New Scientist 2009-09-12

WEEKLY 5 eptember 12 -lB. 2009

First issue of a four-part special

Blueprint for a better ""orld Radical ideas that could transform our lives

Beware common sense

The happY planet index

What the biggest thinkers say

And much more ...

The new more fuel efficient Audis __ _

At Audi, Vorsprung durch Technik is not simply our advertising slogan.

It's at the heart of everything we do. By using technology intelligently,

we can create cars that are genuinely progressive. One of the ways we

measure progress in today's car is how efficiently it uses fuel, which

is why new engine technology is at the forefront of so much of our

work. Every year we take part in the Le Mans 24 hour endurance race.

But for us, it isn't simply about coming first. It's an essential part

of the development of highly efficient fuel-injection systems.

Our new TOI engines are a direct result of this. And among the most

frugal we've ever made. Take the Audi A4 2 .0 TOle, for example.

At 120g/km of C02, it's our lowest A4 ever. Or the new Audi A3 1.6 TOI.

At just 109g/km, it's one of the lowest in its class. Or the Audi TT

TOI which can do 53.3mpg or 600 miles on a single tank. Even the

current Audi A6 is up to 17% more fuel efficient than its predecessor.

We've made fuel efficiencies in performance models too. The new S4

has a supercharged engine, but two cylinders fewer. The result is not

only 97 g/km improvement in C02 emissions but also a 0.5 second

improvement from 0-60mph. Of course, with every innovation comes

the challenge to create new ones. And that's what we' ll continue to do.

For as long as we put Vorsprung durch Technik on our adverts in fact.

Official fuel consumption figures for the A3, A4, TT, A6 and S4 range in mpg

(l/100km): from Urban 19.1 (14.8) - 56.5 (5.0), Extra Urban 36.2 (7.8) - 7 6.3

(3.7 ), Combined 27.2 (10.4) - 68.9 (4.1), C02 emissions from 109 - 250 g/km.

Audi Vorsprung durch Technik ,......., ........ �

CONTENTS

NEWS 3 EDITORIAL Can we make the world a

better p lace? Yes, we can 4 UPFRONT Beer threatened by c l imate

change, The moon is humming 6 THIS WEEK

Inf lammation to b lame for Alzheimer's? Black holes dwarf our partic le-smashers, Ve lociraptor had claws for c l imb ing , Snorted stem ce l ls hit the bra in faster, H igh cholesterol inh i bits female arousa l . Methane mining threatens deadly gas cloud

16 IN BRIEF Eyes detect danger before the bra in , Carrots beat sticks

19 TECHNOLOGY

New breed of cargo spacesh ips set for take-off. Pushing the frontiers of bra in stimulat ion, How to br ing down the US power grid

OPINION 24 Old but notforgotten Specimens in natura l

h istory museums can have a big future i n the battle to save biodiversity, says Richard Lane

24 The hardest word It's t ime to apologise to Alan Turing, argues John Graham-Cumming

25 One-minute interview Stem ce l l p ioneer Doug Melton on cur ing h is own kids' d iabetes

26 LETTERS Keep on trucking, Prawns in pain 28 MythBusters (see r ight)

FEATURES 30 Blueprintfor a better world (see r ight) 42 Smart space robots (see right) 46 Hitch-hiking emotions Ta lk of icy stares and

d i rty minds might be closer to the mark than we thought

REGULARS 26 ENIGMA

48 BOOKS & ARTS

Richard Dawkins preaches to the converted, The power of social networks, Why empathy? Competition winners

64 FEEDBACK

65 THE LAST WORD

52 JOBS & CAREERS

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Volume 203 No 2725

COVER STORY

Blueprint fora better world

Part 1: big ideas to transform the planet

Cover image 33 rpm at Dutch Uncle

MythBusters

Urban legends tested to destruction

Coming next week Better worldt part 2: What you can do to make a d ifference

PLUS Sc ience f ict ion spec ia l

Syndication New York, NY 10010 . Tribune Media Senvices Periodicals postage paid at International New York, NY and other mailing Tel 2 13 237 7987 offices. Postmaster: Send address emai l [email protected] changes to New Scientist, QSS, © 2009 Reed Business 1830 Westline Industrial Drive, Information Ltd, England, St Louis, MO 63 146, USA

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12 September 20091 NewScientist 11

OLYMPUS

Not a Compact. Not an SLR. It's a PEN.

OLYMPUS PEN Since 1959

In 1959 the Olympus PEN revolutionised photography. 50 years later

we have done it again. The new Olympus PEN delivers SLR power

with compact size and simplicity by doing away with the mirror box.

A set of interchangeable lenses and an adapter for E-System lenses

offer you more creative freedom. Art Filters, variable aspect ratios

and multi-exposure make your photos unique while HD movie and

stereo sound allows artistic film-making with SLR picture quality.

You can even use the art filters in movie mode. Add to that 12.3

Megapixels, 3fps, image stabilisation with 4 EV steps, and AF Live

View for real-time effect and you start to get just a hint of the

creative power available in the palm of your hand. The new Olympus

PEN - yet another Olympus revolution.

www.olympus.co.uklpen

EDITORIAL

Optimistic, and for good reason The world may be go ing to he l l

in a handcart, but that doesn't

mean we can't make it better

WE HUMANS have a natural tendency to believe that our own generation is living in extraordinary times. The past is littered

with apocalyptic predictions, and within living memory dire warnings have been made about nuclear conflagration, communist takeover, a new ice age, global famine, a population crisis, deadly new airborne viruses, the millennium bug, the singularity ... The list goes on.

As we approach the end ofthe first decade of the 21st century, apocalyptic thinking is thriving. There seems little doubt that we confront a host of unprecedented problems on an unprecedented scale, from economic meltdown to environmental degradation.

Are we just falling prey to our doomsaying disposition? No. The fact that so many earlier catastrophic predictions did not materialise does not mean that current anxieties are unfounded. The global reach of today's problems means we are truly living in extraordinary times.

That past predictions did not come true wasn't entirely down to dubious forecasting or good luck, however. Humans may tend to make mountains out of molehills, but when confronted by genuine existential threatswhich appears to be most of the time - we have

the ability to face them down. As a species, we are good at meeting the challenges before us.

It is in this spirit that we launch a four-week campaign exploring ways to make the world a better place. It will come as no surprise that our starting point is the power of reason. From that springs an ironclad belief that the world can be made better through the application of science and rational thinking.

Not everyone will be comfortable with this. Even before the invention of the atom bomb, it was clear that science holds immense dangers as well as immense

promise. Even when scientists' intentions are good, all too often their creations turn out to have unforeseen dark sides. The lead

"When confronted by genuine existential threats, we have the ability to face them down"

added to petrol to prevent engine knocking has dented the intelligence of generations of children. The " inert" gases invented for use in refrigerators are destroying the ozone layer. Again, the list goes on.

Overall, though, it is indisputable that science has improved our lives. In developed countries, people live longer, healthier and wealthier lives than in the past, while more and more people in developing countries are starting to enjoy similar benefits. As a result, the world is almost certainly a better place to live in today than ever before (see page 40).

Yet there is still so much to do. Too many people live short lives plagued by disease and poverty. Political decisions are too often taken without any evidence that they will work. Governments are too focused on material

What's hot on NewScientist.com

BETTER WORLD

wealth as an indicator of well -being, and technologies that could improve lives are too often sidelined for irrational reasons. As the global population soars, we are starting to bump up against constraints on key resources, such as oil, water and phosphorus. And if all that isn't bad enough, the developed world has already emitted such vast quantities of greenhouses gases that climate change is already becoming significant. We face a perfect storm of problems.

So talk of making the world a better place is not starry-eyed idealism. It is about survival

the long-term survival of the civilisation we have built and the lifestyles we have come to enjoy. On pages 30 to 39, we look at just a few of the radical changes we should be considering, from legaliSing drugs to taking Fridays off work, forever.

This is a theme that we'll return to over three more issues. Next week we'll move from what governments can do to what we can do as individuals, including giving readers a chance to take part in a pioneering project to work out what really happens to the stuff we throw out. We'll go on to highlight the technologies that are going to help us, and tackle the pressing issue of overpopulation. Finally, we'll ponder the profound changes we are making and look beyond the Anthropocene - the geological era in which humans dominate - to a future when the Earth can look after itself again.

Now, more than ever, science and reason must prevail. The scale of the challenge is hard to overstate, but New Scientist is optimistic that we can succeed: our boundless doomsaying is more than matched by our boundless creativity and our ability to, eventually, do the right thing .•

g SPACE Giant crystals and

spherical flames - science

in microgravity The I nternational

Space Station may sti l l be under

construction, but microgravity

experiments have been under way

for decades. We round up some of the

coolest experiments so far in p ictures

bats h i bernating in a Hungar ian cave

by pecking their heads open. See our

v ideo of the gruesome action

TECHNOLOGY Computer D processor that runs on

thin air The a i r-puffi ng processor

uses a series of valves to crunch 1s

and Os in the form of variations i n

pressure. With a capac ity for

calcu lations s im i lar to that of a

1980s games console, it could he lp

make smart compact lab ch ips

ASTRONOMY Dozens of new

meteor showers predicted If you

a re a sky watcher who enjoys the

annua l Perseid and Leonid meteor

showers, then brace yourself. There

are over 60 new cosmic shows to see

cha l lenges of making shows in

three d imensions is under way -

and viewers wi l l a lso have to adapt

g MEDICINEAn lnfinity of

Things: Henry's collection

Exp lore pharmaceutical entrepreneur

Henry Wel l come's museum of

medical h istory - from Napoleon's

toothbrush to Darwin's wa lk ing D ECOLOGY Killer birds brunch

on bats' brains It sounds l i ke

the avian equ iva lent of an Ozzy

Osbourne concert. Great tits have

been d i scovered k i l l i ng and eati ng to test for d isease

TECHNOLOGY TV braces for

another dimension The technology

needed to br ing the 3D viewing

experience i nto the home is a lmost

here, but it has caught programme

makers by surprise. A scramb le to

understand the techn ica l and artistic

stick- i n our ga l lery

For breaking news, video and on l ine

debate, v is i t www.newscientist.com

12 September 2009 1 NewScientist 1 3

UPFRONT

Finding the Achilles' heart ATHLETES the world over should face tests for hidden heart problems

and potential disqualification if any

are detected.

That's the conclusion of a collection

of studies into the practicality and effectiveness of such tests, carried out at the behest of the International

Olympic Committee (IOC). A number of seemingly healthy

athletes have dropped dead from

"sudden cardiac death", including the

Spanish footballer Antonio Puerta (pictured) two years ago and British rower Scott Rennie in March this year.

Many of the heart problems that

trigger such deaths can be detected

through physical examination,

electrocardiograms and by taking a

medical history, as laid out in the "Lausanne recommendations"

Lunar tunes

THE man in the moon is humming a tune, but thankfully the noise won't prevent sensors on future moon missions from peeking at the lunar interior.

A steady barrage of small meteorite impacts should cause the moon to "ring", but no seismometers sent to the moon to date have been sensitive enough to hear it. So Philippe Lognonne at the Paris Institute of Earth Physics in France and colleagues decided to work out how loud the ring is.

"The moon-hum's quietness means lunar seismometers should be able to peek deep within the moon"

The team estimated the meteorite population in the solar neighbourhood, and calculated the likely seismic signals that would be created by a range of meteorite sizes and velocities as they strike the moon. Their

calculations revealed space rocks with masses ranging from a gram to a kilogram do indeed create a hum, but it is subtle. Earth's

4 1 NewScient ist 1 12 September 2009

created under the auspices of

the European Society of Cardiology.

The new studies suggest that implementing these

recommendations saves l ives. In one, researchers applied the

protocol to 371 Dutch athletes aged

12 to 35 over two years. Of the 55 who

were referred for additional testing,

10 had an underlying cardiovascular

problem, and three were restricted

from further participation in sport (British Journal of Sports Medicine,

001: 10.1136/bjsm.200B.056929). Sanjay Sharma, a cardiologist at

King's College Hospital in London

who led another of the studies, says:

"Everybody who plays sports needs

to be aware that there are certain

conditions that may be silent that could result in a fatality."

hum - created by pounding waves - can be more than 1000 times louder (Journal of Geophysical Research, in press) .

The moon-hum's quietness means future lunar seismometers should be able to use seismic imaging to peek deep within the

moon without the hum creating problematic background noise.

The network of seismometers left by the Apollo missions has been shut down since 1977, so Lognonne hopes more sensitive instruments will be sent to the moon soon. Imaging the interior could help reveal more about the origin of shallow moonquakesoccasionally powerful tremors whose source has yet to be identified. Future seismometers could also reach deeper than the Apollo network to measure the size of the moon's core. "The area within 500 kilometres of the centre of the moon is completely unknown to seismology," Lognonne says.

The first instrument may be a seismometer proposed for Japan's Selene-2 moon mission, which aims to send a lander to the surface, perhaps as early as 2015.

Cover under fire

ARNIE might want to rethink this one. In a classic case of a perverse incentive, California state law actually facilitates building homes in brushy canyons prone to massive wildfires like that

which destroyed dozens of homes near Los Angeles this month.

State legislature mandates that every property owner must be able to buy affordable fire insurance, and so an industry syndicate, the California Fair Plan, serves as the insurer of last resort

for property owners deemed too high-risk for conventional fire insurance. Some 17,400 owners of brush land property now obtain insurance through this route.

Offering such cover may be a bad idea because coastal brushland, or chaparral, is prone to intense fires. Ecologists say anyone living in chaparral should expect to be burned out eventually.

The obvious answer is to avoid building in these riskiest of areas a solution made harder by the state's insistence on providing insurance for such properties.

Worse than a stinking hangover ACCORDING to Asian folklore,

eating the famously pungent durian - known as the "king of fruits" - along with alcohol can ki l l you. Now intrepid researchers have

confirmed there may be some truth

in this supposition. It is the first

time combining a fruit with booze

has been scientifically l inked to

an adverse reaction.

John Maninang and Hiroshi Gemma from the University of Tsukuba,

Japan, wondered if the reported side

effects were due to durian's high

sulphur content impairing alcohol

breakdown. In test tubes they found that durian extract inhibited the

activity of aldehyde dehydrogenase

an enzyme that clears toxic

breakdown products - by up to 70 per

cent (Food Chemistry, 001: 10.10161

j.foodchem.2009.03.106).

Detractors complain about

the rotting smell of durian, says

Gemma. "Now we know that it may

smell of danger too."

For daily news stories, visit www.NewScientist.com/news

Pfizer rapped

BY ANY standard, the $2.3 billion sum that pharmaceutical giant Pfizer will pay to settle charges of improper drug promotion is big. But will it change anything?

"It sends out a clear message. Whether that message gets heard is a different question"

Doctors can prescribe medications in situations other than those approved by drug regulators, but drug firms in the US are not allowed to promote these " off-label" uses.

The payout settles claims by whistleblowers and the US government that Pfizer broke these rules for a range of drugs including the painkiller Bextra, pulled from the market in 2005 because of evidence suggesting it might increase the risk of heart attack and stroke.

The sum represents less than three weeks of sales for Pfizer, based on 2008 figures - a significant loss but by no means catastrophic. "It sends out a clear message," says Merrill Goozner, formerly of the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington DC. "Whether the message gets heard or not is a different question." Given the huge profits to be made from drug sales, he says, the incentives to bend the rules remain strong.

Losing hop

IF THE sinking Maldives aren't enough to galvanise action on climate change, could losing a classic beer do it? Climatologist Martin Mozny of the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute and colleagues say that the quality of Saaz hops - the delicate variety used to make pilsner lager - has been decreasing in recent years. They say the culprit is climate change in the form of increased air temperature.

"The famous hop-growing regions of eastern Germany and central Slovakia are at risk"

Mozny's team used a highresolution dataset of weather patterns, crop yield and hop quality to estimate the impact of climate change on Saaz hops in the Czech Republic between 1954 and 2006. Best-quality Saaz hops contain about 5 per cent alpha acid, the compound that produces the delicate, bitter taste of pilsners.

The study found that the concentration of alpha acids in Saaz hops has fallen by 0.06 per cent a year since 1954, and models of hop yields and quality under future global warming scenarios predict bigger decreases (Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, DOl : 10.1016/

j .agrformet.2009.02.006). It's not just Czech hops that

are at stake here, says Francesco Tubiello, a crop specialist at the European Commission and a lead author of the agriculture chapter of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. "The famous hop-growing regions of eastern Germany and central Slovakia are facing the same situation," he says.

Probe hots up

IT MIGHT have been a simple

mistake to make, but it proved to be fatal and was the undoing of India's lunar probe Chandrayaan-l. The space agency underestimated temperatures around the moon, so the probe had been overheating

for months. In May, the Indian Space

Research Organisation raised the probe's lunar orbit from 100 to 200 kilometres, saying the move was to get a better view of the lunar surface. However, the shift was actually an attempt to cool the probe down, ISRO's T. K. Alex has admitted to The Times of India.

Engineers had miscalculated the radiant heat from the moon's surface. Operating at higher-thanexpected temperatures may have weakened communication circuits prior to the probe's failure, says ISRO chief Madhavan Nair. Radio contact was lost on 29 August, ending the mission a year early.

60 SECONDS

Honey beats MRSA Manuka honey is thoughtto have

antibacterial properties. Now RowenaJenkins from the University

of Wales Institute in Cardiff, UK, has

shown that it appears to defeat

deadly methici l l in-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) by destroying a protein called Fabl . This

is vital for fatty-acid biosynthesis,

key to building bacterial cel l walls.

Bushmeat whacked Science is gradually making the work

of i l legal bushmeat traders more

difficu lt. The DNA " lD tags" of the

African red river hog and13 other species of i l legally traded bushmeat

animals have been added to

the Barcode of Life database,

making it easier for conservationists

to check the provenance of meat at markets (Conservation Genetics,

001: 10.1007/s10592-009-9967-0).

Land of rising cuts Japan's incoming prime minister

Yukio Hatoyama has pledged a 25 per cent cut in carbon emissions

by 2020, compared with 1990 levels,

and chal lenged other countries to do l ikewise. The move puts pressure on

the US to promise cuts ahead ofthe

global summit in Copenhagen,

Denmark, in November, to thrash

out the Kyoto protocol's successor.

Cheap smokes Contraband cigarettes sold at about

one-third ofthe price of legal ones may be undermining attempts to

discourage youngsters from

smoking. In a survey of Canadian

adolescents, 17 per cent said they

buy i l legal brands (Canadian Medical

Association Journal, 001: 10.15031 cmaj .090665).

Gremlins around Mars Observations from NASA's Mars

Reconnaissance Orbiterwil l be suspended for several weeks

following the fourth computergl itch

this year. It is being kept in "safe

mode" while engineers investigate

why it spontaneously rebooted itself.


THIS WEEK

Radical rethink on Alzheimer's I nf lam mat ion and wear and tea r on b lood vesse ls may be the ma in cu lp ritsl not bra i n p laques

Andy (oghlan

GENES that increase the risk of Alzheimer's and a blood protein that speeds up cognitive decline are radically changing our view of the devastating illness. Reported this week, both findings suggest new causes for Alzheimer's, boosting prospects for its treatment and prevention.

"What we've found is absolutely fascinating, and will change the course of research into


Alzheimer's," says Julie Williams of Cardiff University, UK, who led one of two genetics studies. She says the findings " show us the prime pathways into the disease".

For the past 20 years, researchers have been trying to treat Alzheimer's by blocking the accumulation of waxy plaques in the brain, with little success (see "Plaque drug trials fail"). While the exact role of these plaques is still unclear, the new studies suggest that disruptions of the

immune system, the way cells

metabolise fat, and wear and tear on the circulatory system may be as much to blame for Alzheimer's, or perhaps even the root cause.

This could help steer Alzheimer's research towards drugs that maintain the health of immune and vascular systems, while prevention strategies might include eating a low-fat, vegetable-rich diet and exercising.

inflammation. The volunteers also took a cognitive test first when they had their blood tested, and then three more times over a six-month period.

At the end of this time, cognitive decline was four times greater in those who started out with the highest TNF-alpha levels when compared with participants who had no TNF-alpha, whose

Links have recently been "Rapid cognitive decline discovered between cognitive was evident in people decline and inflammation, which who had infections, which is a collection of processes trigger inflammation" involving the immune and vascular systems that protect the body from a range of harmful stimuli. To explore these links, Clive Holmes of the University of Southampton, UK, measured blood levels oftumour necrosis factor alpha in 222 people with Alzheimer's. TNF-alpha is released by white blood cells during

cognition remained almost stable (see graph). A rapid decline in cognitive ability was also evident in people who had routine infections or accidents such as falling over, all of which can trigger inflammation (Neurology, voln p 678). Interestingly, these inflammation "events" were

In this section

• Black holes dwarf particle smashers, page B • Snorted stem cells reach brain, page 12 • High cholesterol inhibits female arousal, page 12

seldom in the brain itself, but the rest of the body and bloodstream.

Holmes says that the results in people echo earlier experiments in mice, which showed that inflammation, and particularly high concentrations ofTNF-alpha in the blood, accelerated Alzheimer's-like decline and death. He found that in the mice, microglial cells, responsible for removing dead neurons and destroying infectious agents,

overreacted to TNF-alpha. He speculates that this might have caused microglial cells to kill live brain cells and that this is how inflammation contributes to, or even causes, Alzheimer's in people.

immunological chain reaction called the complement cascade, which rids the body of unwanted cells, toxins and proteins that have been snared by antibodies. Another is a variant of the CRl gene, also vital for controlling the complement cascade.

It is not clear yet whether the variants cause these genes to be under or over-active. But because both genes are intimately involved in controlling the

immune system, the discovery of their link with Alzheimer's fits with Holmes's result, and opens up a range of alternative causes and treatments.

The normal version of CRl helps prune synapses, the brain connections destroyed in Alzheimer's. In people with the mutated form of CR1, this process may go into overdrive and destroy too many connections. Similarly, mutant c/usterin may not damp down the immune system enough, causing it to attack, not protect, the brain.

Another possibility is that both gene variants affect a person's ability to repair blood vessels.

Inflammation and the brain Immune chemical tumour necrosis factor

a lpha (TNF-a) and "events" that trigger inflammation both accelerated Alzheimer's

Low TNF-a, no event

• Low TNF-a, event

• High TNF-a, no event

• High TNF-a, event

• 11 -LI1

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u LI1 (1) ... "OLI1 (1)� :E - -4-1-------'c 01 .3

As people get older, blood vessels become more damaged, particularly in the brain. The complement cascade is involved in fixing this damage, so the CRl and c/usterin gene variants may impair the repair process.

If this is true, better cardiovascular health might guard against the damaging effects of these mutant genesand perhaps prevent Alzheimer's, says John Hardy ofUniversity

Backing this idea is the discovery of three gene variants that are more common in people with Alzheimer's than in the general population. Two separate research teams were involved, one led by Williams, the other by Philippe Amouyel of the Pasteur Institute in Lille, France (Nature Genetics, 001: 1O.1038/ng440 and 001: 1O.1038/ng.439). Both teams scanned between 300,000 and 500,000 single letter variations of the genetic code in thousands of people with Alzheimer's. PLAQUE DRUG TRIALS FAIL

Until now, the main gene associated with Alzheimer's has been a faulty version of apolipoprotein E. Because faulty APOE causes people to make too much beta amyloid, the substance found in the waxy plaques of people with Alzheimer's, this reinforced theories that Alzheimer's is caused by plaques.

While the new research further confirmed that APOE is the most important gene variant predicting susceptibility to Alzheimer's, it also threw up three new gene variants that are abnormally common in people with Alzheimer's.

One of these variants is in the c/usterin gene that clears the brain of protein junk, including beta amyloid. It is also responsible for dampening down aspects of the immune response, including one

Alzheimer's has long been blamed

on the fatty amyloid plaques that

accumulate in the brain, but recent cl inical trials suggest other processes

may be at work.

Last year, Cl ive Holmes and his colleagues at the University of

Southampton, UK, examined the

brains of dead patients who'd

received a vaccine that primes the immune system to attack amyloid

plaques. Although the plaques had gone in most patients, in l ife their

symptoms hadn't diminished (The

Lancet, vo1 372, p 216).

Also disappointing was the

performance of tarenflurbil

(Flurizan), a drug designed to

attack plaques. Myriad Genetics of

Salt Lake City, Utah, announced last

year that it was suspending the

$200 mi l l ion trial of the drug, the

largest ever of an Alzheimer's

treatment after it fa iled to

del iver significant improvements in memory, cognition or people's abil ity to care for themselves.

Meanwhile, drugs targeting other

processes have shown success. The most tantalising news comes from

trials of d imebolin, a hayfever

treatment developed decades ago

in Russia. Results from a trial

published last year in The Lancet

(voI 372, p 207) showed that patients taking the drug scored 7 points higher in standard tests of cognitive

abi l ities compared with those

on placebo, a substantial

improvement on a scale of 70. As hay fever is caused by the body's

inflammation process going awry, this result chimes with gene and

hospital studies publ ished this week that suggest inflammation plays a

role in Alzheimer's (see main story).

College London, a pioneer of the plaque hypothesis. "This is pushing very much on the idea that we should focus on heart fitness," he says.

Meanwhile, the third gene to be implicated in Alzheimer's was a variant of the PICALM gene, which draws fats and proteins into brain cells, and may also be active around synapses. The researchers suggest that the variant associated with

Alzheimer's may cause too much fat to be drawn into cells, killing them.

Both this hypothesis and the blood vessel one are backed up by a study published last month. Nikos Scarmeas of Columbia University Medical Center in New York and colleagues found that the risk of Alzheimer's was reduced by a third in volunteers who were physically active, while those who ate a diet rich in fruit and vegetables lowered their risk by 40 per cent. Those doing both lowered their risk by a massive 60 per cent (Journal of the American Medical Association, vo1 302, p 627). What's more, in January research by Deborah Gustafson of the University of Gothenberg in

Sweden linked obesity to a higher risk of Alzheimer's disease.

Williams says it is time to shift the focus away from the plaques. "We need to put the immune response, inflammation and the

release of fats and cholesterol at the heart of future research." Hardy is less gung-ho as he suspects the plaque hypothesis will eventually produce drugs that work. But he agrees that preventing damage to blood vessels should now be explored as an Alzheimer's strategy.

Holmes points out that there are existing drugs for rheumatoid arthritis that neutralise TNF-alpha and might be worth trying. Tantalisingly, one such drug, etanercept, may already have helped people with Alzheimer's. The results, published last year, were dismissed by many. Maybe it's time to revisit that verdict. •


THIS WEEK

The ultimate cosmic particle smasher

Jessica Griggs

WHAT will happen to fundamental physics when our descendants reach the limit of particle accelerator technology? We'll

surely run out of space and money long before the smallest building blocks of the universe can be probed with machines, because of the massive energies reqUired.

One saviour may be the universe's own particle smashersblack holes. If two particles are accelerating towards a rotating black hole with a certain velocity then they should collide with energies higher than anything we could hope to achieve on Earth.

The singularity at the centre of a black hole is so dense that any matter and light that reaches the black hole's point of no return, or event horizon, gets sucked in due to the extreme gravitational attraction. The closer that particles get to the black hole,

8 1 NewScientist 1 12 September 2009

the greater the energy they have. So could these particles smash

together and perhaps reveal evidence of "new physics" ? That's what phYSicists Stephen West of Royal Holloway, University of

London, Max Baiiados of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile in Santiago and joseph Silk of the University of Oxford decided to investigate.

The particles they chose for their natural accelerator model were of dark matter. These weakly interacting particles are thought to collect in a dense core around middle-weight black holes as they form out of ordinary matter. They wouldn't be the only particles around, but the team figured the collision results would be more exciting than other more mundane forms of matter, such as intergalactic dust.

Particles accelerated by a simple, non-rotating black hole would become parallel as they

approached the horizon but never collide. But the team's calculations show that if the black hole were rotating at high speed, and a particle approached at a certain

angle, it would be able to collide with another at extremely high energy. The results will appear in Physical Review Letters.

After the collision, a significant proportion of the daughter products would be sucked into the black hole. Yet the authors suspect

that some would have enough energy to escape its clutches, and they are trying to work out just

"Some of the products of a black-hole particle collision would have enough energy to reach Earth"

how large this proportion is. Some may even have enough energy to be detected by experiments like ICECUBE in Antarctica, or detectors on satellites.

Energies at the Large Hadron Collider are likely to peak at 14 teraelectronvolts. In contrast, the energies around a black hole would theoretically be limitless, says West. However, you needn't go beyond the so-called "Planck

0.01 I

0.1

energy" - the point at which our mathematical understanding of particle interactions, in particular gravity, breaks down at the quantum level. This energy is in

the order of 1018 gigaelectronvolts -100 trillion times more energetic than the LHe.

"With black hole collisions you really can recreate the beginnings of the universe," says West. The team's "Planck accelerator" could potentially probe particles

involved in grand unified theories, the energy scale where the four fundamental forces merge.

David Ballantyne of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta likes the idea. In the past, he has explored whether particle collisions at the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way could be responsible for mysterious gamma-ray emissions.

"The idea is interesting enough to continue pursuing," he says. "I would be very interested to see their predictions for the flux and energy distribution of the particles following collision." For one, such particles could tell us a lot about the nature of dark matter and the structure of space-time around a black hole, he says . •

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THIS WEEK

World will'cool for the next decade' Fred Pearce

FORECASTS of climate change are about to go seriously out of kilter. We could be about to enter one or even two decades of cooler temperatures, according to one of the world's top climate modellers.

"People will say this is global warming disappearing," MOjib Latiftold more than 1500 climate scientists gathered at the UN's World Climate Conference in Geneva, Switzerland, last week. "I am not one of the sceptics. However, we have to ask the nasty questions ourselves or other people will do it."

Few climate scientists go as far as Latif, an author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and a climate physicist at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of Kiel, Germany. Yet many now agree that the shortterm prognosis for climate change is less certain than once thought.

This is bad timing. The UN's World Meteorological Organization had called the conference in order to draft a global plan on how to produce useful short-term climate

Killing claws of Velociraptor ... are for climbing ACCORDING to jurassic Park,

everyone's favourite fleet-footed

predators dispatched their prey by

disembowel l ing them with deadly

"kil l ing claws". Not so, say palaeontologists who have studied

the biomechanics of Ve/ociraptor

claws. Instead, the notorious

dinosaurs used their c laws to cling

to prey and to climb trees.

10 I NewScientist 1 12 September 2009

predictions for different groups of people worldwide, from farmers worried about the next rainy season to doctors trying to predict malaria epidemics.

But while discussing how

this might be done, some of the climate scientists admitted that, on such timescales, natural variability is at least as important as the long-term changes from global warming. "In many ways we know more about what will happen in the 2050S than

Phil Manning of the University

of Manchester, UK, and colleagues previously showed that Ve/ociraptol's

sharp-tipped foot claw could puncture skin and help the d inosaur

c l ing to wounded prey but was not sharp enough to rip the skin open.

Now an analysis of the biomechanics

of the hand claw suggests it cou ld have supported the d inosaur's weight

when it was cl imbing (Anatomicol

Record, 001: 1O.1002/ar.20986).

Manning suggests Ve/ociraptor

used its c l imbing abi l ity to perch in

trees and pounce on prey from above, with its claws puncturing the skin so

next year," said Vicky Pope at the UK's Met Office.

Latif predicts that in the next few years a natural cooling trend will dominate the warming caused by humans. The cooling would be down to cyclical changes in the atmosphere and ocean currents in the North Atlantic, known as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and the Atlantic Meridional Oscillation (AMO).

Breaking with climate-change orthodoxy, Latif said the NAO was probably responsible for some of the strong warming seen around the globe in the past three decades. "But how much? The jury is still out," he told the conference. The NAO is now moving into a phase that will cool the planet.

it could cling to its victim's body while

biting and subduing it. He points out that Microraptor, a tiny dinosaur in

the same sickled-clawed dromeosaur family as Ve/ociraptorbut which l ived some 50 mi l l ion years before, had

four feathered l imbs to help it glide

down from trees. "The leg and tail

musculature show that these animals

are adapted for cl imbing rather than

running," he says.

"Velociraptor might have used its climbing ability to perch in trees and pounce on prey from above"

Latif says the NAO also explained the recent recovery of the Sahel region of Africa from the droughts of the 1970S and 1980s. lames Murphy, head of climate prediction at the Met Office, agrees and also links the AMO to Indian monsoons, Atlantic hurricanes and sea ice loss in the Arctic. "The oceans are key to decadal natural variability," he says.

Another favourite climate belief was overturned when Pope

warned the conference that the dramatic Arctic ice loss in recent summers was partly a product of natural cycles rather than global warming. Preliminary reports suggest there has been much less melting this year than in 2007 or 2008 . •

More likely in the next 10 years?

Peter Makovicky, a palaeontologist

at the Field Museum of Natural History

in Chicago, says smaller ancestral

dromeosaurs such as Microraptor

may have been cl imbers, but their descendants adapted the claw for

other purposes, such as latching onto

prey, much as big cats with their

sharp, curved claws do today. You see the same claw shape in

the dromeosaurs Utahraptorand

Achillobator, both of which could

grow to 6 metres long and weigh

several hundred ki lograms,

Makovicky says. "You'd be hard put to find a tree they could c l imb." •

For daily news stories, visit www.NewScientist.com/news

INSIGHT Don't be fooled by the mild cases -pandemic flu still poses a deadly threat

SWINE f lu has sti l l not grown more

severe, as many feared it would , but

as the pandemic's second, autumn

wave begins in the northern

hemisphere, the virus is posing a

different threat. Wh i le HINl mostly

causes m i ld d isease, some people

estimates suggest fewer than 1 per

cent - become deathly i l l , very fast

At a meeting last week i n

Winn ipeg, Canada, experts warned

that these cases cou ld overwhelm

hospita ls . "These were the sickest

people I've ever seen," says Anand

Kumar, an intensive-care expert at the

Un ivers ity of Man itoba i n Winn ipeg.

Kumar hel ped manage a wave of

severe cases i n the city i n June, mostly

in young Canadian abor ig ina ls, who

requ i red the most advanced care. 'Th is

pandemic is l i ke two d i seases. Either

you're off work a few days, or you go to

hospital, often to the i ntensive-care

un it There's no midd le g round ."

In the southern hemisphere,

15 to 33 per cent of hospita l i sed cases

went to ICU i n the past two months.

''That's very high for fl u," says Richard

Wenzel of Virg in ia Commonwealth

Un iversity in R ichmond. "When this flu

is bad, it's very bad."

In these cases the virus rapid ly

destroys the l ungs' a lveo l i , where gas

transfer occurs, often causing acute

respi ratory d istress syndrome (ARDS),

which usua l ly k i l l s in half of all cases.

Antoine F lahault of the School of

Pub l i c Hea lth in Rennes, France, found

It is still too soon to know who is at greatest risk from swine flu

that this past winter in Maurit ius and

New Caledonia, HINl caused ARDS

100 times as often as ord inary f lu.

The d i rect viral damage i nf l icted on

the lungs by severe HINl contrasts

with SARS and b i rd flu, whose impact

is main ly due to a runaway, body-wide

immune response, says Kwok Yung

Yuen of the Un iversity of Hong Kong,

China. This means early suppression of

HINl with antivirals is crucial , which

in turn requ i res spott ing cases fast

Who wi l l get severe HINl? Kumar

is coord inati ng a mUlt i-hospital study

of severe HINl to find out, but says

pre l im inary resu lts suggest severity is

l inked to HLA, a genetic va riation i n

immune systems. Th i s cou ld be why

flu is worse in some ethn ic g roups.

What haunts ICU doctors now is

whether they wil l have enough beds

for the coming second wave. If not,

they wi l l have to decide who to

priorit ise. ICU space is a l ready t ight,

and studies in the U K and US have

found it may not be enough. Austra l i a

managed to increase ICU capacity just

enough to cope dur ing its f lu season,

which is ending, says Kumar. "If we

don't prepare, it cou ld be rea l ly bad,"

he warns. Debora MacKenzie.

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Our international research expertise includes: > Sustainable energy > Transport and land use > Planning and construction > Engineering design and manufacturing > Mathematical modelling, analysis & statistics

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12 September 2009 1 NewScient ist 1 11

THIS WEEK

Snort stem cells to get them to brain Linda Geddes

STEM cells show promise for treating a range of neurological conditions, including Parkinson's, strokes and Alzheimer's, but it is

tricky getting them into the brain. Perhaps inhaling stem cells might be the answer - if mice are anything to go by.

Other options all have their drawbacks. Drilling through the skull and injecting the stem cells is painful and carries some risks. You can also inject them into the

"The mice snorted stem cells high into their noses and large numbers of them migrated into the brain"

bloodstream but only a fraction reach their target due to the blood-brain barrier.

The nose, however, might be a viable alternative. In the upper reaches of the nasal cavity lies the cribriform plate, a bony roof that separates the nose from the brain. It is perforated with pin-size holes, which are plugged with nerve fibres and other connective

Not tonight honey, I haven't taken my statins HIGH cholesterol isn't just bad for

tissue. Since proteins, bacteria and viruses can enter the brain this way, Lusine Danielyan at the University Hospital of Tiibingen in Germany, and her colleagues, wondered if stem cells would also

migrate into the brain through the cribriform plate.

To test their idea, they dripped a suspension of fluorescently labelled stem cells into the noses of mice. The mice snorted them high into their noses, and the cells migrated through the cribriform plate. Then they travelled either into the olfactory bulb - the part of the brain that detects and deciphers odours - or into the cerebrospinal fluid lining the skull, migrating across the brain. The stem cells then moved deeper into the brain.

"We found that the cells could squeeze through these holes, which are far below their own diameter and into the brain," says Danielyan, who presented her findings at the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence meeting in Cambridge, UK, this week.

When the researchers pre-

can reduce blood flow to erecti le

tissue. Since some aspects of female sexual arousal also rely on

increased blood flow to the gen itals, Katherine Esposito and her

colleagues at the Second University

of Naples in Italy compared sexual the heart - it could a lso make it harder function in premenopausal women

for women to become sexual ly with and without hyperl ipidemia.

aroused. That might mean that Women with hyperl ipidemia

cholesterol-lowering drugs l ike statins would help to treat so-called

female sexual dysfunction (FSO).

Hyperl ipidemia, or raised

levels of cholesterol and other fats in the blood, is associated with erecti le

dysfunction in men, because the bui ld-up of fats in blood vessel wal ls


reported significantly lower arousal, orgasm, lubrication and

sexual satisfaction scores than

women with normal blood l ip id

profiles. And 32 per cent of the women with abnormal profiles

scored low enough on a scale of female sexual function to be

Inhaling cells: could it work in people? Mouse studies show that stem cel ls can be inha led and reach the bra in through t iny ho les in the cr ibriform p late

Brain

Cerebral flu id surrounding

the bra in

O lfactory bu lb

Nasa l cavity

Drop stem cel ls inha led

treated the nasal membrane of the mice with an enzyme called hyaluronidase to loosen the junctions between epithelial cells, even more stem cells entered the brain through the nose.

Other researchers have shown that you can also deliver therapeutic proteins such as neural growth factor into the brain in this way. If the results of

this study can be repeated in humans, snorting stem cells might be a way of getting large numbers of cells into the brain without surgery. Repeated

diagnosed with FSO, compared

with 9 per cent of women with

normal levels Uournal of Sexual

Medicine, 001: 10.111l1j .1743-6109.

2009.01284.x) Women's sexual

desire was not affected by

"There are strong connections between loss of women's sexual arousal and disease"

hyperl ipidemia, however.

In a separate paper, Annamaria

Veronel l i at the University of M i lan, Ita ly, and her colleagues found that

female sexual dysfunction was also

associated with diabetes, obesity

doses could also be given in the form of nasal drops.

John Sinden, chief scientific officer at ReNeuron in Guildford, UK, says the results are interesting and that less invasive ways of delivering cells to the brain are needed. "A problem may arise if cells migrate to inappropriate locations that could then become a tumour risk," he cautions. "One needs to discover exactly where the cells are going in both brain and the [rest of the body] in order to understand whether this poses a problem or not." •

and an underactive thyroid gland

Uaurnal of Sexual Medicine, 001:

O.1111/j.1743-6109.2009.01242.x).

"These two papers suggest that there are strong connections

between women's sexual arousal and organic diseases in the same way that men's sexual problems arise," says Geoffrey Hackett. a urologist at

the Holly Cottage Cl inic in Fisherwick,

UK. "This is currently not even considered in women."

Hackett therefore suggests that a loss of sexual arousal in women

might be an ind icator of other

underlying conditions, so such

problems should be raised with a doctor. Linda Geddes •

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THIS WEEK

Stir up this lake at the peril of millions Shanta Barley

BENEATH the shimmering surface of Africa's Lake Kivu, a deadly time bomb awaits. A "gold rush" to extract valuable methane from the lake's depths might trigger an outburst of gas that could wash a deadly, suffocating blanket over the 2 million people who live around Kivu's shores.

The lake, which is almost half a kilometre deep in places, is on Rwanda's north-west border with the Democratic Republic ofthe Congo (see map) and contains a vast reservoir of dissolved methane. Many companies are extracting the gas to burn for electricity production, and the governments of both nations are aggressively courting further investment in extraction plants.

Now a group of biochemists warns that if unregulated extraction continues unabated, it could trigger a catastrophic outgassing of carbon dioxide another dissolved gas abundant in the lake's depths. Such a disaster


occurred at Lake Nyos in Cameroon in 1986, killing 1700 people. Kivu contains 300 times more CO2 than Nyos did, warns Alfred Wiiest, a bio-geochemist based at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag).

Like Nyos, Lake Kivu is permanently stratified : a deep layer of dense water laden with CO2, methane, salt and nutrients is locked away beneath a surface layer of fresh water. Methane is generated by lake-bed bacteria

"If companies trigger a deadly gas outburst, it will be a crime against humanity"

that feed on a stream of dead algae sinking from the surface. The CO2 enters through volcanic seeps.

So far, the Rwandan government has established one methane extraction plant on the lake, and two companies - Contour Global and Rwanda Investment Group are running pilot projects. At least two more plants are in the

pipeline, says Eva Paul of Rwanda's Ministry of Infrastructure. These will support the country's plan to expand electricity access from 6 per cent of the Rwandan population to 16 per cent by 2012.

According to a report by 15 researchers at Eawag and other institutes, certain current practices could trigger a catastrophic outgassing when methane extraction becomes widespread, as it will in the near future.

Perhaps the most dangerous practice is pumping waste water into the lake's shallows. "If degassed water is dumped at the surface, it sinks, mixing water and salts between the lake's layers," says George Kling, an expert on the Lake Nyos disaster at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, who was not involved in the report. Enough mixing would disrupt the density stratification of the lake, and could bring huge volumes of CO2-rich water to the surface. The pressure reduction would cause the CO2 to bubble out of solution. Instead, waste water must be re-injected where it came from, the report recommends, at a depth greater than 270 metres.

Unfortunately, there's an economic incentive for companies to pump waste water into the shallows, says Finn Hirslund of

COWl, a Danish environmental and engineering consultancy. This nutrient-rich water triggers algal blooms that then die and sink, helping to form even more methane. "If companies mess around with the lake's density structures and accidentally trigger an entirely avoidable and deadly gas outburst, it will be a crime against humanity," he says.

The Rwandan government, which commissioned the report,

received it in June, but none of the recommendations has been applied or enforced so far, claims Kling. "There are no regulations in place as far as I know," he says. "Our hope is that we can get the governments to require and enforce regulations."

Hirslund believes that the Rwandan government has been too eager to win investment. "They have failed to put in place sufficient regulations to prevent malpractice," he says.

Rwandan officials insist that they are enforcing regulations. "All the recommendations within the report are sincerely followed," says Paul. But she admits that while all new facilities will be obliged to follow the rules, the government's own plant will not be bound . •

Danger zone up to 2 mi l l ion people cou ld be in the path of a lethal outgassing from Lake Kivu

Major sett lements (population)

0 10,000 - 100,000

0 100,000 . 200,000

. 200,000 - 400,000

• > 400,000

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IN BRIEF

'Extinct' British resident repatriated after 100 years

A BRITISH resident transported to the Antipodes a century ago wil l soon be repatriated. The short-haired

bumblebee was sent to New Zealand to poll inate red

clover in 1875 in one of the first refrigerated ships. The

bee subsequently died out in its native country: last

seen in 1988, it was declared extinct in the UK in 2000.

Efforts to reintroduce the bee have been thwarted

by fai lures in captive breeding and by "bee jet lag" -the inabi l ity of long-haul bees to adapt to the sudden hemisphere shift.

The situation is now urgent. New Zealand's short-

haired bumblebees thrive on another non-native species,

viper's bug loss, but the government is about to embark

on a programme to eradicate the plant.

Fortunately, Czech bumblebee enthusiastJaromir

CiZek has at last succeeded in getting the bees to breed in captivity, by feeding captive queens exclusively with

h igh-qual ity bumblebee pollen instead of honeybee

pollen, as had previously been attempted.

The Bumblebee Conservation Trust at the University

of Stirling, UK, now plans to reintroduce the bees after breeding them up in New Zealand, refrigerating them to

induce h ibernation and avoid jet lag, and transporting them to the UK. The trust presented its work on the

reintroduction at the British Ecological Society meeting

at the University of Hertfordshire, UK, this week.

Potato blight has the genome of death on which the mould then feasts. There are numerous variations, with many bits ofDNA that jump around the genome, allowing the continual generation of more variation. This means the blight can make new enzymes as fast as potatoes evolve ways to neutralise the old ones.

THE blight that triggered the great famine in Ireland in 1845 is still the biggest disease threat to spuds worldwide - and it's no wonder.

Researchers have sequenced the genome of the mould that causes blight and found it keeps a huge arsenal of potato-destroying genes, ready to evolve around whatever defences taters can muster. On the plus side, the sequence also suggests ways to fight back.


Blight is caused by an oomycete or water mould, Phytophthora infestans, related to brown algae. Sophien Kamoun of the Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich, UK, and colleagues report that P. infestans has a genome three times as large as its closest relatives, because it keeps many different variants of its "attack" genes (Nature, DOl: 10.1038/nature08358). These code for enzymes that kill potato cells,

However, the team also found virulence genes in regions of the genome that are not so variable. "Those could be great targets for plant resistance," Kamoun says.

Fatty foods foil fat-fighting cells

HEALTHY muscle cells exposed to fat can become like cells taken from people with diabetes, with the genes that control fat -burning permanently switched off. "In essence, fat tweaks the cell's ability to burn fat," says Juleen Zierath of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.

The findings suggest that changes to DNA may occur when healthy people eat fat-rich diets, and could ultimately explain why adults develop type 2 diabetes.

Zierath and her colleagues discovered that cells from people with diabetes already had these changes, especially inPGC-l, a gene that orchestrates fat burning.

The researchers found that they could trigger the same effects in healthy muscle cells by exposing them to the fat palmitate. The results show that foods may reprogramme our DNA (Cell Metabolism, DOl : 10.1016/ j .cmet.2009.07.011).

Titan has a foggy bottom

FOG has been spotted on Titan, the first evidence that the Earth isn't the only body in the solar system to have a hydrological cycle. Yet Titan's cycle is based on methane.

Saturn's moon Titan is known to have lakes, clouds and river beds, hinting that surface liquid evaporates and returns as rain. But proof is lacking: the lakes might not evaporate, the clouds might not rain, and the river beds might be relics from a wetter past.

Now Michael Brown ofthe California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and his team have used NASA's Cassini spacecraft to view methane fog at Titan's south pole. The only explanation is evaporated surface methane condensing into humid air, say the team (www. arxiv.org/abs/og084087).

For new stories every day, visit www.NewScientist.com/news

Warmer climate, worse meat

Mysterious monopole found at last (in crystals)

IF YOU l ike a tasty slab of meat,

make sure you place your orders soon. Pork chops will become

soggier and paler as the world

warms, warn veterinary scientists, and steaks could be dark and smel ly.

This is because meat qual ity depends in part on whether animals

experience heat stress during

transport to the slaughterhouse.

Nevi lle Gregory of the Royal Veterinary College in Hatfield, UK, who studies how the temperature

at which animals are kept affects

the qual ity of their meat. has looked ahead to meat in a cl imate-changed

world (Food Research International,

001: 10.1016/j.foodres.2009.05.018).

After an animal dies, energy reserves - in the form of glycogen -

are broken down into lactic acid,

causing the carcass's pH to fal l

from 7.0 to 5.5. But the meat of

heat-stressed pigs acidifies more

quickly. When this happens, muscle

proteins fal l apart, and as a result so does the meat's structure. "What

you're left with is meat that resembles soggy white blotting

paper," says Gregory.

Steak, on the other hand, is l ikely

to be smell ier. Heat-stressed cows

run out of glycogen before they die, which darkens their meat, turning

it almost black. And glycogen-free

beef attracts microbes that break down protein and give off the smell

of decay.

WE HAVE moved a step closer to finding cosmic mono poles -magnetic poles without their opposite. Two experiments using strange stuff called spin ice have provided the best evidence yet that mono poles really are out there.

Nearly 80 years ago, physicist Paul Dirac said it must be possible for magnetic north and south poles to exist separately. But despite decades of searching, not one has been found. Last year, researchers demonstrated that certain states of the crystalline material spin ice would

Carrots are better than sticks

WANT cooperation? Try rewarding the helpful rather than punishing wrongdoers.

In the public goods game, players choose whether or not to contribute money to a common pool, which is then redistributed equally. As playing groups change after every round, the temptation to freeload - to reap the rewards

without contributing anything often leads to a loss of cooperation. Previous research found this could be overcome if players were able to punish freeloaders.

David Rand and colleagues at Harvard University wanted to see ifrewarding players had a similar effect. Participants were split into three experimental groups : one had the option of punishing freeloaders, another to reward contributors, while the third could choose to reward or punish. Each volunteer played with the same people every round.

Rand found that rewarding people always gave the largest return, but if the players had the choice to punish or reward and chose to reward, they received bigger pay-offs (Science, DOl : 1O.1126/science.1177418). "It becomes in one's self-interest to help the group," says Rand.

create monopoles that rove about the crystal (New Scientist, 9 May, p 28). They would be seen as disturbances moving through the spins of atoms within the crystal.

Now two separate groups claim to have spotted just that. Tom Fennell and his colleagues at the Laue-Langevin Institute in Grenoble, France, recorded the disturbances when they fired a

beam of neutrons at a spin ice crystal to see how it affected the neutrons' energy (Science, DOl : 10.1126/science.1177s82).

Meanwhile, J onathan Morris of

the Helmholtz Centre for Materials and Energy in Berlin, Germany, and his colleagues watched how atoms within the crystals fell into alignment along trails through the lattice. These trails are known as "Dirac strings", because Dirac predicted that cosmic monopoles would have just such a connection between them (Science, DOl: 10.1l26/science.1l78868).

"To my mind there's now no question: we have overwhelming evidence that these things are real," says Steve Bramwell of University College London.

'Incoming!' warned the eye

NOT just a window to the SOUl, the eye has a few tricks of its own. Newly

discovered eye cells can warn us that an object is coming nearer, and do so

without the brain's help. This abi l ity

may have evolved to speed escape from predators.

Neurons that fire in response to

8iomedical Research in Basel. Switzerland, noticed that one type

behaved unusually in response to movement. Further analysis of this

one kind of retinal cell revealed that it fired only when an object approached (Nature Neuroscience,

001: 10.1038/nn.2389).

horizontal and vertical movements The researchers suspect that

had already been found in the retinas people have similar cells, which alert of mammals, but the only cells known us to approaching objects faster

to be sensitive to approaching

objects were in the brain.

While investigating mouse eye cells, Botond Roska and his team at

the Friedrich Miescher Institute for

than our brain cells can. "It's an alarm system that's as close to the front

end of the organism as possible," says Roska. "If you left it to the brain

to respond, it might be too late."


N T N U i s N o rway's lea d i n g s c i e n ce a n d e n g i n e e ri n g u n ive rs i ty, located i n

Tro n d h e i m a t 63° n o rt h . We may work a t E u ro p e 's o u t e r e d g e - b u t o u r

resea rc h i s c u tt i n g e d g e . H e re 's o n e exa m p le :

R ES EA R C H T H AT M AY C HA N G E YO U R WO R L D The No rweg i a n U n iversity o f Sc ience and Technology (NTNU ] i s No rway's p remier academ ic i nstituti o n for techno logy and the natural sc iences , with equa lly stro ng programmes in the soc ia l sc iences, the a rts and h uman it ies , med i c i ne , a rch itect u re a n d f i ne a rt . The u n iversity's cross-d isc i p li n a ry resea rch resu lts in i n n ovative breakth roughs a n d creative soluti ons with far-reach i n g soc ia l a n d economic impact . Visit www. ntn u . e du

TECHNOLOGY

Socia l and cheap equa ls game sa les WHAT is the key to designing a hit video game - beautifully crafted graphics or a gripping storyline? It may just be a matter of social interactions and avoiding bad pricing, say Russell Beale and Matthew Bond of the University of Birmingham, UK.

The pair analysed game reviews to determine the most interesting features and how games garner good scores. Weak storytelling and lacklustre in-game graphics had little impact, but pricing the game badly was a killer.

"Social aspects are also much more important than previously realised," adds Beale. That may include multiplayer online options, or creating an experience the rest of the family will enjoy.

The research was presented at this year's Human-Computer Interaction conference in Cambridge, UK, last week.

For daily technology stories, visit www.NewScientist.com/technology

Cost in Canadian dollars of the Braidwood inquiry, set up when Robert Dziekanski died after being tased

Robot to get human b ra i n ce l l s A ROBOT controlled by human brain cells could soon be trundling around a British lab, New Scientist has learned.

Kevin Warwick and Ben Whalley at the University of Reading, UK, have already used rat brain cells to control a robot (New Scientist, 16 August 2008, P 22). This has enabled them to investigate the way groups of neurons behave, and they hope their research will shed light on neurological conditions such as Alzheimer's.

However, human brain cells are a better model for studying human neurological disease. So the team

'They're a fr i g hten i ng bunch"

plan to switch to a culture of human neurons once their current work with rats is completed. It will be the first instance of human

cells being used to control a robot. One aim is to investigate

any differences between the behaviour of robots controlled by rat and human neurons. "We'll be trying to find out if the learning aspects and memory appear to be similar," says Warwick.

The team can proceed as soon as they are ready as they won't need specific ethical approval to use a human neuron cell line. That's because the cultures are available to buy and "the ethical side of sourcing is done by the company from whom they are purchased", Whalley says.

Sal im IsmaiL an executive d i rector of the S i ngu la rity U n iversity i n S i l i con Va l ley, Cal ifornia,

says the technology i n st itute's f i rst i ntake of students a l ready have enough knowledge to

teach some of the courses they wi l l s i t (guard ian .co .uk, 2 September)


TECHNOLOGY

ISS robot arm to catch cargo craft on the fly A new breed of u ncrewed spacecraft wi l l make it eas ier and cheaper to keep the I nternati ona l Space Stat ion supp l ied with l ife's essentia l s

Paul Marks

IF THE first launch of Japan's new heavy-lifting rocket passes without incident this month, the residents of the International Space Station will soon be taking delivery offood, water, some spanking new laptops, a robot arm and a couple of Earthobserving experiments. Business as usual, you might think, except that the way this particular cargo gets to its destination is subtly different to its predecessors.

The reason? The cargo is being carried by the latest uncrewed spacecraft to vie for a place in the emerging market to supply the ISS. The driving force behind this latest space race is the impending

Out on a l imb

retirement of NASA's space shuttle fleet, sometime in 2010. This latest vehicle is the work of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. JAXA's H-II Transfer Vehicle, or HTV, offers the space station a range of new capabilities.

Unlike previous uncrewed cargo-carrying craft, which dock automatically or under human control, the HTV stops dead alongside the ISS when its retro rockets fire and it is grabbed by the space station's giant robot arm. Then the arm pulls the HTV slowly but surely into the docking port on the US Harmony module.

"This will be our first free-flier capture from the space station," says Dana Weigel, lead flight director for the ISS at the Johnson

Japan's HTV can dock by being grabbed by the space station's mechanica l arm,

reducing the requ irement for on-board docking systems

Jaxa HTV Docking point

Pressurised segment

Unpressurised segment

Arm attachment point

Solar panels

Avionics module

Propuls ion module

Length - lOm

Diameter - 4.4m

Launch Mass - 16,500kg

Cargo - 6000 kg

Docks to: US Harmony module


Length - 5.2 or 6m

Diameter - 3.6m

Launch Mass · 10,OOOkg

Cargo - 3600kg

Docks to: US Harmony modu le

Space Center in Houston, Texas. The advantage of this, says JAXA

mission spokesman Masazumi Miyake, is that the HTV does not need an elaborate approach and docking guidance system. And that in turn frees up space for yet more payload. "Without a complicated rendezvous, attitude and range-control system, the whole spacecraft is far simpler than other cargo supply craft," Miyake says.

In addition, the HTV has separate compartments for both pressurised and unpressurised cargo, allowing astronauts to unload the likes offood, water and laptops from the pressurised section in just their shirtsleeves.

An unpressurised cargo module

Russ ian Progress M

Length - 7.2m

Diameter - 2 .7m

Launch Mass · 7100kg

Cargo - 2300kg

Docks to: Russian Zvezda module

can hold racks for experiments and equipment designed to sit outside the ISS (pictured). Such gear can be removed from the HTV by the robot arm and installed on the "porch" platform on Kibo, the Japanese ISS lab module. Two of the outdoor experiments on the HTV's first flight are a NASA ionospheric and thermospheric mapping device, and a JAXA system for monitoring

ESA's ATV

Length - 1O.3m

Diameter - 4.5m

Launch Mass - 20,750kg

Cargo - 7700kg

Docks to: Russian Zvezda modu le

For daily technology stories, visit www.NewScientist.com/technology

Robot arm at the ready

the ozone layer's chemistry. "The HTV is just an amazing

vehicle and it's a pleasure to have it in the supply fleet," says Mike Suffredini, NASA's ISS programme manager.

But just what vehicles have the space agencies recruited for this fleet? Until now, uncrewed missions to space stations like the now defunct Mir, and the ISS, have been carried out by the veteran Russian craft, Progress. This is effectively an uncrewed version of a Soyuz capsule. Then just last year, another option arrived when the European Space Agency successfully flew its own

"Without a complex attitude, rendezvous and rangecontrol system, HTV is simpler than other craft"

uncrewed cargo carrier, the Automated Transfer Vehicle, to the ISS - carrying three times the cargo of a Progress vehicle. Both Progress and ATV dock with the Russian Zvezda module of the ISS.

Now JAXA is adding a third option with the HTV. This craft, however, docks with the American Harmony module.

The usual mode of operation for these cargo beasts is to deliver their payloads and then morph

into a cosmic trashcan, remaining at the station until the vessel is brimming with ISS waste whereupon it is jettisoned, deorbited and burned up.

But a fourth, less wasteful, cargo option beckons. SpaceX, the civilian spaceflight firm backed by PayPal founder Elon Musk, has won a NASA contract to ship cargo to the ISS, running 12 resupply flights between 2012 and 2015.

And the upper capsule of SpaceX's new Dragon vessel, which resembles an Apollo spacecraft, is recoverable - via a parachute splashdown in the Pacific ocean. It too can dock via the robot arm.

SpaceX's programme is at an advanced stage. Last week, it supplied NASA with the UHF radio system that will enable the Dragon to dock with the ISS : it will be taken up on the next flight of the shuttle Atlantis. "This radio unit had to pass NASA's strict ISS safety standards and reviews, demonstrating our progress and laying the groundwork for Dragon flights," says SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell.

JAXA is also investigating capsule reuse. "One of our upgrade plans is to make HTV recoverable. It's something we're studying right now," Miyake says.

HTV is scheduled for lift-off sometime between 10 September and the end of the month, on board the HII-B launch vehicle, which has never flown before -and the record of successful first rocket launches is poor. For instance, the giant Ariane 5, which carries ESA's ATV, failed to launch several times before the glitches in the technology were finally ironed out.

A variant of JAXA's workhorse HII-A rocket, the HII-B has four solid rocket boosters instead of the HII -A's two - and has two main liquid-fuelled engines instead of the HII-A's one.

"This is indeed the HII-B's

first launch. But many of the components are already working well on the HII-A," says Miyake. "We have great confidence in it." •

Im p l ants that react to bra i n s igna l s cou l d he l p Pa rki nson's SMART implants in the brains of people with neurological disorders

could eventually help develop treatments for people with

Parkinson's d isease, depression

and obsessive compulsive disorder.

Last week, a team from Medtronic

of M inneapol is, Minnesota, reported

on their design for a neurostimulator

at the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society meeting in

Minneapolis. The devices use electrodes to del iver deep stimulation

to specific parts of the brain.

Neurostimulators are already

approved to treat conditions such

as Parkinson's d isease, essential

tremor, and dystonia, as well as obsessive compulsive disorder. But

existing devices del iver stimu lation

on a set schedule, not in response to abnormal bra in activity. The

Medtronic researchers think a

device that reacts to brain signals

could be more effective, plus the battery would last longer, an

important consideration for

implantable devices. Tim Denison, a Medtronic engineer

working on the device, says that the

Human trials are years away,

but elsewhere, NeuroPace a start-up

f irm in Mountain View, California, is finishing cl in ical trials using its RNS smart implant device in 240 people

with epi lepsy, the results of which

will be avai lable in December, says

Martha Morrel l , chief medical officer

at NeuroPace. An earl ier feasibi l ity

study on 65 patients provided

prel iminary evidence that the devices did reduce seizures.

The NeuroPace device is

implanted within the skul l where it monitors electrical activity via

electrodes implanted deep in the

bra in . If it spots the "signature" of

a seizure, it will del iver brief and mi ld electrical stimu lation to suppress it.

Mark George, a neurologist at the

Medical University of South

"If it spots the signature of a seizure it will deliver mild electrical stimulation to suppress it"

Carol ina in Charleston, says heart pacemakers developed in a s imi lar

way, as researchers learned

neurostimu lator wil l in itially be useful to make them detect and react to

for studying brain signals as patients signals from the heart. "I think it's go about their day. Eventually, the absolutely inevitable that we' l l data collected wil l show whether the develop a smarter, more intel l igent

sensors would be useful for detecting way to figure out how and when to and preventing attacks. stimulate;' George says. Kurt Kleiner •

12 September 2009 1 NewScient ist 1 21

TECHNOLOGY

How to short-c i rcu it the Amer ica n power g r id PREDICTING how rumours and epidemics percolate through populations, or how traffic jams spread through city streets, are network analyst jian-Wei Wang's bread and butter. But his latest findings are likely to spark worries in the US: he's worked out how

attackers could cause a cascade of network failures in the US's westcoast electricity grid - cutting power to economic powerhouses Silicon Valley and Hollywood.

Wang and colleagues at Dalian University ofTechnology in the Chinese province of Liaoning modelled the US's west-coast grid using publicly available data on how it, and its subnetworks, are connected (Safety Science, DOl : 10.1016/j .ssci.200g.02.002).

Their aim was to examine the potential for cascade failures, where a major power outage in a subnetwork results in power being dumped into an adjacent subnetwork, causing a chain

INSIGHT

reaction of failures. Where, they wondered, were the weak spots? Common sense suggests they should be the most highly loaded networks, since pulling them offline would dump more energy into smaller networks.

To find out if this is indeed the

case, the team analysed both the power loading and the number of connections of each grid subnetwork to establish the order in which they would trip out in the event of a major failure. To their surprise, under particular loading conditions, taking out a lightly loaded subnetwork first caused more of the grid to trip out than starting with a highly loaded one.

"An attack on the nodes with the lowest loads can be a more effective way to destroy the electrical power grid of the western US due to cascading failures," Wang says. To minimise the risk, he says, the grid's operators should defend the west

US military takes to the air to destroy missiles with its Airborne Laser

IT SHOULD be the moment of truth

for the Ai rborne Laser (ABL). l n the

coming months, the mu lti b i l l ion-do l lar

laser bu i lt into a customised Boeing

747 wi l l try to shoot a ba l l istic miss i le

as it rises above the c louds.

Don't expect instant reports of

success, though. Instead, if a l l goes

to plan, we're l i kely to hear about a

series of i ncrementa l improvements.

Developed by the US Department

of Defense's Miss i le Defense Agency

(MDA), the ABL a ims to focus a beam

of laser energy i n the megawatt

range for severa l seconds onto a

miss i le at a "m i l itar i ly s ign if icant

d istance" - more than 100 ki lometres.

So far, the laser has on ly operated


at near fu l l power on the g round .

On 18 August it was fired successfu l ly

from the a i r, but at reduced power.

That, however, was no mean feat:

a i rcraft v ibrations play havoc with the

precisely a l igned optical components

needed to generate a laser beam .

F ir ing at fu l l power poses other

chal lenges too. At powers h igh

enough to destroy miss i les, any

surface contamination or tiny flaw i n

the laser optics can absorb so much

heat that they crack or shatter.

High-power laser beams also heat

the a i r they pass through, creat ing

perturbations that can d isperse or

divert the beam. To counteract those

effects, the ABL uses an adaptive

\ /

coast sections by adjusting their power capacity to ensure these specific conditions do not arise.

The US Department of Homeland Security is reviewing the research, says John Verrico, the department's technology spokesman, who adds that countermeasures are already in the works. "Our engineers are working on a self-limiting, hightemperature superconductor technology which would stop and prevent power surges generated anywhere in the system from

Stabilising the beam is much

trickier on an aircraft

system that senses atmospheric

changes a long its path and makes

optical adjustments to compensate.

To test that system, the MDA

p lans a series of i ncreas ing ly powerfu l

shots at modified ba l l istic missi les

spreading to other substations. Pilot tests in New York City may be ready as soon as 2010."

These precautions are well and good, but there are easier ways to bring a grid down, says lan Fells, an expert in energy conversion at Newcastle University, UK. "A determined attacker would not fool around with the electricity inputs or whateverthey need only a bunch of guys with some Semtex to blow up the grid lines near a power station." Paul Marks.

loaded with sensors to measure

the d istri bution of laser power

on the ta rget. Eng ineers w i l l assess

each shots performance and use

the resu lts to fine-tune the adaptive

optics. Once this i s done, the

MDA wi l l test the laser again in

vary ing conditions, and attempt to

destroy actua l miss i les. The fi rst

of these tests is p lanned to take

p lace late this year, with two more

to fol low in early 2010, accord ing to

an MDA spokeswoman.

A s ister project, the Advanced

Tactical Laser, which a ims to use an

a i rborne h igh-powered laser to hit

targets on the ground, recently

completed its f i rst successfu l test.

With future fund ing dependent upon

the success of these tests, the

pressure is on the ABL team to prove

its efficacy. Jeff Hecht •

New Scient ist video - the l ist keeps gett i ng longer.

Search from h u ndreds of the most

amaz i ng, m i n d b lowi ng and coo lest v ideos.

Ta ke your seat and prepare to be amazed !

So what are you wa i t i n g for?

Watch exc l us ive v ideos tod ay.

www. NewScientist.com/video

NewScientist

OPINION �l BETTER WORLD

Buying into b iod iversity Natu ra l h i story col l ections not on ly te l l us about the wor ld as it used to be, they can a l so he lp save today's p l ants and a n i m a ls, says Richard Lane FIRST, the good news : the UN has

declared 2010 the International Year of Biodiversity. Next October, scientists and politicians meet in Japan to assess progress towards the targets under the Convention on Biological Diversity, confirmed at the 2002 Johannesburg summit in South Africa. The bad news is that the chances of meeting those targets are extremely low. Most indicators suggest that the rate of biodiversity loss is increasing, not slowing. It is clear that we need to redouble our efforts.

This has to be done in two ways : by improving scientific understanding of what is happening to the world's biodiversity, and by ensuring that this understanding is conveyed to as wide an audience as possible. Both are difficult but essential and fortunately both are doable.

On the first front, we need to know in as much detail as

The rea l Tu ri ng test I t's t i me to a po log ise fo r m i streat ing computer g u ru A lan Tu r ing, says John Graham-(umming SEVENTY years ago, a 27-year-old mathematician called Alan Turing arrived at Bietchley Park, 86 kilometres north of London and headquarters ofthe British cryptography operation, to help

break the Nazis' secret codes. During his studies at the

University of Cambridge and at the Institute for Advanced Study,


Princeton, Turing had laid the foundations for computer science by imagining a machine that would be capable of any form of computation.

At Bietchley, however, he was instrumental in breaking the Enigma code, among others, and helping to shorten the second world war. After the war, he

worked on artificial intelligence and created the Turing test, designed to show if a machine can think in any meaningful way.

But being homosexual, Turing fell victim to a toxic combination of prejudice and science. In 1952, after being convicted of gross indecency, he was given the choice of prison or oestrogen injections to "cure" his homosexuality. He chose the latter, lost his security clearance, and in 1954 committed suicide, biting into an apple dipped in potassium cyanide.

The UK has started to honour this great man. There are statues, a plaque on his childhood home, a building or two and a road named

possible what has happened to biodiversity over the recent past (the 300 or so years since the revolutions in industrialisation and agriculture had a major impact on the world) so we can better measure current rates ofbiodiversity loss. Only when we have a validated rate of past decline can we assess the effects of conservation efforts.

We also need to be creative about where we look for that

evidence. Monitoring programmes show evidence of changes in one place over a few years or decades, but they are already being made more difficult by the impact climate change is having on the distribution of organisms - and thus on biodiversity - at any particular place on the planet.

When it comes to longer-term changes, monitoring clearly cannot help. This is where scientific collections such as those in natural history museums and herbaria can make a unique contribution. These vast, painstakingly assembled collections of animals and plants are more than mere relics: they offer snapshots of past biodiversity. The collections held in institutions like the Natural History Museum in London can make an important

after him. The centenary of his birth, 2012, will be celebrated as Alan Turing Year. At the same time, the UK government refuses to fund the Bletchley Park Trusta museum devoted to the wartime code breakers. In contrast, the US Association for Computing Machinery has been presenting the Turing Award, the computer science Nobel, since 1966.

To try to right these wrongs, I have set up a petition on the website of 10 Downing Street

"Being homosexual, luring fell victim to a toxic combination of prejudice and science"

Comment on these stories at www.New5cientist.com/opinion

contribution by providing data that will help us all to assess longterm changes in biodiversity.

But assessing the changes is clearly not enough on its own. Action to foster biodiversity is urgently needed, and that requires politicians - and thus the wider public - to understand the significance of the changes taking place. This can be a complex message to communicate. The issue is not whether it is worth

conserving a charismatic mammal or whether it matters if

a few nematodes become extinct : it needs to be far more widely understood that declines in individual species herald the decline of diversity in whole ecosystems, which, in turn, has implications for human survival.

Here, too, museums can play a crucial role by helping to engage people's interest. The International Year of Biodiversity offers an unmissable opportunity to encourage broader understanding about the threats facing biodiversity and encourage action to solve them . •

Richard Lane is d i rector of science at

the Natural H istory Museum in London,

The museum's Darwin Centre, which

brings together col lections, scientists

and visiting members of the publ ic,

opens on 15 September

calling for an apology for the mistreatment ofTuring. More than 25,000 people have signed it, and it has been backed by many scientists, including Richard Dawkins.

It is a disgrace that Alan Turing was prosecuted, and that his name is only well known to computer scientists and cryptographers. An apology would help recalibrate our collective moral compass by saying that his prosecution and treatment were wrong . •

John Graham-Cumming is author

of The Ceek Atlas: 128 places where

science and technology come olive

One-minute interview

F i nd i ng a d iabetes cu re Stem ce l l p ioneer Doug Melton on the futu re of h i s f ie ld and h i s success i n creat ing i nsu l i n - prod uc ing ce l l s from ski n ce l l s

Your son and daughter have diabetes. which

must be a huge incentive to develop a cure

for the disease. How far have you got?

In type 1 diabetes we have two problems, There

is an absence of insu l i n-produc ing beta ce l ls and

also an auto immune attack, which is what k i l led

the cel ls in the fi rst p lace, Our lab and others have

worked on the fi rst problem and I am confident we

wi l l get buckets of beta ce l ls , When I started this,

I thought that by the t ime I got to making beta

ce l ls the auto immune problem wou ld have been

solved, I n fact it i s very d iff icult prob lem.

How did your son respond to you creating

beta cel ls from skin cells?

He said : "Dad, th is has taken you e ight yea rs and

you a re tel l i ng me you have so lved two out of four

or five steps, What are you excited about?" I to ld

h im that this shows it is doable , We wi l l f i l l i n the

other steps,

How are you going to stop beta cells from

being attacked by the immune system?

The goal here is to find the root cause, but that is

go ing to take a long t ime, If you wanted to design

a thought experiment to get at the cause of type 1

d iabetes, it wou ld go as fo l lows, We wou ld clone a

person with d iabetes 100 times, We wou ld put

them in different envi ronments, feed them

different foods, g ive them different vi ruses

and every 5 minutes take b lood samples and do

pancreatectomies to try to f igure out the cause,

Obviously we are not going to do that experiment.

So what can we do to find the cause?

I nduced p luri potent stem ce l l s ( iPS cel ls) g ive us an

a lternative, I see no reason why I can't use iPS ce l ls

to reconstruct human d iseases such as diabetes i n

m ice, What we a im to do is create the human ce l l s

i nvolved i n d iabetes - immune, thymus and beta

ce l ls - from iPS cel ls and put them i nto a

human ised mouse, essentia l ly a l iv ing test tube,

The p lan wil l be to watch human d iabetes develop

i n a mouse, If that happens it opens a doo r to a

prob lem that no one has been ab le to study. Then

I have to work out which ce l l screws up fi rst.

PROFILE

Doug Melton is co-d i rector of the Harvard Stem

Cel l Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, He

orig ina l ly worked on frog development but

when h is i nfant son was d iagnosed with type 1

d iabetes he switched h is focus to us ing stem

cel l s to f ind new treatments for the d isease,

What do you think about how stem cel l

research is regulated?

One nation, and on ly one, has a sensib le approach

to making pol icy on this d ifficult subject one that

ra ises questions about what it means to be

human, when does l ife beg in and so on, I am a

great fan of the way the UK has handled stem ce l l

po l icy, But the US is a mess, It's an embarrassment.

Sometimes I wonder how America can survive, the

way it makes decis ions,

Where do you see the future of stem

cell research?

Stem ce l l s are the key to understand ing our

natural mechanism for repa i r and replenishment

But why wait to get s ick? Why not keep us

healthy? I am not i nterested i n immorta l ity, I am

i nterested in l iv ing between the ages of 30 and

70 fee l ing more l i ke a 30-year-old ,

Interview by Roger Highfield


OPINION LETTERS

Keep on trucking

From Simon Birnstingl The ideas for efficiency improvements in trucks described by Phil McKenna are welcomeif late (15 August, P 34) . However, the realities of road haulage were not adequately addressed in the article.

In the UK, hauliers feel compelled to maintain a fleet of the biggest vehicles permitted,

( 5 0 R MP HI<IILI tP, S \ ilRE BeG I NNING /

'TO s H 1l1 f' . .A 1.-, 6 M T. . . �

�

in order to be seen as competitive. You might think that every vehicle on the road is carrying a full load, but this is a false assumption.

There is also a huge waste caused by the distribution systems of large organisations such as supermarkets, which

rely on a small number of large

warehouses. Goods from one area can be transported across the country to be packaged before being freighted back to a supermarket near their origin.

Road haulage companies will probably adopt more efficient vehicles as soon as the technology becomes economic. It seems likely that governments will need to intervene to achieve the best from the transport system, something that they have been

unwilling to do so far. Upper Beeding, West Sussex, UK

From Mike Taylor The article on advances in truck design contained some overly broad generalisations ofthe attempts to improve fuel efficiency in the haulage industry.

While it may be true that the American trucking industry has resisted improvements because of the availability of cheap fuel, it has made its vehicles more aerodynamic, albeit involuntarily, because of the takeover of American truck builders by companies such as Volvo and Scania. In Europe, manufacturers have been producing aerodynamic cabs, fuel-efficient engines and lightweight

Enigma Number 1562 Same unused dig its RICHARD ENGLAND

I chose two fou r-d ig it perfect squares (with no leading zero) that conta i ned

eight different d ig its. So did Harry, and so did Tom.

Our s ix chosen squares were a l l d ifferent, but the two d ig its that were

unused were the same for a l l three of us. If you knew what those two

d ig its were you wou ld be ab le to deduce with certa inty what the six

squares that we chose were.

What were the largest and smal lest of our six squares?

WIN £15 wi l l be awarded to the sender of the f irst correct

answer opened on Wednesday 14 October. The Ed itor's decis ion is f ina l .

P lease send entries to Enigma 1562, New Scientist, Lacon House,

84 Theobald's Road, London WClX 8NS, o r to en [email protected]

(p lease inc lude you r posta l address).

Answer to 1556 Card trick: 19 centimetres

The winner Jos ie Hudd leston of Durham, UK


components for at least 20 years. Because it is composed of

mainly smaller, independent companies, the British haulage industry can be mistrustful of

change, and is slow to take up new technology because of justified fears about long-term reliability, but we have been investing in fuel efficiency for decades.

Hauliers have long been fitting spoilers and side panels on trailers, and super single tyres

to improve airflow. There have also been major advances in fuel efficiency from improvements to engines, not to mention the gains from speed limiters.

When I started up in haulage in 1977, fuel consumption of between 55 and 70 litres per 100 kilometres (4 to 5 miles per imperial gallon) was expected of a 32-tonne truck. Now it can be as low as 28 litres per 100 kilometres for a 38 to 44-tonne truck.

The haulage company Stan Robinson has been campaigning for 20 years to highlight the fuelefficiency gains to be had with multiple trailers, but it is seen as political suicide in the UK for a government to relax the legislation on lorry length.

While modern technology can bring further improvements, until it is proven reliable and cost-effective under real haulage conditions, it will not be adopted. Hauliers are well aware of possible economies on their biggest cost and are crying out for ways to cut fuel use that will not affect the reliability oftheir operations.

The new technologies you illustrate are researchers' pipe dreams: some may well make the grade given time, others will perish along the way. Borough Green, Kent, UK

Home grid

From Stephen Hodges Clive Semmens discusses the practicalities of producing electricity in your home (18 July,

p 27) . These vary from country to

country. Here in Jamaica, I quite easily generate some 2 kilowatthours per day to supply my house, but I do so via a huge ex-forklift battery that weighs nearly 800 kilograms. The grid is sufficiently unreliable that you would want to have batteries anyway.

As well as the high-tech, lightweight batteries for electric cars reported on by Michael Brooks in the same issue (18 July, p 42), we need low-tech, non-lead

"house" batteries that preferably are made from cheap or recycled materials. Weight and size are not important, cost and durability are.

Also, we may have a lot of sun here, but the heat is a problem. I found recently that installing a sprinkler above my solar panels gives me a 30 per cent gain in power on a hot day. Why is it that I can't find panels with heat sinks, fins or hybrid water heater/ photovoltaic arrangements? I presume it is because most solar panels are in the cold north. Kingston, Jamaica

From Paul Vann I have often felt the same frustration Dave Riddlestone describes in his letter calling for

more cost-effective solutions to climate change (15 August, p 22), particularly in respect of solar panels, which seem to me to be the most user-friendly piece of domestic energy-generation kit.

I recently suggested to the government that it tenders to have 1 million homes - those with the best roof orientation - fixed up with solar panels, financed, owned and maintained by the energy supply companies. The households simply agree to buy the electricity that they use at average market prices. This could overcome the barrier of the up-front cost for the householder, support a sizeable UK solar panel industry, reduce panel prices, reduce carbon emissions and improve energy security.

I am awaiting a response, ever hopeful. Harrold, Bedfordshire, UK

For more letters and to join the debate, visit www.NewScientist.com/letters

From Brian Wootton To go a little way towards cutting my home's carbon footprint I had solar water-heater panels fitted to my roof. The result was that my combined electricity and gas bill dropped to £67 per month.

When our washing machine broke and had to be replaced, I was horrified to discover that all the machines now on sale have only a cold-water inlet, rather than the old-style double inlet for

both hot and cold water. Since this new machine has been installed, my combined power bill has gone up 45 per cent to £98 per month.

Besides hurting me in the pocket in more than one way joule for joule, electricity is approximately four times as expensive as gas - this makes a nonsense of my efforts to make my home more climate-friendly. I wonder who is responsible for this change in design, and why. Caldecote, Cambridgeshire, UK

Climate for caring

From Anthony Patt In his thought -provoking essay, George Marshall suggests that action on climate change is going to be difficult to achieve until the population has a shared belief

(25 July, P 24). But is such a shared belief something we can realistically hope to achieve? Is it a prerequisite to taking action, collectively and individually? In my opinion, such pleas for a shared belief are a siren's call leading to rocky shores.

What to one person is an

effort to forge a shared belief is to another an attempt to impose a world view. Trying to convince people to see a problem in a certain way meets with strong resistance if there is a clear agenda to influence their behaviour, as anthropologists Marco Verweij and Michael Thompson show in the book they edited: Clumsy Solutions For a Complex World. Conversely, efforts can be successful when

people are willing to play along for different reasons.

In the case of climate change, some people may want to reduce their carbon footprint out of concern for future generations and biodiversity. Others, because it means to them a healthier way of living today.

Many people would be motivated by the idea that reducing your carbon footprint saves money, although this is sometimes not the case. That's why we still need collective action to stimulate research and investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency so that their costs come down - putting coal, oil and gas producers permanently out of business.

With enough effort, there is probably a way to make air travel to Thailand carbon neutral, at least for those people who really want to go. But telling them they can't fly there because it is wrong is a great way to get them to go jet -skiing or dirt -biking at home instead.

The reality of collective action is that achieving a single common sense of purpose as a prerequisite to change simply doesn't work. We need a policy discourse that recognises that. Laxenburg, Austria

Prawns in pain

From Amanda Williams In his letter (15 August, p 23), Peter Carr challenges research showing that hermit crabs feel and remember pain (11 July, p 24)

on the basis that "internal pain receptors would be pointless" ina crustacean, as the damage has already happened when the shell is penetrated.

Pain is not only a powerful prompt to escape or try to prevent

.:rn ['I?E I � /'t ( i! � l t E� \ OF PA 1Ni<I L LnS (:{)/t ....... � 1 /l.'S I-- o P·n R..

further pain - although even by this criterion it is not pointless. It also provides the organism with a cue to guard the area that has been damaged, in order to promote effective healing. In many animals it also provides the opportunity to learn a vital lesson about avoidance in the future. On these grounds, internal pain receptors would be useful.

Research by Stuart Barr and others has shown that prawns appear to feel pain in their antennae (Animal Behaviour, vo1 75, p 745). As Carr says, they may not have similar sensory functions beneath their shells, but then we don't have the same sensitivity to pain in our guts as in our fingerti ps.

I am not convinced by Carr's argument that the behaviour of prawns piled in a box out of water can teach us about their evolved pain sensitivity. Pain research in animals looks for characteristic escape, avoidance and protective behaviours that occur in response to damage, make evolutionary sense and are reversed by analgesic substances.

It suits humans too well to deny that other animals really feel pain and to conclude that there is no need to treat them any better than inanimate objects. London, UK

Assault on battery

From Andrew Fogg Proponents of the electric car studiously avoid discussing the problem of refuelling (18 July, p 42) . Ifwe want electric cars to have anything like the performance and versatility of internal combustion ones, they have to "refuel" reasonably quickly; the idea of exchangeable battery packs is an environmental

and practical minefield. A 60-litre tankful of diesel

equates to about 200 kilowatthours of electricity, assuming the electrical energy is used three times as efficiently as the heat energy from diesel.

For argument's sake, let's say we want to be able to "refuel" in 12 minutes, four times as long as filling a tank with petrol. This would require an energy flow of 1 megawatt. In the UK, for example, you would need to multiply that value by six "pumps" at 10,000 filling stations, drawing 60 gigawatts between them.

Where will you build all the necessary power stations, what will they run on, and where will you hide the transmission cables? Great Gransden, Cambridgeshire, UK

For the record

• It was Miguel N icolel is's group at Duke University in Durham, North

Carolina, who implanted electrodes

into the brains of macaque monkeys

(29 August, p 14). Dietmar Plenz,

who we wrongly credited with

the technique, analysed the

resulting data.

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84 Theobald's Road, London WClX 8NS

Fax: +44 (0) 20 7611 1280

Ema i l : [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.


OPINION INTERVIEW

Confi rmed, p lausib le or busted? Ca n a l ead ba l l oon f ly? Can tooth f i l l i ngs p ick u p rad i o

stat io ns? Each week m i l l ions watch Adam Savage a n d Jamie Hyneman, a ka t h e MythBusters, test urban legends

on the i r D iscovery Channe l TV show. Peter Aldhous jo ined

them on set i n San Franc isco to f ind out how these spec i a l effects wizards beca me standard - bearers for TV sc ience

Which of the myths you've worked on have

given you the most satisfaction?

Jamie Hyneman: A favourite is when we investigated whether a lead balloon can fly. Think about what it takes to build a bag out of lead that's 0.007 of an inch (0.2 millimetres) thick, weighs 28 pounds and is 14 feet across. What we had to go through to where it actually floated with helium was just thrilling.

Adam Savage: Another time we wanted to know whether a penny dropped from the Empire State Building will kill you. We'd done a piece to camera talking about the mathematics of its terminal velocity, and then I came up with the idea of creating a wind tunnel with

a different velocity at the bottom than at the top. A tumbling penny should move up and down in the wind tunnel, and it did. That is the kind of thing I really enjoy.

What do you hope the viewers will learn

from the show?

AS: A fan emailed me recently to say: "I heard a myth that the Eiffel Tower weighs less than the column of air that describes its extent." Ten minutes later I had it all plotted out and it's absolutely true. I even accounted for the lowering of the density of the air at the top of the tower. If someone watches our show and realises that this is a simple thing to do, then

PROFILE

Jamie Hyneman ran a sa i l i ng and d iv ing business

before moving i nto visual effects for movies and T\( Adam Savage was a projection ist. toy designer

and welder before f inding h is n iche in specia l

effects. They have hosted MythBusters on the

D iscovery Channel s ince 2002. The new season

opens i n the US on 7 October.


For more interviews and to add your comments, visit www.NewScientist.com/opinion

that's what we're trying to communicate. JH: We're not scientists by training. But if ! were to say one thing, it would be that using your head is actually a lot of fun. ' don't normally associate TV with a whole lot of cerebral activity, and people tend to think of using your head as some kind of work, but we're just having a ball.

There's an element of danger in your tests.

Have there been any close cal ls?

JH: There have, and we generally don't talk about them. The most frequent safety hazard involves moving heavy blast shields that have

broken fingers and caused herniated discs. AS: We have had a few wake-up calls in the course of shooting this show, but we've taken them incredibly seriously. After testing 600 myths in 2000 separate experiments - a lot of them being set up in lethal situations, close enough for us to watch them -you do start to feel like your number's up. So we take that very, very seriously.

How would you describe your different

approaches to testing a myth?

AS: Mostly, we will play devil's advocate about any point that the other brings up. Each of us has a vision in our head, and to get into each other's heads involves a process we call ... arguing.

How do you go from an initial idea to the

segments that we see on TV?

AS: Some ideas come from the fans, some come from our producers, and a good proportion come from me and jamie. JH: For us it's all about satisfying our curiosity. Often it's some kind of paradox we want to investigate, or just an excuse for us to build something that's crazy. ' think the rest is just being methodical. We have to tell a story with a beginning, middle and end. It turns out that the scientific method and the classic narrative structure work really well together.

You often have sample sizes of one or two, but

science is all about replication . How do you

respond to that criticism?

JH: People simply wouldn't watch it if we were just repeating things over and over again. We do them as compactly as we can to keep up the energy level and flow. We intend these shows to be thought-provoking, not definitive. AS: ' think the part of the scientific enterprise that we do illuminate is that it's a messy, creative process that changes your whole understanding. We'll spend half an episode finding that we're asking the wrong question.

Your fans certainly like picking your methods

apart on your discussion boards!

JH: 'f they've criticised us that means they've actually thought about what we're doing, and that's the biggest compliment that we could possibly get.

" I don't normally associate TV with a whole lot of cerebral activity"

Photography: Gabriela Hasbun/Redux/Eyevine

AS: We've done a dozen episodes at least where we've gone back and tackled stories that we've done before, where either we didn't tackle it with the right equipment or we didn't have enough data, or we got new information.

When you are testing your own reactions.

might you bias your results because you have

expectations about the outcome?

AS: That's a good point and makes me think that we should demonstrate experimental bias on the show. It was an issue when we investigated "beer goggles" : whether drinking

alcohol can make people seem more attractive. ' spent a long time with a friend of mine who's a statistician to try and remove as much of the bias as possible.

Do scientists contact you about your tests ?

J H: One that comes to mind was from Oak Ridge

Lab in Tennessee. We'd blown up an airplane as part of a story about whether shooting a gun inside a pressurised airplane would make it explode. The people at Oak Ridge had been trying to get funding to do exactly that kind of test, so they wanted access to the footage.

Are there any myths where the underlying

scientific phenomenon remains a mystery?

JH: One that aired not too long ago was based on a You Tube video that had somebody igniting a bucket ofthermite on top of ice, and there was an explosion. The speculation was that the heat caused the water in the ice to

decompose into hydrogen and oxygen, which exploded. The problem as , saw it was the volume of hydrogen and oxygen that would have to be created instantaneously, and then ignite, seemed to be too large. So , speculated that the steam reaction, pOSSibly coupling with some decomposition of the water, aerosolised the thermite that then flashed. AS: I've also been told that it's what happens when you make water move directly from a solid to a gas.

It sounds like something that readers of our

Last Word column might answer.

AS: We've been getting all sorts of explanations from all over the web, but we don't know which is right. So perhaps you guys can help us out. •

MORE ON LINE

To suggest more myths for i nvestigation go to

www.newscientist.com/articie/dnl7718. To

respond to the MythBusters' cha l lenge to exp la in

the "therm ite and ice" mystery see The Last Word

ins ide the back cover of this issue


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BETTER WORLD

COVER STORY

B uepr' nt for a better wor d Pa rt 1 We l ive i n a n i mperfect wor ld , Poverty, d i sease, lack of

educat ion, envi ronmenta l destruct ion - the prob lems a re a l l

too obvious, Many peop le don't have c lean water, let a lone

enough food, and the unsusta i nab le l ifestyle of the wea lthy

few is stor ing up catastroph i c c l imate change ,

Can we do a nyth ing about it? You bet we ca n , Techno logy is

a doub le-edged sword, but sc ience and reason have made our

l ives i m measu rab ly better overa l l - and on ly through sc ience

and reason can we hope to make a rea l d ifference i n the future,

So here and over the next three weeks, New Scientist wi l l

exp lore d iverse ideas for mak ing t h e world a better p lace,

and the evidence backi ng them,

I n part 1 th is week, we look at some rad i ca l ideas for

tra nsform ing society and chang ing the way countries are

run (pages 32 to 39), We a l so exam ine the state of the world

as it is today, to see whether th ings are gett ing better or

worse (page 40),

Next week i n part 2 we'l l report on what you as a n i n d iv idua l

ca n do to make a d ifference , I n part 3 we'l l exp lore what many

see as the fundamenta l prob lem: overpopu lation , And fi na l ly,

i n part 4, we' l l ponder the profound and long- last ing changes

we are mak ing to our home p lanet


Beware of common sense YOU break your arm. At the hospital, the doctor tells you his team is going to inject iron nanoparticies into the broken bone and use electromagnets to

realign it. Wow, you say, you've never heard of this method. "Oh, it's never been tried before," says the doctor. "But our hospital needs some publicity, and it sounds really impressive and high-tech, doesn't it?"

You would rightly be appalled

if hospitals chose treatments this way. We expect medical therapies to undergo rigorous trials to ensure they are safe and effective. Yet we seem content to let our leaders conjure up policies based on what sounds good, rather than on what has been proved to work.

The effectiveness of policies in many areas, from education and crime to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, can be empirically determined. As in medicine, the best evidence comes from randomised controlled trials ; better still, a systematic review of multiple randomised trials.

Admittedly, there are plenty of problems with evidence-based government. There are many aspects of government which

the scientific method cannot be

Policies intended

to reduce crime can

do the opposite


applied to and, even where it is applicable, it can be timeconsuming and expensive. Trials have to be well designed and they often need to involve

large numbers to produce robust results. Researchers also need to ensure trial results are directly relevant to policy-makers.

Proper trials are worth the effort, though. When they are carried out, they often reveal that policies and laws are having the

opposite effect to that intended. "Common sense" and good intentions are no substitute for hard evidence. You might think, for instance, that scaring young offenders by showing them what prison life is like will discourage them from reoffending. In fact, randomised trials show that such schemes, long popular in the US, increase re offending rates.

The big challenge is to get politicians and policy-makers to understand what constitutes rigorous evidence and to base their decisions on it, rather than on the urgings of iobbyists. The only alternative is to spend vast sums on programmes and policies that, far from achieving their aims, may be making

matters worse. Michael Le Page

"So-called common sense and good intentions are no substitute for hard evidence"

Lega l ise drugs SO FAR this year, about 4000 people have died in

Mexico's drugs war - a horrifying tol l . If only a good

fairy could wave a magic wand and make all i l legal

drugs disappear, the world would be a better place. Dream on. Recreational drug use is as old as

humanity, and has not been stopped by the most

draconian laws. Given that drugs are here to stay, how do we l imit the harm they do?

The evidence suggests most of the problems

stem not from drugs themselves, but from the

fact that they are i l legal. The obvious answer,

then, is to make them legal. The argument most often deployed in support

of the status quo is that keeping drugs i l legal curbs drug use among the law-abiding majority, thereby

reducing harm overal l . But a closer look reveals that

this rea lly doesn't stand up. In the UK, as in many

countries, the real clampdown on drugs started in

the late 1960s, yet government statistics show that

the number of heroin or cocaine addicts seen by the

health service has grown ever since - from around

1000 people per year then, to 100,000 today. It is

a pattern that has been repeated the world over.

A second approach to the question is to look at

whether fewer people use drugs in countries with stricter drug laws. In 200B, the World Health

Organization looked at 17 countries and found no such correlation. The US, despite its punitive drug

policies, has one of the highest levels of drug use in the world (PLoS Medicine, vol S, p e141).

A third strand of evidence comes from what

happens when a country softens its drug laws, as

Portugal did in 2001. While dealing remains i l legal

in Portugal, personal use of al l drugs has been

decriminal ised. The result? Drug use has stayed roughly constant, but i l l health and deaths from

drug taking have fal len. "Judged by virtually every metric, the Portuguese decriminal isation

framework has been a resounding success;' states a recent report by the Cato Institute, a l ibertarian

think tank based in Washington DC.

By any measure, making drugs i l legal fai ls to achieve one of its primary objectives. But it is the

unintended consequences of prohibition that make the most compell ing case against it. Prohibition

fuels crime in many ways: without state aid, addicts may be forced to fund their habit through robbery,

for instance, while youngsters can be drawn into

the drugs trade as a way to earn money and status.

In countries such as Colombia and Mexico, the profits

from il legal drugs have spawned armed criminal organisations whose resources rival those of the

state. Murder, kidnapping and corruption are rife.

Making drugs i l legal also makes them more

dangerous. The lack of access to clean needles for

Drug money helps to

fuel conflicts a l l over

the world

of lethal viruses such as HIV and hepatitis C. So what's the alternative? There are several

models for the legal provision of recreational drugs,

They include prescription by doctors, consumption at l icensed premises or even sale on a similar basis

to alcohol and tobacco, with health warnings and

age l imits. If this prospect appals you, consider the

fact that in the US today, many teenagers say they

find it easier to buy cannabis than beer. Taking any drug - including alcohol and nicotine

does have health risks, but a legal market would at least ensure that the substances people ingest or inject are available unadulterated and at known

dosages. Much of the estimated $300 bi l l ion earned

from i l legal drugs worldwide, which now funds

crime, corruption and environmental destruction, could support legitimate jobs. And instead of

spending tens of bi l l ions enforcing prohibition, governments would gain income from taxes that could be spent on medical treatment for the small

proportion of users who become addicted or whose

health is otherwise harmed.

Unfortunately, the idea that banning drugs is the best way to protect vulnerable people - especially

chi ldren - has acquired a strong emotional grip, one that politicians are happy to exploit. For many

decades, laws and publ ic policy have flown in

the face of the evidence, Far from protecting us,

this approach has made the world a much more drug users who inject is a major factor in the spread dangerous place than it need be. Clare Wi lson

B ig th i n ke rs, b i g i deas We asked prominent thinkers and doers what they reckon will make the world better ...

The world would be a better place

if everybody learned to th ink l i ke

scientists. I don't mean they should

know more science, a lthough that

wou ld be nice too . I mean that

everybody should base their be l iefs

upon evidence, and be h igh ly

suspic ious of any be l iefs that

are not based on evidence,

Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist, University of Oxford

The key to a better future for the

entire world populat ion l ies i n g iv ing

pr iority to the deve lopment of

human capab i l ities, The immed iate

priority must be un iversal pr imary

and secondary education - a l l

ch i ldren in school at least through

to age 15 - everywhere in the world,

New research shows that this

general ly leads to better health,

h igher economic growth and in the

long run better government This

ca l ls for a rad ical reorientation of

our development strategies: sh ift

the focus from giv ing money to

develop ing m i nds!

Wolfgang Lutz, academic

and author of many books on

population and development

If each of us made service to others

a part of our l ives, the world would

become an inf in itely better p lace,

From the beg inn ing, Americans

have dedicated themse lves to

"l ife, l i berty, and the pursuit of

happ iness", But the happi ness that

was to be pursued was not the buzz

of a sexua l escapade or a shopping

spree, it was the happiness that

comes from feel ing good by doing

good, This moment in h istory

demands that we stop wait ing on

others, Now, more than ever, we

must mine the most underuti l ised

resource ava i lab le to us: ourselves,

Arianna Huffington, author and

founder of The Huffington Post


G ive po l i ce your DNA DNA profiling is a powerful forensic technique. It has led to the conviction of many criminals who would otherwise have eluded justice, and the freeing of

many innocent people who had been wrongly convicted.

Its success in solving crimes depends on finding a match to a DNA profile generated from tissue fragments left at a crime scene, so many countries have set up databases of their citizens' DNA profiles, and often retain the original

samples too. The UK's database includes the profiles of7.5 per cent of its population, the highest proportion in the world. Even so, a match can be found for only around half the usable tissue samples taken from crime scenes.

This is the case even though the UK database contains the profiles not only of convicted criminals but also of people who have been arrested, regardless of whether they were then charged with an offence, let alone convicted. Civil liberties advocates say that including the profiles of innocent people is unjust - and the European Court of Human Rights recently agreed. Yet removing these profiles will mean that fewer crimes will be solved.

Many other countries are wrestling with this issue. One possible answer not yet adopted anywhere in the world

is to record everybody's profiles at birth or on entry to the country. A universal DNA database of this kind would not solve all crimes: in many cases, no DNA sample is available, or would be irrelevant because the alleged perpetrator's identity is not in question. But it would ensure a match could be found for most crime-scene DNA samples, while also ensuring people arrested but not convicted are treated no differently to the rest of the population. There is no other way to achieve this.

There are privacy issues, especially if tissue samples are retained in addition to the profiles derived from them. While profiles alone can reveal little about people besides their parentage, frozen samples allow future sequencing of the genome, which will reveal ever more about us. But the risks have to kept in perspective : if someone wants to find out your genetic secrets, there are many other ways to do it. Clare Wilson


Redefine the bottom l i ne

"Above a certain threshold, increasing wealth seems to matter less and less to our well-being"

OUR prof l igate g reenhouse

emissions are creating problems

of p lanetary proportions for our

descendants. Even in the best

case scenario, if we make drastic

cuts in emiss ions soon, sea

leve ls wi l l rise by anyth ing from

10 metres to 25 metres over

the next few thousand years.

Faced by the loss of so

much prec ious coasta l land, it

seems qu ite p laus ib le that our

descendants wi l l resort to some

kind of mega-project to cool

the p lanet and stop the ice

sheets melting . I f so, why not

do it sooner rather than later?

It m ight save countless l ives,

not to mention the myriad

species otherwise doomed

to extinction.

There is no shortage of grand

ideas for geoengineer ing . We

Fi nd out if we can coo l the p lanet

cou ld pump coo l ing su lphur

into the atmosphere to d isperse

incoming sun l ight or generate

reflective c louds by spraying

seawater heavenwards from

specia l sh ips. We m ight even

launch an a lm ighty f loti l l a of

paraso ls into space to shade

our planet from the sun.

The problem with al l of these

schemes is that we have l ittle

c lue whether they wou ld work.

Some of the best evidence so

far comes from the cataclysmic

eruption of Mount P inatubo in

1991, which ob l ig ing ly

conducted a la rge-scale

experiment for us on the effect

of i njecti ng su lphur i nto the

upper atmosphere. From a g loba l

coo l i ng perspective, the resu lts

were encourag ing : temperatures

sank temporar i ly by up to 0.5 0c. It remains unc lear, however,

whether the effects of su lphur

on g loba l weather patterns can

be predicted or contro l led . The

dangers include triggering

severe reg ional droughts, and

even destroying the ozone layer.

WHICH country has the highest quality of l ife: Costa

Rica or the US? According to the standard measure of economic development. the US wins hands

down: its GDP is more than $45,000 per person,

compared to Costa Rica's $10,000. Yet looking at the health and happiness of its inhabitants arguably more important indicators of well-being

Costa Rica comes out top.

The idea that more wealth does not necessarily

equate with more happiness is nothing new, even to economists. Take, for example, a recent study

analysing surveys of 350,000 Europeans and Americans between 1975 and 1997. While the GDP per capita increased by 2.1 per cent per

year on average, happiness actually fell sl ightly

Uournal af Development Economics, vo1 86, p 22). That's not to say that money plays no role in

our well-being; the inhabitants of the poorest

nations have the worst health and the lowest l ife satisfaction. But above a certain threshold,

increasing wealth seems to matter less and less to our overal l wel l-being. As a result. focusing

on GDP as the prime measure of progress gives only a partial picture of social and personal

welfare. A better indicator is needed.

The United Nations' Human Development Index

is one attempt to provide such an indicator. It takes

into account l ife expectancy and education, two key indicators of overal l wel l-being, as well as GDP

future, notjust the here and now. The solution,

according to the New Economics Foundation,

is the Happy Planet Index, which balances a

country's average l ife expectancy and l ife

satisfaction against its ecological footprint,

in terms of how many hectares each person needs to sustain their lifestyle. It gives an indication

of how efficient different countries are at converting natural resources into long, happy

l ives for their citizens. Using this measure, Costa Rica is ranked top, far

above the UK (74), Australia (102) and the US (114) in the l ist of 143 countries. While Costa Rica has a sl ightly higher l ife expectancy and l ife satisfaction

than the US, the most dramatic contrast is in the

ecological footprint: on average, the footprint of

a Costa Rican is just a quarter of the size of an

American's - a level that is almost sustainable.

"People are frightened of giving up their qual ity of l ife to save the environment, but this shows that

a happy l ife does not need to cost the Earth;' says

Nic Marks, a statistician who helped create the

Happy Planet Index. No one is claiming that this index is flawless,

not least because any measure of happiness is

always going to be subjective to a degree. But

even supposedly objective measures have shortcomings. Great swathes of the economy

the informal or "off the books" sector - don't even

per capita. On this measure, Costa Rica (rank 50), register in a country's GDP. Alternative yardsticks the UK (21) and US (15) trai l far behind Australia (4). l ike the Happy Planet Index would encourage

The Human Development Index, however,

does not include any measure of sustainabil ity,

a crucial factor if we are concerned about the

governments to focus on the social and

environmental impacts of their policies,

Faced with such dangers,

it wou ld be foo lhardy to do

anything yet What we need is

a concerted g loba l research drive

into the potential and pitfa l l s

of geoeng ineering . lt wi l l take

decades to estab l ish which of

the poss ib i l it ies are feas ib le,

effective and safe, what their

costs wou ld be, and for whom,

Such a programme

encompassing mode l l i ng and

smal l -sca le experi ments, as wel l

as research i nto the internationa l

legal imp l ications of such

schemes - need not be expensive,

says S teve Rayner of the

Un iversity of Oxford, It would

be smal l change compared with,

say, what is needed to develop

a lternative energy technolog ies,

Desp ite that. res istance to

geoengineering is considerab le,

as well the financial aspects. David Robson

and with good reason, I n some

quarters, geoeng ineering is

a l ready being promoted as an

a lternative to reduc ing

g reenhouse gas levels, rather

than as a temporary measure for

curb ing warm ing whi le we get

emissions under contro l . Coo l i ng

the p lanet without curb ing

carbon d ioxide leve ls won't

prevent ocean acid ification,

whose effects wi l l inc lude the

loss of protective cora l reefs as

erosion outstrips reef-bu i ld ing ,

What's more, by deploying

geoengineer ing without a lso

cutting em issions, we cou ld

land ourselves i n a terr ib le trap,

The h igher leve ls of greenhouse

gases rise, the more

geoengineering would be

requ i red to counteract their

warm ing effect and the longer

it wou ld have to go on for, We

could suffer unexpected and

disastrous s ide effects from

geoengineeri ng but be unab le

to stop for fear of worse

consequences from rap id

warming if we d id ,

That is just the k ind of th ing

a coherent p lan of research

i nto geoengineering should

i nvestigate, G iven the possi b i l ity

that researchers have

underest imated the scale and

speed of c l imate change, and

with emissions r is ing faster than

ever, it wou ld be foo l ish not to

i nvestigate what geoengineering

m ight ach ieve, Is it our best bet

for ensur ing that Earth remains

a ben ign home to future

generations, or a dangerous

delus ion? We need to find out

Richard Webb

B ig th i n kers, b i g i deas 'The best way to make the world

a better p lace is to make it not the

on ly place for us. We shou ld

estab l i sh a self-support ing colony

on Mars. That wou ld make us a two

planet species and improve our

long-term surviva l prospects by

g iv ing us two chances instead of

one, It wou ld change the cou rse of

world h istory - you cou ldn't even

ca l l it world h istory any more, We

should do this before money for

the space programme runs out

J . Richard Gott, astrophysicist,

Princeton University

"I nformation is our most precious

resou rce, l im ited only by the

constraints of human i nte l l i gence,

innovation and imag ination .

However, l i ke most resources,

it is not shared equal ly. I wou ld l i ke

to see fu l l and free shar ing of

i nformation and knowledge, across

a l l sectors, d isc ip l i nes and borders,

gu ided by the shared va lues and

un iversal language of human rights,

This wou ld enable the progress,

development and transformations

necessary in such fields as science,

medic ine and techno logy to

overcome our g reatest chal lenges

and make this world a better

place for a l l .

Mary Robinson, president of

Realizing Rights: The Ethical

Globalization In itiative

Cl imate change is happening and

wi l l shape the future world , It is

un l i kely that we wi l l succeed in

s lowing the pace of change, ma in ly

because we are too s low and

unab le to make effective responses

i n under 20 to 40 years, More than

this, the Earth itself wil l soon be in

the driving seat and a im ing at a 5 °C

hotter world, I th ink that our best

cou rse of action is to spend at least

as much effort adapting to g loba l

heati ng as i n attempts to s low or

stop it happening ,

James Lovelock, independent scientist and originator of the

Gaia hypothesis


To slow global warming,

we m ust put a price on

carbon emissions

CONSIDER this injustice, Governments

tax labour and profit the engines of

prosperity, whi le pol lut ion and the

deplet ion of resources - arguab ly the

greatest threats to our economic wel l

be ing - remain largely untouched, So

whi le we're th ink ing about how to rebu i l d

our broken economies, here's a p lea for a

new cornerstone: a un iversa l carbon tax,

The world needs to put a price on

carbon, that much is agreed, The Kyoto

protocol involves a very d ifferent

mechanism, known as cap and trade,

Permits to emit carbon are d istri buted

among pol l uters up to a tota l , or "cap",

equ iva lent to existing leve ls of carbon

em issions, Those who don't use al l the i r

perm its can se l l them to those who exceed

their a l l ocat ion, Over time, the number of

perm its is reduced, ra is ing their price and

encourag ing peop le to reduce em issions,

That's the theory, but the rea l ity has

not l ived up to expectations, The world's

largest cap-and-trade scheme, the

European Un ion's Emissions Trading

System, saw emissions r ise 2 per cent

in its fi rst trad ing period from 2005 to

2007, Too many perm its were d istr ibuted,

and after trip l i ng in va lue in the fi rst six

months of trad ing, their price rap id ly

col lapsed to virtua l ly noth ing ,

Tweaks i ntroduced for the scheme's

second phase might make it more

effective, but there are some weaknesses

to cap and trade that w i l l never be

erad icated, I n particu lar, it is open to

manipu lat ion and pol it ical inf luence, and if

not properly managed just sh ifts po l lution

around rather than reduc ing it. It also

covers on ly a few carbon- intensive

industries, The mooted i ntroduction of a

s im i la r scheme of personal carbon cred its

for private consumption wou ld have many

of the same drawbacks - and wi l l

inevitably be a bureaucratic n ightmare,

A un iversa l carbon tax cou ld be far

s imp ler, NASA c l imatolog ist James Hansen

is a vocal proponent favour ing a var iant in

which fossi l fuels a re taxed at source or at

a country's port of entry. The most

pol lut ing fuels in terms of carbon

em issions, such as coal or tar-sand

derived o i l , could be taxed more heavily

than others, Consumers would not pay

the tax d i rectly, but its effect wou ld

permeate through to everything from the

price of gas to the price of food: the more


Tax carbon and g ive the money to the peop le carbon- intensive goods or services are,

the more heavily they wi l l be hit.

That doesn't mean that consumers

need be out of pocket. As Hansen

envisages the scheme, the proceeds

of the tax shou ld not be kept by the

government but instead d istri buted

equa l ly among a l l citizens in the form of

payments into the i r bank accounts, Those

who make g reener choices - flyi ng less,

insu lating their home, runn ing a more

energy-effic ient car - wi l l make a net

profit from the tax,

The scheme is not without its

d ifficu lties, Poorer people spend a larger

proport ion of their i ncome on basics such

as heating and food, so they cou ld be hit

hardest. Such effects wou l d have to be

mit igated through targeted subsid ies

for poorer households, for i nstance,

to insu late their homes,

Another crit ic ism is that wealthier

people might just pay more rather than

change their l ifestyles, But steadi ly

i ncreas ing the level of the carbon tax

over the years should mean that a lmost

everyone eventua l ly starts to fee l the

p inch, as wel l as provide a strong incentive

to invest in a lternative technolog ies, In

the UK, this notion w i l l awaken unhappy

memories of the "fuel price esca lator",

a stead i ly r is ing tax on petro l that was

abandoned in 2000 after widespread

protests, Sp l itt ing the proceeds from

a carbon tax among taxpayers wi l l win

many over but the fact is that any effective

scheme for reduc ing em issions is go ing

to involve some pa in , Most of us won't

change our l ifestyles un less forced to,

Pub l i c opposit ion and the lack of

pol it ical w i l l are the b iggest stumb l ing

blocks i n the way of a un iversa l carbon tax,

Hansen is pess imist ic, and contrasts the

s imp l ic ity of a carbon tax with the

mammoth bi l l to estab l ish a cap-and-trade

system for the US now worm ing its way

through Congress - and be ing laced with

c lauses serv ing various spec ia l i nterests

as it does so, "A carbon tax is honest. It

takes one page rather than 1400," he

says, "That doesn't go down too wel l

i n Wash ington," Richard Webb

"A carbon tax is honest. That doesn't go down too well in Washington"

Learn to love genetic eng ineeri ng BY 2040 there could well be 9 billion people on the planet. The challenge, as oil runs out and climate change kicks in, is not just to grow enough food to feed so many people but to do it without wreaking more havoc on the planet.

It won't be easy. Farming causes more global warming than all the world's cars, trains, ships and planes put together. The worst culprit is a greenhouse gas called nitrous oxide, a breakdown product of nitrogen fertilisers (including organic ones). Next in line is methane from livestock and manure. To meet

demand for food and other materials such as biofuels without turning all the remaining wilderness into farmland, and without producing yet more greenhouse gases, we are going to have to exploit every trick we can.

Genetic engineering could make matters far worse. For instance, Craig Venter's Synthetic Genomics and other companies are trying to develop microbes that turn coal, tar shale and oil into methane. This could greatly increase greenhouse emissions by making it possible to exploit hard-to-extract reserves of fossil fuels, such as the extensive oil residues left behind after normal pumping is completed.

Like any technology, however, genetic modification could also be put to positive use. It might be the key to boosting oil yields from algae grown in ponds and to turning plant wastes into fuel, rather than converting

Even normal potatoes

can be toxic, so why are

modified foods so scary?

valuable food into biofuel, as happens now. Experimental crop plants that use nitrogen

more efficiently provide the same yields as normal crops with less fertiliser. Such crops could reduce both nitrous oxide emissions and the nitrogen run-off that creates dead zones in the oceans. Salt-tolerant crops under development will grow on land contaminated by irrigation or sea-level rise, and droughttolerant varieties could find even wider use.

In the longer term, even more dramatic changes could be made, such as altering

the fundamental biochemistry of plants that carry out C3 photosynthesis -which includes nearly all staple crops - to carry out C4 photosynthesis instead. This would allow them to thrive in hotter, drier conditions.

As pests and diseases evolve and spread, crops genetically modified to resist them could boost production, or at least maintain yields. The rings pot virus had halved papaya production in Hawaii before a resistant GM strain was introduced in 1998.

Last but not least, genetic modification can make existing foods more nutritious. The lack of nutrients such as vitamin A remain a major cause of death and disease in developing countries. GM crops such as the soon-to-beintroduced Golden Rice will help to improve health and reduce child mortality, which will ultimately contribute to a reduction in population growth.

Many people, especially in Europe, oppose crops like Golden Rice simply because they are genetically engineered, but there is no rational basis for drawing an absolute distinction between conventional breeding and genetic modification. Thousands of years of selective breeding have produced extensive genetic changes in the plants and animals we eat, not all of them good. Many "natural" crops like potatoes are poisonous to varying degrees, and conventional breeding can make them more toxic. Transgenic organisms are nothing new either: the swapping of genes between separate species is as old as life itself. As for GM crops making farmers dependent on multinational companies, it was the introduction of non-GM hybrid seed back in 1924 that first persuaded farmers to give up saving seed each year in favour of buying it.

Yes, there are other ways to improve nutrition and boost yields, but combining these methods with GM could make them far more effective. With a third of species facing oblivion, environmentalists need to embrace a technology that could help to save many of them - and many of us. Michael Le Page

B ig th i n kers, b i g i deas "One of the biggest prob lems

we face today is a fee l ing of

he lp lessness. How can one person

poss ib ly make a difference i n the

face of overpopu lation, poverty,

overconsumption, deforestation and

desertification, loss of b iod ivers ity,

po l lution, greenhouse gas emissions,

c l imate change, decreas ing water

suppl ies, human violence - and a l l the

rest. No wonder people feel he lp less

and hopeless. It is desperate ly

important for us to understand

that each one of us does make a

d ifference. Every day, we make some

impact on the environment and the

l iving beings around us. And we have

a choice as to what sort of impact we

make. Although one person out of

severa l b i l l ion do ing h is or her bit to

save water, for example, would have

no impact on the water cris is, a few

m i l l ion or b i l l i on do ing the same

wou ld resu lt i n the kind of change

we must see.

Jane Goodall, founder of the Jane

Goodall lnstitute and a United

Nations' Messenger of Peace

These are u rgent times, and

perhaps now some of our messages

wi l l have g reater resonance. B l ind

fa ith i n economic growth and ga in

as the be-a l l , end-a l l , cure-for-a l l

has been m isplaced. Fa i rness is at

the heart of our ambit ions. Greater

equ ity in the hea lth status of

popu lations, with i n and between

countries, shou ld be regarded as a

key measure of how we, as a civi l ised

society, are making progress.

Margaret (han, director-general,

World Health Organization

I 've been th inking about you r

question - how to make the world

a better p lace - s ince receiving you r

letter. Actua l ly, it's what I write and

speak about a l l the t ime. A serious

effort would be out of p lace here,

and every brief response I th ink of

seems trite or inadequate, requ i ring

more exp lanation and background .

Noam (homsky, l inguist,

phi losopher and activist, MIT


End the p i l lag i ng of the h igh seas

LESS than 1 per cent of the ocean is protected to any meaningful degree.

That needs to change, and fast. The oceans provide us with many vital

services: a significant proportion of the food we eat; underpinning for the tourism

industry that is many countries' l ifeblood;

soaking up half of the carbon dioxide we

pump out. and much more. But pol lution

and overfishing are taking their toiL In

places, entire habitats are being destroyed,

from fishermen dynamiting reefs to trawlers trashing slow growing deepwater

corals. Fishing fleets roam increasingly far afield and work in ever deeper waters.

Mining the deep-sea floor for minerals and

other destructive forms of exploitation are

on the horizon. And looming above it al l is

the threat posed by climate change and ocean acidification.

But there is plenty we can do, and one

of the most important is to establish more

marine reserves. With a few exceptions mainly situations where central

governments imposed closed areas from

on high without local support - research

has shown that marine reserves do make

a big difference. There is a dramatic rise

in the amount and diversity of l ife within no-take zones, which then spills over into

neighbouring areas, benefitting fishermen

too. Healthy ecosystems have a much

better chance of surviving cl imate change.

There is a growing awareness of the need for protecting large areas. For

instance, in 2004, Austral ia set aside about

a third of the Great Barrier Reef. Already, infestations of coral-eating crown-ofthorns starfish have fallen dramatically on

protected reefs as the natural balance is

restored. And shortly before leaving office,

US president George W. Bush signed orders

protecting 500,000 square kilometres in

the central Pacific - increasing the total area of protected ocean by a third.

Welcome as such measures are, they are not nearly enough. As yet none of the high

seas, the vast swathes of ocean that fall

outside any country's jurisdiction, have any

protection. There have been massive

declines in populations of large, wide-

Cora l reefs were in dire

straits even before the

seas got too warm


ranging animals such as sharks and yellowfin tuna, and protecting them

will require vast areas to be set aside. Many researchers think we need to fl ip

the status of the oceans round, from being

mostly unprotected to mostly protected, with around a third closed completely

to exploitation. "If you think about what you want protected areas to achieve

extinction prevention, rebui lding

ecosystem services, rebu i lding of fish

populations to promote greater fisheries production and so on - when you start

asking how much of the sea do you need to do this, the answer is of the order of

tens of per cent." says Cal lum Roberts, a marine reserves expert at the University

of York in the UK. "We need to do it pretty

quickly too." Mark Schrope

FANCY a three-day weekend - not just once i n a

whi le but week in week out? You may th ink you r

bosses wou ld never agree to it but the evidence

suggests that employers, employees and the

environment a l l benefit.

The four-day week comes in two flavours. One

option is to switch from five 8-hour days to four

lO-hour days, mean ing overa l l hours and salar ies

stay the same. I n August 2008, the state of Utah

moved al l of its employees, apart from the

emergency services, to worki ng 4/10, as it has

become known, The hope was that by shutting

Take Friday off. . forever

down bu i ld i ngs for an extra day each week, energy

b i l l s wou ld be slashed by up to a fifth .

The fu l l resu lts of this experiment won't

be pub l ished unti l October, but an ongoing survey

of 100 bu i l d ings suggests energy consumption has

fa l len by around 13 per cent. The survey a lso found

that 70 per cent

of employees prefer the 4/10 arrangement and

that people took fewer days off s ick .

The second form of the four-day week is to work

the same number of hours per day for four days

on ly, with a commensurate 20 per cent pay cut.

With the recession h itting revenues, accountancy

company KPMG announced in February that it was

offer ing its 11,000 UK employees the option of a

four-day week to avoid job losses. So far 85 per

cent of employees have appl ied to join the scheme,

and 800 now do a four -day week.

Not everyone wi l l l i ke the idea of working longer

days o r tak ing a pay cut i n exchange for a 3-day

weekend, but it appears most do. Rex Facer at

Generate a feed- in frenzy ONE day, 100 per cent of our energy will have to come from renewable sources. But how do we make it happen?

There is a proven way to rapidly boost the adoption of renewable energy - give companies or individuals who want to generate green energy access to the grid and promise to pay them extra for the electricity they "feed in" over the next 20 years or so.

This approach is known as a feed-in tariff, and since Germany introduced feed-in tariffs in 1990, the proportion of electricity it generates from renewable sources has grown from less than 3 per cent to about 15 per cent in 2008. By comparison, the UK, which tried to boost renewable energy through an alternative "green certificate" scheme, generated just 5 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources in 2008.

Other countries are now trying to emulate Germany's success. To date, 21 European countries have introduced some form of feed -in tariff, and this year the UK, South Africa and the Canadian province of Ontario announced plans to implement similar schemes.

The catch with feed-in tariffs is that consumers or taxpayers have to foot the bill for the higher price paid for renewable energy.

Brigham Young Un iversity in Provo, Utah,

questioned 151 human resources d i rectors

work ing for large cities across the US. Where city

employees had been offered flexitime or 4/10

reg imes, 64 per cent said the a lternative work

schedu le improved morale, and 41 per cent

said it improved productivity - though 9 per cent

said the opposite.

Accord ing to Facer, it was the crash of 1929

that led to the five-day week. "Before that it was

common to work six-day weeks with 12 to 14-hour

days. When the Great Depression h it the idea was

to share work around to get more people i nto

employment." Dur ing the next b ig f inancia l cr is is i n

the 1970s, there was much ta l k of moving to a four

day week, but for a variety of reasons that d idn't

pan out. "Th ings are d ifferent now," says Facer.

"I wou ldn't be surprised if we could get 50 per cent

or more of the workforce worki ng four-day weeks in

the next few years." Next up: the three-day week.

David Cohen

Partly for this reason, they generally favour or are limited to smaller generators. While this is not ideal, small power generators can make a big difference if there are enough of them. According to some estimates, microgeneration could provide up to 40 per cent of the UK's electricity by 2050.

Even with guaranteed prices, though, the initial investment in the generating equipment - a photovoltaic panel, say, or a small wind generator - puts the technology beyond the budget of most households. Fortunately there are other ways for people to take advantage of feed-in tariffs.

More than 350,000 households in Germany hold shares in wind turbines, and almost all wind farms in Denmark are community owned. By providing people living close to the generators with extra income, community-owned renewable power schemes can also help overcome local opposition to what people might otherwise see as intrusive wind turbines. Ben Crystal l

NEXT WEEK: PART 2

What can you as an ind iv idua l do to transform the

world? See next week's issue for our suggestions,

p lus more ideas from renowned th inkers and doers

B ig th i n kers, b i g i deas People should look on the br ight

side of l ife. This can be done

without being complacent about or

turn ing a b l ind eye to the problems

of the world . We rea l ly do l ive i n an

era of amazing g lobal prosperity,

tolerance and freedom compared to

any other t ime i n h i story. Let's take

a moment every now and aga in to

appreciate that good fortune.

Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX

and chairman of Tesla Motors

There is never any one th ing i n

l ife that can provide an answer

to a question l i ke this .

On a global scale, the best pol icy

for mankind would have to be

protection of our surviving

ra i nforests. The next four years of

estimated ra inforest destruction

a lone wi l l produce greater

em issions than aviat ion from 1903

to 2033. The next priority g loba l ly

wi l l need to i nvolve action to l imit

popu lation pressure on the planet.

A personal ambition is to he lp

the space industry. If we are going

to survive as a civi l isation we need

low-energy access to space.

Richard Branson, founder of

Virg in Group and Virgin Galactic

The most effective way to make

the world a better p lace is through

education that shapes the future

rather than reflects the past. By

undercutt ing fundamenta l ism,

education curta i l s violence and war.

By empowering women, education

curbs poverty and popu lation .

The curricu lum should sh ift from

one watered down by consensus

and lobbying to ski l l s our century

needs - for re lat ionshi ps, hea lth,

contraception, time management

critical th ink ing and recogn is ing

propaganda. For youngsters,

learning a g loba l language and

typing shou ld trump long div is ion

and writ ing cursive.

The most important goal of a l l

shou ld be to insp ire cur ios ity and

the desire to learn more .

Max Tegmark, cosmolog ist, MIT


I s the world gett i ng better or worse? I f you want to make the world a better p lace, it's a good idea to fi nd out where you're start ing from. When we did just that,

the resu lts came as someth ing of a su rprise. By most measures, l iv ing

standards are improving across the world, and thoug h hundreds of

m i l l ions of people sti l l l ive i n desperate cond itions, th ings are movi ng

i n the r ight d i rect ion . Less encourag ing ly, the envi ronment is c learly in troub le and armed confl ict remains a major prob lem

Infant mortal ity • Deaths i n first year per 1000 l ive b irths

- World - Developing world

- Developed world -Sub-Saharan Africa

200 +-----�--_+----�----+-__+ 180 160 �"""'"--�---+----�----+-__+ 140 I 120 - �1It----'". ..... �-...... L 100 8

° 1-----r��

.. ��== .. �.J 60

40

Hunger . Percentage of ch i ldren under 5 underweight

60% 50% ------------, 40% -----------I

30% 20% 10%

0%

1990

Developing world

1990

South Asia

2007

Sub-Saharan Africa

Chi ld survival • Beyond fifth b i rthday

100% 1990 2007

80% 60% 40% 20%

0% Developed

world

Malnutrition �� Percentage of

Developing

world

populat ion undernourished

35% -----------------cc=

30% 25% 20% 15% 10%

5% 0%

Sub-Saharan

Africa

Life expectancy at birth • I n years

- World

- Developed countries

- Developing countries

- Sub-Saharan Africa 100 -t---_+-----II----+---+----t-----t-

80a�� 60

40 -t---_+-----II----+---+----t-----t-

20 -r---+--��--+---1---�---+

0 �--_+--��--+_--4_--�--_+ 1980 1990

Maternal mortal ity . Deaths per 100,000 l ive b i rths

1000 800 600

EVERY YEAR, 536,000 WOMEN and G IRLS die as a

result of COMPLICATIONS

during pregnancy or childbirth

2000 2010

1990 2005

400 � 11990 2005

200 o � 2005

Developed Developing

world world

Extreme poverty . Percentage of people l iv ing

on less than $1.25 a day

Sub-Saharan

Africa

As many as 1 BI LLION

people are likely to still be in

EXT REME POVERTY by 2015

60% --------------�39D��-----50% -----------1 11

40% -F=1------7-----;-J 30% 20% 10%

0% Developing world Sub-Saharan Africa

Food supply • Ki loca lories per day

Water • Education . 4000

3000

2000

1000 o

World

2002

Sub-Saharan North America Developing Africa world


Percentage of popu lation with access to c lean Percentage enrolment i n pr imary education water and san itation

_ World _ Sub-Saharan Africa Developing world

80% 60% 40% 20%

0% CLEAN WATER

1990

SANITATION

100% 80% 60% 40% 20%

0% World Developed Developing Sub-Saharan

world world Africa

GDP per capita . US$ per person

$30,000

$25,000

$20,000

$15,000

$10,000

Developed world

Infectious diseases • Worldwide deaths from infectious d iseases

Hepatitis BI Syphi l is

Meningitis Tetanus

J..� Pertussis �

Measles

Malar ia

1993 16.4

mi l l ion

. _____ World

$5000 � _ Developing world

===;:==:;:=====::;.,sub-saharan Africa o 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006

CO2 emissions . Increase in worldwide emissions (tonnes)

War . Number of confl icts, 1945 to 2008

400

t! 300 0= c o u

liJ} b 200 tu -" E :l

Z 100

O � ____________ --L 1945 1965 1985 2005

Ecological footprint • Hectares per person

10 ----�nn '�----------------

8

6

4

2

o US Western Europe China India

Mil itary spending . I n b i l l ions of do l lars

Displaced persons • Displaced people and refugees

$1400

$600 $400 $200

o '---------r-' 1992 2007

30 25 +-+--J-.......... -od--:::;;\�FI-20

V> � 15 -l"""'i'""""i" ..... � ____ � 10 -I----1---l--_+_ +-+--+--I---+--+-

2000 2002 2004 2006 2008

2002 14.7

m i l l ion

Deforestation • Annual net change in forest area (mi l l ions of hectares per year)

o

-1

-2

- -1990-2000 2000-2005

Developed world

Latin America

-3 --------+-

-4 -------I

DEFORESTATION continues at the RATE of about 13 MILLION HECTARES per year

(roughly equivalent to the land area of

Bangladesh)

SE Asia Sub-Saharan

Africa

-5 -----------------

z Q � � :::: >' � § � � � 15 is to '3 o � iii I' 1;

� � � � � E: � � � � � � � � 'i § § i � � "' 8 � Q " ffi " � � " :2

---------------------------------------- ffi Natural disasters • "l i'i

As natural disasters rise, the number of victims is stable w

� 700 ---------------------.._---600 -----------------

V>

� 500 :Ji � 400 --�--�--�. i!! � 300 '"

200 100

o 1990 1995 2000 2005 2008


� � � o

" I � � � � � z => � :;; �

Humans need not apply Wanted : i ntrep id i n d iv id ua l s to exp lore new wor lds , Must be ab le to work unsu pervised . Mol ly Bentley meets the ca nd idates

SOMETHING is moving. Two robots sitting motionless in the dust have spotted it. One, a six-wheeled rover,

radios the other perched high on a rocky slope. Should they take a photo and beam it back to mission control? Time is short, they have a list of other tasks to complete, and the juice in their batteries is running low. The robots have seconds to decide. What should they do?

Today, mission control is a mere 10 metres away, in a garage here at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. Engineers can step in at any time. But if the experiment succeeds and the robots spot the


disturbance and decide to beam the pictures back to base, they will have moved one step closer to fulfilling NASA's vision of a future in which teams of smart space probes scour distant worlds, seeking out water or signs of life with little or no help from human controllers.

NASA, along with other space agencies, has already taken the first tentative steps towards this kind of autonomous mission (see "Spacecraft go it alone", page 44). In 1999,

for example, NASA's Deep Space 1 probe used a smart navigation system to find its way to an asteroid - a journey of over 600 million kilometres. Since 2003, an autonomous

control system has been orbiting our planet aboard NASA's Earth Observing-1 satellite. It helps EO-1 to spot volcanic eruptions and serious flooding, so the events can be photographed and the images beamed back to researchers on the ground. And in the next month or so, the latest iteration of smart software will be uploaded onto one of NASA's Mars rovers, loosening the machine's human tether still further so it can hunt for unusual rock formations on its own.

The idea is not to do away with human missions altogether. But since it is far cheaper and easier to send robots first, why not make

them as productive as possible? Besides, the increasingly long distances they travel from home make controlling a rover with a joystick impractical. Commands from Earth might take 20 minutes to reach Mars, and about an hour to reach the moons of Jupiter.

So what can we realistically expect autonomous craft to do? It is one thing to build a space probe that can navigate by itself, respond quickly to unexpected events or even carry on when a critical component fails. It's quite another to train a planetary rover to spot a fossilised bone in a rock, let alone distinguish a living cell from a speck of dirt.

The closest thing to a space robot with a brain is NASA's pair of Mars rovers, and their abilities are fairly limited. Since they landed in January 2004 they have had to cope with more than six critical technical problems, including a faulty memory module and a jammed wheel. That the craft are still trundling across the red planet and returning valuable geological data is down to engineers at mission control fixing the faults remotely. In fact the rovers can only do simple tasks on their own, says Steve Chien, the head of JPL's artificial intelligence group.

They can be programmed to drive from point

A to point B, stop, and take a picture. They can spot clouds and whirling mini-tornadoes called dust devils on their own. They can also protect themselves against accidental damage - by keeping away from steep slopes or large rocks. For pretty much everything else, they depend on their human caretakers.

What are we missing? This is becoming a significant limitation. While NASA's first Mars rover, Sojourner, travelled just 100 metres during its mission in 1997, Spirit and Opportunity have covered over 24 kilometres so far. As they drive they are programmed to snap images of the landscape around them, but that doesn't make for very thorough exploration. "We are travelling further and further with each rover mission," says Tara Estlin, senior computer scientist and one of the team developing autonomous science at JPL. "Who knows what interesting things we are missing?"

NASA wouldn't want the rovers to record everything they see and transmit it all back to

Earth; the craft simply don't have the power, bandwidth and time. Instead, the team at JPL has spent around a decade developing software that allows the rovers to analyse images as they are recorded and decide for themselves which geological features are worth following up. Key to this is a software package called OASIS - short for on-board autonomous science investigation system.

The idea is that before the rovers set out each day, controllers can give OASIS a list of things to watch out for. This might simply be the largest or palest rock in the rover's field of view, or it could be an angular rock that might be volcanic. Then whenever a rover takes an image, OASIS uses special algorithms to identify any rocks in the scene and single out those on its shopping list (Space Operations Communicator, vol S, P39). Not only is OASIS able to tell the rovers what features are of scientific interest, it knows their relative value too : smooth rocks which may have been eroded by water might take priority over rough ones, say. This helps the rovers decide what to do next.

There are also practical considerations to take into account. As they trundle around >


the surface, the rovers must keep track of whether they have enough time, battery power and spare memory capacity to proceed. So the JPL team has also created a taskmastersoftware that can plan and schedule activities. With science goals tugging at one sleeve and practical limitations at the other, this program steps in to decide how to order activities so that the rover can reach its goals safely, making any necessary scheduling changes along the way.

Spacecraft go it alone Sma l l steps towards a space probe that can th ink for itself

\ • 1978 Progress First launch of Soviet craft \ developed to del iver cargo to space stations.

Navigates autonomously

• 1997 NASA Sojourner rover lands on Mars \ Smart navigation and hazard avoidance

• 1997 NASA Cassini probe \ Autonomous fa i lure detection and reacquisition

of communications on interp lanetary probe

• 1999 NASA Deep Space 1 \ Autonomous navigation system uses star map

and camera tracker, p lus p lann ing and

schedul ing software to rendevous with astero id

• 2000 NASA Earth Observing-i (EO-i) \ This sate l l ite uses autonomous sensors to

monitor Earth's surface

• 2001 Satellite formation flying test \ software Autonomously controls

satel l ites EO-l and Landsat-7

• 2001 ESA Proba-i \ This Earth-orbiting sate l l ite uses

autonomous navigation

• 2004 Three Corner Satellite project \ Three smal l satel l ites designed to use

p lanning and schedul ing software for

autonomous control . Mission fai led

• 2005 NASA DART \ To demonstrate automated navigation and

rendezvous in orbit . Mission fai led

• 2007 Boeing ASTRO \ Autonomously transfers prope l lant fuel

and a battery to another satel l ite, NextSat

• 2007 NASA Mars rovers \ Autonomous dust devil and c loud

detection software uploaded to rovers

• 2008 ESA Jules Verne ATX

Automated craft navigates itself

to International Space Station to

del iver suppl ies

• 2009 NASA Mars rover Opportunity

AEGIS program will be uploaded to

Opportun ity. A l lows rover to locate and

study i nteresting rocks


With low-priority rocks close by, say, a rover might decide it is worth snapping six images ofthem rather than one of a more interesting rock a few metres away, since the latter would use up precious battery juice.

Why stop there? Since OASIS allows a rover to identify high-priority targets on its own, the )pL team has decided to take the next step: let the rover drive over to an interesting rock and deploy its sensors to take a closer look. To do this, Estlin and her colleagues won't be using OASIS, however. Instead, they have taken elements from it and used them to create a new control system called Autonomous Exploration for Gathering Increased Science (AEGIS). This has been tested successfully at JPL and is scheduled for uplink and remote installation on the rover Opportunity sometime in September.

Once AEGIS is in control, Opportunity will be able to deploy its high-resolution camera automatically and beam data back to Earth for analysis - the first time autonomous software has been able to control a craft on the surface of another world. This is just the beginning, says Estlin. For example, researchers at JPL and the Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, have developed a smart detector system that will allow a rover to carry out a basic scientific experiment on its own. In this case, its task will be to identify specific minerals in an alien rock.

The detector consists of two automated spectrometers controlled by "support vector machines" - relatives of artificial neural networks - of a kind already in use aboard EO-I. The new SVM system uses the spectrometers to take measurements and then compares the results with an on-board database containing spectra from thousands of minerals. Last year the researchers published results in the journal Icarus (VOI 195, p 169) showing that in almost all cases, even in complex rock mixtures, their SVM could automatically spot the presence of jarosite, a sulphate mineral associated with hydrothermal springs.

Alien novelties Though increasingly sophisticated, these autonomous systems are still a long way from the conscious machines of science fiction that can talk, feel and recognise new life forms. Right now, Chien admits, we can't even really program a robot for "novelty detection" -the equivalent of, say, picking out the characteristic shape of a bone among a pile of rocks - let alone give it the ability to detect living creatures.

In theory, the shape of a complex natural object such as an ice crystal or a living cell could be described in computer code and embedded in a software library. Then the robot would only need a sensor such as a microscope with sufficient magnification to photograph it.

In fact identifying a cell is a huge challenge because its characteristics can be extremely subtle. In 1999, NASA funded an ambitious project that set out to discover whether there are specific signatures such as shape, symmetry, or a set of combined features that could provide a key to identifying and categorising simple living systems (New Scientist, 22 April 2000, p 22). The idea was to create a huge image library containing examples from Earth, and then teach a neural network which characteristics to look for. Unfortunately, the project ended before it could generate any useful results.

just as a single measurement is unlikely to provide definitive proof of alien life, so most planetary scientists agree that a single robotic explorer, however smart, won't provide all the answers. Instead, JPL scientists envisage teams of autonomous craft working together, orbiting an alien world and scouring the surface for interesting science, then radioing each other to help decide what features deserve a closer look.

This model is already being put through its paces. Since 2004, networks of ground-based sensors placed around volcanoes, from Erebus in Antarctica to Kilauea and Mauna Loa in Hawaii, have been watching for sudden changes that might signal an eruption. When they detect strong signals, they can summon EO-I, which uses its autonomous software

approach also offers increased processing power, since computers on separate probes can work together to crunch data more quickly. And researchers are beginning to believe that teams of autonomous probes could eventually be smart enough to do almost everything a human explorer could, even in the remotest regions of space.

"The team of probes wi l l have much the same investigative powers as a human scientist" planner to schedule a fly-past. The satellite then screens the target area for clouds, and if skies are clear, it records images, processes them and transmits them to ground control.

In july, a network of 15 probes were placed into Mount St Helens, a volcano in Washington state. These probes carry sensors that monitor conditions inside the crater and can talk to each other to analyse data in real time, as well as call up EO-l to take photos. If it detects activity from orbit, the satellite can even ask the probes to focus attention on a particular spot.

Networks of autonomous probes can provide a number of advantages, including helping a mission cover more ground, and ensuring it continues even if one or more probes are damaged or destroyed. This

Last year, in a paper published in the journal Planetary and Space Science (vo1 56, p 448), a consortium of researchers from the US, Italy and japan laid out their strategy for searching out life using autonomous craft controlled by fuzzy logic, the mathematical tool developed in the 1960s to give computers a way to handle uncertainty. Their plan calls for the use of three types of craft: surface-based rovers with sensors designed to spot signs of water and potential sources of heat, such as geothermal vents; airships that float low overhead and help pinpoint the best sites for study; and orbiters that image the planet surface, coordinating with mission control as well as beaming data back to Earth.

The consortium argue that fuzzy logic is

a better bet than neural networks or other artificial intelligence techniques, since it is well suited to handling incomplete data and contradictory or ambiguous rules. They also suggest that by working together, the three types of probes will have pretty much the same investigative and deductive powers as a human planetary scientist.

Experimental simulations of a mission to Mars seem to confirm this view: in two tests the autonomous explorers came to the same conclusions as a human geoscientist. The system could be particularly useful for

missions to Titan and Enceladus, the researchers suggest, since autonomy will be a key factor for the success of a mission so far from Earth.

Back at jPL, the day's test of robot autonomy is almost complete. The two robots are running new software designed to improve coordination between craft. Part of the experiment is to see whether the robots can capture a photo of a moving target - in this case a small remote-controlled truck nicknamed junior - and relay it back to "mission control" using delay-tolerant networking, a new system for data transfer.

In future deep-space missions, robots will need autonomy for longer stretches since commands from Earth will take an hour or so to reach them. And as planets rotate, there will be periods when no communication is possible. Delay-tolerant networking relies on a "store and forward" method that promises to provide a more reliable link between planetary explorers and mission control. Each node in the network -whether a rover or an orbiter -holds on to a transmission until it is safe to relay it to the next node. Information may take longer to reach its destination this way, but it will get there in the end.

And it seems to work: the images from the two robots arrive. They include both wideangle shots and high-resolution close-ups of junior. Estlin is pleased.

As we stand in the heat, a salamander scuttles quickly across a rock. I can't help wondering whether the robots would have picked that out. just suppose the Mars rover had to choose between a whirling dust devil and a fleeing amphibian? Chien assures me that the software would direct the rover to prioritise, depending on the relative value of the two. I hope it goes for the salamander. And if alien life proves half as shy, I hope the rover can act fast. •

Mol ly Bentley is a science writer in Oakland,

California


Hitch-h iking emotions Ta l k of icy sta res and d i rty m i nds m ight be c loser to the mark than we thoug ht, says J im G i les

"W ILL these hands ne' er be clean?" asks Lady Macbeth, as she obsessively tries to wash away the guilt she feels

for her role in the murder of King Duncan. Her feelings of self-disgust, we are led to believe, have manifested themselves as a sensation of physical dirtiness.

It is not only in the language of playwrights such as Shakespeare that complex emotions like guilt, grief or loneliness are compared to physical sensations. These metaphors crop up in everyday phrases, too, in many languages. In English, for example, we talk of being "left out in the cold" when we feel socially excluded, a sentiment echoed in the Japanese saying "one kind word can warm three winter months".

At face value, these connections seem purely symbolic. In real life, loneliness doesn't really send us shivering, and guilt doesn't really make us feel dirty. Or do they? Recent research has found that these physical sensations can often accompany our emotions. It works the other way too - by provoking a feeling of disgust, a scene from the film Trainspotting shaped the way subjects in an experiment made moral judgements.

Many now believe that this reflects the way complex emotions arose in our evolutionary past. As our brain evolved to process more and more complex emotions, the theory goes, there was no need for new neural machinery: our emotions simply piggybacked onto the circuits that handle basic sensory perceptions. Here are some of the most striking experiments linking physical sensations with emotions and behaviour.


Cold shou lders and warm receptions DURING the autumn of 2006, a series of volunteers arrived at Yale University's psychology building. Each was greeted in the lobby by a researcher, who accompanied them up to the fourth floor. In the elevator, the researcher casually asked the volunteer to hold the drink she was carrying while she

noted down their name. The subjects did not know it, but the experiment began the moment they took the cup.

Once in the lab, the 40 or so volunteers read a description of a fictitious person and then answered questions about the character. Those who had held an iced coffee, rather than a hot one, rated the imaginary figure as less warm and friendly, even though each volunteer had read the same description. Answers to other questions about the figure, such as whether the character appeared honest, were unaffected by the type of drink (Science, vo1 322, p 606).

The experiment, run by Lawrence Williams of the University of Colorado at Boulder and John Bargh of Yale, is not the only study to link physical and psychological warmth. Just thinking about being socially excluded, for example, can make the room feel around 3 ·C cooler (Psychological Science, V01 19, p 838). This may explain some aspects of how we socialise. For example, it is more common to offer a hot drink rather than a cold one when we welcome someone into our home.

"Certain behaviours people engage in during interpersonal relationships reflect an understanding of the link between physical and psychological warmth," says Williams.

The insular cortex, which lies deep within one of the folds that line the surface of the brain, is probably at the root of these results. Brain imaging shows that this area is active when people are experiencing both physical and psychological warmth. The connection is probably present at birth and strengthened during early life, when babies learn to associate the physical warmth of their parents with nourishment and protection, says Williams.

Clean l iness and god l iness "TRULY Allah loveth those who turn unto Him, and loveth those who have a care for cleanness," says the Koran. Islam is not alone in linking hygiene to moral purity. Christians cleanse the body and soul through baptism, and cleanliness is likewise important to Hindus.

This connection, which is entrenched in the

orbitofrontal cortex of the brain, can have a profound and unexpected influence on our behaviour. In one recent study, Simone Schnall at the University of Plymouth, UK, and colleagues showed half their volunteers a neutral film and the other half the toilet scene from the film Trainspotting. (The uninitiated need only use their imagination here : the clip features what is described as the "worst toilet in Scotland".) Those who viewed the Trainspotting clip subsequently made more severe judgements about unethical acts such as cannibalism than volunteers who had viewed the neutral scene. Exposing subjects to a fart smell and placing them in a filthy room had a similar effect (Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, vol 34, p 1096).

And as Lady Macbeth's obsessive handwashing suggests, a feeling of guilt can leave us reaching for a bar of soap. Chen-Bo Zhong of the University ofToronto in Canada and Katie Liljenquist, now at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, asked volunteers to read a first -person account of either an ethical act or an act of sabotage. They then had to rate the desirability of various household objects, including soap, toothpaste, CD cases and

chocolate bars. Those who had read the sabotage story showed a greater preference for the cleaning products (Science, vo1 313, p 1451) than those who had not.

A simplistic conclusion from these experiments would be that a cleaner environment makes us more tolerant of the misdemeanours of others. Yet the act of physical cleansing does not necessarily encourage us to act more morally ourselves, as religious ceremonies might have us believe. In another part of their study, Zhong's team asked volunteers to recall an unethical deed from their past. Under the guise of a health and safety precaution, he then gave half the subjects antiseptic wipes to clean their hands. The partici pants were then asked if they would take part in another experiment, this time to help out a desperate graduate student. Only 40 per cent ofthe subjects who had cleaned their hands volunteered, compared with almost three-quarters of those who hadn't.

Other experiments have shown that feelings of moral disgust can spur people to help others. By allowing people to wash away these feelings, say Zhong and Liljenquist, we may be giving licence to ungenerous behaviour.

The sting of rejection CAST your mind back to your schooldays. Do you remember how it hurt when you were left out of a game? Or how you felt when you weren't invited to a party? The pain of exclusion may seem tangible, but can it ever resemble the sensation of a physical wound?

To probe the neural link between physical and emotional pain, Naomi Eisenberger at the University of California, Los Angeles,

and colleagues asked volunteers to play a virtual ball game. Each volunteer believed that their teammates were in other labs, but in fact these "people" were generated by the software, which was also programmed to gradually exclude the human player. All the while an fMRI scanner recorded the subject's neural activity.

The scans revealed that the feelings of social exclusion increased activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), an area of the brain also involved in the feelings of distress that accompany physical pain. The dACC also lit up when people thought about the death of a loved one (Science, vo1 323, p 890).

This might explain why some people in deep emotional pain turn to drugs like alcohol or heroin, which numb physical pain. Yet according to an unpublished study by Nathan DeWall at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, less potent drugs could also do the trick, without side effects.

DeWall asked around 60 college students to take either paracetamol (acetaminophen) or a placebo in the morning and evening for three weeks. The students also answered daily questions about their emotional state. DeWall found that those who took the painkiller reported fewer hurt feelings.

In another experiment, De Wall gave paracetamol or a placebo to volunteers playing the virtual ball game. The result was as expected : the painkiller reduced activity in the dACC that was associated with the emotionally painful feelings of exclusion. He now wants to test the drug on people with clinical symptoms of depression or anxiety. "Anxious people are constantly concerned about negative evaluation," he says. "Perhaps Tylenol [paracetamol] can help them." It remains a long shot, and not something to be recommended right now, but if the results pan out it will be an interesting avenue to explore for the future . •

Jim Giles is a writer based in San Francisco


BOOKS & ARTS

Preach i ng to the (un)converted Creat ion ists won't be wooed by log i c, however e loquent, even when the writer i s R ichard Dawki ns

The Greatest Show on Earth:

The evidence for evolution

by Richard Dawkins, Bantam Pressl

S imon & Schuster, £20/$30

Reviewed by Randy Olson

WHEN he has that fire in his belly, Richard Dawkins is arguably the greatest living populariser of evolution. His foundational

work, The Selfish Gene, inspired a generation of evolutionary biology students (myself included), while The God Delusion was a powerfully effective selfesteem booster for atheists in the closet.

With his new book, splendidly titled The Greatest Show on Earth, Dawkins joins other popularisers in what has become almost a rite of passage - to "make the case" for evolution to the general public. It's like the "ring the bell" game at the county fair where every able young male feels obliged to step up and swing the giant mallet. Two of the greatest efforts in recent years come in both flavours: atheist (Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne) and believer (Finding Darwin's God by Kenneth Miller).

These previous books were so well written it seemed the challenge had been met. Another "argument for evolution" book could only be justified by a great new angle on how to reach the unconverted masses.

Implying that your audience is stupid does not qualify as a great new angle. Yet this is precisely

Stil l hoping to win over the "woeful ly

uninformed" to the cause of evolution


what Dawkins does. He opens the book by mentioning his two previous books about evolution, and then, with a nearly audible scoff, adds that back when he wrote those books (when people, apparently, were smarter?) he didn't have to argue that evolution actually happened. "That didn't seem to be necessary," he says.

By the first chapter he is comparing his predicament to a history professor forced to teach " a baying pack of ignoramuses" and dealing with a "rearguard defence". Today, he proclaims, "all but the woefully uninformed are forced to accept the fact of evolution".

It's really kind of comical. If "spot the condescensions" is a

new drinking game, then bottoms up! There's one in just about every chapter. Though Dawkins says from the outset, "This is not an

anti-religious book", he can't help but knock religion throughout, For instance, he writes : "God, to repeat this point, which ought to be obvious, but isn't, never made a tiny wing in his eternal life." Young Earth creationists are, he writes, "deluded to the point of perversity". You get the sense that Dawkins just can't control it. It's as if he suffers from an anti-religious form ofTourette's syndrome.

The Greatest Show on Earth is not a bad book - Dawkins wouldn't know how to do that. His use of a crime scene investigation

as a parallel for the narrative is at times very effective, particularly in showing the endless frustration of addressing the "gaps" critique

of the fossil record. But in the end, you have to

wonder why Dawkins wastes so much time trying to argue with creationists. We all know that

"You get the sense that Dawkins can't control it. It's as if he suffers from anti-religious Tourette's"

creationists are not rational thinkers. They are driven by beliefs, not by logic. Dawkins provides a transcript of his interview with the president of Concerned Women for America which reads like a Monty Python skit as the woman, a bullheaded creationist, simply answers all of Dawkins's sophisticated argumentation by saying she's not convinced - like a cartoon character standing in front of a hail of bullets taunting, "you missed me."

It's a shame Dawkins couldn't take a few tips from his atheist colleague Jerry Coyne. Coyne's powerful and popular book was, to quote Booklist, "far more presentational than disputatious". That is a desperately needed attribute these days in making the convincing - and persuasive - case for evolution . •

Randy Olson is the writer and d i rector

of the feature f i lms Flock of Dodos:

The evolution-intelligent design circus

and Sizzle: A global worming comedy.

His new book, Don't Be Such 0 Scientist: Talking substance in an

oge of style, is pub l ished this month

by Island Press

For more reviews and to add your comments, visit www.NewScientist.com/books-art

Our contag ious l ives Exa m i n i n g the stra nge behavi our of soc ia l

networks revea ls just how con nected we are

Connected: The surprising power

of our social networks and how

they shape our lives by Nicholas

Christakis and James Fowler, Little,

Brown, $25.99

Reviewed by Michael Bond

- " '"" ,

THE idea that everyone on the planet is separated by only an average of six degrees sounds a little too

- - - . � - -. elegant to be true, '-----___ ---' and yet it seems to hold. The first experiment to confirm this came in the 1960s when psychologist Stanley Milgram asked several hundred people in Nebraska to send a letter to a stranger in Boston via someone they knew. On average, it took six people to get the letter to its destination. The experiment was repeated in 2002 by

sociologist Duncan Watts on a global scale using email, with the same result. The world really is that small.

In their new book Connected, sociologist and physician Nicholas Christakis and political scientist lames Fowler identify another immutable property of social networks that sits nicely alongside Milgram's : behaviours, habits and other traits "ripple" along chains of friends and are contagious at up to three degrees of separation. Thus, my actions and moods -whether I'm happy or depressed, fat or thin, whether I smoke, even whether I vote in elections -affect my friends, my friends' friends and my friends' friends' friends. Thereafter my

influence fades away. What is it about human society

that gives it such an enduring structure? Why not seven degrees

of separation, or four degrees of contagion? Christakis and Fowler do not quite answer this, but they provide an illuminating account of the pervasive and often bizarre qualities of social networks which, they claim, cannot be understood in terms ofthe behaviour or psychology of individuals within them. Rather, the networks have a life of their own. We like to think we are largely in control of our day-to-day lives, yet most of what we do, and even the way we feel, is significantly influenced by those around us - and those around them, and those around them.

Much of what is covered in Connected sounds obvious at first, an impression not helped by the authors' tendency to apply the

tools of network science to issues that do not fully merit them. A main conclusion of the chapter on love - that people tend to meet

their long-term partners through friends and families rather than randomly - is hardly revelatory. Dig a little deeper, though, and things are anything but obvious. Why, for example, are emotional states so much more contagious when passed on by friends and relatives of the same gender? Why do men married to white women

"Should medical interventions be directed preferentially at people who are social 'hubs'r

suffer a significant decline in physical and psychological health when their spouse dies while men married to black women do not? The authors excel at drawing out the devil in the detail : their explanations of how the architecture of networks dictates their dynamics are compelling.

All this has profound implications, both for our ideas about autonomy and free will and for public policy, especially in

matters of social inequality and health - something Christakis and Fowler flag up but might have given more attention. Given how triggers for illness (smoking and eating habits, for example) and for well-being (positive moods) radiate through social networks, should health authorities consider the effect of treatments on whole networks rather than on individuals alone? More particularly, given that wellconnected people are likely to pass on health benefits to a greater number of people, should medical interventions be directed preferentially at social "hubs"?

It is a difficult question, and ultimately a moral one. If anything, we should be helping rather than penalising those who are socially isolated as they are likely to be suffering more already. Yet as Connected demonstrates, targeting centrally placed individuals can improve the way people eat and reduce risky sexual behaviours. We should be open to the idea of using networks to address other social ills too, such as inequality and crime.

The science of social networks is alluring because it gives us another way of seeing the world. We will never fully understand people without understanding the links between them, the authors say. "Our connections matter much more than the colour of our skin or the size of our wallets . . . When we lose [them], we lose everything." •

Michael Bond is a consu ltant for

New Scientist


BOOKS & ARTS

Empathy ru les Evo lut ion has bred a long l i ne of car i ng, sharing creatu res, ourse lves i nc luded

The Age of Empathy: Natures lessons

for a kinder society by Frans de Waal ,

Harmony Books, $25,99

Reviewed by Marc Bekoff

MANY people T IH if A G E 0 F have argued that

E M P A T H Y humans are naturally

" .. . . ,,'" , .c,'" cooperative. :::;:;� •• Charles Darwin,

Abraham Lincoln, '--------"----'-'---_---' Theodore Roosevelt, the Dalai Lama, Russian zoologist and anarchist Peter Kropotkin, neurobiologist Tames Rilling and psychologist Dacher Keltner, among many others including myself, have all made the case that our animal nature is characterised as much by kindness and collaboration as it is by competition and carnage. Now, the prolific primatologist Frans de Waal joins the fray to convince people that we are not such nasty creatures after all.

Empathy, de Waal explains, is the social glue that holds


communities together, and if humans are empathetic animals it is because we have "the backing of a long evolutionary history".

"Bonding . . . is what makes us happiest," he writes, and rapidly accumulating evidence from the behavioural and neural sciences supports the claim.

De Waal, drawing from his own research, focuses on non-human primates. He could have made a more compelling case, however, by discussing the broad spectrum of species in which empathy has been observed. For example, scientists are learning a lot about the evolution of human social behaviour from the social carnivores whose behaviour and social organisation closely resemble that of early hominids and who show high levels of cooperation and empathy. Monkeys, cetaceans, elephants and rodents (rats and mice, at the very least) all exhibit empathy and what we might call moral intelligence.

Given all that we know about empathy in animals, why do so many persist in seeing ours as a dog-eat-dog world? De Waal chalks it up to what he calls "macho

origin myths", which insist that "our species has been waging war for as long as it has been around". But humans have shown empathy for as long as we've been around too. Even if our animal brethren were as violent as some think they are, that wouldn't mean that we

are as well, or that we ought to be. Such thinking suffers from the naturalistic fallacy that just because things are a certain way, that's the way they should be.

Discussions of the rare instances of animals being cruel to other members of their species are attention-getters but they are over-inflated and misleadingly presented as confirmation that nature is "red in tooth and claw". The available data have been scant due to small sample sizes and great variability among different communities of animals, but things are changing now that more and better results are pouring in. Primatologist Robert Sussman and colleagues have shown, for instance, that the

vast majority of social interactions in a wide variety of monkeys are affiliative rather than agonistic or divisive.

As we study more species in situations where they can show us who they really are we'll likely see that caring for those in need is

"Our animal nature is characterised as much by cooperation as it is by carnage"

more prevalent than many think. There's ample evidence that the "age of empathy" has been with us for a long time but has been overshadowed by the prevalence ofthe competitive paradigm. Maybe it's a paradigm we cling to as a sort of biological excuse. The truth is, it's not a dog-eat-dog world after all, because dogs don't eat other dogs. •

COMPETITION WINN ERS

The impressive shortl ist for the Royal Society Prize for Science

Books 2009 made us wonder

what popular science books sti l l

need to be written . We asked

readers to send in their ideas and here a re our five winners.

Visit newscientist.com on 15 September when we reveal the winner of the Royal Society prize.

Gisli Bjorn Heimisson, Iceland

Rebuilding a Civilisation

A do- it-yourself gu ide to rebu i ld ing

civi l isation after a global d isaster, From

making gunpowder to harness ing

e lectricity, it's everything we need to

know to start aga in from scratch ,

C Wright Austra l ia

The Book of Normal

Abnormal ities are often corrected,

medicated or feared, but science has

yet to def ine normal ity, Is b io log ica l

d iversity a better mode l for think ing

about human variation?

Lauren Farmer, Austra l ia

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under

The Sea: Whats really down there

We know more about deep space

than we do about the deep ocean,

more about the top of mount Everest

than the bottom of the Mar iana

trench, Time to redress the balance,

Sarah Bossanyi, UK

Love Your Tapeworm

A book to he lp us appreciate

the b io logy and ecologica l

importance of mosqu itoes, s lugs,

l ice and, of cou rse, tapeworms,

Kieren Lythgow, UK

Digital Kingdom

An excit ing tour of b io informatics,

genomics, systems bio logy and

synthetic b io logy, p lus the potentia l

technologies of our d ig ital future,

from b iowarfare to palaeozoos,

Each winner receives a set of the

Royal Society's shortlisted books

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There's no question that the Massachusetts

biotech industry has taken a hit from the

weak economy. In the second quarter

of 2008, almost half the state's public biotech

companies had less than six months of cash

on hand to cover operating costs, according

to a report by Deloitte. Several have since

put up the shutters. And among the state's

lauded universities, even stalwarts with sturdy

endowments, such as Harvard and MIT, have

announced program cuts.

Now here's the good news. Despite these

setbacks, Massachusetts expects to add 20,000 jobs in biotech alone by 2014. Those new jobs

are for everyone from entry-level technicians to

senior scientists.

''While we expect to hit a flat period for

two years or so, we know that five or 10 years down the road, we will have additional

growth," says Peter Abair, director of

economic development at the Massachusetts

Biotechnology Council.

Until then, the council is bridging the gap

by bringing in new funding sources for start

ups and helping firms reduce operating costs

through group purchasing contracts. Another

program, called Pharma Days, brings together

biotech firms with big pharma companies

interested in partnership deals.

Who is h i r i ng? These larger companies, which can better

weather the recession, are among the firms

still hiring scientists at all levels. One example

is Merck Research Laboratories in Boston;

it focuses on areas including cancer and

Alzheimer's disease.

'We've been recruiting for scientists in

all areas of drug discovery, and we anticipate

further significant growth," says site head

l iOn average. the sa lary i n key pos i tions i s anywhere from 5 to 20 per cent h ighe(


Rupert Vessey. "These areas are between half to

two-thirds populated at the moment."

Another bright spot for Massachusetts is

alternative energy and green technology. One

Cambridge-based firm, Verenium Corp., which

makes biofuels from grass, just scored an

$11.5 million deal with British Petroleum to

build an ethanol plant in Florida.

And this year, biotech leader Una Ryan

launched Waltham Technologies, which uses

blue-green algae to treat wastewater. The

company has raised more than $200 million in

capital and is in pilot testing with a local brewery

- a key target, as the beverage industry creates

between one and nine gallons of wastewater for

every gallon of saleable product.

Lu ri ng the best Attracting scientists t o Massachusetts i s

often an easy sell o n opportunity alone. There

are about 400 biotechnology companies, more

than half of which are developing therapeutic

drugs and 30 major venture capital firms.

There are also 122 colleges and universities;

67 provide degrees in the life sciences, and

40 of those provide graduate degrees. And the

Boston area houses the country's top five

NIH-funded hospitals.

"In today's dynamic culture, where people

tend to change jobs a lot or need opportunities

for a partner or spouse, I think Boston is a good

place to base yourself," says Vessey.

Salaries are higher in both industry and

academia than national averages, even in

suburban areas that have lower costs ofliving

than the Boston-Cambridge hub.

"On average, the salary in key positions is

anywhere from 5 to 20 per cent higher," says

Abair. "For example, the average medical

scientist gets a $96,000 salary here; nationally

it's about $82,000. On the other end, a biological

technician's average salary is $54,000 and

nationally it's $41,000. That's a dramatic

difference - about 24 per cent."

In Massachusetts' academic sector, the

average salary, at more than $140,000 for a

full professor, also runs high. Professors in the

northeast are paid more than their counterparts

in the rest of the country by as much as $37,000, according to the latest survey by the American

Association of University Professors.

Other strong attractions include the

:;; wealth of expertise and the opportunities for 01 E collaboration across disciplines and institutions.

Z' There's also a critical mass of peers to support � scientists at all levels of their careers.

"I came here just as Harvard Stem Cell

Institute was getting going, and the idea behind

that collaborative interaction was so compelling

to me," says Amy Wagers, an assistant professor

of stem cell and regenerative biology at the

Joslin Diabetes Center and Harvard Stem Cell

Institute. "I've also benefited from having

exceptional senior mentors, as well as another

cadre of junior scientists in stem cell biology

with whom I could grow up."

Look ing to the future Massachusetts is positioning itself as a stem cell

leader, providing support for embryonic stem

cell research and commercial applications of

adult stem cell research through its $1 billion

Life Sciences Initiative.

Among the first of the initiative's awards was

$8.2 million to build an international embryonic

stem cell bank and registry at UMass Medical

School in Worcester.

The medical school is also targeting another

key growth area identified by the state's

initiative: RNA interference, a field with new

therapeutics already in trials. The school's RNAi

institute, headed by N obel Prize winner Craig

Mello, is the centerpiece of its new Advanced

Therapeutics Cluster initiative. When complete,

Adverti s i ng fea tu re

Voice of experience "Whenever you need any k ind of

techn ica l expertise, you can f ind

somebody who can he lp . It 's a

wo nderfu l p lace to create ideas i f

you want to reach out of you r f ie ld"

-M Fatih Yanik, assistant professor

of electrical engineering and

computer science, MIT

"I find th is to be a sti mu lat ing

inte l l ectual envi ron ment beca use

there a re lots of semi nars and

conferences i n my f ie ld of resea rch"

-Rachel Wilson, assoCiate

professor of neurobiology,

Harvard Medical School

"There's a cu lture that recogn izes

and rewa rd s excel lent science and

genera l learn ing" -Terry Flotte,

dean, UMass Medical School

" I n terms of b io log i es, th is is

rea l l y one of two or three p laces in

the world you should be, beca use

of the presence of the i n d ustry and

i ts expertise" -Peter Abal"r;

MA Biotechnology Council

the ATC will include some 80 new faculty

researchers and 700 staff.

"This has accelerated the growth of the

research enterprise here, as well as the

opportunity to collaborate closely with some

leading partners on the commercial side," says

Terry Flotte, dean of UMass Medical School.

"The environment in Massachusetts is part of

why this success story was able to occur in a

very short period of time." .

Massachusetts Biotechnology Council 2015 Strategic Report www. massb io .org/wr i ta b l e/

f i l es/2015_Repo rt/f u l l_2015_

repo rt_fo r _d istr i b u t i o n . p d f

Merck Research Laboratories www m e rckcom/mr l

Harvard Stem Cel l I nstitute wwwhsc i .harva rd .edu

UMass Medical School www u massmed.edu


FOCUS ON MASSACHUSETTS

Assistant Professor IV I ,"

J Massachusetts General Hospital

Cancer Center and Harvard Medical School The Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center is seeking applications for a tenure track faculty position at the level of Assistant Professor. We seek outstanding individuals who wish to establish a strong cancer research program with interests including, but not limited to, cancer biology, cancer genetics, genetic model organisms, signal transduction, and cell cycle checkpoints. Candidates must hold a Ph.D. and/or M.D. degree (or equivalent), have postdoctoral experience and a strong record of accomplishment in research. Applications from women and minority candidates are strongly encouraged.

Candidates should submit by email a curriculum vitae including a full list of publications and a brief statement of research and teaching interests to [email protected]. Four letters of reference should be mailed directly to the Search Committee to the address below.

Search Committee c/o Carol Ann Hannan

MGH Cancer Center 1 3th Street, Building 149, Room 7204

Charlestown, MA 02129

Complete applications including four letters of reference must be received by October 15 , 2009.

Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University uphold a commitment to affirmative action and equal opportunity.

Cell P R E S S

Editor, Trends Journals Cell Press seeks to appoint Editors for its prestigious Trends titles, in its Cambridge

office, with possible opportunities for the following Trends Journals: Biotechnology, Cell

Biology, Cognitive Sciences, Genetics, Immunology, Microbiology, Molecular Medicine,

Neurosciences, Parasitology, and Pharmacological Sciences.

As the Editor of one of these leading i nternational reviews journals, you wil l be

responsible for the strategic development and management of the content and editorial

d irection of the journal. You wil l be acquiring, managing and developing the very best editorial content, making use of a network of contacts in academia, as well as exploiting

information gathered at international conferences, to ensure the title maintains its

market-leading position . You wil l collaborate with your Cell Press colleagues to

maximize qual ity and efficiency of content commissioning and participate in exciting

new non-journal based i n itiatives. The Ed itor wil l be trained and wil l work in the context

of this highly dynamic and collaborative publishing g roup which includes the 14 Trends

titles and 12 Cell Press titles.

This is an exciting and challenging role and you will need a PhD in a relevant discip l ine.

Good interpersonal ski l ls are essential because the role involves networking in the wider

scientific community as well as collaborations with other parts of the business.

For this position , previous publishing experience is not necessary - we wil l make sure

you get the training and development you need . This is an ideal opportunity to stay close to the cutting edge of scientific developments in the field while developing a new career

in an exciting publishing environment. To apply, please submit a CV and resume via the

Careers section of Elsevier's website, www.elsevier.com . ind icating the Trends journal

Editor position to which you are applying, and describing your qual ifications, research

interests, and reasons for pursuing a career in publ ishing. No phone inquiries, please.

Cell Press is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer, M/F/DN.

Applications wil l be considered in an ongoing basis through October 9, 2009.

54 1 NewScientist 1 12 Septernber 2009

FACULTY POSITION 11•. � Department of Molecular Biology : � Massachusetts General Hospital .�

Department of Genetics Harvard Medical School

The Department of Molecular Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School invite applications for a joint appointment at the level of Assistant Professor. The laboratory will be located in the Massachusetts General Hospital Department of Molecular Biology (http://molbio.mgh.harvard.edu) and the faculty appointment will be in the Harvard Medical School Department of Genetics (http://genetics.med. harvard.edu). We encourage applications from women and minorities.

MOLECULAR BIOLOGY FACULTY Robert Kingston, Chief David Altshuler Frederick Ausubel Joseph Avruch Michael Blower Deborah Hung

Joshua Kaplan Jeannie Lee Marjorie Oettinger Gary Ruvkun Jen Sheen Jack Szostak

Applicants should apply via electronic submission to the URL listed below. Please submit a curriculum vitae, statement of research plans and up to three relevant publications, all in pdf format, by November 1 , 2009. In addition, provide the names and email addresses of three references.

The URL for submission is: http://molbio.mgh.harvard.edu/facultysearch/ Harvard University and the Massachusetts General Hospital are equal

opportunity/affirmative action employers.

As a lead ing biotechnology company, Genzyme develops break

through therapies for today's toug hest medical chal lenges. Focused on

innova-tion , our employees thr ive in an entrepreneur ia l environment in

which i n d iv iduals can excel wh i le bu i ld ing on their d iverse strengths. We

offer exciting career opportunit ies at every leve l , a long with competitive compensation and benefits.

We cu rrently have open ings in the fo l lowi ng areas :

• Process Engineering • Quality

• Biotech Manufacturing • Information Technology

• Research • Sales & Marketing

• Materials Management • Finance

An EEO/AA Employer comm itted to a cu ltural ly d iverse workplace.

For immediate consideration , we encourage a l l appl icants to go to our website and apply on l ine .

Ranked #5 Employer among the World's Top 20 Biotechnology & Pharmaceutical Companies

www.genzyme.com!careers

IJ


I n novat i on at work . At N ova rt i s I n st i t u tes fo r B i o M ed i ca l Resea rch ( N I B R) , the g l o b a l resea rch o rga n i zat i o n of N ova rt i s , we a re co m m i tted to d i scove r i n g i n n ovat ive med i c i nes to c u re d i sease and i m p rove h u m a n hea l t h . Th i s i s today's fro n t i e r of s c i e n ce . Our c u l t u re of s c i e n ce i s open , e n t re p re n e u r i a l , and co l l eg i a l , u nw i l l i ng to accept b a r r i e rs o r conve nt i o n a l w i s d o m . By h i r i n g the best acade m i c , b i otec h , a n d p h a r m aceut i c a l t ra i ned s c i e n t i sts , w e h ave foste red a n atmos p h e re fo r d rug d i scove ry w h e re i n n ovat i o n i s rewa rd ed . We h ave c reated a dyn a m i c and f l ex i b l e c u l tu re that va l u es a n d l eve rages each assoc i ate's d ive rse backgro u n d , u n i q u e sty l e a n d wea l t h of expe r i e n ce .

N I B R h a s s i tes i n Ca m b r i d ge , M a s sa c h u setts ( h e a d q u a rters) ; E m e ryv i l l e , CA ; East H a n ove r, N J ; B a se l , S w i tze r l a n d ; H o rs h a m , U K ; S h a n g h a i , C h i n a . D i s e a s e a rea res e a rc h i n c l u d es auto i m m u n i ty/tra ns p l a ntat i o n / i nf l a m matory d i sease, onco l ogy, card i ovascu l a r a n d metabo l i c d i seases, gastro i n test i n a l d i seases, i n fect ious d i seases, m u scu l os ke l eta l d i seases, op htha l mo l ogy, n e u rosc i ence, a n d res p i ratory d i seases. P l atfo r m tech n o l o g i es i n c l u d e A n a l yt i c a l a n d I m a g i n g S c i e n ce s , B i o l og i c s , G l o ba l D i sc ove ry C h e m i st ry, D eve l o p m e n t a l & M o l e c u l a r Pathways , P roteo m i c C h e m i st ry, a n d E p i ge n e t i c s . Tra n s l a t i o n a l S c i e n ces i n c l u d e P re c l i n i ca l Safety, B i o m a rke r Deve l o p m e n t , D ru g M et a b o l i s m & P h a r m a c o k i n et i c s , Tra n s l at i o n a l M ed i c i n e , a n d Strate g i c P l a n n i n g & O p e rat i o n s . Fo r i m med i ate c o n s i d e rat i o n , p l ease v i s i t t h e C a re e r sect i o n at www. nova rt i s .co m / n i b r .

N OVART I S IN STITUTES FOR

BIOMEDICAL RE SEARCH

N ova rt is is co m m i tted to e m b rac i ng a n d l everagi ng d iverse backgro u nds , c u l t u res, a n d ta l ents to ach i eve com pet i t ive adva ntage.

N ova rt is i s an eq u a l opportun ity e m p l oyer M / F/ DIV

12 September 2009 1 NewSc ientist 1 55

Cell P R E S 5

Working together for a healthier world""

rTl: Quol ity

'oapI. ord Prc:dud. Woooog 1"9""-"


Opportun ities avai lable: INNOVATIVE.

INDEPENDEI\IT. INSPIRED.

Discovery Research Pharmaceutical Deve lopment C l i n ical and Medical Affai rs Commercial Bus iness and Operations

P lease v is it our website at www.infLcom to l earn more about these opportun ities and our culture of Citizen-Ownersh ip

Assistant! Associate Professor " Basic Scientist

Division of Genetics, Department of Medicine Applications are invited for a tenure-track Assistant or Associate

Professor position in the Division of Genetics in the Department of

Medicine at Children's Hospital Boston. We are seeking an outstanding

MD, Ph.D. or MD/PhD scientist who will establish a vigorous basic

science or translational research program with relevance to genetics,

developmental biology and/or developmental disorders of childhood.

The successful candidate will have modern laboratory space located

in the newly opened Center for Life Science Building. Joint

appointments in the Program in Genomics at Children's Hospital

and the Broad Institute of Mlr and Harvard may be available for

appropriate applicants. The Division resides within a very strong

research community in genetics, developmental biology and related

disciplines throughout the Harvard Longwood Medical Area and the

investigator will hold both Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard

Medical School faculty appointments .

Please submit a current Cv, a 2- or 3-page description of research

interests and directions, and three to five reference letters. Materials

should be sent via e-mail by November 15, 2009 to:

[email protected]. Please contact

Andrea McDonald at 61 7-355-2449 with questions. We particularly

encourage applications from women and minority candidates.

Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer


NASDAQ: INFI

Assistant! Associate Professor • Clinical Scientist

Division of Genetics, Department of Medicine Applications are invited for a tenure-track Assistant or Associate

Professor position in the Division of Genetics in the Department of

Medicine at Children's Hospital Boston. We are seeking an outstanding

MD or MD/PhD clinical scientist who will establish a vigorous basic

science, translational research or clinical research program with

relevance to genetics, developmental biology and/or developmental

disorders of childhood. The successful candidate will have modern

laboratory space located in the newly opened Center for Life Science

Building. Joint appointments in the Program in Genomics at Children's

Hospital and the Broad Institute of Mlr and Harvard may be available

for appropriate applicants. The Division resides within a very strong

research and clinical community in genetics, developmental biology

and related disciplines throughout the Harvard Longwood Medical

Area and offers many teaching and clinical opportunities. The Clinical

Scientist will hold both Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical

School faculty appointments.

Please submit a current Cv, a 2- or 3-page description of research and clinical interests and directions, and three to five reference letters.

Materials should be sent via e-mail by November 15, 2009 to:

[email protected]. Please contact

Andrea McDonald at 61 7-355-2449 with questions. We particularly

encourage applications from women and minority candidates.

Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer

NewScientist Jobs Incorporating ScienceJobs.com To apply on line visit www. NewScientistJobs.com

B IOLOGY Assistant! Associate Professor Basic Scientist Division of Genetics, Department of Medicine Ch i ldren's Hospita l Boston, Harva rd Medica l School MA - Massachusetts We are seeking an outstanding MD, PhD. or MD/PhD scientist who wi l l establ ish a vigorous basic science or translational research program with relevance to genetics, developmental biology and/ or developmental d isorders of chi ldhood, For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job ID : 200548632

Assistant! Associate Professor Clinical Scientist Division of Genetics, Department of Medicine Ch i ld ren's Hospita l Boston,

Harva rd Medica l School MA - Massachusetts We are seeking an outstanding MD or MD/PhD c l in ical scientist who wi l l establ ish a vigorous bas ic science, translational research or c l in ica l research program with relevance to genetics, developmental b io logy and/or developmenta l d isorders of chi ldhood, For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job ID : 200548557

Faculty - Cincinnati, OH - Cincinnati Children's Research Foundation, University of Cincinnati Cinc in nati Ch i l d ren's Hospita l Medica l Center OH - Oh io We seek to f i l l several facu lty positions at the Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, or Professor rank with outstanding candidates i nterested in basic or translational

CALIFORNIA I NSTITUTE OF TECH NOLOGY Cel l u l a r, Devel opmenta l , or Reg u latory Bio logy

T h e Ca lifornia Institute o f Technology invites a p pl ications for

a tenure-track p rofessor ia l position in the Division of Biology.

The successfu l app licant is expected to develop an innovative

resea rch program aimed at deciphering the molecu l a r

mechanisms that underl ie biologica l phenomena a t t h e level

of molecules, ce l l s, or organisms, and to be committed to h igh

qual ity teaching. Preference wi l l be given to candid ates at

the Assistant Professor level; however, consideration wi l l a lso

be g iven to more senior app l icants. Appointment is contingent

upon comp letion of Ph.D.

P lease submit on- l ine a p p lication at http://biology.ca ltech. edufPositions and include a brief cover letter, a curricu lum

vitae, relevant publ ications, and a d escription of proposed

research. Instructions wil l be given for submission of letters

of reference when you app ly on- l ine. Appl ications wi l l be

accepted until the position is fi l led.

The California Institute of Technology i s a n Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action

Employer. Women, minorities veterans, and disabled persons are encouraged to apply.

60 I NewScientist 1 12 September 2009

East Coast Office 600 Technology Square, 5th Floor Cambridge, MA 02139 Email [email protected] Phone 617 386 2190 Fax 617 397 2805

West Coast Office 201 Mission Street 26th Floor San Francisco, CA 94105 Email [email protected] Phone 415 908 3353 Fax 415 543 6789

Cal ls may be monitored or recorded for staff training purposes

research, For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job ID : 200548773

FACULTY POSITION, Department of Genetics and Development Co lumb ia Un iversity NY - New York Appl icant's research program should use molecular genetic approaches to study, in any model organ ism, questions relevant to vertebrate physio logy and to the molecular bases of human degenerative d iseases, For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job ID : 200550778

Staff Associate positions Co lumb ia U n iversity NY - New York The Staff Associate wil l perform and i nterpret h istocompatib i l ity tests; perform molecu lar HLA typ ing and flow cytometry crossmatch ing; coord inate qual ity assurance operations; and tra in new personnel , For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job ID: 200550780

Associate Scientist -Bioinformatics Genentech CA - Cal iforn ia The successful candidate wi l l col laborate with our experimenta l biologists in studying various aspects of cancer b io logy inc luding cancer stem cel l research and molecular diagnostics. For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job ID: 200548846

Postdoctoral Research Fellow Genentech CA - Cal iforn ia A post-doctoral research fel low position is avai lab le in the Protein

Ana lytical Chemistry department with in Process Research & Development to investigate modifications that occur to therapeutic and endogenous IgG antibodies, For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job ID: 200548835

Research Data Unit Manager - Calgary AB - Epidemiology Alberta Cancer Board AB - Alberta This position wi l l provide leadership and d i rection to The Data Support Un it which supports the research studies of Scientists (Epidemiolog ists and Biostatisticians) in the Popu lation Health Research (PHR) Department For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job ID: 200550757

FACULTY POSITION Harva rd Medica l School (HMS) and Massachusetts Genera l Hospital (MGH) MA - Massachusetts The Department of Molecular Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School invite appl ications for a joint appointment at the level of Assistant Professor, For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job ID: 200548712

Faculty Position - Indiana University School of Medicine-South Bend, Cell and Molecular Biology I nd iana U n iversity School of Med ic ine I N - Ind iana The Indiana Un iversity School of Medicine-South Bend at the University of Notre Dame invites appl ications for a tenure-track facu lty position in the area of cel l and molecular b iology at the Assistant or Associate Professor rank.

CALIFORNIA I NSTITUTE O F TECHNOLOGY

The Cal ifornia Institute of Technology invites a p p l ications for a

tenure-track Assistant Professor position in the a rea of com p l ex

biological systems in the Division of Biology. Areas of interest inc lude

(but are not l imited to) quantitative and interdiscip l inary studies of

the dynamica l behavior of biological networks (involving molecules,

cel l s, ci rcuits, organisms, or synthetic a p p roaches). We a re pa rticu lar ly

interested in individuals who propose to combine computationa l

a n d experimenta l a p p roaches t o understand emergent properties

of biologica l systems. Joint appointments in other Divisions may be

a rranged as appropriate.

Appointment will be contingent upon completion of a l l requi rements

for a doctora l degree and successful research ex perience in an

appropriate area of biology, biochemistry, chemistry, biophysics,

physics or related fields. Outstanding candid ates who have strong

commitments to research and teaching a re encou raged to a p p l y.

P lease submit on-l ine a p p l ication at hHp:/ /bio logy.ca ltech.edu/ Positions by December 3 1 , 2009 and include a brief cover letter,

a curricu lum vitae, relevant publ ications, and a description of

proposed research. I nstructions wi l l be given for submission of letters

of reference when you app ly on-l ine.

The California Institute of Technology is on Equal Opportunity / Affirmotive Action

Employer. Women, minorities veterans, and disabled persons are encouraged to apply.

For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job ID: 200550758

Developmental Editor (Temporary) John Wi ley & Sons, Ine . Nj - N ew Jersey We have an exciting opportunity for a temporary developmenta l ed itor for l ife sciences withi n our Scientific, Technical , Medical, and Scholarly business. For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job ID: 200518222

Formulation & Packaging Leader [5323BR] Land O'La kes, Ine . MO - M issour i This position is responsible for managing all aspects of production in the l iquid contract department and ensures that the production is managed in a safe, environmentally sound and profitable manner, For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job ID: 200548683

Formulation Leader [5169BR] Land O'Lakes, Ine . AR - Arkansas Responsible for the production/ formu lation of dry and l iqu id chemical products at the Blythevi l le, AR Omnium faci l ity, For more i nformation visit NewScientistjobs.com job ID : 200548710

Assistant Professor Massachusetts General Hospita l Cancer Center and Harvard Medica l School MA - Massachusetts We seek outstanding ind ividuals who wish to establ ish a strong cancer research program with i nterests i nc lud ing, but not l im ited to, cancer biology, cancer genetics, genetic model organ isms, s ignal transduction, and cel l cycle checkpoints, For more i nformation visit NewScientistjobs.com job ID : 200548677

Bioinformatics Scientist 1 -Curator for TB Database

www.NewScientistJobs.com

Cell P R IE S S

Editor, Trends Journals Cel l Press seeks to appoint Editors for its prestigious Trends titles, in its Cambridge

office, with possible opportunities for the following Trends Journals: Biotechnology, Cell

Biology, Cognitive Sciences, Genetics, Immunology, Microbiology, Molecular Medicine,

Neurosciences, Parasitology, and Pharmacological Sciences.

As the Ed itor of one of these leading international reviews journals, you wil l be responsible for the strategic development and management of the content and editorial

direction of the journal. You will be acqu iring, managing and developing the very best

ed itorial content, making use of a network of contacts in academia, as well as exploiting

information gathered at international conferences, to ensure the title maintains its market-leading position. You will collaborate with your Cell Press colleagues to

maximize qual ity and efficiency of content commissioning and participate in exciting

new non-journal based initiatives. The Editor will be trained and will work i n the context

of this highly dynamic and collaborative publishing group which includes the 1 4 Trends

titles and 12 Cell Press titles,

This is an exciting and challenging role and you wil l need a PhD in a relevant discipl ine.

Good interpersonal ski l ls are essential because the role involves networking in the wider

scientific commun ity as well as collaborations with other parts of the business.

For this position, previous publ ishing experience is not necessary - we wil l make sure

you get the training and development you need. This is an ideal opportunity to stay close

to the culling edge of scientific developments in the field while developing a new career

in an exciting publishing environment. To apply, please submit a CV and resume via the

Careers section of Elsevier's website, www.elsevier.com . ind icating the Trends journal

Editor position to which you are applying, and describing your qual ifications, research

interests, and reasons for pursuing a career in publ ishing. No phone inquiries, please.

Cell Press is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer, M/F/DN.

Applications wil l be considered in an ongoing basis through October 9, 2009,

Massachusetts I n stitute of Technology/Broad Institute MA - Massachusetts The Bioinformatics Scientist at the Genome Sequencing and Analysis Program of the Broad Institute wi l l i ntegrate and curate genome sequence, annotation, l iterature citations, and other genomic data for an onl ine database of integrated TB genomic information, For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job ID : 200550648

Software Engineer 11 - Cancer Group, Connectivity Map Massachusetts I n stitute of Technology/Broad Institute MA - Massachusetts The successful candidate wi l l develop and support user interfaces for complex data management workflow, and/or data analysis systems that support the Connectivity Map research projects in accordance with best practices and new technical concepts, For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job ID : 200550640

Associate Director Operational Excellence Med immune U S M D - Mary land The Associate DirectorOE wi l l work closely with functional and site-based leadership to define and imp lement lean sig s igma capab i l it ies i n their organizations through the use of best -practice teams, processes, tools, and governance, For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job ID : 200551868

Associate Scientist I Med immune U S C A - Cal iforn ia In vivo study design, execution, data analysis and report writing in support of in -house Safety Testing that wi l l be performed under GLP requ i rements, For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job ID : 200548492

Senior Scientist Med immune U S C A - Cal iforn ia



The candidate wi l l be part of a team Northwestern U n iversity Associate Director, Strategic Faculty Search The Stowers working to develop purification of IL - I l l i no is Alliances - Oncology Institute seeks exceptional Medlmmune vaccine candidates We are interested in ind ividuals Novartis I nstitutes for scientists at al l levels to lead and reagents from an imal tissues, whose research addresses BioMedica l Research (US) independent research programs microbial sources and eucaryotic cel l fundamenta l issues in MA - Massachusetts using approaches in the areas culture, neuroscience, inc luding but not The Associate D irector, Strategic of biochemistry, biophysics, cel l For more information visit l im ited to neurogenetics, and Al l iances - Oncology wi l l proactively biology, computational biology, NewScientistjobs.com job ID : who show significant potential identify, evaluate, and negotiate development, genetics, genomics 200548566 for innovation, scholarsh ip, and transactions for Oncology research, and neurosciences,

commitment to excel lence i n For more information visit For more information visit research and teach ing, NewScientistjobs.com job ID: NewScientistjobs.com job ID:

Tenure TracklTenured For more information visit 200552449 200550766 Position, Basic Biomedical NewScientistjobs.com job ID : Research 200550763 National I nstitutes of Hea lth, Research Assistant Director of Mass Nationa l Heart, Lung, and B lood Pioneer H i - B red Spectrometry Facility I nstitute FACULTY POSITIONS IN H I - Hawa i i South Dakota State Un iversity M D - Maryland SYSTEMS NEUROSCIENCE, The agronomy research assistant SO - South Da kota The area of expertise of the SMILOW RESEARCH CENTER-- wil l be responsib le for supporting D irector of Campus Mass candidate is less important than his/ -NYU SCHOOL OF MEDICINE the agronomy efforts of the Kun ia Spectrometry Fac i l ity, Department her demonstrated abi l ity to conduct New York U n iversity NYU, research center with pr imary focus of Chemistry & Biochemistry, South outstanding independent research La ngone Medica l Center on agronomic activities necessary Dakota State Un iversity, in areas with i n the broad biomedical NY - N ew York to rel iab ly produce high qual ity seed For more information visit research interests of the D IR. The Smi low Neuroscience Program, for the research organ ization, NewScientistjobs.com job ID : For more information visit a new in itiative at NYU School of For more information visit 200547081 NewScientistjobs.com job ID : Medic ine, seeks to establ ish an NewScientistjobs.com job ID : 200551151 i nteractive research environment 200549220

of molecu lar, ce l lu lar, and systems Senior Research neuroscientists, Technologist

Research Technician For more information visit Senior Research Associate St. jude Ch i ld ren's Research New Yo rk Un iversity NYU, NewScientistjobs.com job ID : P ioneer H i - B red Hospital Langone Medical Center 200551152 H I - Hawa i i TN - Tennessee NY - New York The successful appl icant wi l l be part Our laboratory is i nterested in the The avai lab le mouse technician of a team provid ing software and development of the vertebrate position requ i res excel lent Principal Scientist hardware support for researchers nervous system, specifica l ly on commun ication and organ izational (Pharmacokinetics) working i n nursery and doubled the mechanism regu lating cel l ski l ls and the ab i l ity to work N ovart is Institutes for haploid development areas of prol iferation, surviva l and fate independently as wel l as with in a BioMedica l Research (US) the Crop Genetics Research and choice of neural progen itor cel ls, group setting, Nj - New jersey Development (CGRD) Division, For more information visit For more information visit The primary focus of this laboratory For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job ID: NewScientistjobs.com job ID : based position is the investigation NewScientistjobs.com job ID : 200550878 200551852 of absorption, d istri bution, and 200549217

excretion (ADME) of therapeutic agents in an imals ( inc lud ing Faculty positions

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, The nonhuman primates), frequently FACULTY POSITIONS IN St. jude Ch i l d ren's Research Department of Biochemistry, using radio labeled tracers, BIOLOGY Hospital , Facu lty Recru itment Molecular Biology & Cell For more information visit Reed Bus iness I nformation TN - Tennessee Biology NewScientistjobs.com job ID : CA - Cal iforn ia As a private nonprofit academic Northwestern U n iversity 200552504 Appl icants in al l areas of Biology research institution and hospital, IL - I l l i no is wi l l be considered, and we St jude supports a range of We are particu larly interested in encourage candidates i n Genetics, programs to advance cures, and the fol lowing areas: • Molecu lar Sr. Pathologist Neuroscience, Stem Cel l Biology, means of prevention, for ped iatric and Cel lu lar Biology, especia l ly Nova rt is I nstitutes for and Chemical Biology conducting catastrophic d isease through research uti l iz ing advanced imaging BioMedica l Research (US) innovative basic science that research and treatment approaches to investigate cel lu lar MA - Massachusetts contributes to translational medical For more information visit processes, The incumbent wi l l be responsib le research, NewScientistjobs.com job ID : For more information visit for provid ing pathology support For more information visit 200550764 NewScientistjobs.com job ID : to Research with additional NewScientistjobs.com job ID : 200550762 contri butions to prec l in ical safety 200550772

assessment across the drug Faculty Recruitment development process, The Center for G l i a l B io logy

Neurobiology & Physiology For more information visit Faculty Search i n Med ic ine (CGBM) at the Tenure-Track Faculty NewScientistjobs.com job ID : Reed Bus iness I nformation Un iversity of Alabama at Position 200552528 MO - M i ssouri B i rmingham



AL - Alabama Medic ine FACULTY POSITIONS, Branch The overarching interest of the NC - North Caro l i na DEPARTMENT OF TX - Texas CGBM is the role of g l ia l cells i n This w i l l be a fu l l -t ime facu lty BIOCHEMISTRY The Division of Gastroenterology & bra in function and d isease. Key appointment as assistant associate U n iversity of Iowa, Carver Hepatology, Department of Internal areas of focus include: 1) the ro le or ful l professor on the tenure track Co l lege of Med ic ine Medicine at the University of of g l ia i n bra in and spinal injury; 2) with rank and tenure determined lA - Iowa Texas Medical Branch at Ga lveston the bio logy of white matter gl ia/ based on academic qual ifications. Biochemistry facu lty members have (UTMB) invites appl ications for one 0l igodendrocytes/NG2 cel ls For more information visit strong col laborative interactions position at the Assistant Professor For more information visit NewScientistjobs.comjob ID : with col leagues throughout the level in the area of cell s igna l ing, NewScientistjobs.com job ID : 200550755 Carver Col lege of Medicine and the epigenetics and DNA injury and 200550775 Un iversity. repair related to d iabetes.

For more information visit For more information visit Endowed Chair in Muscular NewScientistjobs.com job ID : NewScientistjobs.com job ID :

Asc Director Biostatistics Dystrophy Research 200550767 200518560 Novartis I nstitutes for U n iversity of Alberta B ioMedica l Research (US) AB - Alberta MA - Massachusetts The successful appl icant wi l l Software Architect (Senior Assistant Professor in The Biomarker Data Ana lyst be expected to qual ify for an Programmer) Animal Biodiversity &ramp; contributes to drug development appointment as Associate Professor U n iversity of M iami , M i l ler School Biogeography efforts by provid ing h igh-qual ity and or Professor in the Facu lty of of Med ic ine Un iversity of Toronto at timely statistics and b io informatics Medic ine and Dentistry at the FL - F lor ida Scarborough expertise in the areas of Biomarkers Un iversity of Alberta with i n the The Informatics department MIHG ON - Onta r io and Imaging (B&I) data analysis, Division of Neurology and/or other is looking for a looking for a qua l ified The successful appl icant wil l jo in integration and i nterpretation. appropriate Departments. candidate to f i l l an immed iate a mu lti-d isci p l inary department For more information visit For more information visit posit ion as Software Architect. and wi l l be expected to i nteract NewScientistjobs.com job ID : NewScientistjobs.comjob ID : For more information visit with existing research clusters 200552447 200551147 NewScientistjobs.com job ID : (e.g., Biological Dynamics of

200548081 Environmental Change, Integrative Behaviour & Neuroscience, and/or

TENURE TRACK FACULTY Postdoctoral Fellow - Physiology). POSITIONS for MD and/or Cincinnati, OH - Academic Postdoctoral Scholar For more information visit PhD at all ranks U n iversity of C inc innati, Position - Microbial NewScientistjobs.com job ID : The Un iversity of M ich igan Department of Cancer and Ce l l Pathogenesis 200547858 Medica l School B io logy U n iversity of Ca l iforn ia, I rv ine M I - M ich igan OH - Oh io CA - Cal iforn ia Jo in a growing program of molecu lar, The focus of research wi l l be on The N IH-funded research program PHYSICIAN-INVESTIGATORS developmental, population and understand ing the regulation focuses on the study of Salmonel la IN MOLECULAR MEDICINE statistica l geneticists working with of classical and a lternative pathogenesis and the mucosal Un iversity of Utah School of patients, popluations, and model NF-KB s ignal ing and its role in immune response to bacterial Medic ine organisms. tumorigenesis, using different in infections using in vitro and in vivo UT - Utah For more information visit vivo mouse models as wel l as in vitro approaches. The Department of Medic ine at NewScientistjobs.com job ID : methods. For more information visit the Un iversity of Utah School of 200550761 For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job ID : Medicine is seeking candidates for

NewScientistjobs.com job ID : 200547951 appointment to the Program in 200548527 Molecular Medic ine

Database Analyst! Postdoc For more information visit The U n iversity of Texas Tenure track position NewScientistjobs.com job ID : Southwestern Med ica l Center at Post-doctoral Fellow - U n iversity of Pittsburgh School 200551142 Dal las Farmington, Connecticut, of Med ic ine TX - Texas USA - Academic PA - Pennsylvan ia The candidate must have a working U n iversity of Connecticut Hea lth The Un iversity is conducting a Tenure Track knowledge of bio informatics related Center search for an ind ividual with a Un iversity of Utah School of to genomics and/or proteomics CT - Connecticut demonstrated record of research Medic ine data, and of pub l i c database The Un iversity of Connecticut accompl ishment in i PS or stem UT - Utah resources such as NCBI Entrez/ Health Center seeks a h igh ly cel l science to f i l l a tenure track The general areas of interest GenBank. motivated Post -doctoral fe l low position in the Department of include, among other poss ib i l ities, For more information visit (PDF) to investigate molecu lar Developmenta l Biology. protein and nucleic acids NewScientistjobs.com job ID: mechanisms underlying For more information visit biochemistry, cel lu lar function, 200551155 card iovascular d iseases and NewScientistjobs.com job ID : metabol ism/enzymology, s ignal

exp lore possib le ways for 200551137 transduction, and computational treatment. analysis.

Endowed Professorship for For more information visit For more information visit Dementia Research NewScientistjobs.comjob ID : Assistant Professor NewScientistjobs.com job ID : U N C Chapel H i l l School of 200549160 U n iversity of Texas Medica l 200551143


FEEDBACK

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COABYI TiS 1 hJ6 �

Ms .\ "'-. "' .. •

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FEEDBACK is covered in shame, and more confused than usual. Tom Roche was just one reader who posted a comment on newscientist.com to say that Dublin Ferry Port -which the UK's National Rail online map located at 0° N, 0° W (on the equator in the Atlantic ocean, 1000 kilometres south of

Ghana) - isn't at Dun Laoghaire, as we asserted on 22 August, either. That was just the first result of our search on a famous web map service.

It is in fact at the mouth of the river Liffey, closer to Dublin itself.

Sometimes it is, anyway. Tim McCulloch has spotted it in the Netherlands. Our link to the National Rail site didn't work for him, so he visited www. directferries.co.uk/ dublin.htmwhere, as you will see if you get there before they read this, the ferry port is located on a smallish inlet called Simonsgat, near

-� ...

"' ..".. <1' .. .

" ............

Groningen. At least this location has the essential requirements of land near water.

We can offer an explanation: Dublin Ferry Port is close to coordinates 53.35° N, 6.2° W and Simonsgat is at53.35° N, 6.2° E. And thus it appears we have another challenge to issue - where else have you spotted Dublin

Ferry Port in its migrations? In response to our earlier

request to list the places populating 0° N, 0° W in mapworld, John Arthur reports finding "surprisingly many" houses for sale out there in the south Atlantic. Fearing rising damp, if not worse, he has eliminated the vendors involved from his enquiries.

Simon Norton, meanwhile, has investigated the National Rail website further and discovered that, when he looked, Corby and East Midlands Parkway railway stations in the UK were also

The packet of sweet peas bought by John Priest land from on l ine garden centre Van Meuwen assured h im : "Your pants have been grown in a perfect greenhouse envi ronment"


For more feedback, visit www.NewScientist.com/feedback

mapped to 0° N, 0° W. He is pleased, therefore, to conclude that he can avoid crossing the Irish Sea and get from London to Dublin by train in just over an hour, taking the new direct service to Corby, "which is in the same place" as Dublin Ferry Port. And logically it is, if not in the real world.

WE HAVE written before about the

fates of iPods that went through

the washing machine or fel l into the toi let (8 September 2007). Now

the MaclnTouch website reveals an interesting way in which the puddle

can come to the iPod rather than

the usual way round.

As Rob Gi lgan tel ls it, a family

friend noticed that the sound of a game on his iPod Touch i rritated his

Shetland sheepdog, so he made a point of teasing the dog with it. I n

retal iation, when h i s owner left the iPod unattended on his coffee table,

the dog c l imbed up and urinated on

the source of the noise. As Rob

writes, "He found his iTouch pooched in a puddle of pee. Deader than a

parrot in a Monty Python parody." Some iPods recover from other

types of soakings, but this one was

sti l l dead after six weeks, so the

victim took it to the Apple Store,

prepared to buy a replacement.

Much to his surprise, a technician

there couldn't find any sign of

moisture damage - which would void the warranty - and gave

him a replacement.

"Guess sheltie pee doesn't leave

any evidence. Sure does in the

Unwilling To Perform". She wondered why the university has not trumpeted its acquisition of a computer with built-in free will. But then she realised it would probably get criticised for wasting British taxpayers' money on a machine that just can't be bothered to do what it was built to do.

AN ADVERTISEMENT that appeared

on jemma Pollari's Facebook profi le

exhorted her: "Get your own pair of

ballerinas made from a l l recycled materials." What could this possibly

mean? Perhaps the picture of a pair of shoes beside the advertisement

offered a clue.

FINALLY, the latest heroic attempt at virtual printing comes from the UK's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Browsing DEFRA's website, Rob Fitzmaurice was struck by

images of the UK's latest nasty pest, the citrus longhorn beetle. Keen to know more, he clicked onto the website's illustrated

neighbour's lawn, though," writes information about the bug, where Rob, evidently drawing on experience he was informed that what he was of neighbourhood d isharmony. reading was : "Printed on material

RESIGNED acceptance is the only sanity-preserving response to the myriad program error message synonyms for "computer says 'no' ". But Feedback is impressed by the message presented to Lucy Taylor while she was trying to find out how much credit she had left in her University of Sussex printing account : "Error:

that contains a minimum of 100 per cent recycled fibre for uncoated paper and 75 per cent recycled fibre for coated paper." That'll be binary paper, of course.

You can send stories to Feedback by

emai l at [email protected].

Please include your home address.

This week's and past Feedbacks can

be seen on our website.

THE LAST WORD

Three's a crowd

I n a c lumsy effort to seduce

her, I attempted to expla in the

evolut ionary advantages of sexua l

reproduction t o a female friend the other day. One advantage, I said,

was i ntroducing an element of

genetic competition into the process. She wanted to know why,

if two sexes are needed to create genetic competition, why a ren't

there three, four or a mi l l ion sexes

to create even more competition?

So why a re there only two?

• Some species do have more than two types. Single-celled ciliates have up to 100, and mushrooms tens of thousands. But most organisms - even single-celled ones - come in two types.

So why are there two types in most species? In all species, no matter how many types, sex occurs between just two cells and any can mate with any other sex cell that is different from it. So, as your questioner suggests, finding just two types in most species is paradoxical, because having many types would maximise the chances of finding a mate.

One answer to this problem is that two types is best for co-ordinating the inheritance of cytoplasmic DNA -the part of the cell's genetic material that is not contained in the nucleus. However, there is a drawback to this solution. The species with two types fuse cells and potentially run the risk of scrambling this extra material.

Questions and answers should be concise.

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enquiries about everyday phenomena.

The writers of publ ished answers wil l

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reserves a l l rig hts to reuse question and

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any med ium or format.

The species with more than two mating types do it differently. With three types, the coordination is even more difficult to make error proof, while those with many mating types don't fuse cells at all and so are not constrained to having just two types. Laurence Hurst Professor of Evolutionary Genetics University of Bath

Laurence Hurst has written widely on the subject and more information can be found in his following papers -Ed

"Cytoplasmic fusion and the nature of sexes" (with William Hamilton), Proceedings of the Royal Society B, V01 247, P 189; "Selfish genetic elements and their role in evolution: the

"Finding just two sexes in most species is odd; having more would maximise the chances of finding a mate"

evolution of sex and some of what that entails," Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, vo1 349, p 321; "Why are there only two sexes?" Proceedings of the Royal Society B, V01 263, p 415.

• Having taught a difficult lesson on statistical techniques in geography to my secondary school students, I stood before them lost in admiration of the chi square test I'd written up on the board. Just then my students

New Scientist reta ins total editorial control

over the content of The Last Word. Send

questions and answers to The Last Word.

New Scientist Lacon House, B4 Theobald's

Road, London WC1X BNS, UK, by emai l to

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For a l ist of a l l unanswered questions

send an SAE to LWQl ist at the above

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Last words past and present, p l us questions, at www. last-word .com

informed me that there were actually three sexes in this world: men, women and geography teachers. Unfortunately, I am a geography teacher. Mary Sinclair By emai/, no address supplied

Shrink-wrapped

In our office, where we test barcode

scanners, we have a sample plastic

bottle of Coca-Cola that has been

left unopened for four years. Over

this time the bottle has col lapsed

to the point where its famous

shape is now barely recognisable. Because i t is a i rt ight, you might

have expected the opposite from a bottle conta in ing a fizzy dr ink.

What could be causing the reduction

in size? Might it be someth ing to

do with Coke's famously secret

ingredients?

• Plastic bottles are indeed pressurised. Each 2-litre bottle of Coca-Cola contains approximately 8.6 litres of carbon dioxide when it is manufactured. Plastic, in this case polyethylene terephthalate (PET), is not a perfect barrier to gas and

"The plastic used in the bottle is not a perfect barrier to gas, leading to carbon dioxide escaping"

therefore, over a long period, the carbon dioxide will escape through the walls ofthe bottle.

As the gas escapes, the pressure inside the bottle gradually falls to atmospheric pressure. The

Do Polar Bears Ciet Lonely? A brand new co l lection serious enqu iry, bri l l i ant ins ight and the h i lariously unexpected Available from booksellers and at www.newscientist.com/ polarbears

volume of the liquid also falls as the dissolved gas escapes from it, which eventually creates a slight vacuum inside the sealed bottle which causes the bottle to distort in shape. This is known in the soft -drink industry as the "panelling effect". Coca-Cola Great Britain press office London, UK

This week's question

MYTHBUSTERS CHALLENGE

New Scientist has teamed up with Discovery Channel's MythBusters to attempt to solve a mystery. Thermite and ice can make an explosive combination, so don't try this experiment at home -watch it safely on the web at www.mythbusters-thermite. notlong.com.

We want to find out why the explosion happens. Thermite is a mainstay of pyrotechnics, comprising a mixture of metal and metal oxide powders that burn at extremely high temperatures in a tightly focused area. Thermite is not, by itself, explosive, but if you ignite a bucket ofthermite on top of blocks of ice, there will be an enormous bang once it has burnt through the bucket.

MythBusters presenters Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage are seeking a convincing scientific explanation ofthis violent reaction (see interview, page 28). Can Last Word readers solve the mystery?

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Documents

New Scientist 2009-09-12