” So while it is easy to giggle over various conspiracies, the potential effects on their believers is no laughing matter.

DR ROBERT BROTHERTON’s book, Suspicious Minds: Why We Believe Conspiracy Theories, was out in November 2015

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PHOTO: ISTOCK X2, JAMES SMITH/THE GURDON INSTITUTE, GETTY

he had participants rate the evidence and indicate whether they had changed their minds. Rather than putting a damper on their beliefs, the mixed bag of evidence made people more confident in their original opinion. They saw the evidence that fitted with their existing belief as more persuasive, then wrote off contradictory evidence as flawed. It is worth pointing out that these biases are not unique to conspiracy thinking. Does it feel like you met the love of your life because of mere chance, or does it feel like it was written in the stars? Last time someone cut you off on the road, was your gut reaction to assume it was an innocent mistake or an intentional affront? And note that in McHoskey’s study, confirmation bias swayed conspiracy theorists and sceptics alike – it just pushed them in opposite directions. Nobody is immune to bias. It is easy to see conspiracy theories as a

ILLUSTRATOR: ANDY POTTS

SCIENCE

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BEATING MASS EXTINCTION All the signs in nature suggest another mass extinction is imminent – and this time humans, rather than a meteorite, are the root cause. But we’re also working on ways to save the species facing peril, as Duncan Geere discovers….

ll around the world, mankind is hacking enormous branches off the tree of life. Since the last ice age – which ended about 10,000 years ago – the extinction rates of plant, mammal, bird, insect, amphibian and reptile species have skyrocketed, with one estimate putting the current rate of loss at up to 140,000 species per year. That’s a problem – not just for the species that are dying out but for humans, too. We depend on our companions for food security, clean water, clothing and even the air we breathe (see p46) . In 2009, the Stockholm Resilience Centre listed biodiversity loss as one of nine ‘planetary boundaries’ that cannot be crossed without the world suffering irreversible environmental change (other boundaries include ozone depletion, climate change and ocean acidification). Without Earth’s biodiversity, humans wouldn’t be here at all. And even the most conservative estimates of species loss show cause for alarm.

A

Planet in peril The latest calculations come from a group of biologists led by Stanford University’s Paul Ehrlich and Gerardo Ceballos from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, who have published results showing that Earth is experiencing the beginnings of an extinction event at least as large as the one the killed the dinosaurs, and perhaps as big as the other four major extinctions in our planet’s history (see below). “We’re not there yet but we can easily get there in a century,” Ehrlich says. Their paper sets out a best-case scenario – one that only counts species as going extinct if we’ve seen them go extinct, and where the ‘normal’ extinction rate for Earth before humans came along is about twice as high as previous estimates. What did their findings say, with these assumptions in place? “You still get tens to hundreds of times more rapid extinctions today than during the times when there weren’t mass Vol. 8 Issue 1

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SVALBARD GLOBAL SEED VAULT

MAPS: RON BLAKEY/COLORADO PLATEAU GEOSYSTEMS

The roof and front of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault are adorned with stainless steel prisms and mirrors. As light reflects off them, they emit a ghostly glow that changes throughout the days and seasons. Artist Dyveke Sanne was commissioned to come up with this striking design, thanks to a legal requirement that says all Norwegian public and civil buildings exceeding a certain build cost must incorporate an artwork element.

extinction events,” explains Ehrlich. “In other words, a very clear sign that we’re entering a sixth mass extinction.” Ehrlich, it should be pointed out, has a history of making dire warnings about mankind’s impact on the planet, with varying degrees of accuracy. In his 1968 book The Population Bomb, he brought several decades of academic concern about Earth’s rising population to the mainstream, predicting mass famine, disease and social unrest on a global scale. A few years later, he predicted that by the year 2000 the UK would merely be “a small group of impoverished islands”. Thanks to the Green Revolution, his predictions largely failed to come to pass. Ehrlich has since admitted that society has been more resilient than he expected, while reaffirming his stance that overpopulation is a serious problem.

Knowing this, you’d be forgiven for taking Erlich’s predictions of species extinction with a pinch of salt – but he’s not the only academic alarmed at the rates of biodiversity loss. In 2011, biologists led by Anthony Barnosky (a co-author on Ehrlich’s recent paper) described ongoing mass extinctions in a paper published in Nature, writing that “current extinction rates are higher than would be expected from the fossil record”. And as recently as April this year, a group led by Tim Newbold from the United Nations Environment Programme reported that humans are directly responsible for a 13 per cent reduction in the number of species. Ehrlich says that his results are simply “a conservative confirmation of something that basically every scientist knows”.

PHOTO: DORNITH DOHERTY X3

THE FIRST FIVE MASS EXTINCTIONS

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Ordovician-Silurian

Late Devonian

447 to 443 million years ago

375 to 360 million years ago

The first mass extinction was caused by protocontinent Gondwana moving towards the South Pole, leading to global cooling, glaciation and a drop in sea level. Most life at the time was marine, and about 85 per cent of it vanished.

About 70 per cent of all species died in a series of extinction pulses. Marine life was particularly hard hit, with coral reefs disappearing almost entirely. The cause is unclear – possibly global cooling due to oceanic volcanism.

Above: Svalbard houses frozen seed samples from all over the world Below: Svalbard’s seeds are carefully stored in a controlled environment

Stockpiling nature Around the same time that Ehrlich was making his dire predictions about the future of the human race, an environmental movement was blossoming around the globe. The first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970, and Greenpeace was founded in 1971. All over the world, various scattered, underfunded conservation schemes began to join up into a wider network dedicated to preserving the world’s animals and plants. In 1992, 168 countries signed the United Nations’ Convention on Biological Diversity, in recognition that conservation of biological diversity is “a common concern of humankind”. That convention underpins many of the laws that protect biodiversity around the world today – it is seen as a vital document for conservation and

Permian-Triassic

Triassic-Jurassic

Cretaceous-Paleogene

252 million years ago

201.3 million years ago

66 million years ago

The worst extinction event, killing 90 to 96 per cent of species. The cause is debated but could have been a meteorite, volcanism or methane release that led to rapid climate change. Life took about 10 million years to recover.

Between 70 and 75 per cent of the Earth’s species went extinct at the end of the Triassic, including many large reptiles and amphibians. The cause is unknown, but the empty niches allowed dinosaurs to proliferate in the Jurassic.

This is probably the most famous mass extinction – it’s the asteroid impact that killed off the dinosaurs and about 75 per cent of species. Since then, birds and mammals have evolved to become the dominant land species. Vol. 8 Issue 1

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THE GLOBAL SEED BANK NETWORK

Small gene banks and international institutes from around the world all deposit seeds into Svalbard

Svalbard

Arctic Circle

NORTH AMERICA ASIA

EUROPE

ILLUSTRATOR: HAISAM HUSSEIN

AFRICA

SOUTH AMERICA

SCALE 400

KEY 200

National gene banks

50

10 1

International institutes 68

Number of seed boxes deposi ted in Svalbard Vol. 8 Issue 1

S VA LB A R D G LO B A L S EED VA U LT

INTERIOR OF MOUNT PLATEAU

Steel-reinforced corridor

Art installation

Vaults

Entrance 13 0 m

ULT S TO VA

Airport, 5km

TOTAL SEED CAPACITY:

2.25 billion 500

seeds per pack

400

3,750

packs per box

boxes per vault

CURRENT COUNT:

570 millio n* *As of August 31, 2015

LARGEST SEED STOCKS IN STORAGE IN SVALBARD (in millions) 20

40

60

80

Pearl millet

Rice

100

sustainable development. One major project under its auspices, for example, is the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation, which includes 16 ambitious targets for understanding and conserving plant diversity. Another example is a treaty that came into force in 2004 with the objective of guaranteeing food security through conservation and sustainable use of the world’s plants. It called for the creation of a Global Crop Diversity Trust, which could ensure the availability of plant diversity essential for food and agriculture. This organisation, based in Germany and known more commonly as the Crop Trust, funds a global network of gene banks, where seeds and other genetic material can be preserved for decades, if not centuries. “We work around the world with collections of crop diversity, to conserve them and make them available to farmers, breeders and scientists forever,” explains Brian Lainoff from the Crop Trust. “It’s important to have this diversity for the future so that scientists and breeders can grow crops that will have to be able to face higher temperatures, less water, new diseases and new pests. Without the diversity, the building blocks of agriculture don’t exist.”

Goosegrass

Fort Knox for nature Wheat

Sorghum

OCEANIA Barley

Corn

Bristlegrass

Alfalfa

Cicer (chickpea)

Source: www.nordgen.org/sgsv/

The Crop Trust works with national gene banks representing whole countries, as well as those focused on a particular crop, such as the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines. But it also has one of its own – the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, dug into the side of a mountain on a frigid island just 11,300km (810 miles) from the North Pole, where the Sun doesn’t rise for more than four months during winter. “We need a backup for the world’s gene banks,” says Roland von Bothmer from the Nordic Gene Resource Centre, which helps operate the facility. “That’s what the Svalbard Seed Vault is.” There are seeds sitting on the shelves of Svalbard’s vault from 5,103 species and 232 countries – including several, such as Yugoslavia, that no longer exist. Vol. 8 Issue 1

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“Svalbard is designed to last for centuries, if not millennia” Svalbard was chosen because it’s geologically stable and because the frozen ground means that cooling the seeds to the necessary temperature for storage is easier. The remote location reduces the chances of sabotage and the entrance is 130m (425ft) above sea level, meaning that it’ll be safe from rising oceans even if both of Earth’s ice caps melt. Lainoff, who admits to being “not a very religious person”, describes it as being like a cathedral. “It’s deathly quiet,” he says. “You feel very safe there.”

The global gene banks split samples between three locations: their ‘home’ bank, a second bank in another country, and also in Svalbard where only the depositing organisation can access them. As such, withdrawals are rare. “We’ve been working for eight years and it hasn’t happened so far!” says von Bothmer. “It’s hopefully a simple process. They request the material and it’s sent back.” But while the vault has been built into the frozen rock of Svalbard and is designed to last for centuries, if not millennia, its

PHOTO: USDA AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH, ALAMY ILLUSTRATOR: ACUTE GRAPHICS

HOW TO HARVEST SEEDS

1

The first step is to gather some seeds from wild plants. Collecting expeditions prioritise locations with high biodiversity but threatened habitats. It’s vital to record as much data as possible about where the seeds come from – not just the location but also the ecosystem.

2

A temperature- and humidity-controlled room is used to reduce the moisture content of the seeds and then they’re placed in sealed, airtight bags. Samples are then frozen to -18°C. This is the temperature that works best to preserve the majority of seeds for the longest possible time.

3

4

5

6

Seeds stored in a seed bank must be periodically tested to establish whether they are still viable. For most seeds, testing is performed every 10 years. Svalbard just stores seeds – it does not test them, otherwise there could be accusations of contamination.

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Fifty seeds of a batch are tested at once. They are wrapped in moistened filter paper or are rolled between paper sheets. After a few days, the number of germinated seeds is counted and a viability percentage is then calculated.

Finally, the seed samples are shipped to three separate places to ensure maximum security: the local gene bank, a second bank elsewhere in the world and Svalbard’s global backup vault. This means that if one of the banks is destroyed, there will always be a backup.

For most crops, 75 per cent viability is the minimum requirement to pass the test, though for some grasses it can be as low as 50 per cent. If the seeds fail the test, a new sample is grown from the surviving seeds in a location as close as possible to their natural habitat.

Below: Animal sperm stored at the USA’s National Animal Germplasm Program

financial situation is considerably more precarious – especially because some are sceptical about how worthwhile the project really is, arguing that the money it costs to maintain the seed bank would be better spent on preserving crops in their natural habitats. Operational costs are shared between the Norwegian government, which for political reasons can’t guarantee funding beyond the duration of a parliament, and the Crop Trust, which relies on donations from charitable foundations and other governments around the world. “It’s definitely a long-term project but no-one can guarantee the funding,” says von Bothmer.

San Diego Zoo contains over 8,000 individual samples from 600 different animal species

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IF THESE DIE OUT, WE WILL TOO BEES BE Inse have been pollinating flowers for 100 Insects million years and about 70 per cent of our mill agriculture today depends on them continuing agr to ddo so. But pesticides, habitat loss, invasive species and diseases are driving global spe bee populations into a severe decline, with potentially catastrophic consequences for food production.

BATS B Thhese mammals play a vital role in food These production, pr roduction, particularly particul in the tropics. They ppollinate flowers and disperse fruit seeds, but also consume cons insect pests - saving us millions of dollars in pesticides. Without bats, we’d have no bananas, mangoes or ttequila.

When the Iron Curtain sliced Europe in two, wildlife flourished in the border regions because there was little human contact. Today, the European Green Belt aims to preserve and protect this environment

CORAL COR C Ea Earth’s Ear richest ecosystems are coral reefs. TThey offer a home to untold amounts of biological wealth - fish, molluscs, sharks, turtles, sponges, crustaceans and many more. They protect coastlines from storms, filter water and store carbon. Not bad for 1 per cent of the Earth’s surface.

PLANKTON Do you like breathing? You’ve got plankton to thank - it produces between 50 and 85 per cent of the oxygen in the atmosphere. These tiny organisms also sink carbon to the bottom of the oceans. Not only that, they’re the base of the world’s food webs as they are eaten by everything else. else

FUNGI Fungi are nature’s recyclers, ttu turning waste into vital nutrients for vva various plants and animals. As well as this, tth they help produce various cheeses, chocolate, so soft o drinks and many vital drugs, including an antibiotics nt such as penicillin and cholesterol-cont cholesterol-controlling t statins. 72

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Noah’s ark 2 It’s not only plant seeds that are stored in gene banks – animal biodiversity is being cryopreserved in much the same way in almost a dozen ‘frozen zoos’ worldwide. One of the first was at the San Diego Zoo in the United States, where 8,400 samples from more than 800 species have been kept in liquid nitrogen since 1976. Stored material can be kept indefinitely and used for artificial insemination, in vitro fertilisation or cloning of animals in the future, although the network of global banks is nowhere near as comprehensive as that for plants. Instead, animal biodiversity is mostly preserved alive, in the world’s nature reserves. There are tens of thousands around the world and their protected status allows them to maintain ecological processes that have struggled to survive against the onslaught of human development. Several case studies have shown positive effects of these protected areas on plant and animal species, but many ecologists say they’re not enough to combat biodiversity loss the scale we’re seeing. Dr Mark Steer from the University of West of England is one of them. “While nature reserves play a hugely important role in enabling some of our rarer species to cling on in largely hostile environments, our current system of protected areas is wholly inadequate if we want to maintain and enhance biodiversity,” he explains. “If we cannot embed wildlife-friendly habitats throughout the wider landscape, creating extensive and resilient ecological networks, then we will continue to see wildlife ebbing from our lives.”

Above: The path of the European Green Belt is marked by the green line on this map

Svalbard may have grabbed the headlines, but the US Fish & Wildlife Service has been working with a different kind of frozen seeds – using 20-year-old ferret sperm to improve genetic diversity in a strugging population of black-footed ferrets. Once abundant on the Great Plains, by the early 1980s Mustela nigripes had been hunted to near-extinction. In a bid to save the species, the last 24 ferrets were rounded up and taken into captivity; six died, but captive breeding from the

remaining 18 has enabled the population to grow back into the hundreds. However, having such a small gene pool meant the population was becoming increasingly in-bred. So in 2008, the scientists reached for the frozen sperm samples stashed away two decades previously. Measures of in-breeding have since decreased by 5.8 per cent. The positive outcome of the programme suggests that animal sperm banks could in future play a key role in maintaining Earth’s biodiversity.

Thanks to sperm banks, endangered black-footed ferrets can look forward to increased genetic diversity

Some countries are, though, starting to build such embedded habitats. Wildlife corridors allow plants and animals to migrate between green spaces, joining up isolated populations and allowing them to find the resources they need to survive. One ambitious project is the European Green Belt, which hopes to turn the border that once formed the Iron Curtain into a green corridor that runs from the northernmost point of Europe down through more than 20 different countries until it reaches the Mediterranean Sea. Ultimately, though, what we’ve accomplished so far is nowhere near sufficient to slow the pace of the mass extinction that’s currently taking place all over the planet. Twenty elephants in a national park, or a handful of seeds on a shelf in an Arctic mountain, aren’t performing their ecological roles, and the plant and animal populations that depend on them will eventually die unless profound change happens fast. “We have to keep in mind that if the human enterprise – its level of population and consumption – continues to increase, if we continue to treat billions of people badly, either in terms of frozen food or through prejudice and so on, then there’s no hope,” says Ehrlich. “Scientists who look closely at these issues know the direction we’re going and the things we’re not doing. The closer we get, the chances of being able to avoid it become diminishingly small. We should have taken action long ago.”

DUNCAN GEERE is a freelance science writer based in Gothenburg, Sweden

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PHOTO: ISTOCK X6, EUROPEAN GREEN BELT INITIATIVE X2

SAVING THE BLACKFOOTED FERRET

NATURE

Pangolins under pressure The armour that protects pangolins makes them acutely vulnerable to the deadliest predator of all. James Fair reports on the conservationists fighting to save these amazing mammals from Homo sapiens Photos by Suzi Eszterhas

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This is a Sunda pangolin named Lucky. He was rescued from poachers and is now being rehabilitated at the Carnivore and Pangolin Conservation Program (CPCP) in Cuc Phuong National Park, Vietnam.

ildlife photographer Suzi Eszterhas, whose images illustrate this feature, first came across a pangolin while photographing African wild dogs hunting at night in Botswana. As Suzi puts it, “Anything wild dogs come by, they mess with, and they messed with this pangolin.” But pangolins have a defence mechanism, rolling up into a ball to present an unappetising and impenetrable barrier of keratin scales to ward off hungry carnivores, like hedgehogs do with their spines. The dogs would have ripped the pangolin to shreds if they’d had the opportunity, but they soon lost interest. Suzi didn’t, however, and she and her driver watched as the rather bizarre animal unfurled itself and trundled off into the night. “One of the things my driver did before we lost it disturbed me at first – he put his hand on it,” she recalls. “I said, ‘What are you doing?’ He told me that in the local culture it is good luck to touch a pangolin. He did it very gently.” This pangolin had been lucky. While rolling up into a ball has largely served these strange, scaly, ant-andtermite-loving mammals well since they evolved roughly

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80 million years ago, there is one fatal flaw in their strategy: it enables humans to carry them off to a cooking pot as easily as gathering wood for the fire.

Deadly demand And not only for the pot. Despite the fact that they are made of keratin, the same substance as rhino horn and human hair, those scales – which have earned the pangolin unofficial sobriquets such as the ‘artichoke on legs’ and ‘walking pinecone’ – are highly sought after in many parts of both Africa and Asia for their purported benefits, which go beyond the merely medical to warding off evil spirits and conferring invisibility. It’s no wonder that the pangolin has been called “the most traded mammal on the planet”. Suzi was lucky, too – most Africans and Asians don’t even know of the existence of the eight species of pangolin, and they rarely get to see one. It doesn’t help that all eight species are mainly nocturnal, cryptically coloured and extremely secretive; neither does the estimated removal of some one million animals from the wild over the past decade. As Carly Waterman, Vol. 8 Issue 1

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PANGOLINS AROUND THE WORLD There are eight species of pangolin, four in Africa and four in Asia. They have their differences – but all are under threat.

AFRICA BLACK-BELLIED PANGOLIN Phataginus tetradactyla Occurs in forested regions of West and Central Africa, from Sierra Leone to Nigeria. Also in much of the Congo Basin and as far east as Uganda. The smallest (less than 1m long) and most arboreal pangolin. Hunted for its meat and for its scales. STATUS Vulnerable

GIANT GROUND PANGOLIN Smutsia gigantea The largest pangolin species, reaching 1.8m long and 35kg. Patchily distributed in forests through West and Central Africa as far east as western Kenya and Tanzania. Also exploited for its meat and scales, which are used in traditional African medicine. STATUS Vulnerable

TEMMINCK’S GROUND PANGOLIN Smutsia temminckii Most widespread African pangolin, found from southern Chad, through East Africa to the Northern Cape province of South Africa. Inhabits savannah woodlands. Known as bwana mganga – ‘the doctor’ – in Tanzania because every body part is believed to have a medicinal use. STATUS Vulnerable

WHITE-BELLIED PANGOLIN Phataginus tricuspis A large range that extends from Guinea-Bissau in West Africa as far south as northern Zambia and as far east as Tanzania. Prefers lowland tropical forests, but there is evidence of it adapting to secondary forest and farmland areas. One study suggested it was most commonly found in African bushmeat markets. STATUS Vulnerable

ASIA CHINESE PANGOLIN Manis pentadactyla Found from the Himalayan foothills of Nepal through China east to Taiwan and south to Laos and Vietnam. Comfortable in a wide variety of habitats, including tropical forest, bamboo forest and grassland. Heavy exploitation has removed it from much of its range. STATUS Critically Endangered

ALL PHOTOGRAPHS TAKEN IN REHABILITATION CENTRES OR ZOOS.

INDIAN PANGOLIN Manis crassicaudata The most westerly Asian pangolin, its range extends from Pakistan into India and Bangladesh and as far south as Sri Lanka. Poorly studied but believed to be found in a variety of habitats. Exploited for food and medicine, and hunted ritualistically by some tribes. STATUS Endangered

PHILIPPINE PANGOLIN Manis culionensis Only recognised as being distinct from the Sunda pangolin in 1998, it has the most restricted range of any pangolin, being found almost exclusively on Palawan and some neighbouring islands. Exploited for its meat and scales – Taiwanese are reported to drink its blood in wine, while its skin is used to treat asthma. STATUS Endangered

SUNDA PANGOLIN Manis javanica Widely distributed from mainland South-east Asia down through Peninsular Malaysia and onto the Indonesia islands of Borneo, Java and Sumatra. Highest density found in primary rainforest, but also in degraded land, including palm-oil plantations. Extensive international trade from Indonesia to China and Vietnam. STATUS Critically Endangered

the pangolin technical specialist at the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), points out: “It’s more individuals than the losses of elephants, tigers and rhinos combined.” But while this unprecedented level of commercial activity, mainly involving trade to Asian countries such as China and Vietnam, has been taking place, the pangolin has been poorly served by the conservation community. Indeed until 2012 it was the only mammalian taxonomic group that didn’t have its own specialist group under the auspices of the IUCN. In the words of Dan Challender, 76

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Strong claws and a semi-prehensile tail make Sunda pangolins such as Lucky good climbers

All eight pangolin species are mainly nocturnal, cryptically coloured and extremely secretive. who researched the international trade in pangolins for his PhD, it had been “forgotten”. Now, at last, conservationists are fighting back. The arrival of the Pangolin Specialist Group – thanks to Dan and ZSL’s Jonathan Baillie – has, in turn, led to the creation of three notable conservation projects in Cameroon, China and Thailand, all co-ordinated by ZSL. “That’s half-a-million dollars that wouldn’t have gone to pangolins three years ago,” says Dan. The species’ cause has also been taken up by the Duke of Cambridge’s conservation programme United for Wildlife.

A lucky find But when you talk to anyone who’s anyone in the world of pangolins, one particular organisation crops up again and again – a small Vietnamese group called the Carnivore and Pangolin Conservation Program (CPCP), which specialises in caring for and releasing animals that have been confiscated from the illegal wildlife trade. Most of Suzi’s photos were taken there, and many are of ‘Lucky’ who arrived at the centre in December 2006 and has remained there ever since.

Research assistant Hsuan-Yi Lo with a three-month-old orphaned Chinese pangolin at Taipei Zoo, Taiwan

Nguyen Van Thai of the CPCP holds a threemonth-old Sunda pangolin.

This Chinese pangolin, pictured with her baby, was rescued from poachers and is now part of Taipei Zoo’s captive-breeding programme Vol. 8 Issue 1

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Pangolins are often called scaly anteaters because they fill a similar niche – this is a Sunda pangolin

Pangolin mothers carry their babies on their tail until they are weaned. This Chinese pangolin is just two weeks old

ABOVE RIGHT: A 12-day-old Chinese pangolin asleep in Taipei Zoo, Taiwan BELOW: ‘Pangolin’ comes from the Malayan word for ‘the roller’

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“We hope to release Lucky one day, but right now we want to keep him and make him an ambassador for all pangolins,” says the CPCP’s driving force Nguyen Van Thai. “He’s a very friendly pangolin, and we think that he can help raise awareness of the problems they face.” For the moment, Suzi points out, that’s a small price to pay. Thanks to the use of natural vegetation, the centre has some of the best enclosures for captive animals that she’s ever seen, and the staff regularly scour the surrounding forest to bring back ants’ nests so that the residents get to eat as natural a diet as possible. “Lucky goes crazy over these ants,” she says. “He seems to have fun doing what he would in the wild, and not just eating something out of a bowl.” Many of the pangolins – mainly Sunda pangolins Manis javanica – are rehabilitated into the wild, though officials frequently insist that confiscated animals are retained in captivity because they are evidence in criminal cases against wildlife traders. However, Thai is trying to persuade the Vietnamese government to relax restrictions so that

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A greater understanding of the species’ behaviour will help scientists plan suitable conservation strategies individuals can go back to the wild sooner rather than later. According to Louise Fletcher, who co-ordinated releases for the CPCP from 2013 to 2014, the work is also important because it’s one of the few places where individuals are monitored using radio tags. This shows whether the animals are surviving post-release, and therefore whether the criteria used to assess the suitability of the habitat are valid. During her time there, a total of five pangolins were released into Cát Tiên National Park, of which four are believed to have survived for more than six months. “The pangolin that didn’t survive kept returning to the same den site every night,” she says, “which is unusual. Normally pangolins wander all night in search of ants and termites, then find somewhere to sleep when they stop. This one had lost a lot of weight [when they found it after it died], and perhaps its behaviour should have alerted us to the fact that it wasn’t doing so well.”

ANATOMY OF A PANGOLIN

SCALES Most of the animal’s head, body and tail are covered in horny, sharp and overlapping scales made of keratin – the exceptions are the sides of the face, the inner parts of the legs, the throat and the belly. Like hair, they carry on growing throughout the animal’s life, though they are ground down when it digs and burrows in search of food.

EARS Special muscles enable the pangolin to close its ears and nostrils to protect them from insects.

MOUTH AND NOSE A powerful sense of smell is the pangolin’s main method of locating the ants and termites it mostly feeds on – other invertebrates may also be taken. The animal possesses a long, sticky tongue but no teeth, Digestion is aided by pebbles and spine-like protrusions in its stomach.

TAIL

GLANDS CLAWS Three long curved claws on each front foot enable the pangolin to rip into the nests of ants and termites, and help arboreal species to climb trees.

Special glands near the anus secrete a pungent fluid that is used for both marking territory and defence.

The species that are arboreal (white- and black-bellied, Indian, Philippine and Sunda pangolins) have semi-prehensile tails for climbing trees. Females use them to carry their young, too. The black-bellied pangolin’s tail has 46 or 47 vertebrae – the most of any mammal.

But this, as she points out, is valuable information about an animal that is hard to study and whose basic biology is poorly understood. Since leaving Vietnam, Louise has worked with a small conservation project in Brunei, the tiny sovereign state on the island of Borneo, and is now raising funds to start a programme to train sniffer dogs that can find pangolins in the wild – which is after all how the poachers do it. “Say you’ve got an area of forest that’s under threat,” Louise explains. “You could use the dogs to see whether there are pangolins and other species that might help to prevent that development from going ahead.” It would also enable you to tag wild animals to further increase our understanding of their behaviour.

Camera shy Why not just use camera-traps, though, an efficient and relatively cheap technology that is trusted to monitor wildlife all over the world – as demonstrated by our wildcat article on p26? “We had one Sunda pangolin, which was tagged, and it had seven den sites and an area of about 2ha that we were aware of,” Louise replies. “We put up 10 cameratraps in this 2ha area, and it still took us three months to get a photo of it. Bigger mammals need to use pathways, but pangolins just wander through the undergrowth, and until Vol. 8 Issue 1

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There is no evidence that the Pangolin’s scales improve our health, but claims get more outlandish by the year we understand them and their use of micro-habitats better, we can’t place the cameras in the right locations.” A greater understanding of the species’ behaviour will help scientists to plan suitable conservation strategies. But they also need a greater understanding of the human desire to exploit pangolins to the brink of extinction, and this is the issue that increasingly occupies Dan Challender’s time. Once, during a visit to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, he heard that pangolin was appearing on a local menu, so he visited the restaurant. “This guy brought a pangolin into the dining area in a corn sack,” Dan remembers. “It wasn’t big, probably about 2kg, and it was rolled up in a ball.” He killed the animal then and there before cooking and serving it to three diners, who paid US$676 for the privilege. Did Dan learn anything from witnessing such a gruesome sight? “I wanted to get an understanding of the demands and motivations of consumers, and perhaps use that to devise strategies to change their behaviour and stop them consuming pangolins,” he says. “The fact that the animal was killed in front of the customers suggests to me that the chef wanted to confirm the authenticity of the meat – that it came from a wild pangolin. Vietnamese people have a long cultural attachment to the meat of wild animals, which makes this a complex issue to address.”

Medical myths ABOVE: CPCP’s Nguyen Van Thai examines a threemonth-old Sunda pangolin rescued from poachers RIGHT: Staff at the centre weigh another baby Sunda pangolin – in adults, scales represent about a quarter of the total body weight

JAMES FAIR is BBC Wildlife’s environment editor. He edits our Agenda and Analysis pages every month – see p51 for the latest news. 80

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Then there’s the pangolin’s dubious status as a walking medicine cabinet. This is, according to Carly Waterman, mainly an issue in China, and ZSL’s Chinese project is looking at some of the motives there. As with rhino horn, there is no evidence that the scales have any impact on human health, but – as is also the case with rhino horn – the claims made on their behalf seem to become more outlandish by the year. “Pangolin scales are already regarded as something that improves blood circulation, stimulates lactation and cures skin conditions,” Carly says. “And recently one of my colleagues, who is Chinese, said that they were starting to be touted as a cure for breast cancer, which I hadn’t heard before. There’s no doubt that the threat has grown, and that’s probably down to the expanding middle classes with their increased spending power.” Suzi Ezsterhas says that the world needs to care about pangolins, so that the people who live in the species’ range states begin to value them too. Perhaps they could start by appreciating their role as providers of ecosystem services: a single pangolin is estimated to eat 70 million ants and termites every year. Failing that, what’s not to love about an animal that resembles the flowerhead of a cultivated thistle or – depending on your point of view – the reproductive organ of an evergreen tree, and possesses a tongue that starts at its pelvis and, at full extension, is longer than its head and tail combined?

Into the Future Future buildings should take inspiration from the wild obert Zemeckis’s iconic film Back To The Future II (1989) was set in Future cities could have a naturally controlled environment, October 2015, 30 years into the thenjust like termite mounds future. The movie’s predictions had some hits (wearable tech and video calls), but many misses, such as flying cars and hoverboards. The writers didn’t foresee mobile phones and they missed information technology, the dominant feature of our world. So prediction is hard. But in 2015, can we make any better guesses about another 30 years on? In 2045 our cities will surely be saturated with the smartness the movie writers missed. Control systems like traffic lights are already joined in citywide networks, but much more is possible. How about a road surface smart enough to fix potholes? There have been experiments in self-healing concrete, using bacteria that grow in cracks and excrete healing minerals. On a wider scale, the US city of Chicago is pioneering techniques in ‘predictive modelling’, mining banks of data gathered from various places, including police records and sensors in garbage trucks, in order to anticipate problems such as crime hotspots and sanitation breakdowns. But new forms of crime will become possible if hackers break into the artificial mind of the smart city. Meanwhile, cities may become more friendly to wildlife. Cities are warm places with plenty of food and a lack of predators; London landmarks like the Houses of Parliament have already become home to peregrine falcons, the world’s fastest bird. But there may be ways for cities themselves to become more ‘natural’. Rather than relying on fossil fuels and nuclear that legacy. There is a growing interest in ‘urban ore’, forgotten supplies energy, can cities live of metals under city streets. It is estimated, for example, that the copper off renewable sources? available in abandoned piping and cablework underneath Swedish cities Around 40 countries amounts to 90,000 tonnes, worth over $600m. have sufficient access Maybe all these predictions are too conservative. In our world there are to geothermal power, already ‘cities’ made from natural materials whose dense populations enjoy the Earth’s inner heat temperature and humidity control, but use no electricity at all. These are energy, to satisfy all their termite mounds. Their ventilation comes not from using machines to current energy needs. force air through vents as we do; instead, stale air rises naturally through Meanwhile solar heating convection, while fresh air is drawn in from below. and electricity generation Perhaps this is the true future of construction. After all, we humans are already with us, but their efficiencies could be improved if we devised have only been building cities for a few millennia, while the termites’ an artificial form of photosynthesis. Significant investment is being made designs have elegantly evolved over millions of years. And our cities will in the technology by the US government and others. Our cities might merge, at last, with nature. literally become green, with the buildings reaching like trees for the light. One thing Back To The Future II did get right is that we tend not to tear everything down and start anew; we build on the legacy of the STEPHEN BAXTER is a science fiction past. In 2015, Marty McFly’s home town still has the courthouse we saw writer who has written over 40 books. His latest is Ultima, published by Orion in 1985 – though it’s used as a mall. And in the future we might mine

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ILLUSTRATOR: ANDY POTTS

“We have only been building cities for a few millennia, while termites’ designs have evolved over millions of years”

SCIENCE

THE FUTURE OF GADGETS

TECHHUB ON THE HORIZON

ROBOHON It’s a robot! It’s a smartphone! It’s almost unbearably cute! robohon.com/special/english/

pple, Microsoft, Google… stop what you’re doing right now! You’ve been getting this ‘intelligent personal assistant’ business all wrong.The way forward isn’t putting a quasi-human persona à la Siri, Cortana et al inside a smartphone; the way forward is putting a smartphone inside a quasihuman shell or, to be more precise, inside a humanoid robot pal that makes Brian from Confused.com look positively surly. At least, that’s what Sharp is banking on as it unveils Robohon, a 19cm-high robot-shaped smartphone that talks to you. Just to be clear, this isn’t some futuristic prototype built to wow the crowds at trade shows. It’s an actual, working consumer product, and it’s going on sale in Japan early next year. And to say it’s dividing opinion in the tech world would be an understatement. In the blue corner, we have serious-minded, utilitarian commentators whose basic reaction is, “Why the hell would I want one of those? What on Earth was Sharp thinking?” Such commentators point to the phone’s tiny, rearmounted screen, and to Sharp’s promo video which – somewhat unrealistically, they suggest – features someone climbing a rock face with Robohon swinging merrily from their chest in a papoose. In their eyes, Robohon can be written off as a cutesy gimmick that’s doomed to failure anywhere outside Japan.

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TECHOMETER WHAT’S HOT

8K DISPLAYS Neither the public nor the TV industry has exactly rushed to adopt 4K resolution: no UK TV channels broadcast in the format, and there’s only limited content on Netflix and YouTube. But that hasn’t stopped manufacturers cracking on with 8K cameras and screens. The format is intended for use with large screens, with the first commercially available 8K screen – an 85-inch Sharp model – now on sale.

Robohon acts as a personal assistant and can even bust some moves too

overcome the fear of looking foolish because you’re walking down the street talking into a child’s toy. On the other hand… just watch the video. If you hate the thought of being woken up by a robot cheerily calling out ‘Morning! It’s time to wake up!’ ; if you don’t like the idea of a personal assistant who at your command will bend at the waist to project your photos onto the nearest available surface; and if you can’t see the benefit of having a phone that talks to you, learns from you and, for the love of Mike, even dances… if you can’t imagine these things bringing joy into your life, then you’re probably the kind of person who sees a litter of tiny, fluffy kittens and thinks ‘hacky sack tournament’. With no word yet as to exactly when Robohon will go on sale in Japan, how much it will cost, or whether it will ever be made more widely available, we’ll just have to wait and see how the phone manages as a commercial proposition. But we’re undoubtedly moving towards a future where robotics and artificial intelligence play an ever-increasing role in all our lives.With Robohon, Sharp is exploring new ways in which humanity and all that technology might interact. And for that, the company should be applauded, not ridiculed. After all, in 1999, Sharp introduced the first mobile phone with a built-in camera – to which many commentators’ reaction at the time was, “Why the hell would I want one of those?”

WHAT’S NOT You may have seen people riding Swegways – selfbalancing electric scooters that look like a Segway without handlebars. But they look like becoming The Craze That Never Was, because the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service has declared their use illegal both on pavements and on public roads, citing safety concerns.

READER POLL Would you use a Robohon?

50% Yes – that’s what I call an Android phone!

50% No – does not compute!

PHOTO: SHARP

Over in the red corner, meanwhile, we have the rest of the human race, whose reaction to seeing the Robohon video is generally something along the lines of: “OMG that’s the best thing I’ve ever seen! When can I get one?” When it comes to the battle for hearts and minds, there may be a lot of minds to win over but hearts belong to Robohon, no contest. As cute as Robohon is, there’s also no denying that the ‘blue’ commentators have a point. Several points, in fact. At a time when smartphones are looking more and more like tablets, while tablets increasingly come with detachable keyboards that turn them, essentially, into laptops, equipping Robohon with a mere two inches of display seems an almost insanely backward step. How’s that supposed to compete with the 4K screen on the Sony Xperia Z5 Premium, which featured on these very pages last month? Robohon’s quad-core 1.2GHz CPU sounds reasonable enough, but lags behind the likes of the Samsung Galaxy Note 5, which boasts a quad-core 2.1GHz processor. Perhaps most concerning of all, though, is just how little Sharp is actually telling us about Robohon’s inner workings – it hasn’t even said what operating system Robohon will run on.The internet rumour mill suggests some flavour of Android, even if it’s a Sharp-customised version, but – sorry to break it to you like this – the internet rumour mill has been known to be wrong on occasion. Combine somewhat middling known specs with the general air of mystery surrounding the launch, and it’s not surprising that more cynical observers are doubting whether Robohon will have the performance chops to

RUSSELL DEEKS is a freelance science and technology journalist

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SCIENCE

THE NEXT BIG THING

ARE WE ALL CYBERWARRIORS?

PHOTO: TAWFIQUE HASAN ILLUSTRATOR: ANDREW GIBBS

Our online security is being compromised Like every other internet user, I rely on decent encryption to make life online possible. Every time I connect to a secure server, such as my bank, a complex dance takes place between my computer and the server involving a choice of random numbers, a lot of processing and the exchange of encryption keys. The result is a secure channel between us. At least, it’s supposed to be, because one consequence of the slowly-simmering cyberwar between nation states is that the actual security of almost every network connection is being compromised in the interest of national security.The future of online life is starting to look more and more like living in a divided and threatened city, not the peaceful metropolis we were promised. Evidence has recently emerged to indicate that the US National Security Agency is spending a lot of money on a system that can break public key encryption because of a poor implementation in some of the main offerings.This isn’t a problem with the maths, but

FROM THE LAB

with the way the software has been written. Security agencies have also been keeping quiet about security flaws in popular software, using them instead to get access to information from targets. Sadly, it’s highly likely that other people – such as criminal gangs, hackers and the odd unfriendly nation – are also aware of these bugs, and are exploiting them for less noble purposes. By keeping quiet, we’re left more at risk. This is just one aspect of cyberwar, of course. More and more physical hardware, from thermostats to watches through to power stations, dams and even oil refineries relies on computer systems to operate.The recent chilling discovery that you could hack into the entertainment system on a Chrysler Jeep and use it to control the steering and brakes may have been a security flaw, but it’s the sort of flaw that cyberarmies will be looking for – it’s easier to disable a tank over a network than fire an armourpiercing missile accurately. War used to be confined to a

Though cyberwarfare is mostly waged between nation states, the repercussions affect us all

particular geographic area. If you lived there, it was hell and you were in enormous danger, but populations away from the war zones could carry on with their life. Aerial bombing, such as the London Blitz and the US action in Cambodia changed that, and the development of nuclear weapons and intercontinental missiles put us all at risk of mutually assured destruction. Now the zone of engagement has extended online, and it seems that life on the internet

HOW DOES IT WORK?

WHY IS IT USEFUL?

A team led by Dr Tawfique Hasan at the Cambridge Graphene Centre has developed a new way of printing using graphene-based ink. Although several graphene printing methods have been demonstrated before, Hasan’s team is the first to achieve the kind of printing speeds that will be needed for the process to become commercially viable.

Tiny particles of graphene are suspended in a ‘carrier’ solvent mixture, which is then mixed with conductive, water-based ink. The printed material’s resistance can be controlled by varying the ratio of the ingredients, and the same method could also be used to create inks based on other types of metallic, semiconducting or insulating particles.

Currently, most printed circuits are made from a mixture of carbon and silver. By substituting graphene ink, such circuits could be printed more quickly, would be less harmful to the environment and would be up to 25 times cheaper to produce. Suggested applications include the production of ‘intelligent’ packaging and disposable biosensors.

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BILL THOMPSON contributes to news.bbc.co.uk and the BBC World Service

Graphene printing

WHAT’S GOING ON?

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is going to be more like living in North Korea than northern California when it comes to the assumptions we can make about our safety, security and freedom from surveillance. I’d prefer an internet that wasn’t weaponised, but it may be too late to get the cybersoldiers to back down.

Graphene ink could allow the cheap production of smart labels

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 University

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

[email protected]

If you ask The Delft University of Technology student engineers behind the Ecorunner V (pictured), they’d say that reducing drag is a big part of the answer. Theirs is the most aerodynamic car ever, with a record-breaking drag coefficient of 0.0512. By comparison, most production cars are about six times less aerodynamic. The Ford Focus

ST has a drag coefficient of 0.3, while the Volkswagen Golf comes in at 0.27. The Ecorunner V’s body weighs just 9kg, or 38kg including the hydrogen fuel cell. It can achieve an efficiency of 1227.5km per cubic metre of fuel, which is the equivalent of over 3,000km per litre of petrol. GM

The team behind Ecorunner V wants to drive the vehicle from Amsterdam to Moscow and back on a litre of fuel

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PHOTO: RICK SETTELS

How can we make cars more energy efficient?

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PHOTO: SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY, GETTY X3, ISTOCK X3, CSEM

Why do mitochondria have their own genome? Mitochondria are tiny chemical factories inside our cells. They have several roles, including extracting and storing energy from digested food. But they also have their own DNA, hinting at a once-independent existence. It’s thought that this reflects their origin as bacteria, which formed a symbiotic relationship with organisms about 2.4 billion years ago and then evolved into us. RM

Mitochondrial DNA is inherited from your mother

Why are autumn leaves blown into mini tornadoes on the street? Buildings shield us from the surprisingly strong airflows that sweep over the land at this time of the year. If these airflows strike buildings, they produce eddies and swirls just like those around a brick stuck in a stream. The resulting vortices can tip over to produce tornadolike swirls – especially around tall buildings in built-up areas. RM

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Why are impact craters always circular?

Meteor Crater in Arizona is over 167m deep and formed from an impact that took place 50,000 years ago

If you throw a stone into mud at an angle you normally end up with a ‘crater’ that’s elliptical or elongated. It’s natural to suppose the same would be true of a meteoroid hitting the Earth or another planet. But these kinds of impact craters are formed in an entirely different way to the ‘mechanical’ process of a stone hitting mud. Meteoroids are moving at extremely high velocities (up to tens of kilometres

per second). At the moment of impact this enormous kinetic energy is almost entirely converted into heat, which then vaporises the meteoroid instantly. It’s this ‘explosion’ and not the meteoroid itself that creates the impact crater. Since material is ejected equally in all directions, regardless of the direction of travel of the meteoroid, the resulting crater is circular. There can be exceptions to this but only if the impact occurs at an extremely shallow angle. AG

Can a cockroach really live without its head? Decapitation is almost immediately fatal to humans because we have a highpressure circulatory system that we depend on to keep our tissues oxygenated. Cutting the carotid arteries in your neck would cause you to bleed out completely in a few minutes. Even if the cuts were immediately cauterised, your body can’t survive without nerve signals from the brain telling you to breathe. But cockroaches, like most insects, are different. They breathe passively through a network of pipes connected to holes called spiracles along the length of their body. They don’t rely on blood circulation to move oxygen around and their body fluids are at a much lower pressure anyway. Their brain mostly handles the sensory input from the eyes and antennae, with many other behaviours, like running and reacting to touch, handled by ‘mini brains’ called

ganglia in each body segment. A decapitated cockroach will eventually starve to death but this can still take several weeks. LV

What is the world’s smallest camera? It’s the VIP, developed by Swiss company CSEM. VIP stands for Vision-In-Package. The optical sensor chip is 0.8mm across and sits on a package containing its own processor performing tasks like image compression and error correction. The package is smaller than a stock cube and even has its own Bluetooth transmitter. Being selfcontained and low power, it’s aimed at a broad range of applications from robotic surgery to drones. GM

The VIP: smaller than a stock cube, but not half as tasty in a stew

Aka people are part of a traditional hunter-gatherer tribe, with highly tuned skills to suit their environment

How much does IQ help a human to survive? That depends on where you are. In a natural environment that’s rich in edible plants and animals, being good at maths, logic and written language is virtually useless. Instead, you need years of experience of hunting, choosing plants, building shelters and lighting fires. Above all, you need social skills not measured in IQ tests. If you can’t maintain friendships, make alliances, deal with disputes and keep track of liars, cheats and deeds of kindness then you won’t survive long.

In contrast, in a modern environment full of computers, electronic banking and online shopping, a high IQ is increasingly necessary. In societies with a welfare state, you’re unlikely to starve. But researchers in the field of ‘cognitive epidemiology’ find that people with lower IQs are less healthy and die younger. For example, a drop of 15 points in IQ translates to a 24 per cent increase in morbidity and a 20 per cent lower chance of living beyond age 75. So in the modern world IQ really does aid survival. SB

Why do bananas make fruit ripen faster? Bananas produce ethylene gas (C2H4), which acts as a plant hormone. Plants have genes called ETR1 and CTR1 that regulate lots of other genes involved with growth, ageing and cell death. When ethylene gas is present, ETR1 and CTR1 are shut off, which allows the other genes to swing into action. Some fruit plants use this mechanism to control the sequence of cellular changes in their ripening process. Bananas actually only produce moderate levels of ethylene but apples, pears and melons are so sensitive to the hormone that it has a powerful effect on their ripening. LV

Apples don’t find bananas appealing

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TOP TEN

COMMON FOODS HIGHEST IN IRON RDA = RECOMMENDED DAILY ALLOWANCE

1. Liver Iron in 100g: 23mg 264% men’s RDA; 155% women’s RDA

2. Dark chocolate Iron in 100g: 17mg 195% men’s RDA; 114% women’s RDA

3. Pumpkin seeds

Why do some people get migraines? Amazingly, the precise cause of migraines is still unknown. These intense headaches, often on one side and accompanied by nausea and sometimes visions of zigzag lines and extreme sensitivity to light and noise, must be caused by abnormal brain activity. But we just don’t know what kind or whether there are many different causes. Hormonal fluctuations, especially in oestrogen, can trigger migraines. So some women suffer more during menstruation,

pregnancy or menopause. Certain foods and additives can cause migraines and people who diet, skip meals or consume a lot of caffeine can suffer. Disturbed sleep and jetlag can also cause them. One rare inherited type called familial hemiplegic migraine is caused by four specific gene mutations. More common types are also associated with many different genes that affect brain function. The simplest answer lies in the family. Up to 90 per cent of sufferers have a family history of migraines. SB

Iron in 100g: 15mg 172% men’s RDA; 101% women’s RDA

4. Oysters Iron in 100g: 9.2mg 106% men’s RDA; 62% women’s RDA

5. Cashew nuts Iron in 100g: 6.1mg 70% men’s RDA; 41% women’s RDA

Migraines are frustrating, especially as their cause is still unknown

6. Beef Iron in 100g: 3.8mg 43% men’s RDA; 26% women’s RDA

7. Lentils

PHOTO: ISTOCK X14, SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY X2, ARDEA EA

Iron in 100g: 3.7mg 42% men’s RDA; 25% women’s RDA

8. Spinach Iron in 100g: 3.6mg 41% men’s RDA; 24% women’s RDA

9. Tofu Iron in 100g: 2.7mg 31% men’s RDA; 18% women’s RDA

10. Quinoa Iron in 100g: 1.5mg 17% men’s RDA; 10% women’s RDA

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How do we know how fast sea levels are rising? Rising sea levels is one of the most worrying consequences of global warming, threatening over 100 million people living in vulnerable coastal areas. But measuring the rate of the rise is fraught with difficulty. For over 150 years scientists relied on so-called tide gauges, which monitored the rise and fall of floats in tubes. However, such gauges proved vulnerable to errors – not least the rise and fall of the land. Satellite measurements based on radar are now used but these too suffer from subtle

errors caused by orbital, instrumental and atmospheric variability. The need for precision is vital as the expected change in global sea levels is no more than a few millimetres a year. Earlier this year, the journal Nature Climate Change published the latest attempt to iron out the problems and the report suggests the Earth’s oceans are rising by around 2.8mm per year. While this might not sound much, it’s enough to prove a serious threat over the next 100 years. RM

Did you know? The lift with the largest passenger capacity is situated in Osaka’s Umeda Hankyu building it holds 80 passengers Fibre optics can be–used to transmit light and telecommunications

What is dust made of? It’s not mostly human skin: that mainly ends up in the bath or shower. Two thirds of the dust in your house comes from outside, as dirt tracked in on your feet, and airborne particles like pollen and soot. The rest is mostly carpet fluff, clothes fibres and pet hair. LV Atlantic puffins spend most of their lives at sea, only coming ashore to breed Dust mite party

Why do some birds hop and others run? Almost all birds are capable of doing both, but it’s normally more energy efficient for small birds to move by hopping. Their light bodies are easy to bounce into the air and they cover much more distance in a single hop than a walking stride from their short legs. For heavier birds, the extra load

on their joints favours a gait that leaves one leg on the ground at all times. Plus, longer legs make walking faster. Birds that spend most of their time in trees are also more likely to hop because they mainly get around by jumping from branch to branch. LV

Do you use less energy running on a machine compared to outside? Running outdoors requires a little extra energy because you’re moving through the air and this creates drag. But the difference is insignificant unless you’re running quite fast. If you can do a mile (1.6km) in seven minutes or less, which is a speed of 8.5mph (13.7km/h), then the difference is about 1 per cent. Studies have shown that running a mile uses about 100 calories, so you’ll save just a single calorie if you run that mile on a treadmill. Or you can just set the treadmill at a 1 per cent incline to compensate. LV

Do black holes rotate? Yes. All astronomical objects, including black holes, are formed by gravity pulling matter together. If a cosmic body originates from anything that had even the tiniest amount of rotational motion originally, then this spin rate will become greatly enhanced as the object

collapses. In a turbulent and angular momentum-rich Universe like ours, this means everything from dust particles to black holes will have some degree of rotation. Certain objects have observed properties that seem to be a direct result of the rotation of black holes. AG The hamsters were delighted with their new trainers

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& What are the most successful therapies for depression?

What is the biggest object to be 3D printed?

There’s no simple answer because success depends on age, sex, the type of depression and whether it’s combined with anxiety or other mentalhealth problems. Generally, however, therapies based on exploring and changing the patient’s own thoughts and behaviour are far more effective than old-fashioned talking therapies such as psychoanalysis. Alternative therapies, although popular, also fare badly. One meta-analysis combined many studies and found that cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) did best, especially with long sessions. But a newer therapy called behavioural activation also did well. These are both based on the idea that depression is made worse by adopting the wrong coping strategies. So patients are helped to understand what triggers their depression and how their reactions to life’s events affect their moods and emotions. Learning to replace bad coping strategies, such as drugs, drink and endless rumination, with positive coping strategies can help, either used alone or in combination with medication. SB

Architects have 3D printed an entire room of a house. They’re constructing an Amsterdam Canal House and all 13 rooms will eventually be 3D printed. The ‘Kamermaker’ (Dutch for ‘room maker’) printer is 6m tall and is a scaled-up version of the Ultimaker. It will fabricate the entire house from sections up to 3m high and 2m thick. It builds the components layer by layer by squeezing melted plastic at 170°C through the print head. It’s controlled by software

Depression treatment needs to be tailored to the individual

In Numbers

3.04 trillion trees are on the planet. But humans are responsible for cutting down around 15.3 billion trees every year

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that converts the 3D design into layers. Also fabricating building structures on a large scale is Branch Technology, a Tennessee start-up. Their print head is attached to a 3.5m robotic arm on a 10m rail. It uses carbon fibre and plastics to produce objects up to 17m high. These can be entire external walls. The complex matrix-like geometrical forms are light and strong and can be clad with conventional materials like concrete. GM

Should we be worried about El Niño? Bill McGuire reveals what we can learn from previous El Niño events and whether the current one is really that bad

El Niño and La Niña both hail from the tropical Pacific

This flooding took place in Bolivia in 2007, and was due to a weak El Niño event

BRUCE LEE is back. No, this isn’t some magical resurrection of the martial arts icon, but it’s what meteorologists have been calling the latest manifestation of the climate phenomenon known as El Niño. Although notoriously difficult to predict – at least during the early stages – there is no doubt now that a strong El Niño is upon us, and will likely reach the peak of its powers sometime between this October and March next year. WHAT IS EL NIÑO? The bottom line is that El Niño – which translates from Spanish to ‘the Christ Child’, as it often peaks around Christmas – is the biggest climate signal on the planet barring the seasons. The phenomenon is actually the hot end of a climate see-saw known as ENSO, or the El Niño – Southern Oscillation, which involves irregular swings in sea-surface temperature in the eastern tropical Pacific. Under normal conditions, ENSO is neutral. But sometimes, strong trade winds, blowing from the east, herd warm tropical waters further westwards, resulting in sea levels that can be a good half-metre higher than in the east. Under

these La Niña (‘the girl child’) conditions, waters of the eastern tropical Pacific are left unusually cold. Conversely, if the strength of the easterly trade winds fades, a mass of warm water pools in the eastern Pacific and El Niño conditions prevail. From their tropical Pacific lair, La Niña and El Niño affect weather patterns and spawn extreme events across the globe. La Niña is linked to increased hurricane activity in the North Atlantic, extreme drought along the west coast of South America, and torrential rains in Australia. Global ramifications of El Niño are, if anything, even more intense than La Niña. EARLIER EVENTS The 1997-98 El Niño – the most powerful on record – is charged with promoting torrential rains and mudslides along the west coast of South America and California, driving colossal wildfires across Indonesia, and triggering some of the worst flooding ever seen in central Europe. The combined death toll may have topped 23,000, while the estimated cost of the extreme weather reached US$53bn. Previous extreme El Niños developed in 1972-73 and 1982-83, and seem to happen every decade or two, so the

appearance of Bruce Lee is hardly a surprise. The rate of warming of the eastern Pacific suggests that Bruce is going to be a complete whopper, perhaps matching or exceeding that of 1997-98. EL NIÑO 2015-16 So what’s going to happen when Bruce Lee hits? Well, there will be more Pacific typhoons for a start, although this would be balanced somewhat by reduced Atlantic hurricane activity. Torrential rains may, at least temporarily, alleviate the extreme drought conditions in California. Australia, meanwhile, will be at great wildfire risk. In the UK, his impact is likely to be subdued, although past experience suggests that a colder winter could result. Predicting exactly where and when Bruce’s fist will strike is far from an exact science. One thing is certain: when he fades away – probably sometime next spring – a fair few bruised and battered communities will be left picking up the pieces.

BILL MCGUIRE is Professor Emeritus in Geophysical & Climate Hazards at UCL

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& Why do sea turtles cry when they lay eggs? Reptiles have less efficient kidneys than mammals and they can’t produce urine with a higher salt concentration than the seawater they drink. To avoid poisoning themselves with salt buildup, sea turtles have a gland in each eye that actively pumps salt ions into their tears. They need to run these glands continuously to maintain the correct balance of salt in their bodies. We associate crying with egg laying because that’s the only time they come ashore, but they cry in the sea as well. The tears also help flush sand from their eyes. LV

PHOTO: SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY, GETTY, ALAMY ILLUSTRATION: ACUTE GRAPHICS

Donatello wa was distraught at Micha Michael Bay’s new tak take on Teenage Mutan Mutant Turtle Ninja Turtles

Does music affect our heart rate?

“Boom! Shake, shake, shake the womb”

You don’t need a scientific study to realise that a rousing tune gets your blood pumping, pumping and lots of studies have measured a very definite physiological effect [see ‘Tune In To Treatment FM’ in the October issue for a closer look at this very subject]. Calming classical music lowers blood pressure and heart rate, pounding heavy metal raises it. This effect is more pronounced in professional musicians but it affects everyone to some degree, even if you’re listening to music that you don’t like.

How much gold is there in the world? Gold has been coveted for millennia, for its beauty, malleability – and rarity. According to the World Gold Council, there are currently around 184,000 tonnes sitting in bank vaults, government reserves and personal collections. That sounds like an awful lot, until you realise that just one cubic metre of the stuff weighs over 19 tonnes. Thus, all the world’s known gold reserves could be laid out on a football pitch in a layer only a metre or so high. But this is only the gold that has been successfully mined and documented. Estimating how much actually exists on the planet is much trickier. Chemical analysis of rock 92

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samples suggests gold makes up on average a few parts per billion of the total mass of the Earth’s crust. That means the top kilometre or so has around a million tonnes of the stuff still waiting to be dug up. Chances are it never will be, though, because most of it will be hopelessly uneconomic to n extract. This was a bitter lesson learned by the brilliant German 0s. chemist Fritz Haber in the 1920s. He hoped to pay his country’s y WWI reparations by chemically d precipitating the gold dissolved in the world’s oceans. Haber discovered, however, that the concentrations were just too h low for this to be possible. Each 3 litre of seawater contains just 13 M billionths of a gram of gold. RM

Just enough to keep P Diddy in necklaces for a week

It’s not clear why this happens but it might be something we learn in the womb womb. Foetuses can hear from the end of the second trimester (six months) and every baby is exposed to the sound of its mother’s heartbeat. When a pregnant mother is stressed her heartbeat rises and her baby may come to associate that sound with the stressed sensation. It’s possible that our reaction to music is a sort of empathic memory from that shared time. LV

It turns out that mountains can be moved…

Did the earthquakes in Nepal affect the geology of Everest? Everest’s geology is the cause of the earthquakes, not the other way around. The Indian tectonic plate has been moving roughly northeast since the late Cretaceous. The Eurasian plate is also moving northwards but not as quickly. Around 55 million years ago, India hit Eurasia in a massive rear-end shunt and they are still crunching together at a speed of 45mm per year. The Indian plate is being driven under the edge of the Eurasian plate and the Himalayas are the result.

Earthquakes happen because the continents don’t slide past each other smoothly. Some of the impact energy gets stored as the rocks compress or bend slightly and eventually it all gets released as a sudden recoil. The magnitude 7.8 earthquake that hit Nepal on 25 April this year caused Mount Everest to bounce southwest by 30mm, undoing the previous eight months of continental drift. As the plates intersect at a shallow angle, this small movement didn’t have an effect on

Everest’s height, which is currently growing by about 8mm a year. Earthquakes affect the geology of the region in more subtle ways. The shaking can transfer stress to nearby fault lines and trigger other earthquakes, and it also destabilises hillsides. This can make them vulnerable to landslides when the monsoon rains come, and natural dams holding back glacier lakes could be breached and cause catastrophic flooding. LV Vol. 8 Issue 1

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Resource

A feast for the mind Hardback

The Invention Of Science

Paperback

MEET THE AUTHOR

David Wootton Allen Lane

PHOTOS: VALERIE BENNETT

Heroes, villains, skulduggery, death – the history of science doesn’t lack for great stories. One of my favourite books as a kid was Asimov’s Biographical Encyclopaedia Of Science And Technology by the eponymous sci-fi writer. Alongside tales of genius like Newton’s intellectual leap from a falling apple to Universal Law were the struggles of pioneers like Ignaz Semmelweis, whose life-saving work on antisepsis was blocked by petty feuding. But later I discovered such stories are often just that: entertaining fictions that hide a more complex reality. Newton has since been accused of inventing the apple story to help him gain precedence for the law of gravity over a rival. Semmelweis’s ideas about disinfectants got a hard time for good reasons as well as bad. As David Wootton’s massive new study shows, the same is true of accounts of the emergence of science. As a professor of history, Wootton has seen the impact of many fads on his subject, and the history of science in particular. The views of science promulgated by writers like Asimov are now dismissed as ‘Whiggish’ attempts to decide triumphs and failures in hindsight. Then there

“Wootton has seen the impact of many fads on his subject, and the history of science in particular”

David Wootton

are the relativists, who question the idea that science progresses at all, every theory being ‘valid’ in some sense. Wootton is not happy with the impact of all these fads on his field. He claims most fellow historians have been failing to do their subject justice, and gives examples of distinguished colleagues talking nonsense. Clearly, this is fighting talk, so what’s his take? Simply put, that what we call ‘science’ emerged between 1572, when the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe observed an exploding star, and 1704, when Newton published his work on the nature of light. You’ll have to read his account to find out why. But at 700-plus pages, is the effort worthwhile? Unless you’re up for scholarly analysis of a host of esoteric points of academic dispute, then the answer is clearly no. If, like me, you’re fascinated by the subject, the answer is still no. There’s no real engagement with ongoing debates about, for example, probabilistic ways of gauging evidence, or the very definition of what science is. In so large a book by so distinguished a historian, I had hoped to discover so much more.

ROBERT MATTHEWS is Visiting Reader in Science at Aston University, Birmingham 94

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When did the scientific revolution begin? In 1572 – the year in which then-unknown astronomer Tycho Brahe sees a new star in the sky. Every astronomer in the world starts paying attention to it, and Brahe demonstrates that this star is not in the upper atmosphere but in the heavens. According to Aristotle, there can’t be change in the heavens – his philosophy says that this star can’t exist. This is the first great anomaly, and it provokes the first modern research programme. Brahe gets vast resources to build a great observatory, study the heavens, and learn what’s wrong with previous interpretations. That new view of science echoes through into other disciplines. What is the most important event in the scientific revolution? I think the event that crystallises the new science is the famous experiment where Blaise Pascal has his brother-in-law carry a barometer up the Puy de Dôme mountain [in central France] to establish that the atmospheric pressure at the top of the mountain is lower. That crucial experiment is the first to establish the power of the experimental method. The whole commitment of the Royal Society – founded in 1660 – to the experimental method really comes out of the success of Pascal’s experiment. Are we still living in the scientific revolution today? Absolutely. This process proceeds uninterruptedly from 1572 right through to today. There are big changes in the way we think about knowledge, but our understanding of what knowledge really is unchanged from the early 17th Century. In that sense, science is a continuous process, and presumably science will continue into the indefinite future using the same sorts of terms and concepts.

The Master Algorithm How The Quest For The Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World

The Magic & Mystery of Birds The Surprising Lives Of Birds And What They Reveal About Being Human

Pedro Domingos Allen Lane

Noah Strycker

As more of us submit to the algorithms that drive our search engines, shopping sites and social networks, it is becoming vital that we understand how the core technologies that enable adaptive behaviours and machine learning work. But while Pedro Domingos may be a world-class researcher in the field, he is far from being a world-class explainer.The Master Algorithm moves from simple metaphors about cell metabolism to attempts to explain the complex mathematics of Markov chains, but fails to build a level of understanding, leaving me wishing for more clarity. I was also completely unconvinced either that there could be a ‘master algorithm’ that will unify the field, or even that we need one. Machine learning in all its many forms has already transformed our lives and will continue to grow in importance as we build ever more complex systems that can only be understood and managed by systems of similar scale and complexity. But it is going to take a better book than this if we are to truly appreciate what they do, how they do it, and how we might control them.

Anthropomorphism may be frowned on by some scientists, but it’s increasingly fashionable to study animal emotions and personalities. In this absorbing and often witty book, Noel Strycker explores the many parallels between birds and us, pointing out that the gap separating the avian world from the human one is forever shrinking. Each chapter focuses on a different behaviour, from the artistic sensibilities of bowerbirds to the navigational prowess of racing pigeons. Strycker has a magpie’s eye for detail (though I spotted a few minor errors), combined with an engaging and discursive style. He is particularly good at recounting fascinating field studies from the past 200 years. Some would raise eyebrows today, such as John Bachman’s investigation of how vultures find food that required gouging the birds’ eyes out. While discussing the high-octane existence of hummingbirds, Strycker ponders the implications of our own frenetic modern lifestyles.“It seems like humans are speeding up… but do we really want to become hummingbirds?”

This elegant little book by Italian physicist Carlo Rovelli is a cappuccino of a read. It’s frothy and fun, but short on substance and overpriced. Consisting of translations of seven extended magazine articles, it runs to just 78 small pages. The book introduces some key aspects of modern physics – quantum theory, cosmology and loop quantum gravity (though no mention of the opposing string theory), for instance. But Rovelli can be fuzzy on history – so we are told that Einstein spent “10 years of frenzied studies” on General Relativity, where in fact he spent a fair proportion of that time ignoring it in favour of quantum mechanics.The simplicity of the content can be misleading – Rovelli tells us that “things fall because space curves”. It sounds impressive, but isn’t right. The collection finishes with an interesting exploration of the relationship between humans and science, which is intriguing, if not exactly physics. All in all, Seven Brief Lessons In Physics is a fair attempt to introduce the foundations of the subject to someone who hasn’t much experience of science, perhaps as a taster for something more substantial.

BILL THOMPSON is a tech editor and frequent contributor to news.bbc.co.uk

BEN HOARE is the features editor at BBC Wildlife magazine and is an avid birder

BRIAN CLEGG is a science writer whose most recent book is Science For Life

Behavioural EEconomics Saved My Dog Dan Ariely Oneworld

Souvenir Press

Have you ever had ‘Cancel-elation’? It’s the feeling you get when a meeting or appointment that you were dreading, but didn’t have the courage to cancel, is cancelled by the other party. It’s a common sentiment among office workers. Next time you’re thinking about whether to say yes to a meeting in the future, consider how you might feel if it was cancelled. If you’re feeling good – then you probably shouldn’t agree to the meeting in the first place.  It’s this kind of advice that populates Dan Ariely’s latest book, Behavioural Economics Saved My Dog. A behavioural economist by trade, Ariely has been an unconventional

Seven Brief Lessons In Physics Carlo Rovelli Allen Lane

agony aunt for the readers of the Wall Street Journal for some time now, and this book collects his work in one place. Ariely doles out advice on everyday life, all from the viewpoint of someone who’s spent his career studying how people make decisions. With Ariely’s level of expertise there’s always the risk of sounding condescending and dry, but his humble, playful delivery feels like sage advice from a friend from start to finish.

DANIEL BENNETT is Acting Editor at Focus magazine and has a psychology degree

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SCIENCE

MY LIFE SCIENTIFIC UTA FRITH

ILLUSTRATION: PAUL RYDING

Emeritus Professor of Cognitive Development at University College London At school in Germany, I was considered better at languages than I was at science. I studied history of art at university but ended up taking a psychology course. It made me realise, for the first time, that it was possible to study and quantify abstract mental concepts. Psychology seemed to offer the chance to discover new things.

I chair the Diversity Committee at the Royal Society and have founded informal networks like ‘Science and Shopping’ and ‘UCL Women,’ where high-flying, hard-working women who juggle family and career can talk to each other and have fun. We have lunches, do wine tastings… the shopping angle never really took off.

I first came to London because all the psychology books were in English and I needed to learn the language. I fell in love with English life and culture – the museums, the science, the social life – and fell totally in love once I met my very English husband, Chris. He’s a neuroscientist.

People think I’m more empathic than I really am. I’m more detached than people realise. Maybe that’s a scientific stance. I’m also very critical of myself. I’d like to be more altruistic, to fight more for injustice, but I think you have to be quite political to do that and I’m not a political person.

I’ve always been interested in autism and dyslexia. In the 60s, we were completely ignorant about these conditions. Parents were blamed: they were cold or they hadn’t read enough with their children. I talked to parents and it struck me how readily they accepted blame. If it was their fault it meant there was something more they could do to help their children. It was the ultimate in parental love. I began to realise that these conditions are neurological; they have a basis in nature and are not caused by lack of nurture. It’s still a controversial viewpoint but it’s one that I stand by and am proud of. I hope it helps people.

If I wasn’t a scientist I’d be a writer or an art historian. I like going to museums and collecting things like Persian rugs, Chinese porcelain, paintings and etchings. I don’t have a bucket list of things I’d like to do, but I do have a huge list of things I’m grateful I don’t have to do. I would have hated to go mountaineering, horse riding or camping.

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I’m working on a graphic novel with my husband and my son, Alex. Alex is a children’s science book writer. The book is about what makes us social and it’s going to feature both me and my husband, but in pictures. We hope to have a large part of it ready in time for our 50th wedding anniversary next year.

Time Out Crossword No.184 ACROSS 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 17 18 19 21 24 27 29 30 33 35 36 37 38 48 40 41

Processing speed makes concert a failure (8) Betting on a spring (3) I must turn, following left indicator (6) Constructing a path gets husband an ulceration (6) Lovingly have a sherry (7) The bird in the other nest (4) Cultivator finds margins too contrived (10) Paint bird with performing lions (8) Fellow has one party, say, in a kilt (7) Reportedly obstruct some countries (4) University students have time shortfall (6) Part of the extent of time (6-11) Traces out a wheel (6) Spots cane construction (4) Join rugby player in getting a poison (7) Article to ruin, other than an imaginary flower (8) Feature enamel design around tree (10) The burden we bear (4) Every artist contained energy and pain (7) Way to get colour out of rock (6) Dreadful loser has time for some alcohol (6) Your nasturtiums have a vase (3) In true style - negative particle (8)

DOWN 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 10 16 20 22 23 25 26 28 31 32 34 35 39

Monster’s joint breaking off grip (10) Loud performance, that’s true (4) A lab reconstructed heart of a fish (8) A quiet laugh at soldier with a dietary problem (7) Steaming oven – spectra vary (11) Singer and copper join musicians’ group and left one in the clouds (10) Underline anxiety (6) Native peach is new in courtyard, only no good (8) Points out the nose (5) Roman poet cut out of tube (7) Useless thing to find in a G&T (5) In all, no different to a woollen product (7) A pious hoard worked like a placebo (11) Volunteers managed to inform on a routine (10) Providing milk and money after castle collapsed (10) Gathered friend takes in silver first (8) Hope is up about old horse (8) Deduce absence of blaze (7) Have recourse to a holiday venue (6) Protein produces endless filth at home (5) Starts to make a riverbed, like sedimentary rock (4)

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The Last Word Taking a closer look at another ‘breakthrough’ ometimes it’s nice to be proved wrong. I’ve long been sceptical of claims that human genome research will lead to big, life-saving breakthroughs any time soon. But now it seems all the decades of dogged effort are starting to pay off. Take the recent news of a gene-based blood test that can warn breast cancer patients of a relapse months before anything shows up on a scan. Developed by researchers at the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), London, the test is said to detect the presence of just a few cancer cells in the blood. To achieve such amazing sensitivity, the scientists used a neat trick akin to fingerprinting criminals. Using samples from the original tumour of each patient, they obtained the unique genetic profile of the cells, allowing rapid detection if these ‘criminals’ try to return to the scene of the crime. A small study of women previously treated for breast cancer suggested the test can accurately predict which patients will relapse. The researchers cautioned it will be some years before the test is ready for prime-time, but said it could be a “game-changer”. When I first heard the story, I must admit my reaction was: “Hmm, haven’t we been here before?” Last year, another research team announced a blood test said to detect mutations in a gene linked to breast cancer. They also claimed a small study in women suggested it could predict breast cancer risk years before diagnosis. Yet experts queued up to give that earlier claim a kicking. So why should we get excited about this new ‘breakthrough’? When faced with claims about simple tests, we can check them out using… well, a simple test. It consists of three questions: how many humans has it been tested on; how accurate is it; and how much does it tell us anyway? Many claims fall at the first hurdle, having merely been tested on small and furry cheese-eaters. But both these new breast cancer tests have been studied in humans – albeit only a few dozen. So how accurate were they? That’s a bit of a tricky one, because ‘accuracy’ is one of the most abused words in science. Researchers have a habit of quoting only the success rate of their test in identifying those who develop a disease. This so-called true-positive rate is often very high – 80 per cent or more. But on its own, it’s pretty misleading.

ILLUSTRATOR: DEM ILLUSTRATION

Q

“So how accurate were they? That’s a tricky one, because ‘accuracy’ is one of the most abused words in science”

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After all, there’s a simple way of identifying 100 per cent of women who develop breast cancer: 100 per cent of them are female. Gender isn’t exactly a useful test, though – because 100 per cent of women who don’t have breast cancer are also female. In other words, this ‘test’ has a huge false-positive rate. It’s a silly example, but it highlights a serious point: we can only judge scientific accuracy if we know both the true- and false-positive rates. The best tests are those where the former is much higher than the latter. Without that, they don’t add much insight. So how do the two breast cancer test claims compare? As is so often the case, you have to wade through the research papers to get all the necessary figures. But the upshot is that it’s not even close: the ICR’s test looks far more promising. Its true-positive rate is over 10 times its false-positive rate, while the other test barely does better than a coin-toss. It’s still too early to tell if any of these genetic tests will prove to be “game-changers”. But it’s never too early to ask the right questions about them.

ROBERT MATTHEWS is Visiting Reader in Science at Aston University, Birmingham

FOOD FOR THOUGHT Premieres 1st January. Wednesdays to Fridays at 9.45pm (JKT/BKK), 10.45pm (SIN/HK/MAL/TW) For the month of January, BBC Earth will present a series of documentaries that tackle emerging food trends and hot health topics. From embarking on paleo diets to uncovering the truth behind our sweet tooth, the special lineup of programmes will shed light and shatter myths about healthy diets and foods, all under the Food for Thought programming season.

DEADLY NIGHTMARES OF NATURE SERIES 1 - 3 Premieres 11th January. Mondays to Fridays at 5.15pm (JKT/BKK), 6.15pm (SIN/HK/MAL/TW) Travelling the world, Naomi Wilkinson will come face to face with nature’s nightmares – animals that are weird, dangerous or downright scary.

WILD ALASKA

ANIMAL SUPER SENSES

Premieres 13th January. Wednesdays at 7.05pm (JKT/BKK), 8.05pm (SIN/HK/MAL/TW) This series explores spring, summer and winter in this extreme wilderness and discovers the unique species that have learnt to thrive in these harsh conditions.

Premieres 26th January. Tuesdays at 7.05pm (JKT/BKK), 8.05pm (SIN/HK/MAL/TW) Our human senses are pretty incredible - but we only experience the tip of the iceberg. Imagine if you could ‘see’ with sound, smell food buried deep underground, or see the world in slow motion. This series explores the hidden world of animal senses.

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