38 Topics For IELTS Reading BBC NEWS

If only body language revealed deception Credit: Getty Images Clearly, a new method is needed.. “Even the people who weren’t honest had difficulty pretending to be cooperative [after thi

CONTENTS

Topic 1 Improve your memory in 40 seconds 1

Topic 2 Is another human living inside you? 2

Topic 3 The best (and worst) ways to spot a liar 4

Topic 4 How to learn 30 languages 8

Topic 5 The mystery of the female orgasm 13

Topic 6 The suprising downsides of being clever 19

Topic 7 Why do babies laugh out loud 23

Topic 8 Why do we intiutively believe we have free will? 25

Topic 9 I can predict the weather with my nose 27

Topic 11 The geniuses who invented prothetic limbs 33

Topic 12 If alien life exists on exoplanets, how would we know? 36

Topic 13 To find aliens, we need to build a giant space parasol 37

Topic 14 What is it like to have never felt an emotion? 41

Topic 15 The submarines that revealed a mysterious world 45

Topic 16 The air that makes you fat 48

Topic 17 The future of medicine is testing our body fluids at home 51

Topic 18 Dose it pay to be kind to strangers 54

Topic 19 How much would you payt to live for an extra year 58

Topic 20 The secret codes you’re not meant to know 61

Topic 21 Are any foods safe to eat anymore? Here’s the truth 64

Topic 22 Is beer better (or worse) for you than wine? 68

Topic 23 Does mixing alcoholic drinks cause hangover? 71

Topic 24 Does coffee really sober you up when drunk 73

Topic 25 How to live forever 74

Topic 26 The real reason germs spread in the winter 77

Topic 27 Why do we laugh inappropriately? 80

Topic 28 One of science’s most baffling question? Why we yawn 84

Topic 29 How muc would you pay to live for an extra year? 87

Topic 30 The nasa team keeping tabs on intergalatic death rays 90

Topic 31 The private investigator who spies using drones 92

Topic 32 Why do women live longer than men? 95

Topic 33 Why the US hides 700 million barrels of oil underground 98

Topic 34 How do you dismantle a nuclear submarine? 102

Topic 35 The secret of the desert aircraft “boneyards” 106

Topic 36 The dystopian lake filled by the world’s tech lust 110

Topic 37 Have you ever felt “Solastalgia”? 113

Topic 38 Wernher von Braun’s Bold plan for space exploration 115

Topic 1 Improve your memory in 40 seconds

Ever had the feeling your past is slipping away? There’s a simple trick that should

reinforce your recollections

By David Robson

11 November 2015

Have you ever seen or heard something amazing – a scene in a film, a joke or a song – only

to forget it later on? Instead of the crystal clear images you wanted to recall, you’re instead

left with scraps of images and mangled sentences, or more frustratingly still, nothing at all

Even monumental events, like meeting a film star, can sometimes fade surprisingly quickly

There may be a disarmingly simple way to cement those memories, however According to

research by Chris Bird at the University of Sussex, all it requires is a few seconds of your

time and a bit of imagination

Bird recently asked some students to lie in a brain scanner and view a series of short clips

from YouTube (involving, for example, neighbours playing practical jokes on each other)

Straight after some of the clips, they were given 40 seconds to replay the scene in their

minds and describe it to themselves For the others, they just moved onto a new video

By simply describing the event to themselves, they were able to remember twice as many

details a week or two later

It turned out that simply describing the event to themselves massively improved their

chances of remembering it accurately a week or so later: on average, they were able to

remember twice as many details Want to prove it for yourself? Take a look at the short video

below to test this simple principle of memory improvement, and you will see how powerful it

can be

Bird also found that his brain scans appeared to reflect the strength of the memory: when the

activity during their descriptions closely mirrored the activation as they watched the video

itself, the students seemed to have built particularly strong foundations for later recall

That may, perhaps, be a sign of just how much effort and detail they were imagining as they

described the scene It could also be that it allowed the students to peg the events to other

memories; one student compared a character in the clips to James Bond, for instance –

instantly making him more memorable

In other words, if you want to make sure something sticks in your mind, just take a minute or

so to describe it to yourself, consciously and deliberately picking the most vivid details

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Bird can see how it might be particularly important in the courtroom “The findings have

implications for any situation where accurate recall of an event is critical, such as witnessing

an accident or crime,” he says “Memory for the event will be significantly improved if the

witness rehearses the sequence of events as soon as possible afterwards.” But it could be

equally helpful for anyone hoping to cling to something worth remembering

Interested to learn more ways to boost your memory? Here are BBC Future's guides on

"How to learn like a memory champion" and "How to learn 30 languages"

Topic 2 Is another human living inside you?

You may think your body and mind are your own In fact, you are a fusion of many

organisms - including, potentially, another person Words by David Robson,

photography by Ariko Inaoka

By David Robson

18 September 2015

Once upon a time, your origins were easy to understand Your dad met your mum, they had

some fun, and from a tiny fertilised egg you emerged kicking and screaming into the world

You are half your mum, half your dad – and 100% yourself

Except, that simple tale has now become a lot more complicated Besides your genes from

parents, you are a mosaic of viruses, bacteria – and potentially, other humans Indeed, if you

are a twin, you are particularly likely to be carrying bits of your sibling within your body and

brain Stranger still, they may be influencing how you act

“A very large number of different human and non-human individuals are struggling inside us

for control “

“Humans are not unitary individuals but superorganisms,” says Peter Kramer at the

University of Padua “A very large number of different human and non-human individuals are

all incessantly struggling inside us for control.” Together with Paola Bressan, he recently

wrote a paper in the journal Perspectives in Psychological Science, calling for psychologists

and psychiatrists to appreciate the ways this may influence our behaviour

That may sound alarming, but it has long been known that our bodies are really a mishmash

of many different organisms Microbes in your gut can produce neurotransmitters that alter

your mood; some scientists have even proposed that the microbes may sway your appetite,

so that you crave their favourite food An infection of a parasite called Toxoplasma gondii,

meanwhile, might just lead you to your death In nature, the microbe warps rats’ brains so

that they are attracted to cats, which will then offer a cosy home for it to reproduce But

humans can be infected and subjected to the same kind of mind control too: the microbe

seems to make someone risky, and increases the chance they will suffer from schizophrenia

or suicidal depression Currently, around a third of British meat carries this parasite, for

instance – despite the fact an infection could contribute to these mental illnesses “We should

stop this,” says Kramer

Infiltrating siblings

In this light, it becomes clear that our actions are not entirely our own It’s enough to make

you question your sense of identity, but the idea of infiltration becomes even more eerie

when you realise that your brain has not just been invaded by tiny microbes – but also by

other human beings

Even non-conjoined twins could be sharing organs without realising it

The most visible example might be a case of conjoined twins sharing a brain, says Kramer,

but even regular twins could have shared organs without realising it During early

development, cells can be passed between twins or triplets Once considered a rare

occurrence, we now know it is surprisingly common Around 8% of non-identical twins and

21% of triplets, for example, have not one, but two blood groups: one produced by their own

cells, and one produced by “alien” cells absorbed from their twin They are, in other words, a

chimera – a fusion of two bodies – and it may occur in many organs, including the brain

Developing together in the womb, twins may swap cells, making them even closer than we'd

previously realised (Credit: Ariko Inaoka)

Brothers from another mother

Women accidentally carrying a "twin's" child

Lydia Fairchild’s paternity test was meant to be straightforward, proving to the courts that her

two sons’ father was the person she said he was When the test came back, however,

Fairchild herself came up as a blank: there was no trace of her DNA in her own children

The courts threatened to convict her of illegal surrogacy – they assumed it was a scam to

gain benefits Luckily, at around the same time, a scientific paper reported a similar case in

which a woman was apparently not the biological mother of two of her three children The

reason was that she was a chimera: a case in which two twins had merged into one body

early in development Being the product of two different cell lines, some of her eggs carried a

genome that was different from the rest of the body

Needless to say, the discovery has caused Fairchild to question her own identity “Telling my

sons about this was the hardest part because I felt that part of me hadn't passed on to them,”

she told the website Jezebel “I thought, ‘Oh, I wonder if they'll really feel that I'm not quite

their real mother somehow because the genes that I should've given to them, I didn't give to

them.’”

A chimera brain could have serious consequences For instance, we know that the

arrangement of different brain regions can be crucial for its function – but the presence of

foreign tissue, being directed by different genes carrying a different blueprint, may throw that

intricate design into disarray This may explain, for instance, why twins are less likely to be

right-handed – a simple trait that normally relies on the relative organisation of the right and

the left hemispheres Perhaps chimerism has upset the balance

Even if you do not think you ever had a twin, there are many other ways you might be

invaded by another human’s cells It’s possible, for instance, that you started off as two

foetuses in the womb, but the twins merged during early development Since it occurs at

such an early age of development, the cells can become incorporated into the tissue and

seem to develop normally, yet they are carrying another person’s genetic blueprint “You look

like one person, but you have the cells of another person in you – effectively, you have

always been two people,” says Kramer In one extreme case, a woman was surprised to be

told that she was not the biological mother of her two children (See “Brother from another

mother”, left) Alternatively, cells from an older sibling might stay around the mother’s body,

only to find their way into your body after you are conceived

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However it happens, it’s perfectly plausible that tissue from another human could cause the

brain to develop in unexpected ways, says Lee Nelson from the University of Washington

She’s currently examining whether cells from the mother herself may be implanted in the

baby brain “A difference in the amount, cell type, or the time during development at which

the cells were acquired could all result in abnormalities,” she says

Nelson has found that even as an adult, you are not immune from human invaders A couple

of years ago, Nelson and William Chan at the University of Alberta in Edmonton took slices

of women’s brain tissue and screened their genome for signs of the Y-chromosome Around

63% were harbouring male cells “Not only did we find male DNA in female human brains as

a general observation, we found it to be present in multiple brain regions,” says Chan In

other words, their brains were speckled with cells from a man’s body One logical conclusion

is that it came from a baby: somehow, her own son’s stem cells had made it through the

placenta and lodged in her brain Strangely, this seemed to decrease the chances that the

mother would subsequently develop Alzheimer’s – though exactly why remains a mystery

Some researchers are even beginning to wonder whether these cells might influence a

mother’s mindset during pregnancy

Our knowledge of the human “superorganism” is still in its infancy, so many of the

consequences are purely theoretical at the moment Kramer and Bressan's aim with their

paper was not to give definitive answers, but to enlighten other psychologists and

psychiatrists about the many entities that make us who we are today “We cannot understand

human behaviour by considering only one or the other individual,” Kramer says “Ultimately,

we must understand them all to understand how ‘we’ behave.”

For instance, scientists often compare sets of twins to understand the origins of behaviour,

but the fact that even non-identical twins may have swapped bits of brain tissue might have

muddied those results We should be particularly careful when using these twin studies to

compare conditions such as schizophrenia that may arise from faulty brain organisation,

Bressan and Kramer say

In general, however, we shouldn’t feel hostile towards these invaders – after all, they made

you who you are today “I think it is now clear that our natural immigrants are with us for the

long-term, for better or for worse,” says Nelson “And I would think “for better” outweighs ‘for

worse’.”

Topic 3 The best (and worst) ways to spot a liar

Forget body language or eye movements There are much better ways to identify the

deceitful

By David Robson

7 September 2015

Thomas Ormerod’s team of security officers faced a seemingly impossible task At airports

across Europe, they were asked to interview passengers on their history and travel plans

Ormerod had planted a handful of people arriving at security with a false history, and a

made-up future – and his team had to guess who they were In fact, just one in 1000 of the

people they interviewed would be deceiving them Identifying the liar should have been about

as easy as finding a needle in a haystack

Using previous methods of lie detection, you might as well just flip a coin

So, what did they do? One option would be to focus on body language or eye movements,

right? It would have been a bad idea Study after study has found that attempts – even by

trained police officers – to read lies from body language and facial expressions are more

often little better than chance According to one study, just 50 out of 20,000 people managed

to make a correct judgement with more than 80% accuracy Most people might as well just

flip a coin

Ormerod’s team tried something different – and managed to identify the fake passengers in

the vast majority of cases Their secret? To throw away many of the accepted cues to

deception and start anew with some startlingly straightforward techniques

When it comes to spotting liars, the eyes don't have it (Credit: Thinkstock)

Over the last few years, deception research has been plagued by disappointing results Most

previous work had focused on reading a liar’s intentions via their body language or from their

face – blushing cheeks, a nervous laugh, darting eyes The most famous example is Bill

Clinton touching his nose when he denied his affair with Monica Lewinsky – taken at the time

to be a sure sign he was lying The idea, says Timothy Levine at the University of Alabama in

Birmingham, was that the act of lying provokes some strong emotions – nerves, guilt,

perhaps even exhilaration at the challenge – that are difficult to contain Even if we think we

have a poker face, we might still give away tiny flickers of movement known as “micro-

expressions” that might give the game away, they claimed

The problem is the huge variety of human behaviour – there is no universal dictionary of

body language

Yet the more psychologists looked, the more elusive any reliable cues appeared to be The

problem is the huge variety of human behaviour With familiarity, you might be able to spot

someone’s tics whenever they are telling the truth, but others will probably act very

differently; there is no universal dictionary of body language “There are no consistent signs

that always arise alongside deception,” says Ormerod, who is based at the University of

Sussex “I giggle nervously, others become more serious, some make eye contact, some

avoid it.” Levine agrees: “The evidence is pretty clear that there aren’t any reliable cues that

distinguish truth and lies,” he says And although you may hear that our subconscious can

spot these signs even if they seem to escape our awareness, this too seems to have been

disproved

Despite these damning results, our safety often still hinges on the existence of these mythical

cues Consider the screening some passengers might face before a long-haul flight – a

process Ormerod was asked to investigate in the run up to the 2012 Olympics Typically, he

says, officers will use a “yes/no” questionnaire about the flyer’s intentions, and they are

trained to observe “suspicious signs” (such as nervous body language) that might betray

deception “It doesn’t give a chance to listen to what they say, and think about credibility,

observe behaviour change – they are the critical aspects of deception detection,” he says

The existing protocols are also prone to bias, he says – officers were more likely to find

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suspicious signs in certain ethnic groups, for instance “The current method actually prevents

deception detection,” he says

If only body language revealed deception (Credit: Getty Images)

Clearly, a new method is needed But given some of the dismal results from the lab, what

should it be? Ormerod’s answer was disarmingly simple: shift the focus away from the subtle

mannerisms to the words people are actually saying, gently probing the right pressure points

to make the liar’s front crumble

Ormerod and his colleague Coral Dando at the University of Wolverhampton identified a

series of conversational principles that should increase your chances of uncovering deceit:

Use open questions This forces the liar to expand on their tale until they become

entrapped in their own web of deceit

Employ the element of surprise Investigators should try to increase the liar’s “cognitive

load” – such as by asking them unanticipated questions that might be slightly confusing, or

asking them to report an event backwards in time – techniques that make it harder for them

to maintain their façade

Watch for small, verifiable details If a passenger says they are at the University of Oxford,

ask them to tell you about their journey to work If you do find a contradiction, though, don’t

give yourself away – it’s better to allow the liar’s confidence to build as they rattle off more

falsehoods, rather than correcting them

Observe changes in confidence Watch carefully to see how a potential liar’s style changes

when they are challenged: a liar may be just as verbose when they feel in charge of a

conversation, but their comfort zone is limited and they may clam up if they feel like they are

losing control

Liar vs liar

It takes one to know one

Ironically, liars turn out to be better lie detectors Geoffrey Bird at University College London

and colleagues recently set up a game in which subjects had to reveal true or false

statements about themselves They were also asked to judge each other’s credibility It

turned out that people who were better at telling fibs could also detect others’ tall tales,

perhaps because they recognised the tricks

The aim is a casual conversation rather than an intense interrogation Under this gentle

pressure, however, the liar will give themselves away by contradicting their own story, or by

becoming obviously evasive or erratic in their responses “The important thing is that there is

no magic silver bullet; we are taking the best things and putting them together for a cognitive

approach,” says Ormerod

A psychological experiment in an airport revealed new tricks to spot liars (Credit: Thinkstock)

Ormerod openly admits his strategy might sound like common sense “A friend said that you

are trying to patent the art of conversation,” he says But the results speak for themselves

The team prepared a handful of fake passengers, with realistic tickets and travel documents

They were given a week to prepare their story, and were then asked to line up with other,

genuine passengers at airports across Europe Officers trained in Ormerod and Dando’s

interviewing technique were more than 20 times more likely to detect these fake passengers

than people using the suspicious signs, finding them 70% of the time

“It’s really impressive,” says Levine, who was not involved in this study He thinks it is

particularly important that they conducted the experiment in real airports “It’s the most

realistic study around.”

The art of persuasion

Levine’s own experiments have proven similarly powerful Like Ormerod, he believes that

clever interviews designed to reveal holes in a liar’s story are far better than trying to identify

tell-tale signs in body language He recently set up a trivia game, in which undergraduates

played in pairs for a cash prize of $5 for each correct answer they gave Unknown to the

students, their partners were actors, and when the game master temporarily left the room,

the actor would suggest that they quickly peek at the answers to cheat on the game A

handful of the students took him up on the offer

One expert was even correct 100% of the time, across 33 interviews

Afterwards, the students were all questioned by real federal agents about whether or not they

had cheated Using tactical questions to probe their stories – without focusing on body

language or other cues – they managed to find the cheaters with more than 90% accuracy;

one expert was even correct 100% of the time, across 33 interviews – a staggering result

that towers above the accuracy of body language analyses Importantly, a follow-up study

found that even novices managed to achieve nearly 80% accuracy, simply by using the right,

open-ended questions that asked, for instance, how their partner would tell the story

Are police any better at spotting lying suspects than anyone else? (Credit: Thinkstock)

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Indeed, often the investigators persuaded the cheaters to openly admit their misdeed “The

experts were fabulously good at this,” says Levine Their secret was a simple trick known to

masters in the art of persuasion: they would open the conversation by asking the students

how honest they were Simply getting them to say they told the truth primed them to be more

candid later “People want to think of being honest, and this ties them into being

cooperative,” says Levine “Even the people who weren’t honest had difficulty pretending to

be cooperative [after this], so for the most part you could see who was faking it.”

Another trick is to ask people how honest they are

Clearly, such tricks may already be used by some expert detectives – but given the folklore

surrounding body language, it’s worth emphasising just how powerful persuasion can be

compared to the dubious science of body language Despite their successes, Ormerod and

Levine are both keen that others attempt to replicate and expand on their findings, to make

sure that they stand up in different situations “We should watch out for big sweeping claims,”

says Levine

Although the techniques will primarily help law enforcement, the same principles might just

help you hunt out the liars in your own life “I do it with kids all the time,” Ormerod says The

main thing to remember is to keep an open mind and not to jump to early conclusions: just

because someone looks nervous, or struggles to remember a crucial detail, does not mean

they are guilty Instead, you should be looking for more general inconsistencies

There is no fool-proof form of lie detection, but using a little tact, intelligence, and persuasion,

you can hope that eventually, the truth will out

Topic 4 How to learn 30 languages

Some people can speak a seemingly impossible number of tongues How do they

manage it, asks David Robson, and what can we learn from them?

By David Robson

 29 May 2015

Out on a sunny Berlin balcony, Tim Keeley and Daniel Krasa are firing words like bullets at

each other First German, then Hindi, Nepali, Polish, Croatian, Mandarin and Thai – they’ve

barely spoken one language before the conversation seamlessly melds into another

Together, they pass through about 20 different languages or so in total

Back inside, I find small groups exchanging tongue twisters Others are gathering in threes,

preparing for a rapid-fire game that involves interpreting two different languages

simultaneously It looks like the perfect recipe for a headache, but they are nonchalant “It’s

quite a common situation for us,” a woman called Alisa tells me

It can be difficult enough to learn one foreign tongue Yet I’m here in Berlin for the Polyglot

Gathering, a meeting of 350 or so people who speak multiple languages – some as diverse

as Manx, Klingon and Saami, the language of reindeer herders in Scandinavia Indeed, a

surprising proportion of them are “hyperglots”, like Keeley and Krasa, who can speak at least

10 languages One of the most proficient linguists I meet here, Richard Simcott, leads a team

of polyglots at a company called eModeration – and he uses about 30 languages himself

With a modest knowledge of Italian and some rudimentary Danish, I feel somewhat out of

place among the hyperglots But they say you should learn from the best, so I am here to try

to discover their secrets

Most of us struggle with the simplest phrases - but it needn't be that way (Credit: Thinkstock)

When you consider the challenges for the brain, it’s no wonder most of us find learning a

language so demanding We have many different memory systems, and mastering a

different tongue requires all of them There’s procedural memory – the fine programming of

muscles to perfect an accent – and declarative memory, which is the ability to remember

facts (at least 10,000 new words if you want to come close to native fluency, not to mention

the grammar) What’s more, unless you want to sound like a stuttering robot, those words

and structures have to make it to the tip of your tongue within a split second, meaning they

have to be programmed in both “explicit” and “implicit” memory

Speaking extra languages delays dementia by five years or more

That tough mental workout comes with big payoffs, however; it is arguably the best brain

training you can try Numerous studies have shown that being multilingual can improve

attention and memory, and that this can provide a “cognitive reserve” that delays the onset of

dementia Looking at the experiences of immigrants, Ellen Bialystok at York University in

Canada has found that speaking two languages delayed dementia diagnosis by five years

Those who knew three languages, however, were diagnosed 6.4 years later than

monolinguals, while for those fluent in four or more languages, enjoyed an extra nine years

of healthy cognition

If you want to stay sharp in old age, learning a language could be the best neural workout

(Credit: Getty Images)

Those lasting benefits are a stark contrast to the failure of most commercial “brain training”

games you can download – which generally fail to offer long-term improvements in memory

or attention

Learning a new language as we age is easier than you might assume

Until recently, however, many neuroscientists had suggested that most of us are too old to

reach native-like fluency in a fresh language; according to the “critical period hypothesis”,

there is a narrow window during childhood in which we can pick up the nuances of a new

language Yet Bialystok’s research suggests this may have been exaggerated; rather than a

steep precipice, she has found that there is a very slight decline in our abilities as we age

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Certainly, many of the hyperglots I meet in Berlin have mastered languages later in life

Keeley grew up in Florida, where he was exposed to native Spanish speakers at school As

a child, he used to tune into foreign radio stations – despite not being able to understand a

word “It was like music to me,” he says But it was only as an adult that he started travelling

the world – first to Colombia, where he also studied French, German and Portuguese at

college He then moved on to Switzerland and Eastern Europe before heading to Japan He

now speaks at least 20 languages fluently, almost all of which were learnt as an adult “The

critical period hypothesis is a bunch of crap,” he says

Polyglots tend to "inhabit" a language and its culture (Credit: Getty Images)

The question is, how do hyperglots master so many new tongues – and could the rest of us

try to emulate them? True, they may just be more motivated than most Many, like Keeley,

are globe-trotters who have moved from country to country, picking up languages as they go

It’s sometimes a case of sink or swim

Yet even with the best intentions, many of us struggle to speak another language

convincingly Keeley, who is currently writing a book on the “social, psychological and

affective factors in becoming multilingual”, is sceptical that it’s simply a question of raw

intelligence “I don’t think it’s a major factor, although it does make it faster to have the

analytical ability,” he says

Cultural chameleons

Instead, he thinks we need to look past the intellect, into the depths of our personality

Keeley’s theory is that learning a new language causes you to re-invent your sense of self –

and the best linguists are particularly good at taking on new identities “You become a

chameleon,” he says

Psychologists have long known that the words we speak are entwined with our identity It’s a

cliche that French makes you more romantic, or Italian makes you more passionate, but

each language becomes associated with cultural norms that can affect how you behave – it

could be as simple as whether you value outspoken confidence or quiet reflection, for

instance Importantly, various studies have found that multilingual people often adopt

different behaviours according to the language they are speaking

Building friendship is the primary motivation for most hyperglots (Credit: Getty Images)

Different languages can also evoke different memories of your life – as the writer Vladimir

Nabokov discovered when working on his autobiography The native Russian speaker wrote

it first in his second language, English, with agonising difficulty, finding that “my memory was

attuned to one key – the musically reticent Russian, but it was forced into another key,

English” Once it was finally published, he decided to translate the memoirs back into the

language of his childhood, but as the Russian words flowed, he found his memories started

to unfurl with new details and perspectives “His Russian version differed so much he felt the

need to retranslate to English,” says Aneta Pavlenko at Temple University in Philadelphia,

whose book, The Bilingual Mind, explores many of these effects It was almost as if his

English and Russian selves had subtly different pasts

Resisting the process of reinvention may prevent you from learning another language so

well, says Keeley, who is a professor of cross-cultural management at Kyushu Sangyo

University in Japan He recently ran a survey of Chinese speakers learning Japanese to

examine their “ego permeability” – with questions such as “I find it easy to put myself in

other’s shoes and imagine how they feel” or “I can do impressions of other people”, and

whether you can change your opinions to suit the people you are near As he suspected, the

people who score highly on these traits had much greater fluency in their new language

It is not just about the amount of time spent learning and using languages

How come? It’s well known that if you identify with someone, you are more likely to mimic

them – a process that would effortlessly improve language learning But the adopted identity,

and the associated memories, may also stop you from confusing the language with your

mother tongue – by building neural barriers between the languages “There must be some

type of home in your mind for each language and culture and the related experiences, in

order for the languages to stay active and not get all mixed together,” Keeley says “It is not

just the amount of time spent learning and using the languages The quality of the time, in

terms of emotional salience, is critical.” Indeed, that might explain why Keeley could switch

so effortlessly between those 20-odd languages

Of all the polyglots, Michael Levi Harris may demonstrate these principles the best An actor

by training, Harris also has an advanced knowledge of 10 languages, and an intermediate

understanding of 12 more Occasionally, his passion has landed him in some difficulty He

once saw an online ad for a Maltese meet-up Going along, he hoped to find a group of

people from Malta, only to walk into a room full of middle-aged women and their white lap

dogs – an experience he recently relayed in a short film The Hyperglot You can see a trailer

below

When I meet him in a cafe near the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, he

effortlessly slips into a rather posh, “received pronunciation” English accent, despite being a

native New Yorker As he does so, his whole posture changes as he melds into the new

persona “I’m not really trying to consciously change my character or my persona It just

happens, but I know that I am suddenly different.”

Importantly, Harris thinks that anyone can learn to adopt a new cultural skin in this way – and

he has a few tips for how to begin, based on his experiences of acting The important thing,

he says, is to try to imitate without even considering the spelling of the words “Everyone can

listen and repeat,” he says You may find yourself over-exaggerating, in the same way that

an actor may be a little over-the-top in their performance to start with – but that’s a crucial

part of the process, he says “In acting first, you go really big, and then the director says OK,

now tone it down And you do the same with a language.” He also suggests looking carefully

at things like facial expressions – since they can be crucial to producing the sounds

Speaking with slightly pouted lips instantly makes you sound a little bit more French, for

instance

Finally, he says you should try to overcome the embarrassment associated with producing

"strange" noises – such as the guttural sounds in Arabic, for instance “You have to realise

it’s not foreign to us – when you are disgusted, you already say ‘eugh’ And if you

P a g e 12 | 122acknowledge and give your subconscious permission to do it in speech, you can make the

sound.” That may sound a little silly, but the point is that all this should help you to get over

your natural inhibitions “It’s all to do with owning the language, which is what actors have to

do to make the audience believe that these words are yours When you own words you can

speak more confidently, which is how people will engage with you.”

Can thespians teach us all a better way to learn? (Credit: Thinkstock)

There’s one big factor that stops people learning languages efficiently…

Even so, most agree that you shouldn’t be too ambitious, particularly when starting out “If

there’s a single factor that stops people learning languages efficiently, it’s that we feel we

have to be native-like – it’s an unreachable standard that looms over us,” says Temple

University’s Pavlenko “The ease of expression is what matters to me a lot – finding a better

way to express myself, colloquially.”

Along these lines, you should also practice a little and often – perhaps just for 15-minute

stints, four times a day “I think the analogies with exercise are quite good,” says Alex

Rawlings, who has developed a series of polyglot workshops with Richard Simcott to teach

their techniques Even if you are too busy or tired to do serious study, just practising a

dialogue or listening to a foreign pop song can help, says Simcott

In the UK, Australia and US, it is easy to believe that we don’t need to make that effort

Indeed, before I met the hyperglots, I had wondered if their obsession merited the hard work;

perhaps, I thought, it was just about bragging rights Yet all of the hyperglots I meet are

genuinely enthusiastic about the amazing benefits that can only be achieved by this full

immersion in different languages – including the chance to make friends and connections,

even across difficult cultural barriers

Harris, for instance, describes living in Dubai “As a Jewish person living in the Middle East, I

faced challenges But it turns out that one of my best friends was from Lebanon,” he says

“And when I moved away, he said ‘when we first met I didn’t think I could be friends with you

and now you’re leaving, I’m distraught’ It’s one of the most precious things to me.”

As Judith Meyer, who organised the gathering in Berlin, tells me, she saw Ukrainians and

Russians, Israelis and Palestinians all conversing at the gathering “Learning another

language really does open up whole new worlds.”

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Topic 5 The mystery of the female orgasm

From the existence of the G-spot to the origin of multiple orgasms, female sexuality once

mystified scientists But as Linda Geddes discovers, radical experiments are finally revealing

some answers

By Linda Geddes

 26 June 2015

On my washing machine, there is a lock To activate it, you must hold down the start button

for a particular length of time at just the right intensity; too soft and nothing happens, too hard

and the machine beeps angrily at you Once you’ve mastered the technique, it’s easy; the

lights switch on, things start moving and the cycle ultimately climaxes in a shuddering

whirling crescendo of noise Finally, an entangled heap of damp but refreshed clothes

tumbles out at the other end But for the uninitiated, it’s a perplexing mystery

Consider now the female orgasm JD Salinger once wrote that “a woman’s body is like a

violin; it takes a terrific musician to play it right” Pressed or caressed the right way, a woman

can be transported to such ecstasy, that for a few seconds, the rest of the world ceases to

exist But get it wrong and pain, frustration, or dull nothingness can ensue It’s a stark

contrast to a man’s experience; so long as they can get an erection, a few minutes of

vigorous stimulation generally results in ejaculation

Why are orgasms so intensely pleasurable? How come women can experience multiple

orgasms? And does the fabled G-spot even exist? These are some of the most enduring

mysteries of medicine “We are able to go to the moon, but we do not understand enough

about our own bodies,” says Emmanuele Jannini at the University of Rome Tor Vergata –

one of those who has spent his career trying to unravel it Recent years have seen a flurry of

studies by these real-life Masters of Sex, and they are finally getting some answers

Brains on fire

Perhaps the scientists’ greatest skill is in persuading women to sweep aside their inhibitions,

and masturbate – or even copulate – under the full glare of scientific research, including the

uncomfortable environment of the fMRI scanner One of the leaders of this research has

been Barry Komisaruk at Rutgers University in New Jersey, who wanted to probe whether

brain differences can explain why women and men experience sex so differently

What we see is an overall activation of the brain – it’s all systems go

It turns out that despite their varied experiences, both men and women show roughly the

same neural activity during orgasm “The similarities between men and women at orgasm

are far greater than the differences,” says Komisaruk “What we see is an overall activation

of the brain; basically it’s like all systems go.”

This may explain why orgasms are so all-consuming – if the whole forest is blazing, it’s

difficult to discriminate between the different campfires that were there at the start “At

orgasm, if everything gets activated simultaneously, this can obliterate the fine discrimination

between activities,” Komisaruk adds It is maybe why you can’t think about anything else

Women's brains still receive signals from the genitals after orgasm, allowing them to climax

multiple times (Credit: Getty Images)

There are hotspots in this furnace, however One is the nucleus accumbens, a brain region

that deals in pleasure and reward through the release of a neurotransmitter called dopamine

Given the choice, rats will choose electrical stimulation of this brain region over food - to the

extent that they would allow themselves to starve to death Besides sex, it’s also activated by

cocaine, amphetamine, caffeine, nicotine and chocolate No wonder orgasms make you want

to keep on going back for more

After orgasm, however, some important differences do emerge, which might begin to explain

why men and women react so differently after climax Komisaruk, with Kachina Allen, has

found preliminary evidence that specific regions of the male brain become unresponsive to

further sensory stimulation of the genitals in the immediate aftermath of orgasm, whereas

women’s brains continue to be activated: this may be why some women experience multiple

orgasms, and men do not

Anatomy of pleasure

If these brain scans have generated some controversy, it has been nothing compared to the

attempts to pin down the anatomy of the orgasm The penis has just one route for carrying

sensations to the brain, the female genital tract has three or four At the seat of female

sexuality is the clitoris: familiar to most as a small, pebble-shaped nubbin, plonked in an

awkward position, a centimetre or so in front of the vaginal opening Precisely who

discovered the importance of this structure is up for debate Ice-age clay models, known as

“Venus figurines”, depict a faceless woman with large breasts, a rounded belly, a prominent

vagina and labia – and on one model, a clitoris

It wasn’t until the 16th Century that the clitoris began to be described as a distinct physical

structure, common to all women, with the function of inducing pleasure In his book, De re

woman’s delight” Yet in subsequent centuries, female pleasure took a back seat, and the

clitoris was largely forgotten – at least by anatomists and physicians It re-emerged in the

20th Century, but was still regarded as inferior by many Though Sigmund Freud at least

acknowledged that women can experience orgasm, he believed that clitoral responsivity is

superseded by vaginal orgasm in mature women The inability to experience vaginal

orgasms is associated with psychosexual immaturity, he wrote

P a g e 16 | 122

Can science reveal why women and men experience sex differently? (Credit: Getty Images)

If that were true, then there would be an awful lot of women out there who just aren’t realising

their sexual potential Between thirty and forty percent of women claim never to have

experienced an orgasm through vaginal penetration alone – though many more can orgasm

through clitoral stimulation

The suggestion that the vaginal orgasm is somehow superior has irked many feminists It

sounds as if women who don’t experience vaginal orgasms just aren’t trying hard enough So

should vaginal orgasms be a rite of passage for all women, or just a privileged few? Is it even

possible to have an orgasm in the absence of a clitoris?

As soon as I touched the cervix, the rats would become rigidly immobile – Barry Komisaruk

Barry Komisaruk took the first steps to answering these questions by chance, while he was

studying mating behaviours in rats One day, while inserting a rod into a female rat’s vagina,

he triggered a bizarre response: “As soon as I touched the cervix, the rats would become

rigidly immobile,” he says Not only that, but during this kind of stimulation, the rats became

apparently insensitive to pain Soon afterwards, he switched his rats for women, and noticed

the same thing: vaginal stimulation blocked the transmission of pain But how?

The vagina and clitoris have many direct routes to the brain (Credit: Science Photo Library)

To find out, Komisaruk conducted a study with Beverly Whipple that looked at women with

varying degrees of spinal cord injury They found that even when their injuries blocked the

known nerve pathways in the spinal cord from the genitals to the brain, these women could

still feel when their vagina and cervix were being touched Some even experienced orgasm

from it, despite the pudendal nerve – which carries sensations from the clitoris to the brain –

being cut “Women with spinal cord injury who could not feel their clitoris, nevertheless had

orgasms from vaginal stimulation,” says Komisaruk “That’s probably the best evidence that

vaginal orgasms exist.”

The reason is that from the vagus nerves, which are situated outside the spinal cord, carry

sensations from the vagina to the brain “Women describe clitoral orgasms as more localised

and external, and vaginal orgasms as being internal and involving the whole-body; that’s

probably because the nerves that carry sensations from the clitoris are different from the

nerves from the vagina,” Komisaruk adds And as for the puzzling fact that vaginal orgasms

can block pain, the nerves connected to the spinal cord may inhibit the release of the

neurotransmitter involved in pain perception Once signals reach the brain, they could also

trigger the release of neurotransmitters like endorphins that also relieve pain

So if different nerves can carry sensations from different regions of the female genitalia – and

both can trigger orgasm – are some regions of the vagina more sensitive than others? Where

should couples go hunting for the elusive vaginal orgasm?

G marks the spot

The famed “G-spot” was, for a long time, the prime target The term was first coined in the

early 80s, for the German obstetrician and gynaecologist, Ernst Gräfenberg In 1950, he

described an erogenous zone on the anterior, or front wall of the vagina, which correlated

with the position of the urethra on the other side of that wall Subsequent studies revealed a

complex of blood vessels, nerve endings and remnants of the female prostate gland in the

same area; and suggested that in a minority of women – particularly those with strong pelvic

floor muscles – stimulation of this area could trigger powerful orgasms and the release of a

small amount of fluid from the urethra that was not urine

Word soon began to leak out about this magic button on the front wall of the vagina Couples

invested time, and - often fruitless - effort into finding it Some feminists, meanwhile, claimed

that the publicity surrounding the G-spot was an attempt by men to recoup the importance of

vaginal penetration, after the spotlight had shifted to the clitoris during the sexual revolution

of the 60s and 70s

The hunt for the fabled G-spot has revealed more complex anatomy (Credit: Getty Images)

Evidence to support or refute the existence of the G-spot is patchy, and often overhyped

One study ‘disproving’ the existence of a G-spot was based on an MRI scan of just one

woman The debate is further obscured by a dispute about the correct terminology for the

various inner regions of women’s private parts, and also where one structure starts and

another ends

However, there do seem to be physical differences between women who claim to experience

vaginal orgasm and those who don’t In 2008, Jannini published a study involving nine such

responders, and 11 who said they’d never climaxed during penetrative sex alone Ultrasound

scans revealed a thicker area of tissue in the space between the vagina and the urethra in

those that could

P a g e 18 | 122

At the time, Jannini concluded that this might well be evidence for the fabled G-spot But

further studies have prompted a rethink “The word spot suggests a button; something that

you can push to obtain an orgasm or pleasure,” he says “It implies a concrete structure

that’s either there or it’s not No-one has been able to clearly describe such a structure as a

spot.”

The clitoris could also be described as a two-headed penis; both are derived from the same

embryonic tissue

So if it’s not a button, what else could it be? For a growing number of researchers the answer

is simple: the clitoris Although to most people, the clitoris is just a pea-shaped bobble under

the surface of the skin, recent MRI studies suggest that the clitoris is far from diminutive

They reveal a large, bulbous structure around 9cm in length, which somewhat resembles a

wishbone It snakes its way around the outside of the vagina and up inside the pelvis

alongside the urethra

At the head of that wishbone is the glans – the external part that most people feel as the

clitoris, and the most sensitive part But the legs straddle the vaginal opening and extend into

the labia

It could also be described as a two-headed penis Both the clitoris and the penis are derived

from the same embryonic tissue; a swelling called the tubercle which emerges during the

early stages of embryogenesis and then branches into either the clitoris and vulval tissue in

girls, or the penis and scrotum in boys But there are important differences: for one thing, the

penis doesn’t grow in response to hormones like testosterone once puberty ceases, whereas

the clitoris does “It is not simply a little penis,” Jannini says The vagina also responds to

hormones, including oestrogen, which helps explain why women’s sexual response varies

throughout their lives

This complexity may explain why it has been so difficult to prove – or disprove – the

existence of the G-spot; it’s not easy to stimulate the frontal wall of the vagina in isolation

You’re also likely rubbing up against the internal portions of the clitoris and the urethra as

well

Women's sexuality has been a source of controversy throughout the ages (Credit: Getty

Images)

Indeed, further research by Jannini and Odile Buisson at the Centre d’échographie in Saint

Germain en Laye, France, has demonstrated this They persuaded three women to either

stimulate the front wall of their vaginas using a lubricated tampon, or use their fingers to

stimulate the external parts of their clitoris - while using ultrasound to image what was

happening beneath the skin Vaginal penetration caused the internal parts of the clitoris and

the tissue around the urethra to move and become engorged, whereas during manual

masturbation, only the external parts of the clitoris were stimulated

It gets even more complicated; in yet other women, vaginal penetration might simultaneously

be stimulating both the external and the internal parts of the clitoris

The woman had been born without a bladder, and had undergone extensive reconstructive

surgery The silver lining? She has incredible orgasms

In 2009, a 42-year-old woman presented at the clinic of Rachel Pauls, a urogynecologist

based in Cincinnati, Ohio The woman had been born without a bladder, and had undergone

extensive reconstructive surgery to correct some of these problems There is a silver lining to

this cloud, however; “she has incredible orgasms,” Pauls says Indeed, she told Pauls that

she averages two orgasms every time she has sex – one through manual stimulation of her

clitoris; the other through vaginal penetration alone Pauls was particularly fascinated by her

story, because the women’s urethra – and therefore the associated bundle of nerves and

structures usually labelled the G-spot – wasn’t in the usual place Additionally, the woman’s

clitoris was positioned on the very edge of her vaginal opening “It seemed likely that this was

part of why she had such good orgasms,” Pauls says The penis would brush against it with

every thrust

Does size matter?

This sparked an idea Pauls wondered if the size, and location of the clitoris in healthy

women might influence the ease with which they orgasm during penetrative sex So she and

her colleagues recruited ten women who claimed rarely or never to achieve orgasm during

sexual encounters, and twenty women who said they climax almost every time, and used an

MRI scanner to take a detailed look at their clitorises They found that the smaller the size of

the pea-shaped glans, and the further the clitoris was from the vagina, the harder they found

it to achieve orgasm

There is no recipe for good sex (Credit: Getty Images)

Taken together, these studies imply that there are multiple routes by which women can

experience an orgasm, be it through vaginal stimulation, clitoral stimulation, or both at once

Further studies by Komisaruk have revealed that projections from different regions of the

female genitals – and indeed the nipples – all converge on the same general region of the

brain, albeit in slightly different areas “There’s a good neuro-anatomical basis for different

types of orgasms and different types of sensations,” Komisaruk says “This could account for

why combining clitoral, vaginal and cervical stimulation seems to produce these more

intense, complex and pleasurable orgasms that women describe.”

As for women who find it difficult to climax during penetrative sex – or indeed any sex – the

message is simple: experiment

As for women who find it difficult to climax during penetrative sex – or indeed any sex –

Paul’s message is simple: experiment “Women come to see me as patients and they’ll say ‘I

can’t have vaginal orgasms, so there must be something wrong with me’ There’s nothing

wrong with them Everyone is a little different, so some women will have a lot of clitoral

P a g e 20 | 122

stimulation during sex, while for others it’s a little harder - so their partner may have to use

their hands or a toy But women should know that if they don’t have orgasms with straight out

vaginal penetration, then that that’s normal.”

Jannini has an additional message for women: “Not only enjoy sex, but also enjoy knowing

yourself and understanding who you are today, because probably tomorrow you will be

different.” And don’t underestimate the infinite variety that’s on offer “Do not think of the

female body as a machine that can always deliver the same,” he says

Topic 6 The suprising downsides of being clever

Can high intelligence be a burden rather than a boon? David Robson investigates

By David Robson

 14 April 2015

If ignorance is bliss, does a high IQ equal misery? Popular opinion would have it so We tend

to think of geniuses as being plagued by existential angst, frustration, and loneliness Think

of Virginia Woolf, Alan Turing, or Lisa Simpson – lone stars, isolated even as they burn their

brightest As Ernest Hemingway wrote: “Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I

know.”

The harsh truth is that greater intelligence does not equate to wiser decisions

The question may seem like a trivial matter concerning a select few – but the insights it offers

could have ramifications for many Much of our education system is aimed at improving

academic intelligence; although its limits are well known, IQ is still the primary way of

measuring cognitive abilities, and we spend millions on brain training and cognitive

enhancers that try to improve those scores But what if the quest for genius is itself a fool’s

errand?

Anxiety can be common among the highly intelligent (Credit: Thinkstock)

The first steps to answering these questions were taken almost a century ago, at the height

of the American Jazz Age At the time, the new-fangled IQ test was gaining traction, after

proving itself in World War One recruitment centres, and in 1926, psychologist Lewis Terman

decided to use it to identify and study a group of gifted children Combing California’s schools

for the creme de la creme, he selected 1,500 pupils with an IQ of 140 or more – 80 of whom

had IQs above 170 Together, they became known as the “Termites”, and the highs and lows

of their lives are still being studied to this day

The Termites’ average salary was twice that of the average white-collar job

As you might expect, many of the Termites did achieve wealth and fame – most notably Jess

Oppenheimer, the writer of the classic 1950s sitcom I Love Lucy Indeed, by the time his

series aired on CBS, the Termites’ average salary was twice that of the average white-collar

job But not all the group met Terman’s expectations – there were many who pursued more

“humble” professions such as police officers, seafarers, and typists For this reason, Terman

concluded that “intellect and achievement are far from perfectly correlated” Nor did their

smarts endow personal happiness Over the course of their lives, levels of divorce,

alcoholism and suicide were about the same as the national average

It's lonely being smart (Credit: Thinkstock)

As the Termites enter their dotage, the moral of their story – that intelligence does not equate

to a better life – has been told again and again At best, a great intellect makes no

differences to your life satisfaction; at worst, it can actually mean you are less fulfilled

That’s not to say that everyone with a high IQ is a tortured genius, as popular culture might

suggest – but it is nevertheless puzzling Why don’t the benefits of sharper intelligence pay

off in the long term?

A weighty burden

One possibility is that knowledge of your talents becomes something of a ball and chain

Indeed, during the 1990s, the surviving Termites were asked to look back at the events in

their 80-year lifespan Rather than basking in their successes, many reported that they had

been plagued by the sense that they had somehow failed to live up to their youthful

expectations

Early achievers don't always go on to be successful (Credit: Thinkstock)

That sense of burden – particularly when combined with others’ expectations – is a recurring

motif for many other gifted children The most notable, and sad, case concerns the maths

prodigy Sufiah Yusof Enrolled at Oxford University aged 12, she dropped out of her course

before taking her finals and started waitressing She later worked as a call girl, entertaining

clients with her ability to recite equations during sexual acts

Sufiah Yusof, a child prodigy, enrolled at Oxford aged 12 but later dropped out and worked

as a call girl

Another common complaint, often heard in student bars and internet forums, is that smarter

people somehow have a clearer vision of the world’s failings Whereas the rest of us are

blinkered from existential angst, smarter people lay awake agonising over the human

condition or other people’s folly

Constant worrying may, in fact, be a sign of intelligence – but not in the way these armchair

philosophers had imagined Interviewing students on campus about various topics of

discussion, Alexander Penney at MacEwan University in Canada found that those with the

higher IQ did indeed feel more anxiety throughout the day Interestingly, most worries were

mundane, day-to-day concerns, though; the high-IQ students were far more likely to be

replaying an awkward conversation, than asking the “big questions” “It’s not that their

worries were more profound, but they are just worrying more often about more things,” says

Penney “If something negative happened, they thought about it more.”

(Credit: Thinkstock)

Probing more deeply, Penney found that this seemed to correlate with verbal intelligence –

the kind tested by word games in IQ tests, compared to prowess at spatial puzzles (which, in

fact, seemed to reduce the risk of anxiety) He speculates that greater eloquence might also

make you more likely to verbalise anxieties and ruminate over them It’s not necessarily a

disadvantage, though “Maybe they were problem-solving a bit more than most people,” he

says – which might help them to learn from their mistakes

Mental blind spots

The harsh truth, however, is that greater intelligence does not equate to wiser decisions; in

fact, in some cases it might make your choices a little more foolish Keith Stanovich at the

University of Toronto has spent the last decade building tests for rationality, and he has

found that fair, unbiased decision-making is largely independent of IQ Consider the “my-side

bias” – our tendency to be highly selective in the information we collect so that it reinforces

our previous attitudes The more enlightened approach would be to leave your assumptions

at the door as you build your argument – but Stanovich found that smarter people are almost

no more likely to do so than people with distinctly average IQs

People who ace cognitive tests are more likely to see past their own flaws

That’s not all People who ace standard cognitive tests are in fact slightly more likely to have

a “bias blind spot” That is, they are less able to see their own flaws, even when though they

are quite capable of criticising the foibles of others And they have a greater tendency to fall

for the “gambler’s fallacy” – the idea that if a tossed coin turns heads 10 times, it will be more

likely to fall tails on the 11th The fallacy has been the ruination of roulette players planning

for a red after a string of blacks, and it can also lead stock investors to sell their shares

before they reach peak value – in the belief that their luck has to run out sooner or later

Members of high IQ society Mensa are not immune to belief in the paranormal (Credit:

Thinkstock)

A tendency to rely on gut instincts rather than rational thought might also explain why a

surprisingly high number of Mensa members believe in the paranormal; or why someone with

an IQ of 140 is about twice as likely to max out their credit card

Indeed, Stanovich sees these biases in every strata of society “There is plenty of

dysrationalia – people doing irrational things despite more than adequate intelligence – in our

world today,” he says “The people pushing the anti-vaccination meme on parents and

spreading misinformation on websites are generally of more than average intelligence and

education.” Clearly, clever people can be dangerously, and foolishly, misguided

People with an IQ above 140 are twice as likely to overspend on their credit card (Credit:

Thinkstock)

So if intelligence doesn’t lead to rational decisions and a better life, what does? Igor

Grossmann, at the University of Waterloo in Canada, thinks we need to turn our minds to an

age-old concept: “wisdom” His approach is more scientific that it might at first sound “The

concept of wisdom has an ethereal quality to it,” he admits “But if you look at the lay

definition of wisdom, many people would agree it’s the idea of someone who can make good

unbiased judgement.”

In one experiment, Grossmann presented his volunteers with different social dilemmas –

ranging from what to do about the war in Crimea to heartfelt crises disclosed to Dear Abby,

the Washington Post’s agony aunt As the volunteers talked, a panel of psychologists judged

their reasoning and weakness to bias: whether it was a rounded argument, whether the

candidates were ready to admit the limits of their knowledge – their “intellectual humility” –

and whether they were ignoring important details that didn’t fit their theory

High achievers tend to lament opportunities missed in their lives (Credit: Thinkstock)

High scores turned out to predict greater life satisfaction, relationship quality, and, crucially,

reduced anxiety and rumination – all the qualities that seem to be absent in classically smart

people Wiser reasoning even seemed to ensure a longer life – those with the higher scores

were less likely to die over intervening years Crucially, Grossmann found that IQ was not

related to any of these measures, and certainly didn’t predict greater wisdom “People who

are very sharp may generate, very quickly, arguments [for] why their claims are the correct

ones – but may do it in a very biased fashion.”

Learnt wisdom

In the future, employers may well begin to start testing these abilities in place of IQ; Google

has already announced that it plans to screen candidates for qualities like intellectual

humility, rather than sheer cognitive prowess

Fortunately, wisdom is probably not set in stone – whatever your IQ score “I’m a strong

believer that wisdom can be trained,” says Grossmann He points out that we often find it

easier to leave our biases behind when we consider other people, rather than ourselves

Along these lines, he has found that simply talking through your problems in the third person

( “he” or “she”, rather than “I”) helps create the necessary emotional distance, reducing your

prejudices and leading to wiser arguments Hopefully, more research will suggest many

similar tricks

The challenge will be getting people to admit their own foibles If you’ve been able to rest on

the laurels of your intelligence all your life, it could be very hard to accept that it has been

blinding your judgement As Socrates had it: the wisest person really may be the one who

can admit he knows nothing

Topic 7 Why do babies laugh out loud

Babies can't possibly get a joke, so what causes their giggles? The answer might reveal a lot

about the making of our minds, says Tom Stafford

By Tom Stafford

 28 July 2015

What makes babies laugh? It sounds like one of the most fun questions a researcher could

investigate, but there's a serious scientific reason why Caspar Addyman wants to find out

He’s not the first to ask this question Darwin studied laughter in his infant son, and Freud

formed a theory that our tendency to laugh originates in a sense of superiority So we take

pleasure at seeing another's suffering - slapstick style pratfalls and accidents being good

examples - because it isn’t us

The great psychologist of human development, Jean Piaget, thought that babies’ laughter

could be used to see into their minds If you laugh, you must 'get the joke' to some degree - a

good joke is balanced in between being completely unexpected and confusing and being

predictable and boring Studying when babies laugh might therefore be a great way of

gaining insight into how they understand the world, he reasoned But although he proposed

this in the 1940s, this idea remains to be properly tested Despite the fact that some very

famous investigators have studied the topic, it has been neglected by modern psychology

If you want to make a baby laugh, then tickling is the surefire method (Credit: Getty Images)

Addyman, of Birkbeck, University of London, is out to change that He believes we can use

laughter to get at exactly how infants understand the world He's completed the world's

largest and most comprehensive survey of what makes babies laugh, presenting his initial

results at the International Conference on Infant Studies, Berlin, last year Via his website he

surveyed more than 1000 parents from around the world, asking them questions about when,

where and why their babies laugh

The results are - like the research topic - heart-warming A baby's first smile comes at about

six weeks, their first laugh at about three and a half months (although some took three times

as long to laugh, so don't worry if your baby hasn’t cracked its first cackle just yet) Peekaboo

is a sure-fire favourite for making babies laugh (for a variety of reasons I've written about

here), but tickling is the single most reported reason that babies laugh

Babies are far more likely to laugh when they fall over, rather than when someone else falls

over

Importantly, from the very first chuckle, the survey responses show that babies are laughing

with other people, and at what they do The mere physical sensation of something being

ticklish isn’t enough Nor is it enough to see something disappear or appear suddenly It’s

only funny when an adult makes these things happen for the baby This shows that way

before babies walk, or talk, they - and their laughter - are social If you tickle a baby they

apparently laugh because you are tickling them, not just because they are being tickled

What's more, babies don't tend to laugh at people falling over They are far more likely to

laugh when they fall over, rather than someone else, or when other people are happy, rather

than when they are sad or unpleasantly surprised From these results, Freud's theory (which,

in any case, was developed based on clinical interviews with adults, rather than any rigorous

formal study of actual children) - looks dead wrong

Although parents report that boy babies laugh slightly more than girl babies, both genders

find mummy and daddy equally funny

Babies find us funny - even if they're too young to understand why we're funny (Credit: Getty

Images)

Addyman continues to collect data, and hopes that as the results become clearer he'll be

able to use his analysis to show how laughter tracks babies' developing understanding of the

world - how surprise gives way to anticipation, for example, as their ability to remember

objects comes online

Despite the scientific potential, baby laughter is, as a research topic, “strangely neglected”,

according to Addyman Part of the reason is the difficulty of making babies laugh reliably in

the lab, although he plans to tackle this in the next phase of the project But partly the topic

has been neglected, he says, because it isn't viewed as a subject for 'proper' science to look

into This is a prejudice Addyman hopes to overturn - for him, the study of laughter is

certainly no joke

If you have an everyday psychological phenomenon you'd like to see written about in these

topics)

Topic 8 Why do we intiutively believe we have free will?

Free will experiments may not explain whether we are in charge of our destinies – but

they can nevertheless reveal just how little we know about our own minds, says Tom

Stafford

By Tom Stafford

7 August 2015

It is perhaps the most famous experiment in neuroscience In 1983, Benjamin Libet sparked

controversy with his demonstration that our sense of free will may be an illusion, a

controversy that has only increased ever since

Libet’s experiment has three vital components: a choice, a measure of brain activity and a

clock

The choice is to move either your left or right arm In the original version of the experiment

this is by flicking your wrist; in some versions of the experiment it is to raise your left or right

finger Libet’s participants were instructed to “let the urge [to move] appear on its own at any

time without any pre-planning or concentration on when to act” The precise time at which

you move is recorded from the muscles of your arm

The measure of brain activity is taken via electrodes on the scalp When the electrodes are

placed over the motor cortex (roughly along the middle of the head), a different electrical

signal appears between right and left as you plan and execute a movement on either the left

or right

You may think you are in charge of your actions, but is that just an illusion? (Credit: Getty

Images)

The clock is specially designed to allow participants to discern sub-second changes This

clock has a single dot, which travels around the face of the clock every 2.56 seconds This

means that by reporting position you are reporting time If we assume you can report position

accurately to 5 degree angle, that means you can use this clock to report time to within 36

milliseconds – that’s 36 thousandths of a second

Putting these ingredients together, Libet took one extra vital measurement He asked

participants to report, using the clock, exactly the point when they made the decision to

move

The brain activity showed that the decision had often already been made, before the

participants were aware of having taken action

Physiologists had known for decades that a fraction of a second before you actually move

the electrical signals in your brain change So it was in Libet’s experiment, a fraction of a

second before participants moved, a reliable change could be recorded using the electrodes

But the explosive result was when participants reported deciding to move This occurred in

between the electric change in the brain and the actual movement This means, as sure as

cause follows effect, that the feeling of deciding couldn’t be a timely report of whatever was

causing the movement The electrode recording showed that the decision had – in some

sense – already been made before the participants were aware of having taken action The

brain signals were changing before the subjective experience of taking a decision occurred

We struggle to describe our thoughts and feelings accurately, making it difficult to tell when

we have made a decision (Credit: iStock)

Had participants’ brains already made the decision? Was the feeling of choosing just an

illusion? Controversy has raged ever since There is far more to the discussion about

neuroscience and free will than this one experiment, but its simplicity has allowed it to

capture the imagination of many who think our status as biological creatures limits our free

will, as well as those who argue that free will survives the challenge of our minds being firmly

grounded in our biological brains

Part of the appeal of the Libet experiment is due to two pervasive intuitions we have about

the mind Without these intuitions the experiment doesn’t seem so surprising

The first intuition is the feeling that our minds are a separate thing from our physical selves –

a natural dualism that pushes us to believe that the mind is a pure, abstract place, free from

biological constraints A moment’s thought about the last time you were grumpy because you

were hungry shatters this illusion, but I’d argue that it is still a persistent theme in our

thinking Why else would we be the least surprised that it is possible to find neural correlates

of mental events? If we really believed, in our heart of hearts, that the mind is based in the

brain, then we would know that every mental change must have a corresponding change in

the brain

The second pervasive intuition, which makes us surprised by the Libet experiment, is the

belief that we know our own minds This is the belief that our subjective experience of

making decisions is an accurate report of how that decision is made The mind is like a

machine – as long as it runs right, we are happily ignorant of how it works It is only when

mistakes or contradictions arise that we’re drawn to look under the hood: Why didn’t I notice

that exit? How could I forget that person’s name? Why does the feeling of deciding come

after the brain changes associated with decision making?

There’s no reason to think that we are reliable reporters of every aspect of our minds’

contents

There’s no reason to think that we are reliable reporters of every aspect of our minds

Psychology, in fact, gives us lots of examples of where we often get things wrong The

feeling of deciding in the Libet experiment may be a complete illusion – maybe the real

decision really is made ‘by our brains’ somehow – or maybe it is just that the feeling of

deciding is delayed from our actual deciding Just because we erroneously report the timing

of the decision, doesn’t mean we weren’t intimately involved in it, in whatever meaningful

sense that can be

More is written about the Libet experiment every year It has spawned an academic industry

investigating the neuroscience of free will There are many criticisms and rebuttals, with

debate raging about how and if the experiment is relevant to the freedom of our everyday

choices Even supporters of Libet have to admit that the situation used in the experiment

may be too artificial to be a direct model of real everyday choices But the basic experiment

continues to inspire discussion and provoke new thoughts about the way our freedom is

rooted in our brains And that, I’d argue, is due to the way it helps us confront our intuitions

about the way the mind works, and to see that things are more complex than we instinctively

imagine

Topic 9 I can predict the weather with my nose

A strange condition means that one patient smells burnt wood and skunks every time there’s

a storm brewing Helen Thomson meets a human barometer

By Helen Thomson

18 September 2015

Max Livesey was on holiday when he suddenly noticed the smell of burning leaves He

glanced around his hotel room but saw nothing that could have caused the strange aroma

Over the next few weeks, the smell intensified, ranging from burnt wood to an oniony-gas

Eventually, he was convinced there was a family of skunks around “My eyes started to

water, and I had this strange sensation in my throat that I couldn’t get away from,” he says

Livesey (not his real name), now a 72-year-old software engineer, blamed the weird smell on

the musty hotel room But the phantom smells returned when he was back home, increasing

throughout the day and persisting for hours

Livesey went to see Alan Hirsch at the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation

in Chicago, who specialises in smell disorders Hirsch tested his general olfaction by getting

him to smell different odours at a range of intensities He discovered that Livesy’s ability to

sense ordinary smells had been impaired This was not entirely unexpected: Livesey had

Parkinson’s disease, and a poor sense of smell is a common symptom This is likely due to

the disease causing damage to the olfactory nerves, which are cells that transmit information

about sense of smell from the nose to the brain

The human barometer

But why the hallucinations? Occasionally, we all get what’s known as “spontaneous olfactory

discharge” where our olfactory nerves become briefly active Normally, this discharge is

inhibited by other neurons sending out information about real smells, and so it doesn’t

amount to anything However, an impaired ability to smell stops these olfactory discharges

from being suppressed, which means they are consequently perceived as phantom

odours (For a similar reason, some people with hearing difficulties can start to notice

haunting strains of music that are purely the product of their mind.)

An oncoming storm can smell like a family of skunks (Credit: Getty Images)

“My eyes started to water, and I had this strange sensation in my throat that I couldn’t get

away from”

However, Livesey had started to notice something even more peculiar: his hallucinations

would get worse just before a storm Two to three hours before clouds gather, his

phantosmia intensifies and persist throughout a storm Sometimes, he says, he can predict a

storm coming up to ten hours before it starts

Hirsch says this is the first case of weather-induced phantosmia he has ever come across

It’s not, however, the first time that weather and human ailments have been linked

My knees hurt it must be about to rain

Over two thousand years ago, Hippocrates observed a link between neurological complaints

and the weather In 1887, researchers first investigated this relationship and found a

significant link between temperature and humidity and the intensity of joint and muscle aches

in people with chronic pain Since then, links between the weather and migraines, as well as

the weather and pain in people with multiple sclerosis have been well documented

Less well-known is the fact that our sense of smell is also known to decrease with a drop in

air pressure, says Hirsch Since a drop in barometric pressure that precedes a thunderstorm

would reduce Livesey’s olfactory ability even further, it may serve to further increase his

phantosmia

Of course, Livesey’s phantom smells may simply be a case of recall bias, where a selective

memory may lead him to notice the times that his phantosmia gets worse before a storm

than when it fluctuates at other times Or it could be that he’s already been primed by a

weather forecast beforehand Livesey doesn’t believe this is the case – on many occasions

he has not seen a forecast, yet was still able to predict the onset of bad weather

Broken nerves from the nose may cause the brain to make up its own phantom smells

(Credit Getty Images)

Hirsch also believes that a real link between weather and phantosmia exists He says that

you also see phantosmia when you put someone – say a mountaineer training for a high

altitude environment – into a hypobaric chamber, where they experience low ambient air

pressures “We also see phantosmia in people who are on long excursions in high altitude

areas of Antarctica,” he says

Since meeting Livesey, Hirsch has treated a few other individuals with similar complaints:

“Everyone we’ve seen so far has a somewhat impaired sense of smell in normal conditions

and describes how the hallucinations are most intense right before a storm,” he says

Going up?

It’s a difficult problem to investigate objectively In one preliminary experiment, Hirsch tried to

induce the hallucinations by getting his patients to travel in the express elevator up to the top

of the John Hancock Centre – a 100-story, 1,127-foot tall skyscraper in Chicago Although it

had little effect on Livesey’s phatosmia, Hirsch says that the resulting change in pressure did

increase the intensity of some of his patient’s phantom smells, which suggests that the

problem may well be sensitive to subtle changes in air pressure

When they’re at their most intense they can smell like excrement

Unfortunately, there’s no permanent treatment A few years ago, Livesey added L-dopa to

his drug regime for Parkinson’s, and for a couple of months his hallucinations were barely

noticeable Recently, though, they’ve had some bad weather in Chicago and his phantosmia

has returned

Filling your nose with fragrant scents may put an end to the nasty hallucinations that come

with "phantosmia" (Credit: Getty Images)

One idea was that he might be able to reduce the hallucinations by boosting his remaining

sense of smell A few months ago, on Hirsch’s recommendation, he started sniffing three

different scents, three times a day – these fragrant scents appear to replace the hallucinated

smell “It seems to be helping,” he says, “but maybe that’s just wishful thinking.” Mostly, he

just tries to ignore the smells Focusing on work helps, he says, as does laughing and eating

Livesey’s hallucinations aren’t painful but they are annoying, he says “When they’re at their

most intense they can smell like excrement – that’s rather distracting.”

The smell sometimes changes but he says it’s almost always unpleasant “There are also the

physiological effects that I get from the smell, like watery eyes,” he says “I read about some

people who hallucinate the smell of roses I’d like to know who that is – I’d prefer that!”

I wondered whether anyone ever asks him what the weather’s going to be He laughs “No,

it’s not 100% accurate I’m not the national weather service If they do, I tell them to go look

at their iPad!”

Topic 10 The noise we’re creating in the sea can be deadly

Researchers are decoding a secret world of underwater chatter – and discovering the

plight of animals harmed by our noise

 By Chris Baraniuk

 19 October 2015

Some years ago, Michel Andre found himself staring at the body of a dead sperm whale on a

beach in the Canary Islands It was obvious that the animal had collided with a ship – but

why? Only later, after methodically surveying the whales which lived in the area and

measuring the increase of sound pollution from ships did it become clear that there was a

link

There’s a world of sound and animal communication never observed with such clarity before

The whales had become desensitised to the noise of approaching boats and were being

struck by them, often fatally “We never thought that this could be something that could kill,”

recalls Andre, who is the director of the Laboratory of Applied Bioacoustics at the Technical

University of Catalonia, Barcelona

Whales can be protected by changing shipping routes (Credit: Thinkstock)

Andre has spent 20 years developing an advanced system for listening to subsea noise in

order to better understand why incidents like this happen His underwater microphones, or

hydrophones, have exposed a world of sound and animal communication never observed

with such clarity before

Watch Andre collecting and decoding the sounds in the video below:

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The elaborate listening apparatus developed by Andre for detecting sound in the ocean is

dubbed “smart ears” It not only detects the voices of whales, dolphins and other creatures,

but also the deafening whirr of boats, propellers and other marine machinery

It was not an easy task Sound waves don’t travel through water in the uniform, predictable

way they do through the air Instead, the temperature, salinity and flow of the water column –

among other things – dramatically impact their path

Michel Andre has an elaborate listening apparatus for hearing ocean noise (Credit: Michel

Andre)

There’s a lot of distortion, so Andre and his team had to develop algorithms that could

analyse the sounds in real-time and match them to a database of known ocean noises:

everything from whale song to dolphin-speak No two sounds are the same, but the

algorithms are clever enough to pick out similarities in the audio waves and match them with

a reasonable degree of accuracy

Andre’s system can also estimate how far away the sound source is by interpreting how

distorted the sound itself has become – partly an indicator of how much water it has travelled

through before reaching the hydrophone The quality of sound, of course, is also dependent

on the movement of the animal that made it “If the animal turns its head you will not get the

same sound or the same intensity,” he says

The noise of our efforts to exploit the ocean can be heard for hundreds of miles (Credit:

Thinkstock)

After taking tissue samples from the ears of beached whales, evidence of harm was found in

the cells of those sensory organs

A range of hydrophones, on buoys monitored by Andre, is now picking up audio signals in

seas all around the world And the computer analysis is done extremely quickly – according

to Andre there’s just a three-second delay between picking up the sound and predicting

algorithmically what it is Then, the result is transmitted back to the shore

“We are overloaded with information,” he says “It’s 24/7 – data coming from over 100

channels around the world.”

The Genius Behind

Inside innovative minds

This is part of the series The Genius Behind: telling the stories of the most amazing and

sometimes little-known technological and scientific breakthroughs of modern times, and the

innovative minds behind them

Andre’s team aren’t just listening – they have also studied the physiological damage caused

to animals by noise After taking tissue samples from the ears of beached whales, evidence

of harm was found in the cells of those sensory organs This, then, was why creatures had

lost their ability to detect the noise of ships

“If there are some missing structures of these cells, it means that the animal cannot codify

any more the sound that corresponds to this specific cell,” he explains

The kind of noise that whales and other marine animals have to contend with is not trivial,

ranging from ship sounds to loud explosions

Shipping can be cacophonous (Credit: Thinkstock)

Christopher Willes Clark, a bioacoustician at Cornell University (who is not involved with

Andre’s work), says ships easily drown out the noise of whale songs and the animals are

also exposed to deafening explosions caused by subsea oil and gas exploration surveys

“We set off extremely loud explosions every 10 seconds for months at a time such that I can

hear a prospecting survey going on near Ireland – I can hear that off Virginia,” says Clark

One solution is to divert shipping routes to courses where ships are statistically less likely to

encounter marine mammals

What can be done? One solution is to divert shipping routes to courses where ships are

statistically less likely to encounter marine mammals It’s also possible, sometimes, to slow

down to 10 knots an hour (18km/h) or less, which is less likely to fatally injure a whale Clark

explains that this leads to a “significant” reduction in the chances of an animal collision

"We never thought that this could be something that could kill" - Michel Andre on the noise

caused by shipping and other human noises (Credit: Getty Images)

As for tackling the root cause of the problem, the UN’s International Maritime Organisation

(IMO) has already published guidelines on how to quieten ships, but it will be a while before

the impact of such changes might be observed in the wild Plus, businesses and vessel

operators will have to co-operate

“The ocean is not our world,” comments Andre But it is ours to look after And thanks to his

work, we can better understand the impact of subsea sound pollution

“The fact that now we have access to the sound, it is completing the picture that we have,”

he says “This is the only way we can understand what is going on

Topic 11 The geniuses who invented prothetic limbs

Moments of genius can strike at unexpected times Here we look at some of the

fearless inventors who pushed forward prosthetic technology

2 November 2015

Easton LaChappelle's brainwave for building a new prosthetic arm came after he was bored

in class

He stumbled across a cheaper alternative to the expensive prosthetic limbs currently

available, as the video below shows

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The history of prosthetic limbs is littered with such masterstrokes

The world’s earliest functional prosthetic body parts are thought to be two examples of

artificial toes from Ancient Egypt These toes predate the previously earliest known

prosthesis – the Roman Capula Leg – by several hundred years What makes them unique is

their functionality Early prostheses were mostly decorative, but these Egyptian toes are an

early example of a true prosthetic device

“The big toe is thought to carry some 40% of the bodyweight and is responsible for forward

propulsion,” said Dr Jacky Finch, then at the University of Manchester Modern prosthetic

toes would be produced only after intensive study of an individuals 's gait using cameras and

other monitoring equipment

This Egyptian toe may be one of the earliest prosthetics made (Credit: Dr Jacky Finch)

Dr Finch selected two volunteers to test replicas of the toes and to their surprise they were

very comfortable: “My findings strongly suggest that both of these designs were capable of

functioning as replacements for the lost toe and so could indeed be classed as prosthetic

devices If that is the case then it would appear that the first glimmers of this branch of

medicine should be firmly laid at the feet of the ancient Egyptians.”

Dark Age design

In general, artificial limbs moved forward little up to this point However, this iron prosthetic,

belonging to Gotz von Berlichingen (1480-1562), a German knight who served with the Holy

Roman Emperor Charles V, shows how they came to incorporate hinges

Medieval artificial limbs allowed amputees to continue their fighting careers (Credit: Science

Museum London / Science and Society Picture Library CC BY 2.0/Wikimedia)

Artificial limbs like these were expensive but allowed wearers who had lost a limb to continue

a fighting career The articulated fingers could be used to grasp a shield, hold reins or even a

quill This limb was manufactured for von Berlichingen by a specialist armourer

Centuries later, huge number of casualties in the American Civil War caused demand for

artificial limbs to skyrocket Many veterans turned to designing their own prosthetics as a

response to the limiting capabilities of the limbs on offer

James Hanger, one of the first amputees of the war, patented the ‘Hanger Limb’ Samuel

Decker (pictured) also designed his own artificial arms and became a pioneer of modular

limb design

(Credit: National Museum of Health and Medicine CC BY 2.0)

In the design pictured, Decker has a spoon attached to his mechanical arms, recognising the

need to be able to perform everyday activities with his prosthetics Designs now needed to

do more than replace the lost limb, they needed to offer the young amputees some of their

former abilities back For the first time, a generation of young men would now lead lives as

amputees Decker went on to become the official doorkeeper at the US House of

Representatives

Around 1900, the pioneers of prosthetic design had begun the idea of specialised artificial

limbs Limb design looked to more than just decorative uses and became increasingly more

specialist

As technology improved, artifical limbs became more sophisticated (Credit: Wellcome

Images CC BY 2.0/Wikimedia)

Wide spread fingers, index, middle and ring finger smaller than normal, and padded tips on

the thumb and little finger, the above prosthetic had one specific purpose This is an example

of an artificial arm for a pianist who would go on to perform at the Royal Albert Hall, London,

in 1906 The spread fingers allowed her to span one entire octave

Despite her moment of fame, the name of the female pianist is now unknown The Science

Museum, where this limb is now kept, has done their best to discover her identity If you

know who it could be, get in touch

Modern methods

For the first time, artificial limbs were being mass-produced in response to the enormous

number of casualties in World War One In the US, the Walter Reed Army Hospital produced

a large number of artificial limbs for the returning veterans This example is of a welding

attachment and other tools integrated into the limbs for amputees to return to work after the

war

Post-WWI, new prosthetics allowed people to perform previously impossible tasks, like

welding or driving a car (Credit: National Museum of Health and Medicine CC BY 2.0/Flickr)

It wasn’t all work, however Also in the collection of the National Museum of Health and

Medicine, USA, is an attachment for playing baseball The Walter Reed Army Hospital is still

a centre for artificial limb production in the US, 100 years later

The technology continued to develop after WW1 DW Dorrance invented the split hook

artificial hand shortly before World War I It became popular with labourers after the war who

were able to return to work using the attachment because of its ability to grip and manipulate

objects It’s one of the few designs that have remained relatively unchanged over the past

century Dorrance demonstrated its multi-functionality in the 1930s by driving a car using the

arm

Queen Mary’s Hospital, Roehampton became an important centre for manufacturing limbs

(Credit: Imperial War Museum CC BY 2.0/Wikimedia)

In the UK, Queen Mary’s Hospital, Roehampton, became a centre for manufacturing artificial

limbs in the World War Two It opened in 1939 In its first year, 10,987 war pensioners

attended the centre, with an additional 16,251 limbs being sent by post At the outbreak of

war, the factory was expanded because of the realisation that 40,000 UK servicemen had

lost limbs in WW1

However in WW2 there was around half the number of amputees As Leon Gillis, QMH

Consultant Surgeon from 1943-1967, observed, advances in surgical techniques, treatment

of infections and the availability of blood transfusion after WW1 all reduced the need for

amputation

Topic 12 If alien life exists on exoplanets, how would we know?

9 November 2015

Staring at the twinkling stars in the night sky, it’s easy to forget that those faint, distant lights

are all suns And, just like the fiery orb blazing away at the centre of our Solar System, those

suns may have orbiting planets

It’s not like we can zoom in to look at the surface of an alien planet

“We think there are upwards of hundreds of billions of planets in our galaxy alone,” says

astrophysicist Sara Seager She is a born explorer, dedicating her life to the hunt for

exoplanets far, far away with Earth-like conditions that could harbour life

But how will we ever know what planets outside the Solar System might support life? It’s not

like we can zoom in to the surface to look – the distance is simply too great – and if an alien

species wasn’t intelligent, it wouldn’t be broadcasting either

Seager, however, believes she has a way to spot biological signatures on exoplanets – and it

involves a giant flower-shaped spacecraft capable of blocking out the light of an entire star

Watch the video above to see what it takes to achieve this seemingly impossible task

Seager has been described as an "astronomical Indiana Jones"

Seager has said in the past she only has one goal in life, besides raising her children: to find

a second Earth

Exoplanets need to live in the Goldilocks zone – not too hot, not too cold, but just right for

life, says Seager

To find life, we will need to launch an enormous 'starshade', says Seager

sometimes little known technological and scientific breakthroughs of modern times, and the

innovative minds behind them

Topic 13 To find aliens, we need to build a giant space parasol

Could the light from stars be hiding evidence of extraterrestrial life? A giant

“Starshade” could soon reveal answers

 By Marcus Woo

 16 November 2015

Alien hunting isn’t just tabloid fodder anymore Over the last few years, astronomers have

discovered thousands of planets outside the Solar System, suggesting that the galaxy is

teeming with worlds – at least as many as one planet per star, on average

The existence of so many planets raises the odds that at least one of them has life – and it’s

possible there may even be an Earth “twin” – making alien-hunting a bona fide scientific

endeavour “We’re now ready to make the transition from ‘are there planets?’ to ‘is there life

on these planets?’” says Nick Siegler, the chief technologist of Nasa’s Exoplanet Exploration