THE REIiL III1I1TIIR

What happened wh we uploaded a life en

CONTENTS

Vo lume 206 No 2763

NEWS

3 EDITORIAL The futu re of hurna n identity in a digitalworld

4 UPFRONT Dengue hits Florida. C.hameleon neutrino spotted. Interplanetary science, student-style

6 THIS WEEK

D ista nt gas hints at cha ngi ng constants. DNA logic gates could rna ke injectable com puters

Is the Mi Iky Woy blowing bu bbles? Stem cells seek and destroy brei n tu mou rs. Shape-sh ifti ng isla nds defy d imate change

14 IN BRIEF What's the shortest year possible for a planet? Snai 15 on speed

17 TECHNOLOGY

Glove- based computing. Generati ng light from sound. I rnpossi ble ga rnes

OPINION

22 Animal appreciation Too many an imal studies a re bad Iy designed and reported. High ti me for biomedicine to sort itself out, says Simon Festi ng 23 One minute with ... Heston Blumenthal The

science- mad chef on maki ng hospital meals fu n 24 LETTERS M uslca I sustena nee. Asphalt guppies 26 Reali ives, virtual worlds Sci-fi a uthor and "technology activist" Cory Doctorow explains how ourworld is becorri ng ever more vi rtual

FEATURES

28 The real avatar (see right)

32 High flyers Moths and butterfl ies live fo r mere weeks, so how do they complete long migrations? 35 Soccer with altitude (see rig ht)

38 Deeper impact The idea that geology is what ha ppens beneath ourfeet has suffered a

blow - from space

REGULARS 24 ENIGMA

42 BOOKS&ARTS

Review The invention of ag rirulture has

a lot to answer for, says Henry Harpend ing 43 Ga lIery Spiny lobsters and fa ntastical fish 44 Reviews How words colourycurwcrld

The carbon footprint of a text message 56 FEEDBACK

57 THE LAST WORD 46 JOBS & CAREERS

35

Shadow immune system A new Iy discovered "i mmune switch" has a role in asthma - and cancer

COVER STORY The real I avatar

What happened whenwe uploaded a life

Colter imag e Alberto Seveso

Soccer

with altitude

The World Cup willbeagame

of two heights

Coming next week Whafs wrong with the sun? Something mysterious is happening to our star

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5 June 2010 I NewScienti st 11

Official fuel consumption figures in m pg (1/100km) for Ford S- MAX Titaniu m: urban 25,0 - 39, 2 (11,3 -7,2), extra urban 44,1- 57,7 (6.4 - 4,9), combined 34,5-49,6 (S,2-5.7), Official C02 emission 152-1S9g/km, Model shown features optional bl-xsnon headlights and optional Glass Panorama Roof at extra cost.

That's why the new Ford S- MAX comes with a Glass Panorama Roof and Fold Flat Seats, Giving you room, with a view.

New FordS-MAX

Feel the difference

www.ford-smax.co.uk

EDITORIAL

The avatar revolution

What it means to be human may alter when your digital self takes on a life of its own

WHEN it was unveiled in June 2000, the first draft of the human genome marked a new stage in our unders tanding of who we are. Ten years later and our view of human identity may be changing again. Thanks to the plethora of personal information about each of us on the internet, we may soon have a digital twin.

Like it or not, mos tofus already have a digital identity of one form or other. This may be jus t a photo or, like a Facebook profile, it might be packed with personal details. For many, our digital self has become a handy

tool to communicate, network, blog, to buy and sell or to play games online- a useful extension to the real world. But as we leave increasing amounts of personal data behind on the net, the online world could give birth to a digital persona.

The idea would be to capture an individual's personality by uploading personal material and memories and then fuse all this with information harvested online, creating a truly lifelike avatar. Although this lies very much in the future, one of our reporters has taken the first steps down this path (see page 28).

Some may feel that a virtual self is an invasion of our privacy, at least judging by the avalanche of complaints that fell on Facebook when it recently changed its privacy settings

On NewScientist.com

VODCAS T New Scientist TV:

D. June round-up In this month's ed ition, see how smell gets up a

sha rks nose, ill usions that occu rwhen we look at am biguous scenes, and how science cou Id help soccer stars bring home the World Cup

to reflect how - or so it thought - more people want to share more information.

However, such avatars aren't likely to present a new kind of challenge to security, if anything it will be variation on the same old data protection issues.

More interesting is the degree to which people's online character reflects their offline persona. An avatar built on information about you gathered from across the web might evolve in a completely different way to one that you might make yourself.

Take your avatar's "memories" of an event such as a party: these will depend not just on what you upload, but also on what your avatar

"Your avatar could become a more universal you than the you yourself are willing to reveal"

collects from other party-goers, through images or stories on social networking or photo-sharing sites.

These alternative perspectives might provide a more objective picture of who you are - your avatar could become a more universal you than the you yourself are willing to reveal.

For now, avatar technology remains primitive. But the agricultural revolution

saw a vas t expansion of what human beings could accomplish together and the industrial revolution saw power shift from rural nobility to urban business. The digital identity revolution in its turn could transform how people think abou t themselves, their life,

and their neighbours. The rise of the avatar could change our ideas about what it means to be human .•

TECH Giant a irshi p to carry D science back to the 1930s t-Green Technologies' blimp, due m launch in the next few months, ha rks back to the g lory days of the Zeppelin, though ms on Iy a qua rter of the size. The airship'sfirst payload will be a sOil rnoistu re experiment:watch ourvideo of the bl im p being inflated

BlOME D A spoonful of GIV3727 helps the med icine go dOV'l'n

A bitter-blocking chemicli could take the aftertaste out of artifiC'ial sweeteners and make unpleasanttasting a ntibiotics easier to swa II ow

INNOVATION Beatingthe biogas bogey Methane-capture technology could have a dramatic impact on global warming. BUT developing

such tech nologies won't be easy

for how the ancient Chinese treatment mightwork

Tread carefully in immunity's shadows

IF EVER there was a telling illustration of the power of the immune system, it came in 2006. Six men in a trial of an experimental drug made by the company TeGenero became critically ill after suffering a catas trophic over-stimulation of the immune system. The 'l-cells, the "master regulators" of the body's immune system, had turned against it.

N ow it seems we may have a" shadow" immune system ruled by B cells, usually portrayed as foot soldiers that do the bidding of'Tvcells, Tinkering with this as pect of the immune system (page 6) could yield new ways of treating autoimmune diseases and cancer. Bu t, exciting as this is, let's not forget the TeGenero story. We must unders tand shadow immunity much better before we can even think of tweaking it in people .•

A g.ame of two heights

WHEN England and the US face each other for their opening World eu p match on 12 June, expect to hear English commentators refer yet again to Diego Maradona's infamous "hand of God" goal, which contributed to England's defeat by Argentina in 1986. It turns out that Argentina had another advantage that year: they played every game at altitude while their rivals all had to switch (see page 35). In South Africa it will be different, as whoever wins will have played games at sea level and at altitude. The potential for divine intervention remains unchanged .•

using an air· breathing scramjet engine, The craft smashed tne record set by NASfo:s X· 43 venicle, Watch the video

ZOOLOGGER Velvet worm spews 'sticky g lass' on prey Sma II insects be warned: £uperiparoides rowe/Ii is on the hunt, and it nas a unique method of immobilising you

BIOMED How does acupunctu re work? It stimulates the release of natu ral pain ki lIers, resea rchers claim, pnoviding a physiological mechanism

SPACE Ai rcraft smashes D record for longest scra mjet fl ig ht A sleek airCldft called the

X- 51A WaveRider has set the record for the longest hypersonic fl ight

For breaking news, video and onl ine debate, visitnewscientist.com

5June 20101 NewScientist 13

UPFRONT

Lost in space

mE first interplanetary spacecraft to be designed and built by university students has fallen ominously silent.

The microwave-oven-sized cube called UNITEC-1 began its voyage towards Venus on 21 May, hitching a ride on the rocket that launched the half-tonne Akatsuki Venus orbiter, built by Japan's space agency. Radio dishes in Japan picked up signals from UNITEC-1, but for reasons that are not yet dear it fell silent a few hours after launch and has not been heard from since.

The UNITEC-1 project, which is being led by University of Tokyo professor Shinichi N akasuka, is designed mainly to test computer

"For reasons that are not clear UNITEC·l feU sllent just after launch and has

n at bee n heard from since"

chi ps' resilience to the harsh radiation and temperatures of space. The craft is carrying six competing chips designed at different Japanese universi ties,

41 NewScientist 1 5 June 2010

to see which one will last longes t. Also on board are a radiation detector and a small camera.

The lengthening silence has

the mission team worried that

the spacecraft has broken down. "But we are still working to receive the signal," says team member Naomi Kurahara.

The incident evokes unfortunate memories ofthe UK's Beagle 2 Mars lander, another attempt

to build an interplanetary probe without the help of government s pace agencies. Beagle 2 went silent on the day it was supposed to land in 2003-

Dengue fever strikes US

DENGUE fever has re-entered the US via the Florida Keys after an absence of 65years.

The mosquito-borne virus has been identified in 28 people from Key West by the US Centers for Disease Control. The CDC announced the findings last week in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

"We don't know for sure that this hasn't happened before without

be i n g n oti ce d," say s Ch ristopher Gregory of the CDC's dengue branch in San] uan, Puerto Rico. "It could be the tip of the iceberg:'

Most cases reso Ive after flu -I i ke

S:J mptoms, says Gregory. He says the best precaution is to empty standing waterfrom potent.ial mosquito breed i ng g ro u nds, su ch as bird bat hs.

Gregory says the blame forthis

Climate fallout

AS UN climate negotiators meet in Bonn, Germany, this week to pick up the pieces oflast year's failed climate talks in Copenhagen, outgoing UN climate chiefYvo de Boer has said that the chances of

a deal this year were virtually nil. Speaking last week, he said the best that could be hoped for was a new international climate agreement in South Africa at the end of 2011.

Meanwhile, an inside account of the Copenhagen talks reveals that de Boer blamed the collapse of the talks on the Danish presidency of

dramatic rise could liewith increased travel between the US and South and Central America and the Caribbean· areas which have seen nearly

5 million cases of dengue feverfrom 2000 to 2007. Infected mosquitoes have also been moving northwards, thanks to global warming.

Dan Epstein of the Pan American Health Organization in Washington DC isworried thatthese two factors could lead to outbreaks of dengue haemorrhagic fever, the most severe and lethal form of the disease, which is present in South America.

Gregory is more concerned about the potential spread of chi kungunya, an incurable mosquito-borne virus, that causes crippling arthrltls-ll ke sympt.oms.lfs only a matter oftime before it reaches the US, he says.

the event, in particular on Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen. Against de Boer's advice, Rasmussen distributed a

draft compromise agreement before the talks began.

According to de Boer, the document was "unbalanced" and heavily biased in favour of western nations. "The Danish paper destroyed two years of effort in one fell swoop," de Boer wrote in a memo shortly after the conference ended. The memo was obtained by Danish journalist Per Meistrup, author of Kampen om klimaet, and can be seen online at biUy jaanbGg.

SOFIA's first photos

A plane with a built -In telescope has taken its first in- flight imagesbut the beleaguered project is no stranger to turbulence.

The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) is a Boeing 747 jet modified to carry a telescope built by the German space agency. Last week, SOFIA took its first images of the night sky, including a shotofjupiter that would be impossible to take with a telescope on the ground.

For daily news stories, visit www.NewScientistcom/news

Cruising at an altitude of

12 kilometres (39,000 feet), SOFIA flies above most of the atmos phere' s water vapour, allowing it to see roughly 80 per cent of the infrared light that hi ts orbiting space telescopes, which are harder to upgrade or repair. Shock absorbers ensure images are not spoiled by engine vibration and turbulence.

The SO FIA project has not

run smoothly. Since it began in the 1980s, the project has suffered technical hitches and delays. It even came close to cancellation due to budget overruns: it has cost about $1 billion to develop.

Chameleon particle

IT IS the chameleon of the subatomic world, but after many years of searching, direct evidence of a neutrino changing from one type into another has been found.

Neutrinos are thought to "oscillate" between three types: electron, tau and muon. But nobody has seen one after it has transformed.

For three years, a source at CERN in Switzerland has been firing muon neutrinos towards the OPERA experiment beneath the Gran Sasso mountain in Italy. N ow physicists at OPERA say they are 98 per cent confident that they have detected a tau neutrino in the beam. This confirms serious cracks in the standard model of particle physics, which says neutrinos

are massless. Neutrinos can

only oscillate if they have mass.

Previous evidence for oscillation was indirect. In 1998, physicists found that some muon and electron neutrinos produced in the atmosphere and the sun had disappeared en rou te to the SuperKamiokande detector in Japan. But other less likely explanations, such as decay, could not be ruled out. OPERA's Antonio Ereditato draws a parallel over such disa ppearances:

"It's like a murder. You have the murder scene, but now we have found the firs t part of the body."

Avoiding cancer

PREVENTION is the goal of most vaccines. Not so vaccines agains t cancer, which rally the immune system to fight an exts ting disease. That approach might change now that a protein has been found that stops mice developing breast cancer.

Vincent Tuohy of the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio and colleagues took a protein made by cancerous, breast cells, and injected it into mice engineered to develop breast cancer. This primed their immune systems to attack tumour cells and prevented cancer (Nature

Medicine, 001: 10.1038/nm.2161). As the protein is made by healthy lactating cells, too, sucha vaccine might one day prevent cancer in non-lactating women.

That would be a first. Prostate cancer vaccine Provenge extends

"A protein made by cancerous breast cells prevented cancer in engineered mice"

life but hasn't yet stopped cancer arising, while cervical cancer vaccines prime the immune system against a cancer-causing virus, not cancer itself.

BP's three-pronged oil attack

YET another attempt is underway

to control the flow of oil from the damaged DeePlNater Horizon oil well. As New Scientistwent to press, BP was taking a thres-pronqed approach to th e situati 0 n.

Lastweek's efforts to plug the leaking well head with mud failed overthe weekend. BP now hopes

to exploit the same pipes and equipment but in reverse, to carry oil to the surface. The company hopes to have this up and running in the next two weeks.

In addition, it is also seeking to place a cap on the well head. The well head istopped with a now infamous "blowout preventer" (BOP) that

is allowing oil to flow into the sea through a section of pipe that once

BPs latest plan

1. The 1;)llen ,urfdce pipe ls cut just above the blowout preventer (BOP) and remOlled

2.A cap is placed Oller the top of the BOP to carry oH and gas to the surface

FALLENptPE

led to the surface and now lies damaged on the seabed (see diagram). As NewSdenustwentto press, BP was preparing to saw this pipe off where it meets the BOP. This will clearthe way for a cap thatwill sit overthe BOP and channel escaping gas and oil through another pipe to

th e su rface.

Finally, BP is drilling two relief bores into the leaki ng well, which should channel some of the flow away. The resulting reduction in pressure atthe main outpouring should allow engineers to fit an additional BOP on top of the first to finally staunch the flow - an operation BP hopes to complete by early August. Despite previous setbacks, BP is confident itwill succeed.

3. The pipes formerly used to pump mud into the well are usad to carry oil and gas to the su rlace

4. Relief bore, are drilled into the leaKing well and a second flOP is placed Oller too first

60 SECONDS

UK's haste on drug ban Drug control procedures inthe UK came under fire this week after a toxicology report on two teenagers said to have died from mephedronecases instrumental in the imposition of an emergency ban on the drugshowed neither had actually taken it.

Quake alert

The US Pacific Northwest should brace itse If for a m aj or ea rthq ua ke. In a US Geological Survey report, Chris Goldfinger at Oregon State University surveyed undersea landslides to gauge how many quakes above magnitude 8 have struck in the pastlO,OOOyears. Theirfrequency suggests a 37 per cent chance that therewill be one within 50 years.

That I ig ht smells great Whdd confuse blue light with the aroma of rotting fruit? By adding a

I ig ht· sensitive p rote into ne u rons trigge re d by the sm e II, resea rc hers made fruit fly larvae do justthat, and the larvae crawled towards a bright blue light (Frontiersin Behavioral Neurosdence, 001: 10.33B91 fnbeh.2010.00027)

Drunken teen monkeys Bi nqa-drlnktnq monkeys are offering cluesto the toll that drinking takes on the teen brain. Adolescent rhesus macaques fed alcoholic drinks for an hour a day for 11 months had fewer stem cells intheir hippocampuses, the area responsible for memory and spatial awareness (Proceedings of the NationalAcademy of Sdences, 001: 10.1073/pnas.0912B10107).

Stormy weather

The north Atlantic will be unusually stormy this summer, according to the US government agency in charge of sea son al h u rri ca n e fo recasts. It predicts that 2010 could be among the most active years on record, with threeto seven major hu rricanes of category 3 to 5.ln 2005, the region was hit by seven major hurricanes, including Katrina. The Pacific is expected to be quieter than average.

5 June 2010 I NewScientist 15

THIS WEEK

Our immune system's shadow

An immune switch we didn't even know existed may playa role in cancer, diabetes and MS

Linda Geddes, Baltimore

DELIBERATE infection with a blood-sucking worm seems an odd way to treat multiple sclerosis {MS}. Yet more surprising is what this experiment may tell us about a" shadow" branch of our immune system. Completely unknown until recently, this is pointing to new ways of treating

a host of complex diseases.

A couple of recent studies suggest that parasitic infection dampens inflammation and reduces relapse rates in people with MS, in which the body's own cells are attacked by the immune system as if they were "foreign". So Cris Constantinescu at the University of Nottingham, UK, and his colleagues plan to place tiny hookworm larvae on the skin of 32 people with MS, allowing the worms to burrow down and infect the volunteers.

The team won't just be looking for a reduction in volunteers' symptoms though. They will also be watching to see if the parasites boost numbers of a set of newly discovered immune cells, known

as regulatory B cells {B regs}.

B regs are sending shockwaves through the immunology community. Until recently it was assumed that B cells' main role was to make antibodies at the behest ofT· cells. These mas ter regulators enhance or suppress an immune attack depending on the situation, as well as carrying out immune attacks in their own right {See diagram, right}. It was therefore thought that Tvcells are at fault when the body attacks itself in autoimmune diseases, such as MS, asthma, diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis - and when it fails to route out disease agents, such as cancer cells.

N ow it seems that Tvcells are not the immune system's only regulators. Experiments suggest that under some circumstances, B regs regulate'l-cells, providing a shadow role for B cells.

"Diseases we've traditionally thought to be mediated by Tvcells might actually be regulated by B cells," says Kevan Herold of Columbia University in New York. Boosting B regs might therefore provide new opportunities for

WATCH THE 'CLOCK' IN OUR IMMUNE CELLS

TH E d iscov e ry of a "s ha d CI'N" set of immune processes suggests new ways to fight disease. 50 does evidence that immune cells have circadian clocks, making them more active at certain times of the day.

The majority of asthma attacks

Carolina, and her colleagues turned to mast cells, which help drive allergies, asthma and anaphylaxis, a potentially fatal allergic response, by releasing chemicals that boost inflammation.

They found that five "clock genes", known to control the rhythmic

treating autoimmune diseases, while inhibiting B regs it could be a new way to treat cancer.

Animal studies are already suggesting that the approach might work in one type of asthma. In a study published in May, Padralc Fallon of Trinity College, Dublin, and his colleagues isolated B regs from the spleens of mice infected wi th the parasite Schistosoma mansoni. When they transferred the B cells into mice primed to develop asthma, this either reduced their symptoms or stopped them developing asthma in the first place {The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Imm unology, 001: lO.1016/j. jaci.201o.01.018} .

"These are major regulators ofthe immune system in allergic disease," Fallon concludes.

B regs seemed to work by releasing a chemical called IL·lO into the lungs, drawing in regulatory T· cells

{T regs}, which in turn inhibited immune attacks.

A circadian clock also seems to operate in macrophages - immune

ce lis that eng u If pathog ens and d riv e inflammation. Achim Kramer atthe Institute for Immunoimaging in Berlin, Germany, and his colleagues have shown that around B per cent of

occur at night or in the ear1y morning, switching of genes in non-immune mouse macrophage genes are under

while peoplewith rheumatoid cells, were also expressed in a rhythmic the control of this clock (Proceedings

a rthriti S, an i nf la mmato ry disease, report morejoint pain and stiffness in the early morning. To seewhether this is because immune cells are governed by circadian rhythms, Xiaojia Wang atthe Brody School of Medicine in Greenville, North

61 NewScientist 15 June 2010

pattern in mast cells taken from mice, aswas the receptor for a molecule key to activ at i ng mast cells in res ponse to allergens. The resultswere presented in May at a meeting oftheAmerican Association of Immunologists in Baltimore, Maryland.

althe National Acadel1Tr' a/Sciences, 001: 10.1073Jpnas.0906361106j.

If human immune cells have similar clocks, drugs against immune disorders could be given atthe times when their target is most available, a strategy known as chronotherapy.

In this section

• Injectable computers, page 9

• Shape-shifting islands, page10

• Milky way blows bubbles, page 12

IL-lO played a similar role in a subset of B regs, which Thomas Tedder at Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, North Carolina, calls BlO cells. His team found that transferring these cells into mice wi th a disease similar to multiple sclerosis reduced the seven ty of disease.

Tedder has also identified similar cells in humans. "We can stimulate them and we can isolate

them, but they're fairly rare," he says. He presented both findings in May at the annual American Association of Immunologists meeting in Baltimore, Maryland.

The race is now on to identify drugs that might boost B regs in people with autoimmune diseases or suppress them in people who have cancer.

One due that such an approach might work comes from studies of rituximab, which kills B cells. First prescribed for the treatment of B cell lymphoma, a type of cancer, the drug has also reduced symptoms in people

A whole new role for B cells?

A set of 8 cells may help to reg uleta = as weill as execute = attacks on cells

raecqn ised as'foreig n'

- Know n lmmunsprocass '~hodow' immune process

------..,

"The race is on to identify drugs that might boost regulatory B cells in people with autoimmune diseases"

•

with diabetes, MS and rheumatoid arthritis. Rituximab most likely knocked out all the B cells to start with, and then, for some reason only the B regs grew back, which helped su ppress au toimmunity, suggests Frances Lund of the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York (Nature Reviewslmmunology, DOl: 1O.lo38jnri2729).

In individuals with cancer, however, it might be desirable to suppress B regs. Preliminary evidence suggests that as well as keeping autoimmunity in check,

B regs also hel p dampen the immune sys tern's natural ability to recognise and destroy tumours.

Tedder's team has already created antibodies that can deplete BlO cells- but not other B cells- in mice, and says he has similar antibodies that may selectively deplete human BlO cells - although he hasn't yet tested them in people.

Arya Biragyn of the US National Ins titute of Aging, and his colleagues, also announced at the

•

Baltimore meeting that they have identified a separate set of B regs that cancer seems to recruit in order to avoid detection by the immune system. Destroying these cells might make let's hope you have deep pockets cancer immunotherapies work better.

"Even if you transiently wipe out B cells during immunotherapy, this should give you very potent anti -tumour responses against hidden tumour cells," Biragyn says.

Working out how parasitic worms trigger B reg activity might suggest additional ways to do

this - and to boos t B regs. Indeed, Fallon has identified several molecules released by parasitic worms that seem to trigger B regs.

Until such drugs are developed, parasites might be the best way to boost B regs. Severe hookworm infection can cause malnutrition, internal bleeding and anaemia, but in a mild and controlled infection, the dangers are minimal, says Constantinescu, though there may be some itchiness as the worms go through the skin .•

5 June 2010 1 NewScientist 17

Do nature's constants wobble?

Rachel Courtland

TIlE basic constants of nature aren't called constants for nothing. Physics is su pposed to work the same way across the universe and over all of time.

N ow measurements of the radio spectra of a distant gas cloud

hint that some fundamental quantities might not be fixed after all, raising the possibility that a radical rethink of the standard model of particle physics may one day be needed.

The evidence comes from observations of a dense gas cloud some 2.9 billion light years away which has a radio source, the active supermasstve black hole PKS 1413+135, right behind it. Hydroxyl radicals in the gas cloud absorb the galaxy's radio energy at certain wavelengths and emi t it again at different wavelengths. This results in so-called "conjugate" features in the radio spectrum of the gas, withadip

in Intensity corresponding to

sl NewScientist 1 5 June 2010

absorption and an accompanying s pike corresponding to emission.

The di p and spike have the same shape, which shows that they arise from the same gas. But Nissim Kanekar of the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics in Pune, India, and colleagues found that the ga p in frequency between the two was smaller than the properties of hydroxyl

radicals would lead us to expect.

The gap depends on three fundamental constants: the ratio of the mass of the proton to the mass of the electron, the ratio that measures a proton's response to

a magnetic field, and the finestructure constant, alpha, which governs the strength of the electromagnetic force. The discrepancy in the size ofthe

gap thus amounts to "tentative evidence" that one or more of these constants may once have been different in this region of space, Kanekar says.

The change in these constants,

THE NUCLEAR OPTION FOR CLOCKING CHANGE

Physical constants could be measured with unprecedented accuracy if atomic clocks go nuclear.

Atomic clocks traditionally rely

on the frequency atwhich electrons ma ke tra n s iti 0 n s betlllleen d i ffere nt energy states. Measurements of these frequencies have also been used to make ultra-precise determinations of the physical constants, showing that. any change in the fine-structure constant, alpha, which governs the strength of the electromagnetic interaction, is no

biggerthan one part in 1017 peryear.

Now Wade Rellergert of the University of California, LosAngeles, and colleagues say a clock that uses transitions between energy levels in the nuclei of thonum-229 atoms could potentially improve on that limit by a factor of 100 (Physical Review Letters, 001: 10.11031 PhysRevLett.104.200S02). Unlike other atomic nuclei. thorium-229 nuclei boast a transition that can be used to make a clock. This transition is more sensitive to any changes in

if genuine, is tiny. For example,

if a change in alpha were solely responsible for the discrepancy, the measurements suggest alpha would have been jus t 0.00031 per cent smaller 3 billion years ago than today (The Astrophysical Journal Letters, vo1716, p L23).

But even such a small effect would require "a new, more fundamental theory of particle physics" to explain it, says Michael Murphy of Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia.

Measurements by Murphy

and colleagues of visible light from distant quasars absorbed by intervening gas clouds have also hinted alpha was smaller in the past. Butit was never certain that the light measured all came from the same region. "That's a critical assumption," says Murphy.

"Radio measurements currently appear to be the most promising avenue for a secure detection of fine-s tructure constant evolution," says Jeffrey Newman ofthe University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

"I wouldn't call this more than a hint, though. It's the first application of a new technique."

The subtle discrepancy found by Kanekar's team might be caused by" contamination" from light from another patch of gas. Las t month, the team began using the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico to rule this out. •

the fundamental constants, so any shifts in its frequency could reveal changes in alpha or place more stringent limits on any change.

Team members are now working on growing crystals doped with atoms ofthorium-229. With these crystals theywill be able to make simultaneous measurements on 10 billion more thonum-229 nuclei than using other methods, which could help pi n down any deviations in the transition frequency over time, Rellergert says.

For daily news stories, visit www.NewScientistcom/news

DNA logic gates herald injectable computers

DNA·BASED logic gates that

could carry out calculations inside the body have been constructed for the first time. The work

brings the prospect of injectable biocomputers programmed

to target diseases as they arise.

"The biocom puter would sense biomarkers and immediately react by releasing counter- agents for the disease," says ItamarWiliner of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, who led the work.

The new logic gates are formed from short strands of DNA and their com plementary strands, which in conjunction with some simple molecular machinery mimic their electronic equivalent. Two strands act as the input:

each represents a 1 when present or a 0 when absent. The response to their presence or absence represents the output, which

can also be a 1 or o.

Take the "exclusive OR" or XOR logic gate. It produces an output when either of the two inputs is present but not when both are present or both are absent. To put the DNA version to the test, Willner and his team added molecules to both the complementary strands that caused them to fluoresce when each was present in isolation, representing a logical 1

as the output. But when both were present, the complementary strands combined and quenched the fluorescence, representing a 0 output (see diagram).

One ofDNA computing's advantages is that it allows calculations to be carried out in parallel, if different types of logic gates are represented by different ingredients. The team tested

this process by tossing the XOR ingredients into a test tube, along with those for two other gates, to produce the first few steps involved in binary addition and subtraction.

The team was also able to create logic gates that calculate in sequence. The trick here is to make

the output from the first gate a new DNA string that can be used as the input for a second gate and so on. Such "cascading gates" allow for more complex calculations: the entire set of steps required for addition and subtraction, for example, or to deliver a rnultl-s tep drug treatment.

Previous DNA,based computers tended to slow down at each step as the DNA strands were used only once, and so became depleted with time. One significant advance claimed by Willner and his team

is that their DNA strands reform after each step, allowing long sequences of calculations to be carried out easily for the first time.

Even a single logic gate could have useful medical applications, Willner says. His grou p built and tested a gate designed to reduce the activity of the blood-clotting

The logic of DNA computing

The in puts to an XDR log lc ga.te ara two cornp lamentary strands of DNA. If oneor

the other is present the gate fluorascas, indica.ting an output ofl. Ifboth are present they bind together preventing fluorescence, indicating an output of 0

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enzyme thrombin, which can lead to brain damage following a head injury. The gate acts as a switch that is triggered by the presence of thrombin. Part of the gate

cons is ts of a DNA strand connected to a molecule that binds to thrombin. If thrombin

is present, this molecule is

"A biocomputer in the bloodstream would control when and where medication is released"

released, otherwise it stays bound and inert. Such a smart drug could be injected into the bloods tream in advance and would only switch on when needed (Nature Nanotechnology, 001: 10.1038/ nneno.zoio.Ss).

Another problem with earlier DNA computers is that they use enzymes to mani pulate the DNA, and so function only in certain chemical environments that cannot easily be reproduced inside the body. Willner's team use DNA . like molecules to do this job.

"Being enzyme- free, it has potential in future diagnostic and medical applications," says Benny Gil of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. He is impressed with

the new gate system but recognises that it will take years of research and development to bring "smart drugs" to medicine. KatE McAlpine.

Early humans had taste for aquatic diet

A CACH E of tu rtlas, crocodiles and catfish butchered some 2 mi Ilion years ago has been uncovered

near the eastern banks of Lake Turkana in Kenya. The remains, which are some of the earl last evidence of meat-eating in our ancestors, s u g g est that 0 urea rly humans may have found it easierto get protein from aquatic animals than

to compete with other land hunters.

The fossils lie alongside hundreds of stone tools that were probably used to butcher the ani mals (Proceeding of the NationalA cademy of Sdences, 001: 10.1073/pnas.1003181107).

"It's a massive amount of material:' says David Braun, an archaeologist

at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, whose team began excavating the remains in 2004.

There are no hominin bones atthe site, making it d ifficu Itto determine who made the tools and ate the meat. The cachewas found below a layer

of volcanic ash from an eruption

r:;!!T!::"!T1!mU!! """ITn

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1. 9 million years ago, but before a 2-million-year-old geomagnetic shift. That's too early for Homo erectus. Brau n says smaller, stockier hom inins such as Homo habilis or even late australopithecines were responsible.

The site rs pre se nts ou r a nc esto rs' transition from herbivory to omnivory, Brau n says. He suggests smaller

early humans turned to hunting in water as they would have had trouble

"Aquatic animals may have provided nourishment that allowed our ancestors to boost their brain size"

competing with carnivores on land.

Aquatic animals may have also provided nourishmentthat allowed our ancestors to boosttheir brain size. Fish and reptiles are rich in fats and other nutrients that are needed to bui Id up brai n matter.

"The discovery expa nds our understand ing of the prowess of the earliest toolmakers:' says Richard Potts at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC. But without evidence that early humans regu larly ate marine animals, we can't say thatthiswas what boosted ou r brain size. Ewen Callaway •

s June 2010 I NewScientist I 9

Pacific islands defy sea-level rise

Wendy Zukerman

AGAINST all the odds, a number of shape- shifting islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean are standing up to the effects of climate change.

For years, people have warned that the smallest nations on the planet- island states that barely rise out of the ocean - face being wiped off' the map by rising sea levels. Now the first analysis of the data broadly suggests the opposite: most have remained stable over the last 60 years, while some have even grown.

Paul Kench at the University

of Auckland in New Zealand and Arthur Webb at the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission in Fiji used historical aerial photos and high- resolution satellite images to study changes in the land surface of 27 Pacific islands over the last 60 years. During that time, local sea levels have risen by 120 millimetres, or 2 millimetres per year on average.

Despite this, Kench and Webb found that just four islands have

10 I NewScientist Is June 2010

diminished in size since the 1950s. The area of the remaining 23 has either stayed the same or grown {Global and Planetary Change, 001: lO.l016/j .gloplacha.zooxn.ooi).

Webb says the trend is explained by the islands' composition. Unlike the sandbars of the eastern US coast, low-lying Pacific islands are made of coral debris. This

is eroded from the reefs that typically circle the islands and

pushed up onto the islands

by Winds, waves and currents. Because the corals are alive, they provide a continuous supply of material. "Atolls are composed of once- living material," says Webb, "so you have a continual growth." Causeways and other structures linking islands can boost growth by trapping sediment that would otherwise get lost to the ocean.

All this means the islands respond to changing weather and climate. For instance, when

"It's been thoughtthat as the sea level goes up, islands will sit there and drown. But they won't"

GOOD NEWS, BUT THE WARNINGS STAND

At its highest point, Tuvalu stands just 4.5 met res out of th e Pa df c. It

is widely predicted to be one of the first islands to drown in the rising seas caused by global warming. Yet Arthur Webb and Paul Kench found that seven islands in one of its nine atolls have spread by more than

3 per cent on average since the 1950s. One island, Fu namanu, gained 0.44 he cta res, 0 r nea rly 30 pe r ce nt of its previous area.

the republic - Betio, Bairiki and Nanikai - increased by 30 per cent (36 hectares), 16.3 per cent

(5.8 hectares) and 12.5 per cent (0.8 he cta res), respa ct.ively.

Yetwarnings about rising sea levels must still be taken seriously. Earlierthis year, people living on the low-lying Carteret Islands, part of Papua New Guinea, had to relocate. Kenc h says a necdota I re ports that the islands have been submerged

The three major urbanised islands in

Similartrends were observed in are "incorrecf', saying that instead

the neighbouring Republic of Kiribati. erosion has changed the shape of

the islands, forcing people to move.

hurricane Bebe hit Tuvalu in 1972 it deposited 140 hectares of sedimentary debris onto the eastern reef, increasing the area of the main island by 10 per cent.

Kench says that while the

27 islands in his study are just a small portion of the thousands of low-lying Pacific islands, it shows that they are naturally resilient to rising sea levels. "It has been thought that as the sea level goes up, islands will sit there and drown," he says. "But they won't. The sea level will go up and the island will start res ponding."

John Hunter, an oceanographer at the University of Tasmania

in Australia, says the study is solid, and good news for those preparing evacuations. The shifting shape of the islands presents a challenge, however. Even on islands where the total land mass is stable or grows, one area may be eroded while another is being added to. It's not possible to simply move people living in highly urbanised areas to new land, says Naomi Biribo of the University ofWoliongong in New South Wales, Australia.

Webb and Kench warn that while the islands are coping for now, any acceleration in the rate of sea- level rise could overtake the sediment build up. Calculating how fas t sea levels will rise over the coming decades is uncertain science, and no one knows how fast the islands can grow.

Barry Brook, a climate scientist at the University of Adelaide in Aus tralla and a supporter of the 350 cam paign - which calls for the most stringent global emissions targets in the hope of saving lowlying states from sea-level risepoints out that sea- level rise is already accelerating. But, while he was initially surprised by the findings, he agrees with Webb and Kench's analysis. "It does suggest that islands have been able to adapt to sea- level rises," he says. And Biribo, who lives on the Pacific island of Kiribati, says:

"It gives me that sense that we can still live on this island." •

Stem cells to seek and destroy cancer

Linda Geddes

GENETICAllY modified stem cells are to be injected into the brains of cancer patients, where they will convert an inactive cancer drug into a potent and targeted tumour-killing agent.

Stem cells are strongly attracted towards cancer cells, so it is hoped that as well as homing in on the main tumour, they will also be drawn to secondary growths, or metastases. This will enable higher doses of drug to be delivered to cancer cells while minimising the risk of side effects in the rest of the body.

A team led by Karen Aboody at the City of Hope Beckman Research Institute in Duarte, California, used neural stem cells originally derived from human fetuses which had been genetically engineered to produce cytosine deaminase. This is an enzyme that converts a drug called 5' flu orocytosine (5' Fc) into an active chemotherapy drug, 5-fluorouracil (5- FU), bu t only

in the immediate vicinity of

the stem cell.

The team then injected the modified stem cells into the brains

of mice with glioma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. The animals were subsequently given 5-FC. Treated mice saw a

70 per cent reduction in tumour mass compared with untreated animals. "In effect, we're allowing a much higher dose of chemo to be localised to the tumour site," says Aboody, who presented the results in May at an international brain tumour conference in Travemiinde, Germany.

The US Food and Drug Administration has granted Aboody approval to carry out a safety trial of the therapy in up

to 20 patients with recurrent glioma, for whom life expectancy is just three to six months. The stem cells will be injected into the tumour cavity following surgery to reduce its mass, and then given four days to home in on any remaining cancer cells. Patients will then be treated with daily 5- FC for one week.

Tiny colonies of glioma cells often spread deep into healthy brain tissue, but Aboody hopes that the new treatment will be able to zero in on single tumour cells, meaning it could destroy

even the smallest metas tases.

Evan Snyder at the SanfordBurnham Medical Research Institute in La Jolla, California, who first proposed the use of stem cells to fight cancer, sugges ts the same cues that make a tumour invade normal tissue also make

a stem cell migrate to that site.

"I believe the same concept will work for metastatic cancers that

go outside the brain, and for other kinds of cancers," he says.

Unlike clinical trials that use neural stem cells to repair damage caused by stroke, the stem cells used by Aboody have not been seen to differentiate, and stop dividing after 48 hours. This should reduce concerns about the potential for stem cells to trigger cancers in their own right. •

Bubble trouble at the centre of the galaxy

IS THE Milky Way blowing giant bubbles? A pai r of gamma ray bubbles, shaped Ii ke an hourglass, seem to be spewing from the black hole we think lies at the centre of our galaxy. That is ac.cording to the latest maps from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Its large area telescope has been scanning the whole sky every three hours since June200B.

121 NewScientist 1 5 June 2010

The source of the bubbles is a mystery but it seems unl ikely that dark matter is responsible. Thiswas what Douglas Finkbei ner of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, first suspected when he looked at the mapswith his colleagues last year (arxiv.org/ absl0910.45B3).

But a new analysiswith more Fermi data suggests that the gam rna radiation traces out a pa ir of disti net bubbles that span some 65,000 light years from end to end - towering above the 2000-light-yea r-thlck disc of the galaxy. Such a well-defined

shape is inconsistentwith dark matter, which you would expect to be smoothly distributed and produce a diffuse glow, from gamma rays produced as dark matter particles meet and annihilate each other. "We are pretty su re the majority of emissions a re not from dark matt.er," says Finkbeiner's student Meng Suo

Instead, they think the bubbles may have been blown out by the ex plosion of short-lived, massive

"The bubbles may have formed when 100 suns' worth of stuff feU into our galaxy's giant black hole"

stars born in a burst of new star formation about 10 mi Ilion years ago. Altematively, the bubbles may have been forged 100,000 years ago by

hi g h- speed jets of matte r create d when roughly 100 suns' worth of materia I fell into the black hole at the centre of our ga laxy. The team presented its analysis last week at the American Astronomical Society meeti ng in Miami, Florida.

Fermi team members havealso found more gamma radiation than expected in the reg ion but say it's too soon to tell whether it forms an

hou rg lass shape orwhat its source may be. Rachel Courtland.

Canon

IN BRIEF

Snails could speed the path to recovery for meth addicts

in children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.

To probe the drug's effects, Sorg's team placed pond snails in two pools of low-oxygen water, one of which was laced with meth. In low-oxygen conditions snailswill surface and use their breathing tubes to access more oxygen. By poking the snails, Sorg's team trained them to associate using the tubes with an unpleasant experience, and so keep them shut. Only the snails on speed remembered their training the following morning, and it took longerforthe m to "u nlearn" the memory Uournal of Experimental Biology, 001: 10.12421jeb.042820).

Humans are obv iously more complicated, says Sorg, but"the snails still provide a model of how meth affects memory". The team's goal is to work out how to diminish specific memories, and so help addicts recover.

POND snails make unlikely speed freaks. But dosing the gastropods on methamphetamine is helping us understand hCMI certain "pathological memories" form in human addicts.

Meth users develop long-term memories of their highs, which is why the sight of places and people connected with a high can cause recovering addicts to

rei apse. "It's ha rd to get ri d of those me m ori e sin add lets," says Barbara Sorg at Washington State University in

Pu IIman. So potent is meth's effect on memory that, in low doses, the drug can be used as a "cognitive enhancer"

When a year lasts just a few hours

not hold the status of shortes t orbital period for long." says Dawson. If a planet could orbit our sun at a distance equivalent to the sun's radius withou t burning up, its year would be about 3 hours. Planets orbi ting more compact objects, such as white dwarfs, pulsars and black holes, might have even shorter years since they can get closer in. However, no confirmed planets have so far been found around white dwarfs or black holes.

HOW short can a planet's year be? That's the question raised by a planet orbiting its star in less than an Earth day.

The planet, named 55 Cancri e, was discovered years ago. It is

a" super- Earth" - a world with a mass several times that of Earthand orbits a star like our sun.

N ow Rebekah Dawson and Daniel Fabrycky at the HarvardSmithsonian Center for

Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, say gaps in the observational record meant the planet's orbital period was miscalculated. Their analysis shows that the planet's true year is 17 hours and 41 minutes. There may be a planet around the star SWEEPS 10 with an even shorteryear, but its existence

is unconfirmed.

"We expect that 55 Cancri e will

141 NewScientist 15 June 2010

RNA drug tackles Ebola infection

AN RNA -based drug has treated an infection of the deadly Ebola virus - the first drug to have been shown to do so in all recipients.

Ebola Zaire virus kills go per cent of the people it infects. There are experimental vaccines that are protective if given before people are exposed to the virus, but there has been no drug to help those who are already infected.

Now Thomas Geisbert of the Boston University School of Medicine and colleagues have designed a small interfering RNA molecule that sabotages three of the virus's vital genes. Four rhesus monkeys infected with the virus all survived after receiving the drug daily for seven days, starting 30 minutes after infection {The Lancet, vol 375, p 18g6}.

The drug could be used within five years, Geisbert says, but further experiments are needed to find out how soon after infection it must be given to be effective.

The positive side of volcanic ash

THE volcanic ash cloud that has shrouded much of Europe in recent weeks had a positive electrical charge - a fact aircraft could have used to keep flying.

On 19 April, Giles Harrison at the University of Reading in the UK and colleagues used detectors aboard a weather balloon to measure the charge in the ash cloud over Scotland. It reached

0.5 picocoulombs per cubic metre in areas where there were

50 particles of ash per cubic centimetre of air (Environmental Research Letters, DOl: 10.1088/1748- g326/s/2/024004). That's around 1/20th of the danger level set by the UK Civil AviationAuthority.

A similar detector on aircraft could alert pilots to dangerous ash levels, Harrison says.

For new stories every day, visit www.NewScientist.cominews

Exchange meat for sex? No thanks

PROSTITUTION might be the world's 01 d est p rofessi on, but it's not n ea r1y as an d e nt as ha s be e n suggested.

A widespread belief that male chimpanzees trade meat for sex turns out to be baseless, suggesting that sexual bartering among humans may be a relatively recent phenomenon.

"I kept finding references to 'meat for sex' all overthe place, saying this is what chimpanzees do:' says Ian Gilby, a primatologist

at Duke University in Durham,

North carolina. But when histeam examined observations from four chimpanzee communities in Uganda and Tanzania spanning 2B years, they found no evidence that

female fertility affected whether males hunted or not Uournal of Human Evolution, 001: 10.10161

jj hevoI.2010.02.006j.

Other evidence also questions the idea of meat forsex, Gilby says. Maleswith accessto meat were

no likelierto share itwith fertile females than with non-fertile females. Nor do they preferentially give meatto older females, who tend to be more likely to conceive. Sex ra re Iy occ u rs rig ht afte r meat-sharing, and males who share meat are no likel ier to have sex than maleswho don't share.

Instead, chimps are more likely to share meat because others "get in their face" and beg, Gilby says.

Ice age ended with a huge belch from the oceans

AT mE end of the last ice age, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels shot up by nearly 50 per cent. But where did the CO2 come from? This long-standing climatic mystery has now been solved.

Climate scientists have suspected ~ but never been able to prove - that the CO, was the result ofahuge belch of gas from the oceans. They predicted that the ice age had slowed ocean Circulation, trapping CO2 deep within it, and that warmer temperatures reversed this process.

Signs of stagnant CO2 -rich

Rebuild immunity to cure compulsion

BON E marrow trans plants have cured compulsive behaviour

in mice. Their OCD-like sym ptoms seem to be the result of a mutation in a gene never before linked to behaviour.

Hoxb8 is usually active in microglia - immune-system cells that clean up damaged neurons and attack pathogens in the brain. But mice wi thout HoxbB groom themselves until their hair falls out.

"It's startling behaviour," says Mario Capecchi at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, whose team made the discovery.

Capecchi's team also gave the mutant mice a bone marrow transplant, which stopped their compulsive grooming. Normal mice who received marrow from the Hoxb8 "knockouts" groomed themselves compulsively {Cell, 001: 1O.1016/j.cell.2010.03-05S}.

Preliminary experiments suggest that humans wi th trichotillomania, an obsessive compulsion to pull out their hair; also have mutations in Hoxb8.

If proved correct, drugs that modify the immune system may be effective at treating this and other psychiatric conditions that may be associated with mu tated microglia, says Capecchi.

water have now been discovered 3700 metres beneath the Southern Ocean's seabed, between Antarctica and South Africa.

Stewart Fallon of the Australian National University in Canberra and his colleagues collected samples from drill cores of the marine crust of tiny marine fossils called foraminifera. Different species of these lived

at the surface and the bottom

of the ocean. The chemical composition of their shells is dependent on the water they form in and how much CO2 it contains.

The team found that species offoraminifera living on the sea floor around the time

of the ice age contained more carbon than those that floated

at the surface (Science, 001: 10.1126/ science.118860 5). They also found this discrepancy disappeared around 19,000 years ago, which is also when the ice sheets began to melt.

The findings could help predict how ocean circulation will affect atmos pheric CO2 levels in future, says Will Howard ofthe U niversi ty of Tasmania, Aus tralia.

involved in creating pleasurable feelings - were expressed most strongly in their group of alcoholic smokers (Alcoholism: Clinical

and Experimental Research, 001: 10.1UlIj.1530-0277 .2010.01207 .x).

These genes play a role in rewiring the neurons in the nucleus accu mbens. That means people who both smoke and drink might get a greater reward, making it harder for them to quit, says Flatscher-Bader.

Knowing that the link between drinking and smoki ng may not be purely social cou Id lead to new ways to treat addiction.

Quit the bottle to quit the cigarettes

IF DRINKING and smoking seem in extrica bly lin ked, pe rha ps it's because in the brain's pleasure ce ntre they actu a Ily are.

Alcoholics often have a particularly hard time quitting cigarettes. TrauteFlatscher-Bader at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and colleagues wondered why this should be. So they did a post-mortem analysis of gene expression in the brains of smokers, alcoholics and those who had done both during their lives.

They found that a group of genes in the nucleus accumbens - an area

5 June 2010 1 NewScientist 115

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TECHNOLOGY

For daily technology stories, visit www.NewScientistcomltechnology

Laser detectors could nail TNT

LASER· LIKE sensors could sniff out hidden explosives.

Graham Turnbull, a physicist at the University of StAndrew's in Fife, UK, and colleagues have developed a device that uses a film of polyfluorene, a plastic

that emits laser light when bathed in photons. It also reacts with the vapours given offby explosives such as 1NT. This reduces the amount of coherent light the film produces, revealing the presence of the explosive.

The device can detect 1NHike molecules at concentrations of less than 10 parts per billion in

a matter of seconds. A blast of nitrogen gas is all that's needed to clean the film and reset the sensor (Advanced Functional Materials, DO I: 10.1002/ adfm.200g01g04). A device like this could be used

in a remotely controlled robot, Turnbull says.

200

seconds of flight at Mach 5 have been achieved by Boeing's X~51A scramjet. The previous scramjet record was 12 seconds

Entangled photons available on tap

no more than 10 nanometres across. When an So-megahertz alternating current passed through the quantum dot it trapped two negatively charged electrons and two positive "holes". On each cycle of the current, the electrons and holes combined to eject a pair of entangled photons.

We created a train of entangled photons" spat out as iffrom a gun", says Mark Stephenson of Toshiba. "And we did it wi th an electric current, which is easy

to manipulate."

Entangled photons have previously been made using

a crystal to split laser light into photon pairs, a technique which sometimes produces unwanted extra photons.

Tl-lf creation of an "entanglement gun" brings the pros pect of a light-based quantum computer a step closer. The ability of entangled photons to spin in two different senses will allow quantum computers to encode a a and a 1 simultaneously, allowing even a small quantum computer to outperform the fastest supercomputer for some tasks.

A team from Toshiba Research Europe in Cambridge, UK, and the University of Cambridge made the entanglement gun from a "quantum dot", formed by a patch ofindium arsenide semiconductor

"Robots wi II do great th i ngs fo r 0 U r eco nomy"

By giving away 11 of his company's multi- purpose robots to research institutes,

Scott Hassa n, founder of Willow Garage, hopes to spur the innovation needed to kick-start the rnassadoptlon of robots (cnet.com, 27 May)

5 June 2010 1 NewScientist 117

TECHNOLOGY

Thumbs up for gesturebased computing

The gloves are off - and also on - in the battle to bring intuitive hand-gesture computer control to the masses

Shanta Barley

FASHION crime it may be, but

a multicoloured dayglo glove could bring Minority Report- style computing to your home Pc.

Interest in so' called gesture' based computing has been stoked by the forthcoming launch of gaming systems from Microsoft and Sony that will track the movements of players' bodies

and replicate them on screen. But an off-the-shelf system that can follow delicate hand movements in three dimensions to manipulate virtual objects remains tantalisingly beyond reach.

The problem with systems such as Microsoft's Project Natal for the Xbox is that they do not focus on the detailed movement of hands, limiting the degree to which players can mani pulate virtual objects, says Javier Romero, a computer-vision researcher at

the Royal Ins titute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. Arm movements can be captured but more subtle pinches or twis ts of the wrists may be missed.

Until now, capturing detail required expensive motioncapture systems like those used for Hollywood's special-effects fests. These utilise markers placed around the body, or sensorstudded data gloves in which flexible sensors detect joint movements. "Really accurate gloves cost up to $20, 000 and are a little unwieldy to wear," says Robert Wang, a computer

sctentts t at the Massachusetts Institu te of Technology's Artificial Intelligence Lab.

181 NewScientist 15 June 2010

Wang has developed a system that could bring ges ture-based computing to the masses and it requires nothing more than a pair of multicoloured latex gloves, a webcam and a laptop (pictured).

The key to the system is the gloves, each of which is comprised of'zo patches of 10 different colours - the maximum number a typical webcam can effectively distinguish between. The patches are arranged to maintain the best possible separation of colours. For example, the fingerti ps and the palm, which would frequently collide in natural hand gestures, are coloured differently.

The upshot is that when a webcam is used to track a glovedad hand, the sys tern can identify each finger's location and distinguish between the front and the back of the hand. "It makes the computer's life easier," says Wang.

Once the system has calculated

"Once a bare hand is detected, it is a massive challenge to accurately identify its position"

the position of the hand, it searches a database containing 100,000 images of gloved hands in a variety of positions. "If you have more images than that it slows the com puter down, and

if you have fewer then you

don't provide an adequate representation of all the positions the hand can be in," Wang explains.

Once it finds a match it dis plays it on screen. The process is repeated several times per second, enabling the system

to recreate gestures in real time.

Wang presented some earlystage research at last year's SIGGRAPH meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana. "Back then it only worked in windowless rooms and took half an hour to calibrate," says Wang. Now it can be calibrated in 3 seconds, he says.

Wang has already shown that the sys tern can correctly replicate most of the letters of the American Sign Language alphabet, although those that require ra pid motion

(J and Z) or involve the thumb (E, M,

N, Sand T) have yet to be perfected.

The gloves are so cheap to

make - costing about a dollarthat they could bring gesturebased computing to a wider audience, says Douglas Lanman, an expert in human' computer interaction at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. Bu t if it's going to have truly widespread appeal, it will need to lose the gloves. "Wearing a glove is an inconvenience," he says. "Markerless motion-capture is where I think the field is moving, and where the larger commercial market will be."

Last month, at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Anchorage, Alaska, Romero

and his colleague Danica Kragic demonstrated how marker less motion-capture may be possible. Their system also uses a webcam and a database of hand positions to recreate an on-screen version, but attempts to pick out a bare

For daily technology stories, visit www.NewScientist.comltechnology

hand in a stream of video from

a webcam by detecting flesh colours. If you reach down and pick up a ball, say, the program will aim to find a matching image in its database of the positions the had adopts as it reaches down and picks up a spherical object.

Identifying a hand using skin colour is far more difficult than picking out a multicoloured glove.

"Ciesture- based computing requires nothing more than m u Itico lou redg loves, a webcam and a laptop"

Even once a hand is detected, it is a massive challenge to accurately identify its position ~ es pecially

if it is holding something, says Kragic. "The object blocks out parts of the hand, preventing the computer from knowing what the hidden bit is doing."

To tackle the problem, Romero and Kragic created a reference database containing images of

hands picking up 33 different objects, such as a ball or a cylinder. They then set up a webcam, which captured 10 frames per second, and tested their system's capabilities by filming people grasping a cup, a ball or a pair of pliers. The database had images

of a hand picking up a ball, but nothing for a cup or pliers. The system successfully created virtual representation of a hand grabbing a ball, and came as close as it could to the cup by displaying a hand grasping a cylinder. It came up empty with the pliers.

These are exciting results nonetheless, says Romero, because they show that the system can not only reconstruct the gestures of empty hands, but can also generalise when dealing wi th some unknown objects. The shape of the pliers, and the gras p used to pick them up were too different from anything in the database for the system to find a match, but by expanding the reference database it should be possible to overcome that, he says.

To make identification faster, Romero has incorporated an algorithm to rule out unlikely hand positions based on previous estimates of hand pose. For example, if the last hand position was a hand stretched out wi th splayed fingers, the algorithm rules out database images of hands that are clenched into

a fist. While this helps the system operate in real time, it creates problems of its own: if the hand moves very fast, it can indeed "jump" from being splayed

out to being clenched. In this situation, Romero's set-up struggles because that algorithm will rule out the correct pose.

Romero claims the system is already attracting interest from makers of prosthetics, who want to improve their unders tanding about how people grip objects.

It will also, of course, interest game makers, says Takaaki Shiratori of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University

in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania .•

INSIGHT

Social networks must heed the human element ... or there'll be hell to pay

WHATEVER made Facebook think it The human factor should .be key for

would be a good idea to have 50 privacy Facebook chief Mark zuckerberg

settings with more than 170 options?

According to Gus Hosein, policy chief with the pressure group Privacy Imernational, the blame lies with a failure to think clearly a bout how users would respond to the system as it grew. ''They were making that mess up as they went along," he says, "They didn't r!:lalise the nu man-computer interface (Hel) really matters,"

The complexity of those privacy settings, compounded by companyenforced changes that overrode some user privacy choices, led to a storm of criticism from Facebook members, The company has responded with a hasty rewrite of ns privacy controls,

Whether those changes will satisfy disgru ntled users remains to be seerl, but Hel shortcomings are not unique to Facebook, ",It's a problem for evelYone involved in onli ne

self- publishing," Anthony House, European policy manager at Google, told;m Index on Gensorship meeting in London last month,

Google made OJ maJor HD blunder in February when it glued the Buzz social network onto its Gmai I email service: users who did not opt out when a Buzz introduction screen appeared found that they had become Buzz members - and that

long- forgotten email contacts had become "friends",. "We got that wrong. and we learned tromn," says House,

'We do need more intuitive

hurna n-computerinteraction,"

To manage a conteptas nuanced as privacy requires a back-to-basics approach to usertntartaces, says Ann Blandford, an Hel researcher at University Gollege London, She was surprised to f·ind that a picture she had posted on Face'book ended up searchable in Google Images,

When Blandford investigated, she found that the mea ning of many privacy settings was obscuresomething that Hel specialists strive to avoid, Such specialists should be part of every design team from the ve IY Sid rt, 81;m dford s dY s,

Ideally mere should be a way

to preview your social site as if

you were a stranger, d friend, or a friend-of-a-friend - something aldn to an out- of" body experience at the desktop, Blandford says, "I want to login as someone else and look at my online profile - to see what I can see of myself,"

"That's a brilliant idea," says Hosein, ':And itwouldn't be too challenging to implement either," Paul Mark.s •

5 June 2010 1 NewScientist 119

TECHN.OLOGY

Sustainable power stations that sail the seven seas

A FLEET of sailing ships could harvest energy from ocean winds in waters that are too deep or remote for wind turbines, a scheme unveiled last month claims. The shl ps would turn wind energy into hydrogen which would be stored on board, to be unloaded later and used to generate electricity.

Max Platzer and N esrin Sarigul-Klijn at the University of California, Davis, presented their idea at an energy sustainability conference in Phoenix, Arizona, sponsored by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. "Our proposal makes ocean wind energy available for exploitation," Platzer says.

Because the oceans cover 70 per

cent of the globe, this" offers the opportunity to make a decisive contribu tion to the solution of the energy and climate crisis," Platzer adds.

The scheme envisages ships towing hydropower generators in which two Wing-like, oscillating underwater blades are driven

by the force of the water as they are dragged through it. This oscillating motion turns a crankshaft connected to a generator, and the electricity this produces is used to split seawater into hydrogen and oxygen.

Sailing shi ps can reach speeds of up to 25 knots (46 kilometres per hour). A shl p with 400 square metres of sail operating in a force

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7 wind could generate up to

100 kilowatts of electrical power, the pair calculate. Larger shi ps should be able to generate up to 1 megawatt, they say.

With enough ships, the energy needs of the entire planet could be met this way, Platzer says. He calculates that energy could be

converted from electricity to hydrogen and back with an efficiency of about 30 per cent.

Stephen Salter, an engineer at the University of Edinburgh, UK, who in the 1970S invented the "nodding duck" wave power device, says the idea looks sound. He len Knight.

And for my next trick, , , turning sound into light

A TECHNIQUE for converting sound directly into light could lead to more efficient ways of generating terahartz waves, radiation that can be used to detect ski n ca n cers eve n befo re they are visi ble on the surface.

Terahertz radiation occupiesthe reg ion between infrared and micl"OlAl aile frequencies on the electromagnetic spectrum. Its submillimetre-Iong waves can penetrate the skin to

ide ntify density d iffere n ces inti ssue ca u sed by na s ce nt ca ncers.

Now Mark Fromhold at the University of Nottingham, UK, and colleagues have developed a theoretical model which shows how blasting a tiny piece of semic.onductor material with

through the crystal, sweeping

the semiconduct.or's free electrons along. Butwhen the amplitude

of the waves rises above a certain

t h reshol d, the el ect rons i nste ad sta rt osci II ati n g a ro u nd the latti ee structure. These so-called Bloch oscillations are usually induced by applying a voltage across the crystal, but in this case are caused purely by

"Blasting a semiconductor with high-frequency sound could generate useful terahertz radlation"

sound. The oscillati ng electrons act as dipoles and emit photons at

high-frequency sound waves could terahertz frequencies. These could

generate such radiation. be used for medical imaging, says

The team modelled a sou nd with Fromhold in an upcoming edition of

a frequency of about 60 gigahertz Ptrjsico/ Review B.

hitti n g a cry sta I of a Ite rnati ng I ayers Appl i eati 0 ns like thi s a re po ss i b I e

of two semiconduct.ors - such as galli urn arsenide and aluminium galli urn arsenide. They say it results in compression waves that travel

Scientists Biologists Chemists Engineers

B usi ness Professi onal s

in principle, agrees Arkadii Krokhin atthe University of North Texas

in Denton. "The idea is completely new." Ani I Ananthaswamy •

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OPINION

Don't waste the animals

Too many animal studies are badly designed and reported, It's high time biomedicine cleaned up its act says Simon Festing

rnOSE of us who support the careful and well-regulated use of animals for scientific and medical advancement are well aware that it remains controversial. Animal experiments are essential for the development of new medicines, and for safety testing, but are vocally opposed by some.

So it is with growing concern that we read the latest in a string of scientific papers highlighting problems with the way animal research is conducted. The accusation is that animal experiments are too often poorly designed, conducted, reported and reviewed.

Not only does this give ammunition to the opposition, it allows some to claim that animal studies are a misleading guide to what might happen

in humans, and also that animals are suffering needlessly in useless experiments.

The use of animals is a privilege, and mus t always be undertaken responsibly. We must therefore face up to these crt ttctsms and assess what needs to be done.

One of the papers causing concern is an analysis of more than 1350 animal experiments on the treatment of stroke

(PLoS Biology, vol 8, p elOo0344). The authors used statistical tools to predict that a further

214 experiments had been conducted but the res ults never published ~ the so called" file drawer problem".

That is 1 in 7 studies that never see the light of day. The authors concluded that this publication bias has probably distorted the collective findings of the

221 NewScientist Is June 2010

published studies, as research usually remains unpublished because it failed to find any positive effect of a treatment.

Although the results cannot necessarily be applied across all animal research, it is nonetheless cause for concern. The danger is that humans may be put at risk because potential new medicines are moved into clinical trials prematurely.

Another paper reveals perhaps an even bigger problem. The

au thors chose 217 animal studies at random and analysed their quality in terms of experimental design, statistical analysis and reporting of res ults. Only 59 per cent of the studies stated the

objective ofthe study and the number and types of animals used. More than 80 per cent failed to say whether the researchers used randomisation or blinding ~ standard tools in much biomedical research (PLoS One, vol 4, p e7824).

There have been other papers suggesting that many animal studies are poorly designed, using too few animals to be statistically valid, for example.

One note of caution is that animal studies are highly diverse. Most are part of basic or applied

"The use of animals ill research is a privUege and must always be undertaken responsibly"

medical research, but animals are also used in pre-clinical safety testing, veterinary development, environmental studies and various types of fundamental research. It would be wrong to suggest that these different types of research should be designed and analysed the same way.

Even so, these various problems need to be tackled. Doing so will require a willingness to confront the issues and improve practices.

The first area that needs to be dealt with is publication bias.

The non-publication of negative results is a serious problem in many fields of research. Reducing it in animal research would bring clear benefits, not least ens uring a sound basis to move from animal studies into clinical trials.

The recognition of publication bias in clinical trials involving humans led to the introduction

of registration systems to keep track of all relevant trials. It is not inconceivable that we might move towards a similar registration system for animal studies. Initiatives are already under way in some fields of research, with stroke studies a notable example. Collaboration would need to be international, since the missing papers could come from anywhere.

Journals can help. One prominent publication, the British MedicalJournal, now welcomes studies wi th negative results as long as their research questions are important and relevant. Open-access online publishing also presents opportunities for wider access to the buried data.

Another area where weaknesses exls t and improvements are

(omment on these stories at www.NewScientistcomlopinion

needed is the way animal studies are written up in journals ~

failure to report the number

of animals used, for example.

The UK National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (N C3Rs) has been working with scientists, journal editors and research funders to develop guidelines. These will set out the basic information that should be induded, based on successful guidelines for reporting human dinical research developed by an international grou p of biomedical researchers and journal editors called CONSORT.

The design and statistical analysis of individual experiments also need to be improved. While there are plenty of well- condu cted studies out there, ideally every research project- whether using animals or not ~ should be welldesigned and the results analysed using the most appropriate statistical method.

Punders have a role to play here by checking experimental design. Regulatory authorities could also require the panels who evaluate proposed projects to indude sufficient statistical expertise. This meas ure has been induded in the newly revised European Union regulations on animal experiments.

Many of the initiatives in these areas come from researchers themselves. Far from accepting the status quo, they strive to achieve better scientific results. With effort and education,

these difficult iss ues should

be eminently solvable.

Animal research remains

a small but vital part of the biomedical research endeavour. Let's make sure weget it right so that the greatest good is achieved for the least harm to animals .•

One minute with ...

Heston Blumenthal

The pioneering chef on using his scientific approach to cooking to transform hospital food and science festivals

How did you get into the science of cooki ng? I rEad food science writer Hamid McGee's book

On Food an d Cooking: The sdence and lore of

the kifchenin 1985. At the time I was teachi ng myself classical French cooking and Harold's comment about why browning meat did not seal in the juices m<lde comp~en! sense, even though "sealing" was traditiona'i kitchen wisdom. I started to Question everythi ng.

What plans do you have for the Cheltenham Science Festival, aside from interviewing Harold McGee?

I am going to present some exquisite confectionery in my "sweet shop". I want festivalgoers to have the same experience as visitors

to my restau rant, The Fat Duck. Customers

leave the restaurantwiith a sense Dffun, I hope, no matter how gastronomic or complex the

rookl ng. With the audience at Cheltenham, the more fun the scienCE is, the more I think they will be interested ..

You say you plan to make food in UK hospita Is "multisensory". Tell me more.

tm I'ooking atusing the multisensory cipproach

to cooking - how you can use sound, Sight,

smell, touch and taste to transform meilltimes

at a en ildren's hospital. The different sensations help trigger emotion and memory. In this case, that means balloons that release the smell

of a sweet shop, using ordnge oil on dry ice,

and ice creams madewith Hq uid nitrogen. This approach generated so much exdtement among the kids that they started eating food they would not have tried before, nevea'ling how important mealtime rltuals are.

What do you consider to be your most important science- based invention?

My trstwas triple-cooked chips to drive the moisture out 50 they are golden and crispy on the outside and lig.ht and fluffy on the inside.

I am currently writing my third co-a uthored paper, which shows that there is more umami in the heart of a tomato than in any other part. Classical

Simon Festing is chief executive

of Under9:a ndi ng Ani mal Research, a London- based organisation wh lch seeks to promote understand ing and ecrspta nee of the need for humane anima I research

PROFILE

Heston Blumenthal is a Michelin-starred chef and owner of The Fat Duck in Berkshire, UK. He is a guest director of the Cheltenham Science Festival, which begins on 9 June

French recipe books tell you to throw away this part when you deseed a tomato.

You would not describe yourse If as a practitioner of molecu lar gastronomy. Why? Molecular gastronomy used to be about the science of cooking, which is what happens in our kitchen at The Fat Duck. It dealt with Questions such as why an egg goes hard when I overcook

it or the meat grey. These days the term is associated with modern chefs doing fun ny things with test tubes .. It has started to feel more lik@ food science, which is what you study at university and pursue in industry,deal'ing with questions like how to incorporate more ai,intoice cream. Today, the term means something that it was never meant to, and I'm part of the old school.

What do you th ink we will eat in 2050 that is different from today?

If theworld's marine stocks continue to be treated theway they are mm, we will be eating jellyfish cind chips.

I nterview by Roger H ighfiel d

5 June 2010 1 NewScientist 123

OPINION LETTERS

Music makes us

Gene patents

Promlody Wear

Philip Ball writes about the universality of music (8 May,

p 30). One reason that music is important to people around the globe is that making or listening to it is almost always a positive experience, be it joyful, restorative, trans porting or cathartic.

This is significant in an evolutionary sense, because we big-brained creatures fret abou t the future and our immediate circumstances, which can lead to apprehension and depression. We are sometimes desperately in need of pleasure as a counterbalance, and this need creates a selective pressure. Music does not soothe us savage beasts, it sustains us.

Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

From John Maddison

Music often mimics emotional speech, Ball tells us, but this is only the beginning of music's mimicry. Many classical pieces imitate countryside sounds,

bird song in particular. And some of the sounds produced in blues,

particular Iy with the harmonica or slide guitar, mimic the sound of trains that prevailed when that style of music was developing. The fact that those sounds are

no longer relevant in modern society does not matter; they were incorporated into the music and became partofthe genre, and are now recognisably the sound of the blues.

Ball also overlooked the importance of movement and context when discussing the dissonance or harmony of musical intervals. Chords sound more, or less, "tense" depending on how the intervals are placed within them. For instance, the major seventh, which is described in the article as dissonant, can

be used to produce very sweetsounding chords, especially when combined with the "dissonant" major second.

Further, a musical piece contains chord progressions, which create and release tension. This tension can be built either through dissonance or by delaying the resolution of a chord progression. There may be gainful inquiry in the level of tension

Enigma Number 1598

Twin squares GWYN OWEN

FlJr my birthddY, my wife Astrid made identical sets of cams, On each card a letter of ASTRIDOWEN is displayed, mgetherwith its own characteristi'cdigit chosen from

O· g, On the day, Astrid's sister Enid sat on our three-seater settee with our twins Eden and' Toni a nd', when they held up the cards with their

respective na mas, the numbers on the cams satisfied

ENID2 = EDENTONI (read off as an eight·digit numtu:!r),

When my brother Ewa n arrived, we found that

EWAN2 = TONIEDEN,

The twins then made up a set of cards for rheir"taid" (Welsh grandfather),

What eight·digitnumber corresponds to TAl DOWEN?

WIN £15 will be awarded to the sender of the fim correct

a nswer opened on Wednesday 7 JulY, The EditO(s decision is final, Please send entries to Enigma 1598, New Scientist, Lacon House,

84 Theobal,d's Road, London WClX 8NS, or to enigma@newscientist.com (please include you r postal address),

Answer to 1592 Seeing spots: Tile numbers are 0, 24, 27,512 and 576 The winner John Blankenbaker of Dallas, Texas, US

241 NewScientist Is June 2010

preferred in the music of different cultures. Eastern cultures apparently prefer greater dissonance, and perhaps this same preference is expressed

in their other art forms.

Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, UK

Exclusive editing

From Howard Billington

I was excited by the pros pect of reading Ewen Callaway's article about Neanderthals interbreeding with Homo sapiens (IS May, p 8). But I was disappointed on reading it to be left with the impression that the editorial crew involved must have been a bunch ofwhite guys, wearing whi te-guy blinkers.

Callaway reports that the genetic record shows interbreeding between various members of the Homo genus, including H. sapiens with Homo neandertnaiis, bu t only in regions around the Mediterranean and

in wes tern Europe. Des pite these geographical limitations, you use the first-person plural possessive pronoun when discussing the findings: "our own DNA contains dear evidence that early humans interbred with Neanderthals". This implies that New Scientist expects all its readers to have some Neanderthal genes - that none of its readership are of African descent. This glaring oversight in your coverage implies that you don't have-

or don't care about retainingAfrican and Pacific-Asian readers. Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK

From Doug Calhoun

Your edi torial condemning gene patents describes as" tenuous" the argument that "isolating a gene upgrades it from a discovery to an invention" (io April, p 5).

While it is true that discovering something as it exists in its natural state is not classed as an invention, isolating something and finding a practical use for

it is. In the US Supreme Court's landmark Chakrabarty decision of 1980, in which it ruled that a modified microorganism can be patented, the court noted that more than a century before, Louis Pasteur had been granted a patent for an isolated naturally occurring bacterium that had a practical application. The only difference between Pasteur's bacteria and the nucleotide sequences in gene patents is the label" gene", an evocative word that conjures

up an image of the essence of

life. In fact, these sequences of nucleotides are just like any other large com pound.

As part of your argument, you report on the recent federal court finding that the patents Myriad Genetics holds on two BRCA breast cancer genes are invalid. We must remember, however, that the company would not have been able to develop tests for breast cancer without the funding it received from investors who believed that Myriad would enjoy patent exclusivity until 2015.

You assert that numerous studies conclude that gene patents inhibit biomedical innovation, referencingPLoS Medidne, vol 7, p eiooozos, However, two of the three opinion pieces in that paper conclude

that evidence on whether

patents impede innovation

in biomedicine is, at bes t, ambiguous. In fact, gene patents are litigated less frequently than patents for other technologies (UMKC Law Review, vol 76, p 295).

The debate on gene patents has been based a lot more on

For more letters and to join the debate, visit www.NewScientistcomlletters

predetermined views than on supporting evidence. Your readers ought to be invited to consider the other side of this debate and the evidence in support of it. Wellington, New Zealand

Keep it real

From Liz Haihereil; Parent Educator; Neufeld Institute Lakshmi Sandhana reports

on Petimo, a robotic computer interface that, it is hoped, will protect children from the dangers of strangers on the internet by acting as an intermediary during social networking (8 May, p 22).

You quote the device's inventor, Adrian David Cheok, as saying that he wants to use Petirno" to help develop more natural human forms of communication". There is already has a good model for this ~ real people, especially parents and other caring adults.

Outside the virtual world, real communication evolves naturally. If you want to know who your child is talking to, make a personal invitation to meet that child and his or her parents. Trust your instincts: they can be a lot more accurate than any robot.

Clinical psychologist Gordon Neufeld suggests that bullying is an expected outcome of putting children too much in contact wi th

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their peers. This problem is only exacerbated by children's use of social networking, including the devices described in your article.

Ins tead oflooking to the technologists for elegant

solutions to protecting children online, let us step up and bring our children back where they belong until they mature enough to manage something our brains and minds were not developed

to live with.

Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

In cold water

From Eric Kvaalen

Keith Ross's explanation for the Mpemba effect doesn't make sense (24 April, p 25). He asserts that a container stratified with room temperature water separating ice at the top and 4 'c water at the bottom would not have convection. That is not true: the warm layer in the middle would touch the ice, cool off and sink. In fact this convection would probably prevent the formation of ice until the entire contents were at about 4 T

He also says that when supercooled and then provided wi th a nucleation event, previously cold water would quickly produce more ice than the previously hot water - which was contrary to what he had observed in partially frozen samples. If for some reason the cold water supercools but the hot does not, then the initially hot water could end up with a lower heat content than the initially cold water.

Once it hits 0 "C it remains around o 'c, and thus loses heat faster than the su percooled water which is closer to the temperature of the surrounding freezer.

It would be Interes ting to know what the res ults would be if the freezer was much colder than normal, say at·100 "C,

La Courneuve, France

From David Stevenson

A number of your readers have suggested reasons for hot water apparently freezing faster than cold water.

However, insufficient information on the experimental conditions has been supplied.

For instance, if the experiment was done with tap water then the dissolved air content of the heated water will be far less. The presence of any micro bubbles of air will interfere with the growth of the ice front. Does the effect still occur with degassed and

de mineralised water?

Newbury, Berkshire, UK

Salt seller

From Jim Haigh

Franco Cappuccio and Simon Capewell make an assumption in their article on the health risks of eating salt: that what people want more than anything else is to live for a long time (1 May, p 22).

Some people consider it more important to enjoy life than to live as long as possible, and enjoying one's food is an important part of that. If as prinkling of salt makes my food taste better, I shall take the salt ~ and the consequences. Since we all have to die sometime of something, I do not think that my salt intake will put any extra burden on the medical facilities. Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, UK

Tough eggs

From Andy Bebington

Your article on microbes surviving in the Pitch Lake in Trinidad

(24 April, pIS) reminded me of being told while on a visit there that convection currents in the asphalt create areas similar to subduction zones. In the wet season, when these areas fill with

water, guppies can be found swimming there ~ a phenomenon mentioned by Anne Magurran and others in her study on behavioural diversity in guppies {Advances in the Study of Behavior, vol 24, p ISS}. The fish die offwhen the water eva porates in the dry season, but it seems their eggs

can survive the arid conditions

in these crevices, because they reappear when the rains come.

Tests have reportedly shown that these gu pples are ca pable of surviving only in the sulphur-rich waters of the Pitch Lake.

Croydon, Surrey, UK

Rainbow worrier

From Tim Jackson

I was dismayed to see thatNew Scientist has dumbed down to the extent of needing an analogy for the graph of a quadratic equation in Stephen Ornes's article on playing pool (8 May, p 34).

He could at least have picked something the right shape. Lest we forget, a rainbow is an arc of a circle centred on the shadow of the viewer's head, and has

the same curvature all the way around. The graph of a quadratic function is a parabola, the curvature of which reduces progressively along its legs. Haslingden, Lancashire, UK

Forthe record

• The ex periments into the M pemba effect, detailed in Keith Ross's letter, were carried out by student teachers in trai ning, not by primary school students (24 April, p 25).

Letters shou Id be sent to:

Letters to the Editor, New Scientist,

84 Tbeobalds Rmld, london WCD< 8NS Fax: +44 (0) 20 75111280

Email: letters@newscientistmm

In d ude your full postal ad dress an d teleph 0 ne numbe r, and a refere nee (iss ua paq e number, TItle) to articles. We rese rve the ri 9 ht to edit letters. Reed Busi ness Information reserves the rightto use a~ su b m iss ions sent to the letters col umn of New Sdentist magazi ng in any olherformal.

5 June 2010 1 NewScientist 125

OPINION.INTERV.IEW

All the world's

agame

Disobedient computers, frightened gold farmers and money gone seriously ethereal. Jessica Griggs takes a trip to the com plex frontier world of technology activist Cory Doctorow as his novel For the Win hits the shelves

Many people will have never heard about the "gold farming" of your novel. What it is?

Gold farming describes a real-world activity: it's all the things people, mostly in poor countries, do to amass things of worth in

the online gaming world. These range from amassing gold to collecting rare, expensive items like weapons or ingredients for a magic spell or stuff that a player can use to get up to the next level in the game. These things are sold to rich players who don't want to have to do the work themselves. Gold farmers are seen as akin to hackers.

When did gold farming start?

First reports were in Central America and Mexico in about 200l Most of the trade has now moved to China, or at least into the Chinese language. In China, the get-rich-quick story runs like this: find 10 boys who jus t want to play video games around the clock, stick them in a room with 10 computers and then watch the money roll in.

H ow is the "gold" in the ga mers' world exchanged for ha rd cash?

One player will meet another and do the exchange, or drop gold at a preassigned location on a server where another player

PROFILE

Cory Doctorcw (craphoundcom) i:s a science fiction alHhor, activist journdl ist blogger and co-editor of Boing Bcing (boingboing.net). His best·sell.ing novel Lirrle Brother, and new novel For [he Win are pUblished by HarperCollins. He

is the former European director of the E,lectronic Frontier Foundation and (0. founder of the UK Open Rights Group

261 NewScientist 15 June 2010

will pick it up. The money exits the game and enters the real world via brokers. One reason for this is linguistic. If you are a kid from Sichuan province who only speaks five words of English it's going to be hard to sell gold to a kid from Los Angeles.

What do go Id farmers th ink about thei riot?

The gold farmers are a lot less worried about being exploited in real life than they are about being hunted mercilessly in the game. They encounter an awful lot of racism when they move around in games. Anyone with a Chinese name or talking in Chinese is immediately accused of being a gold farmer. If you are on a server where players can attack each other, people will try to kill you. They did have stories about being exploited, too, but a lot of them are 17 and still can't believe they're being paid to play video games all day.

When do you set the action in For the Win?

At a time when 8 out of io of the world's top economies are virtual economies. Scarily, in 2001 the game EverQuest was ranked 77 in the world - on par with Russia as it was then.

So ou r fina ncla I world is Ii ke a game in that it's become ever more etherea I?

We exist in a world in which large parts of our economy already take place in this imaginary realm. The participants are not just the bond traders, they're also th e formal exchequers. So all the real-life fiscal games get played out here. Like governments, the game companies can print more money, devalue their currency, be inflationary or deflationary. While these guys think they have total control, down there at the scurrytng-In-the-baseboard level are mice nibbling at the wires of their mansions.

Your book seems I ike a para ble aboutfi nanda I bubbles - like the one we just went th rough. Absolutely. One of the interesting

things about that bubble was that there weren't enough debt instruments - for

exam pie, bonds or mortgages - being created through people actually borrowing money, so the folk in the finance houses made synthetic debt instruments that were bets

on other debt instruments.

What's your ga mi ng history?

Like anyone born in 1971, I grew up with video games and we had ColecoVision, an Atari and an Apple II Plus. But I wouldn't call myself a

For more interviews and to add yourcomments, visit www.NewScientist.comiopinion

hard-core gamer. My wife, on the other hand, was on the first UK Quake team. She's my source for games now. On a typical evening in our house she'll kill zombies while shouting into her headset while I blog for two hours and ask her questions about what's going on.

What does that mean?

Digital rights management, or DRM, is based on the idea that we should design computers that cons ult an internal policy document written by a third party to check if anything the owner might want to do is a permitted task. If you hit control S or control C to save the work or copy the work, your com puter would be able to stop you. I think your com puter should never say no, it should always obey you.

The D RM files can be on your computer without your knowledge and may hide from you by not showing up in a list of the programs you are running. This is fundamentally broken: it reminds me of my least favourite cinematic

When you're not blogg ing you're busy being a "tech no logy activist". What does that invo Ive? A technology activist believes that the underlying architecture of our technology influences, and to a certain extent determines, the politics we practice. So, for example, one of the areas where I'm very worried is in the field of digital rights management.

science fiction motifs, the self-destructing spaceship where somebody accidentally presses a button and the spaceship starts counting down to oblivion and there's absolutely nothing you can do to stop it.

You've re leased your books under Creative Commons Licences. What does that mea n for us readers?

You can do anything you want with a book

of mine: such as videos, music or other fiction, or you can bind it and print it, but you can't charge money for that and you have to let other people do to your work what you've done to mine, so you have to licence your work under the same terms.

"I think your computer shoulld never say no.It shoulld always obey y,ou"

H ave people played with your work that way? Just this morning a kid sent me his own chapter of my previous book, Uttle Brother, that he'd written. And there's a guy in Australia who's got a band that has done

an entire CD of songs based on my work.

That's flattering, but how do you benefit?

It's financially sensible in that all ofthis stuff just amounts to publicity, and the more publicity there is the greater the likelihood that the book while rise to the attention of a potential cus tomer. Obscurity, not piracy, is the biggest problem writers face. In the zrst century, if you are not making art with the intention of it being copied, you are not making contemporary art. From here on, hard drives get smaller and cheaper, networks get easier to use and more and more people know how to use them so copying will just get easier.

Are there moral reasons?

Yes. It is hypocritical to say {f don't copy" when everybody I know is a copyist. I'm certainly on the wrong side of copyright law at least once a day for things like pasting articles into emails. I've been an avid copyist all my life, if it wasn't for mix tapes, my entire adolescence would have been celibate! I can't do my job unless

I have the source material around so I scan records and photocopy library books I can't take out. It's howwe all learn todo stuff. That's how we are, we are descendents of molecules formed a million years ago because they figured out how to replicate themselves. We have a name for things that don't copy themselves: dead .•

5 June 20101 NewScientist 127

ZOE GRA YSTONE is agirl with two brains. Only one of them is human: the other is an exact digital copy that has become conscious in its own right. When the human Zoe dies, her digi tal brain is im planted into a humanoid robot, effectively bringing her back from the grave.

Such ideas have littered science fiction for decades. Indeed, Graystone is a character in the American TV drama Capri ca. But could such a tale ever become reality?

Though there is little pros pect of creating

a genuinely conscious robe-clone in the foreseeable future, several companies are taking the first steps in that direction. Their initial goal is to enable you to create a lifelike digital representation, or avatar, that can continue long after your biological body has decomposed. This digitised "twin" might be able to provide valuable lessons for your greatgrandchildren - as well as giving them a good idea of what their ancestor was like.

Ultimately, however, they aim to create

a personalised, conscious avatar embodied

in a robot - effectively enabling you, or some semblance of you, to achieve immortality.

"If you can upload yourself into this digital form, it could live forever;" says Nick Mayer of Lifenaut, a US company that is exploring ways to build lifelike avatars. "It really is a way of avoiding death."

For now, Lifenaut relies on a series of personality tests, teaching sessions and uploaded personal material such as photos,

~ videos and correspondence. The result, Mayer ~ says, will be an avatar that looks like you, talks ~ like you and will be able to describe key events ~ in your life, such as your wedding day. But how

far can such technology go? How much of your personality and knowledge can be reproduced by a computer? Can we ever hope to use avatars to resurrect the dead?

Like many people, I have often dreamed of having a done: an alternative self that could share my workload, give me more leisure time and perhaps provide me with a way to live longer. My first step on the road to immortality is to use Lifenaut's websi te to create a basic visual interface with which others, hopefully induding my descendants, can interact. This involves uploading an expressionless photo of myself, taken face- on. Lifenau t's software then animates it so my face can speak, wink and blink.

Right now this kind of avatar is rather crude, though other companies are generating much more lifelike representations that could be adapted for use by projects like Lifenaut.

One such com pany is Image Metrics in Santa Monica, California, which specialises in creating digital faces for films and games.

Faces are particularly difficult to reproduce.

Foryears, animators have struggled with a problem dubbed the" uncanny valley", in which a computer- generated face looks almost, but not quite, lifelike, triggering

a sense of revulsion among human observers. "Systems which look dose to real but not quite real are very creepy to people," says Dmitri Williams of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

Image Metrics believes it has cracked the problem. The company's engineers record

a series of high- resolution images of a person's face, each one with a different expression. Then they calculate the differences between these

COVER STORY

expressions using powerful mathematical modelling software. The result is pretty convincing. For example, the digital version of American actor Emily O'Brien, which the company unveiled at the ACM Siggraph meeting in Los Angeles in 2008, not only looks realistic, but can be mani pulated in real time. "The movements are perfect. We can pretty much make Emily say anything we want," says Mike Starkenburg, CEO ofImage Metrics.

At the moment the process is expensive: creating the virtual Emily cost around $500,000, so for now I'll make do with my primitive avatar and hope my grandchildren won't feel too repelled.

Making a human

How my avatar looks may in the end

matter less than its behaviour, according to researchers at the U niversi ty of Central Florida in Orlando and the University of Illinois in Chicago. Since 2007, they have been collaborating on Project Lifelike, which aims to create a realistic avatar of Alexander Schwarzkopf, former director of the US National Science Foundation.

They showed around 1000 students

videos and photos of Schwarzkopf, along with prototype avatars, and used the feedback to try to work out what features of a person people pay mos t attention to. They conclude that focusing on the idiosyncratic movements that make a person unique is more important than creating a lifelike image. "It might be how they cock their head when they speak or how they arch an eyebrow," says Steve Jones

of the University of Illinois. >

Me and my Avatar

Upload your mind and you could live forever, Linda Geddes meets her own immortal twin

5 June 2010 1 NewScientist 129

'The eventual aim of the project

is to actually exceed human intellig.ence, creating Mozart-like genius"

Equally important is ensuring that these movements appear in the correct context. To do this, Jones's team has been trying to link contextual markers like specific words or phrases with movements of the head, to indicate that the avatar is listening, for example. "If an avatar is listening to you tell a sad story, what you want to see is some empathy," says Jones, though he admits they haven't cracked this yet.

The next challenge is to make an avatar converse like a human. At the moment the most lifelike behaviour comes from chatbots, software that can analyse the context of

a conversation and produce Intelligentsounding res ponses as if it is thinking. Lifenaut goes one step further by tailoring the chatbot software to an individual. According to Rollo Carpenter of artificial intelligence (AI) company Icogno in Exeter; UK, this is about the limit of what's possible at the moment,

a software replica that is "not going to be self. aware or equivalent to you, but is one which other people could hold a conversation with and for a few moments at least believe that there was a part of you in there".

The Lifenaut avatar's conversational abilities come from a chatbot created by Carpenter called Jabberwacky. This has

been developed through conversations with millions of people since 1997 and has twice won the Loebner prize for the mos t humanlike chatbot. While many chatbots are

prep ro grammed with set phrases and reactions in res ponse to keywords, Jabberwacky looks for common patterns between conversations, and uses this to

ens ure that what it says makes the most possible sense in the context of what has just been said to it.

Essence of me

Lifenaut's avatar might appear to respond like a human, bu t how do you get it to resemble you? The only way is to teach it about yourself. This personality upload is a laborious process. The first stage involves rating some 480 statements such as "I like to please others" and "I sympathise with the homeless", according to how accurately they reflect my feelings. Having done this, I am then asked to upload items such as diary entries, and photos and video tagged with place names, dates and keywords to help my avatar build up "memories". I also spend hours in conversation with other Lifenaut avatars, which my avatar learns from. This supposedly provides "Linda"

30 I NewScientist Is June 2010

with my mannerisms ~ the way I greet people or res pond to questions, say - as well as more abou t my views, likes and dislikes.

A more sophisticated series of personality questionnaires is being used by a related project called CyBeRev. The project's users work their way through thousands of questions developed by the American sociologis t William Sims Bainbridge as a means of archiving the mind. Unlike traditional personality questionnaires, part

of the process involves trying to capture users' values, beliefs, hopes and goals by asking them to imagine the world a century in the future. It isn't a quick process: "If you spent an hour a day answering ques tions, it would take five years to complete them all," says Lori Rhodes of the non profit Terasem Movement, which funds Cy BeRev. "But the further you go, the more accurate a representation of yourself the mind file will become."

So is it possible to endow my digital double with a believable representation of my own personality? Carpenter admits that in order to become truly like you, a Lifenaut avatar would probably need a lifetime's worth of conversations with you. Nor am I sure to what extent a bunch of photos and videos can ever represent my real memories. So might there be a better way to upload your mind?

One alternative would be to au tomatically capture information about your daily life and feed it directly into an avatar. "Lifeloggers" such as Microsoft researcher Gordon Bell are already doing this to some extent, by wearing a portable camera that records large portions of their lives on film.

A team led by Nigel Shadbolt at the University of Southampton, UK, is trying to im prove on this by developing software that can combine digital images taken throughout the day with information from your diary,

social networking sites you have visi ted,

and GPS recordings of your location. Other researchers are considering integrating physiological data like heart rate to provide basic emotional context. To date, however, there has been little effort to combine all this into anything resembling an avatar. We're still some way off creating an accurate replica of an individual, says Shadbolt. "I'm sure we could create a software agent with attitude, but whether it's my attitude seems to be very doubtful," he says.

Not surprisingly then, creating a conscious avatar like Zoe G raystones alter ego is far more problematic. AI researchers have had some success in making machines with human- like characteristics, including the humanoid robots Cog and Kismet built by Rodney Brooks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and an intelligent software system called Cyc developed by Doug Lenat

ofCycorp, a Texas-based Al company. Yet according to Raul Arrabales of the Carlos III

U niversi ty of Madrid in Spain, who has developed a test of machine consciousness called Conscale, the best effort so far is probably equivalent to a 1 -year-old child. That's not to saywe shouldn't try, says David Hanson of Hanson Robotics in Dallas, Texas. "Certainly we have no proof that machines can be conscious- we still don't understand consciousness- but likewise, it's silly to assume that machines can't be," he says.

A bit of body

One problem is that some kind of physical body is probably essential for human- like consciousness to develop, says robotics researcherAntonio Chella from the University of Palermo in Italy. "Consciousness requires

a tight interaction between brain, body and environment." We perceive with our whole body, he says, so a conscious entity needs sensors both to perceive the world and to moni tor its own movements.

Researchers working on Project Lifelike are trying to integrate a camera into their digital Schwarzkopf so that it can pick up visual clues from people's body language and adapt its behaviour accordingly. Hanson is yet more ambitious. His company makes realisticlooking androids, and he and Mayer have discussed integrating one of Lifenaut's avatars into a robot body. "Combining a mind emulation wi th a physical body allows that mind to physically interact with the world,

to explore and live among us," he says.

That's a step towards making a conscious machine, but to go further will require a massive, coordinated effort involving the now fragmented areas of AI research. To this end, Hanson has launched the Apollo Mind Initiative to promote collaboration between research grou ps, setting the goal of achieving human-level creative intelligence by 2019.

His first step is to launch collaborative software for the machine intelligence community, enabling scientists to map exactly what stage research has reached and help them identify which im provements need to be made. Hanson says that the project's eventual aim is to exceed human intelligence, creating Mozart-ltkegenlus. "In a way we're looking for protege machines," he says.

What about my own avatar? At Carpenter's suggestion I ask my husband to assess it for realism. After a short chat, he tells me that its responses to questions on politics, food and

Death and the net

How the web can help you log off gracefully forthevery last time ...

MY LAST EMAIL Il1l.lastemail.com

Enables you to leave letters, photos orvideo messages for friends and family, as well as write your own obituary

DEATH5WITCH deathswitch.com

Imagineyou die with a secret that you longed to reveal. Deathswitch is an automated system that prompts you foryour password on a regular basis. If you repeatedly fail to respond, it assumesyou have died and emails prescripted messages to nominated addresses

LEGA.CY LOCKER legacylocker.com

You create a master list of usernames and passwords for all your online accounts and social networking sites. Once your death has been verified by Legacy Locker, the listwill be emailedtoa named beneficiary

SEPPUKOO seppukoo.com

Samurai warriors preferred to commit ritual suicide ratherthan allow themselves to be captured by enemies. Seppukoo.com enables you to commit ''virtual suicide" by deleting your Facebook account - or at least it did until a legal wranglewith Facebook, though the service hopes to be up and running again soon

SLIGHTLY MO RBI D slightlymorbid.com

If something terrible happened toyou, who would tell your online friends? This service enables users to consolidate all thei r online co ntacts, a II ow i n gat ruste d th i rd pOI rty to contactthem in the event of your demise

sports were nonsense. It also told him I'm younger than I really am. I haven't yet started to lie about my age but perhaps Lifenaut's questionnaires picked up on my latent vanity? Finally the avatar revealed it was depressed.

So how human is it? In July, Arrabales plans to test Lifenaut's avatar usingConscale. Although some aspects of the software might meet the criteria for higher consciousness, Arrabales predicts that gaps in its abili ties mean it may only score 3 out of'ro. Forget Zoe Graystone - that's about the equivalent of an earthworm, he says. All that time and effort for an annelid. No wonder I'm depressed .•

Linda Geddes is a biomedical reporter for New Scientistin London

5 June 2010 1 NewScientist 131

High flyers

To complete their long migration, moths and butterflies need some smart navigation strategies, Sea Perks discovers

DEEP in a wood in. so. uthern Engla. nd, tucked under a pile of dead leaves, a neatly folded" silver y" moth is struggling to emerge from its chrysalis.

Watching this delicate creature take its first faltering steps, you would never think it was about to set off on a journey that could take it as far south as north Africa. That's a long way for a moth whose adult life lasts only a week or two.

With their blink-and-they're-gone llfespans, migratory butterflies and moths like the silver Y need some pretty smart strategies to cover distances rivalling those of many migratory birds. So how do they manage to cover such large distances? And how do they know which direction to fly when it's a journey they make only once in a lifetime? The answers are of more than academic interest as many of these creatures' larvae are crop pests, and in a changing global climate we need to know where they will next turn up.

321 NewScientist Is June 2010

Migrating lepidoptera routinely reach

alti tudes of over a kilometre, so studying them in mid- flight is far from straightforward. Samples trapped by aircraft or tethered helium balloons have provided a glimpse of their migrations, but this is expensive, not suited to long-term studies and not easy in the dark - which is when moths prefer to fly.

Fortunately, a UK team of entomologists led by Jason Chapman at Rothamsted Research in Hertfordshire have found a way to Sidestep these problems. What's more, they can make their observations without leaving the ground. Since 2000, the entomologis ts

have been using two radar scanners, one at Rothamsted and the other at Chilbolton in Hampshire, to sweep the skies day and night.

Insects flying through the radar beam bounce back signals that reveal much more than can be gleaned by simply trapping them. Each blip on the radar readout records an

Monarchs hold the record for the longest butterfly migration

Marathon rniqration

Of all migrating moth, and butterflies. the monsrchs of North America hold the distance record for their flight in the fall from Canada to Mexko

• March· April .Apri 1- june • june - july

Each spring, monarchs migrate north. Adults I ilfe only 2-5 weeks. so they hdlle to stop off 10 breeo:J dBeveral points alonq the w<JY, allowing a nllW generation to take over

Eggs hatch N4 days

\

CaterpilldfS pupate N14 days

Adult emef!Jes from chrysalis N10 days

insect's altitude, the speed and direction of travel, body alignment, shape, size and wing' beat frequency. The radar can detect Insects weighing as little as 15 milligrams- far smaller than most migrating moths, which can weigh all of 500 milligrams - flying at altitudes up

to 1200 metres. An insect's species can be deduced from its size, shape and wing beat.

This year, Chapman published the results

of seven years' worth of radar data, providing information on more than 100, 000 individual insects. The observations show migrating moths to be masters at choosing the most favourable wind, setting off only on nights when it blows dose to the direction they need to travel (Science, vol 327, p 682). On such nights, silver Ys, for exam pie, can hit speeds over the ground of go kilometres per hour

by finding the fastest -flowtng hlgh-altltude airstream and angling their flight to corred for any crosswind drift. Chapman has shown that by using these strategies the insects are able to travel about 40 per cent further than

if they were simply blown along in the wind.

Sensing south

For butterflies, there is less of a rush. Painted lady butterflies travel just as far as the silver Ys, but the adults live for weeks rather than days. Painted ladies and related species such as the red admiral tend to fly closer to the ground than moths, and they rely mainly on their wing power rather than the wind. The

In the fall, a single generation

of adults, which can Hve for 7- B month" make the journey SOUlh to central Mex leo where they hibernate through the wimer

September· November

migration distance record for lepidoptera goes to the monarch butterfly ofN orth America, which over the course of a couple of months at the end of summer travels from as far north as the Canadian border to overwinter in central Mexico (see "Marathon migration", above).

Feats like this raise the question of how high- flying insects know where they are heading. They seem to have an inbuilt compass, but how it is set remains controversial. Is it based on the position of the sun - a" sun compass" - or does a magnetic compass like those possessed by migratory birds playa part? Moths are well known to fly towards

the light, and butterflies do too. The sun

can't be the whole story, though, because butterflies don't only fly on dear, sunny

days, and moths fly at night.

It is a question that tnteres ts Robert Srygley's team at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. They have found that altering the direction of the local magnetic field changes butterfly behaviour. For example, insects released into a large cage in which the magnetic field had been reversed tend to fly in the opposite direction to their usual migratory route. However, some of the control insects, released when magnetic north was unaltered, also fly in the opposite direction - so whether they use magnetic fields for migration remains uncertain (Animal Behaviour, vol 71, p 183). "Although we could show that they were sensitive to

the magnetic field, we were not able to show >

5 June 2010 1 NewScientist 133

that they use a magnetic com pass to orient when migrating," Srygley says. "Butterflies are problematic to study because they have an esca pe behaviour towards the sun."

Experiments with insects less distracted

by light have produced dearer results. Srygley has teamed up with physicists in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to test whether leafcutter ants respond to magnetic fields by making use of magnetite (iron oxide) crystals in their bodies. The ants do appear to use a magnetic compass to set a direction home (Animal Behaviour,

vol 75, p 1273), a finding that adds to a steady build- u p of data suggesting that insects possess a magnetic compass.

Steve Reppert at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worces ter

is working ona theory that says butterflies and moths sense magnetic fields using photoreceptors known as cryptochromes, which are also found in birds, other insects and even in plants. Reppert has shown that fruit flies can use theircryptochromes to detect magnetic fields, and had a hunch that monarch butterflies might do the same. To test his hypothesis, he inserted monarch cryptochrome genes into fruit flies whose own cryptochromes don't work - and sure enough, the flies' response to magnetic fields was restored (Nature, vol 463, p 804). One oddity about cryptochromes' magnetic sensitivi ty

is that it only occurs when the photoreceptors are illuminated by blue light; why blue light is required remains unclear.

MOTHS WITH MAPS?

When migratory moths and butterflies emerge from their chrysalises in autumn in northern Europe, they immediately start flying south. When the next generation emerges on the Mediterranean coast the following spring, they start flying north. How do these creatures knowwhere their breeding grounds are, when none of them lives to make the return trip?

It seems they don't. After the adults emerge, they simply travel in a hard-wired direction until they become sexually mature. How far an insect migrates depends on

the length of this genetically determined phase. Migrants don't decide where to land based on the weather orthe vegetation: they land when they reach the insect equivalent of puberty.

Many will land in unsuitable locations and fail to breed, but that's not a huge

Chapman reckons that lepidoptera might use a combination of cues to navigate. Butterflies are known to use a sun compass to determine their direction. Even when the sun itself is obscured, its position can be inferred from the polarisation oflight from patches of clear sky. What's more, polarised light remains visible for up to 2 hours after sunset, so Chapman sus pects that as moths take off at twilight they use polarised light to set their direction compass. During the night, a magnetic compass could take over, he says.

The team is also using the radar data to build predictive models that will tell us when, where, and in what numbers different migrating insects are likely to arrive. To do

Catch the wind

Silver Y moths migrate from northern Europe to the Mediterranean basin lnjust a few dcys. A computer model of their A.ight show, how they do it

Migration of the silver Y moth,'

341 NewScientist 151une 2010

pCDr d moth tdking off from Rotham~ted in the UK on a night with fdlfourdble south-blowlnq wind 5, the mod el; co m pOlre, tw 0 strategies over an B·llOurflight: drillers (Ielt) and strategic flyer, (below)

I3y keeping to the altltudawlth the rastestwma ano dngling their n ight to correct lor ony cmssw ind. slJdtegicflight takes moth, ov~rtw iCE as fdr

as drifti ng in the wind ...... ___'

problem as long as a few of them end up somewhere sensible. A mating pair of insects producesthousands of eggs. The offspring that migrate to inhospitable climes will

die, but the chances are that hundreds of their siblings wililand somewhere more appropriate. Insects only need about 1 per

te nt of thei r offspri ng to su rv ive to su stai n the species.

There is evidence that climate change is already altering insect migration patterns. Steadily increasing numbers of migratory moth a nd butte rfly sped es a re be i n g recorded arriving ina cliff-top garden at

the Portland Bird Observatory in Dorset, on England's south coast. From data collected between 1982 and 2005, it appears that for every 1 e ( inc rease intern p e rat u re, a n extra 15 species wi II arrive (European journal of Entomology, vol 104, p 139).

this, Chapman used a modified version of

the UK Met Office's model of how airborne particles are dispersed by the wind; this is the model that was recently applied to predict the position of the cloud of ash from an Icelandic volcano as it drifted across Europe. "This new version treats the insects as active flyers with specific behaviours, rather than passively transported particles that just travel downwind," Chapman says.

As many migratory insects are damaging crop pests, working out where their extraordinary journeys will take them

has practical implications. The silver v« caterpillars are cabbage and pea-munching pests, and the caterpillars of another migratory moth, the large yellow underwing, are among the group of infamous crop pests better known as the cu tworms that cause fatal damage at the base ofvirtually any herbaceous plant they choose to chew.

Insects are not the only creatures that migrate over long distances; birds do too. But insects have one big advantage over migrating birds: they can afford to make mistakes (see "Moths with maps?", above). The two or three offspring of a mating pair ofmigratory birds have got to land in the

right place, otherwise the future of the species is in trouble. The more robus t reproductive strategy of butterflies and moths stands them in good stead in the face of climate change,

as this year's" right place" might not be the same as last year's. Chapman thinks this is giving insects the upper hand. "That's probably one reason why migratory insects are becoming more common, but many migratory birds are declining." •

Sea Perks Is a science writer based in Cambridgeshire, UK

Word Cup highs and ows

Altitu de does nit just affect footballers' performance, as teams in South Africa are about to discover, Sports engineers Steve Haake and Simon Chopp in explain

FEBRUARY 2007· B. razilian football team Fiamengo are playing a Sou th American cu p match in Bolivia. Their opponents, Real Potosi, are based in the high Andes and the stadium is nearly 4000 metres above sea level. In lashing rain, Fiamengo fall 2·0 behind. Many of their players need bottled oxygen to alleviate the effects of al titude. Though they eventually fight back for a 2·2 draw, Flamengo announce after the game that they will no longer play matches at altitude.

So began football's "high altitude controversy". Flamengo's case was taken up by the Brazilian Football Confederation, which complained to the world governing body FHA that venues in the high Andes were not suitable for football. In May 2007, FIFA ruled that "in the interests of player health", international matches could no longer be played above 2500 metres.

If Brazil thought that meant victory, they were not reckoning on a comeback by Bolivia, Ecuador and Colombia, who complained to FIFA that this would put a stop to international matches in their national stadiums. In response, FIFA suspended the ban pending further studies.

Fast-forward to June 2010 and altitude is again an issue in football. The World Cup in South Africa will be the first for 24 years to

stage games at venues significantly above >

5 June 2010 1 NewScientist 135

"

""~thletes acclimatised to

- altitude can suffer a drop/in performance after sudde Iy descending to sea level"

j

sea level. The main stadium, Soccer City in Johannesburg, is at 1701 metres. That's not quite the high Andes, but it is still high enough to have an effect. Six other venues are at altitude (see map, right). Will it have a bearing on the tournament?

In the wake of the South American controversy, FIFA invited leading medical scientis ts to a conference in its home city of Zurich, Switzerland, in October 2007 to discuss what was known about the effects of altitude on football. The delegates quickly established that there are few well-controlled studies on football at altitude, so they would have to make inferences from research on other sports, including running, skiing and climbing.

The first thing they looked at was physical performance. They concluded that below 500 metres there are no effects. Above 500 metres, negative effects such as increased heart rate, breathlessness and reduced stamina become noticeable and get progressively worse the higher you go - though some people are more badly affected than others. At 2000 metres altitude sickness becomes a problem and acclirnatisation is essential. Above 3000 metres there are subs tantial hits on performance.

The physiological effects of altitude are mainly caused by a reduction in the amount of oxygen in the air, which in tum limits oxygen levels in the blood. The resulting decrease in an individual's physical performance can be quantified by a measure called V02max - the maximum rate of oxygen uptake in lltres per minute per kilogram.

Research on endurance athletes has shown that above 300 metres, V02max falls by around 6 per cent for each 1000 metres in elevation, while the time before exhaus tion

r: sets in drops by around 14 per cent per

~ 1000 metres (EuropeanJouma/ of Applied i Physiology, volg6, p 404).

~ The standard way of minimising this ~ decline in performance is a few days of

~ acclimatisation. The FIFA team recommends

361 NewScientist 15 June 2010

s pending three to five days at altitude, although it is never possible to recover full sea- level fitness levels in this way. Even Bolivian footballers who live at altitudes of 3600 metres have a V02max around 12 per cent lower than footballers living at sea level (Journal of Exercise Physiology, vol 3, p 2g).

So are the physiological effects of altitude likely to skew the results of matches at the World Cup? Probably not. None of the venues is above 2000 metres, and most of the 32 teams will be living at altitude during the tournament. Those that are not are certain to use altitude chambers to prepare.

Flight of the ball

There is, however, a wild card. Some researchers at the meeting noted that there are reports of athletes who are acclimatised to altitude suffering a decline in performance after suddenly descending to sea level. This effect may put them at a corres ponding disadvantage when they come down to playa team acclimatised to sea level {Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, vol 18 (su pplement 1), p 85). This could influence

the latter stages of the tournament, as both semi-finals will be played at sea level between a team that won its quarter final at altitude and a team that won at sea level.

It's not just physical performance that is affected. The FHA team also concluded that altitude is likely to alter the aerodynamics of the ball in a way that could catch players out.

The key to this is the reduced density of the atmos phere, which affects how fast the ball moves through the air and also the bend of a spinning ball. Every 1000 metres increase in altitude reduces atmospheric pressure- and hence the densi ty of the air - by about 11 per cent (though the precise formula is more complicated than this). Other things being equal, Johannesburg has an atmospheric press ure around 81 per cent that of Ca pe Town.

Temperature also has an effect, with air density falling 3 per cent for every io" Crise. So the difference in air density during

a chilly winter evening in Cape Town (7' C) and a relatively balmy winter afternoon in Johannesburg (n 0 c) could be over 20 per cent. Such differences are qui te possible during the World Cup.

To see what this difference would mean in practice, consider a ball struck from directly in front of goal, 18 metres out - that's jus t outside the penalty area - and aimed at the top lefthand comer of the goal. Say that at sea level, the shot travels at an average speed of 22.8 metres per second and crosses the goal line after

0.817 seconds (Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers C: Journal of Mechanical Engineering Science, vol no, p 657).

What happens at higher altitude? Since drag force is proportional to air density, an identical shot at 1700 metres travels faster than at sea level, reaching the goal line after 0.801 seconds - about 2 ball diameters ahead of where it would be atsea level. This gives it less time to dip, and it hits the crossbar.

The upshot ofthis is that players must also acclimatise to the flight of the ball. To get the ball under the bar, they must learn to aim slightly lower than normal, reducing the ball's take-off angle by around haifa degree.

Defensive players will need to adapt too.

Goalkeepers who are accus tomed to the behaviour of the ball at sea level will need to react faster than normal or else see it fly past their outstretched fingers into the net.

N ow consider a shot taken from the same spot but this time struck to bend around a wall of defensive players lined up in front of the goal. This is done by applying side spin, which generates a force - called the Magnus forcethat causes the ball's trajectory to bend.

At sea level, the shot travels at 20 metres per second, bends around the right- hand end of the wall and comes back round to enter the top left comer of the goal after 1.114 seconds. In Johannesburg, the exact same shot would either fly over the crossbar or hit the wall, as the lower air density reduces both drag and the effect of spin. With acclimatisation, players will learn to hit the ball slightly lower while applying more spin to get the ball around the wall and into the top corner. The shot now crosses the goal line 0.030 seconds (or more than 2 ball diameters) ahead of its equivalent at sea level. If the goalkeeper reacts as he would at sea level, the ball would be

in the back of the net before he gets to it.

So far so theoretical. Is there any evidence that altitude actually affects the results of

Winners on top

Tne FIFAWorld Cup in SoutnAfrica is the first for 24yearsin,whicn mateheswill bep.la,yed at altitude. How w;ill the players - andltne ball- respond?

i&iRoyal Bafokeng Stadium i'iEllis Park

!Rustenbu rg, altitud e 1179m ;johannesburg, 1718m

i.Cl P<lC ily 44.530 !. Cd PdC ity 6 Vi 39

s group gdm~s ~ : 5 group game,

i2narouna ~ !2mJround

iqudrt@r~flndl

----_._---_ .. __ . __ .. -------_ .. __ . __ ._---_ .• _------_ .. _-_ ... _. __ ._-_._ ... ,- ...

~ ~ ~~ .. ~ ~ .

@:Green Point Stadium iCape Town, 9m icapaCity 66.005

is group games :2nd rnunc !quilrter- final i,emi.- flndl

~!Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium iport Elizabeth, 20m

i Ca pac ity 46.082

: 5 group game, !2noround iquilrter-flnal

! sro place pl:ly-off

football matches? To investigate, engineer Patrick McSharry of the University of Oxford looked at 1460 international matches played in South America between 1900 and 2004. What he found is that it is not altitude per

se but changes in altitude that matter. After taking differences in skill into account, teams from altitude playing at home against teams from sea level have an increased probabili ty of winning. The converse is also true: when high-altitude teams descend to play at sea level they are less likely to win (Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, vol 18 (supplement 1), p 85).

Tactical switch

The reasons for this are likely to be both physiological and aerodynamic. Tactics could playa role too, with teams changing the way they play to compensate for the changed flight of the ball. To put this hypothesis to

the test, we studied data from eight matches played by Mexico in their cam paign to qualify for the 2010 World Cup, including four home games at the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City, which is 2288 metres above sea level. According to the data, provided by UK-based football performance analysts Prozone, the number of shots from outside the penalty area

iliSoccer City

!Johannesburg, 1701m !CdPdCity 88,460

is group gdm~s !2ndmund

i quarter- flndl :Final

i}iLoftus Versfeld Stadium iTshwane/Pretoria, 1369m !Cdpdcrty 49.365

! 5 group games

i2nd round

~iMoses Mabhida Stadium :Durban, 13m

~!Free State Stadium

iManga ung/Bloemfontei n, 1404m :CapaCity 45.058

: 5 group games

i zno 'round,

iCdPaCity 59.957 :5group qames i2no round !semi-flnal

"If a goalkeeper reacts at altitude as he would at sea level, the ball would be in the back of the net before he can get to it"

increased with altitude while the number of shots from inside the area decreased. The implication is that, at altitude, players might be coached to have a go at goal from longer distances to take advantage of the straighter, faster trajectories.

Similar tactical calculations might come into play in Sou th Africa. Imagine a match in Johannesburg where a direct free kick has been awarded 18 metres from goal. As the defending team lines up a four- man wall, the captain of the attacking team discusses the options with his two main free- kick takers. One is renowned for his hard, straight shot while the other is an expert at curling the ball around walls. Whom should he choose?

The physics points towards a curler: ifthe keeper isn't fully acclimatised to the flight of the ball then the bending shot gives a bigger time advantage. The only problem is that it needs to be supremely accurate, since the margin for error on a curling shot is much smaller at altitude.

It is worth noting that in the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, the last time altitude was a factor, eventual winners Argentina played all their matches above 2000 metres. All the other leading contenders had to change altitude. Did that give Argentina an advantage? lfit did, it won't happen this year. Whoever wins the tournament will have switched from altitude to sea level and back again at some point.

The key message for the World Cu p, then, is that teams need to take into account transition, acclimatlsatlon and tactics. Players will need to adapt to changes in altitude, especially the effect this has on the flight of the ball. Teams that use high altitude to their advantage-

or that are already used to switching from low to high altitude- will profit. That points to a win for a South American team .•

Steve Haake is head of the sports engineering resea rehgroup at Sheffield Hallam Un iversity, UK, where Simon thoppln is a sports engineering resea rcher They blog at engi neeringsport.co.uk

SJune 20101 NewScientist 137

381 NewScientist 151une 2010

The idea that geology is what happens beneath our feet has suffered a blow - from space, says Matt Kaplan

Deeper impact

diameter slammed into Earth 65 million years ago and convulsed its surface. He named the crater Shiva, after the Hindu god of destruction and renewal, and touted it as the big brother of Chicxulub, a crater 180 kilometres across under the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico, which dates to the same time.

This claim was bound to stir controversy.

The aftermath of the Chicxulub im pact

su pposedly did for the dinosaurs and many other species that disappeared in a wave of extinctions around that time. If Chatterjee was right, Chicxulub was unlikely to be the whole story.

Most geologists were unconvinced.

For a start, the Shiva crater was simply too large. Whereas massive impacts were common in the rambunctious early days of the inner solar system, the absence of recent large craters on Mercury, Venus and Mars strongly suggests that those days are long gone. "These surfaces demonstrate that objects larger than 30 kilometres have not produced impacts in the last three billion years," says planetary geologist Peter Schultz of Brown University

in Providence, Rhode Island.

Chatterjee responds that there are still objects of the right size out there, for example the near- Earth object 1036 Ganymed that NASA is monitoring closely, although it is happily not on a collision course with Earth. Moreover, he says that studies off the Indian coast by oil companies in the 1990S revealed gravitational anomalies that add weight to his arguments.

The exact strength of the gravitational pull an object feels at the Earth's surface differs

ON THE west coast of India, near the city of Mumbai, lies a tortured landsca pe. Faul ts score the ground, earthquakes are rife, and boiling water oozes up from below forming countless hot springs.

These are testaments to a traumatic his tory.

Further inland, stark mountains of volcanic basalt provide compelling evidence that this entire region - an area of some 500,000 square kilometres known as the Deccan trapsunderwent bouts of volcanic activity between 68 and 64 million years ago.

We don't know why. The Deccan traps lie

far away from any tectonic plate boundaries, those fractures in Earth's crus t through which lava usually forces its way up from the planet's interior. No volcanism on the scale implied by

the Deccan traps occurs ~nE~~th now. ~owever, 'Th e lava in th e 0 ecca n tra psi s ri ch in i ri diu m

smaller, equally mys terious hotspots dot 'I ' I

the globe away from plate boundaries-the an element rare In the Earth s crust but which

smoking volcanoes ofthe.Hawaiian islands, CO m mo n Iy 0 CC urs in rneteo rites"

for exam pie, or the bubblmg geysers of

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming.

Geologists have generally thought that the history of such features can be traced through the slow churnings and contortions of rock under pressure in Earth's mantle. But it seems there is more to it than that. Sometimes volcanic activity needs - and gets - a hel ping hand from above.

It was in the late 19 60S that oil companies pros pectlng off India's western coast found something odd in the rocks beneath the ocean floor. Sediments laid down on an ocean bed

over millions of years generally form rocks resembling a layer cake, with the layers getting older the deeper you delve. That was true in the boreholes drilled off the coas t near Mumbai, to a point. But some 7 kilometres down, in a layer

of rock deposited 65 million years ago, the neat progression abruptly stopped. Beneath it was a layer of shattered rock, followed by a layer of solidified volcanic lava up to 1 kilometre thick.

Something equally dramatic lurked onshore in the layered lava flows of the Deccan traps. These flows are interrupted

by intermediate layers of sedimentary rocks, indicating that the volcanic activity that shook and remodelled the area from about

68 million years ago was not continuous. It was also not catastrophic; fossils found in the sedimentary layers suggest that dinosaurs had coexisted with this activity reasonably well.

But rooted in layers of lava dating from 65 million years ago- around the time

dinosaurs disappeared from Earth's fossil record - are colossal spires oflava of

a fundamentally different composition. These spires are up to 12 kilometres high and 25 kilometres across at their base, so that their tips appear as surface hills. The lava they are made of is highly alkaline and rich in iridium, an element rare in the Earth's crus t but which

commonly occurs in meteorites.

To palaeontologist Sankar Chatterjee of Texas Tech University in Lubbock, all of this was telling a story. In 1992, he recounted it to the world: the entire basin area off the coast of Mumbai, he claimed, was a huge undersea impact crater, some 500 kilometres across, formed when a meteorite 40 kilometres in

from place to place. It is weaker in areas dominated by low-density granite rocks, for example, and stronger where high-density basalt rocks dominate. If you cross from one side of the posited Shiva crater to the other, the gravity signal weakens towards the centre before reversing and becoming much stronger again towards the proposed rim.

That, says Chatterjee, squares with the idea that a meteorite hit what is now the Mumbai coast from the south-eas t at an oblique angle of 15 degrees to the horizontal, obliterating the crust entirely and scraping away a portion of the upper mantle, too. The impact would have thrown up a granite peak 50 kilometres high that collapsed back down through a pool of >

5june2010 1 NewScientist 139

"A superpowerful pressure wave created by a huge impact from space could rattle volcan ic plugs and activate dormant volcanism"

rock below that had been melted in the impact.

That would explain not only the anomalous area oflower gravi ty under the ocean, but also the odd geology of the Deccan traps. As the granite peak collapsed it too melted, causing the impact crater to overflow and creating enormous melt ponds of alkaline, Iridiumrich lava in the charred surroundings. Meanwhile, the shock of the impact caused the moderate Deccan volcanic eruptions, already occurring nearby, to go into overdrive. "A lava trickle became a torrent," says Chatterjee. This torrent of normal lava enclosed the iridium, rich lava overflow from the impact, producing the stunning enclosed spire architecture seen in the Deccan layers today.

That is at best half an answer: it does

not explain where the Deccan volcanic

activity came from in the first place. Many palaeoscientists, including Chatterjee, think this was linked to a hotspot currently active under the island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean. This hotspot may well have been beneath the areaofthe Deccan traps 68 million years ago, before continental drift moved them apart.

Even so, it is a contentious claim: to sugges t

that im pacts can amplify volcanic activity

is to give them a far greater influence on Earth's recent geological history than has conventionally been allowed. The effects might not just be volcanic, either. According to Chatterjee's calculations, the force of the impact could have been enough to open up

a new rift in Earth's crust to the west of the crater, causing a tiny sliver of western India

to migrate out into the sea as new oceanic crust forced its way up. The most obvious sign of such a detached sliver today lies almost 2800 kilometres south of the Indian mainland - the island group of the Seychelles.

Comparison with other impact sites shows that if the Shiva crater exists and if it is as big as proposed, the impact would indeed have released enough energy to have such effects. "The physics of the process is undeniable," says geophys icist Adrian Jones ofU niversity College London. Even if the Shiva impact never happened, in a startling twist it seems an impact could well have caused the massive Deccan eruptions.

To understand how that might be requires an abrupt change of scene, to the icy permafrost ofnorthern Siberia. This region

contains a huge expanse of volcanic rock just as curious as the Deccan traps ~ and, at some 2 million square kilometres, roughly four times the size. These Siberian traps contain slabs of lava up to 3 kilometres thick that were formed in a single event 251 million years ago.

For geochemist Asish Basu at the University of Rochester in New York, this was fascinating, not least because the lava's date tallies with the largest mass extinction known, the Permian- Triassic extinction, in which over half the existing animal families died out.

Where did so much lava come from over such a short period? When Basu analysed

the chemical com position of the rock to find out, it threw up a surprise. The lava showed abnormally high concentrations of the isotope helium- 3, generally a Signature of rocks from far down in Earth's interior. "Something was causing the deep mantle to come up, but we did not know what," says Basu.

A hole punched by an impact, perhaps?

Basu was aware of Chatterjee's work, and it was tempting to float a connection between two huge unexplained lava flows, each dating from the same time as a mass extinction.

So Basu travelled to India to do his helium analysis on the rocks there, too. He came up with the same anomalous result.

For Basu, that only deepened the mystery.

For one thing, there was no noticeable impact site anywhere near the Siberian lava flows. For another, he was not convinced that the Shiva site was actually an impact crater.

Smash hits

A meteor strike on one part of Earth's surface might create

sei smic shock waves that propagate through the pi anets interior and cause vo lea nir outb raaks in otf er parts of the world

40 I NewScientist 15 June 2010

An alternative theory for the

Oe [can ira ps* is that their formation was assisted by an impact close by

Mollen rock spilling over Irom the crater reinforced the Deccan traps

METEORITE PATH

•

A new crack in tha Earth's crUSI opened by the impac I sp I its I he Seyc h e lies I ro m India

'Trap' a", .r<>3, of solidifi.d ft cod basalt form ing "stap-] ko" hi lis

Were the Deccan traps formed by an ancient meteor strike?

His brainwave was that it didn't matter.

"A big impact anywhere would have shaken the planet and created pressure that might have amplified deep-mantle volcanic activity already in progress," he says. If that was so, whether Shiva was an impact crater or not was irrelevant. An im pact anywhere in the world could have been the trigger for the Deccan volcanism; arguably, it could even have been the well-documented Yucatan impact.

Shaken and stirred

Basic physics says that is plausible. "The

idea of volcantc activity being primed and increased by energy waves sent through the mantle by impacts elsewhere on the planet is

a reasonable one," says Jones. Pressure waves from earthquakes travel extremely well through the inner layers of the Earth: seismographs in Europe and the US routinely pick up tremors thousands of miles away in China, for instance. A superpowerful press ure wave such as one created by a huge impact could well have done enough to rattle volcanic plugs and stir lava domes, activating otherwise mild or dormant volcanism.

To lend credence to the idea, what Basu needed was evidence ofa meteorite impact 251 million years ago - not in Siberia, but anywhere. That had him stumped until 2003, when he and his colleagues were handed a 251·million·year· old rock sample from near the Beardmore glacier in Antarctica. Within the rock, they found inclusions with an odd chemical composition that looked for all the world like meteorite fragments. They published a paper detailing the exciting discovery and its possible implication: that the two largest volcanic events in the past billion years could have been caused

by meteor im pacts (Science, vol 302, p 1388).

The claim caused a considerable stir, and many geologists dismissed the Antarctic finding out of hand. "A lot of criticism came because folks figured it wasn't possible for meteorite fragments to last so long." says

Eric Tohver of the Universi ty ofWes tern Australia in Perth. Meteorites are mostly metal and would usually be expected to rust away into nothingness over 100 million years, even ifburied. The fragments must be modern, said the critics, and somehow have infiltrated the sediments.

Undeterred, Basu and his colleagues pressed on with their exploration. In March this year, ata conference of planetary scientists in Houston, Texas, they presented what they consider to be a smoking gun: more meteorite fragments, this time enclosed in day containing fossils that date them to

251 million years ago. Clay readily absorbs water, drawing offmoisture and preventing meteorite fragments from rusting away.

Scepticism remains. "Small meteorites fall from the sky all the time," says Schultz. "Just because these meteorite fragments are the same age as the Siberian lava does not mean they and the Siberian lava flows are related."

As debated as Chatterjee's and Basu's ideas are, the concept that extraterrestrial bodies might have direct geological effects is now more widely accepted. "The idea of im pacts caustngvolcantsm is absolutely plausible," says Vicki Hansen, a planetary geologis t at the University of Minnesota, Duluth: modelling shows that impacts can readily melt a planet's surface layer where it is relatively thin.

The question is what sorts of volcanic activity that might gene rate. Might impacts help to explain the hotspots of Hawaii and

Yellowstone, for example? Hansen is openminded, but sceptical. "There can be little doubt that an im pact could spawn a type of hotspot given the right conditions," she says. The crust beneath Hawaii, though, seems relatively intact, and the hotspot looks to be the result of'a bulge of superheated mantle, or" plume", forcing its way up for reasons unknown. We know less of what underlies Yellowstone; there is no evidence yet that an impact played a significant part there.

Wi th other hots pots it is a different story.

The Ontong Java plateau lies beneath the western Pacific, north of the Solomon Islands, and it is a hotspot that was active some

125 million years ago. The upper layers of the mantle are uplifted there, but not as much as under Hawaii. A likely explanation is that an impact fractured the crust, allowing melt from below to rise and spill out as an eruption. The escape of so much melt material would reduce the density of what was left behind, causing the mantle bulge seen today {Earth and Planetary scienceietters, vol 218, p 123}.

How long such lmpact-lnduced fireworks might have lasted is another area of debate. Tohver thinks not so long - a few hundred thousand years, perhaps a few million. "It is

a lot like dropping a spoon into thick pea sou p," he says: the ini tiallarge dis turbance would quickly die down. Schultz agrees, on the basis of studies of other solar system bodies. "Theoretical models concluded that impacts could not trigger sustained eruptions," he says.

Jones begs to differ, arguing that better modelling will show that sus tained eru ptions can result from impacts. "A major difference between the Earth and our neighbouring planets is that Earth is still very hot and geologically active, so may be much easier to melt with impacts," he says.

The debate will rage on, but one thing seems certain: accumulating evidence means the days of thinking abou t geology wi thout considering influences from above are numbered. "Geologists don't typically consider impact hypotheses, perhaps for psychological reasons," says Hansen. "We have been trained to consider things that come from within our planet." Being forced to consider the effects of random meteorite strikes adds another complexity to an already involved subject. But in the end, says Hansen, "We are never going to get anywhere if we keep trying to understand our planet with our hands over our eyes and ears.".

Matt Kaplan is a wnter based in Califomia and the UK

5 June 2010 1 NewScientist 141

BOOKS&ARTS

Farmed to death?

The invention of agricu Iture changed the course of human history - and not a Iways for the better

Pandora's Seed: The unforeseen cost of civilization by Spencer Wells, Random House, $26.00

Reviewed by Henry Harpending

FOR more than four decades I

have watched the Bushmen of the northern Kalahari make the transition from a nomadic lifestyle to life in permanent communities - and it has not been pretty.

Sedentism causes many social changes. If you are sedentary you can build a house and own things of all sorts. Many possessions will be passed down generations, so inequality accumulates. With only one or perhaps two harvests per year, you mus t store food rather than share it with your social

grou p as nomadic people do.

If you have an argument with a neighbour you can no longer walk

421 NewScientist Is June 2010

away and live somewhere else, since you are both tethered to your possessions, your stock and your fields. Leaders emerge along with constabularies and courts. Old social relationships disappear in the face of the demands of the new ecology. Families are torn apart, envy replaces assurances ofmu tual aid and support, the environment around the new settlements becomes ugly

and degraded, human wastes accumulate and parasites prosper. This is just the beginning.

In Pandora's Seed, Spencer Wells traces the chain of events that began with the advent of settled communities and the rise of agriculture 10 to 12,000 years

ago and results in the mismatches between our biology and the conditions oflife in today's post-agricultural world. Wells, an anthropologist and geneticist well known for his genetic studies of the modern human dispersal

from Africa, notes that many of the genes that have been selected for over the past 10,000 years of human evolution have been those involved in metabolising foodhighlighting the profound change that sedentary food production has had on our species.

One of its most disastrous consequences is easy enough to see: obesity and other chronic

"Obesity and other chronic dtseases are rooted in our diets. which are rich in simple carbohydrates"

diseases are rooted in our postagricultural diets, which became rich in simple carbohydrates. Mental illness, too, he argues, maybe a part of our Neolithic inheritance, as agricultural society led us to live in noisy, overcrowded environments

that our brains are not evolved to handle.

With possessions and prosperity come duties and responsibilities

Looking forward, he notes that new genetic and reproductive technologies may further magnify the mismatch between biology and culture, and in a particularly valuable discussion about agriculture, Wells points out that the transition from foraging to farming continues with the rise of aquaculture. "On the land we may be farmers," he writes, "but in the sea we remain hunter-gatherers." As that changes, what further unintended consequences might it have?

~ Each chapter of this well-

~ written book is full of detail and

~ fascinating anecdotes. The author ~ cheerfully jumps from one side of

the Earth to the other, from the present to 10,000 years ago and back. In the final chapter, he discusses how we ought to cope with our new world of food production. This is the leas t satisfactory chapter, with little more than weak calls, echoing the 1970S counterculture, for new ideologies like "wanting less".

For some reason, Wells sidesteps the issue of population control. With fewer people,

there would be more resources

to go around. In order to stem population growth, governments should dose international borders to migration and impose a draconian policy offamily limitation like China's where it is needed. After a century or two a world human population an order of magnitude lower than today's could enjoy a sustainable and orderly life on this planet. •

Henry Harpending is a profsssor of anthropology at the University of Utah

For more galleries, visit www.NewScientistcom/galieries

j.

Samuel Fallours and his fantasy fish

Tropical Fishes of the East Indies

by Theodore Pietsche, Taschen, £44.99

Reviewed by Shanta Barley

LOBSTERS that live on rnou ntains, fish with top hats on thei r bellies and rnarma ids that utter mouse-like cries. Welcome to the wei rd world of Samuel Fallours.

In 1719, FaHours published the world's first colour catalog us of fish.A soidierl1Jrned d ergyman's assistant he lived on the island of Ambonin what is now Indonesia. The fish he paintedwere caught off Ambon in the Banda Sea. This area lies atthe heart of the Coral Triangle, which is thought to conta in more marine species tha n any other reg ion of the wo rid.

Just 100 copies of his catalogue were published, rnaki ng it"one IJf the rare st nat ural h lsto ry boo ks 0 n Ea rth': says Theodore Pietsch, a professor of marine science at the University of Washington in Seattlewho has assembled the plates into a neN book, Tropical Fishes afthe East Indies.

When Eu ropeanswere centro nted with FaHou rs'simages, rna ny doubted that such brightly coloured species existed, so flamboya ntwere they; comparedwith the drab creatures fou nd in Eu ropeanwaters.

Theywere rightto be sceptical.

"Fallours applied colouc more

often than not, in a totally arbitrary fashion," says P,ietsch .ln the plate above, the dull stoneflsh{number37)

can be seen decked out by FalloLJrs in vivid reds, yellows and blues .. He also embellished the flanks of fish with suns, moons, stars and pots of flowering plants. Look ciose;1y at the wrasse at number38 and you'll see images of three human heads topped by red hats.

"Fallours probably invented some of the extraordinary beasts he painted and a few outlandish stories togo with them in orderto attract European collectorswith an eye for the bizarre," says Pietsch. For example, Fallours claimed that thEl spinylobstee Panulirusornatus, lived in the mountains, dim bed trees, ate fruit and laid red-spotted, blue eggs "as I'arge as those of a piqson"

Yet Pietsch insists that itwould be unduly harsh to dismiss Faliours's paintings as hav ing 110 S( ientific merit. He estimates that only

10 per cent of the paintings are imaginary. The rest (an be identified to species, genus orfamilyleveL

Th e paintings are valuable for anotherreason too, "Ambon's harbour is now heavily pollutedwith sewage, bottles, cans and plastic bags," Pietsche says, "The kinds of fish that live there have probably changed since Fallou rs's time," making this an invaluable if slig,htly whimsical record. Shanta Sarley •

For more of Fallours'simagEls, see our on line gallery at bit.ly/bSibS8

5 June 2010 1 NewScientist 143

BOOKS&ARTS

For more reviews and to add your comments, visit www.NewScientist.comlbooks-art

Say red to see it

An exploration of colour makes a good case for the influence of language on thought

Through the Language Glass: How words colouryourworld by Guy Deutscher, William Heinemann, f20

Reviewed by Christine Kenneally

IN 1HE 1850s, the British scholar, politician and future prime minis ter William Gladstone proudly published a 17oo'page work on the writings of Homer.

The opus ranged over Greek geography, society and morali ty, and it included a small but remarkable chapter on the use of colour in the Iliad and the Odyssey. Gladstone observed that Homer, whose powers of description and evocation were as exceptional then as they were hundreds of years before, was oddly nonexuberant when it came to colour.

The epic poet overwhelmingly described objects as either black or white, and when he mentioned an actual colour, like red or (much

441 NewScientist 15 June 2010

less commonly) green, there was a strangeness about it. Is a "wtnedark sea" incredibly poetic or just odd? Gladstone wondered

if Homer's off-kilter palette revealed not a poverty of language, but of perception.

Did Homer, and indeed all the ancients, he speculated, see mostly in black and white?

Gladstone's work may be littleread now, but his musings on colour kicked off one of the most fascinating and fractious debates in the psychological sciences: does the language you speak affect the way you see the world? If, for instance, you have no word for violet, can you actually perceive that colour? What if your language obliges you to specify the compass direction of an object every time you mention it; does that mean you'll always know where north is?

In Through The Language Glassa book so robustly researched and wonderfully told that it is hard to put down - Guy Deu tscher traces the pendulum swing of scientific

opinion on this issue, focusing mostly on the story of colour.

Deutscher; an honorary research fellow at the University of Manches ter, UK, and author of The Unfolding of Language, brings together more than a century's worth of captivating characters, incidents and experiments that illuminate the relationship between words and mind.

These include a massive 1875 train crash in Sweden that led to the discovery ofthe phenomenon now called colour blindness, and a significant 1898 trip taken by the experimental psychologist William Rivers. He was investigating colour terms used by islanders

in the Torres Strait, between Australia and New Guinea, and

his study was the first of many

~ to show just how differently

S languages can" talk about" colour. ~ Some languages, for ins tance, I will only defini tively identify

12 black, white and red. Such findings ~ have led in just. the last few years

:;l to clever experiments that show

how colour words can speed up recognition of those shades.

Deutscher makes a convincing case for the influence of language on thought, and in doing so he reveals as much about the way colour words shape our perception as about the way that scientific dogma and fashion can blind us.

Weighty issue

Obesity: The biographyby Sa nder L. Gi Ima n, Oxford University Press £12.99/$24.95

Reviewed by jo Marchant

OBESITY

EAT once a day, sleep on a hard bed and walk naked for as long as possible. Such was the

advice of the Greek physician

'-- Hippocrates to

anyone wishing to shed a few pounds. There's nothing new about people being worried that they are getting fat, notes cultural historian Sander L. Gilman.

His book examines how shifting cultural values have shaped our view of obesity since ancient times. Different societies have blamed it on weak character, poor diet, bad genes, poverty and sin.

N ow we have a new narrative,

says Gilman, a "moral panic" over a global obesity epidemic that

has fat threatening society as a whole. As with global warming, developed nations have destroyed their environment and are

corm pting the rest of the world; the cure is seen as a return to the "natural" and" slow" foods (and values) of the past. It's a thoughtprovoking pers pecttve on one of our most urgent health problems.

Carbon counting

How BadAre Bananas? The carbon footprint of everything by Mike Elerners·Lee, Green Profile, £8.99

Reviewed by Kay leigh Lawrence

EVER wondered what the carbon footprint of a text message is? Or a pint of milk? Or perhaps a pair of trousers? Well, Mike Berners- Lee

TIll '~I."JI r.tTPIIJIll 11"'111',,1111

has done the number-crunching to come up with the answers.

As we are exposed to a flood of all-too-often contradictory tips on greener living, making environmentally responsible decisions can be a perplexing business. Berners-Lee wants this to change, and the declared purpose of his book is to give us all the "carbon instinct".

How BadAre Bananas? is packed with information about the everyday things we do and use that perhaps we did not realise had any impact on the environment at all. It's an engaging book that manages to present serious science without preaching. It offers tools that any reader will be able use to make informed choices, and even seasoned eco-enthuslasts will

be in for plenty of surprises.

Ben Stanger first came face to face with pancreatic cancer as a third-year medical student, like most people, he assumed

that patients could be treated with surgery and chemotherapy to slow the progression of the disease. ''I had no idea how bad itwas," says Stanger, now an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

For clinical oncologists, pancreatic cancer is

one of the hardest diagnoses to deliver. Despite advances that have turned cancers into chronic rather than fatal diseases, pancreatic cancer patients face a dismal 1.9% five-year relative survival rate

if diagnosed after the cancer has spread.

But things are progressing, and physicians

now have a growing toolbox of treatments for pancreatic cancer patients. The intense focus on the disease, both in academia and industry, equates to numerous opportunities for those interested

in a career at the forefront of clinical oncology.

One such opportunity is within diagnosis.

Pancreatic cancer is partly so difficult to treat because few people experience early symptoms, with more than half not diagnosed until after the tumor has spread. Scientists are exploring several ways to solve this problem, most importantly finding the primary cause. They hope to unlock cancer's secrets by probing cell signaling in specific organs and throughout the body. Stanger, a clinician and researcher, wants to determine which cells give rise to cancer by using a mouse model to study signals that regulate cell size, division and death in the pancreas during fetal development.

Scientists are also studying the changes that allow tumor cells to infiltrate other tissues or develop drug resistance. A better understanding of this basic pathology could lead to new biomarkers and tests that detect disease sooner. For example, in lung cancer, the majority of resistance is due

to a single change in an epidermal growth factor receptor, wbich could act as a biomarker to identify who is likely to relapse.

On the genetics side, the Cancer Genome Atlas, funded by the National Cancer Institute, will sequence 500 tumors from pancreatic cancers and more than zo other cancers in the next five years. Making sense of that data will require scores of scientists to comb through the results and link genetic changes to tumor development,

"We know many of the major genetic alterations, but [not] in enough detail to leverage that information rapidly into clinical trials," says Bill Sellers, vice president and global head of oncology for Novartis, 'When we start putting them together in different combinations, it will unveil the grand scheme of things and lead to curative therapeutics."

The tnformation from the Genome Atlas will also

boost one of the hottest areas in cancer treatment: targeted therapies. These drugs bind to and block specific molecules or pathways (targets) involved in tumor growth and development. Well~known targeted therapies include the breast cancer drug Herceptin, a tyrosine kinase receptor inhibitor, and Gleevec, a chronic myelogenous drug that blocks an aberrant enzyme associated with leukemia.

The problem with targeted therapy is that altering these powerful signaling pathways can lead to unwanted results downstream of the original receptors. For instance, blocking one pathway could simply stimulate another. While a tumor may arise from a single precursor cell, its growing, dividing cells rapidly accumulate random genetic

"I n the past five years, we've made

•

more progress In

understanding how cancer works than in medical history previously"

changes, increasing the likelihood that a small fraction of cells will be resistant to anyone therapy.

Preliminaryresearch, however, indicates that tackling multiple pathways simultaneously could overcome these problems. For instance, at the American Society of Clinical Oncology's (ASCO) GI symposium in January, Merck presented promising phase I tria1 results that combined three enzyme inhibitors to target advanced pancreatic cancer. Expect to see similar approaches in other tumor types atASCO's national meeting this month, says Douglas Blayney, ASCO president and professor of medicine at the University of Michigan. "Turning cancer into a chronic disease through maintenance therapies that incorporate existing drugs looks to be the strategy most easily transferable to the clinic," he says.

The widespread use of targeted therapies creates the need for widespread tumor genotyping. "It's becoming accepted that this is the way to move forward," says LeifEllisen, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School who also practices

at Massachusetts General Hospital. Physicians there are already designing trials based on tumor genetics instead of disease sites.

Advertising feature

As genotyping expands nationwide, testing patients will be a major hurdle and offers many oppornmities for scientists trained in other fields, "The ability to do upfront testing has come about through sophisticated engineering and chemistry applications," says Derek Raghavan, chair of the Cleveland Clinic'sTaussig Cancer Institute.

Sellers hopes that technology will reach a stage where patients can be screened for mutations

in their doctor's office or at cancer centers. The data firehose could reveal previously unknown mutations common to certain cancers, accelerating drug development and testing. 'Whatever the function of the mutation turns out to be, the information for those patients will be available and will lead to more rapid recruitment and assignment of patients to clinical trials," Sellers says.

Nevertheless, some cancers do not respond well to drugs based on these critical pathways, so researchers are also utilising the body's immune system. An example is bavituximab, amonoclona1 antibody from Peregrine Pharmaceuticals in California. It binds to amembrane phospholipid that is usually located inside cells but is exposed

on the outside of cells that line tumor blood vessels (endothelials). Once attached to the phospholipid, the drug mobilizes the body's immune system to destroy the tumor endothelial cells.

The drug complements existing therapies that target tumor cells, says Joe Shan,vice president

of clinical and regulatory affairs. "Cancer is a complex disease, and single treatments have not been curative. Were trying to develop broad-based platforms that act on tumors and tumor blood vessels in complementary and different ways."

With so much discovery occurring, clinical oncology has a renewed vigor. ''I'Ve been in oncology since 1979," says Raghavan, "and in the past ftveyears, we'Ve probably made more progress in understanding how cancer works than in medical bistory previously." •

. . . ~ ..

www.peregrineinc.com

5 June 20101 NewScientist 147

FOCUS ON CLINICAL ONCOLOGY &: CAN.CER

"I can create, I can innovate, I can try things.

Right from the beginning, I've had the freedom to come up with new ideas, have them listened to, build something from scratch and run with it."

Roc h e. SWilZe ria nd

Make your mark. Improve lives.

At Roche, our success is built on innovation, curiosity, and diversity - multiplied by 80,000 professionals in 150 countries. By challengin g conventional th in king, and challenging ourselves, we've become one of the world's leading research-focused heelthcare groups, and one of th e most exciting and open-minded places to advance a career.

To innovate healthcare, we're constantly learning and growing - an d seeking people who have those same goals for th ernselves,

To see how Roche will advance your career, visit us today at www"careers.mche.ch

We Innovate Healthcare

Faculty Position

University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute and Department of Pharmacology &: Chemical Biology

Applications are invited for two tenured faculty positions at the level of full Professor at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI). Candidates who have a Ph.D., M.D. or equivalent graduate degree are being recruited to expand expertise in womens malignancies at UPCI. The incumbents will have primary appointment in the Department of Phannacology &: Chemical Biology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine (UPSOM).

The UPCl has consistently been among the top NCI-funded and NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers located within the academic environment of the University of Pittsburgh and University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and has an active and highly interactive community of basic, translational and clinical research scientists. The institution has several state-of-the-art Iacilitles with varied capabilities including cell and tissue imaging, high-throughput drug discovery and a cancer biomarkers facility with mass spectrometry, genomics and proteomics platforms.

The UPCl is executing an exciting plan for the development of a wornens cancer program and envisions expansion of its capabilities to translate research findings to clinical applications with integration of basic research, clinical investigation, and patient care missions of the UPCl. We are interested in the recruitment otcandidates with a strong interest in translational breast cancer research, particularly asit applies to mechanisms of hormone action, therapeutic resistance, growth factor action and its implication for therapeutic application. Understanding and expertise in molecular and cell biology, breast cancer cell lines, breast generics and animal models will be an advantage. In order to develop an outstanding, extramurally-supported research program, the applicants must have excellent communication skills, pu blications in high-impact journals and a proven track record of extramural funding in breast cancer research.

The incumbent will have the opportunity to mentor graduate students through the Department of Phannacology and Chemical Biology and UPSOM Integrated Biomedical Graduate Program and will have progressive involvement in the teaching of graduate and medical students. Salary and benefits will be commensurate with experience.

Interested candidates should send curriculum vitae, brief description of research interests and contact information for three references to:

UPCI Search Comrnntee/Pharmacology C/O V~aya C. Gandhi, PhD, MBA

Associate Director for Administration and Strategic Planning, UPCI 5150 Centre Avenue, Suite 532, Pittsburgh, PA 15232

Email: gandlrivc®Upmc.edu

The UnivcrsityofPittsburgh is an Affirmat ive Action, Equal opponWlity Employer.

481 NewScientist [Sjuna 2010

Commitment is our Strength Ready to Grow Together?

• Driving back disease

• .Enhancing the quality of life

• Producing globally, for the greatest number of people

Oncology R&D Career Opportunities at sanofi-aventfs u.s.

Let more peopl e feel the impact of your oncology work with sanoft-aventls U. S. World·class research capabilities allow our talented teams to develop medicines that fight these challenging diseases, Our onrology team unfi: in Cambridge, MA has mu Iti pie career opportunities existing at all Ievets for M.D., Ph. D., Master's, and B. S. candidates.

Ours is the third·I@Ming pharmaceutical group in the world, and we are proud that our research an d development organization ranks among the very best. We employ about 12,500 sdentmc personnel in 20 research centers on three continents, including approximately 2,500 at our Bridgewater, NJ sfi:e; and our Malvern (Great VaI:l@y), PA; Cambridg€. MA; Tucson. AZ; and Beth@sda, MD facilities. Are YOlJ prepared to help us drive back disease?

For more information and to explore available career opportunities. please vlsit us online at:

www.careers.sanoft-aventis.us

Req #R&D13750

Sanoff-aventls US is an equal ollportunllyemployerlhal embraces diversity 10 foster posltlve, In novatlve Ihin king thai will benefit people worldwlde, sanon-avenns u.s, is also committed 10 employing qualifted Individuals with dlsabilltles and. where warranted, will

prov ide rea>onable aceo m modalio n 10 ap pi lean ~ as We II as I Is em ployee,_

Bee:h..l9t ht:alth mltler~

~ t ~eE,tt can!~!sl.ariJI~

I nt e mat io n al Post doi:to ra I Cancer RellU rch Fell owsh I P at M IT's Koch I nstlt IJt e The Koch Institute for I ntegrative Cancer Research at MIT (KI) has established the Mazumdar·Shaw Intemational Oncology Fellows Program. This high-impact, bilateral collaboration with India seeks to help develop a new generation of cancer researchers in India whose careers and professional networks will be increasingly global, and to bu ild I ndta's posltlon as an intellectual hub for oncology research. The program offers opportunitles for postdoctoral SCientists, engineers, and physicians with a passion to tackle I ndla-centrlc oncology problems. Fellows will work at the interfaces between biology/medicine and the diverse fields of mathematics, engineering, computer SCience, physical and chemical sciences.

The Program provides fLlndlng for:

.A two yearfull·time postdoctoral research fellowship within the KI

• Travelexpensestol ndraf orth e researcheranda Klfaculty advtsortoshare his/her research with colleagues at the Fellow'S I ndlan host institution and peer Institutions in India.

The Fellowship ls awarded with the firm expectation that Fellows will continue research in India for a third year for which funding must be secured from a host I nstltut ion.

Th e applicant must be elth er an Indian national, or a non-lndlan national who has a relevant degree from a university in India or has worked in an Indian university, hospital or institution for at least a continuous three-year period. The applicant should be about to submit his/her doctoral thesis or have up to, but no more than, three years postdoctoral experience from date of his/her PhD or MD to the application deadline.

This Is an annual competition. The application deadlme 15 September 1,11);0. The start date for ths two-year Fellowship term ls January j, 2011.

Fo r q L1a I i ficat ions and an a pp I kat ion visit,

http://web.mlt.edLl/kl/newS/grants/mazLlmdarshaw.html

III. - Massadlu&etli

II Illstitute IQf Technology

MIT is an Eq wi Opport unity! A ffirrootiye Action employer.

FOCUS ONI CLINICAL ONCOLOGY &: CANCER

THE CURE WILL BE FOUND RIGHT HERE

Faculty PosiUDn:

ThoraCic Medical Oncologist

The Moffitt Cancer Center is seeking a Medical Onl::ologist at the AsSistant I Associate Member level for itS Department 01 Thoracic Oncology. The candidate must have an MD or MD/PhD and be Florida mediGal liGensed or eligible, with primary intereslBin developing a laboratory-based translational research P ro-9 ram in lumg cancer, and demonstrated interest in cl;inicaJ actilJiliies. Emphasls on treabnent of lung cancer and other ~horacj'c malignancies is desired. candidates must be ABIM Board GflrtJmed or eligible in Med ieal Oncology or Hematology,

The M(lffitt Cancer CEmter is aiffilialted wi.th tile University of South Rorida, Primary and secondary University appoIntments are available, as applicable. Academic rank is commensurate with education and scholarly ep erience.

The Muffitt Cancer Center & Resea;rch Illstitutel an NCI-de~ignated Comprehensive Cancer Ctder, is compmsed of a large new ambulatory care facility, a 2G6-bed hosprrail wlitl1 a 36·bed blood and marrow transplant program, 1.4 state of the art operating suites, 81 3~-bed intensivB care unj~ a high volume screening program, and modern basic science research space.

Fm inquiries about lhe posman,. contact' Dr. Scant Antoniai Chairi Department of Thoracic Oncol[)giY,. at 813-745,3883,

To formally apply, visit our website. moffittc8reers.arg and refer te re~L!lsilion number 46~ 1.

MOFFITTIQ\

CANe ER CENT ER \1·'11

Moffitt cancer center provtnes <l tonacco-rrae wor~ environment, Is .n E,qU<l1 01' po rtunlty, MIl rm a tll'e Actl <lin emp loye,r and a d rlJQ·free workp I a ~e.

5 June 2010 1 NewScientist 149

NewScientist Jobs

Incorporating sdencejobs.com

To apply online visit www.NewScientistJobs.com

BIOCHEM ISTRY

Oligonucleotide Chern ist Pfizer US

MA- Massachusetts

We are seeking an oligonucleotide chemist to join the Oligon udeotlde Therapeutic Unit (OTUl at Pfizer's Cambridge South location as part

of a team focus@d on 01 igom@r production a nd ana Iytica I chemistry, For more information visit New Sci e ntist] obs .com Job 1 D: 1400806595

PhD Research Scientist - Principal ScientistProtein Purification and Characterization

Pfizer US

MA- Massachusetts SucCElssin th@ rol@will be

cha rartsrzed by qual ity cedslon making and progression of projects, th roug h timely achievement of key milestones,increased efficiency and in novation within group,

For more information visit New Sci entistJ obs .com job 1 D: 1400806585

BIOLOGY

Onli ne Advertising Accou nt Coordinator

Biocompare

CA- California

We offer a n amazing work environment, a competitive benefits package, an on-site fitness facility and bayside walking path, Biocom pa re seeks to hire a wellorga nzec and highly motivated individual torthe position of On line Advertising Accou nt Coordinato~ For more information visit New Scie ntist] obs .com Job I D: 1400805135

Research Technician Assistant - Biology, Pasadena, CA California Institute of Technology

CA- California

One goal of our wo rik is directed towards understanding the

50 I NewScientist Is June 2010

genetic and molecula r mechanisms that regulate cell death,

prol iferation,innatei mmunity and spermatogenesis in Drosophi la, A second goa I of ourwork add resses three questions in population biology,

Fa r more inform atlo n visit

N ewScie nti st] obs .co m job I D: 1400800296

Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Genentech

CA - California

A postdoc position is availabl@in the lab of Dr J iping Zha to study the pathogenesis of triple negative breast career Col ncer genome projects have revealed multiple qenetk alterations in this disease, W@would I ik@ to determlne wh@th@r/hovv the g@n@swith copy nu mber gain may contri bute to tumorigenesis,

Fa r more inform atlo n visit

N ewScie ntlstl obs .co m job I D: 1400799073

Scientist/Sr. ScientistNeu roscience Genentech

CA - California

An opportunity 0<ists for a hig hly motivated and ta lented scientist

in the a rea of neurodegenerative disease, The investigatorwill

be respo nsi ble for conducting cutting-edge translationa I

research to understand disease pathophysiology and discover biomarkers that identify disease heterogeneity and predict response to therapy,

Fa r more inform atlo n visit

N ewScie nti st] obs .co m job I D: 1400799068

Research Scientist Molecular Biology - Job ID 201002-130- 06d

Genomatica

CA - California

Genomatica is a sustana ble chemical company that commercializes novel bio-

East coast Office 225Wymon Street WoltharTl. MA 02451

Email NSSaleS@NewSclentlst.com Phone 781 734 8770

Fax 7203569217

(ails mcy be rnon itored or recorded for staff tra in ing purposes

manufactu ring processes to produce a variety of industrial chemica Is thati rnpart a II major industries and provide the materia Is that com prise theworld we live in,

For more information visit

N ewScientistj 0 bs,co m job I D: 450686813

Junior EpidemiologistEconomic Analyst (205427) Henry M Jackson Foundation MD - Maryland

Global sUMlillanCEl portfolio manag@m@ntincluding proposa I review and project evaluation, Epidemiologic axperuse as related to global surveillance initiatives, Professional evaluation of disease surveillance projects,

to includ@ d@lf@lopm@nt of m@tricsormst=@fftletiv@n@ss analysis,

For more info rmati on visit

N ewScientistj 0 bs,co m job 10: 1400798218

S.AS Programmer/ Epidemiologist (205426) Henry M Jackson Foundation MO - Maryland

Develops, tests, and deploys

SAS rccs on b@hal,f of external

mi litary and coll'a borating eivi lia n research clientsforthe execution of general epidemiologic and seroepidemiologic:5tudies using DMSS and DoDSR seru m specimens,

For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job ID: 1400797958

Engineered Immune Proteins, Group Head (Cambridge, MA) pfizer US

MA - Massachusetts

As a core member of the Engineered 1m mune Proteins group, th is

ind ividual will work closely with RU project tea rns and Imm u me Protein screening saennsts to develop a strategy to generate optimized

im mum protein therapeutic

West coast Office

201 Mission Street zsm Floor Son Francisco, CA 94105

Email NSSales@NewSclentlst.com Phone 415 >l08 3353

Fax 4155436789

Ca ncldates,

For more info rmati 0 n visit New Sci entistjobs.com Job 1 D: 1400806398

Biomarker 'FACs Research Scientist (R4- R6)

Pfizer US

MA- Massachusetts

The successful candidate will have experience developing pa rtnerships in a matrix environ rnent, influencing project strategies, and leaders'hip

in technology development a nd impl@m@ntatlion,

For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com Job lD: 450686824

Conjugation and Poly tides Process Development, Bioprocess R&D R3/4 Pfizer US

NY - New York

These positionswilljoin a larger team of scientists focused on d@v@loping a nd optimizing bio, conjugation and polyt,id€l (p@ptid@s and 01 igonucleotidesl rnemstry processes for biotherapeutic macmmo leeules for early- and latephase clinical trials,

For more info rmati 0 n visit NewScientistjobs.com Job 10: 450686825

Molecular Modeling Methods Developer- Computational Sciences CoE

Pfizer US

MA- Massachusetts

The CompSci CaE currently has an apeningin our La Jolla research site for a methods developerwith strong skills ;in softwa redevelopment and in novations in mol@cularmod@ling, For more information visit

New Scientistjobs.com job: D: 1400801351

Regulated Support, Ligand Bind ing Assay Scientist (R2/ R3)

Pfizer US

MA- Massachusetts

www.NewScientistJobs.com

Desig n, develo p a nd implement ligand binding assays (e,g, ELISA, ECl detection) to detect the presence of neutralizing annprod uct a ntibod iesin a regulated environment Design, develop and implement cell~ based assays to detect the presence of

neutral izing enn- prod uct antibodies,

For more information visit NewScientistjobs.comjob 10: 450686823

Scientist/Sr. Scientist (Protein Chemist) pfizer US

CA- California

This position in the protei n Emgi n@@ring group tocuses on ana Iytica I cha rarterzanon of com plex protei n molecules! conjugates utilizing a variety of ana Iytica I techniques,

For more information visit NewS ci e ntistj obs.com job J D: 1400804250

Scientist/Sr. Scientist, Molecu lar Biology pfizer US

CA- California

Working with multidiscipl inary teams, the candidate will use

in novative techniq ues and experimental a ppnatres for better understa nding the molecula r basis of disease mecha nisms in the areas ofinfla mmation, d labstes and microbiology.

For more information visit NewScientistjobs.comjob 10: 1400804264

Lig ht Microscopy Special ist (C400)- La Jolla, CaliforniaThe Salk Institute

The Sal k Institute for Biologica I Studies

CA- California

Th@ COI1l will facil nats acCElSS to and priJJide logistica I suppo rt for Sa Ik researchers in: fl uoreseence microscopy, fixed a nd live cell confocal microscopy, total-lnte'nalreflection (TIRF) microscopy, mUltiphoton microscopy, and Coherent Anti~Stokes Raman (CARS) microscopy, aswell as scanning and transmission electron microscopy methods,

Fa r mo re i nformatio n vis it

N eWScie nti stj obs. co m job 10: 1400798364

Temporary Research Assistant

Pioneer Hi-Bred Production LP lA-Iowa

Operate liquid handling merhnesto complete production, Operate plate reading machines a nd robotics to ana Iyze data for scoring as

needed, Organize material netsssarytor tba next days production run to era ble first shift to effortlessly begin prod urnon as needed,

Fa r mo re i nformatio n visit

N ewScienti stj obs. com job I D: 1400799060

Product Manager - Genetic Identity

Promega Corporation WI- Wisconsin

This position is I1lsponsi bl@ for planning and @x@cuting product strategy, merchandising, sales support and program management for our growing Genetic Identity product portfolio,

For more information visit

N eWScie nti stj obs. co m job 10: 1400800096

Senior Manager Science Communications NAFTA SyngentaUS

NC - North Carol ina

Lead external communications thatarefocused on science/R&D, especially biotech, to enha nce Syngenta's reputation of having a strong foundation in scientific excellence and R&D innovation in agricultura I technology

Fa r mo re i nformatio n v is it NewScienti stj obs.co m job 10: 1400804321

Associate ProfessorDermatopathologist Birmingham Alabama

Un iversity of Alabama at 8irmingham (UA8), Department of Pathology

AL-Alabama

The successful ca nd idate wi II participate in a rich and diverse prog ram of d iag nostic service and

i~UNSW

~ THE (..NWERSITY(lf I\IEWS(}\!TH WALE'S

Lecturer / Senior Lecturer

FACULTY OF SCIENCE

School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences Sydney, Australia Location

Remote sensing and GIS position in the Australian Wetlands and Rivers Centre.

Base AUD$78K - $109K pa I Ref. 7125 NS

For full details appli cation procedures and uther varancics visit;

http://www.hr.unsw.edu.au

t£lachingin Derrnatnpathology and should have a track

record demonstratrn corrmitmenttc basic or clinical research asw@11 as an int@mational reputation in the field,

For more info rmati on visit NewSci entistjobs.com [obl 0: 1400800455

C401· .Electron Microscopist The Salk Institute for 8iological Studies

CA - Ca liforn ia

The Electmn Microscopist, under th@ sup@Nision of th@ Biophatonics Cor@ Dil1lctor, wi II run th@

electron microscor:Y instruments as a serv.ice for Sa Ik Institute

resea rchers

For more info rmatlon visit NewScientistjobs.com J obi D: 1400805311

Training Manager -Education and Development

Thermo Fisher Scientific (US) CO - Colorado

Coordinatling, tlraining, educating

a nd developing ln-rcuse a nd field re p rese ntat,ives th ro u g hi nteg ratli 0 n of training, ed ucation and development strategi es consistent with the business pia n

For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job 10: 1400798332

Research Associate (Assistant Professor) University of Ch icago IL-Illinois

The primary activity of a Research Associate (Assistant Professor) is

academic resea rchin asscdatio n with a faculty member or team, The Department of M icmbiOlogy at the Univ@rsityof Chicago is r@cruiting

a R@s€larchAssociat@ (Assistant Pmfessor) to parti cipate in studies on the molecular pathogenesis of intlracellular g ram~negat,ive bacte~ial pathogens,

For more information visit N@wScientistjobs.comJob 10: 1400803580

Tenure track position University of Pittsburgh

PA - Pennsylvania Th@individualwill @stablish a vigomusindependentJy funded research program in developmental biology, Proximity of the Rangos Research Centerto Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh will allow @a9j acCElSS to patent mat@rial and collaborative interactions with

cl inical faculty,

For more information visit N@wScientistjobs.com Job 10: 1400800458

Faculty Positions

University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI)

PA - Pennsylvania

Ca nd idates who have a Ph.D., M.D. or@quival@nt graduate d@gl1l@ a I1l being recruited to expa nd expertise in womens mal ig nandes at UPCI, TheinclJmbents will have prima ry appointment in the Department of Pharmacology & Chemical Biology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine (UPSOM),

For more interrnaticn visit New Sci entistj obs .com job I 0: 1400803283

5 June2010 I NewScientist 151

www.NewScientistJobs.com

CHEMISTRY

Associate Scientist 1- Chemistry

Celgene

CA- California

I ndependently solve synthetic problems, propose viable synthetic modifications, efficiently execute mu Itistep synthesis, and productively synthesize ana logs. Responsibil itiesinclude ana log syntheSiS a nd synthetiC method d€M~lapm€mt

For more information visit New Sci e ntistJ obs .com Job I D: 450686822

Scientist (Technology) Genentech

CA- California

Responsibil itiesinclude physicochemical charactBrization of small molecu Ie drug ra ndidates, develo pment a nd qual ification of analytical rnethcos for starting mat@rials, int@rm@diat@s, drug suosta nee and drug prod uct, and release and sta bi lity testing of clinical materials.

For more information visit New ScientistJ obs .com job J D: 1400799071

Analytical Formulation Scientist. III

ImClone Systems

Nj - New Jersey

Imelane Systems, awhally-owned subsidia ry of Eli Lilly a nd Com pany, is comrritted to adva ncing oncology care by developing a portfol io

of targeted bi ologic treatments designed to address the med ical needs of patients with a va riety of cancers,

For more information visit New Scie ntist] obs .com Job J D: 1400798333

Computational Chemistry Scientific ProgrammerPfizer US

CT - Connecticut

Responsibil ities will lnd ude develo pment a ndi mplementatian ofinnavative methods and algorithms to en hanee

com putatio nal a pproaches in areas including virtual screening, library

521 NewScientist 15 June 2010

desig n, and cheminformatics, Fa r more inform atio n visit

N eWScie nti stJ obs .co m job I D: 1400801354

Scientific Computing Methods DeveloperComputational Sciences CoE pfizer US

CT - Connecticut

The Com pSci Co E cu rrently has an opening in our Groton research site for a computationa I scientist to d@lf€!lop ch@mog@nomics

and systems chemical biology algorithms and methods,

Fa r more inform atio n visit

N ewScie ntlst] obs .co m job I D: 1400801160

Formulation Chemist Syngenta US

NC - North Carol ina

Syngentais one of the world's leading com panies with 24, 000

Elm ploy@€!s in over 90 countri@s d€!dicat€!d to our purpos€!: bringi ng pia nt potential to I ife, We contri bute to addressi ng some of the planet's most critical issues such as the rising dema nd farfaod from a growing population,

Fa r more i nformatio n visit

N eWScie nti st1 obs .co m job I D: 1400801452

CLINICAL

DirectorClink'al ResearchRespiratory /I nflammation TA

AstraZeneca US

DE - Delaware

Prima rily deployed to an Established Brands Team but

may also be deployed to teams supporting emerging respiratory and inflam mation therapeutics

as determined by the TACO and project Medical Science Directors, Responsibilitieswill be determined by 1@If@1 of 0<p€!ri€!nc:€.

Fa r more inform atio n visit

N eWScie nti stJ obs .co m job I D: 1400796936

Senior Director CI inical Research- Respiratoryl Inflammation TA AstraZeneca US

DE - Delaware

Prima rily deployed to an

Esta bl ished Bra nds Team but may also be deployed to tea rns supporting emerging respirato ry andinflammat~on therapeutics as determined by the TACO and project Medical Science

Directors,

For more information visit NewScientistjobs.comJob ID: 1400798480

Senior Med ica I DirectorRespiratory; Inflammation andGI

AstraZeneca US

DE - Delaware

Safety Physicians are involved in all safety surveilla nce activities, including m€!dicalrElvi€!W of

ind Ividual saMy rases and cumulative case listlings, the production of periodic reports, signal-detection and SERM adMt'ies, and setting the safety sta ndams a nd strategy for

clinica I d@V€llopm€!nt 'in accorda ncs with tlh@ CI inica I Proj€!ct Op€!rating model,

For more info rmati on visit

N ewScientistj a bs,co m job I D: 1400796938

Medical Science Liaison II Genentech

TX- Texas

The Genentech, Inc. Med ical Science Liaisons (MSL) function as field bas@d members of t,h@ CI inica I Science organization located

within Med ira I Affairs, MSLs are scientifica Ily trained professionals with strong (lin ica I and I or scientific backgrounds,

For more info rmati on visit NewScientistjobs.comJob ID: 1400805679

Principal. Clin ical Business Management

Genentech

CA - California

SupportgREO's Early Development pia ns torthe identification of exterrsl

colla borations across a va~ety of service providers including academic institutions, investigator sites,

KOLs, CROs, and other associated early development cl inica I service providers,

For more info rmati a n visit New Scientistjobs.com job: D: 1400803731

PV Compliance Analyst (Safety Inspection) Genentech

CA - California

Will ensure Pharmacovigilanee actMtlies and processes a re in compliancewith any

d ivisional/depa rtrnenta I procedures and globa I

rngu lations, and that good documentatlion practliees are implemented and mal ntained for all aspects of adverse event case reports and Pharmacovigila nee actMt,ies,

For mom info rmati a n visit New Sci entistjobs.com job 1 D: 1400802409

Safety Sciences Cluster Head, Mature Products Genentech

CA - California

You ensure theinmrporation of Compa rative Benefiit-Risk concepts in the disease a rea strategy

and product plans a nd their use

th roug hout tlh@d€!V€llopm€!nt and com m€!rciallif€!cyc~l€! of products assigned to the clusterto ensure their 10 ngevity,

For more info rmati a n visit New Scientistjobs.com [obl D: 1400802340

Senior Research AssociateDMPK

Genentech

CA - California

The department of Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics (OM PK) at Genentech is seeking a highly motivatBd RAlSRA

with proven ability in

determining the biotra nsformation pathways of small molecu les and m@tabolit@id@ntification by Lc/ MS/MSin drug discavery and early development.

For more information visit New Sci entistjobs.com job 1 D: 140079907.2

Sr Research Associate Genentech

CA - California

www.NewScientistJobs.com

We are looking for a talented

S~ ResearchAssociatewith

strong background in both

immu nology and cancer to join a

g roup with diverse interests and responsibilities, The successful

ra ndidate wi II partitipatei n the discovery a nd investigation of nOllel o rug targets in the therapeutic a rea of oncology.

For more information visit NewScientistJobs.comjob 10: 1400803722

Sr Statistica I Scientist Genentech

CA- California

Provides statistics leadership

for Med ieal Affairs projects and

is di rElctly rsspons' ble for th@ statistical int@grity, ad@quacy, and accuracy of the cl inical studies

in the project As part of a clinical development or assessment team, collaborates in the preparation and review of clinical asssssrnerts

For more information visit NewScientistjobs.comjob 10: 1400802407

Sr. Medical Director(MD) Genentech

CA- California

Genentech's Medica I Affai rs organization' mission is to serve

as the bridge between clinical development and clinica I

prertks to support th@ appropriate utilization and

access to a II our medicines, by generati ng and comm u nicating com pell ing scientific evidence with healthca re professionals and payers,

For more information visit NewS ci e ntistj obs .com job 10: 1400796964

Research Associate

Pioneer Hi-Bred Production LP KS- Kansas

Ma nage the execution of dayto-day Non-RegulatBd maize development activities at the Research Center by collaborating with senior staff a nd exercising independent judgment to set priorities and develop operational plans,

For more information visit

N ewScie nti stj obs. co m job I D: 1400799059

Senior Research Associate - Environmental Safety Assessment

Pioneer Hi-Bred Production LP lA-Iowa

The position wi II support the evaluation and demonstration

of candidate product safety through the cond uct of

environ mental fate resea rth

u ncertha su pavlslon of th@ Environmental Exposure Laboratory Lead,

Fa r rna ra i nformatio n v is it

N ewScie ntlst] obs. co m job 10: 1400802416

Senior Research AssociateMolecu lar Analysis

Pioneer Hi-Bred Production LP DE - Delaware

As a mem ber of the Regulatory SCi@nmt@am, act as Principal

I nv@stigatorfur mol@cularandlor bioehemicallaboratory analyses for regulatory bio-safety

studies,

For more informatio n visit

N ewScienti stj obs.co m job I D: 1400802417

Associate Scientist Soy Continuous Nu rsery SyngentaUS

HI- Hawaii

The pu rpose of the Associate Scientist is to assist the scientists in their roles to creatB su perior products and help su pport the targeted goals for precision,

acru racy, purity and

efficiency,

Fa r rna re i nformatio n v is it

N ewScie nti stj obs. co m job 10:

Ijlf=1§iMi!i"6iiijl'

Staff Associate - New York - The Earth Institute. Columbia University

The Earth Institute, Columbia University

NY- New York

Responsi ble fur researching and conducting policy analysis on a broad range of topics related to meeting the va rious goals and

The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation enables highly-qualified scientists and scholars of all nationaiaiss and fields to conduct extended periods of research in Germany in cooperation with academic hosts at German institutions, Fellowships are awarded solely on the basis of the applicant's academic record, the quality and feasibility of the proposed research and the candidate's intemational publications. The Humboldt Foundation particularly welcomes applications from qualified, female junior researchers.

Humboldt Research Fellowship for Postdoctoral Researchers

• For scientists and scholars who have completed a doctoral degree within the past four years

• Allows for a stay of 6-24 months in Germany; applications may be submitted at any time; monthly stipend of2250 EUR

Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers

• For scientists and scholars who have completed a doctoral degree within the past twelve years

• Fellowships may be divided into a maximum of three visits lasting three months or longer; applications may be submitted at any time; monthlystipend of2450 EUR

Additional allowances are available for accompanying family members, travel expenses, and German language instruction,

www.humboldt~foundation.de

Research in Germany

Alexander von Humboldt Stiftu ng I Fou ndation

@stablish@d research init~ativ@s d@lf@lop@d by o~ J@ffrny Sachs, inolud ing assisting in research and prepsranon of related papers and presentations,

For more info rmatlon visit NewScientistjobs.com J obi D: 450686748

ENGINEERING

Engineer II/Associate Scientist/Sr. RA Genentech

CA - Ca liforn ia

The ra ndidate wi II be expected to apply biological and enginee~ing expertise to develop and opt'imize recombinant protei n processes suitable for large-scale manufacturing, Th@ successtu eand idate must be flexible in balancing pipeline productrelated activities as well as

tBch nology projects to

fu rther examine means of im proving fermentation performance.

For more information visit NewSci entistjobs.com [obl D: 1400788661

Principal Engineer. Device Development

Genentech

CA- California

Major responsl bi lities wi II entail component selection, assessment of container-device and containerdrug compat,ibil ity, d@lf@.lopm@nt of testing met,hods to assess container a nd delivery system

qua lity a nd functional ity for existing and new

technologies,

For mom information visit NewScientistjobs.com job JD: 1400802444

SALES

Ac.count Manager (OOlPA) Monsanto

SK - Saskatchewan

We ru rrently have an opening

for an ACCDU nt Manager to serve as a key business consuta nt to retailers and dealers to effectively sell the value of Monsanto rro p Protection Products,

For more interrnaticn visit New Sci entistj obs .com job I D: 1400806644

5 June 2010 I NewScientist 153

Environment, Earth, and Resources. This world-renowned group will be the f rst to explore the Arctic on a micro scale.

With the CERC award and the support of other partners totalling $35 million in funding, the team's focus on the Arctic's role in global climate change will cement the University of Manitoba's position as a leader in environmental and climate change studies.

THE. UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA RE.CEIVES CANADA EXCELLENCE

RESEARCH CHAIR AND $35 MILLION IN FUNDING FOR ARCTIC RE.SEARCH.

INNOVATIVE RESEARCH. EXCEPTIONAL FACULTY. A SUPPORTIVE ENVIRONMENTTHAT INSPIRES EXCELLENCE.

The key to global climate change may I ie deep within Arctic ice. Now, the University of Manitoba has been recognized with one of the cou ntrys most prestigiou s research awards - the Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERe) in Arctic Geomicrobiology and Climate Change - to help uncover these secrets.

The new chair will be held by Dr. SIren Rysgaard, a distingu lshed geom icrobi ologist from Greenland. He will join the 1 DO-plus team from the University of Manitoba's Centre for Earth Observation Science in the Clayton H. Riddell Faculty of

Canada ExcellO!nce Resea rch Ch airs

Chaires d'excellence

en r~l;;hil!r!;;he d u C~Il~QiI

One university. Many futures. umanitoba.ca

For more information, please visit umanitoba.ca

H ~

UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA

• Shape Australia's ICT sector

• Leading industry organisation

• Sydney or Canberra location

• NICTA

Chief Executive Officer

Imagination to limpllGt

,

NICTA (National ICT Australia) is Australia's Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Centre of Excellence, driving innovation through high-quality research, training and commercialisation.

The centre carries out use-inspired research in the national interest which addresses challenges fadng industry and the community. With over 700 world-class researchers and professional staff, NICTA aspires to be among the world's top ten ICT research centres by 2020.

You can help shape the ICT sector locally and globally as NICTA's Chief Executive Officer. As CEO, you will be responsible for ensuring that NICTA operates to maximum capability in terms of operational performance, research and commercial outputs.

This is a key influencing role that requires a well-connected and respected visionary leader capable of engaging a large, disparate group of stakeholders. More specifically, you will be responsible for:

• Leading the strategic direction of NICTA;

• Delivering on strategy and monitoring performance;

• Setting and championing the culture and tone of the organisation;

• Establishing processes to manage financial performance and optimal allocation of funds;

• Selecting and leading the executive team;

• Representing NICTA publicly, both as an articulate speaker and thought leader; and

• Connecting with stakeholder groups, including governments, universities and businesses.

To be successful, you will need:

• Prior experience leading a research organisation and the ability to command the respect of internationally recognised researchers;

• Strong connections in the ICT arena nationally and internationally;

• An understanding of and sensitivity to the Australian political landscape (Federal and State) generally and as it applies to NICTA; the Australian higher education sector and the key drivers and concerns of universities; the ICT research sector and the direction of international ICT research;

• To be familiar with global commercialisation of new technology, principles of entrepreneurship and the role of and ways to access early stage capital markets;

• To be an effective negotiator, representing NICTA in high-level strategic negotiations; and

• An advanced degree in a technical dlscipline, with a PhD in a scientific area and post-doctoral research considered highly desirable.

More information about NICTA is available at www.nicta.com.au. Qualified and interested candidates should email their resume, on a confidential basis to bryan.teo@russellreynolds.com

RUSSELL REYNOLDS ASSOCIATES

FEEDBACK

>>-

~ 8

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::0

~L- _'

READERS Felix Naughton and Fergal Toohey are probably not the only ones who find it hard to understand why the top Formula 1 racing team Red Bull has signed up FIR· TEX (Far Infrared Rays TEXtile) as an "innovation partner".

Announcing the deal at bit.ly /BuliTEX, Red Bull

says somewhat ungrammatically:

"The agreement means that the team's pi t crew will wear their revolutionary FIR· TEX underneath its team clothing during the 2010 grands prix."

The announcement goes

on to state:" Shown to improve circulation, balance and wellbeing, the FIR·VEST is one

of the new products produced

by FIR· TEX. Using Far Infrared Rays (healthy radiations) which 'switch on' when activated by body heat, the vests have been shown to protect the wearer from stressful electromagnetic radiation and increase power and endurance - important as pects

within the demanding world of Formula One."

None of the New Scientist colleagues we consulted abou t this has any idea what it means, and we strongly sus pect it might not mean anything, other than implying the clothes can keep you warm.

Are Formula 1 racing teams an unusually credulous bunch?

DOCKING spacecraft is no simple matter, and neither is nam ing the mea ns for doi ng so. jonathan Wallace noted that NASA calls one system LADAR (16 january, p 34). That stands for Laser Detection and

Rang ing - which is an example of a nested acronym, writable as "( Light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) Detection and Ranging".

Are there, jonathan wants to know, more nested acronyms out there? Yes, there are. Feedback has had cause to mention the Oxford, Cambridge and (Royal Society of Arts) examination board (OCR), which after

Every now and then Ian Napier's laptop tells him: "Your Dell travel mouse batteries are critical", I an says he feels offended

561 NewScientist 15 June 2010

For more feedback,. visit www.NewScientistcomlfeedback

taki ng overthe Midlands Examining Group (M EG) carried out a searchand-destroy acronym- replacing mission - what Feedback is now calli ng a netplication (3 April) - on

its syllabus. The result was that it for a while requ ired students to learn about ocrawatts (14 ja nuary 2006).

Feedback's colleagues

point out another nested acronym, the WPPT, which stands forthe (World Intellectual Property Organization) Performances and Phonograms Treaty.

Can readers tell us more?

We'd like examples outside the world of geekery, please, because geeks seem to del ight in forming neste d ac ro ny m sfo r th e sa ke of it. Indeed, some fetishise recursive acrony ms, Ii ke the GNU family of free software, which is "GNU's Not Unix" (17 February 2001).

And itwas the free web- pagegenerating software PHP which

fi rst drew our attention to the phenomenon of netplication, when loads of people substituted PHP for ASp, the name of a competing Microsoft product, giving rise to words like"phpects" (13 February). Equally recu rsive, PHP stands for "PHP Hypertext Processor", and the PHP in that stands for ...

jonathan issues a fu rther challenge: can anyone fi nd any acrony ms or i nitialisms that nest more than one other acronym?

WHILE on the subject of netplication, Eddy Barratt tells us that when he was working as

a lifeguard, he and his colleagues used first- aid course books provided by the Swimming Teachers' Association.

"There must have been some debate about whether would-be casualties should be referred to

as customers, as you would expect in a public swimming pool, or pupils, as you would expect from a swimming teacher," Eddy tells us. "The former must have been favoured in the end though. We were instructed, for certain conditions, to check to see if the customers were dilated."

TH E London Daily Telegraph

ann 0 u n ced re cently : "NASA s c ie nti sts use Hubble Space Telescope to capture head-on ast.eroid collision." judy Grindell was surprised to

read on: "The fuzzy cloud from the debris was first photographed last month with a robotic camera ca lied

LI N EAR that sea rch es for astero ids

in New Mexico."

"One wonders why they bothered Hu bble when the asteroids were so much closer," she says.

LINEAR, by the way, is not

a nested acronym, in case you're wondering. It stands for Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research.

THE zoology department at the University of Oxford is hos ting the Sixth International Hole

N es ting Bird Conference in July. Ben Haller, who received an email informing him of this, wonders how the hole-nes ting birds will find out about it, given that few of them have internet access.

FINA LLY, one from the department of redundant information. Orig inally a food store, UK su permarket Tesco has branched out into selling a more diverse range of goods. A recent

add ition is fitness prod ucts, includ ing 3- kilogram ha nd weightswhich, Col in McLeod informs us, retail at £3.99 each. That, the shelf label points out, is "£1.33 per kilogram".

You [an send stories to Feedback by email atfeedback@newscientist.c.om. Please include your home address, This wElek's and past Feedbacks can

be seen on ourwebsite.

THE LAST WORD

Last words past and present, plus questions, at www.last-word.com

Stirring stuff

What is the si gnificance of James Bond's famous phrase "shaken, not stirred"? Is there really a difference in the taste of a shaken vodka martini, as opposed to a stirred one? And ifthere is, why? (Continued)

In our quest to establish the difference between a shaken and a stirred martini, we published a reply from A nna Collins of Washington DC (8 May). She informed us that Bond ordered his martinis shaken so that the ice helped to dissipate any oil left over from the manufacture of vodka from potatoes - the base vegetable for many vodkas at the time Ian Flem inq was writing the James Bond novels. Anna added that with the rise of higher-quality grain vodkas this method of preparation has become unnecessary. One reader decided to check out whether this really was the case- Ed

• Anna Collins is correct, according to our blind trial. We bought two bottles of vodka, one grain, the other potato-based. First we tas ted the vodkas. In the blind trial all six people in our sample said the potato vodka was oily, and the grain vodka wasn't. Then we made two vodka martinis using the potato vodka. One was stirred with ice, the other shaken with ice. The difference was quite distinct and in a blind tasting every one of the six drinkers characterised the shaken martini as being much less oily. But the martini had to be consumed

Questions and answers should be concise. We reserve the right to edit items for clarity and style. Include a daytime telephone number and email address if you have

one. Restri ct q u esti 0 ns to sci entific enquiries about everyday phenomena.

The writers of pu bl ish e d answers will receive a ch eq ue for EZS (01" US$

eq u iva lent). Reed B usi n esslnformati on Ltd reserves all ri g hts to re use q uesti on and

a mw e r m ateri al su brn itted by rea ders in any medium orformat.

quickly. Ifleft to settle for

5 minutes or so, the shaken martini became oily again. Peter Simmons

London, UK

Our final advice is to go easy on the vodka martinis, whether shaken or stirred,for reasons explained in the answers to the following question - Ed

Wine on the line

Since my 20s, I have drunk on average a bottle of wine a day. I'm 57. That's 49 UK alcohol units a week. The UK's recommended weekly Ii mit for a man is 28 units.

I recently had a health check at my local d inic, and Irn in perfect health. Specifically, my liver fu nction tests are entirely normal. Am I exceptional or are the government lim its spurious? I rarely drink spirits and occasionally substitute beer for wine. I play football and squash. I wal k 3 kilometres to and from work. II €lad a norma I life and, probably due to regular consumption, I never feel drunk, but presumably I am considered a binge dri nker.1 don't want advice from a government minister or associated medic. I want objective information. Am I, lucky? Or is my consumption relatively harmless? What's the truth?

A UK unit is 10 mill iiiires (8 grams) of alcohol=Ed

• The questioner may not be getting away with his alcohol consumption as lightly as he thinks. The liver has a remarkable

NewS d entist retai ns tota I ed itori a I contra I over the co nte nt ofTh e La st Word, Sen d

q uestl 0 n s and a nsw e 1'5 to Th e Last Word, New Scientist Lacon House B4 Theobald's Road London WClX BNS, UK by email to lastwol'd@newscientist.comol'visit www.last-word.com (please include a postal ad dress in order to rece ive pay ment for answers),

For a list ef all unanswered questions sen d an SA E to LW QI i st atthe above address,

ability to carry on working, and liver function tests may remain normal even when the organ is quite badly damaged. The gamma GT test is more sensitive than other enzyme tests at detecting damage, but it is often not offered to National Health Service patients in the UK because of its cost.

I also think the writer has underestimated his consumption. Ifhe really drinks a bottle of

wine a day then, given the strength of typical popular

wines, I would estimate that

he could be drinking more than 60 units a week. In more than

30 years of general practice, almost

"Anyone drinking more than 40 units of alcohol a week is damaging their health in some way"

everyone I encountered drinking more than 40 units a week was damaging his or her health in some way, through addiction, hypertension, liver or gastric problems, or mental problems.

That said, government advice on alcohol consumption is necessarily arbitrary, as there

is great genetic variation in

the way that people metabolise and tolerate alcohol.

Anthony Daniel

General practitioner sevenoaks, Kent, UK

• The short answer is that, like a go-year-old smoker, you are just lucky. The government limits of 2 or 3 units per day for women and 3 or 4 units per day for men

Do Polar Bears Get Lonely?

Our latest collection-

serious enquiry, bri II iant insig ht and the hi lariously unexpected

Available from booksellers

and at www.newscientist.com/ polarbears

are based on epidemiological evidence. The complex mix of factors influencing our health makes it impossible to issue

cas t- iron predictions of what will happen to a particular individual at a given level of consumption.

One bottle of wine typically contains 10 UK units or about

So grams of alcohol. Drinking a bottle a day has been shown to increase the risk of live r cirrhosis IS-fold. You are also five times as likely to get cancer of the mouth, and two to three times as likely

to get laryngeal or oesophageal cancer, to have a stroke, or to suffer from essential hypertension or chronic pancreatitis.

These are relative risks. What they are relative to will depend on a number of factors, induding genetics. The liver is vulnerable to excess fat, so an active lifestyle and low- fat diet will reduce the risk ofliver disease.

Rachel Seabrook

Institute of Alcohol Studies St Ives, Cambridgeshire, UK

This week's question

LIGHTEN UP

When I lift my wife for a good hug, her weight seems vas tly different depending on whether she's limp or rigid. Is there anything real about the difference or is it my imagination that she seems lighter (or certainly much easier to lift) when she's rigid? I noticed the same thing a few years back when I used to carry my kids to bed. Geoff Patton

Wheaton, Maryland, US