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QUANTUM CONTROL
WEEKLY 13 September 2014
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No2986 3.90 US/CAN$5.95
How weird do you want it?
TOUCHY SCREENYWhen your phone knows how you feel
ROCKY RIDDLEThe crystal that shouldnt exist
COFFEE HACKERSUpgrading the worlds most popular drug
JUST FOLLOWING ORDERS?Why good people wont do bad things
BRIDGE THE GAP The woman with a hole in her brain
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13 September 2014 | NewScientist | 3
CONTENTS Volume 223 No 2986This issue online
newscientist.com/issue/2986
News6 UPFRONT How will Scotland vote? Japan whaling again.
BP negligent in oil spill. Universal baby size8 THIS WEEK
Hazards of comet landing. The woman with a hole in her brain.
Mother of the Higgs. Waking up during surgery. Stringy fields could
explain dark energy. Bone-eaters of the dinosaur era. Upgrading the
coffee buzz
16 IN BRIEF Cunning trout partner with eels. Whopper of
a dinosaur. Spitting fish. How much gravity?
Coming next weekImaginary worldsWhy do we spend so much time in
them?
The strangest starOur sun has rain and other wonders
34
38
Rise of thejihadisWhat science can and cannot yet tell us about
radicalisation
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Quantum controlHow weird do you want it?
Rocky riddleThe crystal that shouldnt exist
Technology19 Your touchy-screeny phone knows you.
Google Glass seconds that emotion. Tracking aquatic invaders.
Teaching ethics to robots. Robotic hand feels for deep-sea
discoveries
News
On the cover
Features
10 Bridge the gap The woman with a hole inher brain
28 Just following orders? Why good people wont do bad things
19 Touchy screeny Your phone knows you
38 Rocky riddle The mystery crystal
14 Coffee hackers Tweaking the popular drug
Opinion26 Scottish science Stephen J. Watson says
better alone. No way, argues Andrew Miller 27 One minute with
Richard Smith Why
research misconduct should be a crime 28 Just obeying orders?
Alexander Haslam and
Stephen Reicher challenge key ideas on evil32 LETTERS Vital
vitamins. Smart curve
Features34 Quantum control (see above left)38 The crystal that
shouldnt exist (see left)42 The wander stuff RNA doesnt always
stay
put in cells. Heres what it gets up to
CultureLab46 Socrates for psychopaths A tale of talking
classical philosophy in a secure unit 47 Our digital natures
Exploring the deep
effects of modern media on culture
Regulars5 LEADER Our response to radicalisation is
still informed by 1960s research56 FEEDBACK Godzilla grows with
buildings57 THE LAST WORD Heavy metal48 JOBS & CAREERS
Aperture24 Wide-eyed animals in the midnight hour
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13 September 2014 | NewScientist | 5
LEADER
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WHY do ordinary people do appalling things? This problem has
vexed scholars for centuries. Early Christian theologians, for
example, spent an inordinate amount of time trying to reconcile the
idea of a benevolent and omnipotent God who could nonetheless allow
evil to exist.
The darker side of human nature still troubles us, though
nowadays we tend to seek more naturalistic explanations. This was
never more true than after the second world war, which offered an
unflinching and deeply distressing view of the depravity to which
humans can sink.
One influential product of the research or perhaps
soul-searching that followed was the concept of the banality of
evil. Coined by political theorist Hannah Arendt after watching the
1961 trial of Nazi SS officer Adolf Eichmann, this spare phrase
captures the idea that evil acts are not necessarily perpetrated by
evil people. Instead, they can simply be the result of bureaucrats
dutifully obeying orders.
That concept was supported by two infamous psychological
studies: Stanley Milgrams electric-shock experiments on obedience
and the Stanford Prison Experiment, both of which supposedly proved
that ordinary
Not so easily led Compelling but outmoded ideas wont help
counter radicalisation
people can easily be led into performing atrocious acts just
following orders to hurt, humiliate or kill.
The conclusions were not universally accepted at the time.
Nonetheless, the banality of evil became the dominant
late-20th-century explanation for the problem of mass
atrocities.
Its appeal is clear: it simultaneously offered an explanation
for the worst crimes of the century while absolving the vast
majority of the perpetrators.
The horrors of Hitlers Germany and Stalins Russia became largely
the responsibility of their leaders.
The banality of evil remains hugely influential. It is, for
example, visible in relation to the responses to Westerners who
travel to the Middle East to fight for Islamic State.
In seeking explanations for the radicalisation of these recruits
and how to counter it authorities in the UK and US have been quick
to reach for the idea of brainwashing and coercion. Islamic States
slick recruitment videos and savvy use of social
media only reinforce this view. Brainwashing is just
following
orders in a different guise. But the evidence suggests that, in
fact, it rarely plays a role in radicalisation (see page 8).
Nonetheless, Western authorities appear to be locked into thinking
it is happening to their home-grown jihadis, and that they must
fight fire with fire. The US governments anti-radicalisation
strategy, for example, uses social media in a bid to neutralise the
messages of Islamic State.
We can do better. Despite huge ethical challenges, psychologists
are starting to re-evaluate Milgrams research, and with it the
whole notion of the banality of evil (see page 28). Their emerging
conclusion is much more subtle and nuanced, and should be required
reading for those who, rightly, seek to counter the threat of
radical Islam.
This would be further helped if the veil of secrecy over US
intelligence were lifted a little, giving researchers interested in
understanding radicalisation access to precious hard data.
We will never banish the human propensity for atrocity. But the
only way to counter it is to understand it properly, and devise
strategies based on what we know, not what we want to believe.
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It offered an explanation for the worst crimes of the century
while absolving most of the perpetrators
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6 | NewScientist | 13 September 2014
YOU can go green and continue to prosper and develop, said Ed
Davey, the UK secretary for energy and climate, on 9 September. And
the evidence is on his side. Economists say that, despite the
expense, drastic cuts in the UKs carbon dioxide emissions will
boost the countrys economy.
The finding should encourage action to reduce CO
2 levels,
which reached a new high in 2013, according to a report by the
World Meteorological Organization. The growth from 2012 was the
biggest jump since 1984, and may be partly down to plants and other
organisms taking in less CO
2.
If climate change isnt incentive enough to cut emissions, try
this: if the UK cut its carbon emissions by 60 per cent from 1990
levels by 2030, as it has promised, its GDP would be 1.1 per cent
bigger than if it stuck with fossil fuels,
SCIENCE to the rescue in West Africa? The World Health
Organization is launching an emergency programme to test
experimental treatments on people who have Ebola, in a bid to stem
the epidemic. The move will get round regulatory barriers that have
so far stopped one promising drug that is almost fully tested from
being used in the epidemic.
This is absolutely unprecedented, said Marie-Paule Kieny, head
of innovation at the WHO, after a meeting of drug
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Low-carbon payout Attacking Ebola
UPFRONT
If the UK cut its carbon emissions by 60 per cent by 2030, its
GDP would rise1.1 per cent
Only one size available
Border patrol
says a study by consultants at Cambridge Econometrics. About
half the gain would come from cheap running costs for
fuel-efficient cars, with 190,000 new green jobs and higher wages
also helping. The average household would be 565 a year better
off.
The findings chime with a study by the Institute for Public
Policy Research in London. The IPPR says the European Union could
end its dependence on gas from Russia through better energy
efficiency. The EU pays Russia 31 billion a year for gas, much of
it coming along pipelines through Ukraine.
developers and African health authorities approved the plan on 5
September in Geneva, Switzerland. We must move as fast as
possible.
Ethical guidelines allow treatments that havent been fully
tested and approved to be used to try and save lives as long as
information is gathered to help establish whether the treatment
works. The Geneva meeting agreed to test two experimental vaccines
and a handful of other treatments on this basis, including giving
patients blood from Ebola survivors.
BABIES come in all shapes and sizes or so you might imagine.
According to new international growth charts, all newborns should
be broadly the same size, regardless of ethnicity or their mothers
size. Nutrition and health are the only factors that make a
difference.
Standardised charts already exist for a childs growth from birth
to age 5, but until now, there was no internationally agreed
All babies the same
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Taking Scotlands polls IS SCOTLAND poised to withdraw from the
UK? Two opinion polls published this week suggest the yes campaign
has passed the 50 per cent mark and could be on track to win the
Scottish referendum on independence on 18September. But headlines
aside, it is too close to call, and polling realities suggest
either side could bethe true leaders at this stage.
Opinion polls are typically based ona sample of 1000 people,
which means that even if the sample is randomised and
representative of the voting population, statistical theories say
the margin of error is 3 per cent. In other words, a 50-50 poll
split could easily emerge as 47-53 in the real vote. And while many
polls shoot for randomness, there may well be biases in the polled
sample, meaning the
margin of error is even greater.If someone asks us for a
margin
oferror well say 3 per cent, says Anthony Wells of polling firm
YouGov, but he adds that a variety of factors mean that this can
only be a rule of thumb. YouGov published the first yes-leading
poll on Saturday, with a51-49 split.
Undecided voters are also a key factor missing from the
headlines. YouGovs poll actually showed yes on 47 per cent, no on
45 per cent and dont know on 8 per cent. A TNS poll published
Tuesday shows a 50-50 split with dont knows excluded, but the firm
places them at 23 per cent.
Undecided voters dont usually make it into the headlines but
they will probably tip the balance in determining Scotlands
future.
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13 September 2014 | NewScientist | 7
GUILTY as charged. Last week a US court found BP grossly
negligent in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, one of the worst
environmental disasters in US history. It could be fined $18
billion. But the industry may not have learned any lessons.
When the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in 2010, 11 people died
and millions of barrels of oil leaked into the Gulf of Mexico.
US district judge Carl Barbier found BP 67 per cent responsible
for the spill, with contractors Transocean and Halliburton also
partly to blame.
BPs conduct was reckless, Barbier wrote. Bob Cavnar, author of a
book on the accident, says the ruling is BPs worst-case scenario.
The company intends to appeal.
However, the judgment looks
unlikely to bring significant changes in the industry. I dont
see anything in there that would change the way we fundamentally
operate, says John Hughett, who was an expert witness for the
case.
BP was negligent
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For new stories every day, visit newscientist.com/news
Quantum GoogleGOOGLE has announced plans to build its own
quantum computer, despite having purchased one from D-Wave of
Burnaby, Canada, last year.
D-Waves computers, which are based on superconducting quantum
circuits, display quantum behaviour, but it isnt clear whether
their design can actually take advantage of quantum mechanics to
calculate faster than an ordinary PC.
Now Google has hired John Martinis of the University of
California, Santa Barbara, to build its own quantum processors,
following the D-Wave approach. Martinis is also working on quantum
error-correcting techniques, which are likely to be necessary for a
working machine.
Google says the two projects will run in parallel. We will
continue to collaborate with D-Wave scientists, said Googles
Hartmut Neven in a blog post. Google plans to upgrade its D-Wave
machine.
It is no surprise that Google wants to get into the quantum
business. A computer that can successfully exploit its quantum
nature could theoretically revolutionise certain applications, such
as searching large databases very quickly. Scientific whaling?
equivalent for fetal development.The INTERGROWTH-21st
project
pooled data from thousands of healthy, well-fed mothers from the
US, UK, India, China, Brazil, Oman, Kenya and Italy. Each had
regular measurements made of their fetus and newborn baby. These
were then used to plot standard growth charts for fetuses in ideal
conditions.
Provided the mother is healthy, all babies grow in a similar way
and achieve a similar size at birth, says Stephen Kennedy at the
University of Oxford, who led some of the research (The Lancet,
doi.org/f2tx39, doi.org/f2tx4b).
60 SECONDS
The genes of OzYour genes are patentable in Australia for now.
The countrys Federal Court has ruled that genes isolated from the
body are patentable even though they occur in nature because the
act of isolating them makes them artificial. Last year, the US
Supreme Court ruled the opposite way. The Australian case may go to
the country's High Court.
Aircraft was shot downA blizzard of high-energy impacts tore
apart the fuselage of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine
on17 July, a preliminary Dutch air investigation report has
concluded. The finding is consistent with the theory that a
ground-to-air missile downed the Boeing 777 airliner, killing all
298 people on board.
Creaking musclesStarting to slow down? Blame your calves.
Deficits in these muscles contribute the most to age-related
movement problems, shows a studyof muscle output in old age. Hip
muscle deficits also cause difficulties, but knee muscles tend to
stay as efficient as they are in middle age (Journal of the Royal
Society Interface, DOI: 10.1098/rsif.2014.0858).
Monstrous gibbonsGibbons are kings of gene shuffling. Their
genome, now sequenced, seems to have exploded and been put back
together in the wrong order (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature13679).
Over time these reshuffles may have created new species by making
offspring with genomes very different to those of their
parents.
Smoking gateway?Tobacco experts have described theWorld Health
Organizations guidelines on e-cigarattes as misguided, calling into
question its claims that they act as a gateway drug to smoking
(Addiction, doi.org/vjx). They warn that the stance could have
negative health consequences.
More whaling please, asks JapanA BAR on whaling in the Antarctic
could prove short-lived, if Japan has its way. It is drawing up a
new scientific whaling scheme.
In March, the International Court ofJustice in The Hague,
Netherlands, ruled that Japans scientific whaling in Antarctic
waters from 2005 to 2014 was illegal. Conservationists had argued
the JARPA II scheme was a front for banned commercial whaling.
The ruling will be debated next week by the International
Whaling Commission in Portoroz, Slovenia. The IWC had long allowed
JARPA II to proceed, but the court overruled that when it said the
scheme was not for purposes of scientific research. The IWCs
criteria for judging research plans are now under scrutiny.
The credibility of the whole organisation is at stake, says
Vassili Papastavrou of the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
Is the IWC up to the task of making sure future permits for
research are legal?
Japan is trying to get around the ruling. In June it caught
minke whales off its north-east coast, an area not covered by the
ruling. It will ask the IWC to let four coastal communities catch
17 minke whales for local use.
It is also drafting a new research plan, JARPA III, that it
hopes will comply with the March ruling. If it does, scientific
whaling could resume in the Antarctic by late 2015.
But a resolution proposed by New Zealand could stop this, by
making the IWCs assessment tougher.
BP was reckless. The ruling is the companys worst-case scenario
and it could be fined $18 billion
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8 | NewScientist | 13 September 2014
Michael Bond
ITS a question being asked around the world. How can you stem
the flow of foreign jihadis making their way to Syria and Iraq? As
New Scientist went to press, politicians on both sides of the
Atlantic were finalising their game plans to tackle the rise of
Sunni jihadist group Islamic State, but the issue of homegrown
fighters wont be far from their minds.
The answers will be based partly on research that a handful of
counter-terrorism scientists have carried out since 9/11. But
piecing together the mindset of a jihadi hasnt been easy because of
a scarcity of field data, which means that much foreign policy, and
media coverage, is underpinned by speculation rather than hard
data. In recent months, several researchers have called on the US
government to allow academics access to intelligence data, such as
intercepted communications and
transcripts of interviews, to help them understand how fighters
become radicalised.
Despite the shortage of first-hand material, some things seem
clear. For instance, the idea that hundreds of British and other
European Muslims fighting for IS were brainwashed or coerced by
jihadist recruiters into joining is almost certainly wrong.
Those who study terrorist behaviour claim that the vast majority
of fighters originating in the West are radicalised at home,
influenced largely by their own circle of friends. The brainwashing
theory is baloney,
says Scott Atran of Frances National Centre for Scientific
Research in Paris. This is more about young people hooking up with
their friends and going on a glorious mission.
Evidence collected by the International Centre for the Study of
Radicalisation (ICSR) at Kings College London supports this view.
The ICSR has been following about 450 foreign fighters in Syria and
Iraq, communicating with dozens of them through social media tools
such as Facebook and WhatsApp and conducting interviews on the
Syrian border. It estimates that 80-85 per cent of them mobilised
with their peer group.
The vast majority go as part of clusters, says the ICSRs
director
Peter Neumann. This explains why a disproportionate number of
recent British jihadis have come from the same places, such as
Portsmouth and Cardiff. A couple of them might go first, they stay
in touch with each other, and one by one they pull their friends
out there. None of the jihadis interviewed by his group were
recruited in the sense of someone reaching out proactively to
manipulate them, he says. That doesnt happen. No one has been
indoctrinated.
This path to radicalisation is in line with what many studies on
terrorist behaviour in the past decade have suggested, and is a
long way from the often peddled idea of indoctrination.
So why do such myths persist? Marc Sageman, a forensic
psychiatrist and consultant to various US government agencies,
thinks they allow politicians and commentators to ignore wider
causes of radicalisation, such as political injustice, which may be
unpalatable to Western governments. You get politicians saying that
IS is a bunch of psychopaths, which is not helpful.
Of course, it makes little sense to study how terrorists are
radicalised without looking at the political context. It wont do
just to look at the militants and assume that, if we know enough
about them, were going to understand this, says Clark McCauley, a
psychologist at the Solomon Asch Center for
NEWS FOCUS ISLAMIC STATE
Lifting the black mask The science behind what makes people
become jihadi fighters
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The brainwashing theory isbaloney. This is about young people
going on a glorious mission
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13 September 2014 | NewScientist | 9
Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.
Were not. We need databases on how governments respond to terrorism
as much as we need databases on what terrorists do.
Sageman agrees: This is political violence, and the number one
assumption should be that its about politics. That means broadening
the focus of terrorism research to political science, economics,
sociology, social
psychology and anthropology.The need for a broader
appreciation of the factors driving Islamist extremism is
underlined by an as-yet-unpublished study conducted by McCauleys
team. This shows widespread sympathy among Muslims in the US for
Syrias repressed Sunni Muslims.
In this section The woman with a hole in her brain, page 10
Stringy fields could explain dark energy, page 12 Your
touchy-screeny phone knows you, page 19
THIS WEEK
About half those questioned said either that they wouldnt
condemn anyone who joined the fight against Syrian president Bashar
al-Assad, or that doing so was morally justified. McCauley expects
results would be similar in the UK. The poll was conducted in July,
so it isnt known how the beheadings conducted by IS since then have
affected the level of support.
Only a tiny minority of those who sympathise with the jihadi
cause choose to fight for it. For those who do, there are many
paths by which they can become radicalised. There is no one
storyline, says McCauley. But most researchers agree that, aside
from the influence of peers, the following factors are important: a
personal grievance, such as a crisis of identity, that opens them
up to a new religious or political ideology; a sense that their
cultural in-group is being persecuted; moral outrage at injustice
(discrimination against a relative, for example); and access to a
politically active network. While there is evidence that some have
been influenced by hard-line clerics, this is rarely the principal
driver.
Knowing this, is it possible to steer those on the path to
radicalisation away from it? The UK governments Channel programme
aims to identify vulnerable people and introduce them to a suitable
role model, for example, or help them with their career or
relationships. This approach is unlikely to turn hardened
militants, says Neumann, but the Home Office says Channel has
helped several hundred of the 2000 people referred to it since
2012.
It should be easier to develop similar programmes that could
de-radicalise returning fighters if intelligence data gets
released, exposing the motivations and experiences of front-line
jihadis. The difficulty is not lack of ideas but lack of field
knowledge, says Atran. Nobody really knows whats going on with IS.
Clouded in mystery
LANDING on a comet will be even harder than we thought. The
strange shape of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko does not present
as many safe landing sites for the European Space Agencys Rosetta
spacecraft asmission planners had hoped.
Its shape is exciting scientifically but it [creates] a lot of
challenges, says project scientist Matt Taylor at the European
Space Research and Technology Centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands.
He calls the comet the duck because from some angles it resembles a
rubber one.
The probe arrived at 67P on 6August after a 10-year journey. The
plan is to release a probe called Philae to land on the comets
surface on 11November. ESA announced five candidate touchdown sites
on 25August, but on 8 September at theEuropean Planetary Sciences
Congress in Cascais, Portugal, the team admitted that none of the
sites looked very safe. All landing sites are worse than expected
because of the shape of the body, said the landers lead scientist,
Hermann Bhnhardt of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System
Research in Gttingen, Germany.
Worse means smaller. Philae is
designed to land within an ellipse 1kilometre in length. Of the
five shortlisted sites, only site B, at the head of the duck, meets
that requirement. There are some larger, smoother sites on the base
of the ducks body but they are too poorly lit to let the lander
recharge its batteries during its four-month mission.
New images from Rosettas high-res camera reveal what appear tobe
layered cliffs across the comet. These are good for determining the
comets history, but could damage Philae if it hits them.
Once Philae leaves Rosetta, there will be no chance to alter its
trajectory. It will take 5 to 8 hours to drift to the surface under
the comets weak gravity. Should it hit rough ground and tumble on
to its side, some science may still be possible, but settling
upside-down would almost certainly spell doom for the lander
mission.
Meanwhile, Rosetta has captured its first grains ejected by the
comet and shown that such emissions vary throughout its 12.4-hour
day. 67P ejects most particles in the afternoon from the ducks
neck. Examining this site could help show if the comet began life
as one body or two. Stuart Clark
No easy parking spot for first-ever comet landing
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Eeny, meeny, miny, mo
You get politicians sayingthat Islamic State isa bunchof
psychopaths, which is not helpful
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10 | NewScientist | 13 September 2014
THIS WEEK
Helen Thomson
DONT mind the gap. A woman has reached the age of 24 without
anyone realising she was missing a large part of her brain. The
case highlights just how adaptable the organ is.
The discovery was made when the woman was admitted to the
Chinese PLA General Hospital of Jinan Military Area Command in
Shandong Province complaining of dizziness and nausea. She told
doctors shed had problems walking steadily for most of her life,
and her mother reported that she hadnt walked until she was 7 and
that her speech only became intelligible at the age of 6.
Doctors did a CAT scan and immediately identified the source of
the problem her entire cerebellum was missing (see scan, below
left). The space where it should be was empty of tissue. Instead it
was filled with cerebrospinal fluid, which
cushions the brain and provides defence against disease.
The cerebellum sometimes known as the little brain is located
underneath the two hemispheres. It looks different from the rest of
the brain because it consists of much smaller and more compact
folds of tissue. It represents about 10 per cent of the brains
total volume but contains 50 per cent of its neurons.
Although it is not unheard of to have part of your brain
missing, either congenitally or from surgery, the woman joins an
elite club of just nine people who are known to have lived without
their entire cerebellum. A detailed description of how the disorder
affects a living adult is almost
non-existent, say doctors from the Chinese hospital, because
most people with the condition die at a young age and the problem
is only discovered on autopsy (Brain, doi.org/vh7).
The cerebellums main job is to control voluntary movements and
balance, and it is also thought to be involved in our ability to
learn specific motor actions and speak. Problems in the cerebellum
can lead to severe mental impairment, movement disorders, epilepsy
or a potentially fatal build-up of fluid in the brain. However, in
this woman, the missing cerebellum resulted in only mild to
moderate motor deficiency, and mild speech problems such as
slightly slurred pronunciation. Her doctors describe these effects
as less than would be expected, and say her case highlights the
remarkable plasticity of the brain.
These rare cases are interesting to understand how the brain
circuitry works and compensates for missing parts, says Mario
Manto, who researches cerebellar disorders at the Free University
of Brussels in Belgium. The patients doctors suggest that normal
cerebellar function may have been taken over by the cortex brain
scans should reveal the answer.
The woman with ahole in her brain
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The idea for the Higgs boson was borrowed from the behaviour of
photons in superconductors
A WEIRD theoretical relative of the Higgs boson, one that
inspired the decades-long hunt for the elusive particle, has been
properly observed for the first time.
The Higgs field, which gives rise to its namesake boson, is
credited with giving other particles mass by slowing their movement
through empty space. First proposed in the 1960s, the boson finally
appeared at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN near Geneva,
Switzerland, in 2012.
First sighting of mother of Higgs boson
But this mass-giving mechanism was borrowed from a
mathematically analogous process that happens with photons in
superconductors metals that, when extremely cold, allow electrons
to move without resistance.
Near absolute zero, vibrations are set up in the superconducting
material that slow down pairs of photons travelling through, making
light act as though it has a mass.
This effect is the inspiration behind the Higgs mechanism giving
particles mass the mother of it, actually, says Raymond Volkas at
the University of Melbourne in Australia.
The vibrations are mathematically equivalent to Higgs particles,
says Ryo Shimano at the University of Tokyo,
who led the team that has now observed them. In superconductors,
the mechanism explains how light can appear to have mass when
travelling through such materials, while in particle physics it
explains the mass ofW and Z bosons in the vacuum.
Physicists had expected to find Higgs-like vibrations in all
superconductors. But they had only been seen before by imposing a
different kind of vibration on the material first.
To find the vibrations in a
superconductor in its normal state, Shimano and colleagues shook
one with a pulse of light. Shimano says it is similar to how the
real Higgs boson is created with energetic particle collisions.
They first created the superconducting Higgs last year, and have
now shown that, mathematically speaking, it behaves almost exactly
like the particle physics Higgs.
Noting the similarities between the two systems could help in
studying the real Higgs boson, Shimano says. One can really do the
experiments ina table-top manner, which would definitely reveal new
physics and hopefully provide some useful feedbacks to particle
physics. Michael Slezak
aA hole at the back (left) where the cerebellum should be
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13 September 2014 | NewScientist | 11
IF YOURE facing surgery this may well be your worst nightmare:
waking up while under the knife without medical staff
realising.
The biggest-ever study of this phenomenon is shedding light on
what such an experience feels like and is causing debate about how
best to prevent it.
For one year, starting in 2012, an anaesthetist at every
hospital in the UK and Ireland recorded whenever a patient later
told a staff member that they had been awake during surgery. They
investigated 300 cases by
interviewing the patient and doctors involved.
One of the most striking findings, says lead author Jaideep
Pandit of Oxford University Hospitals, was that pain was not
generally the worst part of the experience it was paralysis. For
some operations, paralysing drugs are given to relax muscles and
stop unconscious reflex movements. Pain was something they
understood, but very few of us have experienced what its like to be
paralysed, says Pandit. They thought they had been buried
alive.
I thought I was about to die, says Sandra, who regained
consciousness but was unable to move during a dental operation when
she was 12 years old. It felt as though nothing would ever work
again as though the anaesthetist had removed everything apart from
my soul.
The audit, carried out by the Royal College of Anaesthetists and
the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland,
found that most episodes of awareness were brief and
happened before or after the surgery took place. But waking
still caused distress in 51 per cent of cases (bit.ly/1pKRJcn). As
well as paralysis, people reported sensations of pain and
choking.
The audit found a much lower incidence of waking up than
previous studies 1 case per 19,000 general anaesthetics. Smaller
studies had suggested the rate could be as high as 1 in 500.
The latest study only recorded volunteered reports, but older
studies questioned everyone who underwent surgery. This proactive
questioning could overestimate the problem by picking up moments of
awareness that patients would not have reported unasked, says
Pandit.
But John Andrzejowski, an anaesthetist at the Royal Hallamshire
Hospital in Sheffield, thinks the latest audit probably missed many
non-trivial cases. The true figure is probably somewhere in the
middle, he says.
The audit confirmed that waking when paralysing agents were
used, such as during abdominal, heart and brain surgery, was more
likely to be reported, because they stop patients from alerting
medical staff to their plight. The audit team are urging
anaesthetists to use a low-tech device called a nerve stimulator to
enable them to give the minimum dose. A lower dose should be enough
to stop spontaneous movements yet still allow the patient to move
if they became conscious enough to feel pain, says Pandit.
Sometimes complete paralysis is essential to avoid severing a
nerve, points out Andrzejowski, who advocates using monitors that
record brain activity through scalp electrodes. But Pandit argues
that these give no clear signal of consciousness and are hard to
interpret. Clare Wilson
Paralysis, not pain, panics waking surgery patients
TIM
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Sleep well, hopefully
For daily news stories, visit newscientist.com/news
It felt as though the anaesthetist had removed everything apart
from mysoul
GlaxoSmithKline Prize Lecture given by Dr Nicholas Lydon FRS
Tuesday 23rd September 2014, 6.30pm
The Royal Society 6 9 Carlton House Terrace, London, SW1Y
5AG
Free admission doors open at 6pm
For more information visit royalsociety.org/events
Targeting the human kinome: cancer drug discovery
-
12 | NewScientist | 13 September 2014
THIS WEEK
Jacob Aron
DARK energy, the mysterious force thought to be responsible for
the fact the universes expansion is accelerating, might come from a
series of exotic fields. This notion, which has its origins in
string theory, could explain why it was only after galaxies formed
that the rate of expansion began to increase.
Dark energy could simply be a property of space-time, called the
cosmological constant, which appears as a term added into the
equations of general relativity. But, the trouble is that to make
the equations balance, the constant should be 120 orders of
magnitude larger than observations of the universe suggested it
actually is.
This gigantic discrepancy is a major headache for cosmologists,
so some have turned to more complex explanations. One invokes a
field called quintessence that supposedly fills the universe and
provides the energy necessary for expansion. Crucially, this field
changes strength over time, which would explain why cosmic
expansion hasnt always been accelerating.
But it leaves another problem: why did acceleration switch on
precisely when it did? One explanation is that if it hadnt, we
wouldnt be here to see it. But counting up the other equally
probable options makes our universe just one of 10120
possibilities, a fine-tuning that physicists find equally
unsatisfactory.
Now Marc Kamionkowski of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore,
Maryland, and his
colleagues say they have an explanation that solves both
problems, thanks to something called the string axiverse. String
theory, an overarching term for theories with more than three
dimensions, suggests there could be hundreds of so-called axion
fields that permeate the universe. In the early universe these
fields wouldnt have an effect, but one by one, they would turn on,
giving rise to particles of different masses.
Kamionkowski says each field has a chance of becoming
quintessence and accelerating cosmic growth, but the chance any
particular field has decreases with the total number of fields. All
the fields exist at all times,
but in the beginning they are frozen, just sitting on the bench.
It is a bit like rolling a series of dice if you roll a six, it is
unlikely to be the first six to occur if many other dice have been
rolled already.
The team calculated that it would have to be the 44th axion
field to turn on that became quintessence. The odds of this
happening are 1 in 500, they say (arxiv.org/abs/1409.0549). In
other words, our universe was still unlikely, but much less so than
in a scenario without axions.
The other fields could become ordinary and dark matter, thus
explaining everything in the universe, says Kamionkowski although
the team is still working out the details. Were going to keep busy
with this for a little while. Telescopes looking for changes in the
energy density of space could provide hints that dark energy is
indeed from the string axiverse, he adds.
John March-Russell of the University of Oxford, who helped
conceive the string axiverse, agrees it could explain dark energy,
but doesnt quite solve the fine-tuning problem. Kamionkowski admits
the model rests on assumptions that are just one of many possible
choices, but thinks that the arguments for different assumptions
are mostly philosophical. Its turtles all the way down!
String fields speed cosmic growth
SUPE
RST
OCK
After fish pick the carcass clean, bone-eating zombie worms
feast on blood oozing from the remains
Not quite one universe in a million
A FOSSIL marine reptile, marked by the critters that gnawed its
remains, may reveal how corpse eaters changed during the dinosaur
era.
When modern whales die and fall to the ocean floor, their
corpses sustain teeming ecosystems for decades. But before whales
evolved, reptiles such as the dolphin-like ichthyosaurs ruled the
oceans. Now it seems a 3-metre
Fossil reptile reveals Jurassic corpse eaters
ichthyosaur from 157 million years ago supported a similar
community.
This is the first time anybody has described the ecological
succession inthe Mesozoic equivalent of a whale fall in detail,
says Richard Twitchett of the Natural History Museum in London, who
led the study.
Modern whale falls go through three stages. First, scavengers
like fish pick the carcass clean of flesh. Then snails and
bone-eating zombie worms feast on blood and fluid oozing from the
remains. Last, when only the skeleton is left, microbes eat the
bone lipids, animals like tube worms live off
them, and the zombie worms eat on.Twitchett and his
colleagues
examined tiny fossils on and inside anichthyosaurs bones to find
out what happened after it died. They found bite marks and grooves
left by scavengers on the bones. They also found many molluscs
similar to those from the second, slime-eater phase.
But there was no sign of that final stage. Instead, microbes in
the fatty
skeleton supported a different set ofanimals, including sea
urchins and oysters (Nature Communications,
DOI:10.1038/ncomms5789).
In 2008, Andrzej Kaim of the Institute of Palaeobiology in
Warsaw, Poland, found a modern final phase in a fossil from later
in the dinosaur era (Acta Palaeontologica Polonica,
doi.org/bmz82c). The community may have changed by then, says
Twitchett.
We cant know that, says Steffen Kiel of the University of
Gttingen in Germany, as the ichthyosaur died in shallow water, but
modern whale falls are deeper. Shaoni Bhattacharya
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14 | NewScientist | 13 September 2014
Penny Sarchet
IT GETS you up in the morning and powers you through the day.
Now coffee aficionados have been given a new tool in their quest
for the ideal cup the coffee genome.
Scientists have sequenced the genome of robusta coffee (Coffea
canephora), uncovering many genes involved in making caffeine and
aromas (Science, doi.org/vh5).
Armed with this knowledge, growers and blenders could make
higher quality, tastier varieties of coffee, and help protect the
plants from climate change and disease.
Its like somebody turned on the lights, says Tim Schilling,
executive director of World Coffee Research, a collaboration formed
by the coffee industry and based at Texas A&M University,
College Station. He says coffee lovers could taste the fruits of
these labours in around five years. Traditional methods for
breeding new varieties can take 12 years or more to reach
farmers.
The first item on the agenda is protecting the coffee crop.
Climate change is a big problem for the farmers. Coffea arabica,
closely related to robusta, makes up most of the worlds crop but
only grows within a certain temperature range. As warming kicks in,
arabica farming is being pushed up the mountains, and the total
area suitable for it is shrinking.
We have seen the average temperature increase, says Alejandro
Martinez, who owns a coffee farm in El Salvador. Ideally, [the
genome] will accelerate the development of varieties that can
[cope with] the dramatic impact of climate change on the
crop.
Coffee is also threatened by diseases like coffee rust fungus.
Coffee breeders should be able to use the genome to quickly breed
resistance into the coffee crop.
Then there is the caffeine level. For years scientists have been
searching for a decaffeinated coffee that tastes as good as
high-caffeine varieties, and the genome could help make one.
The sequencing team found a set of genes probably involved in
making caffeine. The expression of these genes could be tweaked to
alter the caffeine content of the coffee, says team leader Philippe
Lashermes of the Institute of Research for Development,
Montpellier, France.
The genome will speed up research, says Paulo Mazzafera at the
University of Campinas in So Paulo, Brazil. He studies proteins
called transcription factors that regulate caffeine production by
switching other genes on or off.
This coffee genome will give us more information on [how] the
transcription factor genes we have selected work, he says.
We could also make better-tasting coffee, says Christopher
Hendon of the University of Bath, UK, who studies coffee as a
hobby.
When you buy ordinary coffee on the high street, it is usually a
mix of arabica for flavour, and
robusta, which doesnt taste as good but gives the high-caffeine
kick customers have come to expect. Hendon suggests boosting the
caffeine content of the robusta bean. You could substitute less
robusta into the same blend, and get the same amount of caffeine,
says Hendon. Non-speciality coffee could then include more arabica
and taste better, without losing its punch.
Hendon says the robusta genome could also help make new flavours
of speciality coffee. For instance, around 5 per cent of a coffee
bean is chlorogenic acid, which doesnt taste very nice. So he
proposes getting rid of it.
That would be a very powerful tool, says Hendon. The resulting
coffee would be incredibly sweet and very floral, because the acid
would probably be converted into substances like sugar and citric
acid. That would be cool!
The genome could unlock new flavours in coffee, says speciality
coffee roaster James Hoffmann of Square Mile Coffee Roasters in
London. He says it also offers the opportunity to improve coffee
yields and pest resistance without compromising quality.
Tweak the genes for better beans
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The coffee genome could unlock new flavours and improve yields
and pest resistance Chase the taste
THIS WEEK
RIGHT IONS HELP YOU SAVOUR THE FLAVOURThe coffee genome might
help create new flavours, but its not just genes that dictate
taste. I have tasted coffees that come from the same varietal but
taste different depending on where they are grown, says coffee
farmer Alejandro Martinez in El Salvador.
Another key determinant of flavour is how the bean is roasted.
Speciality roaster James Hoffmann of Square Mile Coffee Roasters in
London collects data on bean moisture content, roast temperature
and the colour of ground coffee, and tracks their effects on the
flavour. The aim is to improve quality and also increase
consistency, he says.
This is being taken a step further
by Morten Mnchow of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. He
is trying to determine the effects of roast temperature and time on
the flavour of speciality coffees. Im trying to map out the
parameter space of speciality coffee, he says.
The water you use is also key, says Christopher Hendon of the
University of Bath, UK. He spends his weekends studying coffee with
the 2014 UK barista champion Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood. This year
they found that the relative levels of various ions in the water
affects the flavour. Calcium and magnesium ions bring out the
flavour of coffee, while bicarbonate kills it (Journal of
Agricultural and Food Chemistry, doi.org/vhq).
-
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The Scientic Guide To A Better You, a compilation
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-
16 | NewScientist | 13 September 2014
IT MAY be possible to treat the symptoms of autism spectrum
disorder (ASD) in very young infants, finds a small pilot
study.
Sally Rogers and Sally Ozonoff at the University of California,
Davis, taught parents of seven infants aged 6 to 15 months with ASD
symptoms how to interact through play, bathing and diaper-changing
to overcome developmental delays. These were
based on positive-reinforcement strategies effective at reducing
symptoms in older children.
By 18 months of age, the developmental rate of six of the
infants in the programme had started to accelerate and by the time
they were 3 years old, their development was in the normal range,
says Rogers. In contrast, four infants who qualified for the study
but whose
parents chose not to participate continued to show a worsening
of ASD symptoms.
Rogers speculates that the reason for such a dramatic change is
that the programme intervenes when infants brains are most plastic,
as babies are establishing social skills. She cautions that a
large, randomised trial is needed to prove that the intervention
works (Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, DOI:
10.1007/s10803-014-2202-y).
ALE
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Crafty trout use eels as accomplices to catch prey
TO COOPERATE or not, that is the question, and trout know the
answer. Coral trout have joined the exclusive club of species,
including humans and chimps, that can decide whether to work with
animals of another species on a task.
Coral trout (Plectropomus leopardus) are fast so easily catch
prey in open water, but work with moray eels to catch fish on
Australias Great Barrier Reef. The eels ferret out prey hidden in
reef crevices that trout cannot enter.
Alex Vail of the University of Cambridge and his team wanted to
find out if the trout intentionally cooperated with the eels, and
if they chose the most helpful ones.
So they built a fake reef, complete with artificial moray eels
that they could control (pictured, above). The trout only solicited
help from the eels by shimmying and flicking their tails when the
prey was hidden.
The trout were also choosy about which eels they worked with.
They were given a choice of two eels, one ofwhich would dislodge
prey while the other unhelpfully swam away. They quickly learned to
choose the reliable eel (Current Biology, DOI:
10.1016/j.cub.2014.07.033).
Chimps also learn to choose the most reliable partners,
according to a 2006 study by Alicia Melis at the University of
Warwick, UK (Science, doi.org/b8qnjt). The trout chose equally
well, but Melis says that doesnt mean they are as clever. The trout
were performing a natural behaviour, while the chimps had to learn
something new.
Early autism intervention shows promise
Feel the gravity to tell which way is up
MOONWALKING astronauts often lost their balance, but they werent
clumsy it was gravitys fault. It turns out that the moons gravity
is not enough to help them distinguish up from down.
Laurence Harris of York University in Toronto, Canada, and his
colleagues spun volunteers on a giant rotating arm to simulate
different strength gravitational fields. As the volunteers spun,
they saw images of a landscape or the letter p, which they read as
a p or a d, depending on which way they felt was up.
The study shows that humans need to feel at least 15 per cent of
the gravitational force on Earth to figure out which way is up
(PLoS One, doi.org/vhw). The moons gravity is 17 per cent of
Earths, but it is also a strange environment; low gravity and
unusual scenery explain why astronauts fell down even though they
didnt report feeling out of sorts.
Intense rays raise aircrew cancer risk
AIRLINE pilots and cabin crew are at increased risk of melanoma
skin cancer, probably due to the sunlight streaming through
aircraft windows.
Martina Sanlorenzo at the University of California, San
Francisco, compiled data from 19 studies examining aircrews risk of
developing skin cancer. Both pilots and cabin crew had twice the
risk of the general public.
A separate study found that aircrew are no more likely to take
sunny holidays, sunbathe too much or use sunbeds. This leaves
exposure in the air as the likely cause. Typical plane windows
admit only tiny amounts of UVB sunlight, but some admit over half
of the UVA that hits them (JAMA Dermatology, doi.org/vhp).
IN BRIEF
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13 September 2014 | NewScientist | 17
Alien tectonics on Jupiters icy moon
JUPITERS moon Europa sports a chilly version of plate tectonics.
Sections of its icy shell slide beneath each other in a similar way
to Earths continents and ocean floors which could provide nutrients
to any life that might live under the ice.
Europas global ocean is encased in an icy shell, 20 to 30
kilometres thick. Ice appears to form in areas called growth zones,
but since the moon itself isnt growing, no one knew where this new
ice went.
To find out, Simon Kattenhorn atthe University of Idaho in
Moscow studied images taken by the Galileo spacecraft. In the same
way that geologists match up Earths geological features to map past
mega-continents, he shifted ice around to match up Europas
truncated lines and ridges.
Once done, he found a piece roughly the size of Massachusetts
was missing. The best explanation is that it was forced under the
icy crust, in a subsumption zone similar to Earths subduction zones
(Nature Geoscience, doi.org/vh4).
This could be good news for any life under the ice: such
movements would deliver organic molecules onthe surface to oceans
that areotherwise completely sealed off. This could make Europa an
inside-out twin of Earth, where tectonics helps harbour life inside
the crust, instead of on its surface.
Largest dino yet makes T. rex look tiny
THEY just keep getting bigger. The latest dinosaur to be
discovered was 26 metres long and around seven times as heavy as
Tyrannosaurus rex. Named Dreadnoughtus schrani, it is the largest
known land animal whose size can be reliably calculated.
The 77-million-year-old fossil was found in Argentina in 2005.
While other huge sauropods are known from handfuls of bones, almost
half of its skeleton has been recovered.
This meant Kenneth Lacovara of Drexel University in Philadelphia
and his team could estimate the beasts weight precisely. At 59.3
tonnes, it
dwarfed the 42.8-tonne Elaltitan lilloi, the next-largest dino
(Scientific Reports, doi.org/vhr). By comparison, Brachiosaurus and
Diplodocus are minnows, at just 34and 15 tonnes.
The bones also show where muscles attached, so we can figure out
how they moved, says Lacovara.
Dreadnoughtus may be able to help us understand the upper size
limits to life on land, says Paul Barrett at the Natural History
Museum in London.
In life Dreadnoughtus may have been even larger than the fossil,
as it was still growing when it died.
IS IT a mushroom? Is it a jellyfish? No, its Dendrogramma, a new
animal so bizarre in appearance that it has defied attempts to
place it in the vast animal kingdom.
The two mushroom-shaped species of Dendrogramma were dragged up
from the seabed off south-east Australia in 1986 by Jean Just of
the Natural History Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen, and his
colleagues. They have only now been studied.
They belong somewhere in the lowest branches of the animal
evolutionary tree, perhaps related
to jellyfish or another primitive group called the comb jellies.
But unlike jellyfish, Dendrogramma lacks stinging tentacles, and
unlike comb jellies it is missing a comb of hairs.
According to Just, they most closely resemble the Ediacarans, a
group of enigmatic organisms that most biologists think disappeared
half a billion years ago, before the rise of animals (PLoS One,
doi.org/vht).
Their internal system shows a branching pattern similar to some
of the Ediacaran fossils, says Just.
Others say the similarities with Ediacarans may be superficial.
Dendrogramma has a relatively simple shape and so any similarities
with the external shape of Ediacaran taxa could well be
coincidental, says Guy Narbonne at Queens University in Kingston,
Ontario, Canada, who studies Ediacaran fossils.
DNA analysis might help to settle the matter, but will require
new specimens. The chemicals used to preserve the animals have
rendered their DNA unsuitable for study.
Weird creatures may be relics from dawn of animal life
Archerfish spit turbo water jets
ARCHERFISH are the sharpshooters of the animal kingdom. They
spit jets of water into the air to fell flying insects with
startling accuracy. Now it seems they fine-tune their jets to pack
an extra punch.
The water jets made by archerfish can bring down prey up to 2
metres above the surface of the water they live in even small
lizards perched on foliage.
Stefan Schuster of the University of Bayreuth in Germany and his
colleagues trained nine banded archerfish (Toxotes jaculatrix) to
spit at their prey in view of a video camera.
They found that the back of the water jet catches up with the
front just before it hits the unfortunate prey, ensuring that the
force is concentrated into one hard whack (Current Biology,
doi.org/vhv). The fish do this by changing the shape of their mouth
as they expel the water.
The archerfish must be accurately gauging their preys distance
from the water to ensure their jet coalesces at just the right
height, says Schuster. If the jet became focused too early, it
would probably fall apart in mid-air before hitting the prey.
NA
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For new stories every day, visit newscientist.com/news
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13 September 2014 | NewScientist | 19
For more technology stories, visit
newscientist.com/technologyTECHNOLOGY
TOD
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IGEL
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Phone in your feelings An experiment using phones to track the
lives of university students has had some remarkable results, finds
Paul Marks
EARLIER this year, two students at Dartmouth College in New
Hampshire who were due to be failed for skipping lectures and not
completing assignments were spared the academic axe.
Why the leniency? According to an automated analysis of their
smartphone data, both had stress and health-related issues they
hadnt told their professors about. So instead of Fs and a terms
suspension, they were given a chance to complete the coursework
over the summer and have now returned to campus.
The students have Andrew Campbell, a computer scientist at
Dartmouth, and his colleagues to thank. The students, and 46
others, were enrolled in an experiment to see if data gathered from
their phones could be used to guess their state of mind.
Campbells team set out to discover why, out of a group of
students arriving at university with similar qualifications, some
excel while others miss lots of classes or even drop out
entirely.
The researchers suspected that factors like the amount of sleep
students get, their sociability, mood, workload and stress levels
all played a role. So they built an app, called StudentLife, that
monitors readings from smartphone sensors, and then recruited
volunteers to use it over a 10-week term.
The app recorded almost every aspect of life that it was
possible to measure, including physical activity levels, frequency
and duration of conversations, and GPS location. The camera even
watched for when the lights went out each night.
By crunching this data, the app could infer each students levels
of happiness, depression, loneliness and stress. Thats possible
because flourishing students, as the team calls them, are often
with other people and have longer conversations, while depressed
students interact less
with others and have disrupted, or excessive, sleep. Loneliness
is marked in part by mainly indoor activity, the team says, and the
combination of disturbed sleep and short conversations is a
predictor of stress.
The researchers compared these mental states with each
students performance, including grades for assignments and their
grade-point average for the term.
We found for the first time that passive and automatic sensor
data, obtained from phones without any action by the user,
significantly correlates student depression level, stress and
loneliness with academic performance over the term, Campbell says.
It also let them see how behaviour like gym usage and sleep times
changed when students were faced with assignments or exams.
The results showed that students generally started the term in
chipper moods, with most having lots of conversations, healthy
sleep levels and busy activity patterns. As the term went on,
workload increased, stress shot up and sleep, chat and physical
activity all dropped off. Daily interviews with volunteers
confirmed that the automated analyses were accurate. Campbell will
present the teams results at UbiComp in Seattle this week.
He believes the results are good evidence that phones will be
able to provide continuous mental health assessment much better
than occasional questionnaires filled out when someone feeling
depressed visits a doctor. And the app could work for people from
all walks of life.
But accessing data on someones every move will be controversial,
even if it saves them their university place or job. Privacy is the
big issue here, says Cecilia Mascolo, who studies mobile sensing at
the University of Cambridge. You need to constrain this to a very
specific application that will benefit people, and with the user
always in control of their data. Still, she says, with proper
protections in place, stress or depression could not only be
detected, but also mitigated using information derived from phone
sensors.
People wont be given a prescription, she says. They will be
given an app.
The app could infer each students levels of happiness,
depression, loneliness and stress
Spot the ones needing help
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20 | NewScientist | 13 September 2014
TECHNOLOGY
EMO
TIEN
T
Dont worry, be GlassyCan Google Glass put us in better touch
with our emotions?
Hal Hodson
AS SOON as its on my head, Google Glass picks up my pulse. Late
for a meeting, Id had to scramble up to the third floor of the MIT
Media Lab for this demo, and my racing heart shows it. I huff and
puff while Javier Hernandez, the projects leader, explains how it
works. As he talks, my heartbeat settles down before my eyes: 79
beats per minute, 73, 69.
Hernandez has taught Glass to measure vital signs like pulse and
respiration using just the headsets built-in gyroscope,
accelerometer and camera. They pick up the subtle head motion
caused by the beating of the heart, and tease out the rise and fall
of breaths from other movements.
Together with contextual data captured by Glass, Hernandezs
algorithms aim to give the wearer a window into their emotional
state. Its just one aspect of a new
system, called SenseGlass, that is designed to make us more
aware of our mental well-being, and ultimately control it
better.
The work represents a leap forward in the field of affective
computing, which seeks to build technologies that measure, respond
to and influence our emotions. Rosalind Picard, who works with
Hernandez, says Google Glass could be a powerful tool for making
computers more emotionally attuned. Its always been a challenge to
have a computer understand something about your stress but not make
it worse in the moment, she says. Its been hard to get it right
because we havent been able to monitor it in real time in a
comfortable way until now. Whats really groundbreaking is that my
ordinary eyeglasses could have that capability.
Powerful as it is to see your heart rate floating before you
in
a head-up display, biological data alone is not sufficient to
infer emotion context is also vital. For that, the researchers use
Glasss camera to record what the wearer is seeing. The researchers
can analyse the visual data using apps they are developing, such as
Smile Catcher, built by Niaja Farve, also at MIT, which counts the
number of smiles flashed in the wearers direction each day. Such
visual, social clues are combined with the wearers biological
information.
Other apps exist that attempt to use Google Glass to discern
emotions. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute in Erlangen,
Germany, have just released an app called Shore, which identifies
the emotions being expressed on the faces of people around you,
Its a challenge to have acomputer understand your stress but not
make itworse in the moment
She spies a happy chappy
while the start-up firm Emotient of San Diego, California, wants
to use similar technology to let retailers measure your
feelings.
SenseGlass is different, says Hernandez, in that the teams goal
is to help users take an active role in modulating their own
emotions. Say you want to avoid depression, he says. Low variation
in heart rate in response to events that should make people excited
or nervous has been associated with depression, so a user might
benefit from looking back on the systems recordings. Its about
helping you to reflect on your daily life in a meaningful way,
Hernandez says.
Jim Rehg of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, who
has worked on the SenseGlass project, says those who have trouble
recognising or expressing their emotions, such as people with
autism, might benefit by being able to use the devices measurements
to communicate how they are feeling to others. Tech like this might
be used to let a care provider better understand what is going on
with the person theyre caring for, he says.
Rehg co-authored a paper on BioGlass, the aspect of SenseGlass
that monitors pulse and breathing. He will present the work at the
MobiHealth conference in Athens, Greece, in November.
The current version of the system has limitations. The sensors
cant pick up on pulse or breathing rate while the wearer is running
or dancing, for instance, as such large movements drown out subtle
motions. But the team say later versions should overcome this
problem.
What theyre putting together has the potential to address all
the challenges that come with real-world emotional monitoring, says
Julien Penders, who directs the wearable healthcare programme at
Imec, a medical company in San Francisco. In a single platform they
managed to get context and physiological data, and not only to
sense but also to deliver feedback. Thats very unique.
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13 September 2014 | NewScientist | 21
For more technology stories, visit
newscientist.com/technology
ROB
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ONE PER CENT
Soft-bodied robot is hard to killBurn it, freeze it, run it over
this robot just keeps squirming. Created by Michael Tolley of
Harvard University and his team, the air-filled robot has no rigid
skeleton. In experiments, the robot survived a snowstorm with
temperatures reaching -9 C, withstood flames for 20 seconds,
resisted acids and had its limbs driven over by a car. Its ability
to handle extreme conditions could come in handy on search and
rescue missions, says Tolley, where soft bodies are useful for
their ability to squeeze into tights spaces.
3%The Netflix Tax to be imposed on audiovisual content broadcast
over the internet to people in Buenos Aires, Argentina
Fabric circuits pave way for wearablesMost wearable tech isnt
washable but a team at the Institute of Textiles and Clothing in
Hong Kong, China, has hit on a stretchy fabric formulation that can
withstand multiple washes. Xiao-Ming Tao and colleagues have
created a fabric circuit board, in which filaments of elastic yarn
are woven with polyurethane-coated copper fibres. Tests show the
material can be stretched by 20 per cent about a million times
before the fibres start to fail, and it can be washed as
normal.
Phone snap spots jaundice in babiesParents wondering if their
newborn is developing jaundice could soon use their phone to find
out. Lilian de Greef and Mayank Goel at the University of
Washington in Seattle have developed an app called Bilicam that
seeks out the telltale yellow skin discolouration. An eight-colour
calibration card isplaced in the frame to calibrate the camera, and
parents take a snap. The app then tells users to phone a doctor if
something looks wrong.
SAB
INE
VIE
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/PLA
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Singapore sting
TIME to flex our muscles against mussels. Since they first
arrived inNorth America in 1988, zebra musselshave made themselves
at home. The small molluscs, which attach themselves to boats and
clog underwater pipes, cost the US billions of dollars in pipe
cleaning and repair, lost hydroelectric power, damaged boat hulls
and other headaches.
In a bid to stem the tide of invasive aquatic species like
these, a team atthe University of Notre Dame in Indiana have
designed software to identify hubs in the global shipping network
that have outsized roles in spreading interlopers. All told,
invasive species are estimated to cost the US $120billion a
year.
The paths of ships, their ballast discharge, and ecological and
environmental factors all influence the spread of species, says
Nitesh Chawla, a leader of the project. By analysing all of these
factors across hundreds of ports worldwide, the team has shown
which places are the biggest spreaders of species and thus which
would be best to target.
Singapore alone contributes to 26per cent of total species flow
among the 818 ports in the Pacific, says Chawla.
Asking every port to implement strict control measures, like
testing and treating ballast water, could drag
down productivity but focusing on just those places most likely
to spread invaders would have a large effect, say the researchers.
By assuming species-control policies were implemented on the top
20per cent ofthe most connected ports, we showed that it would be
at least twice as difficult for species to propagate, says
Chawla.
Whats more, says the team, container ships are more likely to
transport invasive species than passenger carriers or barges.
That
means that in some areas, only large, bulk carriers need to be
subject to the strictest inspection andprevention measures, and
other ships can pass unhindered.
Kelly Pennington, who studies invasive species at the Minnesota
Department of Natural Resources, says the work could inform global
policies, and be adapted to the regional or state level as
well.
The team presented a paper ontheir work last month at the
Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining in New York City.
Lakshmi Sandhana
Pinpoint key ports to stop aquatic invaders
Singapore contributes to 26per cent of total species flow among
the 818 ports in the Pacific
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22 | NewScientist | 13 September 2014
For more technology stories, visit
newscientist.com/technologyTECHNOLOGY
The robots dilemmaEthics dont come easy to automatons, as Aviva
Rutkin discovers
CAN we teach a robot to be good? Fascinated by the idea,
roboticist Alan Winfield of Bristol Robotics Laboratory in the UK
built an ethical trap for a robot and was stunned by the
machinesresponse.
In an experiment, Winfield and his colleagues programmed a robot
to prevent other automatons acting as proxies for humans from
falling into ahole. This is a simplified version of IsaacAsimovs
fictional First Law of Robotics a robot must not allow a human
being to come to harm.
At first, the robot was successful inits task. As a human proxy
moved towards the hole, the robot rushed in to push it out of the
path of danger. But when the team added a second human proxy
rolling toward the hole atthe same time, the robot was forced to
choose. Sometimes, it managed to save one human while letting the
other perish; a few times it even managed to save both. But in 14
out of 33 trials, the robot wasted so much time fretting over its
decision that both humans fell into the hole. The work was
presented on 2 September at theTowards Autonomous Robotic Systems
meeting in Birmingham, UK.
Winfield describes his robot as an
ethical zombiethat has no choice but to behave as it does.
Though it may save others according to a programmed code of
conduct, it doesnt understand the reasoning behind its actions.
Winfield admits he once thought it was not possible for a robot to
make ethical choices for itself. Today, he says, my answer is: I
have no idea.
As robots integrate further into oureveryday lives, this
question will need to be answered. A self-driving car, for example,
may one day have to
weigh the safety of its passengers against the risk of harming
other motorists orpedestrians. It may be very difficult to program
robots with rules for suchencounters.
But robots designed for military combat may offer the beginning
of asolution. Ronald Arkin, a computer scientist at Georgia
Institute of Technology in Atlanta, has built a setof algorithms
for military robots dubbed an ethical governor which is meant to
help them make smart
decisions on the battlefield. He has already tested it in
simulated combat, showing that drones with such programming can
choose not to shoot, or try to minimise casualties during a battle
near an area protected from combat according to the rules of war,
like a school or hospital.
Arkin says that designing military robots to act more ethically
may be low-hanging fruit, as these rules are well known. The laws
of war have been thought about for thousands of years and are
encoded in treaties. Unlike human fighters, who can be swayed by
emotion and break these rules, automatons would not.
When were talking about ethics, allof this is largely about
robots that are developed to function in pretty prescribed spaces,
says Wendell Wallach, author of Moral Machines: Teaching robots
right from wrong. Still, he says, experiments like Winfields hold
promise in laying the foundations on which more complex ethical
behaviour can be built. If we can get them to function well in
environments when we dont know exactly all the circumstances theyll
encounter, thats going to open up vastnew applications for their
use.
A self-driving car may have to weigh the safety of its
passengers against that of a pedestrian or motorist
VIN
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TOUCH first, ask questions later. Thats the motto a robotic
deep-sea explorer lives by as it examines the depths by touch.
Shaped like a three-fingered hand, the robot could be used to fix
problems at deep-sea oil and gas wells.
Underwater visibility is impaired by impurities or sediments in
the water, says Achint Aggarwal at theGerman Research Center for
Artificial Intelligence in Bremen. In such conditions, it is very
difficult to find or manipulate objects.
To cut through the murk, Aggarwal and his team created a robot
hand that could be attached to an undersea vehicle. Built-in
sensors track changes in pressure, texture and movement as the hand
explores an object. Software uses the sensor readings to create a
digital map of the object and make an educated guess about what it
might be.
The team tested the hand at a pressure equivalent to 6
kilometres under water. It probed several objects, including a mug,
chess piece and toy shark and was right about 90 per cent of the
time (Journal of Field Robotics, doi.org/vh9).
Theyve developed a technology thats basically pressure-proof,
says Dennis Schweers of Nuytco Research, which develops underwater
exploration equipment in Canada. Im very impressed. Aviva
Rutkin
INSIGHT Ethical machines Robotic hand to feel for deep-sea
discoveries
A robot may not injure a human
DAV
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24 | NewScientist |24 | NewScientist | 13 September 2014
APERTURE
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25 13 September 2014 | NewScientist | 25
In the midnight hourREADY to explore the dark side of life?
Nocturnal animals have been around for hundreds of millions of
years, and today they make up around half of all mammal species,
but because most of us are active during the day we rarely
encounter these night dwellers.
Artist and photographer Traer Scott has bridged that gap,
capturing images of 42 animals that become active at night.
Inspiration came from a childrens book belonging to her daughter in
which a boy takes the moon for a walk at night. There were
illustrations of moths and bats and it occurred to me that no one
has done a collection of photos exploring the whole family, so to
speak, of nocturnal animals, she says.
Her subjects range from cockroaches to big catsby way of rodents
like this North American kangaroo rat (left) , primates including
the small-eared galago (below left) and larger carnivorous species
like the North American river otter.
All of the animals featured live in captivity some in wildlife
rehabilitation centres, others in zoos. Scott photographs them in
the dark conditions the animals are most at home in. I have a
wonderful little black box I use to photograph smaller animals, she
says. The animals go inside and theyre immediately put back into
darkness, which makes them more at ease.
Scotts book, Nocturne: Creatures of the night, is published by
Princeton Architectural Press. Colin Barras
Photographer Traer Scott traerscott.com
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26 | NewScientist | 13 September 2014
Scotlands science futureWould Scottish science benefit from
going it alone? Not a doubt, says Stephen J. Watson. Not a chance,
argues Andrew Miller
OPINION
Stephen J. Watson
ON 18 September, the people of Scotland have a precious chance
to vote for independence. There are many reasons to vote yes: I
believe the health of Scottish science is one of them.
For now, Scotlands science and technology funding is delivered
primarily by UK national departments. But according to 2011
figures, Scotland receives about 17 per cent less of such UK
expenditure than its share of the UK population would warrant.
Furthermore, Scotlands gross expenditure on R&D is just 1.3 per
cent of its GDP, less than the UKs 1.7 per cent and woefully
below
the EU average of about 2 per cent.This comes against a
backdrop
of cuts in the UK science budget. According to the Campaign for
Science & Engineering, by 2016 the annual budget will have been
eroded by 1.1 billion since 2010, about 20 per cent of the total.
This erosion is not consistent with high-quality, curiosity-driven
research that drives economic success. An independent Scotland
would have the ability to provide a fresh approach.
Scotland has an enviable scientific history, and Scottish
science is still very strong. An independent Scotland will be
better placed economically to further support it. In an analysis of
Scotlands potential, the
Financial Times concluded Scotland would be one of the worlds
top 20 richest countries. Credit-ratings agency Standard &
Poors calculates that Scotland would have a higher GDP per capita
than Germany and the UK.
Independence will permit Scotland to further advance its
existing strengths, such as in biomedical sciences. It will also
open up opportunities in sustainability science to support a blue
economy based on the 421,000 square kilometres of sea around
Scotland, which contain incredible fish stocks, oil and gas
reserves and vast renewable-energy potential.
Voting yes to independence would provide a constitutional blank
slate on which science can be written into the heart of government.
Furthermore, there is good evidence emerging through the grassroots
yes movement that the creative skills of the Scots would be
unleashed by self-determination.
Reaching out to those who harbour some anxieties about the
effect on research, Michael Atiyah, former president of both the UK
Royal Society and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, wrote in The
Times in July: with mutual goodwill there will be solutions to a
host of technical problems.
I urge those who care about the future of Scottish science to
follow Atiyahs lead and say: I intend to vote yes to independence
for Scotland.
Stephen J. Watson is a mathematician at the University of
Glasgow and chair of Academics for Yes
Andrew Miller
AS PART of the UK, Scotland is a global leader in research. This
success is based on substantial UK funding and unhindered
collaboration within the most efficient research system in the
world. As active and influential members of the UK research
community, scientists in Scotland enjoy an enviably fertile and
productive environment. Separation would break this up and create
barriers to collaboration and quality-enhancing competition.
The environment we currently share produces 14 per cent of the
worlds most highly cited papers. The intense competition and
easy
flow of researchers among leading UK universities and
laboratories drives up standards, while the UKs global reach allows
us to maintain facilities anywhere from Antarctica to West
Africa.
Scotlands crucial contribution to the worlds sixth-biggest
economy allows us to build major facilities such as the Diamond
Light Source synchrotron near Oxford and the UK Astronomy
Technology Centre in Edinburgh, while playing a leading role in
international collaborations such as CERN and the European Space
Agency.
Talented and creative Scots are influential in UK research,
benefiting both the UK and
There is good evidence that the creative skills of the Scots
would be unleashed by self-determination
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13 September 2014 | NewScientist | 27
ONE MINUTE INTERVIEW
For more opinion articles, visit newscientist.com/opinion
Scotland. Separation would harm this synergy. It would be crazy
to pull out of this community in which resources and personnel are
shared cooperatively. Of course small countries can succeed, but
the full-spectrum of UK capabilities would be lost.
The yes campaign makes some incredible claims that research
would somehow be improved by negotiating to keep what we already
enjoy. The legal and practical realities mean that a yes vote is a
vote to walk away from the UK research councils. In addition, major
UK science charities such as the Wellcome Trust and the Association
of Medical Research Charities have concerns that medical research
would be particularly at risk.
The Scottish National Party asserts that somehow everything will
continue, even though no precedent exists for such a cross-border
system. The experts and the evidence are making it apparent that
this is wishful thinking. Concerns have been expressed by Nobel
laureate Paul Nurse, 16 leading medical researchers in Scotland,
nine former principals of Scottish universities and a former chief
medical officer of Scotland.
Uncosted promises have been made and researchers assured that
funding will not fall despite there being no clarity on what
currency an independent Scotland would adopt. How clinical trials
could work if split across multiple jurisdictions, ethical bodies
and populations has also not been addressed.
To settle for less than being a global leader in science is to
sell Scotland short. Scottish research is thriving as part of the
UK, and its future is brightest as part of it. For these reasons I
will be saying no thanks to this ill-judged proposal for
separation.
Andrew Miller is a former principal of the University of
Stirling and a member of Academics Together, part of the Better
Together campaign JU
STIN
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N R
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Lawless labs no moreResearch misconduct degrades trust in
scientists and causes real-world harm. It should be a crime, argues
Richard Smith
PROFILERichard Smith edited the BMJ from 1991 to 2004. He is a
founding member of the Committee on Publication Ethics, a former
trustee of the UK Research Integrity Office and author of The
Trouble with Medical Journals (CRC Press, 2006)
Why should research