New Scientist - December 14 2013 UK
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Transcript of New Scientist - December 14 2013 UK
SICK SOCIETYDiseases of poverty haunt world’s richest country
THE HIDDEN LAW OF CITIESFour rules that define our urban spaces
EARTH’S WEAK SPOTHit it in the wrong place and all hell breaks loose
ULTIMATE SELFIE Mission to snap the Milky Way
ALCHEMISTS AHOYThe quest to turn seawater into gold
WEEKLY December 14 - 20, 2013
Science and technology news www.newscientist.com
US jobs in science
No2947 US$5.95 CAN$5.95
Rediscovering the secrets of killing bugs without drugs
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Veena Sahajwalla’s win in 2012’s The Australian Innovation Challenge is a perfect example of innovative energy thinking. Veena’s insight was to treat discarded plastics and tyres not as refuse, but as a resource. Recycling this waste as part of the steel-making process has not only reduced landfi ll, but also substantially lowered the amount of energy consumed. Which, in turn, saves a signifi cant amount of power and thus helps reduce CO emissions. Following its implementation at steel plants in Melbourne and Sydney, Veena’s brilliant thinking has already diverted more than 1.6 million tyres from landfi ll. That’s why Shell is proud to have sponsored The Australian Innovation Challenge for three years in a row. Let’s broaden the world’s energy mix. www.youtube.com/shellletsgo
LET’S POWER CHANGE WITH NEW THINKING.
14 December 2013 | NewScientist | 3
CONTENTS Volume 220 No 2947This issue online newscientist.com/issue/2947
News6 UPFRONT Saharan wildlife on the brink. Relapse in
men “cured” of HIV. Cost of healthy eating8 THIS WEEK
Youthful surface helps hunt for Martians. 24 hour gut makeover. Why Japanese megaquake was audible from space. Deep-Earth network of bacterial super-invaders. Bad brain connections result in dyslexia. Spare parts for damaged brains. Big bang afterglow could have warmed aliens
17 IN BRIEF Mojito mosquito defence. War paint reveals
chameleon toughness. Waltzing black holes
Coming next week…Bumper holiday specialReindeer to the rescue, body cheese, the gallant ant, shoestring physics, and much more
PLUS: Get ahead in 2014Your essential guide to the near future
Cover image Alex Kent
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42
Tropical disease of AmericaMillions of US citizens
have diseases few
have even heard of
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Forgotten antibioticsRediscovering the
secrets of killing bugs
without drugs
Earth’s weak spotsHit it in the wrong
place and all hell
breaks loose
Technology21 Death of the password. Gaming to beat
hackers. Control a spermbot. Radio blast stops cars. Drag and drop with your eyes
News
On the cover
Features
8 Sick society Diseases of poverty haunt richest country
30 The hidden law of cities Four rules that define our urban spaces
47 Alchemists ahoy Turning seawater to gold
42 Earth’s weak spots Hit them and unleash hell
38 Ultimate selfie Snapping the Milky Way
Opinion28 The science of porn Mark Limmer and
Miranda Horvath on what we need to know 29 One minute with… Ian Dunlop The mining
boss who wants to close down coal for good30 Urban truths Luís Bettencourt explains the
hidden laws that govern our cities 32 LETTERS Beyond evolution. Death row
Features34 Forgotten antibiotics (see above left)38 Ultimate selfie Mission to snap the
Milky Way42 Earth’s weak spots (see left)47 Alchemists ahoy The quest to
turn seawater to gold
CultureLab50 Chaos to complexity We need a paradigm
shift if aid is to save lives in the 21st century 52 Bug brains The human response to insects
Regulars5 EDITORIAL A hidden epidemic is helping to
perpetuate poverty in the rich West32 ENIGMA56 FEEDBACK Quantum-leap workshops57 THE LAST WORD Crystal crisis54 JOBS & CAREERS
Aperture26 Monster wind tunnel that tests jet engines
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14 December 2013 | NewScientist | 5
A cure for inequality
EDITORIAL
A hidden epidemic is helping to perpetuate poverty in the rich West
Mars cash dash up in the air
“A dozen chronic parasitic diseases that plague the tropical poor also plague people in the US”
Can we be adult about this?
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6 | NewScientist | 14 December 2013
Mars TV gets robot Healthy diet costs
–Lost to the Sahara–
Sahara mammals decline THE Sahara desert is looking ever
more like its nickname, the sea of
sands, as its native wildlife
populations decline catastrophically.
Of the 14 species of large animal
historically found in the region,
half are now extinct in the wild or
confined to just 1 per cent of their
normal range, says a report by the
Wildlife Conservation Society and the
Zoological Society of London. These
include the scimitar-horned oryx
(pictured), categorised as extinct
in the wild, and the addax, of which
there are thought to be just 200 left
in the world. Leopards and Saharan
cheetahs are also among those
species most at risk (Diversity and
Distribution, doi.org/qfk).
The troubled politics of the region
makes it difficult to study wildlife, so
conservationists are still uncertain
about the cause of the decline, but
hunting is partly to blame. “Hunting
is widespread across the region, and
almost certainly has played a key role
in the declines of antelope and
ostrich. But habitat degradation and
increasing desertification may also
play a role,” says the study’s lead
author, Sara Durant. A recent rise in
mining activities and oil extraction is
likely to have led to increased access
to the more remote regions of the
desert, which could also contribute
to overhunting and unsustainable
use of natural resources, Durant says.
Some countries are taking steps to
remedy the situation. Niger has just
established the Termit and Tin
Toumma National Nature Reserve,
which shelters the remaining addax.
“Mars One says it will send the first privately funded lander and orbiter to the Red Planet in 2018”
AMONG the tributes to Nelson
Mandela this week were those
extolling his role in galvanising
the global effort against HIV.
“His actions helped save millions
of lives and transformed health in
Africa,” said Michel Sidibé of UN
agency UNAIDS.
Mandela, who died on
5 December, gave speeches at AIDS
conferences in Durban, South Africa,
in 2000 and Bangkok, Thailand,
in 2004.
Mandela’s HIV legacyIR
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His address in 2000 is credited
with catalysing a scale-up in the
supply of antiretroviral therapies
to people in Africa with HIV,
especially pregnant women.
“Every word uttered, every gesture
made, has to be measured against
the effect it can and will have on
the lives of millions,” Mandela
told the conference. “Mandela
had the power to change hearts
and minds,” said Bertrand Audoin
of the International AIDS Society.
UPFRONT
14 December 2013 | NewScientist | 7
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Record-breaking chillsTrek along the ridge between
Dome Fuji and Dome Argus on the
East Antarctic ice sheet and you’ll
find the coldest place ever recorded
on Earth. The record was set on
10 August 2010, when the surface
temperature of a pocket of snow on
the ridge plummeted to −93.2 °C, the
American Geophysical Union meeting
in San Francisco heard this week.
Viagra pain reliefRelief from menstrual pain could
come from an unusual source. A
small study of 25 women shows that
vaginally applying sildenafil citrate,
sold as Viagra, seems to reduce
menstrual pain without any side
effects, although how it subdues the
pain remains a mystery (Human
Reproduction, doi.org/qff).
Space rock re-emergesA rare meteorite that might contain
parts older than the solar system has
been rediscovered by an amateur
astronomer in the Netherlands. The
rock was found in 1873, but ended
up in a private collection. The
5-centimetre-wide stone is made of
a rare carbonaceous chondrite.
Similar rocks have contained dust
particles predating the solar system.
Lunar blueprintMoon Express has revealed the
design of its MX-1 spacecraft, which
it hopes to land on the moon in 2015
in an effort to win the Google Lunar
X Prize. The California-based firm
says the coffee-table-sized craft
could also be used in Earth orbit to
service satellites or clean up debris.
Sauron-friendly climateThere’s no dark tower, and the
hordes of orcs have been replaced by
hipsters, but otherwise Los Angeles
is Mordor. Or at least its climate is,
according to a climatologist who has
simulated the prevailing conditions
of J. R. R. Tolkien’s fictional land of
Middle Earth. Conditions in the rest
of Middle Earth are similar to
Western Europe and north Africa.
–Catching shrimp is so last year–
Shrimp collapse
HIV cure fails to last
“Acid is the main risk – the sludge has a pH of 1, which can damage ecosystems if it gets into waterways”
“What is unusual is a decline in shrimp of all sizes, suggesting an upsurge in predation or disease”
60 SECONDS
–Tributes poured in–
For daily news stories, visit newscientist.com/news
8 | NewScientist | 14 December 2013
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Millions of US citizens have diseases most doctors there have barely heard of, says Debora MacKenzie
AMERICA’S HIDDEN EPIDEMIC
Above: “Kissing
bug” that spreads
Chagas disease
Right: Toxocara
canis roundworm
that can cause
epilepsy
SPECIAL REPORT / TROPICAL DISEASES
14 December 2013 | NewScientist | 9
“They’re called ‘neglected tropical diseases’, but the reality is this is about poverty”
Although poverty is mainly to blame
for the spread of neglected tropical
diseases (NTDs), climate change is
exacerbating the problem. Many
NTDs are spread by parasites that
like warm weather.
The WHO warned last month that
warming will spread mosquitoes,
putting an extra 2 billion people at
risk of dengue fever by 2080. The
snails that carry schistosomiasis
are also projected to invade new
territory, as are the sandflies that
carry leishmaniasis in Europe
and the Americas.
Extreme weather events also
spread disease. There were more
“kissing bugs” and vermin that can
carry Chagas disease in Louisiana
after hurricane Katrina in 2005,
for example.
But climate’s biggest impact on
NTDs could simply be increased
poverty, as changes puts pressure
on crops, water sources and
economic systems that people
depend on for their food and
livelihood. High temperatures
cut yields of staples such as wheat,
for instance, and malnutrition also
favours disease.
“Poverty is the most serious
obstacle to effective adaptation [to
warming]”, the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change wrote in
2007. And the process feeds back
on itself: failure to adapt in turn
means increased poverty, and the
diseases that come with it.
A CLIMATE OF DISEASE
UNDER THE RADAR
Diseases commonly associated with
tropical climates and impoverished
countries are hurting the US too. There
is inadequate research to provide confident
numbers, but the best estimates suggest
that millions of US citizens are affected
PARASITIC WORMS
Toxocariasis 1.3-2.8 million cases
Strongyloidiasis 68,000–100,000
Ascariasis 4 million
Cysticercosis 41,000–169,000
Schistosomiasis 8,000
PROTOZOAN PARASITES
Chagas disease 330,000
Toxoplasmosis 1.1 million
Trichomoniasis 7.4 million
VIRUS
Dengue fever 110,000-200,000
(acute cases annually)
In this section Youthful surface helps hunt for Martians, page 10
Spare parts for damaged brains, page 14
Death of the password, page 21
10 | NewScientist | 14 December 2013
Lisa Grossman, San Francisco
–Like a spring chicken–
Mars’s youthful skin helps hunt for life
NA
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Dark streaks that grow in summer on
sun-scorched slopes suggest there is
water in the Martian tropics, once
assumed dry. If so, it could be harder
to protect them from contamination
by earthly life forms, a finding that
could shape future exploration.
Hints of moisture south of Mars’s
equator came in 2011, when orbital
images showed dark spots in late
spring and summer, fading in winter.
The best explanation was that
ice under the surface was melting
into water that seeped up and
evaporated.
The latest pictures from NASA’s
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter double
the number of southern sites with
streaks and add some near the
equator. These also appear on sunny
slopes and then vanish (Nature
Geoscience, doi.org/qfp). Water
wasn’t expected in the tropics, which
are hot enough to vaporise even
buried ice, but Alfred McEwen at the
University of Arizona in Tucson, who
led the research, is sure that’s what
it is. “As something that wets and
dries again, water is a very attractive
explanation.”
Spacecraft headed to Mars are
sterilised before launch, but there is
still a risk of contamination. A 2008
report concluded that tropical Mars is
too dry for terrestrial life to survive
there, making it a relatively safe
choice of landing zone. The latest
results could change that. Jeff Hecht
UNEXPECTED WATER IN THE TROPICS
“ This is the first time we have ever measured the age of rocks on another planet”
14 December 2013 | NewScientist | 11
For daily news stories, visit newscientist.com/news
Linda Geddes
Dietary change sparks rapid gut bug revolution
Why Japan megaquake was heard in spaceIT WAS literally a slide towards
disaster. An ultra-thin fault zone
packed with slippery clay was behind
the massive seismic slip during the
devastating Tohoku earthquake of
2011 in Japan. The quake was so
great that it changed the region’s
gravitational field and was “heard”
from space.
To find out how such a large slip –
greater than 50 metres in places –
happened, seismologists on board
Japan’s deep-sea research vessel
Chikyu drilled boreholes nearly
850 metres deep into the seabed
around the plate boundary that
ruptured in 2011.
This revealed significant amounts
of smectite, a slippery clay largely
responsible for many major
landslides in Europe. The researchers
also found that the fault zone was
less than 5 metres thick, tens of times
thinner than at other subduction
zones, facilitating the slip (Science,
doi.org/qdn).
“This will continue to help us
explain the mechanism of
earthquakes,” says Robert Geller of
the University of Tokyo, who was not
part of the study. “But I don’t think it
[will] help us to say when or where
the next one will occur.”
The Tohoku slip generated
infrasound waves that rose more
than 200 kilometres through the
atmosphere, nudging the orbit of
the European Space Agency’s GOCE
satellite (Geophysical Research
Letters, doi.org/qb8). The probe
measures small regional variations
in Earth’s gravity, which changes
with the terrain and density of the
crust beneath.
Measurements made before and
after the quake show subtle changes
in the local gravity field, the
European Space Agency said last
week. The Tohoku event joins the
2004 Sumatra-Andaman quake and
the 2010 quake off the coast of Chile
on a list of gravity-deforming
ruptures. Rob Gilhooly
“ The seismic slip generated infrasound waves that rose more than 200 kilometres through the atmosphere”
–Recipe for a microbe coup–
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12 | NewScientist | 14 December 2013
Catherine Brahic
Deep Earth zombie bugs went global
Dyslexia’s roots traced to bad chat in the brainTHE neural basis of dyslexia may
finally have been nailed. It seems
that different areas of the brain’s
language network don’t communicate
properly. The discovery may lead to
ways of helping people with dyslexia
improve reading and writing skills.
One theory proposes that people
with dyslexia have subtle hearing
problems, particularly involving
timing of speech, which in turn leads
to the brain’s neural representation
of phonemes – the basic units of
speech sounds – developing poorly.
The trouble with this idea, says
Sophie Scott at University College
London, is that people with dyslexia
have no problem understanding
speech.
To investigate, Scott and her
colleagues scanned the brains
of 23 adults with dyslexia and
22 without. In all the participants,
patterns of nerve activity in the
auditory cortex, which processes
incoming sound, were equally
reliable in their response to different
speech sounds. This suggests that
the brain represents sounds equally
well, whether or not a person has
dyslexia.
Another possibility is that other
parts of the brain’s language network
may have trouble accessing those
sound representations. To test this,
the team explored connections
between 13 brain regions involved in
language processing. They looked at
how similar activity was across these
regions and the structure of the
actual nerves that connect them. In
people with dyslexia, both types of
test revealed faulty connections,
and therefore bad communication,
between the brain region that
contains the auditory cortex and
the area involved in language
processing and speech production.
The poorer the connectivity
between these regions, the worse
participants performed on reading
and other phonological tasks
(Science, doi.org/qcw).
The team suggest that non-
invasive brain stimulation techniques
might be able to restore the faulty
connections. Simon Makin
Deep Earth communityTeams drilling deep into Earth’s crust at different sites keep finding the same bits
of microbial DNA everywhere they look. Nobody knows how the microbes got there
SOURCE: CENSUS OF DEEP LIFE
“The study points to using brain stimulation to target faulty connections to improve reading”
–Microbes down below–
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THIS WEEK
14 | NewScientist | 14 December 2013
Life could have emerged in the big bang’s glow ANCIENT life could have basked in
the big bang’s afterglow.
Astronomers hunting for signs of
alien life today look for planets within
the habitable zone of stars – the
region around a star that is warm
enough for liquid water to exist on a
planet’s surface. Worlds beyond this
zone, in the deep freeze of space,
should be inhospitable for life.
But space wasn’t always so frigid,
points out Abraham Loeb of Harvard
University. The very early universe
was filled with superhot gas, or
plasma, that gradually cooled and
condensed to form stars and galaxies.
Loeb calculates that about 15 million
years after the big bang, the whole
universe would have been warm
enough to be one large habitable
zone. This life-friendly epoch would
have lasted a few million years,
enough time for microbes to emerge
but not multicellular life, he suggests.
A thornier issue is whether any
planets could have formed so early in
the universe’s history, along with the
complex molecules necessary for life.
When the hot plasma cooled, it
initially produced only hydrogen and
helium atoms. Heavier stuff had to be
cooked up inside the nuclear forges
of stars, then expelled when those
stars exploded.
Standard cosmology says that in
most parts of the universe, the
amounts of heavy elements needed
to make planets didn’t appear until
hundreds of millions of years after
the big bang. But our current
understanding of the early
distribution of matter is incomplete,
says Loeb. If some regions were
much denser than average, it is
possible stars and planets formed
there earlier – perhaps in time to
coincide with the cosmos being at
the right heat.
Such physical conditions might
have existed, but microbes would
also have needed enough time
to evolve, says Jack O’Malley-James at
the University of St Andrews, UK, and
the earliest stars would have been
very massive, with short life spans
of only a few million years or so.
“These systems would have to have
been very calm and stable from a
very early stage to give life a good
chance of gaining a foothold,” he says.
Jacob Aron
“A life-friendly epoch could have lasted for a few million years, long enough for microbes to emerge”
First steps to lab-grown brain tissue
C.J.
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–Brain cells: set to be spare parts–
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14 December 2013 | NewScientist | 17
Warming favours deep-voiced bats
Check out my paint job before you take me on
FOR chameleons, war paint isn’t just an accessory, it is a
battle flag. The brightness of the colours these lizards
display and how rapidly they change are good indicators
of which animal will win in a fight.
Chameleons are famous for changing colour to hide from
predators by blending into their surroundings, but they
also use colour for social communication. To see how this
applies to combat, Russell Ligon, a behavioural ecologist
at Arizona State University in Tempe, pitted 10 adult male
veiled chameleons, one of the most diversely coloured
species, against each other. He used a high-speed camera
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Mozzie mojito could offer cheap defence
to capture the colour changes from 28 points on each
animal, taking into account how the colours would look
to a chameleon’s eye – they can see in ultraviolet.
Males with the brightest side stripes were more likely
to instigate a fight, whereas those with brighter heads
that changed colour most rapidly were more likely to win.
This suggests that different colours and patterns may
signal different aspects of competitive behaviour – how
motivated the chameleon is versus its strength (Biology
Letters, DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2013.0892).
Early in an aggressive interaction, signalling a
willingness to fight by showing bright side stripes could
stop a less motivated lizard from approaching, says Ligon.
If both want to continue, however, the last chance to size
up an adversary would be to look at the pattern on its head.
Suntan harnessed for edible battery
18 | NewScientist | 14 December 2013
Comet to deliver Mars meteor storm
Brain zap gives you desire to triumph over adversity
BLACK holes really know how to
shake up a dance floor. A pair of the
massive objects at the centre of a
bright galaxy are spinning so closely
that they are creating fluttering
ribbons of matter. The sight has
astronomers riveted and it could
mean we are close to witnessing a
black hole merger.
Thomas Jarrett at the University of
Cape Town in South Africa and his
colleagues found the galactic waltz in
images from a NASA telescope. As it
feeds, the supermassive black hole at
the distant galaxy’s centre emits jets
of matter from its poles. But while
one jet shoots straight outwards as
expected, the other is curved into
an unusual spiral. Smaller structures
also jut out from the galaxy at
odd angles.
Jarrett thinks a second black hole
in a close orbit is pulling on the jet
and making it jiggle. The team
estimates that the objects are about
100 trillion kilometres apart – a hair’s
breadth in galactic terms, which
means the dance could soon end
with a powerful merger (The
Astrophysical Journal, doi.org/qcv).
Waltzing black holes near grand finale
NA
SA
Cuttlefish never forget a meal
IF YOU struggle to recall where you
left the keys, knowing that a mollusc
would have no such trouble may be
something you would like to forget.
A form of episodic memory – the
ability to recall when and where a
particular experience happened –
has been discovered in the common
cuttlefish, the first time such skills
have been seen in an invertebrate.
Cuttlefish spend most of their
time hiding from predators, only
nipping into the open briefly to look
for food. So, Christelle Jozet-Alves
at the University of Caen Lower
Normandy in France wondered
whether episodic memory might
help them maximise their foraging.
Her team trained cuttlefish to
associate a visual cue with either
a shrimp or crab snack. Next,
they delayed when the food was
delivered after the cue. Crab was
available in one location 3 hours
after, whereas shrimp was available
in another spot every hour. At first,
the cuttlefish returned to both
locations every hour but, after
about 11 trials, they began to
sync their visits with the delivery
times, suggesting that they had
remembered the pattern.
The rapid change implies that
cuttlefish are able to keep track of
what they have eaten, where, and
how long ago – something akin to
episodic memory, says Jozet-Alves
(Current Biology, doi.org/qdq).
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IN BRIEF For new stories every day, visit newscientist.com/news
www.newscientistjobs.com
Print Online Mobile
14 December 2013 | NewScientist | 21
For more technology stories, visit newscientist.com/technologyTECHNOLOGY
Hal Hodson
Death of the passwordCan’t remember your login? Not to worry – hardware keys could soon replace those vital bits of gibberish
>
My father and I both had our
passwords stolen in the recent
security breach at Adobe that saw
hackers make off with tens of
millions of account details. According
to online security site Lastpass, my
father’s password was common
enough that 97 other people in the
breach had the same one.
Major security breaches are one
of the main ways for hackers to gain
access to other people’s accounts. If
your email address shows up on sites
like haveibeenpwned.com, then it’s
a good idea to reset your passwords.
Good password “hygiene” is vital:
don’t reuse passwords on different
sites, especially for services like
banking, and ensure your passwords
are long and unguessable.
–Unlocking a safer digital future–
K-P
HO
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“ The distinctive physical properties of an individual object could form the basis of an unclonable key”
When me and my dad were hacked
22 | NewScientist | 14 December 2013
TECHNOLOGY
<
How do you control a spermbot? Stick its head in a tubeTAKE bull sperm, mix in some
nanotubes, and what do you get?
Why the very first spermbot, of
course. Eventually, these biobots
could be used to shepherd individual
sperm to eggs or to deliver targeted
doses of drugs.
Oliver Schmidt and colleagues
at the Institute for Integrative
Nanosciences in Dresden, Germany,
combined individual sperm cells with
tiny magnetic metal tubes to create
the first sperm-based biobots (watch
the video at bit.ly/spermbot).
It is far from easy to control a single
cell that propels itself through fluid
with its whip-like flagellum. Until
now researchers had only managed
to persuade groups of cells to
cooperate, with the help of chemical
gradients and magnetic fields. For
example, a group of bacteria were
used to push a tiny bead along.
To create the spermbots, the team
made microtubes 50 microns long,
by 5 to 8 microns in diameter from
iron and titanium nanoparticles.
They added the tubes to a fluid
containing thawed bull sperm.
Because one end of each tube was
slightly narrower than the other,
sperm that swam into the wider end
become trapped, headfirst, with their
flagella still free.
To control the orientation of the
microtubes, the team used external
magnetic fields. It works much as a
compass needle aligns with Earth’s
magnetic field. This enabled the team
Cat Ferguson
Play games for The Man Five video games get players looking for holes in military software
VE
RIG
AM
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–Study the runes in Storm Bound–
For more technology stories, visit newscientist.com/technology
14 December 2013 | NewScientist | 23
ONE PER CENT
DIM
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You will remember ‘me’It can be hard to stand out in the crowd on the web. To boost
the memorability of faces online, Aditya Khosla at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology has designed
software that tweaks photos. His team gave a memory test
to online volunteers to identify memorable faces . They then
tweaked photos, changing the face or eye shape slightly, for
example, to make them look more like the memorable faces.
The changes resulted in a 10 per cent jump in memorability.
Khosla presented the technique at a computer vision
conference in Sydney, Australia, last week.
“The balance in many countries has tipped too far in favor of the state and away from the rights of the individual”An open letter in all major US newspapers signed by leading
tech firms, including Apple, Facebook and Google, calls for the
US government to reform how it carries out surveillance
Attack of the zombie dronesThe zombies are coming. A hacker has shown how easy it is
to use one drone to hijack another, allowing someone else
to take control of its flight. The SkyJack software written
by Samy Kamkar sniffs out a drone’s Wi-Fi control signal,
which is usually unencrypted. It then severs that wireless
connection and establishes itself as the controller – allowing
the drone’s flyer to make the other drone do their bidding.
Kamkar has made the code available for anyone to download.
See through animal eyesWant to know how your cat or dog sees the world? Now you
can look through their eyes in the first 3D game to accurately
recreate the vision of different species. The simulation from
3D design company Dassault Systèmes, based near Paris,
mimics the vision of five animals – cats, dogs, rats, hawks
and bees. Players can steer them through the city’s Place
Vendôme. Watch the video at bit.ly/animalvision.
to control the direction in which the
sperm swam (Advanced Materials,
doi.org/f2n46m ).
Schmidt says that sperm cells are
an attractive option because they
are harmless to the human body, do
not require an external power source,
and can swim through viscous liquids.
“This type of hybrid approach could
lead the way in making efficient
robotic micro-systems,” says Eric Diller
at the University of Toronto, Canada,
although it is hard to get micro-robots
to swim as fast as biological cells.
MacGregor Campbell
“The game developers managed to entirely hide the tedious aspects of testing behind fun games”
–One direction?–
SC
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TECHNOLOGY
24 | NewScientist | 14 December 2013
IMAGINE you could disable a car
remotely just by pressing a button. It’s
not a distant dream: devices that use
radio waves to disrupt the control
computers of modern cars are already
in the pipeline. Police will be able to
use them to halt suspect vehicles in
their tracks.
At the request of police in France,
Spain and Germany, a European
Commission-funded consortium is
developing such a device. Meanwhile,
electronics firm E2V of Chelmsford, UK,
is developing a similar system for
both the police and the military, and
successfully tested its technology
last week.
Europe has given €4.3 million to
the SAVELEC (Safe Control of
Noncooperative Vehicles Through
Electromagnetic Means) project. As
part of this, engineers at the German
Aerospace Center DLR in Stuttgart
have pored over automotive Engine
Control Units (ECUs) to identify
vulnerabilities in microchips that can
be exploited using radio signals. The
electronics and portable antennas that
will transmit those signals are being
designed at IMST, a German radio
antenna research lab in Kamp-Lintfort.
At MBDA, the French missile maker
based near Paris, staff are running
simulations with large groups of
volunteers drivers to gauge how they
react when cars cut out at speed.
“We want to be able to stop the
really powerful cars that we cannot
stop with the tools police forces have
today,” says Cécile Macé, a systems
engineer at MBDA. “Really fast cars on
the motorway are hard to stop in a safe
way,” she notes. Police in Dallas, Texas,
for instance, last year stopped using
stingers –strips of tyre-shredding
spikes – after five officers were
killed attempting to deploy them.
The new devices work not by
frying a car’s electronics as military
electromagnetic pulse weapons do,
but by temporarily disabling them. “We
want to disturb the car’s electronics so
we can stop it, but we don’t want to
break the car and leave it stuck on the
motorway. And we don’t want to harm
the occupants, nearby pedestrians or
the police with the beam either,” says
Macé. Drivers should not feel the
beam – but they might hear something.
“This is known as the Frey microwave
hearing effect and consists of audible
clicks… just a pop in the ear,” she says.
The SAVELEC consortium has yet to
test its system, but the aim is to have
a prototype ready by 2016. For now,
it is releasing few details in order to
prevent people from developing
countermeasures – or their own version.
But the system is likely to be much
smaller than the one E2V is working on.
Named RF Safe-Stop, E2V’s device
uses a 350-kilogram transmitter
mounted on an SUV and a horn-like
metal waveguide to beam microwave
pulses at a car or motorbike up to 60
metres away. With the vehicle’s wiring
acting as an antenna, the pulses
disable the ECU temporarily by
constantly forcing it to reset itself.
That stops the vehicle. E2V gave a
proof-of-principle demonstration
at Throckmorton airfield in
Worcestershire, UK, last week.
Both teams need to be wary of
unintended consequences, says Jay
Abbott of Advanced Security Consulting
in Peterborough, UK, warning that the
technology might also affect steering
and brake systems. “Disrupting all of
them at once could potentially leave
a car travelling at speed as a dead
weight, with limited control over its
direction and braking.” Paul Marks
Speed gun with a twistFiring radio pulses at cars can stop them by scrambling their computers
GE
TT
Y IM
AG
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“ We want to disturb the car’s electronics so we can stop it, but not leave it stuck on the motorway”
INSIGHT Policing technologies
BORED of using a mouse? Soon
you’ll be able to change stuff
on your computer screen – and
then move it directly onto your
smartphone or tablet – with
nothing more than a glance.
A system called EyeDrop uses
a head-mounted eye tracker that
simultaneously records your field
of view, so it knows where you are
looking on the screen. Gazing at
an object – a photo, say – and then
pressing a key selects that object.
It can then be moved from the
screen to a tablet or smartphone
just by glancing at the second
device, as long as the two have
a wireless connection.
“The beauty of using gaze
to support this is that our eyes
naturally focus on content that
we want to acquire,” says Jayson
Turner, who developed the system
with colleagues at Lancaster
University in the UK.
Turner believes EyeDrop would
be useful for sharing photos or, say,
transferring an interactive map or
contact information from a public
display to your smartphone. He says
he has also looked at how content
can be cut and pasted or drag-and-
dropped using a mix of gaze and
taps on a touchscreen.
The system was presented at
the Conference on Mobile and
Ubiquitous Multimedia in Luleå,
Sweden, last week. Niall Firth
Drag and drop files with just a glance
CA
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–No more quick getaways–
www.newscientistjobs.com
26 | NewScientist |26 | NewScientist | 14 December 2013
APERTURE
2714 December 2013 | NewScientist | 27
Ice station Winnipeg
TO CHECK whether jet engines can survive a bird
strike, manufacturers famously fire oven-ready
chickens into them. But it doesn’t end there:
aircraft also have to be able to cope with the
freezing conditions that can hit at any stage of a
flight. And that’s where this massive wind tunnel
in Winnipeg, Canada, comes in.
Here, General Electric’s aviation division
blows ice-laden, frigid gales through its engines
to make sure they can weather ice, hail and snow.
The 6.4-metre-wide aperture to the right of the
image contains seven high-powered fans that
blast the engine on the left with winds reaching
105 kilometres per hour. Then an array of
125 adjustable nozzles – operated from the control
station, pictured below – sprays micrometre-sized
water droplets into the gale to create the kind of
freezing ice, hail and snow cloud that planes will
habitually meet on their journeys. The outdoor
wind tunnel has been sited in Winnipeg because
the temperature there is guaranteed to be below
0 °C on at least 50 days each year.
And when it warms up? It’s back to the
oven-ready chickens. Paul Marks
Photographer Noah Kalina noahkalina.com
28 | NewScientist | 14 December 2013
OPINION
“Pornography is linked to unrealistic expectations about sex and a belief that women are sex objects”
Offensive materialsOur society is drenched in pornography. But what do we know about its true impact on young people, ask Mark Limmer and Miranda Horvath
14 December 2013 | NewScientist | 29
For more opinion articles, visit newscientist.com/opinion
ONE MINUTE INTERVIEW
You now champion a low-carbon economy.
Why do you want a seat on the board of BHP,
the world’s biggest mining company?
If I got on it, I would hope to spark a much more
extensive discussion on climate issues. We need
emergency action if we are going to stop the worst
outcomes of climate change becoming a reality.
Corporations have been waiting for government
to develop the right policies. But it has become
clear that governments are never going to provide
that leadership, so if we want to see serious
action then business is going to have to lead it.
Why should businesses take the lead?
It is in their own interest. If you look at the
science, we are headed for a world, on current
policies, where temperatures will go up by at least
4 °C by the end of the century. Business in that
world is not possible. The potential damage to
shareholder value is huge.
You got 4 per cent of the vote, far off what's
needed for a BHP board seat. Is that a failure?
The board was against my appointment, so I
needed investors to give me sufficient votes to
At the climate coalface
countermand that. A lot of them were supportive
but didn’t want to appear to lack confidence in the
existing board. But this is just the beginning. I will
try again. So no, I don’t regard it as a failure.
What should companies such as BHP do?
First, stop investments in thermal coal and then
phase it out completely. But in Australia, we are
talking of doubling coal exports in 10 to 15 years
and quadrupling oil and gas exports. It is suicidal.
How might such a change work in practice?
It is not a question of divesting these resources.
That solves nothing from an environmental point
of view. You have to leave them in the ground.
What about other types of natural resources?
Coking coal, used to make steel, is a bit different
because we will need steel to create the low-
carbon economy. Oil will still be a premium fuel
because we don’t have an alternative to transport
fuels yet, although the impact of unconventional
oil and gas needs to be better understood. Potash
is a good investment because we are going to
have a fertiliser problem. Uranium too, because
nuclear needs to be part of the energy mix.
Surely one company can’t act alone?
Somehow you have to form coalitions and that
isn't going to be an easy task. It needs to be
between the big emitters in business who have
enough resources and clout to be listened to, and
also the capability to shift things. So it has to be
the BHPs, Shells, BPs and Exxons of the world.
Why is it so hard for businesses to change?
Climate change, for both the company and most
big industries, is still what they call an ESG issue –
environmental, social and governance – which has
become a focus in the last 10 years or so. But ESG
issues are second-order priorities compared with
the top-order priority of shareholder value. And
people see shareholder value as some magical
thing independent of climate change. To me this
has always been a big mistake.
Interview by Michael Slezak
To avert a climatic and economic meltdown, mining companies must voluntarily shut many coal pits for good, says Ian Dunlop
PROFILE
Ian Dunlop, a former oil, gas and coal industry
executive and ex-chair of the Australian Coal
Association, now directs Safe Climate Australia.
Last month he ran for a seat on mining giant
BHP Billiton’s board on a climate change ticket
Mark Limmer is a lecturer in public
health at the University of Lancaster, UK.
Miranda Horvath is a reader in
forensic psychology at Middlesex
University in London.
30 | NewScientist | 14 December 2013
Cities are an ingenious solution to a central problem of being human, says Luís Bettencourt. And if you look closely enough, the hidden laws governing them are revealed
Urban truths
OPINION THE BIG IDEA
PROFILE
Luís Bettencourt is a
professor at the Santa
Fe Institute, New Mexico,
who researches the
hidden laws by which
complex systems arise
and evolve. He has a
PhD from Imperial
College London in the
statistical physics of
the early universe
Is there anything analogous to a
city in the natural world? Cities
have been compared to brains,
organisms, ecosystems and
machines, but are any of these
analogies correct or useful?
For sure, some characteristics
of cities resemble natural
structures. The vasculature of
a leaf is a bit like the layout of
roads, for example, but this
resemblance is only superficial.
Unlike in organisms, urban
infrastructure is open-ended,
so that it can adapt to
accommodate more people.
Cities are not analogous to
machines or other engineering
systems either (though parts of
cities may behave in this way in
the short term) because they
self-organise and evolve.
I can only think of one system
in nature that operates like a
city: a star. A star is a nuclear
reactor, whereas a city is a “social
reactor”. A star, like a city, forms
when there is an implosion of
interacting elements impelled
by their attractive interactions.
And as they get bigger, both
become denser and “shine
brighter”. But cities are much
more complex than stars in the
information they produce and
their ability to evolve.
THE CITY AND THE STARS
For more opinion articles, visit newscientist.com/opinion
14 December 2013 | NewScientist | 31
DA
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“ After 10 years of obsessing over these questions, I had a series of epiphanies ”
This vision of Shanghai in 2020 obeys the same
basic rules as the first cities, 10,000 years ago
32 | NewScientist | 14 December 2013
Footprint size
Dead space
Feeling the heat
Beyond evolution
Must do better
Death row
Enigma Number 1779
OPINION LETTERS
WIN £15 will be awarded to the sender of the first correct
answer opened on Wednesday 15 January. The Editor’s decision is final.
Please send entries to Enigma 1779, New Scientist, Lacon House,
84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS, or to [email protected]
(please include your postal address).
Answer to 1773 Cutting corners: The other two sides of the triangle
were 7.0 and 7.5 centimetres
The winner Tony Griffin of Etobicoke, Ontario, Canada
RICHARD ENGLANDI drew four right-angled triangles. The hypotenuse of my first triangle
was also the shortest side of my second triangle; the hypotenuse of my
second triangle was also the shortest side of my third triangle; the
hypotenuse of my third triangle was also the shortest side of my fourth
triangle. The length in millimetres of each side of each triangle was an
integer less than 100.
What were the lengths of the shortest and the longest sides that I drew?
Four triangles
14 December 2013 | NewScientist | 33
Ghost in machine
Let us play
To read more letters, visit newscientist.com/letters
Letters should be sent to:
Letters to the Editor, New Scientist,
84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS
Fax: +44 (0) 20 7611 1280
Email: [email protected]
Include your full postal address and telephone number, and a reference (issue, page number, title) to articles. We reserve the right to edit letters. Reed Business Information reserves the right to use any submissions sent to the letters column of New Scientist magazine, in any other format.
For the record We fudged the role of insulin in our
story on the link between Alzheimer’s
and diabetes (30 November, p 6);
we should have said the hormone
instructs cells to absorb glucose.
Our claim that 500 tonnes of
methane per square kilometre was
bubbling up from the Arctic seabed
(30 November, p 18) was inflated: it
should have read 500 kilograms.
House of Ugh Unplug me
How many ETs?
Gas guzzler
34 | NewScientist | 14 December 2013
PL
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Two answers to the looming antibiotic crisis are all around us – in great supply and free of charge. Frank Swain reports
A BREATH OF FRESH AIR
14 December 2013 | NewScientist | 35
I
Miracle in a dish
>
COVER STORY
Light, airy hospital
rooms don’t just have
psychological benefits
36 | NewScientist | 14 December 2013
Before antibiotics,
UV light was a standard
therapy for tuberculosis
AL
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” US soldiers in the first Gulf war got more coughs and colds if they slept indoors than in tents” A
GE
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14 December 2013 | NewScientist | 37
Open-air regime
Frank Swain is a freelance science writer and editor
of Medium’s Futures Exchange. You can follow him on
Twitter @Sciencepunk
Sterilising raysUltraviolet light of the right wavelength can kill
bacteria while leaving human cells unharmed
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700
Wavelength (nm)
UV VISIBLE
207nm UV light
HUMAN CELL
Nucleus
BACTERIA
UV light with a wavelength of 207nm can attack cells because it is absorbed by protein molecules
Human cells are large enough that this UV light only penetrates the surface. Bacteria, on the other hand, are small and so are killed
Throwing open a few windows
might be healthier than relying
on ubiquitous air-conditioning
TOP theCHARTS
of
38 | NewScientist | 14 December 2013
We’re about to get the most stunningly detailed map yet of our cosmic neighbourhood, says Stuart Clark
14 December 2013 | NewScientist | 39
>
I
129BC Hipparchus measuredthe positions of 850 stars with the naked eye
1598 Tycho Brahe mapped 1004 stars with the naked eye
1801 Using a telescope, Jérôme Lalande catalogued 47,390 stars including some 8 timesas dim as the nakedeye can see
2000 Hipparcos space telescope published data from 2,500,000 stars 64 times as dim as the naked eye can see
Star charts have grown ever more detailed over the ages as technology has improved
= 1000 stars
= 50,000 stars
2020 Gaia space telescopewill publish catalogue of 1,000,000,000 stars,(see left) including those 400,000 times as faint asthe naked eye can see.Only half are represented here
40 | NewScientist | 14 December 2013
Celestial selfie
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By keeping itself cool with a sun
shade, Gaia can spot faint objects
” The accuracy of Gaia’s camera would allow it to pinpoint a flea on the moon”
14 December 2013 | NewScientist | 41
ES
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Stuart Clark is a consultant for New Scientist and the
author of The Sky’s Dark Labyrinth (Polygon). Follow
him on Twitter @DrStuClark
Astronomers estimate that Gaia will
discover about 2000 planets around
other stars. The spacecraft will not be
able to see those planets directly
because they are too small and dim.
Instead, it will infer their presence by the
effect they have on their central stars.
As the gravity of a mighty star pulls
on a planet, the puny planet tugs back,
causing the star to perform a small
pirouette. Gaia will be able to measure
these motions for stars within about
500 light years of Earth. Its haul of
planets should span everything from
Earth-size rocky worlds to gas giants
like Jupiter and Saturn.
These planets aren’t much bigger
than the exoplanets discovered by
NASA’s Kepler mission. But Gaia will
search “nearby” stars across the entire
sky, rather than distant stars in a tiny
patch of the galaxy as Kepler has done.
With astronomers currently planning
missions to analyse the atmospheres of
nearby planets, the resulting catalogue
will be invaluable.
WOBBLY WORLDS
” The ability to track stars’ movements could help us identify the ones born in the sun’s litter”
Gaia will chart
1 per cent of the Milky
Way’s hundreds of
billions of stars
14 December 2013 | NewScientist | 43
MIR
A R
UID
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Mass extinctions have regularly devastated life on Earth – but have we been missing a crucial ingredient in explaining them, asks Colin Barras
E
Impact science
>
44 | NewScientist | 14 December 2013
Wrong numbers
SE
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Henrik Svensen at the University of Oslo,
Norway, has long argued that location is
crucial to grasping the consequences of
events like asteroid impacts (New Scientist,
8 December 2007, p 42). About 214 million
years ago a massive space rock hit north-east
Canada, forming the 100-kilometre-wide
Manicouagan crater. Yet it seems to have had
little effect on the global ecosystem. What
are we to make of that?
Svensen’s hunch is that the Manicouagan
asteroid hit inert, hard crystalline rock rather
than sediments stuffed full of climate-
changing gases that were subsequently
released, as has been suggested happened
before the end-Permian extinction 252 million
years ago (see main story). “This may explain
why sometimes impacts trigger global
disasters and sometimes they just trigger
local effects but no mass extinction,” he says.
In fact, he goes so far as to suggest that
a similar “fracking” process could have been
the X-factor that turned the Chicxulub
asteroid into a dinosaur killer. Most
geologists think the size of this asteroid
alone explains its lethal effect, but Svensen
points out that the rock struck a thick
sequence of sediments, rich in salty deposits
called evaporites. As a rule, evaporites
contain a lot of sulphur that can escape into
the atmosphere, causing extensive acid rain.
“This might help explain why that extinction
was so big,” says Svensen (see diagram, right).
If there is any truth to such ideas, that
means that there are especially vulnerable
spots on Earth today. We might particularly
wish an incoming asteroid to avoid a place
like the Williston Basin, which straddles
Montana, the Dakotas and Saskatchewan
in North America, for instance – a major
site for present-day human fracking
activities. “They could be vulnerable,” says
Eric Tohver at the University of Western
Australia in Perth.
Peter Ward at the University of Washington
in Seattle is sniffy. “An impact is an impact,”
he says. No matter where it hits, it’s going to
throw up so much stuff into the atmosphere
that you would get several years without
a summer.” He thinks the Manicouagan
impact – and indeed Brazil’s Araguainha
impact – failed to make a global impression
simply because they were too small. Large
though the Manicouagan crater is, it would fit
into Chicxulub three times over. “It seems to
me that there is an impact threshold,” he says.
According to this view, impacts have to be
exceptionally large, like Chicxulub, to trigger
a mass extinction – but it doesn’t matter
where on Earth they fall. It’s pretty safe to
say we wouldn’t be entirely happy following
a large impact anywhere on the planet.
Flood basalts in Siberia are evidence of a convulsive
bout of volcanism some 250 million years ago
14 December 2013 | NewScientist | 45
Small impact, big impact
>90% MASS EXTINCTION 75% MASS EXTINCTION NO EXTINCTION
ARAGUAINHA, BRAZIL (255 million years ago)
METMMMETMETHANHANHANA EEE SULSULPHUPHURREARTH TREMORSEARTH TREMORS EARTH TREMORS
SHALE ROCK
WARMING
EVAPORITES STABLE ROCK BED
CHICXULUB, MEXICO (65 million years ago) MANICOUAGAN, CANADA (214 million years ago)
40km 180km 100km
ACID RAIN
” What lay at the impact site may have been the key: an extensive shallow sea and, beneath that, large deposits of methane”
46 | NewScientist | 14 December 2013
” As the pressure grew, eventually the rock blew, explosively venting ozone-destroying chemicals”
The end-Permian extinction, or Great Dying,
252 million years ago was certainly not good
news for 90 per cent of the species on Earth
(see main story) – but it may be claiming human
lives even today.
In the early 1980s, health authorities
in China became aware that cases of lung
cancer not associated with smoking were
20 times higher in parts of Yunnan province,
in the south of the country, than elsewhere.
A likely source of the problem was quickly
identified, says David Large, a geologist at the
University of Nottingham, UK: the combustion
of coal in cast-iron stoves kept inside without
adequate ventilation, releasing potentially
carcinogenic polyaromatic hydrocarbons.
The mystery was that coal was burned in
a similar way in other areas without those
effects. One possibility was that locals in
Yunnan were genetically predisposed to
lung cancer. Large and his colleagues have
a different idea.
“No one has thought to ask if the coal itself
was different – and it is,” he says. His team
has found tiny, sharp grains of silica, recently
identified as a possible carcinogen, in the fuel.
Large thinks he knows how it got there. The
coal dates to the very latest stages of the
Permian, and would still have been peat during
the end-Permian mass extinction. During the
formation of the vast Siberian volcanic region
around this time, gases released into the
atmosphere made rainwater more acidic,
dissolving surface rocks and leaving the
groundwater unusually rich in silica – silica
that eventually made its way into the coal
(Environmental Science and Technology,
vol 43, p 9016).
“It’s a fascinating piece of detective work,”
says Large. “It shows there is a geological basis
for a lung cancer epidemic, which links it to
this mass extinction more than 250 million
years ago.”
Richard Twitchett of Plymouth University,
UK, needs more convincing that the series of
events happened that way, and points out that
the source of the silica might be closer to the
coal’s home. “We know from ash beds that there
was extensive late-Permian volcanism in south
China,” he says.
Colin Barras is a freelance writer based near Ann
Arbor, Michigan
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14 December 2013 | NewScientist | 47
Modern attempts to extract precious metals from the sea follow a long and chequered history, says Paul Collins
Gold tidings
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“It was a bitter cold night,” Arthur Ryan recalled later. “Great cakes of ice were floating about, and we could hear them crunching against the piles.” He and his fellow investor shivered through the night in February 1897 on a rickety jetty near Providence, Rhode Island, guarding a hole in the floor of their shack. Hours earlier, Prescott Jernegan – Baptist minister, gentleman scientist and inventor – had lowered an “accumulator box” through it into the waters of Narragansett Bay below.
The next morning, on prising open the box, the bleary-eyed men had their reward: gold. But all was not quite as it seemed…
48 | NewScientist | 14 December 2013
Nanoparticles not nuggets
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” Nobel laureate Fritz Haber posed as crew on a transatlantic liner, while surreptitiously testing the sea for gold”
14 December 2013 | NewScientist | 49
Paul Collins is a writer based in Portland, Oregon
The sheer quantity of seawater out there
means that even when elements exist only
in trace quantities, they add up to a vast
potential resource. Bromine, magnesium
and iodine are already profitably extracted
from the sea. Of heavier elements, besides
gold (see main story) uranium has long
aroused interest. The few parts per billion
found in seawater, mostly as the ion uranyl,
is enough fuel to power the planet’s nuclear
power plants for thousands of years.
Attempts to extract this uranium have
a long history. In 1964, the UK’s Atomic
Energy Research Establishment tried
harvesting it from the waters off Portland
Bill on the south coast of England using
titanium hydroxide, which bonds with uranyl
(Nature, vol 203, p 1110). In the 1970s,
German researchers bred algae to absorb
high concentrations of heavy metals
like uranium. Neither technique is yet
competitive with conventional mining, but
they have been of ongoing interest above all
to the mineral-poor and nuclear-dependent
island of Japan.
More recent approaches include sinking
plastic matting soaked with the uranium-
absorbent amidoxime into the sea, and the
use of compounds known as metal-organic
frameworks that have a particular affinity
for uranium (Chemical Science, vol 4, p 2396).
The hope is that even if such extraction
techniques fail to make the grade for
commercial mining, they may prove valuable
for treating radioactive wastewater.
NUCLEAR SUBMARINE
The great seawater
gold swindle electrified
the town of Lubec, Maine,
in the late 19th century
CULTURELAB
50 | NewScientist | 14 December 2013
Aid on the Edge of Chaos by Ben
Ramalingam, Oxford University
Press, £25
“Poor societies aren’t machines where you pour money in and development comes out”
Out of chaos into complexity We need a paradigm shift if aid is to save lives in the 21st century, finds Debora MacKenzie
LOG
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For more books and arts coverage, visit newscientist.com/culturelab
14 December 2013 | NewScientist | 51
Machine solutions
Complexity theory helped reveal
fragilities in aid distribution in Haiti
U.S
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An infant science
Debora MacKenzie is a consultant for
New Scientist
“Even at its best, aid is a child of the 19th-century, with reductionist solutions for simple problems”
Humanitarian aid was distributed in
Haiti after an earthquake hit in 2010
CULTURELAB
52 | NewScientist | 14 December 2013
The Infested Mind: Why humans fear,
loathe, and love insects by Jeffrey A.
Lockwood, Oxford University Press,
£16.99/$24.95
Mark Viney is a biologist and studies
parasitic worms at the University of
Bristol, UK
“ No one is neutral about insects. A few of us have a debilitating horror of them, and a very few love them”
Our fear of insects has inspired
countless horror movies
Bugs on the brainThe strong emotional responses that insects elicit from us have deep roots, finds Mark Viney
UN
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The Stone Age Institute Band
“From the Big Bangto the World Wide Web” “Ancestral Faces”
The Stone Age Institute Band Carrie Newcomer, vocals Seymour Duncan, lead guitar
Listen to our science education songs about Evolution and download them for free at our music webpage!
http://www.stoneageinstitute.org/music.html
“Homo erectus”
“Modern Humans” “Olduvai Gorge” “98% Chimpanzee”
54 | NewScientist | 14 December 2013
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applicant must have an excellent publication record, evidence of strong potential to attain a sustained and externally funded research program, and a commitment to graduate student supervision and training. Candidates with an active field program in terrestrial ecology are especially encouraged to apply. The successful candidate will join an expanding and dynamic group of faculty working in the areas of Ecology and Environmental Science within the department and the wider campus, and contribute to the delivery of a Professional Master’s program in Conservation and Biodiversity. For more information visit NewScientistJobs.com Job ID: 1401483329
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The Department of Atmospheric Science at the University of Wyoming invites applications for a tenure-track faculty position which focuses on atmospheric airborne observations with the department’s highly instrumented King Air research aircraft, supported by the National Science Foundation as a national lower atmospheric observing facility. The successful candidate will join other faculty and staff in using and further developing the King Air’s in situ and remote sensing observational capabilities which support research that includes cloud microphysics and dynamics, air-land and air-sea interactions and boundary-layer processes, atmospheric aerosol and chemistry, and experimental measurement technologies. For more information visit NewScientistJobs.com Job ID: 1401481531
14 December 2013 | NewScientist | 55
newscientistjobs.com
THE SMART GUIDE TO 2012
Ten ideas that you’ll want to understand next year
HOLIDAY SPECIAL
Apps for apes
Phantom photos
3, 2, 1... Drift off!
When games leak into reality
Antarctica’s invisible man
The great hack of 1903
Poetry in (the laws of) motion
How does my icicle grow
Buffet food fights
The compendium of dust
Into the crumple zone
Shiver yourself slim
Win 2011’s best books
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56 | NewScientist | 14 December 2013
FEEDBACK
Does the caption that Frank Fahy saw in The
Guardian newspaper on 4 November – “Solar
eclipse lights up Africa” – imply the discovery
of anti-light, he wants to know
RECEIVING an email entitled “WEFTEC
2014 Abstract Deadline Approaching”,
Graeme Faris was initially “not quite
sure what to do”. Fret about lateness
in an abstract sense, possibly?
Recall the dictum attributed to writer
Douglas Adams: “I love deadlines.
I love the whooshing sound they
make as they go by”? Fortunately,
reading on, a more concrete sense of
“abstract” came to mind, and the air
was thick with the sound of papers
being summarised.
MEANWHILE, Gerald Legg read the
promise of the Midnight Sun system
discussed above to power your home
“24 hrs a day with green energy
generated by your solar system”
quite differently. “With the sun’s
output alone being approximately
3.86 x 1026 watts,” he observes,
“this ‘revolutionary product’ would
certainly do more than power
one’s home.”
FINALLY, pedestrians, according
to the sign that Hugh Carter
photographed at a construction
site in Toronto, “must adhere to
traffic personnel”.
Luckily, as his sister Norma reports,
“there weren’t any traffic personnel
around at the time, so he went home”.
You can send stories to Feedback by
email at [email protected].
Please include your home address.
This week’s and past Feedbacks can
be seen on our website.
For more feedback, visit newscientist.com/feedback
PA
UL
MC
DE
VIT
T
THE LAST WORD
Crystal crisisThis tub of plasticine (see photo
below) has been sitting in a box at
the back of my study. I don’t think
it has been subjected to any
particularly extreme environmental
events, yet it looks like it is covered
in white crystals. Any ideas how
this has happened?
Dung-ho insectsIn a boggy field in Dorset, we saw
these butterflies apparently
feeding on dung (see photo right).
What is going on?
This week’s questions FASTER THAN THE WIND
RIGHT LEANING
CAN’T STAND THE HEAT?
BRIGHT SPARK
WASPS ON THE WING
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