english new scientist october 22 2016

CARBON CONUNDRUM Solving the universe’s existential mystery DAM RIGHT How beavers can sort out California’s drought BRIE ENCOUNTERS Cheese is a hotbed of bacterial evolution WEEKLY October 22 - 28, 2016 KIDS UNLIMITED Stem ceell success coulld end infertilityy IS YOUR Somebody, somewhere is putting a price on your h head No3096 US$5.95 CAN$5.95 70989 30690 Science and technology news www.newscientist.com US jobs in science BLOOD FROM A Rwanda’s flying transfusion delivery FEEL GIFTED Discover more this holiday season Subscribe and save up to 73% Visit newscientist.com/9249 or call 1-888-822-3242 and quote 9249 Give Smarter DOUGAL WATERS PHOTOGRAPHY LTD/GETTY SA Antarctica has been inspiring explorers and scientists for centuries Discover why, with this unforgettable and unique opportunity to journey to the frozen continent Departures: NOV-DEC 2016, FEB-MAR 2017 AND E NE XC V E REA W S LUS C U P DER IEN IV E T O OF TIS F £ ER T 29 0P P JAN-FEB 2018 ADVENTURES ON THE HIGH SEAS ASTONISHING WILDLIFE AND SCENERY CROSS THE ANTARCTIC CIRCLE Your journey begins in Argentina, when you board your ship at Ushuaia and meet your shipmates on the MS Ocean Endeavour or MV Sea Adventurer Then you sail out across the Beagle Channel, and south to the challenging waters of the Drake Passage, accompanied by some of the best polar experts and guides in the industry The next land you see will be the Antarctic Peninsula Enter another world as you sail past haunting icebergs, abandoned whaling ships, glaciers and snow-covered mountains along the peninsula Step on land to meet curious penguins, spot minke or humpback whales and take a dip in the frozen waters of the Southern Ocean with the local fur seal population At each turn you’ll encounter a diverse range of wildlife and scenery, unique to this icy world Visit the Falkland Islands with their extraordinary birdlife, and sail to the island of South Georgia, where Ernest Shackleton is buried at the Grytviken cemetery Encounter huge elephant seals, albatross, and rookeries teeming with king and macaroni penguins Then it’s time to greet the midnight sun as you cross the Antarctic Circle, with a lifetime of polar memories Discounted price: FROM £6800 PER PERSON WHAT’S INCLUDED Hotel before your cruise, domestic flights and transfers (some voyages) and accommodation and meals on the ship | excursions by Zodiac boat experienced guides | on-board lectures and talks CHOOSE YOUR IDEAL ITINERARY Speak with our Antarctica specialists to book your place Call +44 (0)203 308 9751 or visit newscientist.com/travel/Antarctica I D I O CONTENTS Volume 232 No 3096 This issue online newscientist.com/issue/3096 Leaders News Human eggs made in the lab from skin could be just five years away News PASCAL GOETGHELUCK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY The end of infertility? It’s distasteful, but we need a price on our heads Fertility progress is good for all of us UPFRONT Mars lander arrives Hospital infections boom across Europe Whale faeces to stop whaling THIS WEEK New lakes swamp sinking islands Strange stars as a SETI signal? Microbial parties in cheese What you’d look like with Botox Proxima Centauri acts like the sun Overweight mothers have older babies 15 IN BRIEF Worms farm plants Uranus’s new moons Electrodes let quadraplegic man feel touch On the cover 28 34 Carbon conundrum Universal mystery 36 Dam right How beavers can sort out California’s drought 10 Brie encounters Cheese and evolution Kids unlimited Stem cell success 24 Blood from a drone Rwanda’s flying transfusions How much is your life worth? Somebody, somewhere, is putting a price on your head Analysis 18 Animal culling Is it ethical to sanction mass killing of animals – and does it even work? 20 COMMENT A glimmer of sanity in the war on drugs Samsung’s meltdown may not be the last 21 INSIGHT Let women take control of their abortions Technology 22 Mountain sensors monitor California’s water Lasers stop drones crashing First UK trial of driverless cars UAVs deliver blood Aperture Features 26 Orangutan scales dizzying heights 36 Features 28 How much is your life worth? (see above left) 34 Carbon conundrum Solving the universe’s existential mystery 36 Dam right (see left) 40 PEOPLE Chuck Hull and the invention of 3D printing How beavers can sort out California’s drought MICHEL ROGGO/NATUREPL.COM Dam right Culture Coming next week… Our implausible universe The more we look at it, the less sense it makes Into uncanny valley Why some faces unsettle us? 42 Picking up the pieces The 9/11 forensic investigation is casting a long shadow 43 Live long What older men are really for 44 Art, but no artist Philippe Parreno ceded control of a huge installation to microbes Regulars 52 LETTERS Compare a mystery and a fake 56 FEEDBACK Pet radio 57 THE LAST WORD Fly away home? 22 October 2016 | NewScientist | Professor Dame Carol Robinson 2015 Laureate for United Kingdom By Brigitte Lacombe Science needs women L’ORÉAL UNESCO AWARDS Dame Carol Robinson, Professor of Chemistry at Oxford University, invented a ground-breaking method for studying how membrane proteins function, which play a critical role in the human body hroughout the world, exceptional women are at the heart of major scientiic advances For 17 years, L’Oréal has been running the L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women In Science programme, honouring exceptional women from around the world Over 2000 women from over 100 countries have received our support to continue to move science forward and inspire future generations JOIN US ON FACEBOOK.COM/FORWOMENINSCIENCE PLAINPICTURE/OJO/MARTIN BARRAUD LEADERS LOCATIONS USA 50 Hampshire St, Floor 5, Cambridge, MA 02139 Please direct telephone enquiries to our UK office +44 (0) 20 7611 1200 UK 110 High Holborn, London, WC1V 6EU Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1200 Fax +44 (0) 20 7611 1250 Australia Tower 2, 475 Victoria Avenue, Chatswood, NSW 2067 Tel +61 9422 8559 Fax +61 9422 8552 SUBSCRIPTION SERVICE For our latest subscription offers, visit newscientist.com/subscribe Customer and subscription services are also available by: Telephone 1-888-822-3242 Email subscribe@newscientist.com Web newscientist.com/subscribe Mail New Scientist, PO Box 3806, Chesterfield, MO 63006-9953 USA One year subscription (51 issues) $154 CONTACTS Contact us newscientist.com/contact Who’s who newscientist.com/people General & media enquiries enquiries@newscientist.com Editorial Tel 781 734 8770 news@newscientist.com features@newscientist.com opinion@newscientist.com Picture desk Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1268 Display advertising Tel 781 734 8770 displaysales@newscientist.com Recruitment advertising Tel 781 734 8770 nssales@newscientist.com Newsstand Tel 212 237 7987 Distributed by Time/Warner Retail Sales and Marketing, 260 Cherry Hill Road, Parsippany, NJ 07054 Syndication Tribune Content Agency Tel 800 637 4082 New Scientist Live Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1273 live@newscientist.com © 2016 Reed Business Information Ltd, England New Scientist ISSN 0262 4079 is published weekly except for the last week in December by Reed Business Information Ltd, England New Scientist (Online) ISSN 2059 5387 New Scientist at Reed Business Information 360 Park Avenue South, 12th floor, New York, NY 10010 Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY and other mailing offices Postmaster: Send address changes to New Scientist, PO Box 3806, Chesterfield, MO 63006-9953, USA Registered at the Post Office as a newspaper and printed in USA by Fry Communications Inc, Mechanicsburg, PA 17055 Put a price on your head Valuing human life in financial terms can be the fairest option A CYNIC, said Oscar Wilde, is somebody who “knows the price of everything but the value of nothing” If so, then some of the most cynical people on Earth are those who have to make life-anddeath decisions about road safety, medical treatment and health and safety legislation In order to make those calls, they first need some measure of the monetary worth of a human life That does seem a dreadfully cynical calculation, and it is unsettling to think that some faceless bureaucrat somewhere is putting a price on your head (see page 28) But in reality, it cannot be any other way If we were to embrace the idea that life has immeasurable value, then there would be no ceiling on how much we would be prepared to spend to reduce the chance of dying, even by an infinitesimal amount That may seem morally right, but it is economic madness Take the US healthcare system, where the cost of treatment is often not considered That has contributed to rampant inflation; the US now spends a fifth of its GDP on healthcare Contrast that with the UK, where healthcare is a public good that must be distributed fairly with cost considered This makes a difference: basic health outcomes, such as the number of preventable deaths, are far better in the UK The people who make those calls on behalf of the NHS often A time like the present THE Italian government recently got into trouble over a campaign aimed at reversing the country’s falling birth rate Adverts saying “Beauty has no age limit Fertility has” were slammed for being insensitive to young people struggling financially, and insulting to infertile couples Tin ear or not, the campaign highlighted some serious points Fertility is falling; the population is declining and ageing That may sound good to those who see overpopulation as the root of all ills, but a crash is not a desirable way to solve the problem And the volume of misery that infertility causes is underappreciated It often comes about because people are trying for children later in life, relying on medicine to help That is one reason to celebrate the latest advances in fertility find themselves facing bad publicity The UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is frequently criticised for, say, refusing to pay for an expensive new cancer drug In reality, NICE’s methods are fair and equitable The world should embrace its formulas, not criticise them In realms outside of healthcare, the value of a life is all over the map, often decided on a whim or according to highly subjective criteria We should set aside our squeamishness about putting a price on a life – and also any romantic notion that to even ask that question is morally repugnant – and start to so openly and fairly Cynicism is sometimes the fairest way ■ treatment Last month, we broke the story of the first three-parent baby born using a technique that saved him from a fatal disease The same method is helping infertile women conceive Now, scientists have worked out a way to create fertile mouse eggs from adult skin cells (see page 8) The feat will almost certainly be replicated in humans For those who want children, there might not be a perfect time to start a family, but advances like this will help people choose their time ■ 22 October 2016 | NewScientist | REINHARD DIRSCHER/WATERFRAME/GETTY UPFRONT Salvation by dung? MURKY whale waste may have a silver lining: it could be the unlikely catalyst for ending whaling The way whale faeces helps maintain fish stocks will take centre stage this week and next at the International Whaling Commission meeting in Portoroz, Slovenia For the first time in the IWC’s 70-year history, delegates will be invited to vote on a resolution phytoplankton These tiny organisms are eaten by krill, which become prey for fish Phytoplankton also suck carbon dioxide out of the air, helping to limit global warming Chile submitted the unprecedented resolution for member states to vote on “This is an exciting new horizon for the IWC,” says Claire Bass of animal advocacy group Humane Society International “It inspires acknowledging growing evidence that whales don’t decrease fish populations – the primary excuse for continued whaling by Japan, Norway and Iceland Whales actually have the opposite effect Research is revealing that their dung brings nutrients to surface waters, which generates more food for fish by stimulating the growth of us to see whales not as resources to be exploited, or as competitors for fish stocks, but as ecologically essential geoengineers.” “It means there will be an increased focus on whale conservation activities rather than concentrating on whaling all the time,” says Sharon Livermore of the International Fund for Animal Welfare –It’s good for the ecosystem– UK’s dirty air case THE UK government is being hauled back into court over its failure to tackle air pollution A group called ClientEarth is asking the High Court to order ministers to come up with a better plan for improving air quality The case concerns levels of nitrogen dioxide, an invisible gas that mainly comes from road traffic High levels shorten lives by raising the risk of heart attacks, strokes and respiratory disorders A 1999 European Union directive setting legal limits for “Court cases have helped raise public awareness of air pollution and put it on the political agenda” nitrogen dioxide levels came into force in 2010 Six years later, these limits are still being exceeded in many places across Europe, partly because a high proportion of cars run on diesel In the UK, 37 of the 43 zones the country is divided into breach the limits ClientEarth, a group of lawyers who use existing laws to | NewScientist | 22 October 2016 protect the environment, first took the UK government to court in 2011 The case was referred to the European Court of Justice, which ruled in 2014 that national courts can and should ensure that governments act to bring air pollution below legal limits It also ruled that governments must this “as soon as possible” The case then went back to the UK’s Supreme Court, which in April 2015 ordered the nation’s environment minister to take “immediate action” by preparing and consulting with the public on an air quality action plan as quickly as possible But little has happened since then, prompting the new case And ClientEarth is not just suing the UK government Based on the precedent set by the European Court ruling, it has launched or helped to launch similar actions in Belgium, Poland, Germany and the Czech Republic While these legal battles have yet to bring much concrete action, the court cases have helped raise public awareness of air pollution and put the issue on the political agenda Spies in the dock BRITISH spy agencies collected data illegally for more than a decade, a court has ruled The Investigatory Powers Tribunal, which looks into complaints against GCHQ, MI5 and MI6, said on 17 October that the agencies’ secretive collection and use of bulk data from people in the UK failed to comply with human rights laws until 2015 Bulk communications data has been collected since 1998, and includes information such as the time and location of a communication, but not the content of the message Bulk personal data, gathered since around 2006, includes biographical details “This information reveals a lot about you,” says Camilla Graham Wood from campaign group Privacy International, which put forward the complaints Although the data collection was ruled to be illegal before 2015, when it was made public, the tribunal found that the agencies’ data collection is now lawful China’s testing month in space CHINA has sent a pair of astronauts to live on its experimental new space station for a month Jing Haipeng, who is on his third mission, and Chen Dong were due to dock with the Tiangong-2 space station on Tuesday evening (GMT) During their 30 days on board, they will carry out 14 experiments These include a plant cultivation study, a quantum communications experiment and using a gamma-ray burst instrument called POLAR, which is a collaboration between Chinese, Swiss and Polish scientists The two astronauts will also test systems and processes in preparation for the launch of the station’s core module in 2018 Two laboratory modules are scheduled to be attached in 2020 and 2022, when the Tiangong station is due to become fully operational It is considered a stepping stone to a Chinese mission to Mars by the end of the decade For new stories every day, visit newscientist.com/news Ozone saviour ban THE chemicals that saved the ozone layer, but then turned out to be an escalating threat to the climate, are facing a phase-out Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) became widely used in air ESA/ATG MEDIALAB 60 SECONDS Fluffy ducky Rosetta’s comet is as weak as fluffy snow Images from the probe show comet 67P is cracking under seismic stresses That suggests its tensile strength is very low, and its distinctive duck shape will probably change in a few hundred years “They helped us out of a jam with ozone layer depletion But it’s good news that they are being banned” New depression drugs? LI JIN/VCG VIA GETTY IMAGES conditioning and refrigeration after 1987, when the Montreal protocol banned the use of the chlorofluorocarbons that were eating up Earth’s ozone layer But on 15 October, a meeting in Mars rendezvous Kigali, Rwanda, of the 170 nations that signed the Montreal protocol NEXT stop, Mars On 16 October at 1720 GMT, the twin spacecraft agreed to largely phase out use of of the ExoMars mission’s first HFCs by mid-century – because they are potent greenhouse gases phase split in two – and if all goes to plan, one of them will be on They escape into the atmosphere the Red Planet’s surface by the during use and when equipment time you read this is discarded The two spacecraft, the Molecule for molecule, HFCs are 4000 times more potent than Schiaparelli lander and the Trace Gas Orbiter, separated shortly carbon dioxide UN estimates after arriving on the outskirts of show that they were on course to Mars The lander will head for the raise global temperatures by an surface, where it should make a additional 0.5 °C by 2100, and emissions of them were rising by “The Schiaparelli lander per cent a year, faster than any will test a heat shield, other greenhouse gas “It’s good parachute and propulsion that they are being phased out,” says Keith Shine of the University system on its way down” of Reading, UK “But they helped smooth descent on 19 October, us out of a jam We should give a while the TGO will slam on the vote of thanks to the HFCs.” breaks to enter into orbit The ExoMars mission is a collaboration between the European Space Agency and Russia’s space agency Roscosmos The long-term plan also includes a rover, which is expected to land on the Martian surface in 2020 This phase is crucial to the overall mission, because the TGO will act as a communications relay for the rover, and Schiaparelli will test some of its proposed landing gear Schiaparelli is supposed to take minutes to descend to Mars’s –See you in 30 days– Meridiani Planum To inform –Well on their way– future missions, it will test a heat shield, parachute and propulsion system on its way down Once landed, Schiaparelli will start monitoring wind speed, humidity, pressure and temperature, to help us understand Mars’s weather “We are nervous, but excited as well,” says Francesca Ferri, a member of the Schiaparelli team Hospital infections NOT what the doctor ordered The first study of infections acquired in hospitals in Europe has estimated that 2.5 million people caught one between 2011 and 2012 – that’s one in every 20 patients “The most common were urinary tract infections, surgical site infections and pneumonia, each accounting for 20 per cent of cases,” says Alessandro Cassini of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control in Solna, Sweden As well as causing an estimated 90,000 deaths, the infections also led to long-term conditions, including cognitive and physical impairment (PLoS Medicine, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1002150) The total health impact of these infections is thought to be double the combined burden of 32 contagious conditions caught outside hospitals, including flu and tuberculosis A class of anti-inflammatory drugs can relieve symptoms of depression, finds a review of studies of people receiving treatment for chronic inflammatory conditions (Molecular Psychiatry, doi.org/brxx) The drugs, called anti-cytokines, are used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, and may benefit people who don’t respond to standard antidepressants Fewer birth defects Older women who become pregnant with help from IVF or a fertility treatment called ICSI are less likely to have children with birth defects than those who conceive on their own, according to an analysis of 300,000 births (BJOG, doi.org/brxz) The team behind the study thinks this may be due to a beneficial effect of fertility drugs Cold truth about toms Putting tomatoes in the fridge ruins their flavour – and now we know why Chilling stresses the tropical plant, irreversibly reducing activity of hundreds of genes, some of which are involved in giving tomatoes their aroma (PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/ pnas.1613910113) Resupply success On Monday evening, US space firm Orbital ATK successfully launched an Antares rocket to the International Space station The Cygnus spacecraft will berth with the ISS on 23 October and is carrying supplies and experiments It is also bringing a lighting system designed to help keep astronauts’ body clocks in sync The firm’s last Antares launch in 2014 exploded shortly after take-off 22 October 2016 | NewScientist | THIS WEEK Lab-made eggs may cure infertility Jessica Hamzelou PASCAL GOETGHELUCK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY FERTILE, mature eggs have been created from mouse skin cells in the lab for the first time The feat suggests that the same could soon be achieved in humans, opening up the possibility of new fertility treatments, and the potential for two men to genetically father a baby together Katsuhiko Hayashi at Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan, and his team have been trying to mimic egg development in the lab The group had some success in 2012, turning mouse skin cells into primary germ cells – a kind of immature egg cell in its early stages of development But to finish developing, these cells had to be re-implanted into a mouse’s ovary Now, the team has fully matured egg cells in a dish Hayashi’s group started with mice of about 10 weeks old – some 30 years old in terms of human ageing The team took cells from their tails and used an established technique to turn them into | NewScientist | 22 October 2016 induced pluripotent stem cells, which can divide and form various types of cell By placing these cells in a brew of specially selected compounds, the team encouraged them to become immature egg cells But to fully mature, the cells needed help, says Hayashi – tissue taken from the ovaries of mouse fetuses Placing a clump of fetal ovarian cells among the immature egg cells in the dish let them grow into mature eggs In this way, the group generated more than 4000 mature eggs To see if they were fertile, the team then fertilised some eggs with mouse sperm and implanted them in the uteruses of female mice From the 1350 embryos they implanted, eight pups were born (Nature, doi.org/brxt) “It is a tremendous advance,” says Azim Surani at the University of Cambridge “The idea that you can start with a skin cell and make viable eggs in culture is quite amazing.” It is likely to be only a matter of time until the same feat is achieved with human cells “From a technical point of view it could work,” says Hayashi “If we could make human eggs, it could be a very powerful tool for curing infertility.” “If we can apply this to humans, we could almost eradicate infertility,” says Zev Rosenwaks at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York “I’m extremely excited about this.” Jacob Hanna at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, thinks this could be possible within five years The approach could also theoretically be used to create egg cells from men’s skin cells, raising the prospect of babies with two genetic fathers “I get one email a day from same-sex couples asking me about this,” says Hanna “Regulatory bodies would need to discuss this, but I fully support the idea.” Creating eggs from men’s cells is more of a challenge Hayashi’s team has been trying to produce eggs from cells taken from the tails of male mice, but they tend to die at about the time of the crucial cell divisions that share out chromosomes in the right “I get an email a day from numbers among developing same-sex couples asking sex cells This might be because me about babies with two having a Y chromosome – genetic fathers” the male-determining sex chromosome – disrupts this “You would have the unlimited process But there may be ways ability to make eggs,” says Hanna, to overcome this problem, such who is part of a team that has as removing the Y chromosome, already made immature egg says Hanna cells from human skin cells There are other hurdles to If it works in people, the overcome before anyone can start technique could create eggs for generating human egg cells in a women who have become less dish One issue is that Hayashi’s fertile with age or those who have team used fetal tissue in the low numbers of eggs, enabling experiment to give the egg cells them to have IVF Women whose the final push to maturity It is ovaries have been damaged, for possible that to the same example by cancer treatment, with human cells, tissue from could also benefit aborted fetuses could be used, but researchers are likely to need to develop an alternative method It is also not clear how healthy the resulting eggs are Only a tiny fraction of the embryos generated by Hayashi’s team made it through to live births Of the eight pups born from skin-derived stem cells, two were eaten by their mother There are many reasons why this might have happened, but it is possible it may have been because they were abnormal “There are risks that we are willing to take with animals that we aren’t willing to take with humans,” says Craig Klugman, a bioethicist at DePaul University in Chicago “I’m a man married to a man, but I’m not going to sign up to this until it’s a proven –An endless supply of eggs?– technique.” ■ CULTURE Art, but no artist Simon Ings explores the random world of semi-sentient art IN STANISLAW LEM’S bitterly utopian novel Return from the Stars, astronaut Hal Bregg comes back to Earth from a 10-year mission to find that 127 years have passed during his absence The world that greets him is very different from the one he remembers For one thing, its architecture absolutely refuses to stay put Platforms slide past and around each other, walls and columns spring up out of nowhere, or fall precipitately away: the solid environment has liquefied He worries – and is right to worry – that he will never find his feet in this new place The Paris-based artist Philippe Parreno is kinder than Lem Visitors to his vast installation at London’s Tate Modern, Anywhen, get a carpet to lie on while the vast Turbine Hall shimmies and pulses around them Let there be no doubt here: Parreno’s awful grey machine is triumphally futuristic, an interior so smart it has outgrown any need for occupants Anywhen is thunderous, sulphurous, awful in its full archaic sense Visitors find themselves in a sort of aquarium, in which sound and light obey a claustrophobic new physics Speakers descend from and ascend to the ceiling, relaying captured outside noise from nearby teenagers, a fragment of song, a passing aeroplane Banks of lights flash In a sudden hiatus, bits of colour drop down from somewhere on to An exhibition shaping itself as fish float around and screens descend 44 | NewScientist | 22 October 2016 a giant mobile screen and float off and movement are variables in Some are murky projections, but a biocomputed algorithm that there are solid objects, too, in the will enrich the installation’s shape inflatable fish These seem behaviour during its six-month a lot more at home in this shifting run It still remains to be seen space than we Huge, white, whether those initial conditions architectonic panels reconfigure are rich and complex enough the dimensions of the gallery, to generate a significant moving up and down with more creative work than random malevolence Is Right now, as you lie there, this malevolence an illusion? hands scrabbling for purchase Of course, but it’s an utterly “The Turbine Hall has been convincing one – so much so invested with a terrible, that one wonders what the alien intentionality artist means by it Is this another illusion?” Alas, Parreno is not here to answer He has, it seems, ceded control of his installation on the thin carpet, it seems to a colony of bacteria, fed and as if the Turbine Hall has watered in a small lab visible in an been invested with a terrible, out-of-the-way corner Changes in alien intentionality Is this the colony’s temperature, growth another illusion? It must be KIRSTY WIGGLESWORTH AP/PRESS ASSOCIATION IMAGES Anywhen by Philippe Parreno, Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London, until April 2017 And yet, how can we be sure? The 17th-century German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz once came up with a thrilling but flawed argument for the existence of God In one of his best-known works, Monadology, Leibniz invites readers to imagine that they are visiting “a machine whose structure makes it think, sense, and have perceptions” There would be plenty to see: innumerable cogs, wheels, belts and gears But that, says Leibniz, is precisely the problem – “we will find only parts that push one another, and we will never find anything to explain a perception” The same issue arises when we explore the brain: no amount of mapping, no amount of analogy, brings us any closer to the subjective “is-ness” of conscious experience Leibniz used his thinking mill to assert that the world is more than material, and that thinking must occur on another (divine) plane of existence He was a glass-half-full sort of thinker, whose rambunctious belief in the essential goodness of the universe – all is for the best in the “best of all possible worlds” – drove an exasperated Voltaire to pen his savage satire Candide Anywhen is Leibniz’s mill made flesh in glass, wire and panelling Lying on the grey Turbine Hall carpet, I couldn’t help but wonder with Voltaire how on earth Leibniz took comfort from his own story Something is using the Turbine Hall to think with, but we can bet the farm it is not God Imagine wandering into the toils of some vast, cool and unsympathetic intellect Imagine the Martian has landed… ■ Where did we come from? How did it all begin? And where does belly-button fluff come from? Find the answers in our latest book On sale now Introduction by Professor Stephen Hawking letters@newscientist.com LETTERS EDITOR’S PICK Compare mystery and a known fake From Ian Simmons You report on Gordon Rugg’s work, which concluded that the Voynich manuscript is gibberish, while still following the structure of a true language (1 October, p 12) I recently compared the Voynich text and the similarly baffling Rohonc Codex from Hungary with the Codex Seraphinianus, published in 1981 by the artist Luigi Serafini This couples cryptic text with illustrations at least as strange as anything in the Voynich manuscript Like the Voynich and Rohonc texts, much effort has been put into deciphering the Codex, again with little success apart from confirming that it conforms to the structure of a true language The advantage with this volume is that the creator is alive Although he has refused to enlighten anyone on the detailed meaning, he has dropped a hint about the volume’s language At a lecture in Oxford in 2009, he explained that he wanted the book to create the impression a small child, unable to read, has on encountering a book for the first time To that end it is written in an asemic script – one that has the form and structure of a real text, but no meaningful content – making it akin to a written form of glossolalia or “speaking in tongues” I suspect both the Voynich manuscript and the Rohonc Codex are also asemic, and that any attempts at decoding them will also end in failure Monkseaton, Tyne and Wear, UK 52 | NewScientist | 22 October 2016 Signal failure and crossword success From Phil Pope Simon Makin reports that people can assess the competence of teachers or politicians within seconds, merely on the basis of their appearance, body language and social signals (1 October, p 30) The evidence is that these first impressions correlate to students’ evaluations of teachers at the end of courses and to politicians’ success in elections More pessimistically, I suggest that large numbers of people are unable to assess the competence of teachers or politicians, no matter how much time they have They continue to base their judgement on their superficial first impression Thus incompetents are praised and elected to office This appears to correlate with observations Bristol, UK From Brian Horton It is apparently possible to accurately rate another person’s character after seeing their picture for 0.1 seconds But we don’t know what particular features make people appear trustworthy or competent We can instantly tell heroes from villains in a film, unless the director deliberately conceals this for plot purposes So can movie directors shed light on what characteristics are critical? If they won’t tell us, let an artificial intelligence watch thousands of films and work it out West Launceston, Tasmania, Australia From Peter Robbins It’s rather humbling to realise that most of our mental functions are carried out unconsciously I suspect that there isn’t only a distinction between our conscious and unconscious mind, but also between various levels of our unconscious A name coming to mind some time after I’ve been struggling to remember it is a common experience More interestingly, the answer to a crossword puzzle clue often pops up long after I have ceased thinking about it The unconscious me that drives my car is impressive, but quite different to my inbuilt crossword clue solver London, UK From Roger James You say that in forming habits “practice makes perfect” I have been telling trainee trainers for more than 30 years that in fact guidance, correction and coaching make perfect (or at least correct) Practice (repetition) makes permanent If what one practises is wrong, wrong will be made permanent Crigglestone, West Yorkshire, UK @newscientist newscientist others modelling how networks of genes evolve to the “edge of chaos” The emergence of similar forms by seemingly separate evolutionary pathways may be the result of “strange attractors” in the evolutionary space Perhaps Richard Dawkins’s greatest contribution wasn’t the popularisation of the “selfish gene” meme, but the concept of the “meme” itself as a unit of cultural inheritance Still, the meme has been slippery to define Blockley, Gloucestershire, UK From Michael Guppy The bird’s nest depicted with this article is even more interesting from an evolutionary point of view than you may have realised The reed warbler pictured is feeding a cuckoo Moruya, New South Wales, Australia Evolutionary forces Chill out before may evolve too replacing a fridge From Lois Pryce Kevin Laland discusses how concepts of evolution could evolve (24 September, p 41) Is it not likely that evolutionary forces are themselves subject to evolutionary forces? After all, anything that gives living organisms the edge in survival will be prioritised That would include any improvements on the purely “blind chance” method of generating adaptive variations Bristol, UK From Matt Black The description of evolution evolving was a much needed summary for many who have long viewed the “selfish gene” theory as too narrow But a word missing from the article was “feedback” The realisation that information flows from organism to environment and the other way, so that each modifies the other, implies a feedback loop I am now inspired to look at the work of Stuart Kauffman and From David Empson Having recently replaced a thermostat in my old freezer, I was interested in Michael Le Page’s suggestion that this wasn’t a green thing to do, as old appliances use more power and become inefficient with age (1 October, p 23) But he referenced figures from the US market, which may not be relevant to the more energy-conscious Europe I have measured the energy usage rate of my 10-year-old standard German fridge at 85 kilowatt-hours per year, and of my 19-year-old Swedish freezer at 321 kWh per year They appear to be 27 per cent and per cent better than their as-new specifications, not worse Of course this may be due to my house being cooler than that assumes But neither figure is anywhere near the 1000 kWh per year given in the study referenced Perhaps people should use a cheap energy meter before deciding on whether to renew an “Our surprise at their ‘theory of mind’ shows how limited ours is” Emma Olver greets proof of chimps, bonobos and orangutans grasping how others view the world (15 October, p 7) appliance, rather than just looking at its age Bristol, UK Odds on climate change accepted From Jules May Andrew Collins asks whether climate-change sceptics would accept his $1000 bet that the global mean temperature will exceed the 2015 record within 10 years (Letters, 17 September) He is conflating two different ideas One can easily accept that the world is heating up – thus, on the face of it, making the offer a bad one – while still asserting that the change is due to sunspots, volcanoes or any other nonhuman mechanism Surely those he needs to convince are deniers of anthropogenic climate change? There is also a flaw to his logic Had he made the offer last year, with regard to 2014’s record high, he would have stood a very good chance of making his point But the 2015 high of 0.87 °C over TOM GAULD baseline is clearly an outlier Looking at it statistically, I would say that the global temperature is, in financial language, significantly overbought, with falling momentum Based on current trends, I predict (with better than 50 per cent confidence) that the next time the 2015 record will be beaten will be around 2033 – almost 20 years away – and even then by another outlier It won’t be until around 2060 that such temperatures become normal I’ll take his bet, if he’s still minded to stand by it Montrose, Angus, UK Andrew Collins writes: ■ Of course I will! I don’t fear regression to the mean I fear departures from the historical mean Let’s hope I lose Carbon black for soil improvement From Nik Kelly Jon Cartwright describes a reaction that produces hydrogen from methane – and mountains of carbon black (8 October, p 28) Could we pelletise that to the consistency of “biochar” for soil improvement? The build-up of low-lying coastal fields could be an extra benefit Liverpool, UK These memories will not fado away From Luciana Cardoso I very much enjoyed your article about nostalgia (24 September, p 36) It touched on my research into the Portuguese emotion saudade – which could be roughly described as a mix of longing, melancholy and nostalgia It arose during the maritime conquests of the 16th century When the sailors travelled to strange lands, the feeling was present in the memory of those who sailed away and also of those who stayed behind waiting for their return It eventually came to be seen as a characteristic of the Portuguese people Musical genres such as fado, morna and choro have saudade as one of their main themes Windsor, Berkshire, UK Bacterial obscurity is still not secure From Andrew Mulholland You report on increasing the security of spores carrying data by hiding them among other spores to make it almost impossible for a snooper to identify them (24 September, p 25) This is colloquially known as “security through obscurity” It deters only casual crackers An adversary specifically targeting a user will make sure that they know which spores to look for St Peter Port, Guernsey Species change to save the planet From Perry Bebbington When proposing synthetic biology to fix our planet, Ricard Solé gives an analogy of removing large, predatory fish from a lake to reverse algal blooms (1 October, p 36) I immediately thought “yes, that would work: remove the large, predatory simians currently trashing the planet and the climate change problem will end” Kimberley, Nottinghamshire, UK For the record ■ Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Roman lawyer, senator and philosopher (8 October, p 32) Letters should be sent to: Letters to the Editor, New Scientist, 110 High Holborn, London WC1V 6EU Email: letters@newscientist.com 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 22 October 2016 | NewScientist | 53 A LIBRARY OF KNOWLEDGE POCKET SIZED FREE! 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P IN-AP Visit newscientist.com/app or call 1-888-822-3242 and quote offer 9056 Live Smarter For more feedback, visit newscientist.com/feedback FEEDBACK flame on contact with water,” says Barry, “so this mineral will certainly sizzle in the mouth.” PAUL MCDEVITT COMPUTER scientist Robert Garner is left straining over the maths he finds printed on his jumbo bag of kitty litter The “World’s Best Cat Litter” claims to provide enough for two cats for 60 days, and four cats for 30 days “Fair enough,” says Robert “The formula appears to be 120 days divided by the number of cats.” But those with three cats are told they can expect each sack to last 45 days “Where the extra five days come from?” he muses THE cosmos calls on us once again to usher the golden tufts of TV presenter, positivity ambassador and electrosmog campaigner Noel Edmonds onto our page Having previously extolled the virtues of a supposedly cancer-busting electronic yoga mat (25 June), the Deal or No Deal host has a new service for those who have everything: a radio station for animals Positively Pets will soon join Edmonds’s “genre-casting” smorgasbord of niche internet radio stations built around themes such as slimming, babies and snow – all presumably aimed at people who haven’t heard of Spotify playlists As well as curating an animalfriendly channel to keep your pets entertained while you’re away from home, the House Party star will phone your pet and read out a message of support Edmonds previously claimed to be part of a consortium that planned to purchase the BBC: is this a window into the new audiences he would pursue on becoming director-general? BARRY CASH writes to note a deficiency of fruitloopery in our column of late, and offers to remedy that with an enclosed pamphlet for “Sizzling Minerals” by Simply Naturals The flyer is packed with information; unfortunately for readers, much of it is simply nuts For instance, we are told that dinosaurs “were able to grow to enormous sizes because the minerals and nutrients were available in the soil” Make soils great again! Testimonials are included from happy customers, who find themselves relieved of the effects of age, diabetes, rheumatism, deformity, lack of fitness, psoriasis, combat fatigue, multiple sclerosis and asthma Most crucially, Anthony Twohill reports that after being fed Sizzling Minerals, his two racehorses are now storming to victory, adding that “blood proves negative for any banned substances” Good to know for any customers planning to enter the Grand National The flyer also warns against the dangers of sodium chloride and its link with high blood pressure Instead it recommends “good” sodium “Now, as I remember, pure sodium bursts into Martin Necas sends a message from a hospital clinic attendance database: “Sorry, cannot check whether this patient is frozen.” And if they were? 56 | NewScientist | 22 October 2016 WE JUST can’t help ourselves Peter Rodriguez spots a headline in the New Zealand Herald: “Former navy boss takes helm at RSA.” His name: Jack Steer OH, THE perils of Pokémon Go: the journal Oxford Medical Case Reports details two accidents caused by players chasing after digital creatures in the hit augmented-reality game In one, a female driver hit a utility pole after swerving to avoid a pedestrian who wandered into the road while immersed in the game Perhaps more frighteningly, the second involved a 19-year-old man who attempted to swipe his phone to capture a Pokémon – while driving a pickup truck at 65 kilometres per hour He lost control of the vehicle, hospitalising himself and ejecting three friends from the bed as it rolled over Players are advised to pocket their phones when on or near roads It’s super-effective! RECENTLY Feedback discussed the ongoing battle over the shale gas industry in the UK, with those on all sides throwing accusations they could not substantiate (8 October) In the US, they things differently Oklahoma governor Mary Fallin designated 13 October as Oilfield Prayer Day, during which citizens can eat breakfast together and beseech higher powers to rescue the state from an economic crisis precipitated by crashing oil prices US president Harry Truman famously kept a sign on his desk reminding him “The buck stops here.” Senator Fallin appears to have delegated to a yet higher power OUR colleagues in the preceding pages labour to present climate models in a form easily digestible by readers Jonathon Keats has gone one better, creating a suite of sweets to embody climate change “Using a breakthrough scientific technique known as data gastronification,” says Keats, “information is sensed by your alimentary canal and processed by your enteric nervous system Rather than merely glancing at the complex relationship between fossil fuels, the atmosphere and the planet, you feel it in your gut.” Keats, an “experimental philosopher”, has rendered the warming seas and melting permafrost in ice cream, “the perfect food for gastronifying climate scenarios”, and a product for which demand can only grow as we swelter in unseasonal heat What does climate change taste like though? Rich and indulgent, but with a bitter aftertaste, perhaps Visitors to the STATE Festival for science, art and society in Berlin, Germany, next month will be able to find out Given that we’re so often told big data will eat the planet, here’s your chance to bite back You can send stories to Feedback by email at feedback@newscientist.com Please include your home address This week’s and past Feedbacks can be seen on our website Last words past and present at newscientist.com/lastword THE LAST WORD ■ Far from being afraid of us, there are plenty of creatures – mainly insects – that take the opportunity to drink our blood Mosquitoes, fleas, ticks and leeches all this, and we are often unaware it is happening Some unfortunate people even play host to the parasitic larvae of the human botfly through wounds Sometimes butterflies land on us to drink our sweat for the sodium it contains A creature normally avoids getting closer to a potential predator than the shortest head start it needs to escape: its flight distance This means that quicker creatures can often get closer to us When a housefly lands on someone, it may start preening itself, giving the impression of being relaxed Yet when we try to swat it, the quick-witted fly sees our hand approaching and easily evades us The same logic applies with larger animals For example, the flight distance for seals differs depending on whether they are underwater or lounging on a beach In the ocean, they happily tug at the fins of scuba divers, knowing that they can outswim humans with consummate ease around, possibly looking for On land, they head for the surf at food When they find none, the first hint of danger they crawl up to the highest There are many examples point and fly away of animals on the Galapagos Mantids are even more Islands and elsewhere that allow people to get close because we are unwilling than ladybirds to take flight They rely on their peculiar unfamiliar and not perceived as a threat Sadly, it was this type of behaviour that led to the demise “Ladybirds rely on warning colours, together with of the dodo on Mauritius their nasty taste and Mike Follows smell, to deter predators” Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, UK way of moving, or indeed not moving, to avoid predation One ■ Sometimes it is a mistake on your hand will clearly show to anthropomorphise insects itself to be uncomfortable, and It is unlikely that they have any will slowly try to extricate itself concept of fear Each behaves The truth is that different according to how it has evolved insects respond differently and in keeping with its particular Terence Hollingworth attributes To them, a hand Blagnac, France holds no interest, unless they are attracted to its salty secretions or to any aromatic residues from whatever it has been in Sticky ice contact with I don’t make a habit of handling I was watching the bobsleigh event at the Winter Olympics and it was foggy bees, yet I would suggest they The commentator said that the extra have had no past experience that humidity caused by the fog would has caused them to avoid hands “stick to the track” and slow the I once caught one by accident as competitors down How? I would I walked past a lavender bush assume extra moisture in the air swinging my arms It didn’t would make the track more slippery sting me, presumably because and thus faster it didn’t perceive a threat Ladybirds cannot readily take ■ The essence of success in a off, and they rely on warning bobsleigh competition is speed colours, together with their Ice is laid down on the concrete nasty taste and smell, to defend course in millimetre layers over themselves from predators They are therefore not in any particular several days to a thickness of hurry to fly away Flying also takes around centimetres The concrete is networked with far more energy than walking I have had starving ladybirds nibble plumbing, through which at my hand, but usually they stroll ammonia refrigerant flows, The writers of answers that are published in the magazine will receive a cheque for £25 (or US$ equivalent) Answers should be concise We reserve the right to edit items for clarity and style Please include a daytime telephone number and an email address if you have one New Scientist retains total editorial control over the published content Reed Business Information Ltd reserves all rights to reuse all question and answer material that has been submitted by readers in any medium or in any format and at any time in the future Send questions and answers to The Last Word, New Scientist, 110 High Holborn, London WC1V 6EU, UK, by email to lastword@newscientist.com or visit www.newscientist.com/topic/lastword (please include a postal address in order to receive payment for answers) Unanswered questions can also be found at this URL Fly away home? Why are some small creatures unafraid of humans? If a bee, ladybird or praying mantis settles on my hand, they seem reluctant to leave But I have yet to experience lingering contact with a butterfly, small reptile or bird keeping the ice at about -6 °C The ice meister, who oversees the track, uses sensors in and around it to keep informed about the conditions, so all aspects of the course are controlled and optimised for speed Nature is harder to manage, and humidity can pose a problem If the temperature drops towards the dew point, moisture condenses from the air and a crystalline frost forms on the ice This hoar frost acts as a brake under the sleighs’ runners Before racing, the track is shaved and sprayed to ensure no frost or bumps remain to slow down the sleighs You can experience the unlikely friction caused by frost if you walk on an icy path in the evening, then again the next morning when there is a fresh covering of hoar frost You will find that your grip is greatly improved David Muir Edinburgh, UK This week’s question DRIVERLESS DYNAMICS In the UK’s Lake District, tourists tend to drive slowly, leading to congestion on relatively long stretches of road Would driverless cars make the flow dynamics better or worse? If any of the remaining drivers were scared of going close to the speed limit, would this negate the use of the driverless element? Freyja Burrill Kendal, Cumbria, UK Question Everything The latest book of science questions: unpredictable and entertaining Expect the unexpected Available from booksellers and at newscientist.com/questioneverything A watch with a truly global perspective, the C8 UTC Worldtimer is able to tell the time in three timezones at once Designed in England, and built at our atelier in Switzerland, its self-winding ETA 2893-2 movement also boasts a power reserve of 42 hours Steel 44mm Swiss movement English heart Discover the new breed of watchmaker christopherward.com [...]... into space after 1 million years (The Astrophysical Journal, doi.org/brv3) 22 October 2016 | NewScientist | 15 For new stories every day, visit newscientist.com/news IN BRIEF ALEX HYDE / NATUREPL THIS might not be a comforting thought When you arrive home, the spiders can hear you Gil Menda at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and his colleagues studied a type of jumping spider, Phidippus audax... stability CONFIRMED SPEAKERS: Daniel Becerra (Buffalo Grid), Thorsten Klaus (AlphaEOS), Sally Adee (New Scientist) plus more speakers to be announced EARLYBIRD TICKETS START FROM £195 (+VAT) newscientist.com/energysummit 8.30 am – 6 pm ETC Venues St Paul’s London APERTURE 26 | NewScientist | 22 October 2016 Ape takes root YOU need a head for heights to survive in the jungle The orangutan scaling this... between 1950 and 2010, and their numbers are predicted to fall by a further 22 per cent by 2025 Wildlife Photographer of the Year is developed and produced by the Natural History Museum, London, where the exhibition opened on 21 October Niall Firth Photographer Tim Laman Wildlife Photographer of the Year 22 October 2016 | NewScientist | 27 COVER STORY WHAT ARE YOU WORTH? Each life is priceless Except... of the unpredictable watersheds The data will help California to manage its water and the hydroelectric dams that depend on it “We’ve operated our water systems by the seat of our pants 22 | NewScientist | 22 October 2016 for the past century,” says Roger Bales, a civil engineer at the University of California, Merced, who jointly leads the project “We’ve operated with very little information, because... procedure is, they call and make a demand, then the other side makes an offer – a lot less – and all of a sudden, that victim is worth a certain amount of money.” 22 October 2016 | NewScientist | 31 grief and lost companionship, it’s all over the place English courts limit bereavement awards to £12,980 total, far below NICE’s lower threshold for the value of one good year of life This is derived from an early... most-loved animals The latest is a proposed cull of 250,000 Siberian reindeer – which could spread anthrax – just before Christmas Such mass slaughter invariably sparks fierce debate between 18 | NewScientist | 22 October 2016 South Africa announced last month that it would kill some 350 hippos and buffaloes to prevent herds from suffering food shortages while the country endures a severe drought Culling can... of Being popular doesn’t stop reindeer, hippos, kangaroos and badgers from being culled For daily news stories, visit newscientist.com/news Tasmania, Australia “In many cases, removing some animals actually increases the survival and reproduction of the ones that remain, and provides opportunities for new animals to move in,” he says Isn’t it ironic? square-kilometre range This large-scale approach... allow them to coexist with invasive ecological cuckoo-land.” shooting them from helicopters, this help us manage wildlife, it targeting their entire 1.3-millionwill also help us sleep at night ■ 22 October 2016 | NewScientist | 19 COMMENT A ban too far The US wanted to criminalise kratom, a leaf long used in traditional medicine That would have been madness, says Marc T Swogger WHEN the US Drug Enforcement... its sleek curves, capacity and power But then the lithium battery fires began and the brand took a knock No, not Samsung’s Galaxy Note7 smartphone, whose blazing power cells saw the 20 | NewScientist | 22 October 2016 In January 2014, a 787 battery overheated at Tokyo’s Narita airport Boeing’s answer was a better enclosure to contain any fire and an exhaust to jettison hot gas and smoke outside the... difficult as possible to punish women for ending up in this situation Rebecca Gomperts from Women on Web says, “It’s nothing to do with medical science, it’s about controlling women’s lives.” ■ 22 October 2016 | NewScientist | 21 TECHNOLOGY Sierra sensing JENNY E ROSS/CORBIS DOCUMENTARY Climate change has made California’s water supplies unpredictable Covering the mountains with sensors could help, finds