BBC Knowledge AE 2016 (Vol. 8 Issue 6)

WONDERS OF THE DRONE AGE Flying robots uncover the best hidden spots in the world

ASIA EDITION

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SCIENCE • HISTORY • NATURE • FOR THE CURIOUS MIND

WHAT MAKES HISTORICAL ACCOUNTS INTERESTING p50

THE SOCIAL DILEMMA OF DRIVERLESS CARS p56

HOW MUCH RUBBISH IS ON THE MOON? p87

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GORILLA COUNTRY Scientist are just beginning to understand the secret lives of lowland gorillas p64

TOXIC BEES: NATURE’S MAYDAY Premieres 17th June. Fridays at 9.35pm (JKT/BKK), 10.35pm (SIN/HK/MAL/TW) One-third of the world’s agriculture relies on bees for pollination. Intrigued by the disappearance of bee colonies around the world, Taiwan Public Television Service’s (PTS) team spent two full years looking for answers to this phenomenon and explores the serious impacts of pesticides on both our environment and human health, which includes ADHD.

LIFE IN THE AIR Premieres 7th June. Tuesdays at 7.05pm (JKT/BKK), 8.05pm (SIN/HK/MAL/TW) Flight is the ultimate superpower, an extraordinary ability most of us can only dream of. Yet an astonishing number of animals have mastered the skies. From frogs, squirrels to birds – with exceptional skills, these animals hunt, travel, sleep, live and die in the air.

NATURE’S MIRACLE ORPHANS SERIES 2

KOKO – THE GORILLA WHO TALKS TO PEOPLE

Premieres 13th June. Mondays at 7.05pm (JKT/BKK), 8.05pm (SIN/HK/MAL/TW) This observational documentary series meets animals with some extraordinary survival stories, and follows the people determined to help them get back to a life in the wild.

Premieres 28th June. Tuesdays at 7.05pm (JKT/BKK), 8.05pm (SIN/HK/MAL/TW) The unique and personal story of Koko the gorilla and researcher Penny Patterson, who taught Koko sign language and believes that she is living proof of the emotional capabilities of gorillas.

www.bbcasia.com BBC Earth is available in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam and Mongolia. Please call your cable operator for more details or check out our website.

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SCIENCE

On the cover

Vol. 8 Issue 6

HISTORY

32 Wonders Of The Drone Age

Q&A

56 Could A Driverless Car Kill You

COVER STORY

SCIENCE

50 How People Make The Past

87 How Long Will The Man-made Objects On The Moon Last

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Welc me THE KINGDOM OF THE GORILLAS

Y Send us your letters

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I hope you liked the cover we have chosen for this issue, there is a definite cute factor involved in the choice but there are also more important reasons for it, as with most of the things we do here. There are different species as well as subspecies of gorillas, they all look big, imposing and burly yet their existence is a fragile one. These apes have many threats to deal with, such as illegal hunters who have an appetite for bush meat and their skins, others who capture and steal infants for the incessant illegal wildlife trade. Deforestation causes a destruction of not only their habitat, it inadvertently makes it easier for poachers to reach them, not to mention the destructive power of diseases such as Ebola that have almost wiped out entire populations of gorillas in certain areas. It is no mean feat that humans are now able to observe, study and help these elusive western lowland gorillas. It is through a laborious habituation process or the gradual earning of the gorillas’ trust so that they will accept human observers as with most wild animals, that process takes many years and dogged dedication on the part of the researchers.

BBC Knowledge Magazine Includes selected articles from other BBC specialist magazines, including Focus, BBC History Magazine and BBC Wildlife Magazine.

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)

SCIENCE • HISTORY • NATURE • FOR THE CURIOUS MIND Know more. Anywhere.

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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…

MARGAREST MACMILLAN

Margaret is the Warden of St Antony’s College and a Professor of International History at the University of Oxford. She is also a member of the Royal Society of Literature. Follow her story as she explains why we are intrigued by personal recounts of historical people. p50

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MIKE UNWIN

Mike is a prize-winning freelance writer and photographer who spent eight years living and working in South Africa. He writes regularly about African wildlife and safaris. Read about his personal encounters with gorillas. p64

COLIN STUART

Colin is a freelance astronomy writer and author. He is a space geek who shares his knowledge with thousands every year, ranging from schools to public conferences and even businesses. He often writes for The Guardian, New Scientist and BBC Focus. p78

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SCIENCE

Snapshot

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Light echoes used to study protoplanetary disks A new study published in the Astrophysical Journal uses data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and four ground-based telescopes to determine the distance from a star to the inner rim of its surrounding protoplanetary disk. Researchers used a method called “photoreverberation,” also known as “light echoes.” When the central star brightens, some of the light hits the surrounding disk, causing a delayed “echo.” Scientists measured the time it took for light coming directly from the star to reach Earth, and then waited for its echo to arrive. The Spitzer study marks the first time the light echo method was used in the context of protoplanetary disks. This illustration shows a star surrounded by a protoplanetary disk. Material from the thick disk flows along the star’s magnetic field lines and is deposited onto the star’s surface. When material hits the star, it lights up brightly. PHOTO: NASA/JPL-CALTECH

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NATURE

Ice scours the North Caspian sea The Operational Land Imager (OLI) on NASA’s Landsat 8 satellite acquired this large natural-color image showing a view of the Caspian Sea around the Tyuleniy Archipelago on April 16, 2016. Ocean scientist Norman Kuring of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center found a puzzling feature in the image, lines crisscrossing the North Caspian Sea. On its own, the image was strikingly beautiful. Shallow waters surrounding the Tyuleniy Archipelago allow you to see the dark green vegetation on the sea bottom. But the question remained: what caused those lines? The dark green areas, possibly sea grass or benthic algae, and the lines are features of the sea bottom. “You can tell this by the fact that marks laid down in January have not moved by April,” Kuring said. “If those were water features, they would not persist through one tidal cycle.” It’s possible that some of the marks have a human origin. Similar lines show up in the world’s oceans because of trawling. But the scientific literature suggests that a majority of the marks in the images were gouged by ice. In January, blocks of ice stand at the leading end of many lines, most notably in the northeast corner of the image. By April, ice has melted and only the scour marks persist. Stanislav Ogorodov, a scientist at Lomonosov Moscow State University who has published research on the phenomenon, agrees, “Undoubtedly, most of these tracks are the result of ice gouging.” Ogorodov notes that this part of the Caspian is very shallow, about 3 meters deep. Ice that forms here in wintertime is usually about 0.5 meters thick, so most of it never touches the seafloor. But the ice tends to be “warm” and thin, which gives rise to relatively weak ice cover that is easily deformed by wind and currents. When pieces of ice are pushed together, some ice is forced upward and downward into so-called “hummocks.” The keels of hummocks, frozen into the ice fields, can reach the seafloor and scour the bed as the ice moves. PHOTO: NASA IMAGE BY NORMAN KURING, NASA’S OCEAN COLOR WEB

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HISTORY

Train in trouble On the outskirts of London, a tower block has collapsed into Waterloo tube station. But no one has been injured. This is part of a training exercise that took place across four days in February and March to test how emergency teams will respond to a major disaster in the capital. Using seven train carriages and thousands of tonnes of rubble, an entire tube station was recreated in a disused power station close to the Dartford Crossing. It was the largest of such exercise ever carried out in Europe. Firefighters, police officers and ambulance staff all took part in the training scenario. More than 1,000 volunteer ‘casualties’ were covered in fake blood and given convincing injuries to make the scene as realistic as possible for the rescuers, who included specialist Urban Search and Rescue teams from around the UK. But the drill – titled ‘Exercise Unified Response’ – wasn’t just about rescuing trapped passengers. “An incident of this size affects everyone, from thousands of stranded commuters who can’t get home, to distraught relatives who can’t reach loved ones,” says London fire commissioner Ron Dobson. “We are working with Transport for London, local councils and various voluntary organisations to simulate the wider and longer term impacts that any major disaster would have on the community.” PHOTO: Jeremy Selwyn/eyevine

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SCHOOL

CHALLENGE 2016

MALAYSIA

CANBERRA: WHERE HISTORY, SCIENCE AND NATURE MEET! ake a crash course in Australian history and culture in Canberra, Australia’s political and administrative centre. The national monuments and galleries of this planned, spacious city are all within easy walking distance of each other, radiating out from the shores of Lake Burley Griffin. Peer into Australia’s political past and creative culture as you circle the lake, then get up close to its native vegetation in the gardens and bushland. Discuss your Australian discoveries over dinner in Dickson, Civic,

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Manuka or Kingston. Then nurture your love of nature in Namadgi National Park, where you can hike, bike, horse-ride, rock climb and follow a fascinating trail of Aboriginal and European history. Here’s a simple itinerary to guide your journey:

DAY ONE Capital attractions

Have breakfast by Lake Burley Griffin, where you can watch the joggers, cyclists, sail boats and determined dragon boat teams.This

huge artificial lake is Canberra’s centrepiece, surrounded by many of the national attractions. Hear Canberra’s story at the National Capital Exhibition, the chiming of 55 bronze bells on the National Carillon on Aspen Island and visit the War Memorial. Head to the Parliamentary Triangle to explore Parliament House and Old Parliament House on Capital Hill. Learn about the birth of Australia’s political system and visit the public gallery to watch Australian politicians debate issues at Question Time. See famous Australians on canvas at the National

Portrait Gallery, pore over historical documents at the National Library of Australia or check out Australia’s first constitution at the nearby National Archives. Complete your Australian cultural immersion with a show at Canberra’s Theatre Centre in Civic.

DAY TWO Pioneers, art and weird science

Drive to the Australian National Botanic Garden, where the main path meanders through a Tasmanian rainforest gully and a diverse range of native vegetation. Climb to Telstra Tower at the top of Black Mountain for a coffee and sweeping views of Canberra’s monuments and planned streets. Follow a walking trail through the bush, past native plants and animals and brilliant wildflowers in spring and early summer. After descending,

peer into the life of 19th century settlers at Blundells Cottage and check out the exhibitions at the National Museum of Australia. Cross the lake for Questacon, a fantastic family attraction. Experience a volcano, go for a virtual six-metre free fall or play a harp with beams of light.When you’ve regained your bearings, browse the nation’s finest collection of Australian art at the National Gallery of Australia. In the evening, enjoy fine dining in Civic, Kingston, Manuka or Griffith.

DAY THREE Namadgi National Park

Drive out to Namadgi National Park for a day of bushwalking and outdoor adventure in the Australian Alps. Explore forests of snow gum and alpine ash on the Square Rock walking

track or do the short climb to Booroomba Rocks for spectacular views.To get your personal touch of nature, take the Mt Franklin Road into the rugged Bimberi wilderness. Keep an eye out for kangaroos, wallabies, crimson rosellas and northern corroboree frogs amongst the wet gullies and woodlands. Visit an early European homestead in Orroral Valley or trace the story of the Ngunnawal people, who lived here thousands of years ago. Aboriginal campsites, ceremonial stone arrangements and rock art are scattered across the park in around 400 places. Mountain bike the fire trails, horse ride National Bicentennial Trail or rock climb and abseil the craggy granite outcrops. Fish from mountain streams in summer and cross-country ski the winter slopes. Camp overnight or return to Canberra for some creature comforts. Vol. 8 Issue 6

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SCHO OL

CHALLENGE 2016

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Update D I S P A T C H E S

THE LATEST INTELLIGENCE

F R O M

T H E

C U T T I N G

E D G E

Stranded on Mars, The Martian’s Mark Watney is forced to cultivate potatoes to survive

PHOTO: SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

VEGETABLES GROWN IN MARTIAN SOIL CROPS HARVESTED FROM A SIMULATED MARTIAN ALLOTMENT HOLD CLUES TO MAKING AGRICULTURE ON THE RED PLANET A FEASIBLE PROPOSITION 18

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In hit sci-fi movie The Martian, stranded astronaut Mark Watney (played by Matt Damon) feeds himself by growing potatoes in soil from the Red Planet’s surface. Now, researchers from the Netherlands have replicated the feat using simulated Martian soil made from rock taken from Hawaiian volcanoes. The team successfully harvested 10 different crops including tomatoes, peas, rocket and cress. The plants grew just as well as controls planted in regular potting compost. “That was a real surprise to us,” said researcher Wieger Wamelink. “It shows that the Mars soil simulant has great potential when properly prepared and watered. Only the spinach showed poor biomass production.” The plants were grown in trays filled with a mix of simulation soil, which was created by NASA, and

PHOTO: 20TH CENTURY FOX/PICSELECT.COM

BOTANY

PHOTOS: WIEGER WAMELINK/WAGENINGEN UNIVERSITY X4

freshly cut grass in a glass greenhouse and kept under constant “ONLY THE temperature, humidity SPINACH SHOWED and light conditions. “This is because we POOR BIOMASS expect that first crop growth on Mars and the PRODUCTION” Moon will take place in underground rooms to protect the plants from the hostile environment, which includes cosmic radiation,” said Wamelink. There is, however, one downside: the plants are not safe to eat. “The soils contain heavy metals like lead, arsenic and mercury, and also a lot of iron. If the components become available for the plants, they may be taken up and find their way into the fruits, making them poisonous,” Wamelink said. The Dutch team has now launched a crowdfunding campaign (visit their site at bit.ly/ martian_meal) to finance a further experiment that will concentrate on producing food that’s safe to eat. If the crops prove to be a success, they intend to invite funders to join them for a Martian meal made up of the harvested crops.

E X P E R T

C O M M E N T

LEWIS DARTNELL University of Leicester astrobiologist and author of The Knowledge: How To Rebuild Our World After An Apocalypse

ABOVE: It may not have been a bumper harvest (or even an edible one) but the veg grown demonstrates that food can be grown on Mars in principle BELOW: Simulated Martian soil made with rock gathered from Hawaiian volcanoes proved to be a suitable growing medium for a variety of crops

How much of a landmark is this result? These results from Wageningen University are certainly exciting. Being able to grow our own food will be a critical component of long-term habitation on Mars – we’ll have to become space farmers! But we’re only just working out now what crop species might be best suited, and how to exploit ‘in situ resources’ using Martian water, nutrients and regolith [dust, soil and broken rock] rather than having to fly soil from Earth all the way to Mars. How closely did the experiment mimic the real conditions on Mars? This particular experiment used a simulant for the Martian regolith, but then added lots of organic fertiliser in the form of grass clippings and manure, which of course wouldn’t be available on Mars. So it’d be important to demonstrate yields from a more realistic testing of an actual Mars mission, and possibly also under the sort of reduced air pressure found in an inflatable Martian greenhouse. Does this mean agriculture would be viable on Mars on a scale large enough to sustain a colony? That’s certainly the hope! There’s still a lot of work to be done. The first crewed mission to Mars will probably be short-term and take much, if not all, of the food they need with them, but in the long-term this is exactly the sort of research that’s needed. Does this mean there could be, or could have been, plant life on Mars? The short answer is no! Showing that Earth plants can survive in Martian soil, with added fertiliser and an Earth-like atmosphere, does not mean that plants could ever have evolved on Mars themselves. The environment on the Martian surface has been exceedingly hostile to life for a long time: freezing cold, dry, low atmospheric pressure and unprotected from ultraviolet radiation from the Sun. Hardy ‘extremophile’ bacteria might be able to survive such conditions, but not complex, multicellular plants.

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Update

THE LATEST INTELLIGENCE

ZOOLOGY

A STONE’S THROW FROM RITUALISTIC BEHAVIOUR

IN N U MBERS

5-18g

A team led by Hjalmar Kuhl and Ammie Kalan from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology have captured footage of chimps throwing rocks at trees – behaviour that has perplexed researchers. A camera trap set up to record the primates’ actions when no humans were present caught the film. Chimps have long been known to use tools (using stones as hammers to crack open nuts, for instance) but what’s so puzzling about the stone throwing is that it has no clear purpose. And the behaviour is not observed in chimpanzee populations elsewhere. “What we discovered wasn’t a random, one-off event; it was a repeated activity with no clear link

to gaining food or status. It could be a ritual,” said Laura Kehoe, a PhD researcher at Humboldt University of Berlin involved in the research. Some have suggested the behaviour, which leads to piles of stones accumulating at the base of the trees, may be a way of marking territory; others have posited it as evidence of some kind of spiritual belief system, pointing out similarities with the construction of stone cairns by primitive tribes. Whatever the answer, the existence of such ‘ritual’ behaviour that is specific to a given area indicates strongly that chimpanzee behaviour is more complex than was previously believed.

“THE BEHAVIOUR IS NOT OBSERVED IN CHIMP POPULATIONS ELSEWHERE”

The amount subjects in a study at the University of Illinois reduced their daily sugar intake by after replacing four drinks with plain water.

14,600 The number of Sumatran orangutans living in the wild, according to a new survey. That’s 8,000 more than was previously thought.

7,080

Do these stone altars suggest that chimps carry out ritualistic behaviour? 20

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The distance (in kilometres) migrated annually by some Pantala flavescens dragonflies, according to research carried out at Rutgers University Newark.

PHOTOS: NATURE PICTURE LIBRARY, MPI-EVA PANAF/CHIMBO FOUNDATION

Chimps in parts of West Africa have been observed repeatedly hurling stones at specific trees – for no obvious reason

The hypothalamus (highlighted in yellow) may be the trigger mechanism that psyches you up for a fight

NEUROSCIENCE

PHOTOS: SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY x2

BRAIN REGION RESPONSIBLE FOR VIOLENT THOUGHTS PINPOINTED Before a human or another mammal commits a violent act, they will often experience a build-up of ‘aggressive motivations’ – and now a research team at the NYU Langone Medical Center believe they have worked out the exact spot in the brain where this build-up occurs. Their findings were published in the journal Nature Neuroscience on 7 March. Using probes to study the brain activity in mice, the team found that before a group attacked smaller mice, there was increased activity in the ventrolateral region of the ventromedial hypothalamus, a part of the brain linked to sleep, hunger and body temperature regulation. Mice in whom activity in this part of the brain was suppressed didn’t respond to the same stimuli in the same aggressive fashion. Dr Dayu Lin of NYU Langone’s Neuroscience Institute, who led the research, said: “Our study pinpoints the brain circuits essential to the aggressive motivations that build up as animals prepare to attack.” By better understanding how the impulse to engage in violence arises, it’s possible treatments could be devised to prevent it – although Lin says this is currently only “a distant possibility”.

The hypothalamus regulates certain metabolic functions and releases various neurohormones

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Update

THE LATEST INTELLIGENCE

IS EARTH SPECIAL AFTER ALL?

“EARTH HAS VIOLATED THE COPERNICAN PRINCIPLE, WHICH STATES THAT OUR PLANET IS NOT IN A FAVOURED POSITION”

B E H I N D

T H E

H E A D L I N E S

A new cosmic inventory suggests the Earth may be completely unique. Graham Southorn asked Prof Don Pollacco, an exoplanet expert, what this means for Earth and the search for intelligent life

RIGHT: Nicolaus Copernicus’s work led to the heliocentric model of the Solar System in which the Earth and other planets orbit the central Sun 22

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into being. The rate of star formation has changed since the beginning of time, and so the team at Uppsala University looked at what would have happened to the planets that were being made in that time. It’s all intimately tied up with the way galaxies evolve. They estimate the mean age of terrestrial planets to be 8 billion years, whereas Earth is only 4.5 billion years old. What does that tell us? It tells us that the mean age of stars is a lot older than the Sun because most stars are in elliptical galaxies. Also, the ‘typical terrestrial planet’ is in a spheroidal galaxy with twice the mass of our spiral Galaxy… If a typical location [for a terrestrial planet] is in a spheroidal galaxy, then you’d expect most planets to be in those galaxies. But if that is actually the case, Earth has violated the Copernican principle, which states that we are not in a favoured position. Perhaps there’s some unknown reason why spiral galaxies are preferred. If we aren’t violating the Copernican principle, there must be a reason why life is evolving in galaxies like ours.

PHOTOS: ESA/C CARREAU, SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Scientists at Uppsala University in Sweden say they’ve created a ‘cosmic inventory’ of terrestrial planets. How did they produce it? In a way it’s quite straightforward. Scientists have already put a lot of work into understanding the history of galaxies, and we’re beginning to understand the ways planets are arranged around different kinds of stars. What the Uppsala team has done is put the two things together. The number of planets [in the Universe] is dictated by the numbers of stars and when those stars came

T H E Y DID W H AT ?!

Penguins made to run on treadmills What did they do? A team at the University of Roehampton trained eight king penguins to walk on a treadmill and filmed them as they waddled along.

PHOTO: SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY ILLUSTRATION: JAMES OLSTEIN

And what did they do that for? King penguins have to schlep several miles inland from the Antarctic coast in order to breed. As they have no means of hunting for food on land, they must first fill their bellies with fish to enable them to survive the breeding season. The researchers wanted to find out if the penguins’ walking gait changed with body mass.

ABOVE: The Uppsala study suggests the number of terrestrial planets is intimately connected to the number of stars BELOW: With twice the mass of a spiral galaxy like the one seen here, a typical spheroidal galaxy would seem to be a likelier home to terrestrial planets

How seriously should we take the conclusions drawn from this study? You have to remember that there’s a lot we don’t know built into this work. Uppsala’s scientists would probably say the same – they’ve got several pages discussing the errors. It’s still very early days for this kind of study because it involves all the things we don’t know about galaxy and planetary evolution.

What did they find? Tubby penguins tend to widen their gait to accommodate extra weight but they also sway more from side to side. This increased waddling gives them extra stability and helps prevent them from toppling over. They are still less sure on their flippers than trimmer counterparts. However, this potentially makes them an easier target for predators, the researchers say.

What are the implications for finding intelligent life? They say it’s possible that life only exists in one place in each galaxy. That means there are good reasons to do SETI [the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence] on an intergalactic scale, as opposed to just looking at nearby stars. They say the prospects for finding life on other planets are better if we look closer to home rather than far away. Why is that? It’s because of the time it takes for an evolved society to come into existence. It’s intimately connected with the ages of planets – as you look further away, back in time, the planets are younger. There’s no point looking at the start of the Universe because a society hasn’t had time to evolve. Vol. 8 Issue 6

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Update

THE LATEST INTELLIGENCE

THE DOWNLOAD NEUROSCIENCE

MATRIX-STYLE SKILL UPLOAD TO THE BRAIN ONE STEP CLOSER

What’s that? One of the robots from the new Star Wars film? Not even close. It’s the first gene ever identified with greying hair. Tell me more! A team at University College London has found that IRF 4 is involved with regulating the production and storage of melanin, the pigment that determines hair, eye and skin colour. Does this mean an end to grey hair? Possibly. Greying is caused by a lack of melanin in hair. Further study of IRF 4 could lead to new cosmetic applications that could switch off the mechanism that causes this. Are there any… ahem, less vanity-led findings? Yep. The gene could potentially be used as a model to study the biological processes involved in ageing, the researchers say. 24

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ABOVE: Caps with electrodes transmitted pilots’ brain activity patterns to subjects BELOW: Neo kicks butt in The Matrix after kung fu skills are uploaded to his brain

PHOTOS: MOVIESTORE COLLECTION

IRF 4

Take the red pill: a team at HRL Laboratories in California has discovered that electrical brain stimulation can speed up the acquisition of skills. In the classic sci-fi movie The Matrix, Neo (played by Keanu Reeves) is able to learn kung fu instantly thanks to a device that uploads the martial art directly to his brain. While the HRL technique can’t quite replicate this, it was able to reduce the time trainee pilots took to learn to fly. The team measured the brain activity patterns of six commercial and military pilots, and then transmitted these patterns into novice trainees as they learned to pilot an aeroplane in a flight simulator. To do this, they used a method called ‘transcranial direct current “AS WE DISCOVER stimulation’ that passes a small current to the brain via MORE ABOUT BRAIN a head cap embedded with STIMULATION PROTOCOLS, electrodes. The trainees who had WE’LL LIKELY SEE THESE undergone the brain TECHNOLOGIES BECOME stimulation technique showed improved piloting ROUTINE IN TRAINING abilities and were able to land the plane more ENVIRONMENTS” smoothly compared to their unstimulated counterparts. The method’s potential to boost skills with brain stimulation may make accelerated learning commonplace, the researchers said. “As we discover more about optimising, personalising and adapting brain stimulation protocols, we’ll likely see these technologies become routine in training and classroom environments,” explained lead researcher Dr Matthew Phillips. “It’s possible that brain stimulation could be implemented for classes like drivers’ training, SAT prep and language learning.” Sadly, this technology is not able to teach us how to leap from rooftop to rooftop or stop bullets in mid-air.

FASHIONISTAS

Researchers at Penn State University found that volunteers performed better at sports and maths tests when they thought they were using kit made by designer brands. The results mimic the placebo effect seen in medicine, they say.

Tortotubus is the oldest example of fossilised fungus but shares a similar internal structure to modern fungi

SILVER SURFERS

BIOLOGY

ANCIENT MUSHROOM MAY HAVE HELPED KICK-START LIFE ON LAND

PHOTOS: MARTIN SMITH ILLUSTRATION: JAMES OLSTEIN

Meet Tortotubus, the 440-million-year-old fungus to which we may all owe our existence The earliest examples of land-dwelling organisms have been found on the Scottish Inner Hebridean island of Kerrera by researchers from the University of Cambridge. The tiny fossils of Tortotubus protuberans are smaller than the width of a human hair and played a key role in kick-starting the processes required for life to evolve on land. “When this organism existed, life was almost entirely restricted to the oceans,” said researcher Martin Smith. “But before there could be plants or trees, or the animals that depend on them, the processes of rot and soil formation needed to be established.” By reconstructing how the fungus grew, Smith was able to show that the fossils are made of mycelium, the root-like filaments that fungi use to extract nutrients from soil. “This fossil provides a hint that mushroom-forming fungi may have colonised the land before the first animals left the oceans,” said Smith. “It fills an important gap in the evolution of life on land.”

“BEFORE THERE COULD BE PLANTS OR TREES, THE PROCESSES OF ROT AND SOIL FORMATION NEEDED TO BE ESTABLISHED”

A study at Mayo Clinic in the US has found that septuagenarian computer users are 42 per cent less likely to develop the cognitive issues that precede dementia.

GOOD MONTH BAD MONTH

THE IMPATIENT

Patience is a virtue, and now researchers in Singapore have found it may help you live longer too. Impatient people’s DNA seems more prone to ageing than that of their more patient peers.

YES MEN

Research by Australia’s Monash University has found sycophants show more activity in areas of the brain associated with anxiety when they read statements they disagree with. This results in them giving in to peer pressure more easily.

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W H AT W E LEARNED THIS MONTH

BIOLOGY

WORLD’S OLDEST CHAMELEON FOUND IN AMBER FOSSIL

PLUTO MAY HAVE CLOUDS

Getting stuck in tree resin is bad news for ancient critters but good news for today’s scientists A team in Florida has discovered 12 lizards fossilised in amber 100 million years ago. Among them is a well-preserved ancestor of modern-day chameleons that’s the oldest ever found. The fossils were originally found decades ago in Burma (now Myanmar) but remained in private collection until their recent donation to the American Museum of Natural History. “These fossils tell us a lot about the extraordinary, but previously unknown, diversity of lizards in ancient tropical forests,” said researcher Edward Stanley. “The fossil record is sparse because the delicate skin and fragile bones of small lizards don’t usually preserve, especially in the tropics, which makes these fossils a rare and unique window into a critical period of diversification.” By imaging the fossils with a micro-CT scanner, the researchers could peer inside the amber without causing damage, allowing them to piece

together detailed pictures of the reptiles. “It’s mind-blowing. Usually we have a foot or other small part preserved in amber, but these are whole specimens, claws, toe pads, teeth, even coloured scales,” Stanley said. The fossils shed light on exactly when many of the modern features of lizards appeared. For example, adhesive toe pads can be seen on the amber gecko indicating that this “USUALLY WE adaptation originated Similarly, the tiny HAVE A TOE OR earlier. chameleon has the OTHER SMALL projectile tongue seen in its modern counterparts PART BUT THESE but had not yet developed the body ARE WHOLE shape and fused toes we see today. SPECIMENS” CT scans of the preserved reptiles allows researchers to peer inside the specimens without damaging the fossils

Photos sent back from the New Horizons spacecraft following its flyby of Pluto last July show what appear to be hazy, cloud-like features in the atmosphere. Pluto was demoted to dwarf planet status in 2006. If confirmed, the finding could strengthen the case for it to be reinstated as a full planet.

‘SIMPLE’ FACES ARE CONSIDERED MORE ATTRACTIVE A study at the University of Queensland has found symmetrical faces with no unusual features are perceived as more attractive. The effect is thought to be due to ‘simpler’ faces being easier for the brain to process.

GETTING TATTOOS CAN PROTECT YOU AGAINST COLDS Maybe it’s time to get inked. The body’s stress response triggered by having multiple tattoos can lead to a strengthened immune system, researchers at the University of Alabama have found.

CHOCOLATE MAY MAKE YOU MORE INTELLIGENT Break out the choccies! A 40-year study by researchers in New York has found that people who eat chocolate once a week perform better in memory and abstract reasoning tests. 26

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PHOTOS: KRISTEN GRACE /FLORIDA MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY, ISTOCK

Update

THE LATEST INTELLIGENCE

MEDICINE

DOCTORS IMPLANT 3D-PRINTED ‘LIVING’ BODY PARTS INTO RATS

PHOTO: WAKE FOREST INSTITUTE ILLUSTRATION: JAMES OLSTEIN

Gentlemen, we can rebuild him! A team at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine in North Carolina has printed living body parts and implanted them into host animals. Dubbed ITOP, or Integrated Tissue and Organ Printing, the system has been used successfully to print ear, bone and muscle structures that matured into functioning tissue after being implanted in rats and mice. Although the technology has so far only been tested in animals, the tissues created were of an appropriate size and structure to be used in human subjects, the researchers say. “This novel tissue and organ printer is an important advance in our quest to make replacement tissue for patients,” said Anthony Atala, director of the Institute and senior author of the paper detailing the research, which appeared in the journal Nature Biotechnology in February. “It can be used to fabricate stable, human-scale tissue of any shape. With further development, this

technology could potentially be used to print living tissue and organ structures for surgical implantation.” The system uses 3D printing technology to deposit layers of biodegradable, plastic-like materials to form the basic framework of the desired tissue. It then fills this in with water-based gels containing living cells that develop into functioning tissue. So far the team has printed human-sized ears and implanted them under the skin of mice, as well as muscle tissue and human jawbone fragments which they implanted in rats. In all cases, the implants were successfully integrated into the host animals and quickly began to develop networks of nerves and blood vessels. The ITOP system may one day be able to use data from CT and MRI scans to tailor-make tissue for implant. For example, if a patient was missing an ear the system could be used to print and implant an exact replica of the original.

This human-sized ear was 3D-printed and then implanted under the skin of a mouse

T H E Y D I D W H AT ?!

‘Paranoia’ triggered in ravens What did they do? Scientists investigating animal cognition at the University of Vienna encouraged ravens to hide food next to a box with a peephole in it, linked up to a speaker playing the calls of other ravens.

What did they find? When the peephole was open, the ravens believed other birds could see their actions and would go to greater lengths to stash their food, even though they couldn’t actually see another bird watching them. When the peephole was closed they’d hide the food in a more casual manner.

Why did they do that? The team is trying to determine whether ravens possess a ‘theory of mind’. If so, this means that they are able to imagine experiencing thoughts and emotions felt by other animals – a skill that is widely regarded as a sign of higher levels of intelligence. Corvids – crows, ravens, magpies and jays – are believed to be the most intelligent bird family

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Update

THE LATEST INTELLIGENCE

MAKING IT TO MARS

Illustration: Valerio Pellegrini

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In mid-March, the ExoMars orbiter started its journey to the Red Planet. Today, there are five satellites in orbit around the planet, while four rovers are actively exploring its surface. But we haven’t always been so good at reaching Mars, as this graphic shows…

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THE LATEST INTELLIGENCE

IN LOCAL NEWS

SINGAPORE AIRLINES CHOOSES GX AVIATION FOR HIGH-SPEED GLOBAL IN-FLIGHT WI-FI The in-flight entertainment system and connectivity has transformed tremendously over these recent years as passengers are seeking not only wireless connectivity, but high speed Wi-Fi on flight. Demand for high speed internet for airlines has never been greater and Global Xpress Aviation (GX Aviation) provides just what is needed. This groundbreaking satellite solution administers seamless air connectivity for travellers who wish to receive a home equivalent broadband experience. Understanding consumer needs, Singapore Airlines has jumped on the bandwagon to work with Honeywell Aerospace which in turns provide JetWave Satellite communications hardware for connection to Inmarsat’s GX Aviation broadband solution. The installation of the first GX Aviation system is scheduled to equip during the second half of 2016, first on the B777-300ER aircraft, followed by its A380-800s. GX is also the only global Ka-band network designed around mobile assets to provide global high-speed-in-flight connectivity. With this improved system, passengers are able to send real-time social media updates, emails and live stream television on board an aircraft to virtually anywhere in the world.

IN WORLD NEWS

CONSUMER ELECTRONICS TRENDS AT IFA 2016

The world’s leading trade show for consumer and home electronics will take place from 2nd to 7th September 2016 at Berlin Exhibition Grounds (Expo Center City). As in time for the most important period of the year for sales, IFA offers an extensive overview of the latest innovations and updates. These include Ultra-HD televisions (UHD), wearable sensors for health and fitness purposes, superfast 3D scanners and eyeglasses and cameras for virtual reality (VR) applications. UDH has already taken over the mass market with pixels per inch quadrupled compared to Full HD TV and a new quality seal that reads “Ultra HD Premium”. Hollywood movies are using its advantages to the fullest by bringing stunning images to our large screens. Smart watches and other wearables are also set to dominate IFA 2016. Working independently or in combination with a smartphone, these devices display data they receive from tracking body movements to heart rate and even measuring environmental variables. Fun, fitness and health have also never been so interconnected till today. On the other hand, the 3D printer is gaining popularity due to its practical uses. These printers can be used to make chairs, coffee tables, large vases and even foodstuffs like chocolate and sugar. Virtual Reality is also gaining popularity like no others. VR goggles are all the rage now and more manufacturers are offering models to create three-dimensional illusions. Smartphones are also doubling up as VR goggles with special adapters. 30

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Comment & Analysis SELF-STIRRING SHAMPOO “take a moment to think about the fluid in your bathroom, shifting in a slow waltz” hen I was an undergraduate, one of my lecturers told tales of the geological discoveries that had been made by accident, of the many times when someone saw something odd but important while they were supposed to be focusing on something else. This is one of the strongest arguments for carrying out experiments, rather than just thinking about problems. You never know what the world is about to show you. This month, I did a demonstration for my students that turned out to be much more interesting than I’d expected. I spend far too much time in shops tilting bottles of shampoo to assess how slowly the liquid flows. That’s because buying colourless shampoo is a quick and easy way of gathering a range of viscous fluids for simple demos. For this particular demonstration, I’d filled a large glass jar with very gloopy transparent shampoo and floated a plastic ball in it. I scribbled on the outside of the plastic ball with black marker pen to demonstrate a point about buoyancy. After the lecture, I left the jar sitting on a table in my office. After it had been there for two days, I noticed that a blob of marker pen ink was moving away from the ball. As the days went on, I watched the black streak advance downward and then around in circles, moving perhaps a couple of centimetres each day. After two weeks, the jar contained a large whirl, stretching around in spirals, reaching right to the bottom of the jar and back up, using all of the three dimensions available to it. The conclusion was inescapable: although the transparent gloopy stuff looked as though it was just sitting in a jar doing nothing, it was actually moving. The explanation must be convection. Heating any liquid will cause it to expand slightly. If the heated fluid is below a cooler fluid, it becomes buoyant and will rise. The temperature in my office varies because the university building is only heated during the day. In the evenings and at weekends, it’s cooler. That’s one part of the explanation – the overall temperature is rising and falling. The other question is how the convection is driven. Is the shampoo at the top cooling in the evenings and sinking? Or, in the

MAIN ILLUSTRATION: MATT CLOUGH PORTRAIT: KATE COPELAND

W

This month, a humble bottle of shampoo took Helen on an enlightening journey

mornings, is the shampoo getting heated up from below and rising? There are clearly more experiments to be done! But what really got me thinking is the implication that all those bottles of shampoo and shower gel in my bathroom are presumably also moving. The movement is really slow, firstly because the fluid is so thick that it will only gradually respond to a temperature imbalance. And secondly, the density changes caused by the different temperatures within a single bottle are tiny, so they won’t provide much push. But my

bathroom cupboard also follows a daily temperature cycle, and so all the gloop in there is presumably also swirling slowly around, even if it’s been neglected for years. So next time you open your bathroom cupboard, take a moment to think about the fluid in there shifting around in a slow waltz, responding to the outside world even though it’s sealed in. Shampoo is never going to look quite the same again.  DR HELEN CZERSKI is a physicist and BBC presenter whose most recent series was Colour: The Spectrum Of Science Vol. 8 Issue 6

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SCIENCE

WONDERS OF THE DRONE AGE

A NEW WAVE OF UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLES IS SPREADING ACROSS THE WORLD, DISCOVERING ANCIENT CIVILISATIONS, MAPPING CAVES AND PLUNGING INTO THE HEARTS OF VOLCANOES WORDS: LUKE EDWARDS

PHOTO: ERIC CHENG/FERDINAND WOLF

A drone braves the searing heat of an erupting volcano to capture 4K footage

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Scan this QR Code for the audio reader

THE VOLCANO VOYAGER olcanoes are capable of spewing lava at temperatures of up to 1,200°C. This searing heat, combined with choking gases, makes them tricky to study. But now, specially equipped drones are allowing us to take a closer look. Enter Australian drone specialist Simon Jardine, with his company Aerobot. To make a drone that could create 3D maps of volcanoes, Jardine needed a device that could survive extreme temperatures, corrosive fumes and spinning winds.

V

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SCIENCE

It was no easy feat. In order to map Vanuatu’s Marum Crater, Jardine and his team lost several drones and cameras. The prolonged exposure to acidic clouds crippled electronics, while the shifting hot and cool air sent at least one drone smashing into the crater wall. Eventually, by using DJI Phantom drones and GoPro cameras, rendered via Pix4Dmapper, the team virtually recreated the crater (pictured right). After paving the way into this new frontier, more drone volcano footage has emerged. Drone specialist and photographer Eric Cheng recently acquired some stunning 4K shots of active volcanoes in Iceland at the point of the biggest eruption in 200 years. His team f lew two DJI Inspire 1 drones through buffeting thermals to capture the active volcano as never seen before. They even landed one on the lava f low – for science, of course…

The Marum crater is 420m deep and 1km wide

The Red Planet has a thin atmosphere and surface NASA has already developed a drone that can temperature averaging around -63°C, making cope with the atmosphere on Mars as well as it far less welcoming than some of the most conditions in outer space. These ‘Extreme inhospitable places on Earth. Access Flyers’ won’t just snap images Getting to Mars requires a tough and video, but will also collect actual trip. Astronauts would be exposed samples from other planets. to incredibly long periods of space While on the planet, the flyers travel, the effects of which are still will use quadcopter blades and unknown. But we’ve still got ducted fans. But if they’re needed plenty of time to carry out the in a zero gravity situation they can required research, as humans are turn on cold gas thrusters. The not scheduled to set foot on the plan, in the future, is to run the red dirt until 2030. drones on propellants made from Extreme Access Flyers will Despite a lack of human explorers, resources that can be found on have to cope with the Mars has already been mapped so conditions of space distant worlds. accurately that there are Ordnance As is the case with a lot of Survey maps available of 3,672 x 2,721km technological advancements made by of the planet’s surface. This is thanks to the NASA, these creations could be used on Earth data sent back by NASA’s rovers. However, like all too. Imagine a site of heavy toxins, such as an area wheeled vehicles, the rovers have limited capabilities, of high radiation, being studied by drones, or the first especially when faced with walls angled at 30° or more. responders at a disaster being drones. That’s already Drones do not have such limitations. becoming a reality. All hail our drone saviours.

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PHOTOS: SIMON JARDINE/AEROBOT.COM.AU, NASA/SWAMP WORK

THE MARS EXPLORER

THE POLAR PILGRIMS The North Pole is one of the most remote places on the planet. Despite the harsh environment, there is contention about ownership as there could be rich natural resources beneath the ice. To ensure its presence in the Arctic, the Canadian government has started working on drones capable of surviving the conditions. Explorers have died in the sub-zero temperatures of the most northerly point on the planet, and normal drones would likely suffer the same fate. One of the major issues to overcome, if drones are going to explore the Arctic, is direction. At the Earth’s polar tip the use of GPS is difficult. For drones to successfully navigate in the region, there needs to be a ‘crown’ of satellites in the right positions to establish locational data.

Once navigation is solved, the drone then has to survive the cold. At temperatures of around -40°C, the reactions that batteries rely on slow to snail’s pace. But it’s not just chilly temperatures that stop f light – fog is a barrier too. In the Arctic, clouds and fog can undergo structural icing. That means that the water droplets crystallise on impact. Needless to say, that’s a problem for a drone’s spinning rotors. Larger planes and helicopters can survive this as they are big enough to carry de-icing kit. This just isn’t an option for a smaller drones. The work of the Canadian government is still in its infancy but it currently looks like drones will act as assistants to manned missions. These could find the fastest way around a landmass, saving time, resources and potentially even lives.

PHOTOS: GETTY, ALAMY, MEGGITT TARGET SYSTEM

Canada is researching drones that can navigate around the North Pole and survive sub-zero temperatures

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PHOTO: DR GUY WILLIAMS, DR ALEX FRASER AND MS EVA COUGNAN/COURTEST OF THE UNITED STATES ANTARCTIC PROGRAM & NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION

SCIENCE

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Near the South Pole, the United States Antarctic Program has been trialling drones to map the changing sea ice. The UAV that took this picture was paired with an autonomous sub below the ice. This allowed a team to produce a photo mosaic of an ice field out of 500-1,000 images

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PHOTO: AG EAGLE UNMANNED ARIAL SYSTEMS, RYAN DEBOODT

SCIENCE

Fixed-wing drones can smash into a tornado to take measurements

THE STORM CHASER Tornadoes are one of Hollywood’s favourite types of weather. Twisters take unpredictable paths, tear entire houses out of the ground and toss trucks around like they were child’s toys. Until recently, human storm chasers had to get close enough to a tornado to insert their measuring equipment by hand. But these storm chasers may not need to risk their lives for much longer. Drones could take over, leaving scientists to take up surfing instead. A US-based team called The Sirens Project are carrying out experiments using fixed-wing drones to drop probes into tornadoes.

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The decision to pick this type of drone was based on its ability to remain in the air for longest, hold stable f light in high winds and achieve the 160km/h (100mph) target speed needed to punch into a tornado. But getting the drone into the tornado is half the battle – then they need to get the data out. DroneDeploy is a company that has created a remote recording and transmitting device capable of surviving inside a tornado. This allows for an internet-based connection with the drone, on top of the telemetry hardware built into the wing, but also helps to find it after its dance with the elements is over – and it’s likely left broken. This unit also allows for control of the drone from anywhere in the world via the internet. So if tornado chasers want units set up at multiple locations, then that’s an option. More data collection means more early warnings, which means safer humans.

THE CAVE DWELLER Vietnam’s Hang Son Doong cave is enormous, and the prospect of mapping it is daunting. Its main passage is over 5km long, 150m wide and 200m high. Despite its incredible size, the cave was only discovered in 1991. The Cave of the Mountain River, as its name translates to, was stumbled upon by a local man after he heard the whistling of wind and the roar of its river. Until then, the perilously steep descent of the entrance had kept humanity at bay. At some point the roof of the cave collapsed, leaving two large holes that let in sunlight. Trees and other vegetation have flourished in these sunny spots, making the cave look almost inviting. But climbers wanting to explore and map the cave came across some tricky obstacles. One individual who entered the cave early on described climbing 6m blades of limestone to circumnavigate the 150 networks of connected caves. They were ultimately stopped by a 60m wall of muddy calcite. Time for the drones. Beijing-based photographer Ryan Deboodt sent his DJI Phantom II drone equipped with a GoPro Hero4 into the cave’s depths to get a better look. He successfully managed to snap clear and widespanning views of the cavern. The ability of drones to move freely at speed highlights just how much more adept they are at exploring than humans – Indiana Jones included. From August, heavy rains in Vietnam cause river levels to rise, making the caves largely inaccessible for humans. But for drones it’s year-round open season.

Photographer Ryan Deboodt used a drone to snap these stunning images of Vietnam’s Hang Son Doong cave

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SCIENCE

A

B

C

Humans have lived in the Amazon basin for more than 13,000 years. In a bout of irony, the destruction of the Amazon rainforest has breathed new life into our understanding of ancient civilisations. Deforestation has revealed over 450 geoglyphs – patterns left in the ground by former civilisations. These patterns could reveal if societies prior to the 1490s were small bands of hunter-gatherers and shifting cultivators, or more complex civilisations. The problem standing in the way of improving our understanding is about 5,500,000km 2 of thick rainforest. Covering that on foot, which is about the only way to get through the dense growth, would take lifetimes. When you take into account the potential diseases, attacks by the likes of jaguars, alligators and snakes, plus dramatic weather, one life per person might not be enough. This is where drones can help. One project, led by UK scientists, employs robotic planes to f ly over the

Amazon. The drones are equipped with a LiDAR and multispectral sensors, which are able to effectively see through the dense canopy of leaves and branches that makes up the rainforest ceiling. The LiDAR works by bouncing light off objects to build an image. Throw in some algorithms to factor in light ref lecting off the leaves and you’re left with a pretty clear image of what lies within the forest. This isn’t the only place where old civilisations are being revealed by drones. A 1,000-year-old Native American settlement dubbed Blue J was recently discovered in the desert of New Mexico. By flying a drone equipped with infrared cameras, archaeologists were able to see through the vegetation to paint a picture of the former civilisation beneath. By comparing drone images, archaeologists are now able to recognise varying materials so they can determine where to dig more accurately than ever. Watch out hidden cities, you’re about to get spotlit.

“The drones are able to see through the canopy of leaves and branches”

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ABOVE: Thermal images from Blue J (A) can be used to create an interpretation of the region (B) far more effectively than a standard photo (C)

PHOTOS: JESSE J CASANA, GETTY

From above, the Blue J area looks innocuous, but drones helped archaeologists unearth hidden secrets beneath the surface

THE CIVILISATION HUNTER

THE DRONE KILLER THE BORDER DEFENDER

Drones are fast becoming the bad boys of the skies. They have committed airborne crimes such as smuggling phones and drugs into prisons. On top of that, there are fears terrorists may start using drones. Plus, there have already been a number of near-misses at UK airports, in which drones have had close calls with aeroplanes. They have become enough of an issue for the UK government to start looking into ways of stopping the felonious f lyers when needed. So what better way to stop a man-made drone than with one of Mother Nature’s perfectly evolved predators, the eagle? Police in the Netherlands have already trained eagles to pluck pesky drones out of the skies. While some

One of the least-travelled nations on the planet is North Korea. The strict communist regime stops the country’s residents from leaving. Getting in or out of the country is risky. North Korea and South Korea have been in a state of armistice Drones have sneaked over Korea’s heavily since 1953. The two militarised DMZ nations lay claim, despite its Demilitarized Zone name, to the world’s most heavily militarised border. This area stretches for 250km (160 miles) Dutch police are and is 4km (2.5 miles) wide. It is using birds of prey heavily guarded on the surface to disable drones and has been penetrated by underground tunnels on numerous occasions. But now drones are leaving North Korea, apparently to spy on their southerly neighbours. In response, South Korea is researching drone-killing bots. Their mission is to search, locate and disable other unmanned aerial vehicles. Currently, automated tracking weapons such as missiles won’t lock onto things as small as drones, so it falls to other drones to stop them. The future could see drones versus drones on the battlefield, as smaller guard drones defend larger attack drones. The Dutch company Delft Dynamics has shown off a drone with a cannon that can fire a net over target drones, disabling and grounding them. While a future of drone warfare is a worrying one, at least it’ll mean fewer human casualties, right?

animal activists consider this a risky initiative because rotor blades are potentially dangerous, London’s Metropolitan Police is still considering using the birds of prey. Drone laws are still not set in stone, but some rules are already in place. The UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) says that a camera-equipped drone must not be f lown within 50m of congested areas or large groups of people, while commercially f lown drones must have permission from the CAA. Meanwhile, the USA’s Federal Aviation Administration states drones must not be f lown within 8km (five miles) of an airport. 

LUKE EDWARDS IS A TECHNOLOGY AND GADGETS WRITER.

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NATURE

SETTLING IN

SUBURBIA HERONS AND EGRETS ARE MAKING THEMSELVES AT HOME IN THE SUBURBS OF CALIFORNIA, BUT HUMAN PROXIMITY BRINGS NEW DANGERS. SCIENCE WRITER BRENDAN BUHLER FINDS OUT HOW THE LOCAL COMMUNITY IS WORKING TO KEEP THEM SAFE

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A great egret alights in the top of a eucalyptus tree to pass a twig to its mate in Sonoma County, California. The male begins the nest, but when he finds a partner the pair complete the work together. Great egrets are often the first birds to nest in mixed heronries of various species. Sadly, at the end of the 19th century roughly 95 per cent of North America’s great egrets were killed for their plumes as ornaments for ladies’ hats – there were similar declines in Europe. Vol. 8 Issue 6

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ABOVE Great, snowy and cattle egrets and black-crowned night herons roost together in eucalyptus trees at the 9th Street rookery, near downtown Santa Rosa, California. They are attracted to the nearby wetlands and creeks and spent years trying to establish a colony in the area, only to be evicted from one back yard after another because people objected to their copious acrid guano and loud cries. The birds eventually settled into city-owned trees in the middle of a busy road. LEFT Dawn in Sonoma County. A blackcrowned night heron returns to the nest after a hunting trip as a four-week-old chick begs for a regurgitated portion of the night’s catch.

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ABOVE RIGHT It’s feeding time at this nest in Sonoma County as two four-week-old great egret chicks beg for food. Female egrets and herons lay eggs at intervals, and chicks hatch in order of laying. Older, bigger chicks have more success when demanding food, and in lean years their smaller siblings may starve or fall victim to siblicide – note the dead chick in the foreground. RIGHT Brigitta Lewis picks up a monthold cattle egret that has fallen out of its colony at the 9th Street rookery and wandered into the road. Lewis works as a bus driver for an elementary school, and over the years has rescued hundreds of fledglings.

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A black-crowned night heron attempts to look fiercer than its age (one or two weeks) as it faces down Suzi’s camera. The chick has just had its broken wing set with bright green elastic veterinary tape at International Bird Rescue in Fairfield, an hour’s drive south-east of the 9th Street rookery in Santa Rosa.

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ABOVE LEFT X-rays of a black-crowned night heron chick that was struck by a car. Young birds have hollow bones and weigh little, which is why they may fall out of a tree and sustain almost no injury; but such a lightweight build is no defence against traffic. ABOVE RIGHT A black-crowned night heron chick that is less than a week old is weighed at International Bird Rescue. Fledglings may leave the nest at one month, but do not fly until about six weeks old – in the meantime they join flocks to forage by dark. RIGHT International Bird Rescue’s Isabel Luevano examines a one-week-old great egret chick. Every new arrival is weighed, has their temperature and a blood sample taken, and receives a thorough physical examination. The most common injury found by rehabilitation technicians such as Isabel is a broken wing.

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LEFT Snowy egrets huddle in the back of an animal carrier, awaiting release by volunteers of The Bird Rescue Center, which is also in Santa Rosa. The birds grew to full size at the facility – all of them now wear coloured rings and will be tracked on the registries of International Bird Rescue and the US Geological Survey. ABOVE Only after a period of quiet do the snowy egrets creep out of their crate into the chosen wetland. Like most of the birds rescued from the 9th Street Rookery, they are released near where they hatched. The Laguna de Santa Rosa is the largest wetland near the coast of northern California – it exceeds 12,000ha – and the most biologically diverse region of Sonoma County. In addition to open water, the birds will have access to creeks, marshes and woods.

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LEFT Back at International Bird Rescue, black-crowned night herons aged between one and two weeks old huddle for warmth in an incubator. Rescued birds – especially chicks – are glad of the company, but are segregated by age and species to prevent fighting and additional injuries. Between 2002 and 2014 the facility took in nearly 4,500 herons and egrets, most of them black-crowned night herons and snowy egrets.

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THE HISTORY ESSAY

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A soldier says his goodbyes before leaving for Egypt during the Suez Crisis of 1956. Great impersonal forces such as wars and social change may be history’s engines but personal experiences are what really bring the past to life, says Margaret MacMillan

THE GREAT CURRENTS OF HISTORY ARE IMPORTANT, BUT IT’S THE INDIVIDUALS WHOSE STORIES FASCINATE US MOST BY MARGARET MACMILLAN

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HOW PEOPLE MAKE THE PAST

THE HISTORY ESSAY

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA

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ET ME START WITH TWO VERY DIFFERENT STORIES IN TWO VERY DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE PAST. IN THE 1790S, A YOUNG WOMAN CALLED ELIZABETH SIMCOE WALKED IN THE TWILIGHT THROUGH A FOREST IN UPPER CANADA, A SCARCELY SETTLED PART OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE. A FIRE HAD RECENTLY SWEPT THROUGH AND ITS SMOKE STILL LINGERED.

Every so often, one of the smouldering trees shot out a tongue of flame. It was, she reported, “a little like Tasso’s enchanted wood”. In her copious journals, written for those she had left behind in England, we share her surprise and delight at the new world in which she found herself. Some three centuries earlier, Babur, a prince from central Asia, also decided to set down his thoughts and experiences in a journal, which somehow survived his turbulent and adventurous life. And so we can read about Babur’s complicated feelings when he first fell in love but was tongue-tied every time he encountered his adored one. We can sympathise as he gets discouraged in his quest for a kingdom of his own and muses on whether he should simply give up and go and wander around China. Babur is famous in history as the founder of the Mughal dynasty which ruled over much of India from 1526 to 1858. Mrs Simcoe has been known only to a few specialists in Canadian history. Yet they are both history’s people, part of that long cavalcade of the renowned and the obscure, whose separate stories feed into and enrich history. I was drawn to them, as I have been to other individuals, partly because they wrote such vivid memoirs, but also because they each in their own way were part of great historical trends. He was part of that restless movement of peoples out of central Asia which helped to create new empires from Persia to China, while she was a part of the imperial edifices that the European powers were building around the world in the 18th and 19th centuries. The past is a far-off country, but voices such as theirs bring it closer to us. Their lives, like ours, were shaped by the great currents that run through history: economic and social changes, the spread of new ideas or technologies. Yet they were also individuals like us, with loves and hates, fears and hopes, biases and beliefs. And some of them, like Babur, changed the course of events. I must confess, as an inveterate gossip, I love their stories. They are also the stuff of the history I write. As a historian I need to know about both individuals and their times and how they interacted. I have found that the best way to draw students and readers into an understanding and enthusiasm for history is to tell them about people. I can explain the strategies and tactics of

the First World War, for example, but it is when I describe the experiences of a young man who went into the army, or of the woman he left behind, that I help my listeners and readers see what that war meant for millions of lives. The letters, diaries and memoirs which the past has bequeathed the present are an unending source of entertainment, enlightenment and edification. They can take us into worlds unlike our own and make us acquainted with people who may have very different values and attitudes. Today, for example, we tend to look at politicians with suspicion and wonder why anyone would choose to enter such a suspect profession. For young men of good families in ancient Rome, however, politics was the noblest of careers, but personal ambition for its own sake was despised. For inhabitants of the Byzantine world, what was seen was only part of reality. The invisible world, with its gods and spirits, was equally important and the Byzantines spent much thought and energy on placating or tricking the denizens of that other world. The Prussian Junker class, made up of sober country squires who believed in serving God and their king, has vanished, but we can learn something of its values when we read the memoirs of Countess Marion Dönhoff or Libussa Fritz-Krockow, people who grew up just as a way of life that had lasted for centuries was about to be swept away by the Nazis and the Second World War. Yet, we have moments when we recognise that here is another human being sounding very much like ourselves. We know what Samuel Pepys in 17th-century London is feeling when he complains about his wife’s boring friends who always seem to be hanging about just when he wants a quiet evening at home. When the 17th-century wit and woman of letters Madame de Sevigné writes to her beloved daughter about how much she misses her, we can share her pain. In the essays of Michel de Montaigne, the nobleman who retired to his estates in France’s troubled 16th century, we encounter his search to understand human nature. The questions he poses are ones we might well ask ourselves. Why is it that our minds wander? Why do we find certain people beautiful and not others? What, if anything, happens to our souls when we die? Diarists such as Elizabeth Simcoe (1762–1850) give us a unique window on history

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A scene from Babur’s memoirs shows him at the spring of Khawaja Sih Yaran. As the first Mughal emperor, Babur changed the course of history. Yet, says Margaret MacMillan, he was an individual like us, “with loves and hates, fears and hopes, biases and beliefs”

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BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY

THE HISTORY ESSAY

THE HISTORY ESSAY “WE ARE ALL PRODUCTS OF OUR OWN SOCIETIES: WE TAKE ON THEIR VALUES AND ASSUMPTIONS, OFTEN WITHOUT REALISING. IF WE HAVE OPPORTUNITIES, THOSE COME BECAUSE THE TIMES ALLOW FOR THEM”

AKG IMAGES

Marion Dönhoff pictured (far right) during a visit by Paul von Hindenburg to her family home, Friedrichstein Castle. Her memoirs give us a fascinating insight into the world of the Prussian Junker class before it was atomised in the 1930s and 1940s

We all love stories, and I think I first became interested in history through the ones my parents and grandparents told me about their own lives. And then there were books for children: historical novels by Geoffrey Trease or Rosemary Sutcliffe and carefully sanitised versions of The Arabian Nights or King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table. As I grew older, I learned that history is more than a collection of stories about individuals. It is about economic, social or ideological forces and the great changes they bring, such as the industrial and scientific revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries, or the spread of liberal democracy and the rise of its totalitarian opponents. So we need to ask how did Mrs Simcoe, an heiress from England, find herself quoting an Italian Renaissance poet in one of the British empire’s newer colonies? Or why was Babur drawn to conquer India and what made him succeed? What were the currents that swept them along? Without the great expansion of European empires there would have been no Upper Canada for Mrs Simcoe’s husband to rule. Babur could not have taken India if its rulers had not been pitted against each other. We are all products of our own societies: we take on their values and assumptions, often without realising it. If we have opportunities, those come because the times allow for them. Think of all the women in history who did not get the same educations or

chances in life as their brothers. Napoleon was a man of many and extraordinary talents. Yet, as someone from a modest family in the backwater of Corsica, he would not have been able to exercise those if the French Revolution had not swept away much of the old order. Napoleon did not just fall through an open door into a position of power. He stormed through it and made himself the master of France and then Europe. We have to ask if there was anyone else in France who could have done it, which is not the same as going back to what EH Carr, the distinguished British historian, called the ‘Bad King John’ approach to history – the view, as he put it, “that what matters in history is the character and behaviour of individuals”. It does, however, seem legitimate to ask what would have happened if certain individuals had never lived. Would socialist thinking in the 19th century have been the same without Karl Marx? There were many variants of socialism, but through his work and his powerful intellect he created a theory so all-encompassing that it influenced politics for the next century. Or what road would Germany have followed if Hitler had been killed, as he nearly was, in the First World War? Other radical nationalist leaders shared his racism and his ambition to dominate Europe, but it is hard to imagine that Goebbels or Goering could have mesmerised the German people as Hitler did, or would have been prepared to see the German nation perish

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THE HISTORY ESSAY “IF WINSTON CHURCHILL HAD DIED WHEN HE WAS KNOCKED DOWN BY A CAR IN NEW YORK IN 1931, WOULD ANY OTHER BRITISH POLITICIAN HAVE RESOLVED TO STAND UP TO HITLER?” rather than surrender. In Soviet Russia, the Bolshevik leadership believed that collectivisation of the farms was the necessary first step towards industrialisation, yet it took Stalin to force it. If Winston Churchill had died when he was knocked down by a car on Fifth Avenue in New York in 1931, he could not have become prime minister in the spring of 1940, the darkest days of the Second World War. Would any other leading British politician – Neville Chamberlain, for example – have determined that Britain must not attempt to make peace with Hitler’s Germany, that it must fight on, even in the face of likely defeat? It is hard to imagine anyone other than Churchill taking that stand.

A historic handshake: would the Sino-American rapprochement of 1972 have happened if Richard Nixon hadn’t been president?

when he went to Beijing. His trip paid off, not right away perhaps, but in the longer run. Not only did Nixon’s opening of relations with China put the United States back in the centre of world affairs, but it made possible a more stable Asia. It helped that, on the Chinese side, Mao Zedong had also decided that China needed the United States as a friend. The two countries had strong reasons for coming together, but it took Nixon and Mao to make it happen. Still other personalities in history stand out for me simply because of who they were. They might be witty and amusing like the Duc of Saint-Simon at the court of Louis XIV, who noted down all the court gossip and the damning details about the king, whom he greatly disliked. Perhaps, like Madame de la Tour du Pin in the French Revolution, they encountered adversity bravely. She went from being a privileged member of the French court to living on a farm in New York state. Others still set out on improbable adventures, stepping out boldly in the face of obstacles and minefields. Edith Durham, from a prosperous upper-middle-class family in London before the First World War, was miserable looking after an invalid mother. When the doctor advised that she take some holidays every summer, Durham chose to explore the wilder parts of the Balkans, often on her own. In time she became a leading authority on Albania. What all such people have in common is curiosity, about the peoples and places they encounter. When Babur conquered India, he wrote copiously about the land (which he found flat and ugly compared to his beloved mountains), its flora and fauna. He liked the hibiscus and oleanders, and what to him were the strange and different customs of its Some individuals, like former Apple CEO Steve Jobs in the field of technology, are capable of changing the course of history

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ometimes the character of the man or woman in power really does matter. As the crisis of 1914 reached its culmination in late July, two men could have stopped the slide to war: Nicholas II of Russia and Wilhelm II of Germany. Each had to sign the order for his country’s general mobilisation; each hesitated in the hopes of maintaining the peace; and each gave way to pressure from his advisers (both were afraid of appearing weak). President John F Kennedy faced similar pressures in the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. Many of his top military advisers told him that he had to get tough with the Soviets and demand the removal of their forces from Cuba, even at the risk of nuclear war. Kennedy opted for a combination of blockade and negotiation. Perhaps it helped that he had just read Barbara Tuchman’s history of how Europe blundered into the First World War. Individuals are swept along for the most part by the currents of history, but we need to be aware that sometimes there are those who ride and steer those currents and, occasionally, turn them in another direction altogether. In every society there are some who are more daring, ambitious or simply more restless than the rest of us. Such people will go up in balloons, climb unconquered peaks just because they are there, or go into space even though they know that they are risking their lives. In the great age of exploration, they set off in tiny ships across uncharted waters or walked across unmapped continents. Entrepreneurs and inventors, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison or Steve Jobs, will persist in the face of failure. Martin Luther defied the might of the Catholic church and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn the Soviet government. Richard Nixon’s time as president will always be marked by Watergate, the scandal that destroyed him, when he used the powers of his office against his opponents. Yet he was also a statesman who took a risk in re-establishing American relations with China. At a time when anti-communist feeling still ran deep in the United States and memories of American troops fighting Chinese ones in the Korean War were still vivid, he took a considerable political gamble

THE HISTORY ESSAY “WE SHOULD NOT IGNORE THOSE INDIVIDUAL VOICES FROM THE PAST. THEY REMIND US BOTH OF OUR COMMON HUMANITY AND OF THE DIFFERENCES AMONG US”

Pages from Elizabeth Simcoe’s diaries. Her curiosity about the world around her is evident in her observations on everything from Niagara Falls to Native Americans

ARCHIVES OF ONTARIO

people. Mrs Simcoe sketched and described everything she came across, from Niagara Falls to Native Americans. ithout such acute observers history would be much poorer. We know a great deal about Nazi Germany, thanks in part to the records the Nazis themselves kept, but without Victor Klemperer we would not know first-hand what it was like to be a Jew there. Because he was married to what the Nazis classified as an ‘Aryan’, he was spared deportation and death in the camps to the east. He kept a diary, a brave act in itself, which shows, hideous detail by detail, how the regime tightened its grip and systematically excluded German Jews from society throughout the 1930s. Klemperer and his wife chose not to emigrate and when war came they no longer had the

choice. We see through the diaries Klemperer’s gradual realisation that Europe’s Jews are being exterminated and we wait with him for the war to end. History is always changing. We find new documents and artefacts. We bring in new insights from other fields such as biology, anthropology or archeology. And we ask new questions because of what preoccupies us. Climate history, for example, is a new and exciting field. Yet we should not ignore those individual voices from the past. They remind us both of our common humanity and of the differences among us. Above all, they bring history to life and help us to understand why it is important – and show us that it can be fun too. 

MARGARET MACMILLAN IS A PROFESSOR OF INTERNATIONAL HISTORY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.

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PHOTO: GETTY

SCIENCE

IN F OCU S

COULD YOUR DRIVERLESS CAR CHOOSE TO KILL YOU? TWO KIDS ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF A MOUNTAIN ROAD. YOUR CAR COULD DRIVE STRAIGHT INTO THEM, OR AVOID THEM BY SWERVING OFF THE SIDE, KILLING YOU IN THE PROCESS. SO WHICH CHOICE SHOULD IT MAKE? WORDS: HEATHER BRADSHAW-MARTIN

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he sound of screeching tyres followed by a bus hurtling directly towards you. It’s not exactly something you’d want to come across when cycling up a steep, narrow road. But in March 2015, on Franschhoek Mountain Pass in South Africa, that was just what one cyclist faced with after a bus driver swerved in an attempt to avoid two other cyclists while negotiating a sharp corner. The bus overturned and three passengers lost their lives. In the investigation that followed, the police talked of prosecuting the bus driver for ‘culpable homicide’, a charge resulting from the negligent killing of a person according to South African law. But what might they have said if the bus had been driven by autonomous software? The driver was faced with a rare and complicated type of moral dilemma in which they were forced to choose between two bad options. Analysis of the above scenario raises two main questions: the first is to ask whether the accident could have been avoided by better vehicle maintenance, more careful driving, better road design or other practical measures and whether there was negligence in any of these areas. The second is to ask that if the accident was not avoidable, then what was the morally least bad action? When thinking about these issues in terms of autonomous vehicles, the first question is relatively easy to answer. Driver software will have faster reaction times and be more cautious and physics-faithful than human drivers, meaning driverless cars will be able to stop extremely quickly once they detect a hazard. Also, they will never show off or get drunk. However, their sensors and image classification processes will remain cruder than human perception for some time to come, meaning they may not recognise or classify unexpected hazards the way humans do. They won’t be able to

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reliably tell the difference between children and adults, for example. Nor will they know whether other vehicles are empty or are carrying passengers. Some commentators believe that once the technology is perfected, autonomous vehicles could provide us with a completely accident-free means of transport. Yet large-scale statistical analyses, such as those carried out by Noah Goodall at the Virginia Department of Transportation, indicate that this is unlikely. Thanks to the existence of pedestrians, cyclists, and even animals, our roads are too unpredictable for any autonomous system to take everything into account. So how do driverless cars fit in with the moral question? Firstly, autonomous vehicle driver software won’t have had years of real-life experience to learn the nuances of morality through praise, blame and punishment the way a human driver has. Nor will it be able to use its imagination to build on these previous learning experiences. Imagine a similar situation to the above scenario. A vehicle being driven completely by software and carrying one passenger is travelling uphill around a steep corner on a narrow two-lane mountain road. Two children are riding bicycles down towards it on the wrong side of the road and a heavy truck is approaching in the other lane. To avoid the children, the car can head for the truck or drive off the side of the road, but if it stops the children will hit it. Driving into the truck or off the precipice will likely kill the human passenger but save the children. Attempting to stop could lead to the children being killed if they crash into the car, yet the passenger will be protected. What should the car’s software be designed to do?

RARE DILEMMA Of course, such dilemmas are rare occurrences but they are nevertheless of key concern to engineers and regulators. But whereas the human bus driver mentioned above had only a frightening fraction of a second to make a life and death decision, the engineers have hours and hours in the safety of an

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1 Self-driving pods are already being tested in the UK 2 Cyclists are safe when Google’s driverless car is on the streets 3 In the Franschhoek accident, the bus driver swerved to avoid two cyclists – but did he have an alternative option?

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PHOTOS: CORBIS X2, PRESS ASSOCIATION

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To visualise how driverless cars view the world, ScanLAB – a UK-based 3D scanning company – drove a 3D laser scanner through London’s streets 60

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PHOTO: SCANLAB PROJECTS

“A human driver might instinctively flinch away from a large object like a truck, without being able to process the presence of cyclists”

office to design how the vehicle’s driver software will react. Of course, this means that they cannot claim that they reacted ‘instinctively’ due to time pressure or fear. In the event of an accident, courts will say that the engineers have programmed the software rationally and deliberately and thus expect them to be fully morally responsible for their choices. So what must they consider? There are three broad schools of thought. One: autonomous driver software may be expected to operate to a higher moral standard than a human driver because of the lack of time pressures and emotional disturbances and its greater processing power. Two: it could be expected to operate to a lower moral standard due to the sensors’ lack of classificatory subtlety and the overriding belief that only humans can act ethically because software cannot be conscious or feel pain. Three: software may be expected to operate to the same moral standard as applies to human drivers. All three options imply that the moral standard expected of human drivers in such dilemmas is definitively known. But when forced to act quickly, humans will often use their instincts rather than conscious, rational analysis. Instincts may be honed through life experience or deliberate practice but they are not under conscious control at the point of application. Our emotions can also inf luence instinctive action. So a human driver might instinctively f linch away from a large object like the truck, without being able to process the presence of the cyclists. Or, a human with different instincts might act to protect the vulnerable children without recognising their own danger. Such unconsidered reactions are hardly moral decisions that are worthy of praise or blame. So what would moral behaviour require if we set aside the confounding factors of time and emotion? The study of such questions takes us into the territory of ethical theory, a branch of philosophy concerned with extracting and codifying the morally preferable options from the morass of human behaviour and

beliefs. Philosophers have developed logically consistent theories about what the morally preferred actions are in any given situation. Today, two main contenders exist for the top theoretical approach: consequentialism and deontology. Consequentialist theories say the right action is that which creates the best results. Deontological theories say the correct action is that in which the people’s intentions were best, whatever the results. Despite starting with different founding assumptions about what is valuable or good, these two theories agree on the morally preferable action in the majority of common situations. Nevertheless, they do sometimes differ.

MACHINE ETHICS Both consequentialism and deontology are based on consistent reasoning taken from a small set of assumptions, which is something algorithms can do. So, can we write algorithms that will calculate the best course of action to take when faced with a moral dilemma? Those working in the small scientific field of machine ethics believe that we can. Artificial intelligence researchers Luis Moniz Pereira and Ari Saptawijaya have been collating, developing and applying programming languages and logic structures that capture deontological or consequentialist reasoning about particular moral problems. These programs are limited in scope, but their work suggests that it would be possible to program an entity to behave in accordance with one or other of the major ethical theories, over a small domain. This work is often criticised, not least for not covering the entire range of ethical problems. But a slightly deeper look at moral theory suggests that’s inevitable. Most cases where the two moral theories agree are easy for courts of law to decide. But there are certain types of cases in which judges must call on the wisdom drawn from years of courtroom experience. Examples include trials for war crimes, shipwreck and survival cases, medical law, and also road accidents. Because of their complexity and the moral discomfort they cause, cases such as these attract lots of legal and philosophical attention.

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LIDAR vision systems bounce lasers around the car to generate a picture of its surroundings

THE TROLLEY PROBLEM This popular ethics dilemma makes you choose between killing one person or five, and was first introduced by philosopher Philippa Foot

A runaway trolley is hurtling down the tracks; you’re standing by a lever that can change the trolley’s direction

If you pull the lever, it will switch direction and kill the single person on these tracks

TROLLEY PROBLEM In ethical theory, complicated moral dilemmas are named ‘trolley problems’ after a thought experiment that was introduced by British philosopher Philippa Foot in 1967 (see diagram above). The experiment asks you to imagine a runaway trolley (tram) travelling at breakneck speed towards a group of five people. You are standing next to a lever that can switch the trolley to a different set of tracks where there is just one person. What’s the right thing to do? The two main ethical theories disagree about the morally correct course of action in trolley problems. Humans also disagree with which is the best course of action. Studies show that most people will not pull the lever and therefore fall on the side of the deontological theory. MRI scans show that the areas of the brains associated with emotions light up when these people considered the question. Their thinking goes that to pull the lever knowing about the one person on the side track would be to take an action intended to kill the one. Deliberately acting to use one person to benefit five others is considered wrong, irrespective of the outcome. Here, standing by and doing nothing is acceptable because as there isn’t an act, there can’t be a ‘wrong’ deliberate intention. The death of the

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five is only an unintended side effect of doing something perfectly acceptable: nothing. But a minority feels very strongly that consequentialism is preferable and MRI scans of their brains show more stimulation of logical reasoning areas when considering the problem. They would pull the lever because one death is a much better outcome than five deaths, and whether there was a deliberate intention to kill or not is irrelevant – only the outcome matters. Similarly, if we think back to our earlier scenario of the passenger travelling on the mountain road, then consequentialist theory would claim that it makes sense for the car to kill them because two children would be saved. And saving two lives is preferable to saving one. Acting in accordance with either theory is

“In the world of law, judges have to recognise that some actions they don’t agree with are still morally acceptable”

PHOTOS: GETTY, ALAMY

Do nothing, and the trolley will plough into the five people standing on these tracks

PHOTO: HERE.COM

Autonomous cars could pick up traffic data in real time, negotiating you through the jam safely

considered to be ethically principled behaviour. In the world of law, judges have to recognise that some actions they don’t agree with are nonetheless still morally acceptable. Respecting others’ ethical reasoning is one way we recognise and treat other humans as moral agents with equal status to ourselves. This is an important – although subtle – part of our Western ethical consensus today, because we believe that being faithful to our ethical beliefs contributes towards our well-being. This makes the problem more difficult for designers of autonomous driver software: there isn’t a single moral standard expected of human drivers in these dilemmas. Whichever theory they choose, they will end up offending the morals of ethically principled customers who favour the other theory. Imagine, purely speculatively, that engineers tend to fall in the consequentialist minority and therefore design consequentialist driver software. However, imagine that the majority of customers are deontological. The engineers would have imposed their own moral preferences on many people who do not share the same ideologies. Being true to one’s moral convictions is an important part of human wellbeing, so we run the risk of inadvertently breaking a moral principle of our societies and adversely affecting the well-

being of other people. I co-authored a paper with Dr Anders Sandberg, an expert in ethics and technology. In the paper, we suggested we could get around the problem of different principles by developing code that would follow either consequentialist or deontological reasoning in a trolley problem scenario. The passenger could selected their chosen principle at the start of their journey. This would preserve the basis of respect for moral agents that allows our society’s ethical and legal system to deal with the two different ways that people make their decisions about trolley problems. We can’t have a piece of code that decides between the theories for us. Human moral preferences seem to be a result of learning through praise and blame, not logic. For now, we have to leave that choice to human users of technology. Until they become moral agents in their own right, autonomous cars will act as what Sandberg has called a “moral proxy” for the users’ own human morals. In other words, we will select how they choose to act. 

HEATHER IS AN AUTOMOTIVE SOFTWARE ENGINEER AND TEST DRIVER. SHE HOLDS A PHD IN BIOETHICS FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL.

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The silverback Makumba. Fiona Rogers and Anup Shah spent two months photographing his troop in the Dzanga-Sangha Dense Forest Special Reserve in the Central African Republic.

GORILLA COUNTRY Vol. 8 Issue 6

PHOTOS BY FIONA ROGERS AND ANUP SHAH

SCIENTISTS ARE FINALLY BEGINNING TO UNCOVER THE SECRET LIVES OF LOWLAND GORILLAS. MIKE UNWIN EXPLORES THE LATEST DISCOVERIES SHEDDING LIGHT ON THE BEHAVIOUR AND BIOLOGY OF OUR CLOSE RELATIVES

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id-morning in the rainforest, and the humid air hums with insects. There is no movement – just the metronomic chime of a tinkerbird from high in the canopy. Yet the trackers are on high alert: they’ve been out since first light and now the trail is getting warmer. Somewhere behind that wall of foliage is what they’re searching for. After a tense wait – brushing away the swarming sweat bees – their patience is finally rewarded: a rustle of leaves, a glimpse of black through green and, finally, that rapid, telltale ‘pock, pock, pock’ tattoo of a chestbeating silverback. They relax. The troop is still here. The lowland tropical rainforest that covers much of the Republic of the Congo, spilling over into the Central African Republic and Cameroon, is very different terrain from the cloud forests of the Virunga volcanoes, far to the east. The latter – a cooler, hillier habitat – is the kingdom of the mountain gorilla, star of 1988’s Gorillas in the Mist and a famous televised encounter with a floppy-fringed David Attenborough for 1979’s Life on Earth. The former region, however, is home to the far less familiar western gorilla. Only recently have scientists begun to uncover its secrets. To clarify: Africa’s two species of gorilla are not the ‘lowland’ and ‘mountain’, as is often thought. The western gorilla (Gorilla gorilla) inhabits lowland equatorial rainforests from Gabon north to Cameroon, and is split into a pair of subspecies – the western lowland and Cross River gorillas. Meanwhile the eastern gorilla G. beringei occurs further east, in the vast Democratic Republic of the Congo and over the border into Rwanda and Uganda. It also has two subspecies – the mountain gorilla is a high-altitude race of the eastern lowland form, with longer, blacker fur.

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It is the lifestyle of western gorillas, NOT APPEARANCE, that best distinguishes them from their lowland cousins. Western gorillas are greater in numbers with a population estimated at more than 100,000. This might seem a lot, but the species is still classed as Critically Endangered due to the frightening speed of its recent decline. These are the gorillas you are most likely to see in zoos, such as Twycross and London. Though they are slightly smaller than eastern gorillas, they are still hugely impressive. A mature male western gorilla weighs about 160kg and stands up to 1.8m tall. He has a rusty-brown forehead and crest and, like mountain gorillas, acquires a pale grey cape across his upper quarters from about 18 years – the point at which he becomes known as a silverback. 66

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Makumba’s troop feed on sedge grasses in a clearing in DzangaSangha. At the far left is a five-yearold male known as Mobangi.

Fruit is an important component of the diet of western lowland gorillas, requiring them to range widely.

THE WORLD’S RAREST GREAT APE

LOWLAND LIFESTYLE It’s the lifestyle of western gorillas, rather than appearance, that best distinguishes them from their high-altitude cousins. While mountain gorillas move little, munching through their lush salad bowl of herbaceous staples, western gorillas have a more seasonal, fruit-based diet that requires them to wander much farther. From the moment they rise, at about 6am, until the moment they construct sleeping nests of arrowroot leaves and bed down, they are on the move. Each night they sleep somewhere new and each morning head out to fresh feeding grounds. Indeed they have the largest home ranges of any gorillas, covering up to 3km per day to find what they need. They are also more arboreal than their mountain counterparts, even the massive silverbacks clambering high into the canopy to harvest fruit. Fruit becomes especially important during the August–November wet season, when the gorillas may consume more than 100 different species. At other times they switch to a greater variety of vegetable matter, from roots and shoots to tree bark and pulp. They often visit swampy clearings, known as bais, to feed on aquatic plants – notably the tubers of the kangwasika waterlily – and, for extra protein, rip into termite mounds. Such is the challenge of studying these ultra-shy, mobile primates, however, it wasn’t until the 1990s that we began to

Like the eastern gorilla, the western gorilla has a high-altitude subspecies. The Cross River gorilla (Gorilla gorilla) diehli is restricted to a tiny area of highland rainforest at the headwaters of Nigeria’s Cross River, along the Cameroon border. This, the rarest great ape on Earth, numbers no more than 250–300 individuals in 11 isolated locations, all separated

The dominant male Makumba is 32 years old – gorillas can reach 40 years of age in the wild.

by at least 300km from the nearest western lowland gorillas. Hunting, cattle grazing and loss of genetic diversity pose a severe threat. WWF is working with the governments of Nigeria and Cameroon to improve law enforcement and establish safe havens, including much-needed corridors that will enable gorillas to move between different groups.

unlock their secrets. In 1991 primatologist Magdalena Bermejo at Lossi Sanctuary in the Republic of Congo became the first to habituate a western lowland gorilla troop to humans – much as Dian Fossey had done with mountain gorillas 30 years earlier. Similar initiatives soon followed. In the Djéké Triangle, an area of virgin forest further north, the Wildlife Conservation Society founded the Mondika Research Center, where from 1993 to 2003 US anthropologist Diane Doran-Sheehy succeeded in habituating the Kingo gorilla group. Across the border in the Dzanga-Sangha Dense Forest Special Reserve of the Central African Republic, a WWFbacked programme habituated another group of gorillas. Habituation – the gradual earning of the gorillas’ trust so that they will accept human observers – is an arduous process. It requires daily visits over many years, running the gauntlet of biting insects, hostile terrain and unfriendly forest elephants. Success has been down to the local Ba’Aka trackers. These once-nomadic hunters have walked the Vol. 8 Issue 6

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The four-year-old male Tembo crosses a river by walking upright – newly observed behaviour in gorillas. Makumba and Mobangi are feeding in the background.

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Mopambi carries her 18-month-old baby Sopo as she crosses a river. Gorillas are weaned when about three to four years old.

Years of observation and countless photographs have enabled scientists to identify each individual gorilla. Opposite centre: females such as Malui care for their young for the first four or five years of life. Opposite bottom: the 13-year-old male Kunga plays with the five-yearold male Mobangi. Play helps social bonds – wrestling and a form of ‘tag’ are common. Opposite: another photo of Mobangi. Almost all males leave their natal group at puberty, if their silverback denies access to fertile females.

forests for centuries and can locate the apes by bent twigs, disturbed leaves and faint knuckle prints.

SOCIAL DIFFERENCES The miraculous skills of the Ba’Aka have rewritten the textbooks. They have taught us that we cannot make assumptions about western lowland gorilla society based on our knowledge of their mountain gorilla relatives. It seems, for a start, that western lowland gorillas form smaller family groups – just four to nine members on average, typically a silverback, three females and their offspring – and that these groups spread out much farther.“This social structure is more vulnerable than that of mountain gorillas,” says Michelle Klailova, an adviser to the WWF programme in Dzanga-Sangha. “If a group male dies, there is generally no other male available to take his spot, so the group immediately disintegrates.” And while each group has a home range, there is no strict territorial demarcation and their boundaries often overlap. Field studies have also examined the differing roles of males and females. Among all gorillas, the silverback is generally assumed to be the leader of a group. Usually calm and nonaggressive, he is nevertheless capable of intimidating displays of size and strength – hooting, beating his chest and mock-charging in order to gather his group or defend them from a threat. Females, however, may have a more influential role in decision-making than was once thought. In one troop they have been seen to fake distress calls in order to divert the silverback from a course he insisted on and redirect him

The female Malui feeds on leaves. Even the much bigger males will climb trees when hungry.

towards a more productive feeding area. Furthermore, it seems to be the females who, by evaluating males, determine how partners pair up – arguably the ultimate power in gorilla society. After all, females can’t afford to get it wrong: they don’t reach sexual maturity until eight or nine years of age, and only give birth every four or five years. Some of the most productive research has taken place in the marshy bais where numerous large forest animals, including western lowland gorillas, are attracted by the rich plant growth and mineral salts. At Mbeli Bai, a clearing in the Congo’s Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park, researchers have constructed a wooden platform from where, working every day since 1997, they have studied 14 separate gorilla groups. Years of observation and countless photographs have enabled the scientists to identify each individual gorilla – often going by its unique ‘nose-print’. In this way they have painstakingly built up family trees, tracing lives from infancy to adulthood.

NEW BEHAVIOUR A bai functions like a town square for gorillas, where groups that are usually hidden from each other in the forest gather to interact. Males and females check each other out, while the former size up the competition. For researchers, it offers a wide-angle view of social dynamics and has allowed them to observe some never-before-seen gorilla behaviour. At Mbeli they have witnessed adolescents splashing water in dominance displays, adults crossing deeper pools by walking upright and, most exciting of all, tool use. In 2005 a female known as Leah stripped a branch of leaves and used it to test the depth of a stream and as a walking stick when she crossed. Tool use of this kind by wild apes had previously only been observed among some chimpanzees and even fewer orangutans. This raises new questions about the extent to which gorillas may be using other tools behind the cover of the forest. Vol. 8 Issue 6

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EBOLA: A VACCINE FOR GORILLAS? First discovered 40 years ago, ebola has been as devastating to West Africa’s great apes as to its people, with western lowland gorillas the worst affected. Since 2011 scientists have been developing a vaccine. Progress is promising: chimpanzees have already demonstrated a strong immune response, and there are no unwanted side effects. But challenges remain. Darting in the wild is impractical, given the terrain and the apes’ behaviour, so attention has shifted to an oral vaccine based on a rabies model used for red foxes in Europe. The recent outlawing of medical testing on captive apes, even when it is for their benefit, is another obstacle. The first gorilla vaccine is due to be tested on wild apes in March 2016, and conservationists believe

Above: Makumba forages in a forest clearing. Though silverbacks are not aggressive by nature, they need to be formidable fighters to defend their troops.

But just how secure is this forest? Today the apes have many threats to contend with. Illegal hunting for bushmeat, skins and charms and to capture infants for the pet trade removes an estimated 5 per cent of the population every year. Industrial-scale deforestation not only destroys habitat – it opens up logging roads, providing easier access for poachers. Disease is also taking a heavy toll. Like humans, gorillas may also be infected with ebola. In 2002–2003 an outbreak in the Lossi Gorilla Sanctuary killed virtually all of its habituated gorillas – an estimated 5,000 animals perished in an area of 2,700km2. With mortality rates of about 95 per cent, some scientists believe that the disease may have so far accounted for up to a third of the world’s gorilla population.

NEED FOR HUMAN INTERVENTION The future of the western gorilla depends upon our help. Taking a lead from the success of mountain-gorilla conservation in Rwanda and Uganda, conservation bodies are working with governments and local communities to develop ecotourism. The Sangha Trinational Initiative brings together key western gorilla strongholds in one block of protected habitat that straddles the borders of the Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and Cameroon. It includes Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park, the Djéké Triangle and the Dzanga-Sangha Dense Forest Special Reserve. Each of these beautiful forests now offers gorilla viewing for adventurous visitors, who can track individuals and observe them at the bais.The region has other charismatic mammals too, such as forest elephants, colobus monkeys and bongo antelopes – plus more than 300 species of bird. “The long-term presence of tourists and researchers protects the environment and causes a reduction in poaching,” says Michelle Klailova. Tourist money helps sustain the Dzanga-Sangha programme, enabling monitoring of forests and providing employment to more than 45 70

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that one year of ebola vaccination could save as many individuals as decades of antipoaching activities. Gorilla vaccination will benefit humans as well, by blocking a source of infection and proving the effectiveness of a potential vaccine under difficult field conditions. There’s no time to lose.

A check-up at the Senkwekwe Center in Rumangabo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Ba’Aka and nearly 70 other local people. For wildlife photographers Anup Shah and Fiona Rogers, whose images illustrate this article, a two-month assignment with the Makumba troop at Dzanga-Sangha proved more intense than any of their previous encounters with wild great apes. Rogers came to feel a sense of solidarity with them.“I always felt happier in that forest when I was with Makumba, the silverback,” she says.“He was our eyes and ears. I felt closer to him and those gorillas than I have done with any other primate.” Such observations may not be strictly scientific, but they do underscore the fact that we have much more to learn from these complex primates. Studies are already revealing how gorillas are essential to forest structure and composition, dispersing seeds of numerous plant species in their droppings. Scientists have also observed that the apes feed on certain treetop leaves commonly used in herbal remedies by local people, and have speculated that they may select plants for their medicinal properties. A more intriguing question, perhaps, is how much light gorillas can shed on our own species. We know that they suffer from our ailments – not only ebola, but also malaria and heart disease. Studies of their social systems and communication may yet teach us more about the origins of behaviour that we persist in seeing as uniquely ‘human’. “They are so close to us,” says primatologist Chloe Cipolletta, who works for the Dzanga-Sangha programme. “They too have a culture; they kiss, they embrace, they hold hands.” Western gorillas undoubtedly still have secrets to share. But unless we act to conserve their forests, they may never get the chance. And we, like them, may be the losers. 

MIKE UNWIN IS A NATURALIST AND AUTHOR. HIS BOOKS INCLUDE 100 BIZARRE ANIMALS W

SCIENCE U N D E R S TA N D FORENSIC SCIENCE

UNDERSTAND FORENSIC SCIENCE

SCENE-OF-CRIME OPERATIVES IN PLASTIC OVERALLS ARE A COMMON SIGHT ON OUR TV SCREENS. BUT WHAT DO THEY ACTUALLY DO? WORDS: TOM IRELAND

hat is forensic science? Any scientific process used as part of a criminal investigation is considered forensic science. This spans both the grim, grisly procedures of the autopsy room and the cutting-edge analysis of a crime scene. But it also encompasses the less glamorous, painstaking lab work of DNA profiling, fingerprint analysis and the uncovering of hidden digital files. There is even such a thing as forensic accountancy.

PHOTO:BBC

W

What techniques are used to solve crimes today? The bulk of modern forensic work involves the analysis of DNA or fingerprints left at a crime scene. In murder cases, forensic autopsies help work out how a person died. A range of more specialised and elaborate forensic techniques can be used to identify suspects in the most serious cases, such as tracking serial killers or terrorists. These methods include forensic ecology, where tiny traces of pollen or fungal spores can be used to tell where a suspect has been, or forensic entomology, where

the presence of certain insects can help reveal how long a person has been dead. As people spend more and more time on devices like smartphones and computers, so-called ‘digital forensics’ is playing an ever-greater role in criminal investigations, too. The growth in this field of forensic science also ref lects the fact that there are now over four million CCTV cameras in the UK. Is forensic science anything like what we see on TV? Rarely. According to forensic scientist Prof Sue Black, who has advised a number of crime writers throughout her career, “There is an element of truth in TV crime, but also an element of fantasy – the work is often long, slow, and laborious. But viewers quite rightly don’t want to see us doing our double-blind trials.” Nathan Clarke, a professor of digital forensics and cyber security, says the depiction of tracking technology in spy movies, where security services miraculously enhance fuzzy images of

Forensic science isn’t as glamorous as television shows suggest…

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Even a tiny sample of DNA can provide crucial evidence

How does DNA profiling work? Although 99.9 per cent of our DNA is the same in every person, the remaining 0.01 per cent is different enough to distinguish one individual from another. Forensic DNA profiling looks specifically at highly variable stretches of DNA called ‘variable number tandem repeats’ (VNTRs). These are short sequences of genetic code that may occur tens or hundreds of times at specific points in a person’s DNA. VNTRs are often located in parts of the human genome with little or no known function. Mutations in the genetic code here will not cause abnormalities, and so over many generations these sections of our genome have become hugely varied. And because unrelated people will almost certainly have different numbers of VNTRs in different places, they can be used to discriminate between two people. DNA found at a crime scene is processed so that these sections can be compared to those from a sample swabbed from a suspect, or compared to a huge number of DNA profiles held on police databases. As well as helping to identify suspects, DNA profiling has helped prove the innocence of people incorrectly convicted, in some cases decades after the crime, and is often used to help identify victims, especially where people have been killed in large numbers or when their remains are badly damaged. What’s the smallest amount of DNA from which a suspect or victim can be identified? As technology advances, scientists can process smaller and smaller

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samples to develop a DNA profile. Modern techniques can ‘amplify’ tiny amounts of DNA from minute traces of any material that contains fragments of tissue or cells, such as blood, semen, saliva, urine, faeces, hair, teeth or bone. ‘Low-level’ or ‘touch DNA’ can sometimes even be collected from a few skin cells left behind after a person has touched an object or victim. With a full sample and the latest DNA profiling techniques, investigators are able to generate a ‘match probability’ of up to one in a quintillion (1x 1018). The chance of a random person in the population having that DNA profile is infinitesimally small. If a suspect’s DNA is found at a crime scene, will it always lead to a conviction? Not necessarily – there are all sorts of innocent reasons why a person’s DNA could be at a crime scene or on a body. And even when DNA found at a crime scene is clearly that of the perpetrator, the police still need to find a match – if the murderer is not already a suspect, and their DNA profile is not on file, the evidence is effectively useless. However, in such cases a person’s own family can land them in it. A serial killer known as the Grim Sleeper, who killed at least 10 people in Los Angeles between 1985 and 2007, eluded police for decades, despite them having a sample of his DNA. A suspect was finally apprehended when his son was arrested for weapons offences. The son gave a regulation DNA sample, which partially matched the DNA profile found at all of the Grim Sleeper crime scenes, which led the police to investigate his relatives. Police posed as waiters to get the father’s DNA from a pizza slice, and found that it matched the crime scene DNA. He was arrested in

J A R GO N BU S T E R

DNA PHENOTYPING Something of a holy grail for forensic scientists, DNA phenotyping would be the creation of a ‘photofit’ image based on a DNA sample alone. But our current knowledge of, and ability to analyse, DNA is not yet sufficiently advanced to make this a reality. Blowflies are usually the first insects to invade a dead body

DNA PROFILING

A person’s DNA profile is not simply their entire DNA sequence, which is billions of letters long. Instead, profiling compares the DNA in around a dozen highly variable stretches of the human genome.

ENTOMOLOGY

The study of insects. Forensic entomologists can work out the time of a victim’s death by studying the types of insects feeding on their corpse.

LOOPS, WHORLS AND ARCHES

These are the classic patterns made by the ridges of skin in a fingerprint. Fingerprints are still commonly used to identify suspects today.

MATCH PROBABILITY

This complicated calculation essentially gives the probability of a forensic match occurring by chance – for example, the likelihood that your DNA matches some DNA found at a crime scene which is not actually yours.

PALYNOLOGY

The study of pollen and other tiny biological spores, which can link a suspect to a crime scene. Pollen is useful as it’s very easy to pick up but very hard to remove from clothing, and is normally completely invisible to anyone other than an expert.

PHOTO: GETTY/ISTOCK

suspects, is pure fiction. “In reality, you need someone to sit there and watch hours of video,” he says.

PHOTO: GETTY

CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION

‘Forensics officers’ are a crime show staple, but how does the work they really do match up to what we see on our TV screens?

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In one tweet… There’s actually no such thing as ‘forensic science’. Any science used in a criminal investigation is #forensicscience.

2010, but is yet to be convicted at the time of writing. Can DNA evidence be faked? Although DNA profiling is an excellent way to distinguish between individuals, it is still not immune to falsification, errors or manipulation. In 1992, a doctor and rapist called John Schneeberger evaded justice by injecting other people’s blood into his arm just before his DNA was sampled by police. He was found guilty when forced to take another test years later. It’s also possible, although extremely rare, for a person to be a ‘genetic chimera’, meaning that they have cells in their body with different DNA from the rest of them.

How accurate is it? Fingerprints may be considered an ‘older’ forensic technique, having first been used in the 1890s, but the technology behind them is continuously being improved. As

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Lonnie David Franklin Jr was arrested for the Grim Sleeper murders in 2010. At time of writing, his trial is still ongoing

well as the well-known method of ‘dusting’ for fingerprints at the scene, forensics teams can also use chemical reagents and lasers to reveal extremely faint prints. Even more sensitive tools can be deployed if objects are taken back to the lab. One method involves gold or silver particles being placed with a sample in a vacuum; the metal will settle on the faintest of marks. Is everyone’s fingerprint really unique? The underlying patterns of ridges on people’s digits are determined genetically, but the way individual ridges divide and break is dependent on conditions in the womb and the movement of the developing foetus. Even the fingerprints of identical

twins will be different, while their DNA will be the same. What else might police look for at a crime scene? Criminals often wear gloves while committing premeditated crimes, but they can’t float in and out of the crime scene, so footprints can be crucial. While footwear can’t definitively identify an individual, knowing the exact model of shoe the perpetrator wore is still very useful intelligence when looking for a suspect. In more serious crimes, forensic ecologists will look for traces of biological material that can link a suspect to a certain area, such as the type of woodland where a body has been found. Pollen and fungal spores are especially important as they are

PHOTO: GETTY

Why do forensic scientists still use fingerprinting? With fingerprints, police can often use their own in-house specialists rather than call on external forensic scientists. The digitization of fingerprint records means a photograph of a fingermark can be sent from a crime scene and compared to a database almost in real time. According to the Fingerprint Society, fingerprints remain the number one ID metric for crime scenes in the UK, accounting for the identification of well over 100,000 suspects in 2012. Prints can also help indicate what someone was doing or how they entered a building – for example, if they are found leading up to a broken window or in a grip figuration on a weapon. And unlike DNA, it’s hard to plant a fingerprint at a crime scene.

ANATOMY OF A MODERN CRIME SCENE A man has been found murdered in a suburban home. The killer may have got away, but forensic scientists have plenty of evidence to pore over…

4

1 FINGERPRINTS Prints can be recovered from surfaces. Their position helps detectives sequence events. 2 INSECTS Insects on the body can help to determine when the victim died. Blowflies and then maggots arrive first, followed by beetles.

3

3 SALIVA There may be visible bodily fluids, but DNA can be collected from less obvious sources such as a drinking glass.

1

4 VEGETATION Pollen and spores from plants and fungi can stick to clothes or car tyres, linking suspects to a precise location.

6 5

5 FOOTMARKS Forensics can recover a footmark that’s almost invisible to the eye.

2

6 DIGITAL FOOTPRINT With our smartphones, travel cards and online activity, most of us now leave a digital trace that can be easily followed.

W HAT W E S T IL L DON’ T K NOW

1

2

Police forces have been compiling large databases of DNA profiles for years, sometimes from people they’ve arrested but then released. Having the DNA profile of everyone in the country is a detective’s dream, but others say it turns everyone into a suspect. With DNA-testing companies and the NHS also collecting DNA samples en masse, there’s no easy answer to the question of who actually owns your genetic code, or what they can do with it.

Government security agencies are locked in a battle with technology giants over how to access evidence they say is crucial to preventing terrorism. Amazingly, even the FBI’s digital experts find it difficult to unlock encrypted iPhones without the help of Apple. Even more worrying for security services is the burgeoning art of digital steganography – hiding secret messages within seemingly benign files such as holiday photos.

PHOTOS: GETTY

WHO OWNS OUR DNA?

HOW TO POLICE THE DIGITAL WORLD

The FBI wants Apple to unlock a terrorism suspect’s iPhone, but Apple refuses

3

CAN DNA GIVE US AN IDEA OF WHAT A SUSPECT LOOKS LIKE?

Scientists have been able to map how certain genes are linked to certain facial features, but this relationship is immensely complex and not yet accurate enough to be useful. A DNA sample is also unlikely to ever be able to tell us whether someone is overweight or suntanned, as these are environmental, and not genetic characteristics. Besides, you can always put on glasses or (if male) grow a beard.

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FORENSIC SCIENCE

Forensic entomologist Mark Benecke at work in his lab

What can forensics teams learn from human remains? In the first 72 hours after death, a pathologist is usually able to provide a reasonably accurate determination of the time and cause of death. If a person has been dead for longer, forensic entomologists may be called on to estimate the time of death, based on the number and type of insects feeding on the corpse. This method can be used to determine a period of hours, weeks or even years since death. Blowf lies are almost always the

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first insects to arrive and lay eggs on a corpse, as they are mobile, common and able to smell death from up to 10km away. Eventually other families of insects are attracted to the body, such as beetles. For more heavily decomposed or damaged remains, forensic dentists can match remnants of teeth to known dental records, or even use what they find to draw conclusions about the victim’s age, size, gender, race and socioeconomic status. What is currently being developed at the cutting edge of forensic science? Forensic scientists can use anything to link a suspect to a crime scene, as long as they can prove the samples are unlikely to match by chance. In the US, scientists have looked at the atomic structure of fragments of glass to prove it was from the same sheet of glass as that found broken at a crime scene. Pioneering techniques that mix digital forensics with anatomy are also now being used to identify people from small areas of their body seen in photos or videos. Features such as vein patternation or knuckle marks can identify suspects from images showing only small areas of their hands or arms. Grimly, this is likely to be used in cases involving sexual abuse. As our understanding of DNA improves, we may one day be able to create a photofit-style image of a suspect solely from DNA evidence. However, such ‘DNA phenotyping’ is not yet accurate enough, and can’t predict many aspects of how a person looks, such as whether they have a beard. 

TOM IRELAND IS A JOURNALIST AND MANAGING EDITOR AT THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF BIOLOGY.

Forensic science, especially DNA analysis, can often involve tedious laboratory work – something that TV programmes usually neglect to show. For forensic evidence to hold up under scrutiny in court, every stage of the process – collection, handling, storage, and analysis – must be conducted to impeccable scientific standards.

2

PRINTS AND PROFILES

DNA and fingerprints are the most commonly used forensic evidence in criminal investigations. Apart from identical twins, no two people have the same DNA, and DNA samples are compared at points where the human genome is known to be incredibly varied. Fingerprints are still used, though, as they’re cheaper to process and more likely to indicate what someone has been doing.

3EXTRAORDINARY EVIDENCE Fingerprints have been used to identify criminals since the 1890s

A huge range of materials can be collected and analysed to match a suspect to a crime scene. The more unique or rare the material, the more credible the case against them. It can be anything from pollen grains and mud to chemicals and even bacteria.

PHOTOS: GETTY, SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

picked up easily but not easily shed, even from clothing and footwear that’s been washed. But suspects are likely to have walked through many types of soil, mud, or vegetation before and after being at a crime scene. It all adds up to a huge headache for those trying to analyse and compare all the biological material found on the suspect. The rarer the pollen or spore that forensics can match, the more credible the case. A good example is also the first ever example of forensic ecology. In 1959, a man was murdered while travelling down the river Danube in Austria, but a body had not been found. Mud on the suspect’s shoes contained a type of pollen from ancient hickory trees. Scientists concluded this could only have come from vegetation growing on exposed Miocene-age rocks, and the only place such soil had developed was a small section of the river 20km north of Vienna. Presented with this theory, the suspect confessed and took police to the body – exactly where the scientists had predicted. Other techniques often seen on TV, such as blood spatter and ballistics analysis, may give detectives an idea of what happened at a crime scene, but rarely help find the perpetrator.

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SCIENCE

MAKING WAVES IN FEBRUARY THIS YEAR, PHYSICISTS ANNOUNCED THAT THEY HAD DETECTED GRAVITATIONAL WAVES TOWARDS THE END OF 2015. COULD THESE RIPPLES IN THE FABRIC OF SPACE-TIME HELP US DECIPHER SOME OF THE STRANGEST PHENOMENA IN THE COSMOS? WORDS: COLIN STUART

n 14 September 2015, a new window into the Universe was opened. Researchers at LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) caught the distant murmurs of two black holes colliding, and in doing so made the first direct detection of gravitational waves. This discovery is yet another victory for Einstein’s General Relativity. But more than that, because gravitational waves carry information about some of the most exotic events in the cosmos, they will allow astronomers to see the Universe in a new way. At the beginning of this revolution, here are some of the game-changing developments astronomers may uncover in the years ahead.

O

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ABOVE: When two black holes merge, they alter the motion of gravitational waves

Black Holes The signal picked up by LIGO is believed to have come from two huge black holes colliding 1.3 billion lightyears away. One of the black holes in the merger detected by LIGO was around 29 solar masses (one solar mass = the mass of the Sun), the other tipped the scale at 36 solar masses. By analysing the way the gravitational waves changed as the black holes spiralled towards each other, the LIGO team established that the two black holes were initially orbiting each other 30 times a second, but this ramped up to 250 times, before a telltale ‘chirp’ in the signal indicated that the two

behemoths had combined. LIGO and other gravitational wave experiments will help us learn more about black holes and General Relativity. “One of the most dramatic predictions of General Relativity is that black holes with large spins will dance in their orbits,” says Prof Bangalore Sathyaprakash from Cardiff University. “It is impossible to mimic such an experiment in any laboratory or with other astronomical observations. They will only be visible in the gravitational window and that’s something we hope to observe in the coming years,” he adds.

PHOTO: ISTOCK

W H AT A R E G R AV I TAT I O N A L WAV E S ?

Gravitational waves are ripples in the fabric of space-time. Think of space a stretched sheet of nylon. If you placed a bowling ball into the centre, the fabric would warp and sink, creating a kind of funnel. Drop any more balls onto the the sheet, and they’ll roll

towards the centre where the bowling ball is. The Sun makes a similar depression in space itself, giving rise to the gravity that pulls Earth towards it. As an object accelerates through space – say a planet orbiting a star – its motion

causes distortions in this fabric, which ripple outwards as waves. The bigger the mass of an object, the bigger the waves. The recently spotted gravitational waves came from two colliding black holes – some of the hugest objects in the Universe. Vol. 8 Issue 6

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SCIENCE

Galaxy Formation

A tiny neutron star alongside a larger white dwarf

Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Observatory is used by NANOGrav astronomers to help them decipher galaxy formation

Neutron Stars Neutron stars are compact, city-sized stellar objects resulting from the explosive death of much larger stars. They are incredibly dense – a neutron star the size of a golf ball would weigh around one billion tonnes. They spin extremely rapidly thanks to the power of the explosion from which they are created. It is thought that some rapidly rotating neutron stars have ‘mountains’ on their

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surface. These asymmetries should generate gravitational waves as the neutron star spins. Detecting such waves would be a real boon for theorists trying to understand how these mountains form. “Unfortunately, the processes leading to these deformations are very difficult to model. A direct observation would give us important insights into the star’s history,” says the University of Southampton’s Prof Nils Andersson. Studying gravitational waves may also help astronomers to pin down the exact size of these extreme objects, Andersson says.

PHOTOS: SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY X3

The black holes observed by LIGO are tiny compared to those found at the centre of some of the most massive and distant galaxies. Take the system known as OJ 287, for example. Here, a hefty black hole of 100 million solar masses encircles a beast of 18 billion solar masses. Such humongous beasts are thought to have been formed by a succession of previous mergers. Given that most galaxies are thought to host such supermassive black holes at their centre, systems such as OJ 287 could give us clues about the role that black hole mergers play in galaxy formation. Gravitational waves emitted by a system like OJ 287 are too low frequency to be picked up by LIGO. Instead, astronomers are hoping to detect the waves indirectly by observing their effect on pulsars. This is the kind of measurement that the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) will be detecting.

Dark Energy

“Gamma-ray bursts (GRB) are among the most violent and energetic events seen in the Universe”

Artist’s concept of dark energy

In the 1990s, astronomers found that the expansion of the Universe is speeding up. This was unexpected because it was thought that the expansion would be slowing down as the initial force of the Big Bang continued to fizzle out. It is thought that an invisible material, known as dark energy, is acting as a sort of anti-gravity and pushing clusters of galaxies apart. Measuring distance in space has traditionally been done using events such as Type Ia supernovas. These explosions have an initial fixed brightness that fades over distance and are known as ‘standard candles’. Gravitational waves could offer an alternative approach. Waves from colliding black holes get smaller as they spread out through space. These fading chirps would provide a new measuring stick called a ‘standard siren’. “This can be compared with dark energy models for the expansion history of the Universe, and so measure dark energy, hopefully better than the Type Ia supernovas,” says Prof Andy Taylor at the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh.

We still don’t know for sure what causes gamma-ray bursts

Gamma-ray bursts Gamma-ray bursts (GRB) are intense explosions of gamma rays and are among the most violent and energetic events seen in the Universe. Currently, we can only observe these events if the beams of gamma rays conveniently head in our direction. But the gravitational waves created by GRBs travel out in all directions. Observing gravitational waves could also help us to work out what is causing so-called short GRBs – those that last less than two seconds. The current leading contender for the origin of short GRBs is the collision of two neutron stars, but astronomers have so far been unable to detect the proverbial

smoking gun. However, this could be about to change. Within the next two years, upgrades to the LIGO experiment will make the detector sensitive enough to pick up any neutron star mergers occurring in the closest 300,000 galaxies. “Seeing both a gamma-ray burst and gravitational wave would completely nail down the progenitors of GRBs, because with a gravitational wave signal we directly measure the mass of the merging system,” explains Prof Andrew Levan from the University of Warwick. “Studying the gravitational waves means we can see these mergers even when the gamma rays are directed away from us.” Vol. 8 Issue 6

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SCIENCE

Cosmic Inflation When astronomers try to peer into the early Universe, they hit a smoke screen around 380,000 years after the Big Bang. At this time the Universe was composed of a dense sea of subatomic particles that prevented light from escaping, which means there’s nothing to detect to tell us about the early Universe. Gravitational waves, however, would have been able to spread unhindered, allowing us to look back further than previously possible. Observations of gravitational waves could be used to test a theory known as inflation. It’s the idea that the Universe underwent a rapid burst of expansion in

When the Universe first expanded, it could have sent gravitational waves rippling through space-time

its earliest moments, taking it from many times smaller than an atom to about the size of a marble in a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second. This extreme growth spurt could have sent gravitational waves rippling through the fabric of space-time. LIGO doesn’t operate at the right sensitivity to pick up the kind of gravitational waves thought to have been spawned by inflation, but the next generation of detectors might find them. “Their amplitude would point to the energy scale of inflation, which is a major unknown,” says Prof Uros Seljak from the University of California at Berkeley.

“The feather and the hammer hit the lunar dust at exactly the same time, despite their vastly different shapes and masses”

Equivalence Principle LIGO’s detection of gravitational waves ended a game of cosmic hide and seek that began 100 years ago when they were predicted by Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. Now that we have found them, gravitational waves could be used to test another cornerstone of Einstein’s theory: the equivalence principle. Put simply, it says that all objects, irrespective of their composition, fall with the same acceleration in a gravity field. The most famous example is the feather and hammer dropped on the Moon by Apollo 15’s Commander Dave Scott in 1971. Both objects hit the lunar dust at exactly the same time, despite their vastly different shapes and masses. But just because the equivalence principle holds in our Solar System, it doesn’t necessarily mean it is universal. That’s where gravitational waves come in. A recent paper published by Xue-Feng Wu of the Purple Mountain Observatory in China calculated that combining light signals with gravitational waves from the same event could help test the equivalence principle to an accuracy of 0.0000000001 per cent – several factors of 10 better than the best current efforts.

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Hammer time: a feather and hammer dropped on the Moon hit the lunar surface at the same time, proving Einstein’s equivalence principle

PHOTOS: SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY, T PYLE/CALTECH, NASA

Gravitons Perhaps the ultimate quest for physicists is to find a single, coherent theory that can explain all phenomena in the Universe. We currently have Einstein’s General Relativity to explain the very big, and quantum physics to explain the very small, but the two are at odds with one another. Part of the problem is that gravity, as explained by General Relativity, doesn’t seem to want to play nicely with the other three fundamental forces of nature: the electromagnetic force, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force. These three forces are known to be mediated by gauge bosons – particles known to transmit force. It is thought that there is an equivalent for gravity called ‘gravitons’, but we haven’t found them yet. In conventional General Relativity, gravitons are

Einstein’s General Relativity says that space-time is warped by massive objects, but this doesn’t work with quantum physics

predicted to be massless. However, in their efforts to piece together a theory that combines General Relativity with quantum physics, theorists have been toying with the idea that the graviton may in fact have mass. “If the graviton had a mass it would change the black hole chirp. As this is very accurately measured it puts very strong constraints on it,” says Prof Andy Taylor from the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh. This means that by studying the behaviour of gravitational waves, researchers will be able to investigate the possibility that the graviton has mass, taking them a step closer to the elusive theory of everything. 

COLIN STUART (@SKYPONDERER) IS A FREELANCE ASTRONOMY WRITER AND AUTHOR. Vol. 8 Issue 6

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YOUR QUESTI0NS ANSWERED BY OUR EXPERT PANEL

&

DR CHRISTIAN JARRETT Christian edits The British Psychological Society’s Research Digest blog. His latest book is Great Myths Of The Brain.

DR ALASTAIR GUNN Alastair is a radio astronomer at the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester.

PROF ROBERT MATTHEWS After studying physics at Oxford, Robert became a science writer. He’s visiting professor in science at Aston University.

DR PETER J BENTLEY Peter is a computer scientist and author who is based at University College London.

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]

There is virtually none there to begin with. Only the white blood cells have a nucleus, so they are the only cells that carry any of the donor’s DNA. Red blood cells and platelets lose their nucleus during production in the bone marrow. Donated blood is spun in a centrifuge to separate it into plasma, platelets, red cells and white cells and only the first three are used for transfusions. If whole blood is used in an emergency transfusion, it causes a fever called ‘febrile non-haemolytic transfusion reaction’, as the recipient’s own white cells destroy the foreign DNA. LV

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So whole blood makes you ill? No wonder Dracula was so stroppy…

PHOTO: SOUTH WEST NEWS SERVICES

What happens to the donor’s DNA in a blood transfusion?

The hips don’t lie: dinosaurs are split into two groups, called ‘bird-hipped’ (left) and ‘lizard-hipped’ (right)

Ornithischia

What makes a dinosaur a dinosaur?

Saurischia

ILIUM

It’s all to do with the shape of the pelvis. Dinosaurs are divided into two groups: the Saurischia, or ‘lizard-hipped’ dinosaurs, have a pubis bone that points forward; the Ornithischia (‘bird-hipped’) have a backwardspointing pubis. Any fossil with either of these pelvis types is classified as a dinosaur. Ironically, birds are actually descended from the Saurischia. Their bird hips evolved independently, much later in time. LV

PUBIS

ISCHIUM

ILIUM

PUBIS

ISCHIUM

PHOTO: GETTY ILLUSTRATION: PHIL ELLIS

What ignites supernova explosions? Although there are many classifications of supernovae, there are two basic mechanisms that result in stars blowing themselves apart. The first involves the accumulation of material into a white dwarf star, the extremely dense final evolutionary state of most normal stars. This extra material could come from a merger with or by simple accumulation from a close companion star. As this material accumulates on the white dwarf, its core temperature increases until a runaway nuclear reaction occurs. In a fraction of a second most of the white dwarf undergoes nuclear

fusion, blowing the star apart in the process. The other way a supernova can ‘ignite’ is by the collapse of a high-mass stellar core. As the star reaches the end of its life the nuclear fuel becomes exhausted, the energy source switches off and the pressure holding the star up against gravity disappears. The core collapses almost instantaneously, causing a catastrophic release of energy that destroys the star. If the core mass is high enough, however, the star may become a neutron star or black hole with little radiated energy. AG

A supernova is a rare event, in which a star explodes at the end of its life

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& IN NUMBERS

Could my pet catch my cold?

30

metres

The viruses that cause ordinary colds are all quite speciesspecific. Dogs can’t catch human colds (or vice versa), but they do have their own version, called canine infectious tracheobronchitis or kennel cough. The influenza virus is much more adaptable though. Bird, pig, horse, dog and human flu have all been shown to jump the species barrier. And bacterial diseases are even more contagious. Cats and dogs can both catch tuberculosis from humans, for example. LV

is the height of the biggest wave ever surfed

20

teeth are present in the mouth of a common vampire bat – the fewest number of teeth of any bat species

THE THOUGHT EXPERIMENT

1. IT DEPENDS ON THE GUN Experiments using ballistic gelatine to mimic the human body suggest that a 9mm bullet from a handgun will penetrate about 60cm through human fat tissue. A fully jacketed bullet from an assault rifle, such as an AK-47, will go much further and can easily shoot through a brick wall. 86

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2. NOBODY IS THAT FAT A morbidly obese person weighing over 125kg might have 60cm of fat at the thickest point, including subcutaneous fat and the fat that surrounds their organs. But no one has that thickness evenly across their entire body. Even a blue whale’s blubber is only 30cm thick.

3. DO YOU FEEL LUCKY? In 2010 Samantha Lynn Frazier was hit by a stray bullet in a shooting in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The bullet lodged in her ‘love handles’ and she was otherwise unharmed. This is rare, though, and we can’t know for sure whether the bullet ricocheted off something else before it struck her!

PHOTO: ISTOCK ILLUSTRATION: PHIL ELLIS

How fat do you have to be to stop a bullet?

LIQUID NITROGEN AUXILIARY GUIDING GEAR

HOW IT WORKS

EDS maglev There are two main types of maglev train that use magnetism in different ways. Electromagnetic suspension (EMS) uses C-shaped arms that wrap underneath the track. Electromagnets on the underside pull the train up by attracting the arms to the bottom of the track. Electrodynamic suspension (EDS), pictured here, uses the train’s motion to induce magnetic eddy currents in the metal rail, which creates a cushion of magnetic repulsion. The sides of the track have magnetic coils built in, which create an overlapping pattern of alternating north and south magnetic fields. To accelerate, the train rapidly alternates the direction of its own supercooled magnetic coils to attract the front of the train to the next coil along the rail.

AUXILIARY SUPPORTING GEAR

COMPRESSOR UNIT IN CAR-MOUNTED HELIUM REFRIGERATION SYSTEM BOGIE FRAME AIR SPRING

BEAMS LIQUID HELIUM REFRIGERATOR

RADIATION SHIELD

LEVITATION GUIDANCE COIL

SUPPORTER SUPERCONDUCTING COIL

PROPULSION COIL WHEEL SUPPORT PATH

PHOTO: NASA ILLUSTRATION: PHIL ELLIS

How long will the man-made objects on the Moon last? It has been estimated that there are more than 180 tonnes of man-made material on the Moon, ranging from bags of human body waste to crashed spacecraft. But there is very little to affect this material – no wind, pollution or water to erode, rust, dissolve or abrade it – although the action of sunlight, particularly UV radiation, has probably already bleached the US flags left there by the Apollo astronauts. While the constant bombardment by energetic micrometeorites is likely to gradually erode this material over time, current research suggests it could survive for up to 100 million years! AG

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Can microwaves change the molecular structure of food? Yes. When you microwave a piece of chicken, energy from the microwaves causes the protein molecules to vibrate faster. This can break the hydrogen bonds and sulphur bridges that give the protein chains their specific three-dimensional shape. With a piece of bread, a high enough dose of microwaves will cause the starch and protein molecules to break down and react with each other to create dozens of complex organic molecules. When you put food under the grill, you are cooking it with infrared waves, which are part of the electromagnetic spectrum – just like microwaves. The difference is that infrared rays have a longer wavelength that doesn’t penetrate as far into the food. Most of the energy therefore gets deposited at

the surface of the food, which gets brown and crispy. Microwaves tend to spread their energy more evenly throughout the food, so it cooks before the outside becomes brown, but the basic chemistry is much the same. There are no chemical reactions unique to food cooked in a microwave. LV

HEAD TO HEAD

PHOTOS: NASA, SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY, ISTOCK ILLUSTRATOR: SAM FALCONER

vs UK SMOKERS 10

Number of (millions)

UK DRINKERS 24

US$14bn

TAXES RAISED (per yr)

US$14.5bn

US$3bn

COST TO NHS (per yr)

US$5bn

450,000

HOSPITAL ADMISSIONS (yr)

1,100,000

100,000

DEATHS (yr)

6,600

Which is worse - smoking or drinking? As an individual, cigarettes are much more likely to kill you eventually, but alcohol can kill you at any age; through binge drinking, 88

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alcohol-related violence and drink driving. And smoking rates have almost halved since 1974, whereas average alcohol consumption figures have fallen much more slowly.

Why are some people so hairy? Hair growth in humans is complicated and influenced by several different genes and hormones. The prevailing theory is that we evolved to have less hair than primates because our ancestors evolved sweating as a strategy to keep cool on the African savannah, and too much hair gets in the way of sweating. But the evolutionary reasons why hairiness varies with ethnicity are unclear. Caucasian people are generally hairier than the Japanese, for example, even though testosterone levels are the same. The difference seems to be in how sensitive the hair follicles are to those testosterone levels. LV

‘Werewolf syndrome’, or hypertrichosis, causes thick hair to grow over the body

Why do we talk in our sleep? When we are sleeping, there is a brain mechanism that stops the neural activity associated with dreaming from triggering speech or body movements. But this system isn’t perfect, and sometimes signals can get through. This can lead to mumbling and groaning and sometimes even proper speech (and sleep walking).

The content of sleep talking can be complex and is usually grammatically correct. It may be influenced by recent events in the sleeper’s life, but can be strange and nonsensical. Sleep talking is usually benign, although stress and other psychological problems can increase the likelihood of it occurring. CJ

PHOTOS: ISTOCK, GETTY X4, SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Are public Wi-Fi networks safe?

No Wi-Fi network is completely safe if you have the wrong settings on your phone or computer. When you browse http pages, you are transmitting and receiving unencrypted text; this makes it easy to intercept, making your passwords vulnerable. Only https pages are secure. If you have Sharing

enabled on your computer, it is possible to access your files or even remotely log on to your system. For these reasons it’s best to keep Sharing switched off, your Firewall turned on, and do not browse sensitive websites on public networks. If you have to do so regularly, you should use a Virtual Private Network (VPN). PB

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& W H AT C O N N E C T S…

What’s the difference between viruses, trojans and worms?

…Fridges to frying pans

1.

Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are organic molecules with a low boiling point. Before they were discovered to deplete the ozone layer, CFCs were widely used as the refrigerant gas in fridges.

A virus is a nasty piece of software that is inserted into a normal piece of software, just as a biological virus infects a cell. When the normal software is run, the virus copies itself into other software while also doing unwanted things such as recording keystrokes to steal passwords. A trojan is similar, but it does not replicate itself. It hides inside a seemingly innocuous program – run the program and the trojan wreaks havoc, from deleting your files to giving hackers access to your system. A worm is an independent program that replicates on its own, typically spreading across networks and causing major disruption to systems. PB

2.

3.

Why do planes have to be ‘de-iced’? Planes are designed to cope with extremes of temperature, allowing them to take off from searingly hot desert runways before cruising in the bitter -55°C cold of the stratosphere just minutes later. Yet even the most sophisticated aircraft can be put at risk by freezing conditions. When ice builds up along the leading edges of the wings it changes their shape – and thus their

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ability to generate lift. Aircraft are fitted with de-icing systems, but in severe conditions even these can be inadequate, requiring the application of high-pressure blasts of antifreeze. Failure to use them can be disastrous. In 1982, ice on the wings of a Boeing 737 taking off from Washington DC prevented it from climbing adequately. It crashed into the frozen Potomac river, killing 74 passengers and crew. RM

4.

In 1938, a DuPont researcher called Roy Plunkett found his gas cylinders of the CFC tetrafluoroethylene were clogged with a white slippery substance. The iron cylinder was catalysing the CFC into polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE).

DuPont trademarked PTFE as Teflon. It wasn’t until 1954 that French engineer Marc Grégoire tried using it as a non-stick coating on frying pans. The company Tefal was named after ‘Teflon’ and ‘aluminium’.

PHOTOS: BAE SYSTEMS, ALAMY, GETTY, SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY X2 ILLUSTRATION: PHIL ELLIS

The company that first used CFCs in fridges was Kinetic Chemicals, owned by General Motors and DuPont. They trademarked their particular blend of CFC compounds as ‘Freon’ (pictured) in 1930.

W H AT I S T H I S ?

Osteosarcoma cells These human osteosarcoma cells were viewed using a light microscope. A stain has been applied to show the structure of the cells. Osteosarcomas are malignant cancerous bone tumours, most frequently seen in children and young adults.

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& T O P 10

Top 10 wettest Regions of the UK in 2015

Could captured CO2 be stored in the deep ocean?

We can’t just chuck carbon dioxide into the oceans to prevent global warming

1. Western Scotland Actual rainfall: 2,254.1mm Difference from 1961-1990 average: 135%

2. Northern Scotland Actual rainfall: 1,980.5mm Difference from 1961-1990 average: 123%

3. Northwest England and North Wales Actual rainfall: 1,576mm Difference from 1961-1990 average: 123%

Capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) to stop it boosting global warming seems like a good idea, but raises the problem of where to store the stuff. One low-cost solution is simply to pump it into the deep ocean, but CO2 is toxic to marine life and would also combine with the seawater to produce an acid, which would pose unknown environmental risks. Underground or sub-seabed storage are thought be less risky options. RM

4. Eastern Scotland

5. Southwest England and South Wales Actual rainfall: 1,304.5mm Difference from 1961-1990 average: 108%

6. North England Actual rainfall: 1,118.8mm Difference from 1961-1990 average: 119%

7. Northeast and East England Actual rainfall: 841.4mm Difference from 1961-1990 average: 112%

8. Midlands Actual rainfall: 798.1mm Difference from 1961-1990 average: 103%

9. South England Actual rainfall: 758.2mm Difference from 1961-1990 average: 99%

10. Southeast England Actual rainfall: 756.6mm Difference from 1961-1990 average: 99%

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Why does garlic give you bad breath? Garlic contains a chemical called allyl cysteine sulphoxide or ‘alliin’. When a raw garlic clove is crushed or chopped, an enzyme in the garlic cells is released that reacts in a matter of seconds with the alliin to produce a chemical called allicin. This breaks down into lots of other chemicals, most of them stinky. Nearly all of these chemicals are broken down in your stomach and liver, but allyl methyl sulphide is one that survives to be absorbed into the

bloodstream intact. This means that it can diffuse out through your lungs into the air you exhale for up to two days. Brushing your teeth has only limited effect because the chemical is still in your blood. LV

PHOTOS: ALAMY, GETTY X2, ISTOCK ILLUSTRATION: PHIL ELLIS

Actual rainfall: 1,367.7mm Difference from 1961-1990 average: 123%

What happens to lost body fat when we lose weight? Fatty acids are broken down into smaller molecules and fed to the ‘power plants’ of our cells, the mitochondria (pictured)

Our fat is stored as triglycerides. When we need it for energy, enzymes in the blood break it down into fatty acid chains and glycerol. The fatty acids are absorbed by cells and broken down into even smaller molecules and ‘fed’ to our

PHOTO: ISTOCK, GETTY X2

Why do sneezes come in twos or threes? Sneezing is a way for your body to reset the nasal environment by getting rid of any irritating particles and restoring the correct level of mucus – either too much mucus or too little can trigger a sneeze. For a single sneeze to guarantee to shift any possible irritant, it would have to be dangerously powerful. Sneezes already expel air at 160km/h (100mph), so it’s safer to just chain a few sneezes together if the first doesn’t do the job. LV

W H O R E A L LY I N V E N T E D …

THE TELEPHONE

ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL

mitochondria (the ‘power plants’ of our cells). The ultimate waste products of this complex sequence are just CO2 and water, which we breathe out. So when you exercise, you are turning fat into puffing and panting. LV

ANTONIO MEUCCI

Credit is usually given to the Scottishborn scientist and engineer Alexander Graham Bell, who was granted a US patent for what he called an ‘acoustic telegraph’ in 1875. His claim comes complete with the famous story of Bell using his invention to call his colleague in the next room with the words: “Mr Watson, come here – I want to see you.” Yet like many major inventions, whether Bell deserves all the credit has long been the subject of debate, not least over what exactly constitutes a ‘true’ telephone. For example, some historians point out that Italian engineer Antonio Meucci and German inventor Philipp Reis independently invented telephone-like devices that achieved the key breakthrough of turning sound into electric signals over a decade before Bell. In 2002, the US House of Representatives accepted that Meucci’s work was so important that it could have been enough to prevent Bell getting a patent. Over the years, Bell’s right to any credit has been challenged by evidence that he plagiarised key parts of his design.

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& QUESTION OF THE MONTH

Why does Uranus orbit the Sun on its side? South pole will be in sunlight for 42 Earth years

NORTH

SOUTH

N SUN

S

South pole will be in darkness for 42 Earth years

The reason for this is not known for sure. The most likely cause is that Uranus collided with a large object soon after its formation. The problem with this explanation is that if the planetary system were disrupted by a single impact it would result in the moons of Uranus having ‘retrograde’ orbits (orbiting in the opposite direction to the spin of the planet). However, this is not what is observed. Encouragingly, the latest research suggests that two or more impacts with Earth-sized protoplanets could result in exactly the kind of orbits displayed by Uranus’s moons. AG

IN NUMBERS

hours

of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute

35 metres

is the height of the tallest Lego structure – it was built outside St Stephen’s Basilica in Budapest and contains around 450,000 bricks

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Why are habits so hard to break? Habits are behaviours that we perform automatically, especially in response to a prompt, such as a particular place or time of day. They’re so tricky to break because they usually happen without any thought, a bit like a reflex. One solution is to identify the trigger that cues your habit, and either avoid it somehow (for example, don’t leave the buscuit tin out on display), or plan in advance an alternative action, known as an ‘if-then plan’, such as “If I see a croissant in the cafe, then I will buy an apple instead.” Easier said than done! CJ

PHOTOS: ALAMY, GETTY X2, ISTOCK ILLUSTRATION: PHIL ELLIS

300

After 10 days of going cold turkey, James was now 48 hours into his nose-picking binge

A feast for the mind

Resource

02

EMBRACE OUR MORTALITY

In his new book Death On Earth, Jules Howard explores death in the animal kingdom, asking what it can tell us about our own approach to death. He talks to JAMES LLOYD

What was the most memorable experience you had while writing your book? I visited a field where forensic scientists do pathological investigations on dead pigs to study how corpses decompose. It was just fascinating to see the myriad of life forms that have made death their home – clown beetles, rove beetles, parasitic wasps, maggots. What I thought would be a rancid, stench-filled hellhole actually turned out to be a fireworks show. What was the most challenging part of your book to write? It was the chapter about how and to what degree animals perceive death. We’re famously told about elephants and chimpanzees mourning, but these are often anecdotes – it’s very hard to assess

what’s going on in the animals’ minds. I went to a donkey sanctuary and talked to the scientists about how the donkeys often display distress when they lose a stablemate. But is this true grieving and mourning, or are these just human labels? Death is one of the last taboos in human society. Why do you think that we find it so difficult to talk about? I think as a species we have a degree of narcissism and self-importance, and any reminder that we’re a temporary blip in the history of life is difficult to deal with. And that’s fair enough. Perhaps one of the things that makes us most human is our inability to properly get our heads around the fact that we’re going to die. Did writing your book change the way you think about death? Well, I have a will now! This is going to sound like a cliché, but being immersed in death hasn’t made me depressed – it’s been really life-affirming, in a way I hadn’t predicted. Death On Earth: Adventures in Evolution and Mortality by Jules Howard is published on 10 March

PHOTO: GETTY

Why did you decide to write a book about death? I spent about three years looking at the evolution of sex [for my last book] and I realised that sex in the animal kingdom is heavily influenced by the chances of death – death is always there in the background. So I decided to investigate this. But what starts off as a journey into the evolution of life in the shadow of death turns into a broader exploration of mortality.

Donkeys are known to show distress when their friends die

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Witty Viewpoint LAUGHTER “When the tribe laughs at you, they’re really telling you never to do that again” hich will come first: a universal theory that unites quantum mechanics and the General Theory of Relativity, or a scientifically scrupulous theory of humour, where laughter and the underpinning of all jokes is explained in a single, pithy sentence? My money remains on the universal theory. “Why are they laughing?” is the question of the paranoid man and the lecturer in anthropology. Humour studies is accused of being humourless, but it’s still fun to think about what makes something funny. Unlike biochemistry or cosmology, I don’t think an objective and scientifically accurate theory of comedy is necessary, though jokes can help us to understand the structure of our brains, the nature of artificial intelligence and what it means to be human. So why do we laugh? Maybe a good place to start is with a couple things that make me laugh. As a teenager, comedy was my obsession. I fell off my chair laughing at Rik Mayall stepping in dog poo in More Bad News. I’ve watched it over 50 times, and still it makes me laugh. My other laughing-until-apoplectic highlight was Billy Connolly re-enacting the experience of bathing in the North Sea. His impression of the involuntary noise that comes out of your mouth as the cold sea touches your genitals was the funniest noise in the world to me. Why would I experience near-death by joyful asphyxiation when seeing and hearing these things? With Connolly’s anguished cry, it may partly be the laughter of recognition. When we recognise ourselves in a comedian’s routine, we’re united with whoever else is watching or listening. Being a self-conscious being on a small planet can be a lonely, alienating business. This moment of laughter says, “You are not alone”. That’s why people can be so furious when they don’t get a joke; the noise of laughter is really an accusatory cry of “You are not one of us”. Rik Mayall’s pratfall into poop may fall into the category of ‘how laughter educates through shame’. It’s an evolutionary thing. No one likes being laughed at, so when the tribe laughs at you, they’re really telling you never to do that again. It’s a way of controlling the behaviour of the group. The clumsy man on the mammoth hunt who slips on his own spear and ends up piercing his bottom is not very useful, so it makes more sense to laugh at him while he’s still slipping in dung, before it’s developed into the sort of behaviour that sees him impaling himself. Laughter also offers solace during repression. When you’re under the cosh, and physical rebellion is not an option, each joke you make at the expense of the oppressor is a secret little victory. Then there’s the theory that a punchline works by producing a twist in behaviour that delivers the unexpected, which makes me wonder how quantum physicists manage to get anything done when they must be perpetually blinded by tears of laughter. I delight in pondering humour theories, but in the end, I realise that even when the most rigorous comedy research is complete, the 96

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punchlines in the pub won’t be any better. So maybe we should stop thinking about it and just enjoy the laughter. After all, in the words of Billy Connolly, “Good hearty laughter… it’s just the most extraordinary thing you can do for a fellow human being.”.  Robin Ince is a comedian and writer who presents, with Prof Brian Cox, the BBC Radio 4 series The Infinite Monkey Cage.

MAIN ILLUSTRATION: JAMIE COE PORTRAIT: KATE COPELAND

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SCIENCE

MY LIFE SCIENTIFIC EDZARD ERNST

A report commissioned by Prince Charles claimed no end of dangerous nonsense Both my father and grandfather were doctors, so in a way I was destined to become a medic too. But before I studied medicine, I studied psychology and became a musician. I played the clarinet, saxophone and drums. For a long time, I considered myself a professional jazzer and an amateur medic! My first medical job was at a homeopathic hospital in Munich. When you are studying medicine you don’t have time to think critically because there is so much to take in, so I was actually quite impressed with what I saw. When I took a job as a researcher, it changed my life. It turned me into a scientist and a critical thinker. I never look for controversy, but there have been a few times when I’ve found myself in the thick of it. The first was when I was professor at the Medical Faculty of Vienna. I did some research into the Nazi occupation of Austria and disclosed how the Nazi ‘cleansing’ of the medical faculty led to unspeakable atrocities. Austria wasn’t ready for this, and I felt like the evil spirit hadn’t quite vanished from my own faculty. In 1993 I moved to England to take up my position at Exeter University. I expected a peaceful backwater and had no idea how contentious the new job would turn out to be.

ILLUSTRATION: PETER STRAIN

I tried to rigorously test alternative medicine and keep a low profile, but after about 15 years of research I became more outspoken. At this stage, it was blatantly obvious that well over 90 per cent of the claims made by enthusiasts were not just wrong but often dangerous too. Disclosing this undeniable fact was nothing less than my duty, but it did not exactly increase my popularity. In 2005, I couldn’t help but criticise a report that Prince Charles had commissioned which claimed no end of dangerous nonsense. Charles’ secretary filed an official complaint. The worst for me was the abominable lack of support from my own university. I was treated as ‘guilty until proven innocent’. Although in the end I was cleared of any wrongdoing, it led to the closure of my research unit. I’m quite a shy person. I think more than I talk. Sometimes I can be stubborn, but I try to be honest and sometimes brave. Last year, I was awarded the John Maddox Prize for Standing Up For Science. I’m really chuffed with that. So much of my life has been about defending science, transparency and integrity.

I write something almost every day. It helps me to relax. I have my blog and I continue to publish books. I also have two drum kits at home. Sometimes I join my old band, The Jazz Kids, and we play together. Considering our age, we should perhaps rename ourselves as The Swinging Zimmerframes! 

EDZARD ERNST is a qualified doctor and rigorously researches alternative medicine. He is also editor-in-chief of two journals. Vol. 8 Issue 6

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The Last Word irst thing every morning I go through the same ritual. I stand on the bathroom scales to check if my weight is below 73kg. If it’s not, my day is pretty much ruined. But if it is, I feel happy for, oh, as long as 30 seconds. The reason: 73kg is the weight above which someone of my height becomes an official, certified fatty. Health experts put it slightly more politely: it’s the weight that, when expressed in kilograms and divided by the square of my height in metres, gives a Body Mass Index (BMI) in excess of 25 – which classifies as overweight. And that, in turn, means I’d face a greater risk of ill health and an early death. Is it any wonder, then, that I feel depressed when the digital display of the scales flashes up 73kg followed by a 68kg (or, if it’s Sunday morning, 80kg)? Yes it is, because I feel happy or depressed despite having known for years that the whole ritual is nonsense. The BMI is, bluntly, pure bull. The idea of a simple formula that separates the lean-andhealthy from the fat-and-doomed is undoubtedly alluring. It has its origins in research carried out more than 150 years ago by Adolphe Quetelet, a Belgian statistician obsessed with the idea that human traits follow mathematical laws. After studying data on human development, he argued that human weights are typically proportional to the square of height. Quetelet didn’t have decent scientific explanation for this; his ‘law’ just fitted the data. That didn’t matter too much until the early 1970s, when the influential American public health researcher Ancel Keys made Quetelet’s formula the basis of research into obesity. Keys coined the term Body Mass Index, and it’s remained central to research into obesity ever since. Yet it’s always been clear that the BMI can be very misleading. Sure, people who are unhealthily fat tend to have large BMIs – but you can’t simply flip that around and insist that having a large BMI means you’re unhealthily fat. That’s like arguing that because everyone with Ebola starts with a fever, everyone with a fever has Ebola. This isn’t just logical nitpicking. If you calculate the BMIs of world-class rugby players, boxers and the like, they often end up categorised as waddling fatties – an obvious absurdity. That’s because muscle is denser than fat, so if you’re healthy but powerfully built, you’ll end up with the BMI implying you’re overweight. You don’t have to be professional boxer Wladimir Klitschko, 98

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whose fighting weight BMI makes him a ‘flabby’ 28.4 (you can tell him), to fall foul of the formula. There is a heap of evidence that shows BMI fails miserably for the rest of us too. The latest comes from researchers at the University of California, who compared the calculated BMIs of over 40,000 people with actual measurements of health markers like blood pressure. The research study showed that nearly half of those who were classified as overweight had perfectly good health marker levels. And the flipside was also true: more than 30 per cent of those with BMI values in the ‘healthy’ range proved to have dodgy health markers. I’d bet I fall into this latter category. Yet somehow I can’t stop putting my trust in Keys’ simple yet patently silly formula. The trouble is, neither can health policymakers – and until they do, many of us will remain self-deluded fatties. 

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

MAIN ILLUSTRATION: ADAM GALE PORTRAIT: KATE COPELAND

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AMERICA’S ROCKY MOUNTAINS

place s to stay Extraordinary

A good hotel, much like a good relationship, boasts equal parts comfort and excitement, intrigue and indulgence, while fulfilling the needs and interests of both parties. For oenophiles seeking a couple’s retreat, a boutique hotel amidst lush aromatic vineyards may be the perfect getaway. Urban dwellers who catch themselves marvelling at historical architecture may prefer staying in culturally-rich abodes. Whether you seek a private respite or a fairytale setting, here are some home-away-from-home options for that next great romantic escape.

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HOTEL DANIELI

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The birthplace of Japanese tradition and culture in Kyoto

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Cobbled Via dei Cappellari in the district of Parione. Right Flavio, owner of Flavio Al Velavevodetto, carries two local pasta dishes from his kitchen An 18th-century sacred fresco outside the Church of Sant’Egidio. Right A cat poses outside an antiques shop in Trastevere. Opposite an artfully positioned Vespa

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* What to do, eat & see * Best spots to rest your head * Maps included

Great Escape

Make it perfect in America’s Rocky Mountains

ROME

AMERICAN ROCKIES

Plan your trip 2

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The Eternal City through the eyes of its locals

A PUBLICATION OF

TAKING THE HIGH ROAD Wine and dine in Victoria’s High Country

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Before exploring Colorado’s Elk herds and hardy Rocky the Rockies, fuel up souls forge tracks Mountain in Boulder, a city through the snow in Wyoming’s Jackson National Park is making the most of its Hole, in the shadow of mountainside environment decked out in its winter finest, when the forest takes Grand Teton (p46). in its off-time and its on a secretive allure (p43). mealtimes (p42).

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A 2-NIGHTS STAY* AT THE LAGUNA HOLIDAY CLUB PHUKET RESORT

America’s most stirring national parks offer seasonal activities galore

WILL I BE CONVINCED? Though there are many rooms and suites to choose from, we highly recommend the Doge Dandolo Royal Suite. Covering an impressive 150sqm and with a coveted corner position on the Piano Nobile of Palazzo Dandolo, this is undoubtedly the hotel’s crown jewel. Wake up to 180-degree views of the Venice lagoon and explore the original antique furnishings, fabrics, paintings and chandeliers that brings life to the room.

◆ GREAT ESCAPE ROCKY MOUNTAINS ◆ KYOTO ◆ VICTORIA

WILL I BE CONVINCED? This iconic property is the first Relais & Chateaux resort in Sri Lanka and holds a total of five restored colonial era bungalows, coupled with gracious butler service and gourmet cuisines. Enjoy a relaxing weekend against the idyllic backdrop of mountains, lakes and waterfalls within the comfort of your private bungalow. Go on foot and enjoy the hikes and clear waters of the rivers as you kayak through them. Mountain biking through tea valleys, croquet, tennis and whitewater rafting are also available for adventurous couples.

LOCAL’S ROME

CEYLON TEA TRAILS WHAT IS THE EXOTIC EXPERIENCE? Stay within the world’s first bungalow resort perched at an altitude of 1250m atop Sri Lanka’s panoramic Ceylon tea region, which borders on the World Heritage Central Highlands. A residential tea planter will bring you on a journey of the age-old tea making process – from trekking through dense jungle to picking the best tea leaves and later on, learning the art of making a good brew of tea. Pampered with tea-infused cuisine, tea-based spa treatments and trekking trails that traverse tea-blanketed hills, you will literally lose yourself in the romantic fragrance of tea.

WHAT IS THE EXOTIC EXPERIENCE? Fans of Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp might be thrilled to know that the A-listers have filmed in this very establishment for The Tourist, a romantic thriller. Part of The Luxury Collection, Hotel Danieli is a patrimony of Venetian excellence and dominates the Venetian lagoon as it sits steps away from the Bridge of Sighs and the famous monuments of Piazza San Marco. Be whisked away into the contemporary comforts of the hotel as you learn about its precious art and antiques that play witness to the city’s history, evident through its paintings and décor around the hotel.

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Venice, Italy

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VICTORIA

CITY AT A GLANCE

VOLUME 7 ISSUE 3

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LOCAL ROME

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MCI (P) 116/09/2015, PPS 1747/12/2012(022909)

TRAVEL MADE EASY

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Great Escape

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M O U N T A I N S

Winter has an awesome beauty in the American Rockies: explore a small but star-studded stretch in Colorado and Wyoming, starting with a capital of craft beer, before heading into the mountains for snowshoe hikes, wildlife-rich national parks and the planet’s most spectacular geysers

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Short breaks you can book now

@RGouldingTravel l PHOTOGRAPHS PETE SEAWARD

A view towards 4,011-metre-high Taylor Peak, one of the points along the Continental Divide of the Americas, inside Colorado’s snowbound Rocky Mountain National Park

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