CO NTE NTS Volume 205 No 2745

NEWS
COVER STORY

32
5 EDITORIAL We've much still to learn about
"vegetative" patients
'-. ' Why water
6 UPFRONT Clinical trials should include the
elderly, Stem cell science "stifled", NASA hit
.. issow eird
in US budget. Pacific waves are getting taller
Secrets of
B THIS WEEK
the strangest
How to communicate with people who seem
unconscious, Huge impact of exported UK
•
liquid revealed
emissions, Concern over DIY sperm counters,
Can headache pill save trauma victims?
Quantum secrets of photosynthesis
16 IN BRIEF The warming power of water.
How Asians got the booze-battling gene, . '
Cover image
.
Complex smells make food more satisfying, "' .. BIWNGa liery Stock
Laser fusion breakthrough, Comets doomed - . . ..
19 TECHNOLOG Y
Internet telescope inspects web's dark heart.
Elegant photos for all. Sun-storm warnings
from a chip-sized spacecraft
36 Life'sa gas
Where did

OPINION all the oxygen

24 Neurons for peace Neuroscientists must stop come from?
their work being used to advance torture and
aggressive wars, says Curtis Bell
25 One minute with .. , Rob Hopkins, promoter of
the Transition Towns movement
26 LETTERS Alternatives to robot border guards,
Pitfalls of consciousness studies
2B Rewriting Darwin Let's admit that natural
selection isn't the whole story, say Jerry Fodor
and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini

FEATURES
32 Why water is so weird (see right)
36 On the origin of Earth's oxygen (see right)
40 The age of the whale Vast numbers of the
mighty mammals once ruled the oceans
43 Bye-bye wires Will beamed power finally free
Coming next week
your appliances from the socket on the wall? Impossible star
REGULARS Relic from a
26 ENIGMA
long lost universe
46 BOOKS & ARTS
Reviews What liberal democracy owes to
science, A history of death by poison, Bacteria
Speaking to the brain PLUS A marriage
and fungi galore, A Nobelist's musings We can now communicate
made in e ndocrinol ogy
56 FEEDBACK with people once thought to
57 THE LAST WORD be unconscious
4B JOBS & CAREERS

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6 February 2010 I NewScientist 13

EDITORIAL

Holster the harpoons

research now offers a way to ask someone if
A peek into the they wish to end their life. The ethical issues

twilight zone
We may now be a b l e to
co m m u n i cate with people who
seemed to be u n responsive
IT TOOK Jean-Dominique Bauby hundreds of
thousands of blinks to dictate his book about
how a stroke had left him paralysed yet still
aware. Now comes the remarkable news that
neuroscientists have communicated with a
man presumed to be in a vegetative state,
by studying the activity in his brain with
functional magnetic resonance imaging, fMRI.
Vegetative usually means awake but
unresponsive and devoid ofintellectual
activity. However, a handful of people have
defied that diagnosis. The Anglo- Belgian team
led by Adrian Owen and Steven Laureys
describe how they scanned the brain of one
of the group as he thought of one of two
different activities - tennis and navigating his
way round his house. Different brain areas
lit up, depending on whether he wanted to
answer yes or no to questions about his family
(see page 8).
To discover awareness in someone who is
supposedly vegetative will be unsettling for
friends and family. But surely ignorance can't
be preferable to understanding their plight.
Some argue that the discovery that a
"vegetative" person actually possesses a
degree of consciousness suggests they
can suffer and may increase pressure to
discontinue their life support. However, this
surrounding assent to suicide will be just
same as for someone who is terminally ill. The
central question remains: are they capable of
making a life-or-death decision and deciding
their own fate.
Bauby had locked-in syndrome, which
means his mind was intact but trapped inside
an almost useless body. But many other
people exist in a twilight zone between
consciousness and coma. The new study
underlines arguments by bioethicists such as
Joseph Fins of Weill Cornell Medical College,
"The central question remains:
are these individuals capable of
deciding their own fate"
New York, that scanners will be critical for
categorising disorders of consciousness, on
which there is little consensus at the moment.
Excitement about the ability to
communicate with some people who have been
unreachable until now should also be tempered
by pragmatism. Doctors will now need to find
cheap ways to read minds ifthese patients are
to have any chance of rejoining society.
Many groups around the world, including
the one led by Owen and Laureys, are now
working on cheaper and more portable
alternatives to fMRI, based on EEG recordings.
In the short term, the study will ease fears
that we may be withdrawing life support when
there is a chance of recovery. At least now
there is a way to respond to these patients'
needs, even if we do not know how to make
them happy. In this new era of consciousness
science, we can explore the twilight zone.•
till we have the facts
WHEN settlers arrived in the New World in the
nth century, they found waters so thick with
whales it was said you could walk across the
bay of Cape Cod on their backs. Such stories
have been dismissed as fantasy. Nevertheless,
it appears that the whale population was once
vastly bigger than we thought, and that our
slaughter of them was more thorough than
history records (see page 40). This matters
because commercial whaling may be allowed
to resume once populations reach 54 per cent
of their "historic" levels. This is generally
assumed to be the population of the mid-19th
century, before the explosive harpoon was
invented. But if this historic benchmark is too
low, the whaling moratorium must continue.
Ironically, the vast slaughter of whales past
may yet help to secure their future.•
Quantum visionaries
QUANTUM biology has come in from the cold.
First came news that birds may see magnetic
fields, thanks to quantum effects. Now it
seems that pigments used in photosynthesis
use quantum calculations to harness light (see
page 12). Physicists had ruled this out at life­
friendly temperatures because heat disrupts
an effect called quantum coherence. The
implication is that we, too, could possess
quantum computers. We may only need to
look into our own eyes to find the evidence,
in the form of the pigment rhodopsin.•

What's hot on NewScientist.com

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6 February 2010 I NewScientist 1 5

UPFRONT

US abandons moon shot

DREAMS of a moon base will have to
remain just that. The US is cancelling
Constellation, the Bush-era p lan to
return humans to the moon by 2020.
The programme is a victim of cuts
announced by President Barack
Obama in his 2011 budget request.
The cancellation will leave
NASA without its own rocket capable
of sending astronauts into space
after the retirement of the space
shuttle later this year. Instead,
NASA is betting that astronauts will
be able to pay for rides to and from
the International Space Station on
commercial launch vehicles.
The new p lan must now be
app roved by Congress. The White
House faces fierce opposition from
officials who rep resent areas with
thousands of jobs tied to the
Constellation programme.
It was not all bad news, however.
The space station wil l now be
funded until 2020, rather than being
abandoned after 2015 to free up
money for the moon shot. A nd NASA
is to invest $7.8 billion overthe next
five years on new technology for
human space exp loration, such as
orbiting fuel depots that could act as
staging posts for future missions.
Science as a whole also fared
well. Obama is seeking $61.6 billion
for research in 2011, 5.6 per cent
more than in 2010. A mong the
winners is clean-energy research,
with $300 mil lion req uested for the
new Advanced Research Projects
Agency-Energy, created to make
investments in potentially game­
changing energy technologies.

including Nature and Science. Emissions dance commitment to cut emissions

Referee or rival?
WOULD top-flight scientists stoop
so low as to sabotage disclosure of
rival research that threatens to
scoop their own?
Although short of proof, a group
of senior stem cell researchers
warn that it may be ha ppening.
They are calling for journal
editors to be alert to referees who
might abuse their position in the
peer-review process to discredit
or block rival research.
"It's all done in secret, so it's
very hard to gather information
"If all peer-review comments
were published, it would
hopefully make biased
refereeing less common"
on this," says Robin Lovell-Badge
of the National Institute for
Medical Research in London.
He and Shinya Yamanaka of
Kyoto University, Japan, who
famously reprogrammed
ordinary cells to become similar
to embryonic stem cells, are
among 14 signatories to a letter
of complaint sent in July 200g
to major scientific journals,
Frustrated by the lack of res ponse,
some signatories decided to
publicise the letter's content
more widely this week.
The letter called on journals to
publish anonymised comments
from referees alongside published
papers, so that the fairness and
scientific validity ofthe comments
can be judged by all, a practice
already adopted by The EMBO
Journal. "Because all comments
would be published, it would
hopefully make biased or careless
refereeing less common, and it
would embarrass journals if
people could spot biased or stupid
comments," says Lovell-Badge.
The fact that only two
signatories were from the US
hinted that most disenchantment
lies elsewhere, he adds. "There
does seem to be this bias against
groups from the rest of the world."
Philip Campbell, editor-in-chief
at Nature, says The EMBOJou rnal
model " is still on the table", but
says it's up to journal editors to
decide if referees' demands for
extra experiments are justified,
and to spot referees who appear
to be causing delays.
THE Copenhagen climate dance
continues. This week, 55 nations
representing 78 per cent of global
greenhouse gas emissions from
energy use, submitted pledges to
the UN to cut emissions by 2020.
The commitments were made
to meet a deadline set at the
climate talks held in Copenhagen
in December. But they mostly
reiterate national pledges made
before the summit, and are
steeped in conditions. The US,
for instance, reaffirmed its
Pacific waves are getting bigger
GOOD news surfers: waves in the
north-east Pacific are getting taller,
and the height of the most extreme
"lOO-year" waves is increasing fastest.
Previous data had shown
wave height to be increasing in
the north-east Pacific and north
Atlantic since the late 19805. Now
measurements from a deep-water
buoy moored off the Oregon coast
since the mid-1970s indicate that
the "lOo-year" waves - the monster
waves with a 1 per cent chance of
to 17 per cent below 2005 levels,
contingent on legislation being
passed at home. China repeated
that it would "endeavour to lower
its carbon dioxide emissions per
unit of G DP by 40 to 45 per cent"
between 2005 and 2020.
"The vast majority of nations
has failed to seize this opportunity
to make their pledges more
ambitious," says Niklas Hahne,
a policy analyst at ECofys in
Cologne, Germany. "Our analysis
suggests that the world is still on
track for a 3- 5 °C rise."
occurring in any given year - could
be 40 per cent larger than previous
estimates, at 14 metres high.
Peter Ruggiero of Oregon State
University, who carried out the
analysis, found that average wave
heights increased at the rate of
1.5 centi metres per year, while each
year's biggest wave increased by an
average of 10 centimetres per year.
He says climate change is a l i kely
culprit, but more measurements
are needed to confirm this.

6 1 NewScientist 1 6 February 2010

For daily news stories, visit www.NewScientist.com/news
Wanted: the elderly
CLINICAL trials must include
more older recruits if thousands
of lives are to be saved, say
researchers who have drawn up a
charter calling for such a change.
"Non-steroidal anti­
inflammatory drugs are
not trialled in the over-70s
but are prescribed to them"
The team told the British
Medical Association on Monday
that the elderly are under­
represented in clinical trials,
and that in a quarter of cases the
reasons for excluding them are
unjustified. Paul Dieppe at the
University of Bristol, UK, says that
non-steroidal anti-inflammatory NOTHING more thana sugar rush
drugs, which are not trialled in
patients over the age oho but are volunteers who took part in a
prescribed to people of this age,
may have caused thousands of
avoidable deaths because these
drugs are more toxic in over-70s.
Andrew Beswick ofthe UK's
Medical Research Council says
that the elderly may experience
more underlying health issues
and interference from other
drugs, but that this isn't a reason
to exclude them as it " represents
the real-life situation".
The charter calls on trial
sponsors, regulators and ethics
committees to offer support to
those with communication or
mobility problems that might
hamper their participation.
Mass overdose pact
was reported by hundreds of
mass-overdose stunt around
the world. The aim was to show
that homeopathic remedies are
nothing more than sugar pills.
"There were no casualties at
all, as far as I know," says Martin
Robbins of the 10: 23 campaign,
created to highlight the alleged
ineffectiveness of homeopathic
remedies. "No one was cured of
"Each pillule is a tiny sugar
pill dabbed with a drop of
homeopathic remedy at
'infinite'dilution"
anything either." Like an
estimated 300 volunteers in
several cities in the UK, Australia,
New Zealand, Canada and the US,
Robbins swallowed a bottleful of
around 80 "pillules" at exactly
10.23 am on 30 January. Each
pillule is a tiny sugar pill dabbed
with a drop of a homeopathic
remedy, produced by " infinite"
dilution. This involves diluting
a solution so much that not
one molecule ofthe " active"
component is likely to remain,
according to the Avogadro
constant - the origin of "10:23".
Robbins says that the aim was
to draw attention to homeopathic
medicine's lack of scientific
foundation and to embarrass the
British high-street pharmacist
Boots into withdrawing its
treatments. Boots said: "Many
people believe in the benefits of
complementary medicines and
we aim to offer the products we
know our customers want."
Robbins said that the campaign
would be a success if it led others
to question homeopathy more.
Climate and Gates
THE world's richest man has
been funding geoengineering
research, it emerged last week.
According to a report posted
online by Science, Bill Gates has
committed $4.5 million of his
own money to funding a number
of climate scientists interested
in geoengineering.
It is not clear whether all of
that has gone to geoengineering
studies. Atmospheric scientist Ken
Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution
for Science in Stanford, California,
says he received $1.1 million over
three years for "blue skies"
research. He estimates about
one-third ofthat was spent on
investigating geoengineering.
Caldeira says he sees no moral
dilemmas in Gates funding
geoengineering. "There is no
attempt to profit from this,"
he says. He contrasts Gates's
involvement with commercial
geoengineering ventures.
60 SECONDS
Oil nay, nuclearyea...
Big oil took a hit and nuclear got
a boost from US president Barack
Obama's budget proposal. It calls
fo r a $36 billion i ncrease in loan
guarantees for nuclear p ower plants
and cuts $36.5 billion in subsidies to
oil and natural gas companies over
10 years. If app roved by Co ngress,
the money could be used to finance
six new nuclear power plants.
... but not in Yucca
The US is finally abandoning plans
to store high-level nuclear waste in
an underground repository in Yucca
mountain in Nevada, having putthe
p rogramme on hold last year after
a decade of local oppositio n. The
waste will now be stored a bove
ground for the foreseeable futu re.
A whole latta vaccine
An "unprecedented" donation of
$10 billion towards vaccine research
and delivery could dramatically
reduce child mortality, says the
World Health Organization. The
Bill and Melinda Gates Fo undation
p ledged to donate the sum overthe
next decade, to p rotect children in
p oor co untries against big kil lers
such as diarrhoea and pneumo nia.
Finch bucks evolution
Things are looking up forthe
rarest of Darwin's 13 finches.
A three-year p rogramme to kill
black rats on Isabela Island in the
Galapagos has resulted in fewer
nests being raided (Philosophical
Transactions Of the Royal Society B,
vol 365, p I). Researchers have seen
yearling mangrove finches fo r the
first time in 10 years.
Autism paper dumped
The discredited 1998 paper linking
the measles, mumps and rubella
(MMR) vaccine to autism has been
retracted byThe Lancet. The journal
cited falsehoods that were exposed
last week by the UK General Medical
Council following a lengthy
i nvestigation of lead autho rA ndrew
Wakefield and two co -authors.
6 February 2010 1 NewScientist 1 7
THIS WEEK

When someone is in a VS, they

A voice for can breathe unaided, have intact

reflexes but seem completely
unaware. But it is becoming clear

the voiceless that some people who appear to

be vegetative are in fact minimally
conscious. They are in a kind of
twilight state in which they
It is now poss i b l e to "ta lk" to people who seem to may feel some pain, experience
be u n conscious, by tap p i n g i nto th e i r bra i n activity emotion and communicate to a
limited extent. These two states
can be distinguished from each
Celeste Biever state (VS) to picture herself other via bedside behavioural
carrying out one of two different tests - but these tests are not
THE innervoice of people who activities. The resulting brain perfect and can miss patients who
appear unconscious can now activity suggested she are aware but unable to move. So
be heard. For the first time, understood the commands and researchers are looking for ways
researchers have struck up was therefore conscious. to detect consciousness with
a conversation with a man Now Owen's team has taken brain imaging.
diagnosed as being in a vegetative the idea a step further. A man In their original experiment,
state. All they had to do was also diagnosed with VS was able Owen and his colleagues used
monitor how his brain responded to answer yes and no to specific functional MRI to detect whether
to specific questions. This means questions by imagining himself a woman could respond to two
that it may now be possible to give engaging in the same activities. spoken commands, which were
some individuals in the same The results suggest that it is expected to activate different
state a degree of autonomy. possible to give a degree of choice brain areas. On behavioural tests
"They can now have some to some people who have no other alone her diagnosis was VS but
involvement in their destiny," way of communicating with the the brain scan results were
says Adrian Owen of the outside world. "We are not just astounding. When asked to
University of Cambridge, who showing they are conscious, we imagine playing tennis, the
led the team doing the work. are giving them a voice and a woman's supplementary motor
In an earlier experiment, way to communicate," says area (SMA), which is concerned
published in 2006, Owen's team neurologist Steven Laureys of the with complex sequences of
asked a woman previously University of Liege in Belgium, movements, lit up. When asked
diagnosed as being in a vegetative Owen's collaborator. to imagine moving around her
house, it was the turn of the
parahi ppocampal gyrus, which
Talking tothe brain
represents s patial locations.
By asking people to imag i n e one activity for yes and another for no, researchers
can use brai n imag ing techniques to identify the answers to simple questions in
Because the correct brain areas lit
both hea lthy volunteers and some "vegetative "patients up at the correct time, the team
concluded that the woman was ifhe wanted to answeryes to
modulating her brain activity to questions such as : Do you have
cooperate with the experiment any sisters? Is your father's name
c:
w and must have had a degree of Thomas? Is your father's name
w
I­
Z
consciousness (Science, DOl: Alexander? And if the answer
:>
.. 10.1126/science.1130197). to a question was no, he had to
o
> In the intervening years, Owen, imagine moving round his home.
Laureys and their team repeated The man was asked to think of
the experiment on 23 people in the activity that represented his
Belgium and the UK diagnosed as answer, in la-second bursts for up
being in a VS. Four responded to 5 minutes, so that a strong
positively and were deemed to enough signal could be detected
possess a degree of consciousness. by the scanner. His family came
I­
Z To find out whether a simple up with the questions to
w
� conversation was possible, the ensure that the researchers did
�
a: � researchers selected one of the not know the answers in advance.
�� four- a 29-year-old man who had What's more, the brain scans
� been in a car crash. They asked were analysed by a team that had
� him to imagine playing tennis never come into contact with

B 1 NewScientist 1 6 February 2010

 In this section
• Concern over DIY sperm counters, page 10
• Quantum secrets of photosynthesis, page 12
• Can headache pill save trauma victims? page 15
the patient or his family.
The team found that either
the SMA orthe parahippocampal
gyrus lit up in response to five of
the six questions (see diagram).
When the team ran these answers
by his family, they were all correct,
indicating that the man had
understood the task and was able
to form an answer (The New
EnglandJournal ofMedicine, DOl:
lO.los6/nejmoaogoS370). The
group also asked healthy
volunteers similar questions
"We are not just showing
that people are conscious -
we are giving them a way
of communicating"
they can answer yes/no questions
should be extremely disturbing to
our clinical practice."
One of the most difficult
questions you might want to ask
someone is whether they want to
carry on living. But as Owen and
Laureys point out, the scientific,
legal and ethical challenges for
doctors asking such questions are
formidable. "In purely practical
"One of the most difficult
questions you might want
to ask someone is whether
they want to go on living"
terms, yes, it is possible," says
Owen. "But it is a bigger step than
one might immediately think."
One problem is that while the
brain scans do seem to establish
consciousness, there is a lot they
don't tell us. "Just because they
can answer a yes/no question
does not mean they have the
capacity to make complex
decisions," Owen says.
Even assuming there is a subset
of people who cannot move but
have enough cognition to answer
tough questions, you would still
have to convince a court that this
is so. "There are many ethical and
legal frameworks that would need
to be revised before fMRI could be
used in this context," says Owen.
There are many challenges. For
example, someone in this state
can only to respond to specific
relating to their own families and diagnoses on how someone questions; they can't yet start a
found that their brains responded behaves: iffor example, whether conversation of their own. There
in the same way. or not they can glance in different is also the prospect of developing
"I think we can be pretty directions in response to smaller devices to make
confident that he is entirely questions. The new results show conversation more frequent, since
conscious," says Owen. "He that you don't need behavioural MRI scans are expensive and take
has to understand instructions, indications to identify awareness many hours to analyse.
comprehend speech, remember and even a degree of cognitive In the meantime, you can
what tennis is and how you do it. proficiency. All you need to do is ask someone whether they are
So many of his cognitive faculties tap into brain activity directly. in pain orwould like to try
have to have been intact:' The work " changes everything", new drugs that are being tested
That someone can be capable says Nicholas Schiff, a neurologist for their ability to bring patients
of all this while appearing at Weill Cornell Medical College in out of a vegetative state. "For
completely unaware confounds New York, who is carrying out the minority of patients that this
existing medical definitions of similar work on patients with will work for, just for them to
consciousness, Laureys says. "We consciousness disorders. exercise some autonomy is a
don't know what to call this; he "Knowing that someone could massive step forward - it doesn't
just doesn't fit a definition:' persist in a state like this and not have to be at the life or death
Doctors traditionally base these show evidence of the fact that level," Owen says.•
6 February 2010 1 NewScientist 1 9
THIS WEEK

The chip tallies the electrical

Home test for sperm count
cou ld leave men in a mess
GENTLEMEN, ever been curious
about your sperm count? If so,
a home fertility test could be just within an hour - which generally
the thing.
Loes Segerink and colleagues
at the MESA+ Institute for
Nanotechnology at the University count remains the" gold
of Twente in Enschede, the
Netherlands, have developed a
10-centimetre-long "lab-on-a-chip"
which could determine fertility
in a matter of seconds. While
undeniably useful, such kits
also raise the ethical issue of
whether diagnosis without the
professional advice that normally is first doped with a known
accom panies it could do more
harm than good.
Male fertility analysis can
be embarrassing for the person
in question and time consuming
for medical staff. The ejaculate
must be submitted for analysis
precludes men from producing
the sample at home - and once
submitted, a lengthy manual
standard" for spermatozoa
concentration analysis.
"With our system we overcome not understand the impact conditions from viral infection
these problems," Segerink
says. Their microfluidic chip
contains a tiny channel through
which the spermatozoa are drawn be used as part of hospital-run
by pressure flow. The sample
concentration of polystyrene
beads, and as beads and cells are
drawn along the channel they
pass between two electrodes,
altering the electrical impedance. of Oxford, says this is a concern.
"There would be the potential
perturbations due to the beads
for harm to be caused to patients
and cells, and comparing bead
ifthey were not provided with
concentration to that of the
the relevant information about
spermatozoa provides the sperm
the impact of a positive result for
count (Lab on a Chip, in press).
infertility," he says.
Segerink says the chip could
As other research teams
take just 12 seconds to determine
develop similar devices, this
sperm concentration with the
is becoming an increasingly
same measurement error as important issue. Hywel Morgan
a manual count. But while she
and colleagues at the University
of Southampton in the UK are
"Self-diagnosis could be developing microfluidic chips
harmful if the patient does that could hel p diagnose
of a positive result" to anaemia using a pinprick of
blood. "Devices of this nature
stresses that the chip would allow you to distribute healthcare
into the community," he says.
fertility treatment, it could "But if you're diagnosing disease,
be adapted to produce a cheap the answers you're providing
and easy-to-use version for have to be handled appropriately."
self-diagnosis at home. "Even if the technology is
Michael Dunn, a healthcare ready for the marketplace," says
ethics researcher at the University Morgan, "whether society is ready
to use it is an issue." Colin Barras.

Helium clue
found in echo
of the big bang
THE subtle signal of ancient helium
has shown u p forthe firsttime in
light left over from the big bang. The
discovery will help astronomers work
out how much of the stuff was made
during the big bang and how much
was made later by stars.
Helium is the second-most
abundant element in the universe
after hydrogen. The light emitted by
old stars and clumps of hot pristine
gas from the early universe suggest
hel i u m made up some 25 per cent of hydrogen and so alters the way These observations are in l ine with expanding as they decayed into
the ordinary matter created d u ring pressure waves must have travelled earlier measurements, although less protons. 50 the amount of helium
the big bang. through the young cosmos. But accurate. "I think CMB measu rements that formed places important limits
The new data provides another helium's effect on the CMB was on a will surpass them eventually," says on how q u i ckly this expansion took
measure. A trio of telescopes has scale too small to resolve until now. team member David Spergel. place. That could help test theories
found helium's signature in the By combin ing seven years of data More accurate numbers cou l d that postulate extra di mensions or
cosmic m icrowave background (CMB, from NASA's Wi lkinson Microwave reveal how quickly t h e early universe as-yet-unseen particles.
pictured), radiation em itted some Anisotropy Probe with observations expanded. Helium forms from the Better data should be ava i lable
3BO,000 years after the big bang. by two telescopes at the South Pole, interaction between protons and in the next few years. The European
The patterns in this radiation are an astronomers have confirmed its neutrons. This is constra ined by the Space Agency's Planck satellite,
important indicator of the processes presence. "This is the first detection number of ava ilable neutrons, which which launched last year, is poised to
at work at that time. Helium affects of pre-stellar helium," says WMAP's would have dropped during the ti me measure the amount of helium even
the pattern because it is heavier than chief scientist, Charles Bennett. the brand new universe was more precisely. Rachel Courtland .

10 1 NewScientist 1 6 February 2010

THIS WEEK

Imports mean respond to their opponents'

actions. So although they moved
UK emissions faster, they never won.
Is there any truth in the
are up not down Hollywood version of the
gunfight, where the last guy to
THE UK government is sitting on a draw is the winner? If there were,
report that shows its emissions rose a gunslinger would have to wait
by 13.5 per cent between 1992 and for the hotheaded villain to move
2004. It previously claimed they fell first. But that couldn't have
by 4.6 per cent overthe same period. worked when two clued-up
The discrepancy appears when cowboys faced each other.
emissions from goods that are made Now Welchman says
abroad and imported into the UK are neuroscience doesn't support
included. "We seem to emit less Hollywood's portrayal either.
because we don't produce much here The only way the last guy to draw
any more," says Giovanni Baiocchi, an
economist at Durham University, UK. "It would be hard to get
"But more emissions are released now fast enough to recover
in other countries because of our the time it takes to react
consumer demands." to your opponent"
Baiocchi and his team were asked by
the UK Department for Environ ment, could win is if the reactive part
Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) to carry of the brain makes him move so
out an audit of the nation's emissions. fast that the time it takes him to
They found that efforts to decrease draw, plus his reaction time, is
national CO2 emissions, mainly by less than the time it takes the
shifting from coal to natural-gas power first guy just to draw.
plants, cut148 megatonnes between "[ t would be hard to get fast
1992 and 2004. But this was enough to recover the time it
outweighed by a 217-megatonne rise takes to react to your opponent,"

He who draws last,

in CO2 emissions from imported goods. says Welchman. He thinks fast
"This undermines the whole reactions evolved for avoiding
Kyoto process," says Glen Peters of unexpected danger, or for

draws his last breath

Norway's Center for International confrontations in which animals
Cli mate and Environment Research. are in a face-off and the second to
Under the Kyoto protocol, developed move needs speed.
nations are only required to cut "Voluntary and reactive
emissions produced within their own Debora MacKenzie people against each other. The movements differ in basic ways,"
borders. "The UK can pat itself on the task? Lift your hand off a button, says Florian Waszak, who studies
back and say they reduced carbon N IELS BOHR once had a theory push two other buttons, then movement at the University of
dioxide emissions, but they just on why the good guy always return to the first (Proceedings of Paris Descartes, France. The
pushed those emissions elsewhere." won shoot-outs in Hollywood the Royal Society B, 001: 1O.lOg8/ system has evolved so that
DEFRA has not yet publ ished the westerns. It was simple: the bad rspb.200g.2123). There was no reactions may be very fast but
report, whose results now appear in guy always drew first. That left the start bell. "Eventually, one decides perhaps less accurate, Waszak
Environmental Science &- Technology good guy to react unthinkingly ­ it's time to move," Welchman speculates.
(DOl: 10.1021/es902662h). "[It] was and therefore faster. When Bohr says. "The other player will then Indeed, Welchman's "reactive"
finished six months ago," says Peters, tested his hypothesis with toy try to move as fast as possible." players hit the buttons less
who reviewed the study for DEFRA. "It pistols and colleagues who drew The players who had to react accurately than the "intentional"
could be a slow bureaucratic process first, he always won. took 21 milliseconds less time to players, another reason fast
or it could be that they are worried Andrew Welchman of the move, on average, than the first reactions may not win gunfights.
about the impact of the reSUlts." University of Birmingham, UK, ones. Welchman thinks reaction So it was all Hollywood
"Unfortunately it has taken longer has now taken this a step further. movement involves a faster brain legend. "I've found little evidence
than anticipated to publish the report Bohr may have won a Nobel pathway than intentional for face-to-face duels on the
due to the techn ica l nature and prize for his work on quantum movement. So Bohr was right? streets of Dodge," Welchman says.
terminology used in initial drafts," mechanics, but it turns out the Not quite. And Bohr? "Maybe he was just a
DEFRA told New Scientist. DEFRA answer to this puzzle is more There was also a " reaction good shot." Or maybe everyone
aims to publish the report later this complicated than he thought. time", a delay of 200 milliseconds just expected the great Niels Bohr
year. Phil McKenna . Welchman pitted pairs of before the players started to to win.•

111 NewScientist 1 6 Feb ruary 2010

THIS WEEK
Hot green quantum
computers revealed
Kate McAlpine
WHILE physicists struggle to get
quantum computers to function
at cryogenic temperatures, other
researchers are saying that
humble algae and bacteria may
have been performing quantum
calculations at life-friendly
temperatures for billions of years.
The evidence comes from a
study of how energy travels across
the light-harvesting molecules
involved in photosynthesis. The
work has culminated this week in
the extraordinary announcement
that these molecules in a marine
alga may exploit quantum
processes at room temperature
to transfer energy without loss.
Physicists had previously ruled
out quantum processes, arguing
that they could not persist for
long enough at such temperatures
to achieve anything useful.
Photosynthesis starts when
large light-harvesting structures
called antennas capture photons.
In the alga called Chroomonas
CCMP270, these antennas have
eight pigment molecules woven
into a larger protein structure, with
different pigments absorbing
light from different parts of the
spectrum. The energy of the
photons then travels across the
antenna to a part ofthe cell where
it is used to make chemical fuel.
The route the energy takes
as it jumps across these large
molecules is important because
longer journeys could lead to
losses. In classical physics, the
energy can only work its way
across the molecules randomly.
"Normal energy transfer theory
tells us that energy hops from
molecule to molecule in a random
walk, like the path taken home
from the bar by a drunken sailor,"
says Gregory Scholes at the
University ofToronto, Canada,
12 1 NewScientist 15 February 2010
emitted light, the team can work algae perform their work at 21°C.
out the details of the quantum
superposition that created it.
"Scholes's work is fantastic,"
says Gregory Engel at the
The results are a surprise. University of Chicago. "The
Not only are the two pigment difficulty ofthis experiment
molecules at the centre of is extraordinary." Engel
the antenna involved in the demonstrated the same principle
one of the co-authors of the paper superposition; so are the other in 2007 at the University of
published inNature this week six pigment molecules. This California, Berkeley, though at a
(DOl: 10.1038/nature08811). "quantum coherence" binds frigid -196°C. His team examined
But Scholes and his colleagues them together for a fleeting 400 a bacteriochlorophyll complex
have found that the energy­ femtoseconds (4 x 10 13 seconds). found in green sulphur bacteria
routeing mechanism may actually But this is long enough for the and discovered that the pigment
be highly efficient. The evidence energy from the absorbed photon
comes from the behaviour of to simultaneously " try out" all "This is going to change
pigment molecules at the centre possible paths across the antenna. the way we think about
of the Chroomonas antenna. When the shared coherence ends, photosynthesis and
The team first excited two of the energy settles on one path, quantum computing"
these molecules with a brieflaser allowing it to make the journey
pulse, causing electrons in the without loss. molecules were similarly
pigment molecules to jump The discovery overturns some wired together in a quantum
into a quantum superposition long-held beliefs about quantum mechanical network. His
of excited states. When this mechanics, which held that experiment showed that the
superposition collapses, it emits quantum coherence cannot occur quantum superposition allows
photons of slightly different at anything other than cryogenic the energy to explore all possible
wavelengths which combine temperatures because a hot routes and settle on the most
to form an interference pattern. environment would destroy the efficient one (DOl: 10.1038/
By studying this pattern in the effect. However, the Chroomonas nature05678). In a sense, he says,
the antenna performs a quantum
� computation to determine the
� best way to transfer energy.
� Engel and his group at
� Chicago have just repeated the
�
'" experiment at a more life-friendly
4°C. They found the duration of
the coherence to be about
300 femtoseconds (arxiv.orgl
abs/1001.5108v1).
Exactly how these molecules
remain coherent for so long, at
such high temperatures and with
relatively large gaps between
them, is a mystery, says Alexandra
Olaya-Castro of University
College London, who has been
collaborating with Scholes to
understand the underlying
mechanisms and apply them
elsewhere. She believes that the
antenna's protein structure plays
a crucial role. "Coherence would
not survive without it," she says.
The hope is that quantum
coherence could be used to
make solar cells more efficient. The
work is going to change the way we
think about photosynthesis and
quantum computing, Engel says.
"It's an enormous result." •
For daily news stories, visit www.NewScientist.com/news
At last we will know how
bright the stars really are
LIGHT is the bedrock of astronomy,
so it may come as a surprise that
astronomers don't have a very good
handle on measurements of
brightness. That is set to change,
however, as the antiquated
brightness scale undergoes a long­
overdue upgrade that could help to
reveal the true nature of dark energy.
More than 2000 years ago, the
Greek astronomer Hipparchus
devised a scale ranking the apparent
brightness of different stars. Today,
astronomers use much the same
system, measuring brightness
relative to a handful of standard
reference stars. The trouble is, the
reference stars' brightness is not
known very accurately, and
measurements of it have not kept
pace with developments in detector
"The most accurate
measurements of the
bright star Vega date
back to the 1970s"
technology. For example, the most
accurate measurements of the bright
star Vega date back to the 1970s.
"It's surprising. There has been
relatively little work on that in the
past couple of decades," says Gary
Bernstein of the University of
Pennsylvania in Philadelph ia.
To redress this, a team led by
Mary Elizabeth Kaiser of Johns
Hopkins University in Baltimore,
Maryland, is planning to launch a
rocket-borne telescope to make the
most accurate measurements yet of
the reference stars' brightness (arxiv.
org/abs/1001.392S). Cal led the
Absolute Color Calibration
Experiment for Standard Stars
(ACCESS), the NASA-funded m i ssion
will lift off in a yea r or two a nd make
four su borbital flights, each taking it
above Earth's distorting atmosphere
for a few minutes ata time.
During these brief jaunts,
ACCESS will gauge the brightness of
four common reference stars - the
sky's brig htest star, Sirius; Vega; and
a couple of much dimmer ones - to
a precision of 1 per cent or better.
That is twice the accuracy of current
measurements, an advance that will
be possible thanks to the ca libration
of the telescope's sensors with
artificial light sources before launch.
The measurements ACCESS makes
will serve as a benchmark to calibrate
the observations of other telescopes.
This will al low the brightness of
supernovae and other objects to
be measured more accurately.
Such precision will be key to
finding out the secrets of dark
energy, a mysterious entity that
is causing the universe to expand
at an ever faster rate. The existence
of dark energy was deduced in
199B when astronomers noticed
that distant supernovae were
fainter - and thus farther away ­
than expected.
Astronomers still don't know
where dark energy comes from.
It could spring from a fundamental
new force, or it might point to a flaw
in our understanding of gravity.
To better understand it, researchers
are examining the history of cosmic
expansion, searching for slight
variations in the expansion rate
over time. This req u i res more
accurate measurements of the
brightness of supernovae at different
cosmic epochs.
ACCESS team member Adam Riess
of Johns Hopkins University, one of
dark energy's discoverers, says subtle
errors can crop up when combining
brightness data from multiple
telescopes, potentially misleading
astronomers about the nature of the
acceleration. "You cou l d think that
dark energy is changing with scale
ortime, but it's only an artefact of the
fact that your observatories have not
all used the same reference poin!'''
he told New Scientist.
The ACCESS mission will help
astronomers avoid this pitfall, he
says. "It doesn't measure dark energy
itself but it makes your scale more
accurate." David Shiga .
6 February 2010 1 NewScientist 1 13
THIS WEEK

Cannibal bonobos
Ineeded the food'
Ewen Callaway Fowler's team lost sight ofthe
apes not long afterwards, but
SO MUCH for the "hippy chimp". early the following day he saw
Bonobos, known for their Olga join them carrying Olivia's
peaceable ways and casual sex, body, which had already begun
have been caught in the act of to decompose. "It was smelling,
cannibalism. limp and wet," he recalls. Olga
An account of a group of wild and seven others spentthe rest
bonobos consuming a dead infant, ofthe day devouring the corpse
published last month, is the first (American Journal ofPrima tology,
report of cannibalism in these
animals - making the species the "In all of the great apes
last of the great apes to reveal a except for the chimpanzee,
taste for the flesh of their own kind. all documented cases of
The account comes from a cannibalism are outliers"
group of primatologists led by
Gottfried Hohmann of the Max DOl: 10.1002/ajp. 2080 2).
Planck Institute for Evolutionary "We've never seen anything like
Anthropology in Leipzig, this," says Vanessa Woods at Duke
Germany. The team has studied University in Durham, North
bonobos in the wild at a site in Carolina, who studies semi-captive
Salonga national park in the bonobos at a reserve. "The last time
Democratic Republic ofthe Congo I saw an infant die, the mother held
on hundreds of days since 2002. onto it for days and the keepers had
Among the most eventful were trouble taking the body away."
9 and 10 July 2008. Though bonobos mostly eat
Early on the morning of 9 July, fruit and leaves, they are known monkey. Some even played with it. reasonably large piece of meat,
Andrew Fowler spotted an ape to hunt monkeys and the small "If they just think ofit as another you may as well eat it," he says.
known as Olgawith her two antelopes called duikers. But piece of meat, why do they behave " It's perfectly normal that you
daughters, 5 or 6-year-old Ophelia Fowler noted signs that this meal differently with it?" he asks. would eat the meat that's
and Olivia, three years her junior. was somehow different. More Fowler warns against over­ available, even if it's in the form
"By 8 o'clock Olivia was dead," says individuals got a taste of the interpreting the events, and of a dead infant:'
Fowler. She showed no obvious infant than is typical when the reckons that the need for Frans de Waal at Emory
traces of blood or bruises, so it apes share meat. They also spent nourishment was the animals' University in Atlanta, Georgia,
seems unlikely she had been killed 7'/, hours eating the body - longer main driver. "Ifyou eat meat and agrees. "It may be that bonobos
by other members of her grou p. than they take over a similar-sized you can see [the infantI as a are craving animal proteins and
fats more than we realise!'
Bonobos are studied far less in
WH EN PRI M ATES EAT T H EIR OWN the wild than chim panzees, and it
CHIMPANZEES Of all the great apes, Nothing has been reported since. Spain, and more recent Neanderthal is impossible to tell from this one
chimpanzees resort to cannibal ism ORANG-UTANS Two instances have fossil bones suggest that our distant observation whether cannibalism
most often. Typically, males will kill been documented in orang·utans ancestors ate the flesh of their own is a regular feature ofbonobo
and eat the infant of another female, living wild in Sumatra. In both cases, species. More recently, thousand­ behaviour. David Dellatore, a
usually in their own group but the mothers ate their infants after year-old bones discovered in the primatologist at Oxford Brookes
occasionally in another. When chimps carrying their corpses around for American Southwest bear clearsigns University in the UK, who last year
kill adults from other groups in a several days. David Dellatore of Oxford of butchery. There are even signs of became the first to document an
fight, they do not eat the body. Brookes University in the UK, who cannibalism in the human genome: instance of cannibalism in orang­
GORILLAS In the 1970s, observed both events, thinks they a mutation has been found in Papua utans, doubts it. "In all of the great
primatologist Dian Fossey found were due to stress. New Guineans that protects them apes except for the chimpanzee, all
remains of two gorillas in the faeces HUMANS Cut marks on BDO,OOO-year- form kuru, a prion disease documented cases of cannibalism
of a mother gorilla and her daughter. old hominin remains from Atapuerca, transmitted through cannibalism. are outliers," he says. (see "When
primates eat their own").•

14 1 NewScientist 1 6 February 2010

For daily news stories, visit www.NewScientist.com/news
Headache pill cou ld save
earthquake crush victims
JUST one tablet of paracetamol
(acetaminophen) could help save
earthquake survivors who otherwise
risk dying from kidney failure after
rescue. Experi ments in rats have
shown that the drug prevents "crush
syndrome", or rha bdomyolysis, in
which muscle debris from crushed
l imbs floods the kidneys soon after
the limb is freed from rubble, causing
them to fa il.
"When you release the pressure on
m uscle through rescue, debris goes
to the kidney. It's like a chain reaction, thousands of lives"
and acetaminophen blocks it,"
says Olivier Boutaud of Vanderbilt
University in Nashville, Tennessee,
and head of the research team.
The destruction of muscle through
crushing leads to the release of
myoglobin, a protein vital for
delivering oxygen to muscle and
other tissue. When the myoglobin
reaches the kidneys it clogs the
tubu les and produces harmful
chemica l agents called free radicals.
These free radicals destroy
fatty membranes in the kidney,
which die and turn black. They
a lso trigger constriction of blood
vessels, cutting off blood flow to
the kidney and halting filtration
of blood, rapidly leading to death
through kidney fai l u re.
After inducing crush syndrome
in rats via m uscular injections of
sugar, Boutaud and colleagues
demonstrated that the human­
equivalent dose of acetaminophen
successfully b l ocked both of these
processes, whether given before or
shortly after the injury (Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences,
001: 10.1073/pnas.0910174107).
"We don't know whether it
would work, but we must
try because it could save
Although the finding has (orne too
late to save lives following the quake
in Haiti, Boutaud is hopeful that the
treatment can be validated in humans
before, or even d uring, the next big
quake. "We don't knowyet whether
it wou l d work, or how soon we'd need
to give it to prevent kidney damage,"
he says, "but we must try because
it could save thousands of lives."
Martin de Smet of Medecins Sans
Frontieres will refer Boutaud's results
to the International society of
Nephrology's Renal Disaster Relief
Task Force, which has developed
validated protocols for treating crush­
syndrome victims, involving the rapid
infusion of sal ine fluids. The drug
might be testable as a supportive
treatment, he says. Andy Coghlan .
6 February 2010 I NewScientist 1 15
IN BRI EF

Urban heat islands

feel cooler in white

CITIES can battle the "urban

heat island" with paint. Highly
reflective white roofs could cool
cities by an average of 0.6 ·C,
according to a global simulation.
Dark city surfaces like roofs
and roads absorb and radiate heat,
leaving cities up to 3 ·C hotter
than surrounding areas. A team
at the US National Center for
Atmospheric Research in Boulder,
Colorado, combined climate
models with a simulation of
how temperatures are modified
by city landscapes.
They found that i n a
hypothetical world i n which cities
sported highly reflective white
roofs, urban temperatures were
on average 0.6 ·C cooler than in
cities with existing, mostly black
roofing materials. In the real
world, says lead author Keith
Oleson, the benefits might be
simulate the impact of volcanoes on ocean chemistry. slightly less as rooftops get
Beware of geoengineering
Before oceanic oxygen levels tumbled, something covered in dust (Geophysical
using volcanoes' tricks caused a big change in atmospheric sulphate levels. "That Research Letters, in press).
something was probably volcanoes;' says Hurtgen. He says
WE HACK the climate at our peril. Volcanoes spewed so their sulphate emissions triggered vast phytoplankton
much sulphate into the atmosphere 94 million years ago blooms and much of the ocean's oxygen was gobbled up
Fusion fuel gets
that the oceans were starved of oxygen and 27 per cent as these died and decomposed. According to the team's
of marine genera went extinct. Geoengineering our model, oceanic sulphate was extremely low prior to the round a big problem
climate (ould inflict a similar fate on some lakes. eruptions (Nature Geoscience, 001: 10.1038/ngeo743).
50 claims Matthew Hurtgen at Northwestern This has implications for geoengineering, says PAN CAKES have been getting in
University in Chicago, who with his colleagues measured Hurtgen. "Like the mid·Cretaceous ocean, most the way of nuclear fusion: the
sulphur isotopes in sediments on the floor of the Western modern lakes are poor in sulphate, so it's possible that process comes unstuck when fuel
Interior Seaway. The WIS was a vast body of water geoengineering the climate [using sulphate aerosols pellets end up spread out flat.
that divided the continent of North America down the to reflect sunlight] could trigger blooms and ulti mately Now the world's largest laser
middle at the time. The team also developed a model to anoxia in some la kes." complex has solved the problem.
Fusion should start if a laser
pulse heats a fuel pellet and
Water vapour fingered in climate change that happened in the 1990S (Science squeezes it very tight. But if the
001: 1O.1126/science.1182488 ) . nuclear fuel spreads out from the
A RISE in water vapour in the and weather balloon data to track The model also suggests that implosion zone, input energy is
atmosphere fuelled 30 per cent changes in the concentration of the decline in water vapour lost. Using the huge laser power of
of the global warming that took watervapoun6 kilometres up concentrations that occurred the US National Ignition Facility,
place during the 1990S. This in the stratosphere, between the in 2001 slowed down the rate of a team led by Brian MacGowan of
discovery suggests that the potent 1980s and today. global warming in the last decade the Lawrence Livermore National
greenhouse gas plays a bigger role Water vapour levels in the by 25 per cent. Laboratory in California have
in climate change than we stratosphere increased in the 1990S "This research does not change managed to squeeze fuel into
previously imagined. but dropped by 10 per cent in 2001. the consensus view that human spheres for the first time. The next
Susan Solomon and colleagues After feeding their measurements emissions drive climate change," step is to create spherical pellets
at the US National Oceanic and into a climate model, the team says Fortunat loos, a climate of deuterium and tritium - the key
Atmospheric Administration suggests that vapour was to blame modeller at the University of ingredients for fusion (Science,
combined satellite measurements for almost a third of the warming Bern, Germany. 001: 1O.1126/science.u8s634).

16 1 NewScientist 1 6 February 2010

For new stories every day, visit www.NewScientist.com/news
Feeling stuffed is
a complex matter
INCORPORATING complex smells
into what you eat may produce more
satisfyi ng foods.
That's the conclusion of Ria nne
Ruijschop at Nizo Food Research
in Ede, the Netherlands, and
col leagues, who were investigating
what effect different aromas have
on the feeling of fullness.
The team added two different
strawberry aromas to small pots of
yoghurt and asked volunteers which
was the most fi lling. Although to
the u ntrained nose the smells were
indistinguishable, one pot contained
a simple aroma from one chemical.
and the other a more complex
aroma made up of 15 chemicals.
All 41 volunteers reported
feeling more satiated after eating
the yoghurt with the complex
aroma. However, in a separate
experiment, Ruijschop found
that given a much larger supply,
volunteers ate the same amount
of both yoghurts (Chemica/ Senses,
001: 10.1093/chemse/bjp086).
Jennifer Coelho, a cli nical
psychologist at Maastricht university
in the Netherlands, says this is not
surprising since we don't necessarily
stop eating when we feel satiated.
Ruijschop ad mits that aroma is
only one contributing component
and hopes next to alter the texture
of the yoghurt, with the a i m of
developing more satiating foods
to help dieters eat less.
Did rice wine lead to flushed faces across Asia?
A MUTATION that causes some
Asians to flush red when they
drink alcohol may have evolved
to help their ancestors cope
with rice wine. A genetic study
suggests that it evolved around
the same time as Asians were
starting to farm rice and ferment
it into boozy drinks.
Bing Su, a geneticist at the
Chinese Academy of Sciences in
Kunming, studied the genes of
2275 people from 38 east-Asian
populations. He was looking
for a mutation that modifies the
gene responsible for the enzyme
Chikungunya foiled
by copycat 'virus'
A VACCINE that masquerades
as chikungunya virus might finally
defeat the mosquito-borne disease.
In 2006 a single mutation in
the virus allowed it to burst out
of Africa via a new species of
mosquito. Chikungunya now
infects about 1 million people a
year around the Indian Ocean and
causes intense joint pain which
can persist for years. It could
invade temperate regions as the
mosquitoes' range expands.
Gary Nabel of the US National
Institutes of Health in Bethesda,
Maryland, and colleagues put
genes that code for the virus's
protein coat into cultured human
cells. The proteins assembled
themselves into virus-like
particles (VLPs), which mimic the
virus but aren't infectious. "We
got structures that beautifully
replicated the natural virus,"
Nabel says.
Rhesus monkeys injected with
the VLPs produced antibodies that
gave them complete protection
against the virus. Their antibodies
also worked for immune-deficient
mice that are normally killed by
chikungunya (Nature Medicine,
001: lO.1038/nm.2lOS). Nabel
hopes the vaccine will be tested
in people in one to three years.
alcohol dehydrogenase (BMC south-eastern China but becomes
Evolutionary Biology, VOl lO, p IS).less common further north and
The mutation causes alcohol to west - dates and locations that
be metabolised 100 times faster dovetail with archaeological
than it otherwise would be. As a evidence of early rice cultivation.
result, it protects people from the Pottery shards from the same
harmful effects of booze. Those period show traces of alcohol.
who have the mutation also tend The mutation in alcohol
to flush red when they drink. dehydrogenase would have
The mutation is most prevalent protected those who had it from
inAsia and least frequent in Europe some of the nefarious effects of
and Africa, but the reason for this alcohol and alcoholism. As a
has remained a mystery. Su's result, Su says, natural selection
analysis shows that it cropped up for the mutation caused it to
between lO,OOO and 7000 years spread west in near-synchrony
ago, is virtually ubiquitous in with rice paddies.
Planetary nebu lae snack on comets
WHEN the sun dies. it's not just results. a discrepancy that has
Earth that will be doomed - the baffled astronomers for decades.
destruction will reach as far as the Now William Henney of the
comets in the outer solar system. National Autonomous University of
That's according to a new explanation Mexico in Mexico City and Grazyna
of the behaviour of planetary Stasi nska of the Paris Observatory
nebulae - bubbles of gas sloughed i n France suggest that material from
off by dying stars (pictured). vaporised comets could be skewing
There are two methods the recombination method's result.
for calculating the abundance of This is because pockets of gas rich in
elements in planetary nebulae: heavy elements would be created ifa
looking at light emitted when comet in the outer regions of a solar
electrons and ionised atoms system got vaporised by a dying star
recombine, or looking at the energy in its red giant phase or by the
emitted by atoms excited by expanding planetary nebula that
collisions. Yet they yield very d ifferent follows it (arxiv.org/abs/1001.4513).
6 February 2010 I NewScientist 1 17
TECHNOLOGY
Hybrid video to a id
search and rescue
COULD seeing with heat and light
simultaneously improve search­
and-rescue missions? Nathan
Rasmussen of Brigham Young
University in Provo, Utah, thinks
so. He has created a hybrid video
system that integrates visible and
infrared footage into a single shot.
Search drones already use visible
and infrared cameras, but making
sense of two videos at once is hard.
So Rasmussen has devised a way to
calibrate the feeds from two such
cameras on a model aircraft, and
then overlay the infrared images
on the visible stream.
In tests, subjects were better able
to carry out tasks simultaneously
when watching the hybrid stream
than when viewing separate
videos, suggesting that the new
dis play is easier to interpret. The
findings were presented at the
Applications of Computer Vision
conference in Snowbird, Utah.
For daily technology stories, visit www.NewScientist.com/technology
Sylvain Gigan and colleagues at
We see t h rough E cole Superieure de Physique et
a g iassl da rkly de Chimie Industrielles in Paris,
France, have transmitted a simple
IT'S not quite X-ray vision, but a image through a painted slide and
way has been found to transmit reconstructed it on the far side
simple images through opaque (arxiv.org/abs/091O.5436).
objects using ordinary light. They worked out the slide's
Researchers have used the method transmission matrix - how light
64
to project an image through glass bounces around inside it - by
covered in thick paint. hitting it with a laser beam more
Some things we consider than 1000 times, changing the
opaque actually allow a small shape ofthe beam each time
amount of light through. But it is and recording the different light
hours. The time it scattered so much as it bounces patterns that made it through to a
around inside the opaque digital camera beyond. They then
takes to fill the tank
material's lattice of atoms that it used the information to decode
of Honda's FCX fuel
was considered beyond practical an image sent through the slide.
cell vehicle at its use for transmitting an image. "Once the matrix is known,
new solarhydrogen But by reverse engineering reconstructing the image is very
station in Los A ngeles the scattering process, physicist quick," Gigan says.
"It i s ve ry s i m i l a r to a n a i rp l a n e flyi n g i n the sea"
Richard Branson unveilsthe Necker Nymph, the p rototype for a three - perso n
submarine, which he hopes to rent to peo p le wanting to enjoy spectacu lar u nderwater
sights - without having to get wet (TheSun.co.uk, 29 January)
6 February 2010 1 NewScientist 1 19
TECH NOLOGY

A telescope that sets

work with was a cyber-security
risk. Using the internet telescope,
it zoomed in on the geotagged
data to determine that some of

its sights on cyber-crime

the proposed partner company's
computers had indeed been
compromised by a botnet.
UK government officials told
the conference that more real­
world countermeasures like
As govern m ents beco me i n c reasi n g ly awa re of the threat from
Endgame's are needed - and fast.
cybe r-wa rfare, n ew i d eas are being d eve l oped to com bat it Without them, today's attacks
on crucial infrastructure, such
as banking networks, may
Paul Marks instructions from once the information which could be encourage nation-on-nation
current control domain expires­ passed onto law enforcers. cyber-warfare in future.
A TELESCOPE that can peer into a trick they play to evade Endgame's CEO, Chris Rouland, "We underestimate the skill
the depths of the net to spot the detection. Once these domains presented his company's work at set of organised cyber crime. It
gathering threat of a bot net could are known, Endgame buys them the Cyber Warfare conference in is persistent, very well organised
help combat cyber-attacks. up before the person controlling London last week. The firm's and focused," says Amit Yoran of
Botnets- networks of the botnet, or "botmaster", does, customers include government cyber-forensics firm NetWitness
compromised computers that ensuring that it seizes control of agencies and companies who based in Herndon, Virginia.
are controlled by someone with the entire botnet when it switches It is also increasingly successful.
malicious intent - are an to its new control address. "The skill set of botnet Over $1 trillion was stolen online
increasingly common feature of Endgame can then either kill creators is underestimated. in 2008, according to computer
the internet. They can be used to the botnet - by ordering all bots They are persistent, well security firm McAfee. "That's
flood a target website with useless to cease activity - or try to catch organised and focused" because we are using technology
data to bring it down, launch the botmaster by interfering with designed to fight the cyber-threats
spam, or spy on computer users the botnet's activity in such a want to know if the organisations OfI99S," Yoran says.
by looking for their banking way as to blow their cover. The they plan to do business with Most security software impedes
logins and passwords. botmaster might, for example, could infect their computers. known threats, but the most
To combat this threat, Endgame contact their domain registrar In his presentation, Rouland skilful botnet operators don't
Systems of Atlanta, Georgia, has to find out what's wrong with gave the exam pie of a company use known malware. A survey
come up with a system, called the their domain. This would provide that wanted to know whether an by communications company
internet telescope, that can map the registrar with contact energy firm it was planning to Verizon, based in New York City,
the physical location of computers
infected with the malicious
software, or malware, used to run
botnets. It can even identify the
type of malware on the machine
and pre-empt its next moves.
Cyber-criminals use the
internet to plant malicious code
on computers that lack up-to-date
security patches. Thousands of
such machines, known as bots,
can then be controlled by the
botnet operator without the
owner realiSing their computer
has been recruited into a botnet.
Endgame passively tracks these
compromised PCs from the
botnet traffic they disgorge,
geotagging the data to create a
global threat map.
It then dissects the malware to
work out the web addresses of the
next few domain name servers
each bot is programmed to seek

20 1 NewScientist 1 6 February 2010

For daily technology sto ries, visit www.NewScientist .com/techno logy
Disorderly measu re beats encrypted viruses
Computer virus recognition needs
an overhaul if online attacks are to
be fought successfully, security
expert Jim Butterworth told the
Cyber Warfare conference.
A common way to fight viruses
is to use an algorithm to create a
"hash" signature - a nu mber derived
from a string of its instruction
text - that uniquely identifies it.
To check for a particular virus,
software only needs to look for this
hash, rather than trawl through all
its instruction code for all possible
viruses. The problem, however, is
that antivirus software won't
recognise the virus if it has been
encrypted. So multiple iterations
found that 59 per cent of cyber­
attacks involve custom-written
programs that bypass existing
security systems.
Some excellent programmers
are behind these attacks, says
Jim Butterworth, a director at
computer forensics firm
Guidance Software of Pasadena,
California. "Some malware
code has been through far more
quality assurance than a lot of
commercial software."
At risk from c yber -attack
Softwa re doctors bad photos
of viruses evolve, each needing
to be assigned a unique signature to make them l ook l i ke a pro's
before they can be stopped.
However, encrypting a virus does IT MAY seem crude to reduce a ny distortion is not so noticeable so
not change the degree of disorder, aesthetics to number crunching, there's more freedom to alterthe size."
or "entropy", in its program code. By but software can now manipulate In trials, the team manually
working out a figure for the disorder an amateu r's photographs to make cropped professional photos to
in the sequence of Is and Os that them more pleasing to the eye. destroy their aesthetics. When the
constitute a virus, Butterworth's Algorithms score a photo's software processed the i mages, the
firm, Guidance Software of aesthetics using simple composition
Pasadena, California, assigns rules widely used to guide budding "The image is automatically
itan entropy value. photographers. The i mage is then cropped, or parts of it
Paul Dickens, a cyber·operations automatically cropped, or parts of it moved and resized, to
planner with the U K's Ministry of moved and resized, to boost its score. boost its aesthetic score"
Defence in Corsham, Wiltshire, Developed by Daniel Cohen-Or and
believes it is an approach worth Lior Wolf at Tel·Aviv University, Israel, results were similar to the ori g i nals.
checking out. "looking for a single with colleagues at Zhejiang U niversity Martin Constable at Nanyang
score seems a good idea," he says. in Hangzhou, Chi na, the software Technological University in Singapore
spots the key features of a n i mage says the new softwa re fits with a
based on their colour and shape. The recent trend for easy-to-use creative
Developing countermeasures positioning of those elements is used software. ''This is a high-level
is being made tougher by the to judge a photo, then tweaked to example. Doubtless we will see
speed of online developments, improve it, says Wolf (see below). such things in future versions of
says Yoran. The shift to mobile "In regions without key features, Photoshop." Colin Barras .
computing platforms and
social networks such as Twitter Photo composition by num bers
helps malware to spread in New software can alte r a photogra p h taken by an amateu r to obey some basic
milliseconds, he says. aesthetic g u i d elines on h o w to compose shots
The speed of cyber-attacks has
also had an effect. In the US, the
newly established 24th Air Force
heads up the military's cyber
security operation. Charles Shugg,
the 24th's second in command,
says his "hunter" teams, who fend
off online attacks or pre­
emptively seek out online
vulnerabilities, often have no
time to develop countermeasures.
"Things ha ppen so qUickly in the
cyber-domain that the hunter One such guidline is the "rule of thi rds". It says that the main e l e m e nts o f an image
should be positioned near the four "power poi nts" created by d ividi n g it i nto n i n e
teams' offence and defence are
e q u a l parts using horizontal a n d verti cal l i n es
often one and the same thing."
Tools such as Endgame's
internet telescope may have
a role to play in providing the
intelligence needed to combat
botnets as this type oflocation­
aware technology may slash the
number ofbots available to
launch cyber-attacks.
Without action, says Gerard
Vernez, a cyber-security expert
with the Swiss army, the networks
we depend on will be vulnerable. The software recrops the image and w i l l even move or resize i n d ividual e l ements to
"What are we doing now? I call bring them closer to the power points. The result reta ins t h e features of the original
it plug and pray," he says.• image but should make for a better looking ph oto
6 February 2010 1 NewScientist 1 21
 TECH NOLOGY

If a space storm is com i ng

the 'sm a rt d u st' will know
A SWARM of "smart dust" normal-sized spacecraft but
spacecraft, positioned at a sweet is significant at the millimetre
spot between the Earth and the scale. The grooved edges ofthe
sun, could alert us to the approach "spacecraft-on-a chip" deflect
of dangerous space storms well incoming photons in such a
before a conventional craft can. way as to ensure it always faces
The first prototypes are due for the sun.
launch into low-Earth orbit this The craft's miniature size would
year, perhaps as early as May. let it hitch a ride into space on the
Mason Peck, a mechanical back of another satellite mission
headed for the Lagrange point
"They can edge closer to between the Earth and the sun. could disrupt communications At least one chip capable of
the sun than a larger craft A Lagrange point is a kind of and electronic systems on Earth. sending back temperature data
monitoring solar activity, gravitational sweet spot, where After the tiny craft has been will be launched later this year.
buying an extra 13 minutes" a small object can be stationary dropped off at the Lagrange point, "At this stage we're just hoping
relative to two larger objects. the effect of solar radiation moves to demonstrate that a spacecraft
engineer at Cornell University in The chips are essentially small it closer to the sun. Peck estimates the size of a fingernail is feasible,"
Ithaca, New York, and his colleague solar panels with a radio antenna, that this could give an extra Peck says.
Justin Atchison have designed and could act as a solar wind 13 minutes' notice of a storm Colin McInnes from the
a l-centimetre-square spacecraft sensor (Acta Astronautica 001 : compared with larger solar University of Strathclyde in the
that is 25 micrometres thick and 10.1016/j.actaastro.2oog.12.008). monitoring craft such as NASA's UK says: "There is a strong
weighs under 7.5 milligrams. The team envisage sending a Advanced Composition Explorer. international interest in
The craft is modelled on the whole swarm of these "smart The prototype is in the final 'spacecraft-on-a-chip' concepts.
dust particles that orbit the sun dust" chips to the Lagrange point, stages of development, and in the Peck's group have some great
and are propelled by the photons where they would monitor the next few months will undergo tests ideas which are firmly grounded
streaming out from the sun. strength of the solar wind. They at the terrestrial testbed at Cornell in terrestrial applications of
This solar radiation pressure would also warn of any oncoming to examine its communication microelectromechanical
would have a negligible effect on gusts of charged particles that capabilities and durability. technology." Jessica Griggs .

INSIGHT
The world wide web wants to
know where you are right now
THAT the i nternet is the same for
everyone, wherever they a re, is
one of its defi ning features, But
increasingly your location maners,
and wi l l alter what you see online,
Two events last week offer a
preview of the web's location-aware
future, Social network Twiner started
telling users the most talked-about
topics in thei r vi cin ity, Meanwhile,
Ca nadian newspaper publisher Metro
teamed up with location-based social
network Foursquare to offer users
restaurant reviews based on the ir
GPS-enabled phone's location,
Those may seem sma l l cha nges,
butthey mean people's web
experi ence is becoming inextricably
li nked with where they are, not j ust
who they a re, It's not j u st the a d dition
of new features to these services that
is making them more location- based;
users are a d d ing to the trend by
changing their online behaviour,
People are now thinking locally
about the ir use of the global network,
says John Breslin, co-author of
The Social Semantic Web a n d a n
electronic engineer at the National
University of Ireland, Galway, adding
location-awaren ess to their own
contributions, For example, by tagging
a Twiner update about an event
you are anending with its location,
"you're beginning to go beyond
fun" and a re add ing important
contextual information to the filters
you apply to strea ms of data,
That could be empoweri ng for some
people, says Bharat Bedi, a n emerging
technol ogy consultant at IBM Hursley
in Ham pshi re, UK, For example, people
The location-aware internet can
suggest where to g o for d inner
with physical d isabilities
could easily obta i n i nformation about
a ccessible places and routes based
on where they are, he says,
While location-based services have
been tried before - typically from
businesses looking to a d vertise their
wares - what i s significant today "is
the intent", says Bedi. Users are actively
sharing their location as a way to
specify the i nformati on they want to
recei ve, whether restaurant reviews or
the most-shared gossip in their city,
Advertisers may gain too, but for
now the growth of the location-based
web depends on users' appetitefor
new ways to filterthei r online
experience, Gareth Morgan .

22 1 NewScientist 1 6 Feb ruary 2010

OPI N ION
Neurons for peace
It's ti m e fo r n e u rosci e n ce to catch u p with oth e r p rofessions a n d
pledge not to support a g g ressive war a n d to rture, says Curtis Bel l
NEUROSCIENTISTS can take pride
in the many contributions that
their work can make to enhancing
human life. These include
improved treatment of illness,
better education, creation of
sophisticated information­
processing machines and new
insights into ancient human
mysteries such as the nature
of the mind and the self.
But there is also a dark side to
neuroscience. Like any body of
knowledge, it can be used for good
or ill. Yet neuroscientists often
seem unaware of the potential of
their field to threaten or damage
human life.
Aggressive wars and coercive
interrogation methods such as
torture are two particularly
egregious ways in which human
life is damaged or threatened. Not
only are both immoral, they are
also illegal under national and
international laws. At the
Nuremberg trials following
the defeat of Nazi Germany,
aggressive war was judged to be
not only an international crime,
but the supreme international
crime. Prevention of such wars
was a major reason for the
founding of the United Nations.
Neuroscience can be of service for War. Neuroscientific work on
to both aggressive war and to
coercive interrogation methods.
Potential contributions to
aggressive war include
pharmaceutical agents that
enhance the effectiveness of one
nation's soldiers or damage the
effectiveness oftheir enemy's.
In addition, war is becoming
more and more dependent on
robots such as the MQ-g Reaper
unmanned aerial vehicles now
24 1 NewScientist 1 6 February 2010
being used in Afghanistan and
elsewhere. Autonomous robots
that can move, perceive, decide
and kill on their own are in the
offing, as political scientist and
military commentator Peter W.
Singer describes in his book Wired
motor control, perception, and
cognition can be readily applied
to the construction of such robots.
Potential neuroscience
contributions to torture are also
clear. These include the creation
of drugs that cause extreme pain,
anxiety or unwarranted trust,
as well as manipulations such
as focused brain stimulation
or inactivation.
A pledge is being circulated
among neuroscientists around
the world with the aim of creating
greater awareness of the potential
dark side of neuroscience. Those
signing the pledge commit to two
things. First, to make themselves
aware of possible applications
that would violate international
law or human rights, and second,
to act in accordance with national
and international law by refusing
to knowingly participate in the
application of neuroscience to
such violations. Thus signers of
the pledge are committing to
"Neuroscience can be of
service both to aggressive
war and to coercive
interrogation methods"
acting responsibly, morally and
in obedience to the law.
Once signatures have
been gathered, neuroscience
organisations, such as the
Federation of European
Neuroscience Societies and the
Society for Neuroscience, will be
asked to amend their ethics
statements to forbid knowing
participation in such applications.
Similar pledges and petitions
have been signed by scientists
from other disciplines. The
majority of members of the
American Psychological
Association have signed a petition
declaring that "psychologists
may not work in settings where
persons are held outside of, or in
violation of, either International
Law (e.g. the UN Convention
Against Torture and the Geneva
conventions) or the US
Constitution". The governing
bodies of the American Medical
Association and the American
Psychiatric Association have
also condemned participation
in torture.
Many anthropologists
have signed a pledge issued
by the Network of Concerned
Anthropologists in relation to the
US's "war on terror", declaring that
"anthropologists should refrain
from directly assisting the US
military in combat, be it through
torture, interrogation or tactical
advice". The American Association
of Anthropology's executive
board has issued a statement
in accord with the pledge.
Unlike psychologists,
physicians or anthropologists,
neuroscientists are unlikely to
provide direct assistance to
Comment on these stories at www.NewScientist.com/opinion
combat forces fighting an
aggressive war or participate
directly in torture. They could
provide tools for such purposes,
however, and thus act as
accessories to the crime.
Opinions may vary as towhether
a given application constitutes
torture and whether a given war
is an aggressive war. Here one can
be guided by international law as
embodied in the UN charter, the
Geneva conventions and the
Convention Against Torture.
Aggressive war, for example, is
defined as a war that is not in self­
defence, with the corollary that
all peaceful means of resolving a
conflict must be pursued before
a war is begun.
Opinions will be especially
varied concerning aggressive war,
but the pledge simply commits
signers, once convinced that a war
is aggressive, to refuse to provide
the government conducting the
war with additional tools.
Signing this pledge will not stop
aggressive wars or human rights
violations, or even the use of
neuroscience for these purposes.
But by signing, neuroscientists
will help make such applications
less acceptable.
The pledge gives neuroscience
the opportunity to join with other
professions in moving away from
militarism and violence toward a
culture of peace and respect for
human life. Professionals and
their organisations have a special
responsibility in this regard,
because they are members of a
respected elite with knowledge
and influence.
Our goal as neuroscientists
and human beings should be to
create a culture that encourages
a pplications that enhance human
life while discouraging those
that damage it. If you are a
neuroscientist and you agree,
sign the pledge.•
Curtis Bell is a neuroscientist and
Senior Scientist Emeritus at Oregon
Health and Science University in
Portland. The pledge can be signed
at tinyurl .com/neurosci entistpledge
One minute with ...
Rob H o p kins
A prime mover behind the Tra nsiti on Towns move ment explains
why he is opti m i stic about our a b i l ity to wea n ou rselves off o i l
Can you tell m e more about the Transition
Towns movement?
A Transition Town is formed when a group
of i ndividuals gets together to ask how their
community can m itigate the effects of a potential
reduction in oil and drastically reduce their carbon
emissions to offset climate change. The scheme
has become so su ccessful we now have 250
official Transition Towns and Cities worldwide,
with many more interested in becoming involved.
Transition Towns have set up bartering
systems like local currencies and seed
exchanges; what other in itiatives are
they taking?
In England, Totnes and Lewes are setting up PROFILE
the first energy companies owned and run by the Rob Hopkins taught a permaculture course
community - Transition Stroud has written the in Ireland before found ing his com m unity-led
local council's food strategy. One group i n Scotl and response to peak oil and climate change, the
has managed to get access to land for new Transition Towns movement
a l lotments in their area and the first university
scheme has just been set up at the U n iversity of
Edinburgh. oil ava i lable to having less cheap oil ava i lable each
year. It's the shift from a time when our economic
You're about to launch an Energy Descent su ccess, our perso nal prowess and wealth is
Action Plan for Totnes. What is it? directly li nked to how much fossil fuel we
It's based on the idea that the way out of our consume, to a time when our degree of oil
current economic situation isn't to carry on as dependency is a vulnerability. By 2030 we will be
normal. We have to look at the local economy and entering a time of increasing volatil ity in terms of
askwhat a town could look like i n the next 20 price and availabil ity. For an economy which is
years if oil production has peaked - "peak oil" - and designed to function on a plentiful supply of cheap
climate change is a real ity. So the vision for food oil, that's a histor i c transition.
might be that people have a local food economy
with more urban agriculture employing local Are there specific characteristics that make
people. We then work out how we might a chieve a Transition Town more likely to succeed?
this. For instance, we look a t the land ava i lable, We have a thing called the "cheerful disclaimer" -
how it is used and to what degree the area could which means we have no idea if the idea is going
be self-reliant. to work or not. It's a n invitation to have a go.
When do you think we're going to run If the majority of people in a Transition Town
outof oil? were on-board, are they more likely to survive
We're probably not going to run out of oil in our peak oil or climate change?
lifetime. There won't be a mythical moment when There are no guara ntees tha t your community wi l l
someone i n Leicestershire pours out the last drop b e immune to cli mate cha nge. But I think human
into thei r car and that's it; what matters is the beings have an i n-built survival mechanism.
poi nt at which we move from havi ng more cheap Interview by Jessica Griggs
6 February 2010 1 NewScientist 1 25
OPINION LETTERS

spent more money and effort of deconstructing some of the From Derek Bolton
Hi g h-tec h b ord ers
ensuring that the "have nots" had research and assumptions When discussing the "unity" of
From Christos Giannou more access to what the "haves" surrounding this topic, he fails to consciousness, Ray Tallis says
Paul Marks ends his article on have, then we could spend less address the biggest hurdle: what he "can relate [experiencesI at
robot border guards (9 January, on keeping the "have nots" away does he, or indeed anyone else, a given time (the pressure of the
p 20) with a question about the from the "haves". mean by "consciousness"? seat on my bottom, the sound
privacy implications of such Taroona, Tasmania, Australia Humanities students are taught oftraffic, my thoughts) to one
surveillance technologies for to carefully define their terms another as elements of a single
people who live close by. before beginning to discuss them. moment". Maybe he can, but
There are other questions we Philosophers have wrestled I can't. I can contemplate each
should be asking, such as whether inconc!usively with the term different input in turn, but to
technology really is the answer "consciousness" for centuries. what extent am I really aware of
to controlling illegal immigration. The concept of consciousness them all at once?
The main reasons people may seem self-evident. Indeed, There are known limits to how
leave their homes, often under most people will think that they well we can discern the order of
dangerous circumstances, are have understood it until they two sensory inputs of different
poverty, war, tyranny, corruption try to describe exactly what types. An explanation of
and injustice. Are better radar and they mean. The difficulty arises continuity of experience and the
sensors the way to deal with these because we are dealing with simultaneous nature of events
issues? If the world tackled the an abstract idea, and a simple could be that they are illusions
socio-economic problems behind definition like "self-awareness" constructed from memory.
illegal immigration, perhaps rich immediately runs into trouble Tallis further maintains, when
countries would not have to hide In your head because it uses more abstractions talking about the biology of the
behind high-tech borders. without concrete reference brain, that " there is nothing in
Kastro, Monemvasia, Greece From Stuart Leslie points to define another the convergence. . . of neural
Ray Tallis gets it right when term which also lacks such pathways that gives us this ...
From Tim Sprod he argues that we are a long way reference points. ability to see things as both
Regarding the emergent high-tech from explaining the origin of Dorrigo, New South Wales, whole and separate". Not so.
border guards reported by Paul consciousness (9 January, p 28), Australia For example, it is possible to
Marks, it strikes me that if we but while he does a very good job experience the whole of a piece
From Gerald Rudolph of music when I listen to it :
Perhaps Ray Tallis could have I am aware of the melody and the
gone a bit further in his article rhythm, and the synthesis of the
Enigma N u mber 1581 on consciousness. He wrote two, because each ofthese three
of science beginning when we aspects ofthe music can have its
escape our first-person subjective
Daley's Gold THOMA S experience. Yet the conceptual
own neural correlate.
Birchgrove, New South Wales,
RICHARD ENGLAND DA L E Y understanding of science itself, Australia
I n J u ly 2009, 16 months after with its logical and mathematical
winning the individual divi ng G O L D thinking, consists of activities From Tim Wilkinson
gold medal from the lO-metre occurring in that same piece of As Ray Tallis suggests, any
platform board at the European No number starts with a zero. flesh that the neurophysiologists account of consciousness based
Championships at the age of 13, Since there are 11 different lellers, are exploring. on brain function will lack a
Thomas Da ley won the gold medal everythi ng is in base 11 - use the Even if we believe that plausible explanation for how
at the World Championships. So it is dig its 0 to 9 as normal and add a we have a form of scientific the cold unconscious world of
filling that I can offer this puzzle: symbol of your choice for the objectivity, each one of us is still particles and forces is able to
In this subtraction, digits have extra digit. limited by the fact that we are perform the trick of generating a
been consistently replaced by Please send in the 6-digit corporeal human beings, and subjective, self-aware experience.
I ellers, with different lellers number (sti l l in base 11) that consequently are constrained Nevertheless, if we show that the
representing different d igits. is represented by THOMAS. by the particular types of brain can generate consciousness,
chemical activity that take it is not necessary to know how it
WIN £15 will be awarded to the sender of the first correct place in our brains as we reason does so to rule out supernatural
answer opened on Wednesday 10 March. The Editor's decision is final. about their perceptions. sources. We can be sure that the
Please send entries to Enigma 1581, New Scientist, Lacon House, However objective provenance of consciousness is
84 Theobal d's Road, London WClX 8NS, o r to enigma@newscientist.com neurophysiologists try to be, entirely natural.
(please include your postal address). their research still boils down By what means we will solve
Answer to 1575 All our days: the FAMOUS n u mber is 528941 to consciousness studying the difficult "how" question
The win ner Doug Fenna of Ryde, Isle of Wight, UK consciousness. we cannot say at this stage. The
Lexington, South Carolina, US answer may involve completely

26 1 NewScientist 1 6 February 2010

For more letters and to join the debate, visit www.NewScientist.com/letters
new phenomena, hitherto
unnoticed. Perhaps we will
never know, but while we wait
for the answer, philosophers are
justified in claiming that a proper
explanation of consciousness
cannot come from any possible
rearrangement of the kind of
physics we already have.
We should be pleased : even
if space and matter yield their
secrets to the Large Hadron
Collider, we have something even
more fascinating to investigate.
Hough ton-Ie-Spring,
Tyne and Wear, UK
F e el the music
From Georg Pedersen, Sydney
Conservatorium ofMusic
The list of obscure or little-studied since extreme weather proves
emotions in jessica Griggs's
article (16 january, p 26) barely
scratched the surface.
As any music-lover knows,
there is a world of intense emotions trap, using extreme weather
out there that are impossible to
verbalise or conceptualise. To
experience music is to experience in 2000 David Viner, then of the
a separate universe, one created
entirely by humans. The deeper
we penetrate this world, the more
subtle it becomes and the harder
to describe.
Perhaps in trying to
understand our experience of
music we are faced with the same
kinds of problems we encounter
when trying to understand
consciousness - in other words,
we have little idea how it comes
about or even how to talk or
think about it. But for anyone
who listens to music, there is a
glory, a passion, an intensity
that constitutes a marvellous
synthesis of both intellect
and emotions.
Sydney, Australia
Weather isn't climate
From Michael Payton
Michael Le Page roundly turns
on anyone who dares to suggest
that the current severe winter
conditions throughout the
northern hemisphere put a
question mark over the existence
of global warming (16 january,
p 20). Ifthat were right, he says,
the sceptics would have to accept
that a spell of hot weather would
mean the climate was getting
warmer - equally nonsensical,
nothing about climate change.
Yet don't those who subscribe
to the idea of climate change
regularly fall into the same
scenarios - or the lack of them ­
to make their case? For example,
University of East Anglia Climate
Research Unit, claimed a
consequence of global warming
would be that within a few years
children in the UK "just aren't
going to know what snow is".
Would Le Page also dismiss
Viner as "intellectually challenged
or plain dishonest"?
London, UK
Rac e to m etric
From Ross Richdale
I was disappointed by David
Cohen's article about the
1000 mph car (21 November
2009, p 38): surely in this day and
age you could use metric units.
In New Zealand and Australia
we gave up the archaic imperial
measurements about 30 years ago.
I know that the US and, to a
lesser extent, the UK insist on
staying in the dinosaur age but
how can they be expected to
join the rest of the world if a
scientific magazine such as yours
condones the continued use of
this anachronism?
Palmerston North, New Zealand
The editor writes:
• "The 1609.3 kph car" would
have lacked charisma. The teams
we reported chose 1000 mph as
their target, so just this once, for Mac users are any more security
ease of comparison, we used miles conscious than anyone else.
per hour throughout the article.
Blink of a butterfl y
From Bern ie Mason
I was astounded to read in The
Last Word piece about how high
butterflies fly (16 january) that
commercial airline pilots have
reported seeing monarch
butterflies at between 3000
and 4000 metres. What I would
give for eyesight that good:
commercial airlines cruise at
about 250 metres per second.
How do pilots manage such feats
of observation?
Flowerdale, Tasmania
Mac attack
From Kevin Sheldrake
In Paul Marks's article on the
dangers of hackers using networks Letters should be sent to:
of computers to eavesdrop on
conversations on your laptop or
smartphone (16 january, p 17), an Fax: +44 (0) 20 7511 1280
anonymous " security expert"
claimed that such attacks are too
crude to pose a serious threat.
"It is unlikely any worthwhile
target will use Windows
unpatched," he says, "and few
Apple Mac users would
voluntarily install unknown
software."
I must assume that this expert
either works in academia, where
the world may look different,
or has had little exposure to
commercial security testing.
There is little evidence that Apple
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, UK
Pizza perfect
From Michael Shaw
As an employee of a chain of
pizza restaurants, I initially found
Stephen Ornes's article on the
mathematics of preparing perfect
pizza portions highly insightful
(12 December 2009, p 48).
However, as soon as I began to
attempt the method it described
I floundered. This only appears to
work with margherita pizzas and
others with a strictly uniform
distribution of toppings.
Alas, I found it oflittle help
when sharing pizza with my
fellow employees.
Bristol, UK
F or the r ec ord
• Possessing a "grid" of bra i n cells
that helps us to navigate might
explain why some people a re better
at finding their way around than
others (23 Janua ry, p 15). Although
these cells provide a virtual grid on
which locations in the world can be
represented i n the brain, we should
have made it clear that the celis
themselves are not arranged i n a
physical grid.
Letters to the Editor, New Scientist,
84 Theobald's Road, London WClX 8NS
Email: letters@newscientist.com
Include you r full posta I add ress a nd telephone
number, anda reference (issue, page number, title)
to articles. We reserve the rightto edit letters.
Reed Business Information reserves the right to
use any submissions sent to the letters column of
New Scientist magazine, in any other format.
6 February 2010 I NewScientist 1 27
OPI NION TH E BIG I DEA
Survival of the
fittest theory
Darwi n was only half-right a bout evol uti o n : evi d en ce
agai nst natu ra l se l e cti o n is m o u nting u p, arg u e Jerry Fodor
a n d Massimo Piatte l l i-Palmarini
READERS in search of literature about Darwin
or Darwinism will have no trouble finding it.
Recent milestone anniversaries of Darwin's
birth and ofthe publication oWn the Origin of
Species have prompted a plethora of material,
so authors thinking of adding another volume
had better have a good excuse for it. We have
written another book about Darwinism, and
we urge you to take it to heart. Our excuse is
in the title: What Darwin Got Wrong.
Much ofthe vast neo-Darwinianliterature
is distressingly uncritical. The possibility that
anything is seriously amiss with Darwin's
account of evolution is hardly considered.
Such dissent as there is often relies on theistic
premises which Darwinists rightly say have no
place in the evaluation of scientific theories.
So onlookers are left with the impression that
there is little or nothing about Darwin's theory
to which a scientific naturalist could
reasonably object. The methodological
scepticism that characterises most areas of
scientific discourse seems strikingly absent
when Darwinism is the topic.
Try these descriptions of natural selection,
typical ofthe laudatory epithets which
abound in the literature: "The universal acid"
(philosopher Daniel Dennett inDarwin's
Dangerous Idea, 1995); "a mechanism of
staggering simplicity and beauty ... [it] has
been called the greatest idea that anyone ever
had... it also happens to be true" (biologist
Jerry Coyne in Why Evolution is True, 2009);
"the only workable theory ever proposed
that is capable of explaining life we have"
(biologist and ethologist Richard Dawkins,
variously). And as Dennett continues in
Darwin's Dangerous Idea: "In a single stroke,
the idea of evolution by natural selection
unifies the realm oflife, meaning, and
purpose with the realm of s pace and time,
28 1 NewScientist 1 6 February 2010
cause and effect, mechanism and physical law:'
Golly! Could Darwinism really be that good?
Darwin's theory of evolution has two
connected parts: connected, but not
inseparable. First, there is an explanation
of the taxonomy of species. It is an ancient
observation that if you sort species by
similarities among their phenotypes
(a phenotype being a particular creature's
collection of overt, heritable biological
properties) they form the hierarchy known
as a " taxonomic tree".
This is why most vertebrate species are
more similar to one another than they are
to any invertebrate species, most species of
mammals are more similar to one another
than they are to any species of reptiles, and so
forth. Why is this? It is quite conceivable that
every species might be equally different from
every other. What explains why they aren't?
Darwin suggested a genealogical hypothesis:
when species are relatively similar, it's because
they are descended from a relatively recent
common ancestor. In some ways, chimps
seem a lot like people. This is not because God
created them to poke fun at us, or vice versa; it
is because humans and chimps are descended
from the same relatively recent primitive ape.
The current consensus is that Darwin
was almost certainly right about this. There
are plaUSible exceptions, notably similarities
PROALE
Je rry Fodor is a phi los opher and cognitive scientist
at Rutgers U n iversity, New Jersey, Mass i m o
Piatte l l i Palmarini is a cognitive scientist at the
Uni v ersi ty of Arizona, Tucson. This essay draws
on material from their new book, What Darwin
Got Wrong, pub lished in the US by Farrar, Straus,
and Giroux, and in the UK by Profile
For more opinion articles and to add your comments, visit www.NewScientist .com/o pinion

that arise from evolutionary convergence, phenotypes from each generation to the next
but evidence from a number of disciplines, are " imperfect" in the sense given above. Then,
including genetics, evolutionary all else being equal, the coloration of the i + lth
developmental biology and palaeontology generation will form a random distribution
argues decisively for Darwin's historical around the mean coloration of the parent
account of the taxonomy of species. We agree generation: most of the offspring will match
that this really was as brilliant an idea as it is their parents more or less, but some will be
generally said to be. more red than brown, and some will be more
But that cannot be the whole story, since brown than red.
it is not self-evident why species that have This assumption explains the random
a recent common ancestor- as opposed, say, variation of phenotypic traits over time, but it
to species that share an ecology - are generally doesn't explain why phenotypic traits evolve. So
phenotypically similar. Darwin's theory of let's further assume that, in the environment
natural selection is intended to answer this that the species inhabits, the members with
question. Darwinists often say that natural brownish coloration are more "fit" than the
selection provides the mechanism of ones with reddish coloration, all else being
evolution by offering an account of the equal. It doesn't much matter exactly how
transmission of phenotypic traits from fitness is defined; for convenience, we'll
generation to generation which, if correct, follow the current consensus according to
explains the connection between phenotypic
similarity and common ancestry. "Much ofthe vast n e o­
Moreover, it is perfectly general: it applies Da rwinian lite ratur e is
to any species, independent ofwhat its
phenotype may happen to be. And it is distr essingly uncritical"
remarkably simple. In effect, the mechanism
of trait transmission it postulates consists which an individual's relative fitness co-varies
of a random generator of genotypic variants with the probability that it will contribute
that produce the corresponding random its phenotypic traits to its offspring.
phenotypic variations, and an environmental Given a certain amount of conceptual and
filter that selects among the latter according mathematical tinkering, it follows that, all else
to their relative fitness. And that's all. again being equal, the fitness of the species's
Remarkable if true. phenotype will generally increase over time,
and that the phenotypes of each generation
will resemble the phenotype of its recent
Compel ling evidence ancestors more than they resemble the
But we don't think it is true. A variety of phenotypes of its remote ancestors.
different considerations suggesting that it is That, to a first approximation, is the neo­
not are mounting up. We feel it is high time Darwinian account of how phenotypes evolve.
that Darwinists take this evidence seriously, or To be sure, some caveats are required. For
offer some reason why it should be discounted. example, even orthodox Darwinists have
Our book about what Darwin got wrong reviews always recognised that there are plenty of
in detail some of these objections to natural cases where fitness doesn't increase over time.
selection and the evidence for them; this So, for example, fitness may decrease when a
article is a brief summary. population becomes unduly numerous (that's
Here's how natural selection is supposed to density-dependent selection at work), or when
work. Each generation contributes an imperfect a species having once attained a "fitness
copy ofits genotype - and thereby of its plateau" then gets stuck there, or, of course,
phenotype- to its successor. Neo-Darwinism when the species becomes extinct.
suggests that such imperfections arise Such cases do not show that neo-Darwinism
primarily from mutations in the genomes is false; they only show that the "all else being
of members of the species in question. equal" clauses must be taken seriously.
What matters is that the alterations of Change the climate enough and the next
phenotypes that the mechanisms of trait generation of dinosaurs won't be more fit
transmission produce are random. Suppose, than its parents. Hit enough dinosaurs with
for example, that a characteristic coloration meteors, and there won't be a next generation.
is part of the phenotype ofa particular species, But that does not argue against Darwinian
and that the modal members ofthe ith selection, as this claims only to say what
generation of that species are reddish brown. happens when the ecology doesn't change, or
Suppose, also, that the mechanisms that copy only changes very gradually, which >

6 February 2010 1 NewScientist 1 29

OPI NION TH E BIG I DEA
manifestly does not apply i n the case of the
dinosaurs and the meteorite strikes.
So much for the theory, now for the
objections. Natural selection is a radically
environmentalist theory. There are, therefore, from the environment.
analogies between what Darwin said about
the process of evolution of phenotypes and
what the psychologist B. F. Skinner said about the data. If that is so, there is inevitably less for
the learning of what he called "operant
behaviour" - the whole network of events and
factors involved in the behaviour of humans
and non-human animals.
Driven from with in
These analogies are telling. Skinner's theory, constraints on trait transmission. They
though once fashionable, is now widely agreed include constraints imposed "from below"
to be unsustainable, largely because Skinner
very much overestimated the contribution
that the structure of a creature's environment genes, chromosomes, cells, tissues and
plays in determining what it learns, and
corres pondingly very much underestimated
the contribution of the internal or
"endogenous" variables - including, in
particular, innate cognitive structure.
In our book, we argue in some detail that
much the same is true of Darwin's treatment
of evolution: it overestimates the contribution interaction ofthese multiple constraints has
the environment makes in shaping the
phenotype of a species and correspondingly
underestimates the effects of endogenous
variables. For Darwin, the only thing that
30 I NewScientist 1 6 February 2010
organisms contribute to determining how
next-generation phenotypes differ from
parent-generation phenotypes is random
variation. All the non-random variables come
Suppose, however, that Darwin got this
wrong and various internal factors account for
environmental filtering to do.
The consensus view among neo-Darwinians
continues to be that evolution is random
variation plus structured environmental
filtering, but it seems the consensus may be
shifting. In our book we review a large and
varied selection of non-environmental
by physics and chemistry, that is, from
molecular interactions upwards, through
organisms. And constraints imposed "from
above" by universal principles of phenotypic
form and self-organisation - that is, through
the minimum energy expenditure, shortest
paths, optimal packing and so on, down to the
morphology and structure of organisms.
Over the aeons of evolutionary time, the
produced many viable phenotypes, all
compatible with survival and reproduction.
Crucially, however, the evolutionary process
in such cases is not driven by a struggle for
If Darwin had known
what we know now,
he might have come to
differentconciusions
survival and/or for reproduction. Pigs don't
have wings, but that's not because winged
pigs once lost out to wingless ones. And it's
not because the pigs that lacked wings were
more fertile than the pigs that had them.
There never were any winged pigs because
there's no place on pigs for the wings to go.
This isn't environmental filtering, it's just
physiological and developmental mechanics.
So, how many constraints on the evolution
of phenotypes are there other than those
that environmental filtering imposes? Nobody
knows, but the picture now emerging is of
"Eve ry case offr e e-riding
is a c ounter- exampl e to
natura l se l ecti on"
many, many of them operating in many,
many different ways and at many, many
different levels. That's what the evolutionary
developmental school of biology and the
theory that gene regulatory networks control
our underlying development both suggest.
And it strikes us as entirely plausible.
It seems to us to be no coincidence that
neo-Darwinian rhetoric in the literature of
experimental biology has cooled detectably in
recent years. In its place, we find evolutionary
biologist Leonid Kruglyak being quoted in
Nature in November 2008 (vol 456, p 18) thus:
"It's a possibility that there's something
[about the contributions of genomic structure
to the evolution of complex phenotypes1 we
just don't fundamentally understand ... That
it's so different from what we're thinking
about that we're not thinking about it yet."
And then there is this in March 200g from
molecular biologist Eugene Koonin, writing
in Nuc/eic AcidsResearch (vol 37, p 1011):
"Evolutionary-genomic studies show that
natural selection is only one ofthe forces
that shape genome evolution and is not
quantitatively dominant, whereas non­
adaptive processes are much more prominent
than previously suspected." There's quite a lot
ofthis sort of thing around these days, and we
confidently predict a lot more in the near future.
Darwinists say that evolution is explained
by the selection of phenotypic traits by
environmental filters. But the effects of
endogenous structure can wreak havoc
with this theory. Consider the following
case: traits t1 and t2 are endogenously linked
in such a way that if a creature has one, it has
both. Now the core of natural selection is the
claim that phenotypic traits are selected for
their adaptivity, that is, for their effect on
For more opinion articles and to add your comments, visit www.NewScientist .com/o pinion
fitness. But it is perfectly possible that one
of two linked traits is adaptive but the other
isn't; having one ofthem affects fitness but
having the other one doesn't. So one is
selected for and the other "free-rides" on it.
We should stress that every such case
(and we argue in our book that free-riding is
ubiquitous) is a counter-example to natural
selection. Free-riding shows that the general
claim that phenotypic traits are selected for
their effects on fitness isn't true. The most
that natural selection can actually claim is
that some phenotypic traits are selected for
their effects on fitness; the rest are selected
for... well, some other reason entirely, or
perhaps for no reason at all.
It's a main claim of our book that, when
phenotypic traits are endogenously linked,
there is no way that selection can distinguish
among them: selection for one selects the
others, regardless of their effects on fitness.
Notall the traits
passed on between
generations haveto be
selected for their
adaptive value
That is a great deal less than the general even to aesthetics and theology. Some people
theory ofthe mechanics of evolution that really do seem to think that natural selection
the Darwinists suppose that natural selection is a universal acid, and that nothing can resist
provides. Worse still, there isn't the slightest its powers of dissolution.
reason to suppose that free-riding exhausts However, the internal evidence to back
the kinds of exceptions to natural selection this imperialistic selectionism strikes us as
that endogenous structures can produce. very thin. Its credibility depends largely on
"All right," you may say, "but why should the reflected glamour of natural selection
anybody care?" Nobody sensible doubts that which biology proper is said to legitimise.
evolution occurs -we certainly don't. Isn't this Accordingly, if natural selection disappears
a parochial issue for professional biologists, from biology, its offshoots in other fields seem
with nothing cosmic turning on it? Here's why likely to disappear as well. This is an outcome
we think that is not so. much to be desired since, more often than not,
Natural selection has shown insidious these offshoots have proved to be not just post
imperialistic tendencies. The offering of post­ hoc but ad hoc, crude, reductionist, scientistic
hoc explanations of phenotypic traits by rather than scientific, shamelessly self­
reference to their hypothetical effects on fitness congratulatory, and so wanting in detail that
in their hypothetical environments of selection they are bound to accommodate the data,
has spread from evolutionary theory to a host however that data may turn out. So it really
of other traditional disciplines: philosophy, does matter whether natural selection is true.
psychology, anthropology, sociology, and That's why we wrote our book.•
6 February 2010 1 NewScientist 1 31
 No l i q u i d behaves qu ite as odd ly
as water, but a controversial new
theory may fi n a l ly have wrung out
its secrets, says Edwin Cartlidge

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32 1 NewScientist 1 6 February 2010


• • , .
.�
of Stockholm University, Sweden, and their
• colleagues, we could at last be getting to the
bottom of many of these anomalies.
Their controversial ideas expand on a
theory proposed more than a century ago by
Wilhelm Roentgen, the discoverer of X-rays,
•
I who claimed that the molecules in liquid
• water pack together not in just one way, as
today's textbooks would have it, but in two
fundamentally different ways.
•
Key to the understanding of water's
w
.
•
-
mysteries is the way its molecules - made up
..
.,. � "e- of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom ­
":!". e are confronted by many mysteries, interact with one another. The oxygen atom
•
. .
from the nature of dark matter and has a slight negative charge while the hydrogen
the origin of the universe to the quest atoms share a compensating positive charge.
� for a theory of everything. These are all puzzles As such, the hydrogen and oxygen atoms of
on the grand scale, but you can observe neighbouring molecules are attracted to one
another enduring mystery of the physical another, forming a link called a hydrogen bond.
world - equally perplexing, if not quite so Hydrogen bonds are far weaker than the
• grand - from the comfort ofyour kitchen. bonds that link the atoms within molecules
Simplyfill a tall glass with chilled water, throw together, and so are continually breaking
.- in an ice cube and leave it to stand. and reforming, but they are at their strongest
The fact that the ice cube floats is the first when molecules are arranged so that each
oddity. And the mystery deepens if you take a hydrogen bond lines up with a molecular bond
thermometer and measure the temperature (see diagram, page 35). The shape ofa water
of the water at various depths. At the top, near molecule is such that each HP molecule is
the ice cube, you'll find it to be around 0 °c, surrounded by four neighbours arranged in
but at the bottom it should be about 4 0c. the shape of a triangular pyramid - better
That's because water is denser at 4°C than it is known as a tetrahedron.
at any other temperature - another strange At least, that's the way the molecules
trait that sets it apart from other liquids. arrange themselves in ice. According to the
Water's odd properties don't stop there (see conventional view, liquid water has a similar,
"Water's mysteries", right, and page 34), and albeit less rigid, structure, in which extra
some are vital to life. Because ice is less dense molecules can pack into some of the open ga ps
than water, and water is less dense at its in the tetrahedral arrangement. That explains
freezing point than when it is slightly warmer, why liquid water is denser than ice - and it
it freezes from the top down rather than the seems to fit the results of various experiments
bottom up. So even during the ice ages, life in which beams of X-rays, infrared light and
continued to thrive on lake floors and in the neutrons are bounced off samples of water.
deep ocean. Water also has an extraordinary True, some physicists had claimed that
capacity to mop up heat, and this helps water placed under certain extreme
smooth out climatic changes that could conditions may separate into two different
otherwise devastate ecosystems. structures (see "Extreme water", page 35),
Yet despite water's overwhelming but most had assumed it resumes a single
importance to life, no single theory had been structure under normal conditions.
able to satisfactorily explain its mysterious Then, 10 years ago, a chance discovery by
properties - until now. Ifwe can believe Pettersson and Nilsson called this picture into
physicists Anders Nilsson at Stanford question, They were using X-ray absorption
University, California, and Lars Pettersson spectroscopy to investigate the amino acid
COVER STORY
WATE R'S MYSTE R I E S
Picturing water as a liquid that can form two
types of structure, one tetrahedral and the other
disordered, could explain many of water's unusual
properties. Here are 10 of them
Water is most dense at 4 O(
EXPLANATION: Heating reduces the number
of ordered, tetrahedral structures in favour of a
more disordered arrangement in which molecules
are more densely packed. However, the heat also
agitates the molecules in the disordered regions,
causing them to m ove further apart. Above 4 0(,
this effect takes precedence, making the water
less dense
Water has an exceptionally high specific heat
capacity: it takes a lot of heat energy to raise
water's temperature by a given amount
EXPLANATION: Much of the extra heat energy
is used to convert more molecules from the
tetrahedral structures to the disordered
structu res, rather than into increasi ng the
kinetic energy of the molecules, and hence
the temperature.
Specific heat capacity is at a minimum at 35 O(
but increases as the temperature falls or rises,
whereas the heat capacity of most other liquids
rises conti nuously with temperature.
EXPLANATION: Between 0 and 35°(, increasing
the temperature steadily removes regions of
ordered, tetrahedral structure, reducing water's
ability to absorb heat. Above 35 0(, so few of the
tetrahedral regions are left that water behaves
like a reg ular l iquid.
Water's compressibility drops with increasing
temperature unti l it reaches a minimum at 46 0(,
whereas in most l i quids, the compressibility rises
continuously with temperature
EXPLANATION: As the temperature rises,
the dense, disordered regions become more
prevalent, and these are more difficult to
compress. However, rising temperature also
forces molecules within these regions further
apart and hence makes them more compressible.
This effect takes precedence beyond 46 0(,
6 February 2010 1 NewScientist 1 33
IIWh at we saw i n the water was
sensatio n a l, so we had to g et to
the bottom of itll
XPbANATION: The strong attraction between
water molecules keeps them more closely packed
than the molecules of many other liquids.
This effect is particularly marked when the
higher-density disordered structure dominates
The speed of sou nd in water increases with
temperature up to 74 0(, after which it starts
to fa Ii again
EXPLANATION: This isthe result of the
interplay between water's u n usual density
and compressibility profiles, which directly
stem from the changing balance between the
two types of structure.
Water molecules diffuse more easily, not less
easily, at higher pressures
EXPLANATION: High pressure converts more
molecules to the disordered structure, in which
they are more mobile.
Unlike many liquids, water becomes less viscous,
not more viscous, at higher pressures
EXPLANATION: Molecules are freerto move when
in the disordered structures, which are favoured
at higher pressures, than when they are in the
ordered, tetrahedral structure.
Increasing the pressure increases the amount
by which water expands on heati ng
EXPLANATION: Rising temperature causes
disordered regions to expand more rapidly than
ordered, tetrahedral ones, and high pressure
favours fluctuations to the disordered regions.
Properties such as viscosity, boiling point and
melting poi nt are significantly d ifferent in
"heavy" water - made from the heavier hydrogen
isotopes deuteri um and tritium - compared with
their equivalents in normal water.
EXPLANATION: The heavier isotopes change
the quantum mechanical properties of water
molecules, altering the balance of the disordered
and tetrahedral regions.
David Robson
34 1 NewScientist 1 6 February 2010
glycine. The peaks in the X-ray absorption
spectrum can shed light on the precise nature
of the target substance's chemical bonds, and
hence on its structure. Importantly, the
researchers had got hold of a new, high-power
X-ray source with which they were able to
make more sensitive and accurate
measurements than had ever been possible.
They soon realised that the water containing
their glycine sample was producing a far more
interesting spectrum than the amino acid.
"What we saw there was sensational," Nilsson
recalls, "so we had to get to the bottom of it."
Dramatic impl ications
The feature that sparked their interest was a
peak in the absorption spectrum that is not
predicted by the traditional model ofliquid
water. In fact, in a paper published in 2004
they concluded that at any given moment
85 per cent ofthe hydrogen bonds in water
must be weakened or broken, far more than
the 10 per cent predicted by the textbook
model (Science, vol 304, p 995).
The implications ofthis finding are dramatic:
it suggests that a total rethink of the structure
of water is needed. So Nilsson and Pettersson
turned to other X-ray experiments to confirm
their claims. Their first move was to enlist the
help of Shik Shin of the University ofTokyo,
Japan, who specialises in a technique called
X-ray emission spectroscopy. The key thing
about these spectra is that the shorter the
wavelength of the X-rays in a substance's
emission spectrum are, the looser
the hydrogen bonding must be.
The team struck gold: the spectrum of
emitted X-rays included two peaks that might
correspond to two separate structures. The
spike of the longer-wavelength X-rays, the
researchers argued, indicates the proportion
oftetrahedrally arranged molecules, while
the shorter-wavelength peak reflects the
proportion of disordered molecules.
Importantly, the shorter-wavelength peak
in the X-ray emissions was the more intense
of the two, suggesting that the loosely bound
molecules must be more prevalent within the
sample - an assertion that fitted the team's
previous models. What's more, they also
found that this peak shifts to an even shorter
wavelength as the water is heated, while the
other peak remains more or less fixed (Chemical
Physics Letters, vol 460, p 387).
That suggests that the hydrogen bonds
connecting molecules arranged in a disordered
way are more likely to loosen upon heating
than those linking the more regularly
arranged molecules - which again is what the
team had predicted. They then reanalysed
older experimental data that had seemed
to support the traditional picture of water­
and now argue that these results, too, are
consistent with the new model.
If the team is right, another question
arises: how large are the different structures
within the liquid? To find out, they turned
to the high-power X-rays generated at the
Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource
in California, this time measuring how water
scatters rays arriving from various angles.
The results, they say, reveal that water is
dotted with small regions of tetrahedrally
arranged molecules, each region being
1 to 2 nanometres across (Proceedings of the
National Academy ofSciences, vol 106, p 15214).
Combined with further measurements
carried out by Uwe Bergmann at Stanford
University, they concluded that the ordered
structures consisted of roughly 50 to 100
molecules, on average, surrounded by a sea
of the more loosely bound molecules. These
regions are not fixed, however. In less than a
trillionth of a second, water molecules are
thought to fluctuate between the two states
as the hydrogen bonds break and reform.
Explaining the inexpl icable
The changing balance between Nilsson
and Pettersson's two types ofwater provides
an explanation for the way water's density
peaks at 4°C. In the disordered regions, water
molecules are more closely packed, making
them denser than regions where the
molecules are arranged in a tetrahedral
structure. At 0 °C these disordered regions
should be relatively uncommon, but as the
water is warmed the extra heat energy tends
to shake the more ordered structure apart, so
molecules spend less time in the tetrahedral
structure and more time in the disordered
regions, making it more dense on average.
Counterbalancing this, the loosely bound
molecules will move around more vigorously
as the temperature rises, gradually forcing
them further apart from each other. Once
enough ofthe molecules become loosely
bound - at 4 °C - this expansion effect will
dominate, and the density will fall with
increasing temperatures.
According to Pettersson, the theory offers
equally tidy explanations for many of water's
other previously inexplicable anomalies ­
something they say that no other theory can
EXTRE M E WAT E R
The dual structure of water proposed by
Anders Nilsson of Stanford U niversity,
California, and Lars Pettersson of Stockholm
University in Sweden may be a ghostly
echo of the strange properties of
"supercool" water - water that has been
cooled to below O°C withoutfreezing.
Eugene Stanley of Boston University
and his colleagues have long claimed that
at temperatures below about -50°C and
pressures of more than 1000 times
atmospheric pressure, distinct high and
low-density forms of supercool water should
exist. Several research groups claim they
have found evidence for these two structures.
Stanley, however, believes there should
be small but discernible traces of this
behaviour at higher temperatures too -
The two faces of wate r
Each water molecule has the potential to form hydrogen bonds with four neigh bouring
m o l e c u l e s : one via each of its hydrogen atoms plus two via its oxygen atom, Fluctuations
betwe en the two resulting structures could explai n waters u n i q u e prop erties
With a l l fou r hy drogen bonds i n place, the
result is a regu lar tetrahedral structure
MOLECULAR BOND
HYDROGEN ATOM
yet achieve (see "Water's mysteries", pages
33 and 34). Martin Chaplin, a chemist at
London South Bank University, agrees.
Explanations based on the conventional
one-component system have to "go round
the houses" to try to accommodate the
maxima and minima in various properties
as the temperature of water changes, he says.
"The dual-structure idea is strongly
supported by experiment and can explain
water's anomalies far more readily than
the conventional picture," Chaplin says.
Nilsson and Pettersson's 2004 paper in
Science has now been cited over 350 times by
other researchers. Yet many remain sceptical.
One criticism is that the team's explanation
of their X-ray spectroscopy results is based
on simulations of at least 50 interacting water
molecules - an immensely complex model
that can only be resolved approximately.
"We need a much more accurate theory
seen as fluctuations i n water's density. Sure
enough, the size of the fleeting high and
low-density regions seen in Nilsson and
Pettersson's X-ray scatteri ng experiments
are consistent with his theory's predictions.
However, physicist Alan Soper at
the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in
Oxfordshire in the UK is not convinced that
these density d ifferences are anything
other than the density fluctuations that
can occur in any l iquid.
The crux of this dispute concerns the
precise statistical distribution of regions of
different denSity. According to Nilsson and
Pettersson's model, there should be two
peaks attwo distinctly different densities,
but Soper believes only one continuous
distribution is possi ble.
Water m o lecu l es are more densely packed w h e n
they are i n a m o r e ran d o m, disordered structure
in order to make such drastic claims," says
Richard Saykally at the University of California,
Berkeley. He claims that minor ad justments to
the arrangement of the hydrogen bonds in the
conventional structure are enough to explain
Nilsson and Pettersson's X-ray results. One
member oftheir group, Michael Odelius
of Stockholm University, even left the
collaboration because he disagreed with their
interpretation of the X-ray emission data.
One detail that alienated many sceptics was
an assertion in the 2004 paper that the more
loosely bound molecules form rings and
chains - and indeed Nilsson and his colleagues
are now less specific about the structure ofthe
disordered molecules. Eugene Stanley of Boston
University, however, does not believe that this
fatally damages the team's case. "I don't think
they should be condemned forever," he says.
Though their argument is not yet watertight,
the X-ray scattering results provide "one more
piece of supporting evidence", he says.
There is no doubt that Nilsson and
Pettersson still face stiff opposition, but the
rewards of a comprehensive understanding
of the structure ofliquid water could be
considerable. It could lead to a better
understanding of how drugs and proteins
interact with water molecules within the body,
for example, and so provide more effective
medicines. And by giving us a better idea of
how water behaves around narrow pores, it
might improve water desalination attempts
and so increase access to clean water.
"Our understanding of water is an evolving
picture," Pettersson says. "Further research by
many different groups is needed before this
exciting and important journey can end."
With so much to gain, who could disagree? •
Edw i n Cartlidge is a j ournalist based in Rome,
Italy. To enjoy more stunning images of water in
moti on by Shinichi M a ruyama, visit his website:
www.shinichimaruyama.com
6 February 2010 1 NewScientist 1 35
Oxygen made us, But what
made oxygen, asks Nick Lane
O
XYGEN i s life. That's true not just for us :
all animals and plants need oxygen to
unleash the energy they scavenge from
their environment. Take away oxygen and
organisms cannot produce enough energy to
support an active lifestyle, or even make them
worth eating. Predation, an essential driver of
evolutionary change, becomes impossible.
It is easy to picture a planet without oxygen.
It looks like Mars. Our nearest planetary
neighbour was probably once a water world
too, primed for life to evolve. But it lacked a
vital ingredient: a protective shield of ozone
derived from oxygen. Without an ozone layer,
the sun's rays slowly atomised the Martian
water. The hydrogen floated off into space
while the oxygen oxidised the iron-rich
Martian topsoil, turning it rust-red. Perhaps
there is - or was - life on Mars. But ifso it never
progressed beyond the bacterial stage.
So how did Earth get lucky? Ten years ago,
when I was writing my book Oxygen, it didn't
seem too big a deal. Photosynthesising
bacteria were the magic ingredient. These tiny
organisms popped up in Earth's oceans early
on, sometime between 4 and 3 billion years
ago. In the cou pie of billion years that
followed, their oxygenic exhaust fumes slowly
did the job. By 600 million years ago, the air
was primed for complex animal and plant life.
Now this cosy story has collapsed. We are no
longer so sure how Earth's atmosphere got ­
and retained - its oxygen-rich atmosphere.
"Photosynthesis by itself was not enough,"
says Graham Shields, a geochemist at
University College London. "It was a complex
dance between geology and biology:'
Uncovering life's earliest origins is never
an easy task. There are no large animal or
plant fossils to draw on: these only make
an appearance starting around 600 million
years ago. Yet perhaps remarkably, hints of
life's humble beginnings do survive in ancient
36 1 NewScientist 1 6 February 2010
as
rocks, crushed by the weight of sediment and
time. With ardour, patience and skill, they can
be marshalled into a convincing story.
William Schopf had those qualities. Two
decades ago he thought he had the story, too.
A palaeontologistat the University of California,
Los Angeles, he was investigating the Apex
cherts of Western Australia, 3-S-billion-year­
old rocks that are among the oldest on Earth.
In 1993, he announced that they contained
11 different types of " microfossil" that looked
for all the world like modern photosynthesising
cyanobacteria (Science, vol 260, p 640).
The finding fitted a global pattern. Other
3.S-billion-year-old Australian rocks contained
rippling structures that looked like fossil
stromatolites. A few examples of these
structures, domed edifices up to a metre high
built by cyanobacteria, still eek out a marginal
existence in salty lagoons on the coast of
Western Australia and elsewhere. Meanwhile,
3.8-billion-year-old rocks from Greenland
had reduced levels of one of the two stable
carbon isotopes, carbon-13, compared with
the other, carbon-12 - a chemical signature
of photosynthesis. It seemed that life had
come early to Earth: astonishingly soon after
our planet formed some 4.6 billion years ago,
photosynthesising bacteria were widespread.
This emerging consensus lasted only until
2002, when palaeontologist Martin Brasierof
the University of Oxford unleashed a barrage
of criticisms. The Apex cherts, he claimed,
were far from being the tranquil sedimentary
basin evoked by Schopf. In fact, they were shot
through with hydrothermal veins that were no
setting for cyanobacteria. Other evidence that
the rocks had undergone convulsions in the
past made the rippling stromatolites no more
biological in origin than ri pples on a sandy
beach. As for the microfossils Schopf had
identified, they ranged from the "almost
plausible to the completely ridiculous". >
6 February 2010 1 NewScientist 1 37
IIWith a l l of oxygen's ups a n d d owns, l ife on E a rth was
even l u ckier th a n we tho u g ht to g et as far as it hasll
Mind the gap
If, as seems increasingly likely, photosynthesising
cyanobacteria first made an appearance in Earth's
oceans around 2.7 billion years ago, why did they
take so long to make a difference to Earth's air?
One possibil ity is that the oxygen's first
chemical mission was to oxidise all the iron and
compounds l i ke hydrogen sulphide in the oceans.
Only after it had done that was it free to escape
into the atmosphere.
Perhaps the most persuasive answer,
though. is purely geologicaL It comes from
veteran geologist Heinrich Holland of Harvard
University. He points the finger at gases such
as methane and hydrogen sulphide that are
constantly spouted out by volcanoes. They
would have reacted with the first free oxygen
to form carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxides.
effectively removing the oxygen from
circulation (Geochimica et Cosmochimica
Acta. vol 73. p 5241).
Holland proposed that two processes took
place over geological time. First. the supply of
radioactive fuels in Earth's interior gradually
dwindled. reducing its internal temperature.
That in turn damped down the rate of volcanic
emissions. and the rate at which oxygen­
consuming gases entered the atmosphere
gradually fell too.
Second. the volcanic gases themselves
contained more oxygen. Oxygen produced by the
first cyanobacteria would have steadily oxidised
surface rocks. As those rocks cycle through the
Earth's mantle through the standard processes
of subduction and convection. rocks with an extra
load of oxygen gradually fed through to the gases
emitted by volcanoes.
As cyanobacteria continued to pump out
oxygen. there came a point where the balance
tipped inexorably towards oxygen. and the
excess finally accumulated in the air. Perhaps it
took the 300 million years leading up to the great
oxygenation eventto getto that tipping point.
38 1 NewScientist 1 6 February 2010
This very public spat produced no clear
outcome, but since then new evidence has
been emerging. In 2006, Thomas McCollom
ofthe University of Colorado in Boulder and
Jeffrey Seewald of the Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts
found that reactions known as Fischer­
Tropsch syntheses can occur in hydrothermal
vents, leaving a carbon isotope signature that
mimics photosynthesis with no need for a
biological explanation. The mere possibility
that hot water might have massaged the
evidence in Australia and elsewhere was
damning enough for the duo. "The possibility
must be entertained that complex life was not
present on Earth, or at least not widespread,
until a much later date," they wrote (Earth
and Planetary Science Letters, vol 243, p 74).
That conclusion was supported by a
reanalysis of " biomarkers" found in
2.7-billion-year-old Australian shales. These
organic molecules had been thought to
indicate the presence of cyanobacteria, but in
2008 an Australian team concluded that the
shales had been contaminated by ancient oil
that had filtered down into the sediments
some time after the rocks first formed (Nature,
vol 455, p 1101). Even more damningly, in
September 2009 a French team discovered
living bacteria buried deep down in ancient
rocks of a similar age (PLoS One, vol 4, p e5298).
C ru mbling edifice
Perhaps the decisive blow came in August
last year, when Daniele Pinti ofthe University
of Quebec in Montreal, Canada, and his
colleagues announced results from a survey
of the Apex cherts using advanced microscopy
techniques. They concluded that the rocks had
formed ina hydrothermal vent at a searing
250 'c or more -way too hot for cyanobacteria.
The "microfossils", they said, were mostly
deposits of iron oxides and clay minerals
(Nature Geoscience, vol 2, p 640).
These new lines of evidence mean that the
oldest undisputed signs of cyanobacteria are
now fossils found in rocks from the Belcher
Islands in northern Canada dating from just
2.1 billion years ago. So where does that leave
our ideas about how life evolved, and the part
oxygen played in that evolution?
In one sense it is no bad thing: it removes an
embarrassing billion-plus year delay between
cyanobacteria arising and oxygen levels in the
air first taking a significant upwards turn. In this
"great oxygenation event" of around 2.4 billion
years ago, levels rose from around 1 per cent of
today's levels to perhaps 10 per cent.
Our best guess is still that cyanobacteria
were around some time before this event.
Persuasive evidence is converging on a date
around 2.7 billion years ago (see diagram,
right). Research from Linda Godfrey and
Paul Falkowski of Rutgers University in New
Brunswick, New Jersey, indicates that the
modern nitrogen cycle kicked off around this
time. This requires free oxygen to form nitrogen
oxides, suggesting that a first whiff of oxygen­
not even 1 per cent oftoday's levels - had just
appeared (Nature Geoscience, vol 2, p 725).
That squares with evidence from Robert Frei
of the University of Copenhagen, Denmark,
and his colleagues that the oxidative
weathering of rocks kicked off around this time
too. They measured levels of chromium in
ancient marine rock layers known as banded
iron formations. Exposed to oxygen in the air,
the metal is weathered from rocks and washed
out to sea, where it reacts immediately with
iron, settles to the ocean bottom and forms
these layers. The chromium signature in them
suggests there was essentially no oxidative
weathering before 2.7 billion years ago, after
which chromium became significantly more
mobile (Nature, vol 461, p 250).
If these coordinated changes are the calling
cards ofthe first photosynthesising bacteria,
there is still a mysterious hiatus of 300 million
years before the great surge in oxygen 2-4 billion
years ago. The gap is less embarrassing than a
billion years, but still needs explaining (see
"Mind the gap", left). Yet this puzzle masks a
more fundamental new twist to the tale.
It is that the great oxygenation event was
perhaps not as decisive an event as we thought.
It certainly happened -a suite of geochemical
evidence leaves little room for doubt on that
score - and it was traumatic, too. Evidence
of a sudden drop in ultraviolet radiation
penetrating to Earth's surface 2-4 billion years
ago indicates it was enough to create the ozone
layer- a pivotal event that ensured our
planet's history diverged from that of Mars.
It also seems to have been the forerunner
to a "snowball Earth". IfJoe Kirschvink ofthe
California Institute ofTechnology in Pasadena
and many others are correct, the oxygen
produced by cyanobacteria oxidised the
potent greenhouse gas methane, precipitating
a global freeze. "That raises the spectre of one
mutant organism being able to destroy an
entire planetary ecosystem - the first biogenic
climate disaster," says Kirschvink.
And yet the great oxygenation was
impermanent. The same chromium record
that provides evidence for a first whiff of
oxygen 300 million years before this event
 Did l i chens help oxygen
to finally break free?

shows that, by 1. 9 billion years ago, levels of

breathable oxygen in Earth's atmosphere were
back down to the merest trace.
We don't know why. It might have been a
knock-on effect from a big freeze: if Earth did
indeed enter a snowball phase, glaciers would
have scoured huge amounts of nutrients from
the underlying rock. When the ice eventually
retreated, melted by the build-up of volcanic
greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, those
nutrients would have found their way into the
oceans. One idea is that they nourished a huge
transient bloom of cyanobacteria that quickly
died and rotted, in the process consuming all
the oxygen they had once produced.

Sti n king oceans

Oxygen levels in the atmosphere soon
recovered again as rates of photosynthesis and
weathering established a new equilibrium, at
about 10 per cent of present-day levels. But
this was no fresh dawn of a high-octane world:
quite the reverse. This time, the oxidative
weathering of sulphides on land filled the
oceans with sulphate. That in turn fuelled a
hardy group of bacteria that filled the oceans
with sewer gas - hydrogen suiphide - turning
them into stinking, stagnant waters almost
entirely devoid of oxygen, rather like the
deeper levels ofthe Black Sea today. It was the
herald of an extraordinary stasis in Earth's
environment lasting nearly a quarter of its
history - a period dubbed the "boring billion".
But hang on: what happened to the
oxygenic utopia in which life supposedly grew
and prospered, evolving the complex cells that
went on to make up animal and plant life? The
answer is that it probably never existed. If
O2 o n t h e u p
The rise of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere has experienced many setbacks since the
fi rst ph otosynthesising cyanobacteria a p p eared, probably 2.7 b i l l i on years ago
Volcanic hydrogen sulphide and
methane keep oxygen down
2.7·2.4 bya
SNOWBALL
c ii 10
� y;
� ii B
a Ll
� .s 6
�
OJ '+­
a STINKING, SEWER
-E. � 4
:B �
E c 2
.it �
OJ
.2: 4 2
BILLION YEARS
AGO (bya)
cyanobacteria did produce the first oxygen
in Earth's atmosphere, all the evidence is they
lacked the oomph to push levels much above
10 per cent of present levels in the long term.
That has led William Martin, an expert in
cell evolution at the University of Dusseldorf
in Germany, and others, to come up with a
controversial theory: that the boring billion
was anything but boring. In fact, the stinking
oceans were the true cradle oflife. Evidence
behind this idea includes the fact that
mitochondria, the powerhouses of all
complex, oxygen-respiring "eukaryotic" cells
today, were once far more varied, sometimes
"breathing" sulphur or nitrogen instead of
oxygen, or even emitting hydrogen gas. It
seems that these mitochondria originated
in the stinking oceans of the boring billion,
which were full of the chemical imbalances
that power life today in places, like deep-sea
hydrothermal vents.
Oxygen level down
to almost zero again
1.9 bya
EARTH "BORING BILLION"
LIKE SEAS
0 Fellow at U n iversity College London, and auth or
Earth's anoxic stasis was broken in the
end by a dramatic series of snowball Earths,
indicating bursts of oxygen, beginning about
750 million years ago and recurring over the
following 100 million years. They broke the
eternal loop : soon afterwards, oxygen levels
shot up and never looked back. Animal life
soon exploded onto the scene.
What made the difference this time? One
intriguing possibility is that it was down to the
organisms that had evolved in a leisurely way
during the boring billion: terrestrial red and
green algae and the first lichens. "I suspect
the final big rise in oxygen was caused by
the greening of the continents from around
800 million years ago," says Shields. Terrestrial
algae and lichens get their nourishment in
part by breaking down the rocks on which they
live. These nutrients flooded into the oceans,
stimulating more and more photosynthesis
by both cyanobacteria and the more advanced
algae that had evolved in the meantime.
It did not all end in a " bloom and a bust" this
time because lichens kept right on eating away
at the rocks. They sustained a higher rate of
erosion, and constant flow of nutrients into
the ocean, even after the scouring glaciers of
various snowball Earth phases had melted.
Life's story on Earth is a complex one,
perhaps more complex that we ever
imagined. After many false starts, a singular
combination of chemistry, biology and
geology finally came together to unleash the
oxygen we breathe. Even then, many ups and
downs were to come. To get as far as it has, life
on Earth was even luckier than we thought. •
Nick La ne is the first Provost's Venture Research
of Life Ascending: The ten great inventions of
evolution (Profile, 2009)

6 Febru a ry 2010 1 NewScientist 1 39

 HEY
T
are enigmatic sea monsters - rare,
magnificent beasts patrolling the
ocean depths. Yet old chronicles tell
of populations of whales hundreds oftimes
greater than today. Such tales have long been
dismissed as exaggerations, but could they be
true? Have humans killed such a staggering
number of whales?
New genetic techniques for analysing whale
populations, alongside a growing archive of
fresh historical analysis, suggest so. Taken
together, they indicate that we have got our
The death toll ideas about marine ecology completely upside
exacted by historical down: whales may once have been the
whal i n g could have dominant species in the world's oceans.
bee n staggering This is not simply an academic question.

As eager wha l ers reach once more for

the i r harpoons, reve lations on the forme r
abundance of wha les may yet stay the i r
hands, says Fred Pearce .
.. �
�

40 1 NewScientist 1 6 February 2010

 It matters now more than ever before. Whale
numbers have been recovering slowly since
the end oflarge-scale hunting in 1986, but this
global moratorium is only temporary. The
International Whaling Commission, the club
of mostly former whaling nations which
maintains the ban, has rules that say it can
reconsider hunting a given whale species if its
population climbs back to more than 54 per
cent of its pre-hunting levels. Right now,
according to IWC estimates, Atlantic
humpbacks and Pacific minkes may have
recovered sufficiently to put them back in
whalers' Sights. But, crucially, such decisions
rest on the veracity ofthe IWC's estimates of
historical whale populations - 54 per cent of
what, exactly? If the old salts' tales of whale
abundance are true, it is way too early to be
dusting off those harpoons.
Human pressure on whale stocks "was much
earlier, much larger and much more significant
than previously thought", environmental
historian Poul Holm ofthe University of
Dublin, Ireland, told a meeting of the Census
on Marine Life (CML) project in 2009.
Most estimates of how many whales were
present in the oceans before hunting began
come from population modellers, many of
them working for the IWe. These estimates are
mostly based on combining the size of current
populations with numbers caught in the past,
as recorded in the logbooks of whalers. There
are other ways to calculate historical whale
numbers, though.
So far, genetic evidence has received the
most attention, in particular the publication
of a controversial study in 2003 by Stephen
Palumbi and Joe Roman of Stanford
University's Hopkins Marine Station. This
study's high numbers appeared to blow
IWC historical estimates out of the water,
particularly for humpback whales (Science,
vol 301, p 508).
The pair had investigated whales for signs
of genetic variation. Geneticists claim to be
able to use this to estimate the size of the
population in the past since large populations
tend to accumulate diversity through random
DNA mutations and breeding, while small
populations lose it through inbreeding. The
results were dramatic.
The IWC believed that before large-scale
whaling began, the North Atlantic was home
to about 20,OOO humpback whales. With a
current population of about 10,000 and
rising, this meant that under the 54-per-cent
rule hunting could soon resume. But Roman
and Palumbi estimated the pre-exploitation
population was more than 20 times as great,
at 240.000. Globally, they suggested, there
may have once been 1.5 million humpbacks,
rather than the 100,000 estimated by the IWC.
Hostile reception
Unsurprisingly, Palumbi got a hostile
reception when he presented these figures to
the IWC in 2004, and the numbers remain
controversial. One leading expert, on
condition of anonymity, told New Scientist
that the estimates were "ridiculous" and
privately accused Palumbi of being " more
interested in getting papers into Nature and
Science than in getting it right".
There are problems with the analysis. It
assumes that the particular whale population
under scrutiny never bred with others. Critics
point out that the now-distinct humpback
populations of the North and South Atlantic
may well have once done just that. It could be
that Roman and Palumbi have inadvertently
estimated the entire Atlantic humpback
population, or even the global population
rather than that in just the North Atlantic.
Palumbi and Roman are not alone, however.
Charles Scott Baker, a conservation geneticist
at Oregon State University in Newport, has
used DNA analysis to investigate minke
whales. IWC estimates put their number
today near their historical levels of around
600,000 globally. But Scott Baker reckons
that as recently as 300 years ago there were
probably close to 1.5 million ofthem. That
suggests its recovery is still at an early stage.
Can these conflicting numbers be
reconciled? Historical abundance is estimated
using a combination of the current population
and the total historical catch. The problem is
that nobody can be sure how many whales
were taken in the past. Some estimate that
the total catch for the 20th century was about
4 million. But official whaling records are
incomplete, especially post-war logs.
The most dramatic revelations have come
from the archives of the former Soviet Union,
itA l a rge n u m be r of
wha l es esca ped the
h u nte rs to die l ate r
fro m h a rpoon i nj u rieslt
which carried out massive illegal harvesting
of whales - especially in the 1950S and 1960s ­
while sending false logbook records to the
IWe. Memoirs of Russian whaling inspectors
published in the past two years reveal that
from 1959 to 1961, Soviet whaling fleets killed
25,000 humpback whales in the Southern
Ocean, while reporting a catch of just 2710.
This continued well into the 1970S according
to new revelations at an IWC conference in
2009 by one of the original whistle-blowers,
Yuri Mikhalev of the South Ukrainian
Pedagogical University in Odessa, Ukraine.
Earlier records, where they exist, may be
more reliable. Tim Smith, who heads the
World Whaling History project, says that "the
keepers oflogbooks [in the 19th century] had
no incentive and little latitude to under-report
catches". Even so, there may still be huge gaps
in the data used by today's modellers. British
whaling records were often dramatically
incomplete, for example. Jennifer Jackson of
Oregon State University in Newport has
studied right whales off New Zealand, which
were heavily hunted in both the 19th and 20th
centuries. She discovered that British whalers
took an estimated 10,000 whales in the South
Pacific that had simply not been included in
previous catch estimates.
But even after such data gaps are accounted
for, the numbers still cannot be reconciled.
So what else may have been going on? >
6 Feb ruary 2010 1 NewScientist 1 41
 Roman points out that whalers' logbooks,
even if scrupulously kept, only report some
If W h a les we re 'floati n g
of the killings. For one thing, manywhales are
killed but never landed. Population modellers
have traditionally added a few percentage
points to allow for this, but many believe
that only a minority of the whales attacked by
vessels were killed, landed and logged - a large
number escaped their hunters to die later
from harpoon injuries. Others died in fishing
nets, were struck by ships or used as target
practice by naval vessels, says Roman.
An cient h unters
There is also growing evidence of massive
damage to whale populations inflicted by
humans long before the industrial era of
explosive harpoons and factory ships. Some
70,000 records of whale catches and sightings
assembled by the History of Marine Animal
Populations project, part of the CML, suggest
the impact of pre-industrialised hunting on
whale stocks was much greater than
previously assumed.
Basque and japanese fishermen were
catching right whales 1000 years ago. And
for centuries, many other island and coastal
communities have harvested the creatures.
Whaling was the first global industry, says
marine biologist Callum Roberts of York
University in the UK. Whalers were hunting
deep in Arctic waters long before explorers
Lost gia nts
The analysis of genetic diversity suggests that the popu lations of some whales were once far largerthan models suggest
NORTH ATLANTIC
H U M PBACK W HALE
Megaptera novaeangfiae
11.000
CURRENT POPU LATION
POPU LATION BE FO R E
20.000
H U NTING, BAS ED ON
40.000
H ISTORICAL CATCH RECORDS
Calculated using current population
plus (known and estimated) catches
from whaling records
POPU LATION BE FO R E
240,000
H U NTING, BAS ED ON
GENETIC DIVERSITY
Large populations accumulate
diversity through mutation and
breeding. Small populations lose
it through inbreeding
42 1 NewScientist 1 6 February 2010
o i l we l l s', p rovi d i n g o i l fo r
ca nd les, street l a m ps
a n d m a c h i n e rylf
showed up. When Darwin reached the
Galapagos Islands in 1835, they were already
overrun with American vessels pursuing
sperm whales.
According to Robert Allen of the University
of Oxford, it now appears that many whale
populations in the northern hemisphere
were ravaged in the 17th and 18th centuries by
whalers employing hand-held harpoons and
sheer manpower. Back then, whales were
essentially "floating oil wells", providing oil
for candles, street lamps and machinery, as
well as ingredients for perfumes, plus bones
for everything from corsets to fishing rods.
The downfall of the Arctic bowhead whale
is the best documented. Thousands of Dutch
whaling ships headed into the Arctic in the
17th and 18th centuries to catch bowheads
off Spitsbergen, until the population
collapsed. Whaling then moved to the waters
off Greenland where a frenzied hunt soon
wiped out what had been the biggest whaling
ground in the world. Today there are only
about 1000 bowheads swimming west of
Greenland - and none at all between
N O RTH AT LANTIC EASTERN PACI FIC
FIN W HALE GRAY W HALE
Bafaenoptera physafus Eschrichtius robustus
3 5 0,000
Greenland and Spitsbergen, says Allen.
The emerging history of pre-industrial
whaling, and what it suggests about past whale
numbers, raises some important questions.
Not just about the wisdom of a return to
commercial whaling, but also about ocean life
in general. jeremy jackson of the Scripps
Institution of Oceanography in San Diego says
the hunting ofwhales has fundamentally
reorganised ocean ecosystems. Today, ocean
biomass is dominated by small creatures. But
he says this "trophic pyramid", with only a
tiny tip of large creatures, may not be natural.
Before we intervened, he says, the pyramid
was probably the other way up, with large
beasts dominating the biomass.
Keeping these big beasts fed would be
possible if the turnover of their smaller prey
species was fast enough to ensure that fresh
food was constantly being produced. And
rather than devouring an ecosystem, a greater
number of whales might help feed it : when
a whale dies, its carcass sinks to the seabed
where it could feed a local population of
scavenging species for up to 80 years. Peter
Karieva, chief scientist at conservation
charity The Nature Conservancy in Seattle,
Washington, says there is evidence that the
decline of sperm whales in the tropical Pacific
has moved the entire ecosystem towards
domination by species like squid. We don't
know what was lost with the whales - or what
else might reappear if their numbers soared.
All this new research is putting the scientific
credibility of the !WC under increasingly
scrutiny. Some hope that the issues might be
resolved at the IWC's annual meeting in
Agadir, Morocco, in june this year. Don't hold
your breath: "The discrepancies are unlikely to
be resolved in the scientific committee of the
IWC," says !WC scientist Sidney Holt.
Until now, says jeremy jackson, the
widespread anecdotal evidence of huge
numbers of whales and other large animals
on the planet has been systematically
downgraded by scientists simply because it
cannot be proved. He calls the process " scary,
unbridled anti-historical determinism". The
result, he says, is that "we deny the once-great
existence of anything we killed more than a
century ago".
The new ecological perspective on the past
abundance ofwhales is, like Palumbi's work,
controversial. Nevertheless, the ever-growing
body of historical evidence is siding with
the DNA. It suggests that even the most
"recovered" oftoday's whale populations are
mere ghostly reminders oftheir former
dominance.
The whale's past may be shrouded in mist,
but one thing's for sure- their future is in our
hands . •
Fred Pearce is environmental consultant for
New Scientist
W i l l beamed power fi n a l ly u nshackle our electron ics
from those u g ly power ca bles, asks David Robson

e w res

L
ET'S face it: power cables are unsightly
dust-traps. pes, TVs and music players are
becoming slicker every year, but the nest
ofvipers in the corner of every room remains
an ugly impediment to true minimalism.
Then there is the inconvenience of charging
phones, MP3 players and PDAs. A minor
hassle, admittedly, but it is easy to forget to
top up the batteries and before you know it
you have left the house with a dead gadget.
Wouldn't life be simpler if power was invisibly
beamed to your devices whenever you walked
into a building with an electricity supply?
Wireless communication is ubiquitous, after
all, so why can't we permanently unshackle
our electronics from power cables too?
Poor transmission efficiencies and safety electricity through the troposphere to power from the ground. Some have even suggested
concerns have plagued attempts at wireless homes. He even started building Wardenclyffe that one day we might power spaceships by
power transfer, but a handful of start-ups ­ Tower on Long Island, New York, an enormous beaming power to them with lasers (New
and some big names, like Sony and Intel - are telecommunications tower that would also Scientist, 17 February 1996, p 28). As well as this,
having another go at making it work. The last test his idea for wireless power transmission. much theoretical work has gone into exploring
few years have seen promising demonstrations The story goes that his backers pulled the the possibility of beaming power down to
of cellphones, laptops and TVs being powered funding when they realised there would be Earth from satellites that harvest solar energy
wirelessly. Are we on our way to waving no feasible way to ensure people paid for the (New Scientist, 24 November 2007, p 42).
goodbye to wires once and for all? electricity they were using, and the wired Long-distance ground-to-ground
The idea of wireless power transfer is almost power grid sprang up instead. wireless power transmission would require
as old as electricity generation itself. At the Wireless transmission emerged again in the expensive infrastructure, however, and with
beginning ofthe 20th century, Nikola Tesla 1960s, with a demonstration of a miniature concerns over the safety of transmitting
proposed using huge coils to transmit helicopter powered using microwaves beamed it via high-power microwaves, the >

6 Feb ruary 2010 1 NewScientist 1 43

idea has been met with trepidation.
While we won't be seeing a wireless
power grid any time soon, the idea of beaming
power on a smaller scale is rapidly gaining
momentum. That is largely because, with
wireless communication, like Wi-Fi and
Bluetooth, and ever-shrinking circuits, power
cables are now the only limit to becoming
truly portable. "The move was inevitable once
wireless communication became popular,"
says David Graham, a co-founder of
Powerbeam in San Jose, California.
With this new impetus, engineers and
start-up companies have jumped at the
challenge, and while beamed power is still
in its infancy, three viable options seem to be
emerging. The use of radio waves to transmit
electricity is perhaps the most obvious
solution, since you can in principle use the
same kinds of transmitters and receivers used
in Wi-Fi communication. Powercast, based in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has recently used
this technology to transmit microwatts and
milliwatts of power over at least 15 metres to
industrial sensors. They believe a similar
approach could one day be used to recharge
small devices like remote controls, alarm
clocks and even cell phones.
A second possibility, for more power-
"With such p romising
demonstrations it
seems l i kely w i reless
powe r will e nter our
homes in a big way "
44 1 NewScientist 1 6 February 2010
hungry devices, is to fire a finely focused "So ny has tested a
infrared laser beam at a photovoltaic cell,
which converts the beam back to electrical wi reless TV a nd I ntel
energy. It's an approach PowerBeam has is i nvestigating the
adopted, but so far its efficiency is only
between 15 and 30 per cent. While that could techno logy fo r a
serve more power-hungry appliances, it would ra nge of devices"
in practice be too wasteful.
The technology has been used to power
wireless lamps, speakers and electronic photo The team's set-up consisted of an inducting
frames that require less than 10 watts to coil connected to a capacitor. The energy
function. Over time, as both the lasers and within this circuit oscillates rapidly between
photovoltaic cells improve, the company an electric field in the capacitor and a
hopes efficiencies of up to SO per cent will be magnetic field in the coil. The frequency of
possible. "There's no reason we couldn't power this oscillation is controlled by the capacitor's
a laptop eventually," says Graham. Unlike ability to store charge and the coil's ability to
some other possible techniques, a sharply produce a magnetic field. If the frequency in
focused beam loses minimal energy over the energy-transmitter's circuit is different
large distances, preserving its efficiency: from that of the receiver's circuit, they are
"A hundred metres is no big deal." non-resonant. The result is that the magnetic
field coming from the transmitter interferes
destructively with the field building up in the
Inconven ient bea ms receiver, constraining energy transfer. But if
Others are sceptical that this technique would the transmitter and receiver are resonant, the
be practical for truly portable devices, which team reasoned, the oscillating fields of their
are constantly moving around and between two coils would always be in sync, meaning the
rooms. "An infrared beam would not be interference is constructive and the amount of
convenient to charge a mobile phone - it's too energy transferred is boosted.
directional," says Menno Treffers, chairman They tested their theory in 2007 with great
of the Wireless Power Consortium in the success, transmitting 60 watts across 2 metres,
Netherlands. Powerbeam's solution is to fit a with 40 per cent efficiency (Science, vol 317,
small fluorescent bulb to the receiving device p 83). The team has since founded a company
so that a camera on the transmitter can track called WiTricity to develop the idea. Last year,
the light and steer the laser beam accordingly. the firm used two square coils 30 centimetres
Another problem is that a separate beam is across, one in the receiver and one in the
needed for each device you want to power, transmitter, to power a so-watt TV 0.5 metres
which would be tricky to engineer, says from the power supply, with an impressive
Aristeidis Karalis at the Massachusetts Institute 70 per cent efficiency. "In some cases, the
ofTechnology, who is developing an alternative improvement in the effiCiency due to
wireless power transmission system. resonance can be more than 100,000 times
The third possibility for wireless power is that of non-resonant induction," says Karalis.
magnetic induction - the most attractive Unlike laser-based line-of-sight energy
option for beefy domestic applications. A transmission, a magnetic field is not focused
fluctuating magnetic field emanating from one and so can pass around or through obstacles
coil can induce an electric current in another between the transmitter and receiver.
coil close by, which is how many devices, The big consumer electronics companies
like electric toothbrushes and even some have also been keen to investigate " resonant
cellphones, recharge drained batteries. The transfer". Sony, for example, has
snag, however, has been that while efficiency demonstrated a wireless TV, and Intel is
is good at close contact, it can drop to zero at investigating the technology for a range of
even a few millimetres from the transmitter. devices. "Power transfer efficiency scales
Enter Karalis and his colleagues. It has independently of power, so the same
long been known that such mechanical energy efficiency can be achieved for laptops,
transfer is improved enormously if two consumer electronics such as TVs, and smaller
objects resonate at the same frequency - it's portable devices such as cellphones," says
how an opera singer can smash a glass if she Emily Cooper, a research engineer at Intel's
hits the right pitch. Karalis wondered whether labs in Seattle. In other words, the same
the same idea could improve the efficiency of proportion of the total energy will be lost for
magnetic induction at greater distances. a power-hungry plasma TV as for a tiny PDA.
An e l ectri c atm o s p h ere
New technologies to beam powerto gadgets could e n d the days of ugly cables

H I G H POW ERED LASER ­

EFFICIENCY: 15 30%
DISTANCE: Less than lOW over
distances of 100+ metres
USES: Lamps, s p eakers,
e l ectro n i c ph otoframes, laptops
MUST HAVE DIRECT LlNE·OF·SIGHT
AND SAFETY CUT-OFF

EFFICIENCY: 70%
DISTANCE: SW with close contact
to charging pad
RESONANT I N DUCTION USES : P h o n es, PDAs

EFF ICIEN CY: 70%

DISTANCE: SOW over SOcm
U S ES : TVs, laptops
DOESN'T REQUIRE DIRECTLlNE·OF·SIGHT

With such promising demonstrations, it
seems likely that wireless power will one day
enter our homes in a big way. A technical
standard, dubbed Qi, is already being
established for the non-resonant magnetic­
induction technique and compatible charging
mats will soon be available. It is early days for
the other techniques, but similar standards
are likely to emerge.
Damage to the person
The technology is likely to meet some
objections along the way, however. For one
thing, you would be forgiven for being a
little worried about zapping relatively high­
power energy beams through the atmos phere.
Take laser transmission, for example.
"High powers concentrated in a narrow laser
beam could cause serious damage to a
person," says Karalis. That shouldn't be a
danger with PowerBeam's products: if the
small camera on the transmitter fails to see
the small light bulb ofthe receiver, it shuts
down the laser within milliseconds. And as a
failsafe, the receiver also sends a message to
the transmitter via radio if it notices an
unexplained interruption in power reception.
Exposure to radio waves and fluctuating
magnetic fields also have their potential
dangers. If they transmit heat to our cells,
they can damage tissue over a long period of
time. "All the technologies pose a potential
risk for thermal interaction with the body, in
the same way that radiation from cell phones
does," says Riidiger Matthes, vice-chairman of
the International Commission on Non-Ionizing
Radiation Protection in OberschleiBheim,
Germany. But, provided the exposure is below
the thresholds put forward in guidelines from
ICNIRP, which companies like WiTricity are
following closely, it should not be a problem.
The fear remains that electromagnetic fields
could damage tissue through some other,
non-thermal mechanism, a concern raised by
many biophysicists about cellphone signals.
Without any available cohort studies to test
exposure over a long period oftime, though,
they have had to rely on lab studies, which
failed to find any clear or reproducible
biological effects. "The matter is still open
to debate," says David de Pomerai at the
University of Nottingham in the UK, who
studies the effect of microwaves on nematode
worms. Ifthe wireless power transmission
methods all fall within the ICNIRP's criteria,
he says that the exposure should be no more
risky than that from cellphones.
Perhaps more pressing, though, are
environmental concerns. With global
warming an ever increasing issue, most
people are looking forways to improve
efficiency and save energy - and therefore
reduce power-station emissions of
greenhouse gases. To some people, wireless
power transmission will seem like a distinctly
profligate and retrograde step.
"The fact that these appliances are only
10 to 60 per cent efficient means that go to
40 per cent of the electricity the householder
is paying for is wasted," says Paula Owen, who
heads the statistics group at the Energy Saving
Trust, based in London. "Consider these
products next to other typical household
a ppliances. Boilers, for example, are now over
go per cent efficient. It seems we are going
back to the days of incandescent bulbs, which
were only 5 per cent efficient at creating light
and are now being phased out."
Taking individual gadgets, the energy losses
might seem small, but scaling up to a truly
wireless home would be a much bigger deal.
The question is, would you be prepared to
throw away your green credentials for wire­
free, minimalist beauty? •
David Robson is a New Scientistfeatures editor

6 February 2010 I NewScientist 1 45

BOOKS & ARTS
Experi m ents i n freedom
The i d ea that l i beral d e m o cracy owes i ts existe nce to scie n ce is worth exp l o ring, says A C. Gray l i n g
The Science of Liberty: Democracy,
reason and the laws of nature by
Tim othy Ferris, HarperCoili ns, $26.99
HISTORIANS date
T I l\IO T H Y
FER R I S the beginning of
T H E S C I E N C E modern times to
O F LUERTY
the period ofthe
late Renaissance,
the Reformation
and the scientific
revolution.
These tectonic shifts in the
western mind resulted in the
18th-century Enlightenment and
the liberal democracies of the
19th and 20th centuries.
This broad-brush picture is
a familiar one, and it is, equally
broadly, right; but interesting
questions remain about the
relationship between the strands
involved. In this lucid and
captivating study, Timothy Ferris
argues that the growth of science
and the growth of liberal
democracy were not merely
contemporaneous, but causally
connected. The growth of science,
he says, caused the growth of
democracy - and science
continues to underwrite the
political freedoms enjoyed by
developed societies today.
His argument is not simply that
the technological applications
of science have promoted wealth­
creation, military prowess and
security in those nations that
have, as a result, become both
dominant and free. This is
undeniably part of the story.
But the more important point
for Ferris is that scientific enquiry
demands the freedom to enquire
and debate, and that liberal
democracy - meaning a pluralistic
political system in which
individual rights, free speech,
privacy and autonomy are
46 1 NewScientist 1 6 February 2010
promoted and defended - is itself
an experimental system requiring
the same conditions offreedom
and openness as science itself.
As he surveys how science
influenced the social and political
developments ofthe countries
where it flourished, Ferris makes
full and (as he acknowledges
himself) potentially tendentious
use of hindsight. But he keeps
the risks in view, and is able to
show how matters developed as
expected given the influence of
scientific styles of thought on
social and political questions.
Inevitably, Ferris also addresses
the conflict between scientific
and non-scientific thought today,
and the social and political
urgencies many feel in light of
the revival of dogma, faith and
non-rational influences.
Ferris's clear and educative
account of these matters makes
for an enjoyable read. More
importantly, there is a lot to
be said for the thesis he offers.
Science could neither have arisen
nor flourished in circumstances
of oppression of thought. Indeed
the churches made strenuous
Benjamin Franklin drawing electricity
from the sky. E n l i g hte nment i n action
efforts - persecuting and even
executing people - in the early
phases of the scientific revolution
in an effort to quell it.
The science-freedom link
is an intimate one, and the
task undertaken by Ferris of
specifying its details and
describing the causal relations
at work is deeply important.
That is not merely a rhetorical
remark: an understanding of the
link could have major utility to
societies eager to develop and
progress, and wishing to know
what conditions would best serve
their aims.
I would suggest to Ferris that
ratherthan taking the rise of
science to be the literal cause
of the growth of political liberty,
they might be regarded as the
joint outcome of an antecedent
cause. I argued this in Towards
The Light (Bloomsbury, 2007):
aspirations to liberty of religious
conscience in the 16th century
rapidly evolved into demands
for liberty of enquiry in all fields,
including science; and once
people had asserted the right
to think for themselves without
conforming to an orthodoxy on
pain of death, they were able to
ask questions both about nature
and sociopolitical arrangements.
On this view, science and
democracy grew together from
a fundamental impulse towards
liberty; they are its joint fruits . •
A.C. G rayl i ng is professor of
philosophy at Bi rkbeck, U niversity
of London, and author of Ideas
That Matter(Weidenfeld & Nicolson,
2009), wh ich will be published in the
US by Basic Books in March
For more reviews and to add your comments, visit www.NewScientist.com/books·art
Rog u esl d ispensa ry
New Yo rl<s poiso n e rs esca ped d etection u ntil
two forensic p i o neers stepped in
The Poisoner's Handbook
huckleberry pies with arsenic
and kindly grannies who
by D eb ora h Blum, Penguin, $25.95
poisoned figs. Incompetent
Reviewed by Paul Collins
medical examiners ensured that
"NICE woman," these murderers all too often got
toxicologist away with their crimes. But Norris
Alexander Gettler and Gettler belonged to a new
commented to generation offorensic scientists
reporters at the who recognised the signs of
trial of Ruth poison - the cherry-red arterial
Snyder, New York's blood of carbon monoxide, the
infamous "Double blue mottled skin of cyanide, and
Indemnity" murderer. In 1927 the green "evil dazzle" thallium
Snyder (pictured) and her lover made under the spectroscope.
killed Snyder's husband with Pick your poison: divided by
alcohol, chloroform, garrote wire dastardly substance, Blum's
and a bash to the skull with an iron Handbook is a fascinating rogues'
sash weight. It was bloody overkill dispensary that also includes
but, as Gettler testified, it was the arsenic, radium and mercury.
chloroform that killed him. Blum fleshes out the toxicology
In Deborah Blum's The and method of detection for
Poisoner's Handbook, we see each with stories from Norris
Gettler and his colleague, chief and Gettler's files. !t was through
medical examiner Charles Norris, their work, for instance, that
wield Bunsen burners and flasks millionaire industrialist Eben
against the "nice" denizens of Myers's skeletal disintegration
jazz-age Manhattan. Here are the was traced to his fondness for the
ladies who spiked cocoa with radium tonic Radithor. They
thallium, cooks who dosed didn't always catch their killers:
one arsenic poisoner Gettler
missed went on to serve her
neighbour eggnog laced with
Rough On Rats powder.
Blum, a Pulitzer prizewinning
reporter and journalism professor
at the University of Wisconsin,
Madison is especially compelling
when she traces how Gettler and
Norris found their most galling
foe in wood alcohol (methanol),
a cheap but dangerous high
during the years of Prohibition.
Norris had split the sternums of
too many party goers to support
enforced temperance: "Prohibition
is a joke," he declared. He was
appalled that the government
backed the addition of methanol
to household products to deter
tippling, a move he labelled " Our
Experiment in Extermination".
For all the seductive horror
of coldly deliberate killing ­
"homicidal poisoning shows us
at our amoral worst," maintains
Blum - many dangers also lay in
plain sight. Gettler and Norris
traced deaths to a baby bottle
washed with Lysol and a tureen
buffed to a shine with arsenic
metal polish. And it remains
sobering that one com plication
the duo faced in carbon monoxide
poisonings was that many victims
already had it in their blood from
smoking. Alas, sometimes the
poisoners we seek are ourselves.
Small is beautiful
March of the Microbes: Sighting the
unseen by John L. lngraham, Harvard
Un iversity Press, $28.95/£21.95
Reviewed by Jo Marchant
WE MAY not be
able to see them
with the naked
eye, but we can
see - and hear,
smell, feel and
touch - the
effects of micro­
organisms all around us. That's
the premise oOohn Ingraham,
who has written this introduction
to bacteria, fungi and other
microscopic life forms as a field
guide for " microbe watchers".
From the mundane (a smelly
fish, a child with earache) to the
exotic (hydrothermal vents),
Ingraham presents the microbes
behind so much of the world
around us. He drives home
the point that without these
overlooked life forms we wouldn't
be here at all.
The bacterium Psychromonas
ingrahamii, current record-holder
for growing at the lowest
temperature, is testament to the
author's academic credentials.
March of the Microbes does feel
at times like a thinly disguised
textbook, but Ingraham's fresh
perspective makes it an engaging
read nonetheless.
Brave new physics
Lake Views: This world and the
universe by Steven Wei nberg, Ha rvard
U n iversity Press, $25.95/£19.95
Reviewed by Dan F al k
NOBEL laureate
Steven Weinberg
has been writing
eloquently on
modern science
ever since The First
Three Min utes was
published in 1977-
But unless you are a regular
reader of The New York Review of
Books, you may have missed some
of his best recent work. This
collection of essays proves once
again that Weinberg is more than
just a top-tier physicist. He is also
one of the few scientists brave
enough - and knowledgeable
enough - to successfully take
on the role of public intellectual.
There is, of course, plenty of
physics here. Weinberg examines
the pros and cons of string theory,
suggests that our universe may be
just one of many, and warns that
even if we can discover nature's
ultimate laws, we will still have
no idea why those laws are true.
He also weighs in on social and
political issues, from terrorism
to the politics of the Middle East.
It's essential reading.
6 February 2010 1 NewScientist 1 47
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Caledon, Ontario - Plant
Biotechnology
International Bio Threat Pioneer H i - B red Production LP
Reduction Expert ON - On ta ri o
Sandia National Laboratories Supervise and evaluate employees'
NM New Mexico performance as part of effectively
American Association
!or (7ancerllesearch
Grants Manager's Position Description
The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) seeks a Grants Manager to
support the development and coordination of Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C) research

The department has projects in
the following areas: biosecurity
and biosafety system analysis
and design; biological threat
characterization; biological
agent risk prioritization; biorisk
management systems;
biosafety and biosecu rity
training; and biological
information control and
management
For more information visit
managing laboratory - Drive
changes to the current process or
platform to improve efficiencies
and reduce costs Assist in
the improvement of laboratory
automation projects, LlMS
system development and
utilization.
For more information visit
NewScientistjobs.com job 10:
200700942
projects to ensure effectiveness in al phases of grant funding. The position reports
to the Director of Scientific Review & Grants Administration and serves as project
management and operational expert in establishing and implementing policies
proce dures in alignment with federal regulations, AACR and SU2C guiding principles.
Key Functions - assist with planning, implementation and evaluation of SU2C AACR
grants programs and initiatives supporting SU2C principles; evaluating and monitoring
business management capability and performance of applic ant organizations and
grantees, and the internal operating procedures associated with business management
aspects of the grants process; participates in oversight and allocation of budget;
allocates resources, determines priorities and new initiatives; maintains & manages
grant portfolio; represents AACR and SU2C in contacts with U.S. and international
scientifc research community.
Essential Skills and Knowledge - strong project management, grant management,

NewScientistjobs.com job 10:
200700053
Postdoctoral Fellow-in
Laboratory of Chromosome
Replication
Van Andel Research I n stitute
M I - M ic h i ga n
A postdoctoral position is available
immed iately to study the reg u lation
of DNA replication in human celis,
Staff Scientist - Associate
Director of Purification,
Bethesda, MD
National Institute of A l l e rg y &.
I nfect i ous Diseases (NIAID),
National Institute of Health
(NIH)
MD - Ma ry l and
The associate director of
purification development directs the
activities of two scientists and three
fnancial knowledge and scientifc knowledge, experience monitoring scientifc
milestones and deliverables, highly collaborative, experience managing relationships
across teams; Excellent written & oral communications skills; competency with data
management tools, poli tically savvy, ability to deal with sensitive information, and
available for 25% travel.
Education & Training - Masters Degree is required. Ph.D. or advanced degree
preferred. 5 years grants management expo
Specialized Knowledge, Competencies and Experiences - knowledge of
science, medicine, drug development, project management and grants administration
management
Apply to: Human Resources, P.o. Box 40138, Philadelphia, PA 19106
e-mail: humanresources @aacr.org, fax: 215-440-1 045

Qualified applicants should have chemists/biochemical engineers in

a recent Ph.D. in the biological
sciences and experience with DNA
replication, chromatin biology, or
genetics,
For more information visit
NewScientistjobs.com job 10:
200699393
Postdoctoral research
opportunities
Mount Sinai School of Medicine
NY - New York
N I H funded postdoctoral pos itions
are available at Mount Sinai School
of Medicine in New York City to
study thyroid cancer biology and
therapeutics, Interested applicants
should be highly motivated, have
a PhD and/orMD degree, a strong
background in cell and molecular
biology or mouse genetics, and
have track record of
publications.
For more information visit
NewScientistjobs.com job 10:
200702063
the downstream purification group
of the Vaccine Production Program
Laboratory (VPPL) in the VRC,
which includes development of
processes to purify recombinant
proteins, virus vaccines, and
virus-like particles that could be
used as clinical vaccine
candidates,
For more information visit
NewScientistjobs,com job 10:
200700777
Staff Scientist - Senior Cell
Culture Scientist, Bethesda,
MD
National Institute of Allergy &.
Infect i ous Diseases (NIAID),
Nati on al Institute of Health
(NIH)
MD Maryland
The cell culture scientist will lead
the activities of up to five cell cu Iture misuse,
personnel, consisting of research
associates and postdoctoral fellows NewScientistjobs.com job 10:
in the cell culture group. Activities
include development of virus
vaccines, recombinant proteins,
and virus like particles (VLPs) that
may be used as clinical vaccine
candidates,
For more information visit
NewScientistjobs.com job 10:
200700778
Project Manager­
Nonproliferation #1214009
U.S, C iv i l i a n Research &.
De ve l o p ment Fo u ndat i on
VA Virginia
CRDF's Nonproliferation Program
is seeking a project manager to
support u.s. government efforts
to promote the safe, secure and
responsible use of biological
materials that are at risk of
accidental release or intentional
For more information visit
200701867
Cell Biologist Systems
Biology - R4/RS
Pfizer US
MA Massach usetts
We are seeking a highly motivated,
team-oriented scientistto join our
Systems Biology Group within the
BBe. The successful candidate for
this position will work with our
systems modelerto understand
there scientific needs and to design
and conduct experiments to answer
scientific questio n s,
For more i nformation visit
NewScientistJobs.com job 10:
200702413
Faculty positions in Skeletal
Muscle Biology and Disease
The Un iversity of Iowa
lA - Iowa
Successful candidates are
expected to establish independent
laboratories focusing on skeletal
muscle biology and disease, We are

48 1 NewScientist 16 February 2010

 www.NewScientistJobs.com

TEMPLE U N IVERS ITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE . . . TEMPLE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE offers
opportunities for faculty in the following basic science disciplines:
offers opportunities for faculty i n the following c l i nical speci a lties: Anesthesiology:
genera l, OB, and regional expertise; Cardiology: general , echocardiography, heart
Bone/carti lage biology Neural plasticity and repa ir
fai lure, e lectrophysiology/arrhythmia management, i nterventional/invasive, structural
intervention, cardiac imaging; Emergency Medicine: academic and c l i nica l ; Family and
Cancer biology Neuroendocrinology
Community Medicine; I nternal Medicine and its subspecialties, including Cardiology, Cardiovascular biology Neuroi m m u nology
Endocrinology, Hepatology, H em< tology, and Rheum<ltology; also a board certified/ Developmental biology Neurovirology
el igible Oncologist or Hematologist interested in Bone Marrow Transplant Program; Drug abuse and add iction Neu ro-oncology
Neurology and its subspecialties of stroke/critic<ll care, epilepsy, and neuromusc u lar Drug combi nation studies Neurodegeneration
disorders; Neurosurgery, including a variety of cerebral , spinal, and peripheral nerve
Gene therapy Neuropharmacology
disorders, as we l l as brain and spinal tumors; Obstetrics/Gynecology: general and
maternal feta l medicine, gynecologic oncology; Ophthalmology: general , retina, Growth regu lation Platelet biology
and glaucoma specialties; pediatrics; and plastics, cornea, optometry, and optical I m m unobiology Signal transduction
sal es/service; Orthopedic Surgery: joint replacement/reconstruction, trauma, spine, Molecular biology Stem cell biology
hand , genera l , foot, and ankle, and sports medicine; Otolaryngology: genera l , head Molecular m icrobiology and Structural bio logy
and neck surgery, neurotol ogy; Pathology: anatomic (surgical , cytology, autopsy, and
pathogenesis Thrombosis and hemostasis
hematopathology), c l i n ic<ll (microbiology, virology, i mmunology, tr<lnsfusion medicine,
c l i nical chem istry, molecular pathology; H LA tissue typing); Pediatrics: genera l ; Molecular pharmacology Vascu lar biology
h o
Physical Medicine and Re abilitati n: m usculoskeletal medicine <l n d i nterventional Musculoskeletal biology Viral oncology
physiatry; Psychiatry: adult i n p<ltient and outpatient eval uation and treatment, c h i l d
a n d adolescent outpatient eval uation a n d treatment, crisis intervention services, and Positions may be ava i l a b l e in any of several basi c sc i e n ce
consultation and l i<lison services; Radiology: general and women's imaging; Surgery: departme nts a n d/or research progra ms a n d i nstitutes.
v<lscular/endovascular, general, cardiothoracic surgery, breast su rgery, pl<lstic surgery,
oncology, trauma and critical care, colon/recta l, hepabi l iary, b<lriatrics, transplant; The School of M e d i c i n e consists of 7 b as i c science a nd 1 8
Section Chief, Vascular Surgery; Urology: urologic oncology, kidney, prostate and bl<ldder c l i n ical depa rtments, a n d a variety o f m u l t i d i sci p l i nary research
cancer, sexu<ll dysfunction of men and women, reconstructive urology, stone d i se<lse, programs and institutes. There are a pp rox i m atel y 738 med ical
erectile dysfunction, stress u r inary i ncontinence, infertility, neurologic problems of the stu d e nts , 125 gra d u ate students, 450 f u l l t i m e faculty mem bers
GU tract, BPH, chronic pelvic pai n , interstiti<ll cystitis, infections; Shriners Hospitals a n d , 1 200 a dj u n ct facu lty members. It is aff i l iated with Tem p l e
Pediatric Research Center (Center for Neural Repair and Rehabil itation): spinal cord U n i ve rs i ty Health System, a major healthcare prov ider i n t h e
inj ury, neuromuscul<lr inj ury, cerebral palsy, and brain inju ry.
Delaware Va I ley.
The School of Medicine consists of 7 basic science and 18 cli nical departments, and
a variety of multidisciplinary research programs and institutes. There are approximately To subm it c u r ri c u l u m vitae o r to requ est further i nformation about
738 medical students, 125 gr<ldu<lte students, 450 full time f<lculty members and a fac u lty position, p l e a se co ntact the Senior Associate Dean for
1200 adjunct faculty members. It is affi liated with Temple U n i versity He<llth System . Facu lty Affairs, Tem p le U niversity School of Medicine, 3500
To submit curricu l u m vit<le o r t o request further inform<ltion <lbout a faculty position, North Broad Street, Room l l l 1 K, Ph i lad e l ph i a , PA 1 9 1 40.
ple<lse cont<lct the Chairperson, Department of (Specialty), Temple University School
Further i n for m a t i o n about Temple U n iversi ty School of
of Medicine, 340 1 North Broad Street, Philadelphia, PA 19140.
Medicine is ava i l a b l e at hHp:/Iwww. medschool .temple.edu/
Further i nform<ltion about Tem p l e U niversity School of Medicine is ava i lable at
http://w. medschool.temple.edu/
School of Medicine
School of Medicine TEMPLE UNIVERSITY®
TEMPLE UNIVERSI�
Tem p l e U n iversity is an aff i r m at ive acti on/eq ual opportunity employer
Temple U niversity is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer and strongly encourages
appl ications from women and m i norities. and strongly encourages app l i cations from women a nd m i norities.

particularly interested in individuals
who would complement existing
strengths in the Center,
For more information visit
NewScientistjobs.com job 1 0:
200703538
Grants Manager
The American Association for
Cancer Research (AACR)
DC D i stri ct of Co l u m b i a
The position reports to the Director
of Scientific Review &: Grants
Administration and serves as project
management and operational
expert in establishing and
implementing policies-procedures in
alig nment with federal regulations,
MCR and SU2C guiding principles,
For more information visit
NewScientistjobs.com job 1 0:
200703499
Signal Transduction
Research Department of
Surgery
Michigan State Un iversity,
De partm ent of Su rg e ry
MI - M i c h ig a n
Applicants are sought with
demonstrated expertise in cellular
signal transduction, with preference
toward those with a background in
mechanotransduction and physical
fo rce effects or intestinal e pit h e l ial
biology.
For more i nformation visit
NewScientistj obs.com job 10:
200703522
Faculty Position in
Immunology and Imaging
U n ivers i ty of New Mexico (UNM)
Department of Pathology
NM - New Mexico
The recruit will develop a dynamic
externally funded research
program that combines studies in
immunology, including immune
cell development, immune cell
responses to allergens and
pathogens, immune surveillance
against cancer, or leukemia,
with the development and/or
application of innovative imaging
techniques.
For more information visit
NewScientistj obs.com job 10:
200705210
Computational Biologist
(Ph.D)
Novartis Institutes for
BioMedical Research (US)
MA - Massachusetts
As a member of the Quantitative
Biology research team in the
Department of Developmental and
Molecular Pathways, you will be
working in a dynamic, agile 'dry-lab'
research environment committed to
the discovery of novel drug
targets,
For more information visit
NewScientistjobs.com job 10:
200704283
PhD Microbiologist ­
Infectious Diseases
Novartis Institutes for
BioMedical Research (US)
MA Massachusetts
We are seeking a dynamic
microbiologistto work in the
Infectious Disease department
that will characterize novel
antibacterial agents. The
individual will be responsible for
testing the activity of antimicrobial
compounds against bacterial
pathogens.
For more information visit
NewScientistjobs,comjob 10:
200704347
Postdoctoral Fellow
N ovartis Institutes for
BioMedical Research (US)
MA Massachusetts
This new microfluidic-based
technology will be applied to high
throughput screening for nucleic
acids, proteins and whole cells, all
of which play a vital role in drug
discovery. This will be a collaborative
effort between Novartis and Prof.
Doyle's Lab at MIT
For more information visit
NewScientistjobs.com job 10:
200704373
Protein Production Scientist
Novartis Institutes for
BioMedical Research (US)
MA - Mass ac husetts
The Novartis Institutes of
Biomedical Research (NIBR) is
recruiting an individual to head a lab
in mid-scale protein expression to

6 February 2010 I NewScientist 1 49

www.NewScientistJobs.com
support our Biologics research. We
are seeking a highly motivated and
experienced scientist with a
strong background in protein
expression in mammalian cells,
using both transient and stable
systems.
For more information visit
NewScientistjobs.com job 10:
200704398
Process Engineer
Pfizer US
MA Massachusetts
The candidate will work closely with
development scientists/engineers,
technical operations personnel, and
manufacturing to ensure proper
transition of processes from bench
top to manufacturing scale.
For more information visit
NewScientistjobs.com job 10:
200705863
Postdoctoral Research
Fellow
Genentech
CA Ca l ifo r n i a
A Postdoctoral Research Fellow
50 I NewScientist 1 6 February 2010
position is available in Protein
Analytical Chemistry department
to study conformational and
biophysical properties of proteins by
using nuclear magnetic resonance
(NMR) techniques.
For more information visit
NewScientistjobs.com job 10:
200706166
Scientist - Neuroscience
Genentech
CA - Ca liforn ia
We are seeking a highly motivated
neuroscientist to join our efforts
in developing therapeutics
for neurodegenerative and
neuropsychiatric indications.
This individual will lead a small
team that will use molecular,
genetic, imaging and/or
biochemical techniques to
investigate the molecular
mechanisms of nervous system
disorders and to participate in
drug discovery
projects.
For more information visit
NewScientistjobs.com job 10:
200706228
CHEMISTRY
Analytical Chemist
Gevo Inc.
CO Colorado
Bachelor or Masters degree in
Analytical Chemistry. Additional
expertise in General Chemistry or
Biochemistry would be considered
a plus. 3 - 5 years of professional
work experiencewith the following
items: Reagent & sample prep. Data
processing/excel 0 Chromatography
(LC or Gq. Method Development (LC
or Gq 0 Instrument repair (LC or GC)
For more information visit
NewScientistjobs.com job 10:
200700943
Staff Scientist - Director of
Analytical Development
National I n stitute of Allergy &
I nfecti o us Diseases (N IAI D),
National Institute of Health
(NIH)
MD - Maryland
The incumbent will direct the
analytical development group of
the Vaccine Production Program
Laboratory (VPPL) in the VRC, which
includes the development of
assays for release and
characterization of recombinant
proteins, plasmid DNA, virus vectors,
and virus like particles that could be
used as clinical vaccine
candidates.
For more i nformation visit
NewScientistjobs.com job 10:
200700760
810 CHEMISTRY Sabbatical
Replacement Faculty
Position
Reed College
OR Oregon
The Chemistry Department
invites applications for a two year
visiting position within the fields
of Biochemistry and/or Analytical
Chemistryforthe 2010 2012
academicyears. The successful
candidate will be capable of
offering courses selected from the
following possibilities: structural
and metabolic biochemistry,
biochemistry laboratory, analytical
chemistry, and general
chemistry.
 www.NewScientistJobs.com

I nternships with the

AS I A N U N I V E RS I TY The Microsoft® Med ical Media La boratory (M3L)

FOR WOM E N Was h i ngton, District of Columbia

Asian U n ivers it y for Women seeks Vice Chancellor & CEO

The Asian University for Women, a start-up initiative in Chittagong,
M icrosoft's Health Solutions Group, in conj u n ction with
Bangladesh with the mission of preparing women of high ability and M icrosoft® Research, is pleased to offer three to six month
potential to meet society's cha l lenges and effect positive change locally and internships for individuals holding o r pursuing graduate level
throughout the world, is renewing its search for a Vice Chancel lor. It seeks degrees.
an outstanding leader with proven entrepreneurial and organizational skills
The M3L ex p l o re s the use of i nformation technology in
in academia, business, government, or non-governmental orga nizations to
healthca re, and i n particular, t h e o p p o rtunities afforded by
lead the University as its Vice Chancellor and CEO. The incumbent will lead
surface computing, m u lti-media d i s p l a ys, m ob i l e computing,
a growi ng and sophisticated international team to create vi b rant and healthy
un ified communications, human-computer interaction a nd
academic and residential programs for students, oversee a significant facilities
deve lopment program, design and implement systems and processes for stable
decision support.
governance and operations of the U n iversity, and lead an on-going global Interns will h av e the opportunity to design and build novel
fundraising effort. The position calls for a passionate and socia lly empathic solutions in one of these areas and examine the im pact of this
leader who has exemplary organizational and commun ication skills and a
technology in a real-world healthca re environment.
deep understanding of the needs of an academic community and intellectual
commitment to free inquiry. Experience i n building a start- u p i n itiative into
maturity would be greatly va lued. A familia rity with deve loping Asia and an
u nderstanding of the unique chal lenges of establishing a tertiary academic Stipend and expenses paid.
i nstitution in such a setting will bolster the incumbent's effectiveness. Contact: Hank Rappaport, MD I Email: M3Ljnt@microsoft.com

The Vice Chancellor w i l l have a salary of US $150,000 to $180,000 which More info r m ation, including an on-line application, can be found at
may be tax-exem pted in Bangladesh. In addition, free housing and a http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/j obs/intern/medicalmedia.aspx
comprehensive package of benefits are offered.

Please direct nomi nations/a pplications for this position to M r. David Pattillo,
VC Search Coord inator at david.pattillo@asian-university.org. Additional
i nformation on the Un iversity is ava i lable at www.asian-university.org. or
by email request.
www.asian-university.org

For more information visit
NewScientistjobs.com job 1 0:
200703528
Formulation Chemist (2
Positions)
of metal and othersemiconductor
nanoparticles and their application
in imagin g and other novel film
applications,
For more i nformation visit
NewScientistjobs.com job 10:
200702294
year visiting position within the
field of Organic Chemistry at the
Assistant Professor level forthe
2010 2012 academic year, The
successful candidate will be capable
of offering courses in introductory
and advanced organic chemistry
Genentech
CA California
There is an Associate Director
position available in Protein
Analytical Chemistry. a part of
Genentech's Quali ty B ioanalyt ical
Development organization to ,

Carestream Health ta rg eted at chemistry and allied an accomplished individual with

MN - Minnesota
We are seeking to hire two
(2) Formulation Chemists to
join our R&D facility located in
the Minneapolis/St. Paul area,
Relocation assistance is available to
q ualified candidates, The successful
applicant will play a key role in
research and development of new
product formulations for imagin g
and novel film applications,
For more information visit
NewScientistjobs.comjob 1 0:
200702293
Nanomaterial Scientist
Carestream Health
MN Minnesota
The successful a pp licant will play a
key role in providing chemical and
nanomaterial science expertise and
participate in a newly established
R&D project involving development
Polymer Scientist
Carestream Health
MN - Min nesota
The successful applicant will play
a key role in providin g polymer
science, material science and
engineering expertise and
participate in a newly establi shed
R &D project involving development
of advanced material for imaging
and other novel film applications
For more i nformation visit
NewScientistj obs.com job 10:
200702292
ORGANIC CHEMISTRY
Sabbatical Replacement
Faculty Position
Reed College
OR Oregon
The Chemistry Department
invites ap p lications for a two-
maj ors,
For more information visit
NewScientistjobs.com job 1 0:
200703529
Scientific Associate II
-Analytical Chemistry
Novartis Institutes for
BioMedical Research (US)
M A Massachusetts
- The Advanced Drug Delivery group
, Determine effects of
pharmaceutical drugs desi g n ed to
treat heart disease and cancer on
tissues and vital processes of living
organisms. Develop and test new
drugs and medications intended for
commercial distribution,
For more information visit
NewScientistjobs.com job 1 0:
200704776
ASSOC Director, Quality
experience in method validation for
commercial filings,
For more information visit
NewScientistj o bs.com j o b 1 0:
200706164
Research Scientist
Pfi zer US
MA Massachusetts
is seeking a q ualified technical
scientist to provide technica I
expertise in development and
evaluation of novel biomolecular
conjugates, and their application to
new candidate drug products,
For more information visit
NewScientistJobs.com job 10:
200705851
Sr Scientist (Chemistry)
Genentech

6 February 2010 I NewScientist 1 51

www.NewScientistJobs.com

CA - California
The successful candidate will
accomplish our mission through
innovation and teamwork,
collaboration with strategic
partners, creative problem solving
and use of state-of-the-art
technology.
For more information visit
NewScientistjobs.com job 10:
200706177
Clinical Scientist Specialist
Genentech
CA - Ca l ifo rn ia
The Clinical Scientist Specialist is
accountable, with support and
supervision from their manager
or Medical Director, for day-to-day
Clinical Science deliverables of
clinical trials and programs, including
all Phases (I IV) of clinical trials
through o ut their implementation
and limited filing activities.
collaborates in the preparation and
review of clini cal assessments.
For more information visit
NewScientistjobs.com job 10:
200706286
ENGINEERING
Head of Engineering
N ovarti s Institutes for
BioMedical Research (US)
MA - Massachusetts
be responsible for development and
i m plementation of project team and
project management train i ng within
NIBR targeted project management
of discovery projects, and will assist
in build i ng a project management
competency framework to be used
by the organization.
For more information visit
NewScientistjobs.com job 10:
200704276

CLIN ICAL
Zebrafish Research
Associate (BS/MS)
Nova rti s Institutes for
BioMed ical Research (US)
MA - Massachusetts
The cand i date will participate
in the discovery and genetic
validation of candidate targets
affecting pathways involved in
tissue regeneration . The preferred
candidate will have strong skills
in molecular and developmental
biology, i ncluding in vivo and geneti c
manipulations.
For more information visit
NewScientistjobs.com job 10:
200704437
Assistant Medical Director
(MD)
Gene n tech
CA - Cal iforn i a
Stays abreast of internal and
external developments (scientific,
clinical, commercial, competitive,
legal, regulatory and like) as such
developments may implicate or
otherwise i m pact the product
pi peline and portfolio within the
assigned therapeutic area(s).
For more information visit
NewScientistjobs.com job 10:
200706281
Associate Scientist/Scientist
- In Vivo Pharmacology
AstraZeneca US
MA - Massachusetts
Seeking a highly motivated,
experienced individual for the
Bioscience/ Pharmacology Group,
within Oncology. Position req uires
conducting pharmacological
techniques for d rug discovery
research.
For more information visit
NewScientistjobs.com job 10:
200705780
For more information visit
NewScientistjobs.com job 10:
200706244
Senior Director Clinical
Research· Neuroscience
Therapy Area
AstraZeneca US
DE - Delaware
The role of Senior Director Clin ical
Research provides med i cal input
into the development and/or
commercialization of AZ compounds
by using detailed disease area
knowledge to integrate knowledge
into design of drug registration
programs and diligence reviews of
licensing candidates .
For more information visit
NewScientistjobs.com job 10:
200705761
Senior Research Associate­
Oncology Biomarkers
Genentech
CA - Ca l ifornia
We are seeking a highly motivated,
interactive and flexible Senior
Research Associate to perform
translational research related to
the identification and development
of molecular biomarkers of lung
cancerthatcan be utilized to
pred ict therapeutic outcome and/or
support early clinical development.
For more information visit
NewScientistjobs.com job 10:
200706246
Sr Statistical Scientist
Genentech
CA - Ca l ifo rn ia
Provides statistics leadership
for Med i cal Affairs p rojects and
is directly responsible for the
statistical integrity, adeq uacy, and
accuracy ofthe clinical studies
in the project. As part of a clinical
development or assessmentteam,
Manage all activities for systems
engineering and analysis in the
research, engineering, design,
manufacturing and testi n g of
new molecular diagnostic tests in
the Molecular Diagnostics Unit of
Novartis Pharma.
For more information visit
NewScientistjobs.com job 10:
200704289
MATHS & IT
Statistical Associate
Alberta Cancer Board
AB Alberta
Our team of Research Scientists
is engaged in cutting edge
population-based cancer research
including etiology, molecular
epidemiology, cancer sc reening
health services and
biostatistics.
For more information visit
NewScientistjobs.com job 10:
200691129
Pharmaceutical Sales
Specialist - CNS
AstraZeneca US
Knowledge of medical eq uipment
territory management di rect
and in-direct sales processes.
Possess excellent written and
verbal communications skills, and
presentation skills. Problem solving
skills
For more information visit
NewScientistjobs.com job 10:
200704744
SALES
Associate Director of
Research Management,
Program Office
N ovartis I nstitutes for
BioMed ical Research (US)
MA - Massach usetts
The Associate Di rector of Research
Management Program Office will
, 200705747
Contracting Director ·
Managed Markets
AstraZeneca U S
DE - Delaware
This individual is the access poi nt
for Account Directors on contract
related issues. Responsibil ities also
include supporting the Account
Di rector throughout the contract
negotiation process via financial
models and negotiating expertise
and provide feedback to the Brand
Managed Markets Team.
For more information visit
NewScientistjobs.com job 10:
200705741
Exec Pharmaceutical Sales
, Specialist · MCl
AstraZenec a U S
C A - Ca l ifo rn i a
Function independently with a
high degree of sales proficiency.
Develop superior product and
disease state knowledge and
effectively educate and engage
healthcare professi onals in dialogue
about clinical evidence, approved
indications, and product efficacy/
safety profiles to support on-label
prescribing for appropri ate pati ents.
For more i nformation visit
NewScientistjobs.com job 10:
200705765
Regional Sales Specialist
AstraZeneca U S
N Y N ew York
As a Regional Sales Specialist, you
will be hired into any ofthefollowing
u.s. regions: Central US, Great Lakes,
Mid Atlantic, Northeast, Southeast
and West. lnitiaI 6 7 week training
has a three phased focus (disease
state, product and professional
selling training)
For more information visit
NewScientistjobs.com job 10:

52 1 NewScientist 1 6 February 2010

 www.NewScientistJobs.com

I n n ovat i o n at work .
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orga n i za t i o n of N ova rt i s , comm itted to d i scove r i n g i n n ovative m ed i c i nes
w e a re

to c u re d i sease a nd i m p rove h u man hea lth . Th i s i s to day's fro n t i e r of sc i ence.

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N I B R has sit es i n C a m br idge, M a s sa c h u s etts (headquarters); Emeryv i l i e ,

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6 February 2010 1 NewScientist 1 53

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54 1 NewScientist 1 6 February 2010

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6 February 2010 I NewScientist 1 55

FEEDBACK
OUR colleague Jim Giles
subscribes to Google Voice,
the Google service which,
among other things, transcribes
incoming telephone messages
and sends them to you as an
email. Jim forwards on to
Feedback a transcript of a call
from the owners of the apartment
he rents in London. The message
was to enquire about some work
being carried out there. It is,
he suggests, evidence that
computerised dictation has not
reached maximum verisimilitude
quite yet.
"Good Morning to you on
Michael for French forces area so
will you go out. Workman in your
flight 046 44 life. Pace, Elco we
must install a new phone working.
I'm coming to tell the cats. I could
please celebrate the contract. It's
not working. M A D late. Thank
you. If you can leave me. Another
[phone number]. Thank you."
As you can imagine, Jim was
particularly pleased that the cats
were being kept in the loop.
The sack of orga n ic potatoes that Richard
J e n n i ngs bought bea rs a stark message ­
"Warn i n g : potatoes - hand l e with ca re", Do
they, he wonders, kn ow somethi n g we don't?
56 1 NewScientist 1 6 February 2010
IN A report on packaging overkill, we
noted recently that Derek Woodroffe
received a tiny integrated circu it in a
large padded envelope that gave a
ratio of product volume to packag ing
vol u me of 1:11,947. "Can anyone
beat that?" we asked (16 january).
john Purser thi n ks he can, and
by a factor of four. Mail-order firm
screwfix Direct sent him two
screwdriver bits that they had
omitted from a previous order. They
were about 6 millimetres in diameter
by 15 m i l l imetres long. A nifty
calculation involving pi gave john a n
estimated volume for t h e two of
them of 0.B5 cubic centimetres. They
arrived in a cardboard box about 50 x
50x 15 centimetres, givi ng a volume
of 37,500 cubic centi metres and a
ratio of goods volume to packaging
vol u me of about 1:44,000.
So john beats Derek. But wait.
Enter Maurice Childs. Dell sent him
a single stick-on barcode label
measuring about 10 x 25 x 0.05
millimetres, or 12.5 cubic m i llimetres.
It was delivered in a box measuring
about 350 x 350 x 25 millimetres, or
For more feedback, visit www.NewScientist.com/feedback
3,062,500 cubic m i llimetres. That's a
ratio of 1:245,000. Maurice's figures
are from memory, but if they're
close - and we believe Maurice when
he says they are - then he clearly
beats both john and Derek.
So that settles it. Or does it? Enter
Geoff Robinson. The nicely wra pped
box he received at Christmas was
"not particularly large but
unfortunately, and presumably
accidentally, it was empty". That,
Geoff reckons, yields a goods-to·
packaging ratio of infi nity.
"Difficult to beat," he points out,
"unless a larger empty box means
a larger infinity."
Yes. Well. Perhaps it's time to
stop this thread.
HOW nice to be an adperson,
dreaming up wonderful worlds
where the boring constraints of
scientific precision can be
gleefully ignored.
Despite repeated raps over the
knuckles, telecoms companies
still advertise broadband speeds
of "up to" however many
megabits-per-second the person
writing the advert cares to pluck
from the sky. So the world has had
IV
to learn that "up to 8 Mbls" means
nothing more than "anything
above a couple of kilo bits per
second and guaranteed never
to exceed 8 Mbl s".
Meanwhile, Korean company
Samsung was recently taken to
task by the UK's Advertising
Standards Authority for
describing TV sets as LED (light
emitting diode) TVs, when in
fact they are LCD (liqUid crystal
display) TVs that are backlit by
LEOs instead of the normal
fluorescent lamps. But we are still
seeing publicity for LED TVs and
LED monitors. Says Samsung:
"Samsung will continue to use
the term LED as we believe it will
continue to be a commonly used
industry term."
So the world will now have to
learn that LED TVs do not have
screens made from LEOs.
As for the new generation of
LED torches, these do indeed use
white-light-emitting diodes
instead offilament bulbs. But
Duracell's advertising people
seem to have been taking lessons
from the broadband folk. The
latest LED torch from Duracell
boasts "TrueBeam Optics" and
"captures up to 100 per cent of
light". So could that mean
anything above a mere couple of
per cent efficiency? Perhaps
Duracell could tell us.
FINALLY, one of the Christmas
presents Patrick Fox-Roberts
received was a Mensa calendar with
a daily brain-teaser. Mensa, as
readers will know, is an organisation
for very brainy people - but is the
Mensa brain-teaser compiled by
people who are also very brainy?
Each morning since receiving the
calendar Patrick has dutifully solved
the day's puzzle as his "daily workout
forthe brain" - until the Friday
morning last month when he found
hi mself utterly stumped by the
question "Rearrange the letters
'RUSTLED LIKE TARZAN' to give three
am phibians".
Flicking forward to the sunday
page, which gave the answer, he saw
what the problem was. The answer
given forthe Friday question was
''Turtle, lizard a nd snake" - but most
people, brainy or otherwise, know
that these are reptiles, not
am phibians.
You can send stories to Feedback by
email at feedback@newscientist.com.
Please include your home address,
Th is week's a nd past Feed backs can
be seen on our website,

TH E LAST WORD
Bi g and sca r y
While in (osta Rica we were v isited
by this beast (see photo). It was
about the size of a cigarette packet
could fly (but not very well), and
dogs seemed nervous of it. We
haven't managed to identify it
and neither could locals or tour
g u ides. We're not even sure what
sort of insect it is. (an any of your
readers help?
• The insect in the picture is
a male dobsonfly, which is in
the order Megaloptera and the
genus Corydalus. However, a
species identification is not
possible without the full insect
being visible.
Dobsonfly larvae inhabit
fresh running watercourses
before crawling out and hatching
into the adult shown. The genus
Corydalus attracts attention
throughout both north and
south America as a result of
its size - its wingspan can reach
16 centimetres. The males possess
Questions and answers should be concise,
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Last wo rd s past a nd present plus q uestio ns, at
certainly a species of Corydal us
and its large jaws indicate that
it is a male.
Males use their jaws in mating
displays and in threat postures
directed at rival males, as well as
to grasp females during mating.
They have little leverage, though,
so are not as fearsome as they
may seem to the human observer.
In contrast, the female's short,
pincer-like jaws can inflict a
painful nip.
Dobsonflies spend most of their
lives as aquatic larvae, hiding
under stones and pouncing out
very large mandibles, as shown in at prey. Some fishermen, who use
the photograph, which can be up North American species as bait,
to 3 centimetres long. They are too call the larvae hellgrammites.
long to be a threat to humans, The larger species can take several
though, as the leverage is too poor years to mature. When mature,
to puncture the skin. the insect can eject a foul­
Dobsonflies are nocturnal but, smelling, and no doubt foul­
like other insects, are attracted to tasting, secretion from the anus as
lights, which is probably what a deterrent to predators. The adults
attracted this specimen to you. are short-lived and do not feed.
The dogs were most likely
bothered by the sight of a large "While male dobsonflies
insect fluttering around them. have mandibles that are
If you had asked a fisherman to 3 centimetres long, they
help identify the insect you may pose no threat to humans"
have had more luck. They tend to
have an in-depth knowledge of The larger species of dobsonfly
local insects as they make similar­ can have a body length of 12.5
looking fly hooks to help catch fish. centimetres, with males having
Peter Scott jaws up to 2.5 centimetres long.
School ofLife Sciences There are 30 species of Corydalus,
University ofSussex found mainly in Central and
Brighton, East Sussex, UK South America. Three occur in
North America, the most common
• The insect is a dobsonfly being Corydalus cornuta.
and part of the Megaloptera Chris O'Toole
order, which also includes the Hope Entomological Collections,
alderflies and fish flies. The Oxford University Museum of
individual shown is almost Natural History, UK
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Thisw e ek'squ esti ons
MEAN GREENS
Of all the vegetables I buy, whole
iceberg lettuces have the greatest
longeVity. They are edible up to
three weeks after their " best
before" date. Other vegetables
succumb sooner. Why does it
last so long compared with, say,
tomatoes, broccoli or radishes?
Finn de Boer
Rotterdam, the Netherlands
TIMELY QUESTION
I look after a pendulum clock
at the University of Cambridge
which I hope will achieve an
accuracy of less than 1 second of
error per year (ww.trin.cam.ac.
uk/clock). It has a temperature­
compensated pendulum, but is
sensitive to air pressure variation.
If the mean global temperature
was to rise by, say, 4 °C, would
there be any change to mean air
pressure at sea level? Put simply,
would global warming cause the
clock to speed up or slow down?
Hugh Hunt
Keeper ofthe Clock, Trinity College,
University ofCambridge, UK
HOT TOP I C
One suggestion to combat climate
change is that we should become
vegetarians as livestock is more
environmentally damaging than
growing crops. However, if we
stopped eating meat, livestock
would still live, so is the suggestion
correct? Or are we expected to cull
any remaining pigs and cows?
Ella Gribben
London, UK