FERTILE OR FUTILE? Myths and truths about getting pregnant WOBBLING STAR Planet Nine pushed our sun off its axis EBOLA EYEWITNESS The man who discovered the world’s deadliest virus WEEKLY July 23 -29, 2016 POKÉMON GO AWAY! Is anywhere out of bounds for augmented reality? WE WANT OUR INTERNET BACK! The grassroots fight to regain control and what it means for you No3083 US$5.95 CAN$5.95 Science and technology news www.newscientist.com US jobs in science 70989 30690 NO GREAT SHAKES How to stop an earthquake in its tracks KNOW THE FACTS IMAGE SOURCE/GETTY Subscribe to New Scientist Visit newscientist.com/9018 or call 1-888-822-3242 and quote offer 9018 Live Smarter C9 Moonphase CONTENTS Volume 231 No 3083 This issue online newscientist.com/issue/3083 Leader News News Reversing the menopause UPFRONT Bald eagles starving in Florida SpaceX sends DNA analyser to ISS GM mozzies beating dengue New World Heritage sites THIS WEEK Planet Nine tilted the sun Your grandad made you fat Tracking Stone-Age Britons on the beach How to find fake nukes 14 IN BRIEF Kiss of death activates ant killer squad Ducklings dabble in abstract thought Pulsar swoosh Self-folding graphene PETER DAZELEY/GETTY Breakthrough claims to make older women fertile again Maybe baby doctors and fertility clinics often contradict each other Who to trust? On the cover Analysis 26 30 Fertile or futile? Busting pregnancy myths 10 Wobbling star Planet Nine pushed our sun off its axis 38 Ebola eyewitness The man who discovered the world’s deadliest virus 22 Pokémon Go away Bounds of virtual reality 34 No great shakes Stop a quake in its tracks We want our internet back! The grassroots fight to regain control Cover image Ahoy There Studio 16 Psychiatry’s last taboo Should those with unbearable mental illness be allowed to die? 18 COMMENT Human evolution at an end? Far from it Decimating biodiversity should worry us all 19 INSIGHT Tackle police prejudice with small steps Technology 20 Video games to help troops handle battle Meeting Hubo, the world’s most advanced robot Pokémon Go and the limits of VR Aperture 24 Storks at all-you-can-eat buffet Features Features 34 26 We want our internet back! (see above left) 30 Fertile or futile? Myths and truths about getting pregnant 34 No great shakes (see left) 38 PEOPLE Peter Piot, the man who discovered Ebola How to stop an earthquake in its tracks TED SOQUI/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES No great shakes Culture 42 Wild at heart When tech gets too complex to understand, time to copy field biologists 43 All lit up Finland’s starry art knows its limits 44 Red roads Science and the counterculture Coming next week… You are junk It’s not our genes that make us human Regulars 52 LETTERS Neo-Luddites versus AI 56 FEEDBACK Get a job, why don’t you 57 THE LAST WORD Learn to like your voice Conquering the deep The new golden age of ocean exploration 23 July 2016 | NewScientist | PETER CADE/GETTY LEADER 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 One born every minute Who should we believe when it comes to fertility? HOW old is too old to have a baby? more alternatives Egg freezing, For many women in their 30s for instance, allows women to and 40s, that question nags away squirrel away eggs from their at them as they try to strike a years of peak fertility and hence balance between their career, defer IVF without worrying about their finances and their desire declining egg quality to start a family Meanwhile, science keeps on If you ask the medical pushing the boundaries of the profession for an answer, the possible As we report this week, message is clear: don’t delay Get researchers at a fertility clinic in pregnant in your 20s if possible, Greece claim to have rejuvenated when female fertility is thought the ovaries of post-menopausal to peak Any later and you face women, enabling them to the prospect of infertility, or produce viable eggs once more health problems associated with If the technique works – which is older pregnancy (see page 30) However, the real world seems “Women starting families in their 50s may come to to be ignoring that advice In be seen as unremarkable, England and Wales, the mean but not routine” age for a woman to give birth has been rising since the mid 1970s a big if at the moment – it would and is now over 30 Women in potentially enable women of any their 40s have more babies than age to have children (see page 8) those under 20, and the highest That is way in the future, but it number of births per capita is is clear that the direction of travel among women aged 30 to 34 is towards older motherhood These demographic shifts Even if regeneration fails, egg are driven largely by social and embryo freezing could open and economic trends: the the door to post-menopausal increasing numbers of women pregnancy Women could freeze in professional occupations, for eggs in their 20s and use them example, and the spiralling cost in their 50s, for example of buying a home But IVF has This isn’t an issue yet But also played a big part, giving never say never A small number couples the option of delaying of children are already born to in the knowledge that there is mothers over 50 every year, by a plan B – albeit a risky one IVF using donated eggs If there Couples will soon have even was a way for older women to use their own eggs to have genetically related children, demand could increase Assuming life expectancy continues to rise, the general health of the population carries on improving and the twin pressures of career and home ownership keep moving in the same direction, women starting families in their 50s might come to be seen as fairly unremarkable But it won’t become routine Most IVF cycles don’t result in the birth of a child, whether using fresh or frozen eggs For the foreseeable future, then, couples will continue to face tough choices They aren’t helped by inconsistent messages emanating from doctors on the one hand and fertility clinics on the other – who are often the same people wearing different hats Faced with this mismatch, it helps to remember that much of the fertility industry is a profitmaking business that has been criticised by academics for making excessive promises and offering techniques that have never been properly validated Of course, choosing when to have a child can be the most difficult decision of a lifetime and plan B can be the right one But caveat emptor ■ 23 july 2016 | NewScientist | SPACE X UPFRONT SpaceX delivers again THE latest bag of goodies has been launched to the International Space Station (ISS) A SpaceX Falcon rocket blasted off just after midnight local time on 18 July from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida The rocket’s first stage returned safely to ground just minutes later, marking SpaceX’s fifth successful landing Afterwards, SpaceX boss Elon Musk tweeted that this stage was ready to fly again The uncrewed Dragon capsule made its way to the ISS, where it was due to arrive on Wednesday carrying a selection of food, water and other supplies for the station’s astronauts, along with more exotic cargo The other cargo includes a USB-stick-sized DNA sequencer called MinION, made by UK firm Oxford Nanopore Technologies It is the first DNA analyser to head into space, and may eventually allow astronauts to directly monitor changes to their genetic code caused by the harsh radiation environment in orbit For this first flight, astronauts will just test that the technology works in microgravity by analysing the genomes of bacteria, viruses and mice Also on board is a new docking port to be attached to the outside of the ISS This will allow future crewed spacecraft to dock automatically and is designed to work with SpaceX’s Dragon V2 and Boeing’s Starliner capsule, both of which are expected to make their first trips to the ISS in the next couple of years –Blazing a trail– Will Russia see Rio? RUSSIA is facing a complete ban from the Rio Olympic games following a damning investigation into doping claims made against Russian athletes competing at major international events over the past five years The competitions included the 2012 London Olympics, the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014, the 2013 World University Games in Kazan and the 2013 IAAF World Championships in Moscow Media revelations about the scale of doping first appeared in May “Doped samples from Russian competitors were swapped through a mouse hole drilled in the wall” based on evidence from Grigory Rodchenkov, former director of the lab in Moscow where athletes’ samples were handled, which was accredited by the World AntiDoping Agency He is now in hiding in the US The investigation whose results were released this week was launched in the wake of | NewScientist | 23 July 2016 Rodchenkov’s allegations Authored by Canadian law professor Richard McLaren, it claims that the Russian Sports Ministry devised complex systems to prevent urine samples from testing positive and to secretly administer cocktails of steroids to athletes prior to competitions The most damning findings involved a scam in the testing labs at the Sochi Olympics – and with full involvement of the FSB, the state security service – which used a mouse hole drilled in the wall of the laboratory to swap doped samples of Russian competitors for clean ones Russia went on to claim 33 medals in Sochi The International Olympic Committee, which met on Tuesday to discuss the revelations, expressed its dismay at the findings “They show a shocking and unprecedented attack on the integrity of sport and on the Olympic Games,” said IOC president Thomas Bach in a statement “Therefore, the IOC will not hesitate to take the toughest sanctions available against any individual or organisation implicated.” Mozzies cut dengue GENETICALLY modified mosquitoes really seem to reduce disease That’s the finding of a trial in Piracicaba, Brazil, involving the release of male Aedes mosquitoes modified to produce non-viable offspring Just by eliminating standing water where mosquitoes breed, Piracicaba halved the incidence of dengue during the 2015-16 dengue season, compared with the previous year But in areas where the mosquitoes were released too, cases of dengue fell by more than 90 per cent The result matters as regulators want evidence that this method cuts disease, not just wild mosquito numbers This small trial doesn’t provide the rigorous evidence that epidemiologists need, but it demonstrates potential, says Hadyn Parry, chief executive of Oxitec, the UK firm that developed the mosquitoes The US Food and Drug Administration is considering whether to approve use of these insects Bald eagles go hungry in Florida IT’S short rations for America’s iconic raptors Eagles at Florida Bay are feeding their young less than twice a day on average, so the chicks get much less food than those elsewhere Matthew Hanson and John Baldwin at Florida Atlantic University made the discovery by installing cameras at four bald eagle nests in Florida Bay “Florida has always historically been a stronghold for the species,” says Bryan Watts at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia So why are bald eagles there in decline? A collapsing ecosystem may be to blame in the bay In recent decades, high salt levels have killed off sea grasses, releasing sediments that triggered algal blooms, which in turn killed fish that eagles eat Development in the Everglades may have led to these problems by disrupting the flow of fresh water into the bay (Southeastern Naturalist, doi.org/bmqk) For new stories every day, visit newscientist.com/news Shooting for Mars NASA wants an orbiter worthy of human missions to Mars The agency has given contracts to five engineering companies – Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Orbital ATK and Space © OCTAVIO ABURTO 60 SECONDS Cluck off Don’t want to get bitten? Hang out with a hen Malaria-carrying mosquitoes seem to avoid the odour of chickens, according to fresh research Isolating the compounds involved may lead to new ways of repelling the life-threatening pests (Malaria, DOI: 10.1186/ s12936-016-1386-3) “Next-gen orbiters will rely on harnessing the sun’s energy to accelerate ions, propelling the craft” Far out JAMIE FELTON/GETTY Systems Loral – to demonstrate what kind of spacecraft each one can build for a potential mission in the 2020s Today’s Mars orbiters are vital for relaying data from rovers back Nature sites listed to Earth To support a human EIGHT natural sites around the mission, the next generation will world have been added to need to be superior in terms of UNESCO’s World Heritage list, propulsion, imaging capabilities celebrating places of outstanding and communication cultural or natural value The sites Solar-electric propulsion will include sandstone canyons and be key to their design Already in valleys in Chad, forests sheltering use in Earth-orbiting satellites, leopards and Asiatic black bears in it works by harnessing the sun’s China, and wetlands in Iraq energy to accelerate ions, The latest additions bring the propelling the craft total number of UNESCO sites to Future orbiters must be able 1052 Although they may feature to fly close to the Martian surface historically significant to get high-resolution pictures of good landing sites They will “It’s going to make also boast high-fidelity conservation easier and communication systems to it’s going to be easier to cooperate with a ground crew mitigate threats to areas” NASA would also like to see orbiters that can return to Earth architecture or “exceptional with Martian samples sent up by natural beauty”, many are in capsule from a planned rover danger of degradation, for example, from the effects of climate change Listing an area helps governments and NGOs preserve it, says Juan Bezaury-Creel at the Nature Conservancy in Arlington, Virginia One of the newly designated sites is the Archipiélago de Revillagigedo in Mexico, pictured above Each of its four islands in the eastern Pacific is the tip of an underwater volcano The surrounding waters host whales and sharks that will now be –Emblematic but failing to thrive– protected, says Bezaury-Creel “It’s –Better protected, in principle– going to make conservation easier, and it’s going to be easier to mitigate threats that come to the area,” he says Richard Thomas of Mistaken Point Ecological Reserve in Newfoundland, Canada, another of the newly listed sites, says the designation will boost tourism and may be an economic “shot in the arm” for the region Fix the ozone fix SAVING the ozone layer has inadvertently warmed our planet – but the error is about to be fixed When nations signed the Montreal Protocol in 1987, the plan was to save the ozone layer by banning ozone-eating CFCs in aerosols, refrigerators and airconditioning units Ozonefriendly HFCs were seen as a great substitute But HFCs are potent greenhouse gases, and 30 years later their manufacture is rising globally by per cent each year Last November in Dubai, signatories to the Montreal Protocol agreed in principle to amend the agreement in order to outlaw HFCs – better alternatives now exist At a meeting in Vienna, Austria, this week, they will begin the task of setting targets and timetables for doing that The hope is that they will eventually be able to phase them out South Africa’s new MeerKAT radio telescope has discovered more than 1300 galaxies in a tiny patch of sky where we’d only spotted 70 before The telescope is only at a quarter of its eventual capacity, with 16 of 64 dishes operational Zika sex The Zika virus seems to have passed from a woman to a man via sex This is the first time this has been reported (MMWR, doi.org/bmqg) The woman had unprotected sex just after she returned to New York from an affected country Earlier cases of sexual transmission involved men infecting women Traffic light party Fireflies’ flash colours harmonise with their habitats Males in greener, more vegetated habitats evolved yellower flashes to contrast with ambient light reflected from vegetation Females have a different strategy: because they broadcast while sitting on leaves, they use greener flashes that reflect better off leaf surfaces to boost their signal (Evolution, doi.org/bmn4) Cuckoo karma Cuckoos that take a shortcut over Spain are more likely to die than those opting for a longer route over the Balkans This is the first time a population decline in the common cuckoo has been linked to its choice of migration route Drought at stopover sites in Spain may be to blame for higher death rates over the Western route (Nature Communications, doi.org/bmqq) 23 July 2016 | NewScientist | THIS WEEK Reversing the menopause MENOPAUSE need not be the end number steadily dwindles, with of fertility A team claims to have fertility thought to peak in the found a way to rejuvenate postearly 20s Around the age of 50, menopausal ovaries, enabling which is when menopause them to release fertile eggs, New normally occurs, the ovaries stop Scientist can reveal releasing eggs – but most women The team says its technique has are already largely infertile by restarted periods in menopausal this point, as ovulation becomes women, including one who had more infrequent in the run-up not menstruated in five years The menopause comes all-tooIf the results hold up to wider soon for many women, says scrutiny, the technique may Sfakianoudis boost declining fertility in older The age of motherhood is women, allow women with early creeping up, and more women are menopause to get pregnant, and having children in their 40s than help stave off the detrimental ever before (see graph, below) But health effects of menopause as more women delay pregnancy, “It offers a window of hope “It offers hope that that menopausal women will menopausal women will be be able to get pregnant using able to get pregnant using their own genetic material,” their own genetic material” says Konstantinos Sfakianoudis, a gynaecologist at the Greek fertility clinic Genesis Athens many find themselves struggling “It is potentially quite exciting,” to get pregnant Women who says Roger Sturmey at Hull York hope to conceive later in life are Medical School in the UK “But it increasingly turning to IVF and also opens up ethical questions egg freezing, but neither are over what the upper age limit of a reliable back-up option (see mothers should be.” “The pregnancy pause”, page 30) Women are thought to be The menopause also comes born with all their eggs Between early – before the age of 40 – for puberty and the menopause, this around per cent of women, Older mothers The percentage of women giving birth in England and Wales who are 40 or older has quadrupled since 1980 4.2 3.8 3.4 2.5 | NewScientist | 23 July 2016 20 15 20 10 20 05 20 00 19 95 1.4 19 90 19 85 19 80 1.1 SOURCE: ONS.GOV.UK 1.7 1.0 either because of a medical condition or certain cancer treatments, for example To turn back the fertility clock for women who have experienced early menopause, Sfakianoudis and his colleagues have turned to a blood treatment that is used to help wounds heal faster Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) is made by centrifuging a sample of a person’s blood to isolate growth factors – molecules that trigger the growth of tissue and blood vessels It is widely used to speed the repair of damaged bones and muscles, although its effectiveness is unclear The treatment may work by stimulating tissue regeneration Sfakianoudis’s team has found that PRP also seems to rejuvenate older ovaries, and presented some of their results at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology annual meeting in Helsinki, Finland, this month When they injected PRP into the ovaries of menopausal women, they say it restarted their menstrual cycles, and enabled them to collect and fertilise the eggs that were released “I had a patient whose menopause had established five years ago, at the age of 40,” says Sfakianoudis Six months after the team injected PRP into her ovaries, she experienced her first period since menopause Sfakianoudis’s team has since been able to collect three eggs from this woman The researchers say they have successfully fertilised two using her husband’s sperm These embryos are now on ice – the team is waiting until there are at least three before implanting some in her uterus The team isn’t sure how this PETER DAZELEY/GETTY A blood treatment seems to restore periods and fertility to menopausal women Is it too good to be true, asks Jessica Hamzelou technique works, but it may be that the PRP stimulates stem cells Some research suggests a small number of stem cells continue making new eggs throughout a woman’s life, but we don’t know much about these yet It’s possible that growth factors encourage such stem cells to regenerate tissue and produce ovulation hormones “It’s biologically plausible,” says Sturmey Fertilised eggs Sfakianoudis’s team says it has given PRP in this way to around 30 women between the ages of 46 and 49, all of whom want to have children The researchers say they have managed to isolate and fertilise eggs from most of them “It seems to work in about twothirds of cases,” says Sfakianoudis “We see changes in biochemical patterns, a restoration of menses, and egg recruitment and CULTURE Revolutionary, and wrong Give folly its place in the history of science, says Michael Doser IT HAPPENED before, of course At the end of the 19th century, Victorian spiritualists challenged the strictures of science, driven by the hope of establishing a richer fabric of reality The leavings of that movement – N-rays, mitogenetic rays, Joseph Banks Rhine’s newly minted extrasensory perception, and many others – are patently pathological, but all, in the first heady days, represented legitimate pathways of enquiry At least as much can be claimed for the “groovy science” that held sway a generation later Think of John Lilly’s attempt to communicate with dolphins (with its obligatory diversion through LSD), the parapsychology studies of physicist Peter Phillips, and Immanuel Velikovsky’s “catastrophism” This, at any rate, is the argument of Groovy Science, though the task of evaluating the intellectual and cultural worth of these escapades is anything but easy While the military-industrial complex is entertaining (and funding) experiments in sensory deprivation, dolphin training and space colonisation, we may as well abandon any attempt to distinguish between the establishment and its counterculture Indeed, look hard and you will find that there is no counterculture – only a loose overlapping of opposed A good idea at the time? John Lilly’s attempt to talk to dolphins 44 | NewScientist | 23 July 2016 subgroups, each with its own of the personal computer expectations, each interacting Less obvious, but equally odd, rather warily with the others is the way the book satirises the Psychologist Abraham Maslow picture of the scientist as “a whitelectured at Esalen, a retreat in Big coated man in a laboratory, bald, Sur, California, but kept away from tired, and unfit to marry”, but the New Age movement that then singularly fails to celebrate Esalen spawned; psychedelia’s very many non-white non-males champion Timothy Leary and Yes, there are cameos about space-colonisation prophet Gerard natural childbirth and K O’Neill shared almost nothing cheesemaking, but given the huge beyond their avid readership “We may as well abandon The explorations and the distinction between experiments discussed here the science establishment hardly rivalled the mainstream and its counterculture” breakthroughs of the time (recombinant DNA, the quark model, the creation of societal changes taking place at buckminsterfullerene) – but their the time – the women’s liberation prevailing ethic of curiosity and movement, the Black Panthers, iconoclasm had a historical Stonewall – I expected more If influence that this volume, these huge segments of society unexpectedly, sells rather short were really not involved in There is, to pick the most glaring “groovy science”, their wholesale example, no discussion of the absence might well be the homebrew computing scene, subject for another, as-yetwhich appeared in the early unwritten book 1970s and led to the development Reading Groovy Science leaves the reader enthused, but daunted at the work still to be done The authors’ chosen focus on the US leaves whole traditions of “groovy science” unexamined (Explorers Thor Heyerdahl and Michel Siffre are conspicuous by their absence.) This compendium of individual scholarly articles is a trove of information, and the references are useful and exhaustive But the prose of several of these pieces wobbles uncertainly between the academic and the popular, as if a community of scholars was not quite ready to distil its research into a mainstream account That account is, for my money, well worth looking forward to In the meantime, we have this frustrating but always enthralling archaeological travel guide to an epoch that, although only 40 years old, already feels like an alien continent ■ Michael Doser is a particle physicist working at CERN BILL CURTSINGER/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE Groovy Science: Knowledge, innovation, and American counterculture edited by David Kaiser and W Patrick McCray, University of Chicago Press, $75 Take a Chance Explore the science and secrets of luck, randomness and probability in the latest book from New Scientist, available now from all good bookstores newscientist.com/chance Executive Director, North Pacific Research Board Congress created the North Pacific Research Board in 1997 to recommend marine research initiatives to the U.S Secretary of Commerce, who makes final funding decisions Primary Responsibilities: Under the direction of the North Pacific Research Board (NPRB), provide leadership for a nationally recognized scientific organization to maintain and enhance the organization’s reputation for excellence in marine research To meet this goal, manage the staff and established processes to administer sub-awards with funds made available to the Secretary of Commerce from the Environmental Improvement and Restoration Fund (EIRF) EIRF funds provide for Federal, State, private and foreign organizations or individuals to conduct; research activities for cooperative marine research projects and activities on, or relating to, the fisheries or marine ecosystems in the North Pacific Ocean, Bering Sea, Gulf of Alaska and Arctic Ocean (including lesser related bodies of water) as set forth at 43 U.S.C §1474d(e)(1) and in accordance with criteria and priorities for grants established by the North Pacific Research Board, as set forth at 43 U.S.C §§1474d(e)(2) and (e)(4)(B) Specific Duties: Work jointly with the parties of the Memorandum of Understanding pertaining to the North Pacific Research Board (NPRB) and the North Pacific Marine Research Institute; the U.S Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the Alaska SeaLife Center to meet the overall objectives of the EIRF Employ and manage NPRB staff and contractors in accordance with relevant laws and regulations to assist in achieving the duties and responsibilities outlined in this scope of services Develop the annual work plan formulation process to generate budgets for the operation and administration of all research, education, and administration activities, and submit these timely for NPRB approval, together with all proposals for grant funding; track and report on the work plan in synchrony with Board meetings Manage the overall NPRB budget, and track and report on the budget in synchrony with Board meetings Provide NPRB with all information necessary to approve research, education and demonstration projects in accordance with 33 U.S.C §2738 and oversee implementation and monitoring of all approved grants to ensure compliance and timely conduct; report to Board timely on issues associated with grant implementation Work with and for the Board, including working at the direction of the Board to develop standard operating procedures, science and strategic plans, and other policies for ultimate NPRB approval and oversee their implementation by staff, consultants, and contractors Provide oversight of scientific guidance provided to the Board and scientific peer review of grant requests via the Science Panel; implement and administer grants, programs and projects, and perform such other science review functions as may be required by the Board Coordinate Advisory Panel meetings and reports to the Board and foster community and public input to the Board as appropriate Oversee a public process of communications and outreach and develop a biennial report of NPRB activities for Board approval Oversee, in conjunction with the ASLC HR manager, performance appraisals of NPRB staff; submit to the Executive Committee an annual performance report for this position and meet annually to agree on personal business goals and priorities for the year ahead Represent the Board at appropriate public, professional, and scientific meetings and symposia Ensure compliance with applicable laws and regulations and work with the Fiscal Agent for the NPRB (the Alaska SeaLife Center) to ensure compliance with all Federal, State and local regulations pertaining to NPRB operations; comply with all NPRB policies, procedures, and programs and all ASLC financial agent requirements relating to human resources, fiscal management, risk management, etc Perform other related duties as assigned from time to time by the Executive Committee Physical Requirements: The physical demands described are representative of those that must be met by the employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this position Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions Minimum Skills and Qualifications: Proven/strong managerial and leadership skills; team building; and strong interpersonal skills; At least 10 years experience at a senior level in research and/or organizational management with years of program-level supervisory experience; Proven communication and interpersonal skills - must be able to communicate effectively, internally and externally, to multiple audiences; Leader and facilitator – ability to motivate, influence, and develop capacity in others to create conditions that elicit passion, commitment, and best in class work that builds the reputation of an organization; Proven emotional intelligence (i.e., ability to appropriately perceive, use, understand, and manage the emotions of oneself and others); and a Bachelor’s degree in a field related to science, business, law, administration, fisheries, or environmental research Preferred Skills and Qualifications: A postgraduate degree in a field related to science, business, law, administration, fisheries or environmental research; A record of accomplishment with a particular emphasis on oversight of multidisciplinary research that has management applications; Solid understanding of issues relating to marine ecosystems, including current, key, and developing issues; Experience working with and for a board of directors; Ability to work effectively with key government, private and academic institutions; Current knowledge of key government and academic institutions and partners in marine science and management, including fisheries, oil and gas, tourism and other marine industry organizations; Demonstrated experience with business and financial management; Demonstrated partnership-building experience with diverse political environments at State, National and International levels; Able to work with confidential information and diverse stakeholders; Be alert to opportunities, be innovative, entrepreneurial, and take on new challenges in a manner that supports and reinforces the priorities of the Board; and Be of the highest levels of character and ethical behavior This is a regular, full-time position equivalent to the GS-15 level in federal service Candidates should submit a letter of application, curriculum vitae, a two-page summary of their philosophy on guiding collaborative research and contact information for four references at http://alaskasealifecenter.gatherdocs.com/apply?listing_id=2382 Applications will be accepted through June 24, 2016 and review of applications will take place in July with an anticipated start date of no later than October 21, 2016 NPRB is committed to affirmative action, equal opportunity and the diversity of its workforce letters@newscientist.com LETTERS EDITOR’S PICK Luddites’ work is not finished From Ron Burbery Jon White reinforces the concept that the loom-breaking Luddites of early 19th-century England were focused on their own concerns (25 June, p 33) The Luddites were way ahead of their time and the concerns they were raising and protesting about are as relevant today as they were then: to whom does the material benefit of mechanisation accrue? They believed that benefits shouldn’t accrue to just the owners of machinery; rather they should be spread throughout society – to workers and communities as well as, of course, the “owners” of said machinery Isn’t this the same discussion we need to have today – only this time around artificial intelligence and robotics? Will we again be defeated by the power elites? There is a desperate need for this discussion to be had much more widely than in your pages But I fear that it will be subverted and be subject to the same orchestrated put-downs and suppression that the Luddites faced How successful this suppression was is clearly shown by how people view the notion of “Luddite” today We need another way of looking at how the material benefits of new technology are disbursed Wellington, New Zealand To read more letters, visit newscientist.com/letters 52 | NewScientist | 23 July 2016 Chilling thoughts on waking in 2116 From Gillian Peall I am rather puzzled over this business of cryonics (2 July, p 26) I have no problem with freezing cells, tissues and organs But when an entire person is reanimated after perhaps 100 years, are they then at the age at which they died? Would they start living again with a 100-year gap in memory and a chasm in cultural, social and psychological experiences? With no friends or family to guide them, how would they navigate this strange life? Would they end up as interesting specimens of a past age in a laboratory enclosure somewhere? Macclesfield, Cheshire, UK From Margaret Kettlewell Imagine getting a call from Life Extensions R Us in 2116 They have just revived your great-great-great uncle Kevin, who died in 2020 His pancreatic cancer is cured, though he still has some arthritis Before being frozen, Kevin set up a trust fund on which he proposed to live after his revival, but 90 years of poor investment has left its value after inflation the same as your children’s pocket money They would like to know when you will be along to collect him Bournemouth, Dorset, UK From Simon Ritchie If a person close to death is frozen in the hope of being reanimated one day, why should somebody in the far future revive them? If a person frozen in 1816 were revived today, what contribution would they make to society, other than providing source material for social historians? The UK government is reluctant to admit a few thousand Syrian refugees, citing a burden they will place on the state while they find their feet But they are well-equipped to contribute to modern society, having been brought up in it That wouldn’t be the case for those who were revived As for setting up a trust fund to pay for your revived future: my hypothetical frozen Victorian might have put their money into the East India Company, or maybe that thriving steam engine business run by Messrs Boulton and Watt… Leatherhead, Surrey, UK Mumbo-jumbo, hope and delusion From David Muir You juxtapose two comment articles on the UK’s vote on EU membership and on the futility of homeopathy for animals (2 July, p 18) Both decry a lack of critical thinking and logical discussion This is no surprise New Scientist advertises itself with a reminder that “9 out of 10 people hold a delusional belief” Many people have no truck with rational thought and their decisions are often (mis)informed by emotion Desperate and disenfranchised people grasp the tripod of mumbo-jumbo, hope and self-delusion to support their views As you report, science has shown that cogent argument does not sway the irrational but makes their attitudes more entrenched Scientifically literate politicians need more than facts and solid arguments to carry the majority They also, sadly, need sound bites and showmanship Without these they will be trumped by snake-oil sellers and opportunists Edinburgh, UK From Bryn Glover When then UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher was launching her assault on the trades unions in the 1980s, she first proposed that decisions to go on strike be legal only when supported by twothirds of those entitled to vote in a ballot This year, the UK legislated that strikes in public services must be backed by 40 per cent of those entitled to vote Many companies’ rules require that two- @newscientist newscientist thirds of those voting back any amendment to those rules Now, 37 per cent of the UK’s electorate – little more than a quarter of the total population – have imposed a far-reaching constitutional change upon everyone Surely such changes should need the backing of least half of the possible voters? Kirkby Malzeard, North Yorkshire, UK Brain models could replace primates From Kathy Archibald (Safer Medicines Trust), Gerry Kenna and Barbara Pierscionek You claim that the Weatherall Report helped to end debate about the validity of primate research (18 June, p 5) Yet the report states that “debate on the use of nonhuman primates in research would benefit from more systematic information on its overall impact on scientific and medical advances” Models using human tissues, reproducing key features of biochemistry and physiology, have enormous potential in brain research A 2016 paper in Alternatives to Laboratory Animals concludes: “neuroscience would be more relevant and successful for humans if it were conducted with a direct human focus” As scientists dedicated to ensuring the best outcomes for patients, we concur Kingsbridge, Devon, UK; Macclesfield, Cheshire, UK; and Kingston, Surrey, UK Language escapes from instinct From Christine McNulty Scientist Kristin Andrews has put forward six attributes that she believes would qualify an animal to be considered a person (2 July, p 17) But the crucial and fundamental difference is that “I say sleeping is the normal state We just wake up to get some food in order to sleep on” Lisa Blaustein stays awake long enough to propose a different angle on why we sleep (16 July, p 8) humans are the only animals that can deny the evidence of our senses We this with language Language isn’t an instinct: it is a tool of cognition Our ancestors developed language in order to escape the constraints of instinct For example, in an animal, the fight or flight reaction is automatic Humans, by contrast, can identify phenomena – and a response – with a word and modify our behaviour Human language, therefore, is the antithesis of instinct Oxhey, Hertfordshire, UK Do liveable planets need moons? From Gerald Legg I read with interest the article on planets more habitable than ours (21 May, p 26) But would they be habitable without moons? Many hold that the presence of our large moon is critical to life on Earth, and our planet would be quite a different place without it The moon’s most obvious effect is on the oceans, producing the daily TOM GAULD and monthly cycles of tides and influencing deep ocean tidal streams This tidal effect also pulls on Earth’s crust, causing heating and distortion, which may have triggered plate tectonics We thus have a dynamic crust with convection currents beneath it dragging material down into the mantle and spewing it out again This recycling affects many processes, from the saltiness of the sea to the composition of the atmosphere So other worlds have moons and are they of a similar size and distance from their planet compared with ours? Hurstpierpoint, West Sussex, UK Few superflares from the sun From Eric Kvaalen David Copsey calculates that the sun may emit superflares more or less every 184 years (Letters, 18 June) Some sun-like stars produce superflares; others apparently not Those that are much more magnetically active than the sun Records of nitric acid and carbon-14 in ice cores show that we have not had a solar flare bigger than the 1859 “Carrington event” since 1561 There are signs of bigger events in the 8th and 10th centuries A Carrington-like event may be dangerous to our technological civilisation, but obviously there has not been a superflare capable of wiping out life on Earth for billions of years Les Essarts-le-Roi, France Clean coal betrayed by governments From Pamela Ross Alec Cawley suggests that shale gas can replace coal (Letters, 18 June) I have been a lay union representative for a coal branch for two decades, and during that time have been involved in initiatives around clean coal With carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), coal could be an easier and cheaper option than gas and could achieve near zero emissions However, despite lip service to CCS, successive UK governments have done nothing to implement it The technology does exist, but it’s obviously not as good a “get rich quick” option as fracking Certainly, fracking in the US led to coal being dumped cheaply elsewhere and has been a big factor in the demise of the UK coal industry Our last deep mine closed in December 2015 with the loss of hundreds of jobs and hundreds of years of tradition However, we are still burning coal Sadly, UK governments over many years have failed to put together an integrated energy policy that delivers what the country needs, considers the environment and provides jobs Cawood, North Yorkshire, UK A butterfly exists to make caterpillars From Craig Sams You report cooperation between metalmark butterfly caterpillars and ants in Peru and the apparent exploitation of the ants by the butterflies once hatched (25 June, p 15) If the caterpillar supplies ants with its sugar secretions, it is in the interests of the ants that the butterfly produces as many viable caterpillars as possible in order to maintain the supply of sugars for future generations of ants Hastings, East Sussex, UK The editor writes: ■ It turns out that the butterflies lay their eggs elsewhere, so the ants are unlikely to benefit directly from a relationship with the next generation of caterpillars 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 23 July 2016 | NewScientist | 53 A LIBRARY OF KNOWLEDGE POCKET SIZED FREE! SUES SAMPLE IS ! P IN-AP Visit newscientist.com/app or call 1300 534 178 or +61 9422 8559 and quote offer 9056 Live Smarter For more feedback, visit newscientist.com/feedback FEEDBACK PAUL MCDEVITT reflected by skin and cellulite This will virtually eradicate the appearance of cellulite whilst the garment is being worn.” Until medicine allows us to dispense with skin once and for all, and carousel through life like flayed corpses in a Hieronymus Bosch landscape, Feedback hopes we learn to love our surface imperfections HEAPING scorn on the younger generation for their perceived fecklessness is a time-honoured tradition stretching back to the Ancient Greeks Millennials, with their cereal cafes, selfie sticks and much diminished prospects, make no less an inviting target The Daily Mail reveals a further crime to add to their list of failings: a lack of “hard work” means grip strength in today’s young adults is significantly less than it was a generation ago, according to a study published in the Journal of hand therapy It seems a lifetime spent lifting nothing heavier than a smartphone has left Millennials with handshakes like wilted lettuce leaves, which may be why they can’t get jobs Feedback can only urge young adults to start flexing their muscles, and if in doubt, ask their parents for advice After all, they come from a generation which knows a thing or two about exerting a vice-like grip on homes and jobs IT IS a universally acknowledged fact that people have skin, an issue that many companies have volunteered to take arms against, particularly those of us they declare to have skin of an inappropriate quality or quantity Monica Backes forwards the latest weapon in this war on encapsulation, Emana, a “polyamide yarn with bioactive minerals” which is said to “absorb the waves emitted by the human body and send them back in the shape of far infrared rays” The result of this is, of course, “a unique formula which improves skin elasticity and reduces the appearance of cellulite, delivering smoother younger looking skin” Monica has taken the liberty of rewriting this for Feedback readers into something rather more experimentally verifiable It goes: “This garment is made from a yarn containing pigments that absorb virtually all visible light In response to the question, “What is the term for having had that déjà vu feeling before?”, Julie Miles says surely one need look no further than Yogi Berra’s “déjà vu all over again” 56 | NewScientist | 23 July 2016 THE Beast of Bodmin is a fabulous fabled big cat that stalks the UK’s West Country, slaying sheep and posing for blurry long-distance photographs Now it may have a rival after a wild lynx escaped from Dartmoor Zoo Not so much a big cat as a slightly larger than normal tabby, Flaviu is more like to be worrying shrews than sheep Following an intensive search involving expert trackers and thermal cameras mounted on drones, the Plymouth Herald reported there had been a sighting back at the zoo – but unfortunately, it was only a can of Lynx deodorant glued by some enterprising wag to the sign outside BREXIT fever continues apace, with UK citizens demanding that politicians “take Britain back” Yet Welsh warbler Cerys Matthews perhaps didn’t realise just how far back we’d have to take Britain, and the universe, to see her arable dreams realised Paul Manson relates that when asked by The Guardian newspaper “If you could bring something extinct back to life, what would you choose?”, the musician and radio presenter proposed “chemical-free farming” Fulfilling this request would mean making our home at the dawn of the universe, amid an explosive soup of chaotic, highly charged matter An environment that sounds to Feedback not unlike post-Brexit Britain ALSO pondering ways to rid one’s land of unwelcome visitors, the secularists penning The Guardian gardening column ignore one notable Creator to report that chemical giant BASF is “the only UK maker of nematodes” If this is true, Feedback wonders where the rest of the nation’s nematodes come from? And more importantly, says Luke Caskell, “if BASF can create life, what else are they making?” MAMA MIA! Italian scientists at the Neuromed Institute in Pozzilli report that, contrary to popular belief, pasta is not fattening The patriotic scientists surveyed the eating habits of 23,000 people to conclude that the presence of pasta in a person’s diet was associated with decreased body weight – although Feedback notes that the correlation does not take into account exactly how much pasta one must eat to achieve this slimming effect CLARE MUNKS writes that a quick glance round the kitchen has produced the ideal solution for deflecting mind-control waves (2 July) “It is lightweight, cheap and readily available from your nearest pet store: a stainless steel dog bowl!” These have the advantage of coming in several sizes, enabling protection for all the family “However,” says Clare, “I am unable to accept responsibility for any more down-to-earth attacks that may occur in the school playground as a result of any child being so equipped.” 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 ■ As a radio producer who has made more than 350 documentaries, I have often observed the distaste we have for how we sound in recordings The way we perceive our voice directly includes sound percolating through the bones of the skull Recordings, lacking this component, sound subtly mutated, like uncanny impostors Also, to gain time to think while you’ve walked right around the talking, we often use junk words world So there is no horizontal and sounds such as “sort of”, end to the sky “like”, “actually” and “umm” We If you look straight upwards on tend not to be aware of these, but a cloudless night, you will see the on playback we sound painfully, stars There are more distant stars umm, hesitant and, sort of, that you can only see with a inarticulate Radio producers telescope, and more beyond that edit these out, compressing the So there seems to be no vertical duration of speech by as much end to the sky either as 20 per cent “If we could travel through We only rarely hear our voice an infinite sky long as others do, so over time enough, we would come to preconceptions may build up a planet exactly like Earth” as to how nice we sound But a recording reveals all sorts of unflattering details, which can One day, scientists think, the sun will expand and perhaps be a shock swallow our planet However, I have worked with certain that’s so far off in the future presenters who are used to that nobody need worry about hearing themselves and have a particular type of vanity, an audio it just yet The sky we know might seem preening that is best described doomed to end then, but it won’t as “liking the sound of their own It will still be there, just different voice” However, being armed David Muir with this often helps them enjoy Edinburgh, UK long careers in radio Matt Thompson ■ That depends on what you Radio producer and sound mean by “sky” and what you designer mean by “end” If, by sky, you North Berwick, East Lothian, UK mean the stuff above our heads that we see as blue/white/grey in the daytime, the answer is yes: Dying light it does end Does the sky ever end? If you flew up in a rocket, you would pass through dust particles ■ This is a very good question (which scatter sunlight, making coming as it did from a 5-year-old, the sky blue) and the white or grey and the answer is the same clouds And as you did, what’s however you look at it If you look above you would become darker sideways, the sky seems to end at and darker as the air becomes the horizon But if you walk thinner and thinner, carrying less towards the horizon, you’ll find water vapour to form clouds and the sky keeps on going until fewer dust particles to scatter 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 Playback payback Why, as a general rule, we not seem to like the sound of our own voices when we hear them in recordings? ■ It’s because you don’t hear your own voice like other people To them, the noises made by your vocal cords and lungs, and shaped by your lips, tongue and nasal cavity, are what you sound like But what you hear when you speak is mostly conducted to your ears through bone and flesh So it’s profoundly disturbing when you hear your external, recorded voice and it sounds nothing like the internal voice you know Your internal voice is usually more resonant, deeper and has less nasality, so for most people their external voice is less attractive However, if you listen to yourself enough you can train yourself out of this You will even find yourself changing your voice to sound more attractive – you could almost call it an example of biofeedback Ron Dippold San Diego, California, US light You can see this beginning to happen if you are flying in a commercial airliner at 30,000 feet and you look upwards through a window At somewhere between 70,000 and 100,000 feet, what is above turns black So the daytime sky that you see from the ground would effectively have ended But if you mean everything above our heads (relatively speaking) during both day and night, the answer is that we can’t be sure because we just can’t see that far Some people believe that the sky, also known as the universe, goes on and on forever, to infinity If that is the case, then every possible combination of fundamental particles will occur, and recur That means that if we could travel through the infinite sky for long enough, we would come to a planet exactly like Earth, with a country on it called South Africa, where a 5-year-old called Sabine is asking “Does the sky ever end?” Alistair Scott Gland, Switzerland This week’s question SLEEP TIGHT The articles in “A user’s guide to sleep” (28 May, p 31) set me thinking How people in polar regions, where there can be up to 24 hours of daylight or night, cope physiologically? Wendy Akers Pearce, ACT, Australia Question Everything The latest book of science questions: unpredictable and entertaining Expect the unexpected Available from booksellers and at newscientist.com/questioneverything 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 ... 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