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8 | NewScientist | 9 July 2016Clare Wilson FOR the first time, pregnant women in the UK may be given official advice about the relative risks of vaginal births and caesarean sections.. A

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9 July 2016 | NewScientist | 3

This issue online

newscientist.com/issue/3081

Coming next week…

Does reality exist without you?

Making the universe one random act at a time

vanity can get

you a long way

8 Labour painsRisks of natural childbirth

32 Moon grab

Luxembourg’s gold rush

19 Green and Brexit land

How leaving the EU couldhelp the environment

8 THIS WEEK

Neutrinos may explain missing antimatter.Colourful sign language Feel the force ofyour personal space NASA’s biggest rocket

14 IN BRIEF

Gut bacteria eat brain chemical Lazy bearsstick to dumps CRISPR snips out herpesviruses Rafting sea slug goes global Hunt for invisible aliens

Technology

20 Testing the DNA of rivers Machines don’t

see the world like we do A virtual journey inside a cell Giving plants a voice

Analysis

16 Teen health What are hormonal

contraceptives doing to teenage girls?

26 Me! (see above left)

30 Plight of the Hainan gibbon The race to

save the world’s rarest mammal

32 Moon grab Luxembourg’s lunar gold rush

36 PEOPLE

Desert fire (see left)

Culture

42 Listening to everyone Do antidepressants

work? It depends who you ask

43 Eat the enemy Tasty invasive species

44 Old world The challenge of being 100

Regulars

52 LETTERS Out with obscure dark energy

56 FEEDBACK Homeopaths Without Borders

57 THE LAST WORD Earth’s angle explained

Aperture

24 Inside the lightning strike lab

Leaders

5 The risks of natural childbirth should be

clear Don’t go ape over gibbon conservation

THE 1983 movie Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life opens with

a scene in a hospital room where

a woman is giving birth “Moreapparatus please nurse,” shoutsone doctor “Get the machinethat goes ‘ping’,” bellows another

The mother-to-be and her babyare an afterthought

The scene was (in part) asatire on the overmedicalisation

of childbirth How times havechanged A similar satire todaywould probably target theexcessive promotion of naturalchildbirth as the ideal

In the UK, for example, womenwho request a caesarean sectionfor non-medical reasons – whichthe National Institute for Healthand Care Excellence says they

A woman’s right to choose

Go ape? Not just yet

The risks of all forms of childbirth should be made clear

should be allowed as long as theyare warned about the risks – areoften blocked from having one,

or have to jump through so manyhoops they give up

Vaginal birth is, of course, thenatural endpoint of a pregnancy,but natural does not necessarilymean good And while it is right

to inform women about the risks

of non-medical C-sections, theplaying field is not a level one

Pregnant women who choose avaginal delivery are not officiallywarned about the possibility ofbad outcomes for themselves ortheir babies Now UK doctors areconsidering whether to formallywarn women about the risks ofgiving birth vaginally (see page 8)

The medical evidence is on their

side Planned C-sections are thesafest option for the baby, becausethey avoid any chance of braindamage from a vaginal birthand the not-insignificant risk

of stillbirth after 39 weeks

A planned C-section is alsothe only guaranteed way to avoid

a risky emergency C-section.And they are cheaper in the longrun once the costs of caring forinjured mothers and childrenare taken into account

Obstetricians’ leaders are stilldeciding whether to press ahead,perhaps fearing a battle withnatural birth campaigners But ifthey delay much longer they will

be letting down the patients theyare meant to serve Sometimesmedicalisation is best.■

WHAT is the world’s rarestmammal? If you have no idea,you’re not alone The Hainangibbon – current head count 26 – may be on the brink, but there

is barely a murmur of publicity about efforts to conserve it

Maybe that is no surprise We often hear about extremely rare species only once it is too late Theplight of the baiji, for example, only came to the world’s attention

after the last sighting in 2002

Five years later it was extinct

Given this precedent, what odds

do we have of saving the gibbon?

Is it even worth trying? Those are key questions in conservation biology right now (see page 30)

Some argue that we should only invest in relatively healthy populations or ecosystems rather than fight rearguard actions to save species on the edge

That is a valid point However, the Hainan gibbon increasingly represents the future of conservation Vertebrate populations have declined by about half since 1970, and more and more species are dwindling towards extinction Working out what can be done for those that have been reduced to Hainan gibbon levels will only become a more common problem Efforts

to save it are clearly worthwhile,

if only to learn lessons that will maximise future success ■

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6 | NewScientist | 9 July 2016

OUT with antibiotics for colds?

People do not experience more

serious health problems when

family doctors are stricter about

prescribing the drugs for

conditions such as coughs, colds

and sore throats – a finding that

should help stop the spread of

antibiotic resistance

Martin Gulliford at King’s

College London and his team

studied 610 general practices

in the UK and found that,

overall, those that prescribe

fewer antibiotics for respiratory

infections do not have higher

rates of serious bacterial

complications, such as

meningitis (BMJ, doi.org/bkrd).

However, the researchers did

detect slightly higher rates of

pneumonia and quinsy, a rare

complication of sore throats They

estimate that if an average-sized

GP surgery with 7000 patients cut

THE deep sea is about to yieldmore of its secrets The Nektonalliance, launched this week,brings together more than 30international organisations fromthe fields of science, technologyand business to try to learn moreabout Earth’s final frontier

“We know more about thesurface of Mars and the moonthan we do about our ownseabed,” says principal scientistAlex Rogers at the University

“This study provides GPs

with the evidence to

convince patients they

don’t need antibiotics”

antibiotic prescriptions by 10 percent, it would see one extra case

of pneumonia a year and onemore case of quinsy every decade

“Both these complications can bereadily treated once identified,”

says Gulliford

These findings are encouragingfor family doctors, who have todecide many times a day whether

to prescribe antibiotics, withoutknowing if a person’s condition

is caused by bacteria or a virus

Using antibiotics for what isactually a viral infection helpsspread drug resistance, but thefear has been that failing tocatch a bacterial infection in itsearly stages can have severeconsequences

“This is an important study andaddresses a very emotive subject,”

says Adam Roberts, who studiesantibiotic resistance at UniversityCollege London “The pressure

on GPs to reduce prescriptions

is increasing, and this studyprovides them with the evidencethey need to convince patientsthat, at least for respiratory tractinfections, it is not going toharm them if they don’t receive the drugs.”

The alliance’s XL Catlin DeepOcean Survey will kick off withdives in Bermuda this month,using both manned andautonomous submersibles.Rogers says such increasinglysophisticated craft are giving usunprecedented access to the deepsea “We see a great need to learn,and we now have the technology

to do it.”

Nekton’s ultimate aim is todiagnose the health of watersbelow 200 metres, to betterinform policy decisions onprotecting these habitats

Juno at Jupiter, at last

JUBILATION, relief and exhaustion

That was the reaction at NASA’s Jet

Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena,

California, the heart of the Juno

mission, when the probe pulled into

orbit around Jupiter on Monday night.

It was the most dangerous day

for NASA’s Juno spacecraft since its

launch in 2011 Long communication

times between Earth and the probe

made human help impossible, so

mission engineers could do nothing

but wait to hear whether it had

succeeded.

Juno’s approach was the fastest

ever by a spacecraft going into orbit,

at more than 200,000 kilometres

per hour relative to Earth In the

event, the spacecraft slipped into

a near-perfect orbit after a journey

covering 869 million kilometres.

“We conquered Jupiter!” said mission lead Scott Bolton, who was overwhelmed as confirmation came

in “All that went through my head is,

‘Wow It’s perfect.’”

Bolton wasn’t exaggerating: Juno’s orbit is so close to ideal that it is a mere second behind its scheduled trajectory

Juno is now in a 53.5-day capture orbit Then, on 14 October, it will burn its main engine, tightening up into a 14-day orbit This is also when it will turn its scientific instruments on to carry out its major observations

Over the next year and a half, the craft will investigate some of Jupiter’s biggest mysteries, mapping the planet’s gravity and magnetic fields, looking for evidence of a solid core and tracking its auroras.

–By Jove, we did it–

Tesla: accidents will get rarer

THE first death in an autonomous car has occurred According to the US road safety administration, Joshua Brown was killed in Florida in May after his Tesla Model S hit a truck while in autopilot mode

Brown was on a highway when the truck joined the road from a cross street Unable to pick out the white truck against the bright sky, the self-driving system failed to brake

Florida police found a DVD player in the car, but it is not known if Brown

was watching a movie at the time Tesla said the accident was a tragic loss “As more real-world miles accumulate and the software logic accounts for rare events, the probability of injury will keep decreasing,” it said in a statement The fatality will raise tough questions about the safety of semi-autonomous cars but should not be seen as an indictment, says Hussein Dia of Swinburne University

of Technology in Australia.

AS MANY as 2000 hippos may bekilled over five years in Zambia.

The government has resurrected

a culling plan it suspended inmid-June Animal welfare groupssay there is no solid scientific casefor the cull, which may be carriedout by paying trophy hunters

The government has putforward various reasons forthe cull in the South LuangwaNational Park These includepreventing anthrax, which

hippos can spread, claims ofoverpopulation and of waterlevels too low to support bothhippos and the other wildlife

Yet there’s no current anthraxoutbreak and water levels are thehighest they have been in fiveyears, says Will Travers, president

of wildlife charity the Born FreeFoundation “They are on thinground scientifically.”

The government suspended thecull on 14 June, following protests

by animal rights activists Butsenior officials met on 22 June in Lusaka to recommend the cull

go ahead after all, the Born Free Foundation claims “There’s a relentless effort to press ahead,”

says Travers “But at the moment,

I can’t see how they can justifywhat’s going on.” He has nowwritten to Zambian presidentEdgar Lungu asking for the cull

to be abandoned, and for openpublication of the rationale forkilling the animals

Officials hadn’t replied to New Scientist’s request for comment

For new stories every day, visit newscientist.com/news

Anyone out there?

CHINA finished building the

largest radio telescope in the

world this week – and will use the

enormous dish to listen for aliens

The Five-hundred-meter

Aperture Spherical Telescope

(FAST) is the size of 30 football

pitches, dwarfing its nearest rival,

the 300-metre-wide Arecibo

Observatory in Puerto Rico

Assembled from 4450

triangular panels, the dish should

be able to detect astronomical

objects whose radio signals are

too weak to be picked up by

smaller telescopes And aliens

Construction of FAST began

in 2011 It is situated in Guizhou

province in a natural bowl-shaped

feature that is ideal for housing

the colossal concave disc

The individual panels can be

rearranged to focus on and track

radio waves from specific objects

of interest, which will give the

dish much greater range and

sensitivity than rival dishes

“The size of this telescope is

key to its scientific impact,” says

Tim O’Brien at the University of

Manchester, UK “The bigger the

telescope, the more radio waves

it collects and the fainter the

objects it will be able to see.”

60 SECONDS

Onwards and outwards

After its fly-by of Pluto last July, the New Horizons spacecraft has got one final job before its fuel runs out NASA has approved an extension of the mission to visit 2014 MU69, an ancient object just 30 kilometres across The probe will head out into the Kuiper belt and is scheduled to reach MU69 on 1 January 2019

Don’t take it lying down

The idea that women are more likely

to conceive if they lie down to help sperm reach the egg is bogus Women who rested for 15 minutes after insemination were no more likely to get pregnant than those who moved around The work was presented at the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Endocrinology in Helsinki, Finland.

Cosmic weather map

In March, a software glitch caused the Japanese X-ray space telescope Hitomi to spin itself to pieces just six weeks after launch But before the malfunction, the probe mapped one

of the largest weather systems in the universe, the flowing plasma of

a clump of galaxies known as the

Perseus cluster (Nature, DOI:

10.1038/nature18627).

Greenpeace under fire

A third of all living Nobel laureates have signed a letter criticising Greenpeace’s stance on genetically modified crops Greenpeace has

“misrepresented the risks, benefits and impacts” of GM crops, they say, adding that “there has never been a single confirmed case of a negative health outcome for humans or animals from their consumption”.

Asleep, one ear open

King penguins sleeping on a beach react to different levels of threat, the Society for Experimental Biology meeting in Brighton, UK, has heard When orca or skua calls were played, the penguins woke up and fled Sounds of non-predators woke them but they did not flee.

“Individual panels can be

rearranged to track specific

objects, giving it greater

range and sensitivity”

–Attention still needed–

–Run for your life–

IT’S a turtle tragedy Tumours arecrippling an increasing number

of green sea turtles on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef

The affected animals have aturtle-specific herpes virus thatcauses fibropapillomatosis – a condition in which disfiguring tumours grow on and inside the body Those can block vision and increase risk of other infections, says Karina Jones at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia Her team’s surveys this year shows that in parts of the reef as many as half of the turtles have these crippling tumours

“We think there must be some external trigger that causes the tumour development,” says Jones Turtles in healthy marine environments can still carry the virus, but it often lies dormant with no symptoms The next step

is to try to pin down the pollutants responsible

Turtles in trouble

“There’s relentless effort

to press ahead with the suspended cull, even without scientific backing”

8 | NewScientist | 9 July 2016

Clare Wilson

FOR the first time, pregnant

women in the UK may be given

official advice about the relative

risks of vaginal births and

caesarean sections

The move comes in the wake

of a landmark 2015 UK Supreme

Court case that awarded damages

for a baby who sustained brain

damage during vaginal birth

In this case, the plaintiff had a

higher than usual risk of having

a difficult birth, due to having

a small pelvis and diabetes But

doctors didn’t inform her of

these increased risks – an act of

“medical paternalism”, said the

presiding judge, who decided in

the mother’s favour

This ruling is seen as applying

to all births Although advice is

available for those who seek it out,

women are not officially warned

about common risks such as

tearing and incontinence, because

vaginal birth is seen as the default

outcome of pregnancy

Age matters

In many countries, including the

UK, the average age of mothers at

birth has been rising for decades

For example, in 1973, the average

age at childbirth in England and

Wales was 26 years, but by 2014

this had risen to 30 Research

is now revealing how age raises

the risks from vaginal delivery

A recent study by Hans Peter

Dietz of Sydney Medical School,

Australia, found that women who

have their first child later in life

are more likely to have major

pelvic floor injuries during

vaginal birth – damage that can

lead to incontinence (American

Journal of Obstetrics and

Gynecology, doi.org/bkps).

For every extra year at age of

first childbirth, he found that therisk of injury to a woman’s pelvicfloor muscles from vaginal birthrises by 6 per cent The risk of one

of these muscles detaching fromthe pubic bone – which greatlyraises the risk of uterus prolapse – was 10 per cent for a 20-year-old having a vaginal delivery without the use of instruments like forceps, but this doubled to

20 per cent for a 40-year-old

Age is a factor because our muscles and ligaments get less stretchy as we grow older This makes them more likely to tear during childbirth, and increasesthe likelihood of needing an

emergency C-section, which carries a higher risk of infection, haemorrhage and blood clots than planned C-sections

Dietz argues that women should be warned about how factors like age and having a big baby make vaginal birth more difficult In April, he suggested that, given that patients are warned of risks as low as 1 in 1000before surgery, it is incongruous not to warn a woman having her

first child at 38 that she has a

15 per cent chance of an anal tear

(American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, doi.org/bkpw)

“They have the right to know that,” he said

At the moment, women considering C-sections are warned about potential risks, like wound infections, blood loss and riskier future pregnancies But women aren’t warned about the risk of bad tearing during vaginal birth, which can lead to problems in later life

“They have got leaflets about C-sections, yet most people opt for a vaginal birth and there are

THIS WEEK

Doctors may warn of birth risks

Official advice on the risks of vaginal birth could soon be given to women

–Consent form needed?–

no risk leaflets for them,” says

Bryan Beattie, an obstetrician in

the UK’s National Health Service

Doctors are now considering

a major change The UK’s Royal

College of Obstetricians &

Gynaecologists will meet this

month to discuss how patient

information for many different

medical procedures should be

altered in light of the court case,

and will start trialling them

as soon as possible They are

considering issuing one on

vaginal births, says the college

president David Richmond

“It’s terribly sensitive and

difficult,” he says

Proponents of natural births

predict that warnings about the

risks of vaginal delivery may

lead to more people choosing

C-sections The risks of vaginal

births need to be balanced against

the potential harms from

C-sections, such as babies being

born with breathing difficulties

and risks to future pregnancies,

says Louise Silverton of the Royal

College of Midwives “We need

a healthy debate on what the

emphasis should be.”

Some argue that leaflets won’t

be enough, and that women

planning a vaginal birth should

sign a consent form that details

the risks, just as with any medical

procedure However this is likely

to meet with opposition from

midwives and campaigners

for more natural childbirth

approaches “A vaginal birth

is not a treatment, it’s a natural

consequence of being pregnant,”

says Deborah Chippington

Derrick of the Association for

Improvements in the Maternity

Services

Beattie says ultimately only the

woman herself can decide which

risks are most important to her

“You might say to me: ‘I could

cope with a wound infection if I

had a C-section but I could not

cope with faecal incontinence

from a bad vaginal delivery’,” he

says “You should be allowed to

make that choice but you can’t if

you don’t have the information.” ■

In this section

■Colourful sign language, page 10

■ What are hormonal contraceptives doing to teenage girls? page 16

■ Testing the DNA of rivers, page 20

IT COULD all have been so different.

When matter first formed in the universe, it should have been accompanied by an equal amount

of antimatter But if so they would then have annihilated each other, and we wouldn’t be here Now a pair

of experiments could be telling us where our theories have gone wrong.

Neutrinos and their antimatter counterparts each come in three flavours: electron, muon and tau, which they can switch, or oscillate, between The T2K experiment in Japan watches for these oscillations

as neutrinos travel 295 kilometres between the J-PARC accelerator in Tokai and the Super-Kamiokande detector in Kamioka (pictured above).

T2K looks both at muon neutrinos and at their antimatter version to see

if there is a difference in their rates

of oscillation, as a principle called charge-parity (CP) symmetry holds that they should be the same.

The idea is that physics should remain basically unchanged if you replace all particles with their respective antiparticles It appears

to hold true for nearly all particle interactions, and implies that the universe should have produced the same amount of matter and antimatter in the big bang.

If CP symmetry holds, then matter and antimatter should have mostly destroyed each other and vanished

in a puff of radiation early on in the universe’s history That clearly didn’t happen, but we don’t know why

“We know in order to create more matter than antimatter in the universe, you need a process that violates CP symmetry,” says Patricia Vahle She works on NoVA, an experiment similar to T2K that sends neutrinos between Illinois and Minnesota.

We already know of one such process: certain interactions between different kinds of quarks, the constituents of protons and neutrons

in atoms But that is not enough to explain why matter dominates the modern universe Morphing neutrinos are another promising place to look.

At this week’s Neutrino 2016 conference in London, the first signs

of a violation emerged The latest results from T2K, presented by Hirohisa Tanaka of the University of Toronto, Canada, include 32 sightings

of muon neutrinos morphing into the electron flavour, compared with just

4 muon antineutrinos becoming the anti-electron variety.

This is more matter and less antimatter than expected, assuming

CP symmetry holds Although small, the difference is enough to rule out

CP symmetry holding at the 2 sigma level – in other words, if CP symmetry

is actually valid in this process, there is only around a 5 per cent chance of T2K observing the reported discrepancy Particle physicists normally wait to reach the 3 sigma level before getting excited, and won’t consider anything confirmed until 5 sigma, so it’s early days But at the same conference, Vahle presented the latest results from NoVA showing that the two experiments are in broad agreement The extent of CP violation rests on

a key parameter called delta-CP, and both teams found that their results were best explained by setting it equal to 1.5π “[NoVA] data really does prefer the same value that T2K does,” says Asher Kaboth, who works on T2K “All of the preferences for the delta-CP stuff are pointing in the same direction.”

NoVA plans to run its own antineutrino experiments next year, which will help firm up the results, and both teams continue to gather data It’s too soon to say definitively, but one of the mysteries of why we are here could be on the road to getting solved Lisa Grossman ■

Neutrinos hint at why matter beat antimatter

–Seeking unruly oscillations–

“Matter and antimatter should have vanished in a puff of radiation early on

in the universe’s history”

10 | NewScientist | 9 July 2016

THIS WEEK

Anil Ananthaswamy

OUR brains are aware not just of

our bodies but also the immediate

space around us Now, a twist on

the classic rubber hand illusion

has let people “feel” this space – a

sensation they liken to perceiving

a “force field”

Neuroscientists have known

for decades that our brains

contain representations of the

area surrounding us, known as

peripersonal space This allows

us to grasp objects within our

reach and helps to protect us

For example, imagine you are

walking through the woods, when

a low-hanging branch suddenly

appears in your peripheral vision

You’ll instinctively duck to dodge

it: your sense of peripersonal space

has helped you avoid being hit

Hard neuroscientific evidence

on the phenomenon appeared in

the late 1990s in animal studies

Michael Graziano at Princeton

University and his colleagues

found that some neurons in

monkey brains fired not only when

an object touched the body, but

also when the object came near it

Upon stimulating these neurons,they found that the monkeys would reflexively move their heads and limbs as if defending themselves – for example, grimacing and closing their eyes

Although no one has repeatedthe experiments in humans, there

is evidence that certain regions

of our brain deal specifically withperipersonal space For instance,some people who have strokes

in the right posterior parietallobe cannot sense peripersonalstimuli on the left side of theirbody, but can perceive things further away on that side in the normal way

“This suggests that there is a

representation similar to those found in monkeys in the human brain,” says Arvid Guterstam

of the Karolinska Institute

in Stockholm, Sweden Now, Guterstam and his colleagues have tricked humans into feeling our peripersonal space.They turned to the classic rubber hand illusion, in which

a paintbrush is used to stroke a volunteer’s hand hidden from view and an adjacent, visible rubber hand, at the same time, speed and place on both Within minutes, most people report feeling the brush on the rubber hand as if it belonged to them

In the new study, which involved

101 adults, the researchers never brushed the rubber hand directly Instead, they moved the brush above it, again at the same time

as brushstrokes that touched the real hand Most volunteers reported feeling a “magnetic force” or “force field” between the paintbrush and the rubber hand below – as if the brush was encountering an invisible barrier The volunteers also felt a sense

of ownership of the fake hand

(Cognition, doi.org/bkc9).

For decades, neuroscience has filled in our knowledge of the special buffer zone around the body, says Graziano “Now

we have a clever way to get at the phenomenon.” ■

We can sense our

invisible force field

–There’s something in the air–

IMAGINE if each of these words

had their own taste or colour For

synaesthetes – a small proportion

of people whose senses intertwine –

this is the stuff of every day Now a

new form of synaesthesia has been

discovered – one that moves beyond

written language to sign language.

In theory, any two senses can

overlap “People with synaesthesia

experience the ordinary world in

extraordinary ways,” says Jamie

to have corresponding colours

An individual synaesthete may always associate the letter A with the colour pink, for instance This type of synaesthesia has been found across many written languages, prompting Ward’s team to wonder

if it can also apply to sign language.

They recruited 50 volunteers with the type of synaesthesia that links colours with letters, around half of whom were fluent in sign language

All the participants watched a video

of someone signing and were asked

if it triggered any colours.

Of those that understood sign language, four did associate colours with the signed letters – and the colour was the same as the shade they saw for the written version of each

letter (Neurocase, doi.org/bkhn)

However, those who didn’t understand sign language did not associate any colours with the gestures This suggests that it is the meaning of letters and other

symbols that is important for triggering other sensations – the action is not enough by itself Most of those in the study who knew sign language were not hard

of hearing and had learned to sign

in later life This implies that their synaesthesia adapted to this new form of language, says Ward “It tells

us that synaesthesia is not fixed in early life – exposure can bring new synaesthesia,” he says.

“The results are consistent with the idea that synaesthesia

is predominantly mediated by conceptual links,” says Anina Rich

at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia Jessica Hamzelou ■

Professor Dame Carol Robinson

2015 Laureate for United Kingdom

h roughout the world, exceptional women are at the heart of major scientii c advances

For 17 years, L’Oréal has been running the L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women In Science programme, honouring exceptional women from around the world Over 2000 women from over 100 countries have received our support to continue to move science forward and inspire future generations.

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12 | NewScientist | 9 July 2016

Mika McKinnon, Promontory, Utah

THEY call it the most powerful

rocket ever built NASA’s Space

Launch System (SLS) is designed

to carry astronauts on deep

space missions, and is about to

undergo its final ground test at a

facility belonging to the rocket’s

manufacturer, Orbital ATK

I’m at the private viewing area,

dotted with trailers, giant white

tents, and an enormous video

screen The obligatory countdown

clock stands on a nearby hill,

red numbers glowing in the low

morning light

A single rocket booster is just

2 kilometres away – as close as we

can safely get The booster is tied

down on its side, nozzle pointed

into a human-cut ravine that will

contain its flames When the SLS

launches for its first test flight

in 2018, two of these will provide

75 per cent of its lifting power

It’s 8.05 am on 28 June, the

scheduled time for the test,

but the booster is silent The

countdown clock is frozen

because of a delay caused by a

glitch in the booster’s monitoring

system As we wait for a simple

parts swap, the tents fill with

visiting dignitaries sheltering

from the blazing sun

The test is a straightforward

one: does the booster fire for 2

minutes and 6 seconds, then stop?

If so it will pass, and everything

else is just details But those

details are important More than

530 sensors will help the post-test

analysis team pick apart every

aspect of its behaviour One team

is even devoted to the world’s

worst jigsaw puzzle: reassembling

a styrofoam plug, currently

jammed into the exhaust nozzle

Designed to control pressure for

the first few seconds, the plugwill mostly disintegrate as soon

as the booster ignites

Although the SLS will be thelargest rocket the world has everknown, it will be some time before

it claims that crown The rocketI’m about to see go off is morepowerful than the space shuttlebooster it’s based on, but its firsttest flight with an empty Orioncrew capsule in 2018 will haveonly half the lifting power of theretired Saturn V rockets that sentastronauts to the moon

Essential upgrades

To get more thrust, NASA plansfirst to upgrade the SLS’s upperstage rocket for a second test flight

in 2023, when Orion will carry acrew After that, the booster itselfwill need an upgrade to be able topropel explorers into deep space

That’s the plan – the elephant

in the room is whether the projectwill keep getting the fundingand policy support it needs

What’s more, the technology tokeep humans alive in the harsh

radiation of deep space doesn’t even exist yet NASA’s previous deep space project, Constellation,died a quiet death the last time the US administration changed

With election season looming, will the SLS survive the whims

of a new president?

No one is really worrying aboutthat right now At 9.05 am, the lastfew seconds count down on the clock, and the rocket flames intolife right on cue Cheers erupt asthe flame extends, the booster quickly and visibly reaching full ignition At first, it’s unnervinglysilent, a physics lesson brought tolife that light is faster than sound

A beat later, the shock waveliterally hits us, accompanied

by a roar that just doesn’t end.This isn’t like a launch, in which the blast fades as the rocket tears away into the sky The booster is locked into its ravine backstopped

by solid rock Inside its engine,gases heat to over 3000 °C,

enough to boil steel The noisecontinues, unleashing a tower

of smoke as my heart thumps

in counter-rhythm to a bass line

I could never hope to match.And then it’s over, flame sputtering out as a cooling arm swings into the nozzle, silence returning as the staggeringly tall smoke clouds start to feather in the gentle breeze Later, when I can get up close to the booster, I learn that spent propellant reeks

of burning tyres, offset by the scents of sun-warmed dirt and bruised sagebrush

I can spot wild grins on the face of every Orbital employee and every NASA visitor The SLS’s boosters have passed the test and are ready for launch Everything from here on in is just details ■

THIS WEEK

Close encounters

of the rocket kind

–There she glows–

“It’s unnervingly silent at first – light is faster than sound Then the shock wave literally hits us”

From parallel universes to photosynthesis, entanglement WRbHQFU\SWLRQFRPSXWLQJWRFDWVDQGbPXFKPRUH

%X\\RXUFRS\IURPDOOJRRGPDJD]LQHUHWDLOHUVRUGLJLWDOO\ )LQGRXWPRUHDW newscientist.com/TheCollection

EXPLORE THE

QUANTUM

WORLD

14 | NewScientist | 9 July 2016

COLD sores, begone! Gene editing

could wipe out the herpes viruses

that hide inside us

Almost all of us carry a form

of herpes virus, which can cause

cold sores and shingles as well as

being implicated in blindness,

birth defects and cancer

As yet, we can’t completely rid

ourselves of them, because we

have no way of targeting the

viruses when they are dormant

But messing with their DNAmight do the trick Robert JanLebbink at the University MedicalCenter Utrecht in the Netherlandsand his team have been

experimenting with CRISPR,

a gene-editing technique thatcuts DNA When this happens, anorganism usually repairs its DNA,but this process often introducesmutations Such errors might beenough to disable a virus

When they used CRISPR on cellsinfected with Epstein-Barr virus –

a herpes virus associated withsome cancers – they found thatcutting the viral DNA in one spothalved viral activity, and cutting

it in two places led to 95 per cent

of dormant viruses being lost

from the cells (PLoS Pathogens,

doi.org/bkhs)

“We could efficiently removethe latent genome from infectedcells, essentially curing cells fromtheir invader,” says Lebbink

Lazy bears prefer garbage

dumps to forest foraging

GARBAGE dumps are turning bears into couch potatoes.

A survey of brown bears in north-east Turkey has

revealed how visiting a dump has completely changed

local bears’ lifestyles The bears that visited the dump

became more sedentary, no longer migrating and

foraging over the same distance as those that didn’t.

“It’s surprising that two substantially distinct

lifestyles can develop and coexist within a small

and isolated subpopulation,” says Gabriele Cozzi

of Zurich University in Switzerland This is a first for

brown bears, he says, although such distinctions

have been found within groups of black bears.

Cozzi and his team radio-tagged 16 bears, then followed their movement for an average of 10 months, and up to 20 months They found that the 10 “dump bears” — seven males and three females — did not stray far from the dump, except to hibernate during the winter.

By contrast, the remaining six wild bears —three males, three females — that never visited the dump ventured far and wide These bears migrated an average of

165 kilometres each year in search of food, especially in the period prior to hibernation, when they were probably

“fattening up” (Journal of Zoology, doi.org/bkhx).

The local authority in the Sarikamis city is now planning to close the dump The danger is that the dump bears will then venture into the city for easy snacks.

Giving herpes viruses the snip

Off-world lightning now predictable

IT’S the first interplanetarylightning forecast A team ofastronomers led by GabriellaHodosán at the University of

St Andrews, UK, has extrapolatedobservations of storms onEarth to predict lightning onexoplanets

Volcanic exoplanets probablyhave electrically chargedatmospheres, with the dust fromeruptions setting off lightningbolts, says Hodosán To modelone such world, Kepler-10b –which could have a surface made

up entirely of volcanoes – theteam used data from lightningduring the eruptions of MountRedoubt, Alaska, in 2009 andEyjafjallajökull, Iceland, in 2010.The results suggest that ifKepler-10b is mostly volcanic, itshould experience between 100million and 2 trillion lightningflashes in the 2 hours it takes totravel across its star, as seen fromEarth (arxiv.org/abs/1606.09172)

Rafting sea slugs conquer the oceans

IF THEY had sailing skills likethese, Nemo and Dory wouldn’tkeep losing each other

Unlike most sea slugs that crawl

on coral reefs, the nudibranch

Fiona pinnata lives on the go These

seafaring sea slugs live on floatingislands of debris, eating gooseneckbarnacles and drifting with thecurrents As a result, they span theglobe – yet a genetic analysis nowshows they are still closely related

It seems rafting helps slugs find

each other (Invertebrate Systematics, doi.org/bkn8).

They travel on anything thatfloats: uprooted mats of kelp,plastic – even turtles “There’s always stuff out there for them to live on,” says the study’s co-author Jonathan Waters at the University

of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

IN BRIEF

Frigatebirds ride

clouds to gain lift

EASY riders The great frigatebirds

can fly for weeks without a break,

mostly cruising over the ocean

looking for food near the surface.

“Frigatebirds are really strange,”

says Henri Weimerskirch at the

Centre for Biological Studies, Chizé,

France Unlike other birds that travel

over the sea, such as albatrosses,

their feathers lack waterproof oil,

so they can’t take a break on the

water Instead, they save energy by

coasting for kilometres while

minimising wingbeats.

Weimerskirch’s team tracked the

migrations of 49 frigatebirds native

to Europa Island in the Mozambique

Channel throughout the Indian

Ocean using tiny data loggers They

found some flights lasted up to

63 days without a rest Only alpine

swifts can fly for longer Juveniles

travelled the farthest, with one

chalking up 55,000 kilometres in

185 days with only four days’ rest

on islands (Science, doi.org/bkht).

Unlike other birds, most of which

avoid clouds because of their

turbulence, frigatebirds seem to

seek them out to ride on the strong

updrafts under cumulus clouds in

the open ocean to gain altitude

They usually climb to the base of

the cloud layer, about 700 metres

up, before entering a long

descending glide They don’t flap on

the climb, so this may also be when

they catch a snooze

See the heavens and honour the dead

THOUSANDS of years before the invention of the telescope, prehistoric people may have built observatories underground to espy faint stars

Passage graves, common throughout western Europe, from Portugal to Scandinavia, are subterranean tombs connected to the outside by a long, straight corridor Now archaeoastronomers are making the case that they could also have been used for spotting stars at dawn, when they would otherwise be too faint to see

The tombs would enhance vision

because someone looking skywards from the depths of the tomb would find the corridor walls blocking out most of the ambient light The viewer’s eyes would also be adapted

to the dark.

This would allow knowledgeable observers to see stars at morning twilight as they come into view for the first time each year, having previously been below the horizon, says Fabio Silva at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David in the UK Silva presented the theory at the National Astronomy Meeting in Nottingham last week.

It’s a cosmic game of seek The way to find advancedextraterrestrial civilisationscould be to look for stars or evengalaxies that have vanishedwithout trace, as anything sooutlandish could only be down tolife far more intelligent than us

hide-and-Beatriz Villarroel at UppsalaUniversity in Sweden and hercolleagues scoured multiplenight-sky surveys by eye, to seewhether any of nearly 300,000light sources disappeared fromone survey to the next (arxiv.org/

abs/1606.08992)

The team found one interestingartefact that looks like it mighthave gone, but they can’t be sure

“We neither could reject it andneither could we say that it was areal candidate,” says Villarroel

Even if the disappearance isreal, there could be a conventionalexplanation Quasars, the brightcentres of galaxies powered bysupermassive black holes, canshut down in less than a decadeand dim drastically Stars, too, can

Villarroel and her colleaguesinvoke sci-fi writer Arthur C.Clarke’s third law: “Anysufficiently advanced technology

is indistinguishable from magic.”

If they can confirm that a starhas vanished without anaccompanying supernova, orthat a galaxy has gone from view,there’s simply no physicalexplanation, save for aliens

Now you see it, now you don’t… oh, that’s just aliens at work

Gut bug thrives

on brain chemical

IT’S food for thought A bacterium recently discovered in our gutdepends on a neurotransmitterfor its survival – which could help explain why our microbiome seems to affect mood

Philip Strandwitz and his team

at Northeastern University in Boston found that they could only culture a type of bacteria called KLE1738 if they gave it GABA, a molecule crucial for calmingbrain activity “Nothing made

it grow, except GABA,” said Strandwitz, who announced the finding at the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in Boston in June

GABA inhibits signals from nerve cells, and an abnormally low level of it is linked todepression and other mooddisorders A study in 2011 foundthat another gut bacterium,

Lactobacillus rhamnosus, candramatically alter GABA activity

in the brains of mice, as well asinfluence how they respond

to stress

Strandwitz is now looking forother gut bacteria that directlyalter GABA levels Such workmay eventually lead to new treatments for disorders like depression or anxiety

16 | NewScientist | 9 July 2016

TEENAGE pregnancies have hit

record lows in the Western world,

largely thanks to increased use of

contraceptives of all kinds But

strangely, we don’t really know

what hormonal contraceptives –

pills, patches and injections that

contain synthetic sex hormones –

are doing to the developing bodies

and brains of teenage girls

You’d be forgiven for assuming

that we do After all, the pill has

been around for more than

50 years It has been throughmany large trials assessing itseffectiveness and safety, as havethe more recent patches andrings, and the longer-lastingimplants and injections

But those studies were done inadult women – very few have been

in teenage girls And biologically, there is a big difference

At puberty, our bodies undergo

an upheaval as our hormones go haywire It isn’t until our 20s that

things settle down and our brains and bones reach maturity

“If a drug is going to be given to

11 and 12-year-olds, it needs to be tested in 11 and 12-year-olds,” says Joe Brierley of the clinical ethics committee at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London

Legislation introduced in the US

in 2003 and in Europe in 2007 wasintended to make this happen but

a New Scientist investigation can

reveal that there is still scant data

on what contraceptives actually

do to developing girls The few studies that have been done suggest that tipping the balance

of oestrogen and progesterone during this time may have far-reaching effects, although there

is not yet enough data to say whether we should be alarmed

It is estimated that around aquarter of girls aged between

15 and 19 in the US are using hormonal contraceptives Girls younger than 15 are also prescribed them, often to regulate their periods, or to help with period pain or acne Fourteen per cent of pill users say they are taking the drug for exclusively non-contraceptive reasons “Girls can be prescribed contraceptives

as young as 9,” says Andrea Bonny

of Nationwide Children’s Hospital

in Columbus, Ohio

It is common practice to extrapolate results gleaned from adults in clinical trials to children Pharmacologists use models to

predict the scaled-down dosethat might be appropriate for a younger person

It is estimated that this has resulted in over half the drugs prescribed to babies, children and young people having never been tested in those groups The laws that came into force in 2003 and

2007 have started to take effect formany drugs, but not for birthcontrol – the US National Institutes

of Health, for example, funds a contraceptive trial network but still excludes under 18s “I suspect it’s political,” says Bonny, who has been running her own, small-scale

The contraception deception

Thousands of teenage girls worldwide take hormonal contraception But we don’t

actually know what this does to their bodies, says Jessica Hamzelou

US using contraception

Source CDC, 2006-2010

9 July 2016 | NewScientist | 17

research projects “No one wants

to test contraceptives in minors.”

Bonny has been involved in

investigating whether an

injectable drug called depot

medroxyprogesterone acetate

(DMPA) or Depo-Provera, which is

promoted to teenagers, causes

bone loss Bone is built up and

broken down throughout life, but

overall bone density increases in

adolescence, stabilises in middle

age, and then declines

The bare bones

Several studies have suggested

that rather than gaining bone,

teenagers taking Depo-Provera

experience bone density loss of

somewhere between 5 to 7 per

cent, if they have been taking it for

more than two years Although

there are no big studies on

whether this results in more

fractures later in life, the drug

now comes with a warning label

in the US There is some evidence

that teens who stop having the

shot recover the lost bone, but we

don’t know if they reach optimum

bone density, says Bonny

There are other potential issues

Some hormonal contraceptives

cause weight gain This might be

because of the changes in

hormone levels they create, says

Kelly Klump at Michigan State

University in East Lansing The

normal fluctuation of hormones

across the menstrual cycle

triggers an increased appetite

before a period starts “Essentially

what [hormonal] contraceptives

do is increase this phase,” says

Klump She is investigating if the

drugs cause women to binge eat

Either way, weight put on when

you are young can be harder to

shift further down the line “My

suspicion is body composition

changes are going to have

long-term consequences for obesity

and metabolism,” says Bonny

That hunch is based on what we

know about how the female brain

develops during puberty The

swings in oestrogen and

progesterone that result in

irregular periods, mood swingsand acne also cause the death ofbrain cells This sounds dramaticbut it’s a normal developmentalprocess known as pruning, whichsculpts certain brain circuits intotheir adult form, including theone governing metabolism

Hormonal contraceptivessuppress the release of thebody’s own versions, so teens

on the pill may miss out on thisroller-coaster ride “You’reimposing an adult hormoneregimen on someone who maynot experience it for another fewyears,” says Cheryl Sisk atMichigan State University

This means less painfulperiods, but there could also be

an effect on pruning This couldhave consequences not only forbody weight, but also for otherthings regulated by the sculptedbrain circuits – sexual behaviourand how a person processesrewards, which is linked tosubstance abuse, says Sisk

“It could have long-lasting,maybe permanent effects.”

Kathryn Clancy of theUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign says imposingadult levels of sex hormones

on teenagers may disrupt thedevelopment of the body’shormone control system, which

is set during adolescence “If yougive teenagers hormones, you’re

potentially setting a different

‘normal’ for the ovaries,” saysClancy She suspects this maysignal premature development

But the consequences areunclear – the effects might even

be beneficial for all we know

“I’ve tried to research this, butwhat’s frustrated me is the lack ofresearch on adolescent hormonalcontraceptive use,” says Clancy

There is no doubt thathormonal contraceptives havehad a massive positive impact

The fall in teen pregnancies inrecent years – down 50 per centsince 1999 in the UK, and 40 percent between 2004 and 2014 inthe US – is thought to have huge

implications for young women,

in terms of their health, educationand future financial stability –

as well as those of their children.But often the choice of whichcontraceptive doctors shouldprescribe to teens comes down to

which a person feels comfortabletaking, or which they can betrusted to use properly Theseshouldn’t be the only factors,say the researchers

A study carried out almost

30 years ago found that women

of different ethnicities respond differently to varying doses of hormonal contraceptives Others suggest that lower doses might be sufficient in teenagers, especially those who are using the drugs for reasons other than safe sex Tweaking the ratio of hormones

in a contraceptive might also make them more suitable for teens Oestrogen helps build up bone, while progesterone breaks

it down And while oestrogen can increase the risk of blood clots, the risk from this is lower for teenagers with their youthful blood vessels than it is for adults But without trials, there is no way

of knowing what will work best ■

For daily news stories, visit newscientist.com/news

TEENAGE TRIALS

There are many reasons why companies, individuals and funding organisations are reluctant to test contraceptives in teens Andrea Bonny, a physician in Columbus, Ohio, says she gets angry letters when she advertises for young study participants, with many writers feeling that she is encouraging teenagers to have sex “We are inundated with negative comments”

When children participate in clinical trials, their parents must give consent But teenagers might not want to tell their parents they are taking contraceptives, says Dirk

Mentzer, chair of the European Medicines Agency’s Paediatric Committee (PDCO), which assesses clinical trials that involve children

“This is one reason why the PDCO is not pressing organisations to run these studies,” he says

Some countries oppose testing contraceptives in children for cultural reasons, says Mentzer

And many research ethics committees will only support a clinical trial if the outcome is likely

to have a positive, measurable effect

on health – something that is hard to read in a trial of contraceptives

What teens choose

Sexually active girls between the ages of 15 and 19 in the US use many methods

Condom Withdr aw

al Pill

Patc

h Ring

Implan t

Emer gency

con

traction Depo-Pr

overa injection Fertility

awar

eness

Intraut

erine

device

57% Sexually active girls aged 16-19 in the UK using contraception

Source ONS, 2008-2009

18 | NewScientist | 9 July 2016

A question of Curiosity

Should contamination fears stop us from sending a Mars rover to

sites where water and life may exist, asks Dirk Schulze-Makuch

SINCE the Mars rover Curiosity

landed near Mount Sharp in 2012,

an orbiter has spotted features

that might be caused by seasonal

flows of water on the peak’s

slopes Should Curiosity be sent

to take a closer look? NASA is

considering this question now

If liquid water is periodically

present, it would make these

places so-called “special regions”,

which enjoy a higher status under

planetary-protection guidelines

Only rovers and landers that have

been rigorously sterilised, unlike

Curiosity, are supposed to

examine them, to avoid possible

contamination from microbes

that hitched a ride from Earth

But does maintaining this rule

make sense? NASA is planning

human missions to Mars in the

2030s, which makes

contamination ever more likely

And those missions will aim to

exploit water sources on the Red

Planet, so shouldn’t we do all we can to find out what the first astronauts there will encounter?

In any case, we must recognise that Mars has already been contaminated, both from non- or poorly sterilised spacecraft and the earlier interplanetary transfer

of life by asteroid impacts, ejecting rocks from Earth that later landed on Mars

The latter must have occurred many times on a much warmer and wetter Mars in the early history of the solar system If so, life that came from Earth might

be widespread there

Even if life on Mars originated independently, it would have been exposed to terrestrial cousins long ago

Fears of a takeover by new arrivals are overblown The Martian environment is extreme and sterilising at the surface, and hitch-hikers would be pounded by

Automatically good

Ensuring robots evoke empathy is vital as they

take their place in society, says Jamais Cascio

AN ELECTRIC buggy’s brakes fail,

sending it into the street where it

blocks traffic; it’s the third time

this has happened and its owners

say they will scrap it Bystanders

nod and get on with their day

A dog slips its leash, running

into the street where it blocks

traffic; it’s the third time and its

owners say they are going to put

the dog down Bystanders are understandably horrified

Last month, Russian robot Promobot wandered out of its testing and programming facilityfor the third time, blocking trafficwhen its battery ran out in the street Its owners expected the first kind of reaction when they said they were going to scrap it

Instead, they got the second

This backlash should not have come as a surprise They gave Promobot a wide face and large eyes, infant-like traits that the human brain is wired to see as

“cute” and non-threatening

Seeing as the bot was intended for customer relations, its makers wanted to invoke a friendly, empathetic reaction to the machine That’s what they got

By hijacking our preprogrammed response in this

way, robot designers around the world have begun to expand our circle of empathy And while complications are possible, in the long run this is a good thing.Most of this is superficial at present, emerging from big eyes

or movements that echo appealing animal behaviours, but engineers have already begun to experiment with more complex phenomena.Ultimately, the more empathy

we have for the robots we share our lives with, the better Treating robots as companions rather than servants will benefit our

relationships with increasingly sophisticated intelligent machines and with other people

“Promobot has a wide face and large eyes, infant-like traits that the human brain

is wired to see as cute”

Michael Le PageBREXIT may be bad in many ways, butthere’s a very faint glimmer of a silverlining If the UK leaves the EuropeanUnion, it may not necessarily be adisaster for the environment despitethat being the general consensusbefore the vote Here are three ways

But plenty of British MPs andbusinesses want the UK to remain inthe single market If the UK had a new arrangement like Norway’s, it would still be bound by almost all EU laws, but would have no say in them

This might sound like a bad thing, but in recent years, the UK has blocked

or diluted many EU environmental regulations For instance, prime

minister David Cameron blocked anattempt to introduce rules to stopfrackers polluting the environment

or triggering too many earthquakes

Future EU environment laws may bestronger if the UK has no input

2 Losing the Common AgriculturalPolicy could benefit wildlife

Nearly half the EU’s budget is spent onthe Common Agricultural Policy (CAP),which sees £3.5 billion go to UKlandowners every year To qualify, landdoesn’t actually have to be farmed – itjust has to be kept bare, as if ready forplanting or grazing This system means

unused land that could providevaluable habitats for wildlife is often kept barren instead

After a Brexit, many had assumed that the UK government would start doling out cash to landowners instead, as promised by some Leave campaigners But hard financial times could well mean that the government

reduces or halts these subsidies.This could make it hard for many farmers to continue Those that do are likely to be pushed to use more intensive, less-wildlife-friendly, farming practices But overall, the end of the CAP may lead to more land in the UK supporting wildlife-rich habitats, because landowners would no longer have an incentive to keep bare areas that could be valuable to wildlife

3 The failing carbon trading scheme could be fixed

The pound isn’t the only thing whose value is falling The cost of polluting the atmosphere with carbon dioxide also plummeted after the vote British politicians were instrumental

in persuading the EU to set up the Emissions Trading System in 2005, which enables big emitters like power plants to buy the right to pollute The ETS is supposed to be the main mechanism for reducing carbon emissions in the EU, but it has failed

It has delivered an emissions price that

is both too low and too volatile to bring about significant reductions – the price crash in response to Brexit is yet more evidence of the system’s flaws.What we need instead is a steadily rising price for polluting, to encourage long-term investment in emissions-reducing technology While the UK could still remain part of the ETS after Brexit, it will lose its influence With its voice gone, there could be a better chance for reform ■

Brexitdoesn’thaveto doomtheenvironment

“The UK has blocked many

EU laws Future regulations may be stronger if

the country has no say”

For more opinion articles, visit newscientist.com/opinion

radiation and exposed to huge

temperature swings, reactive

minerals and nasty chemicals

Survival is not impossible,

but the chances are remote

Our current best sterilisation

methods for spacecraft are

prohibitively costly and not

100 per cent effective – so Earth’s

toughest microbes can make the

journey to Mars anyway

In effect, this mean that no

spacecraft is likely to go any time

soon to a place on Mars where

life could exist

Planetary protection is, of

course, extremely important,

but the emphasis should be on

protecting our own planet

Searching for life on Mars is safer

than bringing samples back to

Earth, risking contamination of

our planet What’s more, the risk

of mistaking a terrestrial

hitch-hiker for a Martian is tiny

Current planetary-protection

policy is too restrictive It is not

allowing us to go to places that are

interesting and where we might

find life We should change it and

let Curiosity take this chance to

examine what could be seasonal

water flows ■

Dirk Schulze-Makuch is a professor of

ecohydrology at Washington State

University and a visiting professor at

the Technical University of Berlin

Studies show that people who

mistreat animals in their youth

are more likely to mistreat other

people as adults We may well see

a point where abusing a robot

without regard for its apparent

affection or pain will serve as a

similar warning

And when the day comes that

robot minds are complex and

aware enough to recognise abuse,

I’d rather not see the appearance

of resentment as a newly

emergent property ■

Jamais Cascio is a distinguished fellow

at the Institute for the Future in

California, and writes about the impact

of innovation at Open the Future

Water contains so many organisms that it is difficult to count them.

Conor Gearin explores a way to do it using the code of life itself

THE Mekong river teems with life

as it flows to the South China Sea

But the unique species found here

are under threat from plans to

build hydropower dams along the

river A new environmental

monitoring technique may help

limit the damage, by quickly

counting all the species upstream

using only DNA pulled out of the

river That information could be

used to influence dam locations at

the planning stage

Traditional surveying methods

would take years to identify

ecological hotspots that dams

should avoid – time developers

don’t want to waste “There’s no

way you’re going to sample that

[large an area] with the

traditional methods,” says

Douglas Yu at the Kunming

Institute of Zoology in China

Yu hopes to speed up surveying

by gathering the fragments of

DNA littered throughout theenvironment and identifying thespecies they belong to with DNAsequencing He wants to work withChinese ecologists to carry out

“eDNA surveys” in the Mekong,building up a picture of whererare and vulnerable species live

The idea is based on recentresearch that suggests every riveracts as a conveyor belt for geneticmaterial released from cells shedfrom the species living there –what’s called environmental DNA(eDNA) Identifying species likethis – in much the same way thatmicrobiologists use DNAsequencing to identify bacteria in

a sample – could revolutionisewildlife surveys This would allowbiologists to quickly detect many

of the species in an ecosystem

The technique works wellfor identifying aquatic species

Last year, a team of European

ecologists sampled water fromstreams and ponds in France andthe Netherlands for DNA, thencross-referenced their results withextensive traditional surveys Theylooked for fish by eye and caughtfrogs and salamanders in nets

When they compared the results,they found that eDNA showed asmany or more fish species at

89 per cent of the sites they visited

“With the techniques we are using, we obtain all the fish species,including the very rare ones,” saysPierre Taberlet at the Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France, who carried out the test

The eDNA survey worked well for amphibians, too: at every

survey site, the team found as many or more amphibian species through eDNA as they did through the traditional survey That’s because many well-hidden species are hard to find by eye It’s not just useful for water dwellers: eDNA found in rivers could also give a picture of land-dwelling creatures A group led

by Kristy Deiner at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, sequenced the eDNA found in samples from eight sites in the Glatt river system in Switzerland They turned up 296 families of organisms – everything from aquatic worms and shellfish to plants and fungi that lived on the land around the Glatt

Taberlet isn’t sure that rivereDNA sampling is good enough

to survey all the land in a river’s watershed “You’re at risk of missing a lot of species,” he says

In addition, Deiner’s team only identified organisms to the family level, not to species “What can you do with identification at just the family level for biodiversity research? I think there is some improvement to do,” he says.The sheer scale of rivers gives them potential as environmental monitoring systems, says Si Creer

at Bangor University in the UK

“You could almost use the rivers

as an ecological pulse to try tofind out how what we’re doing

on the land is reflected in the biodiversity of the river,” he says

He also points out that eDNAsurveys overcome the problem

in using taxonomists to identify all of an ecosystem’s species: no one’s knowledge is complete

“Even a team of taxonomistscan only look at the diversity of

a community within the limit of what they’re able to do,” he says

Yu says eDNA surveys could make wildlife monitoring cheaper, faster and more available

to those with fewer resources

“The world is just permeated with DNA,” he says “You just have to collect it and sequence it in the right way, and then you get a much better view of life.” ■

–Threat to fish–

“The world is permeated with DNA Collect it and sequence it and you get a much better view of life”

For more technology stories, visit newscientist.com/technology

THEY can be as hard to read as people

Artificially intelligent systems may

make good decisions, but their

thought process is utterly inscrutable

In one important area, though, we

are cracking that black box open and

peering inside It turns out that

humans and machines don’t pay

attention to the same things when

they look at pictures – not at all.

Researchers at Facebook and

Virginia Tech in Blacksburg got

humans and machines to answer

simple questions about images, a task

that neural-network-based artificial

intelligence can handle But it wasn’t

the answers that were of interest The

team wanted to map the areas that

humans and AIs focus on, in order to

shed a little light on the differences

between us and them.

“These attention maps are

something we can measure in both

humans and machines, which is pretty

rare,” says Lawrence Zitnick at

Facebook AI Research in Menlo Park,

California Comparing the two could

yield insights “into whether computers

are looking in the right place”.

First, Zitnick and his colleagues

asked online workers on Amazon

Mechanical Turk to answer queries about a set of pictures, such as “What

is the man doing?” or “What number

of cats are lying on the bed?” Each picture was blurred, and the worker had to click around to sharpen it

Mapping those clicks was a guide to which parts of the picture they paid attention to.

The researchers then put the same questions to two neural networks trained to interpret images, and

monitored the areas each network chose to sharpen and explore.

On a scale where 1 represents total overlap and 0 is none, the attention maps from any two humans had an average overlap score of 0.63, whereas AI and human attention maps had a lower score of 0.26 (arxiv.org/abs/1606.03556)

Despite the discrepancy, neural networks are pretty good at deciding what an image shows, so there remains an element of mystery to

Machines just don’t

see the world as we do

their skill “Machines do not seem to

be looking at the same regions as humans, which suggests that we do not understand what they are basing their decisions on,” says Dhruv Batra

at Virginia Tech.

This gap between humans and machines could be a useful source

of inspiration for researchers looking

to refine their neural nets “Can we make them more human-like, and will that translate to higher accuracy?”

The results intrigue Jürgen Schmidhuber at the Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence Research in Manno, Switzerland

“Selective attention is all about actively filling gaps in the attentive observer’s knowledge,” he says

But Schmidhuber cautions that the test results don’t mean we should

be rushing to build systems that exactly mimic human attention

Humans have wider experience and knowledge than neural nets, and

so are better at focusing on what matters “What’s interesting to one system may be boring to another that already knows it.” Aviva Rutkin ■

“Neural networks’ focus is different from ours, so there’s a mystery to their skill at figuring out images”

–How many towers? Show workings–

ONE PER CENT

160,000

The number of ticketsoverturned by a chatbotcalled DoNotPay which fightstraffic tickets automatically

AI spots dodgy cargo

The world trades more goods every day as our population grows How are human inspectors supposed to keep up with the bad guys? Researchers at University College London have trained a neural network to spot cars hidden

in shipping containers, using X-ray data Illicit cars are often involved

in export fraud and smuggling,

so being able to find them tucked away in a container is helpful The team’s technique spotted hidden cars 100 per cent of the time, with just one false positive

Always with you

Peace of mind for parents?

A start-up called Jiobit in Chicago

is launching a tiny wearable designed to help you keep track

of your children The device clips

on to clothing, and the battery lasts a week The idea is that children will be freer to roam and explore out of sight of their parents, who can track each child’s whereabouts on a smartphone Jiobit calls this device an “invisible”.

it began But what does it mean?

Nigel Wallbridge doesn’t know,but wants to find out He’s a co-founder of Switzerland-basedVivent, whose device is giving

my peace lily an electronic voice

Electricity is an important way

of sending messages throughout

a plant But scientists know littleabout how and why plants usethese signals Wallbridge hopeshis new device, called PhytlSigns,will help us to understand andmanage them better

The device measures voltage inplants using two electrodes, oneinserted into the soil and the otherattached to a leaf or stem Whenthe speaker squeals, it means thevoltage is changing: the higherthe wail, the faster the change

Software then collects the voltagedata so it can be studied later

“When and why a plant useselectrical signals, and their role

in plant communication, is not

well understood,” says GerhardObermeyer, a plant biophysicist atthe University of Salzburg, Austria

Edward Farmer, a plant biologist

at the University of Lausanne inSwitzerland, has attempted toverify that the signals detected bythe device are really coming fromthe plants In a lab, he recordedelectrical events in plants inresponse to being wounded, thentested how PhytlSigns reacted

to the signals “The PhytlSignsdevice picked these signals upvery well,” he says “The devicealso detects smaller signals,most of which have no knownbiological function.”

Obermeyer is not fullyconvinced of the measurementmerits of PhytlSigns.“Whensprayed with water, the plantimmediately responds withvoltage changes These electricalsignals are just too fast and are notgenerated by the plant,”he says

My peace lily starts to behaveoddly around mid-morning

It suddenly becomes moreanimated, with the speaker

emitting excited whoops andwobbles It makes me jump, and

I wonder what’s going on in there

As far as I can tell, the conditions in

my living room haven’t changed.Obermeyer suggests that the main signal detected by the device is electrical noise from the environment or the plant itself

“Without any useful algorithms orfiltering devices, any informationstays hidden in the noise,” he says.Wallbridge is hoping that the appeal of listening to your house plants will grab the imagination

of enough people to help fund improvements to the device and a large production run His Kickstarter campaign, which launched last week, aims to raise

$76,000 “Having thousands of plant lovers observing their plants and recording their signals will mean we can go much faster

in understanding plants,”

says Wallbridge

There was something nice about the electronic squeals emitted every time I walked past the lily – as if it knew I was there – but I don’t think I’ll keep my peace lily plugged in After a while, the plant started to bother me: it’s like having a vocally disruptive child in the room Eventually, I’m forced

to turn it off Penny Sarchet ■

–Sense the power–Listen in to the electric

voices of plants

THIS feels like an alien planet I’m

walking across the surface of a breast

cancer cell as drug nanoparticles

whizz past my head like spaceships

Suddenly, one crashes in front of me

and is sucked through the surface

It feels real – and in a sense, it is

The cell I am exploring in

virtual reality is not a conceptual

model John McGhee at the University

of New South Wales in Sydney,

Australia, and his colleagues have

used high-resolution

electron-microscope data to reconstruct a

real-life cancer cell from a human

breast in 3D CGI.

McGhee’s idea is that chemists

and cell biologists can explore cells

in virtual reality to get a better feel

for the minuscule environments they

are researching They could watch

simulations of the ways in which

nanoparticles are gobbled up by

cancer cells, for example, potentially

helping them design drugs.

The technology is immersive

When I take the goggles off, I’m

surprised to realise that I have been

padding around a 3-by-3-metre

patch of carpet for the last 5 minutes.

The next step is to find clinical

applications for the technology

McGhee’s lab is conducting a study

in which information from MRI and

CT scans is used to create 3D virtual

representations of the arteries of

people who have had strokes These

people can then walk through their

own arteries and see the size and

locations of cholesterol build-up

McGhee says he has had positive

feedback from the three people

who have tried this out “Before,

they would be looking at a 2D scan

in a doctor’s office, but now they

can actually see what’s going on.”

gobbled up by cancer cells

could help design drugs”

A career in science, it’s not always

what you think

From movie advisor to science

festival director, where will your

science career take you?

newscientist.com/jobs

24 | NewScientist | 9 July 2016

APERTURE

Shocking beauty

TALK about sparking someone’s interest The hazards of the High Voltage Lab at the Technical University of Denmark in Lyngby held a certain charm for photographer Alastair Philip Wiper

“It’s full of devices that to me looked like sculpture,” he says “You could be in a modern art museum.”

The lab runs tests on commercial products to see how well they cope with real-world power surges and lightning strikes – by delivering jolts

of up to 1.2 million volts.

The image on the far left shows Joachim Holbøll, deputy head of the lab, peering up at the giant impulse generator, which sends a massive electrical discharge between the two spheres

“Big stuff is always cool,” Wiper says “You can’t help but just go, ‘wow, human beings built this’.” Wiper likes to contrast the huge and impressive with the small and disregarded For four years, he has been developing a project with the working

title Unintended Beauty, showcasing scientific

and industrial objects with overlooked aesthetic appeal So he was intrigued by the collection of discarded electronic components in Holbøll’s office, such as the GE GL-833A triode (left) Triode vacuum tubes were the first devices able

to amplify electric signals, making it possible to develop appliances like radios and TVs.

But it was the triode’s odd shape rather than its historical importance that caught Wiper’s eye

“I quite like the fact that a lot of people won’t really know what it is,” he says “It looks like a 50s sci-fi robot or something.” Conor Gearin

Photographer

Alastair Philip Wiper

alastairphilipwiper.com

HUMILITY Empathy Selflessness.

These are qualities most of us associatewith being a “nice person” But beingnice doesn’t often help you in the fiercecompetition to get that job, win a project orsecure a promotion No one likes an egocentricbig-head but if, as they say, “you are your ownbrand”, perhaps in this modern world it pays

to be a bit narcissistic

The truth is that although narcissists may bedeluded, they can benefit from their inflatedself-image and desire for others to recognisetheir superiority We think we dislike them,but research shows we actually tend to judgethem as more confident, intelligent andattractive than other people This means theyare more successful in job interviews, morelikely to become leaders, and preferred bythe opposite sex There’s even evidence thatnarcissistic artists sell more and get higherprices for their work So if you’re strugglingwith work or a relationship, perhaps youshould become a bit more narcissistic

That’s not as laughable as it sounds A newunderstanding of narcissism suggests why,when and how it might be beneficial It points

to certain aspects of the trait that help peopleget on It reveals that when it comes to success

in life, there is a “right” and a “wrong” sort

of narcissism What’s more, we’re starting tounderstand how parents cultivate narcissismand self-esteem in their children There areeven hints about how adults lacking in self-love could learn to be a bit more narcissisticand promote “brand me” more successfully

Psychologists view narcissism as apersonality trait, existing as a continuum

on which all of us fall somewhere Someonewith an extreme form of the trait – narcissisticpersonality disorder – is not going to get ahead(unless becoming a dictator is a job optionwhere they live) Between 1 and 2 per cent ofpeople fall into this category Move along thenarcissism spectrum, though, and you get tothe “everyday” variety that you might see in

a friend or boss – particularly a male one,because research indicates that more menthan women are narcissists This kind ofperson is “self-absorbed – and potentiallyobnoxious – but not necessarily dysfunctional

or in need of therapy”, says Jens Lange at theUniversity of Cologne, Germany In terms

of the big five personality traits, they tend

to be extroverted, open and conscientious,not very neurotic and low on agreeableness.How a particular everyday narcissistcomes across, however, depends on whatsort of narcissist he or she is Psychologistsdistinguish between two forms:“vulnerable”and“grandiose” Vulnerable narcissists believethey are special, and want to be seen that way –but are just not that competent, or attractive

As a result, their self-esteem fluctuates a lot.They tend to be self-conscious and passive,but also prone to outbursts of potentiallyviolent aggression if their inflated self-image

is threatened Grandiose narcissists are moreconfident Their belief that they are superior

is unshakeable, even when it’s unwarranted.They can be pompous show-offs, but canalso be charming It is this type of narcissismthat’s more commonly found and studied

in the general population – and seems morelikely to bring benefits

Emily Grijalva at the University at Buffalo,part of the State University of New York,investigates narcissism in business and hasfound hints that a bit of it might indeed be agood thing Her team’s analysis of previousstudies reveals no association between high

or low levels of narcissism and success as

a leader But it does show that possessing

a “moderate” level of grandiose narcissism

is linked both to becoming a leader and tobeing an effective one

When it comes to getting the job, Grijalvathinks these people do well “because theyare perceived as attractive, charismatic,dominant and assertive” Once hired, theirsuccess depends on the ability to keep less

ALL ABOUT ME

Self-promotion comes naturally to narcissists, so should we all be stroking our egos, asks Emma Young

28 | NewScientist | 9 July 2016

socially acceptable narcissistic tendencies

in check while maintaining self-belief and adesire to lead “To be an effective leader, youneed to be self-confident enough that peoplewill want to follow you, but not so confidentthat you come across as a self-absorbed jerk,”

she says Such confidence, together with theability to convince others to follow your grandvision, motivates employees and encouragesoutside investors On an individual level,grandiose narcissists also report feelingemotionally stable and having a strongsense of well-being, she adds

There can, however, be downsides tomoderate grandiose narcissism Suchpeople can be charming but can also beselfish, exploitative and entitled, saysGrijalva This might help explain why theyare likely to make morally dubious decisions

Looking at data on 42 US presidents up toand including George W Bush, Ashley Watts

of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, andher colleagues found that those rated higherfor grandiose narcissism were judged as beinggreater presidents: they did better on rankings

of public persuasiveness, agenda-settingand the initiation of legislation, for example

However, they were also more likely to beseen as impulsive and bullying, and to faceimpeachment charges The study suggeststhat the benefits of grandiose narcissismstem largely from its association withextroversion, whereas the downside islargely due to lack of agreeableness

Not all grandiose narcissists seem able tocash in on the benefits of their personalitytrait, however.“Sometimes they can be disliked

by others,” says Lange To explore why thismight be, he and Jan Crusius, a colleague at theUniversity of Cologne, looked at research intopossible subgroups of grandiose narcissist

Some are characterised by “narcissisticadmiration”, others by“narcissistic rivalry”–

the former being driven by hope for success,the latter by fear of failure

The work of Lange and Crusius suggests thatthe difference between these groups and thesubsequent difference in likeability is down

to envy Narcissism is strongly associatedwith envy, and many vulnerable narcissists,

as well as some grandiose narcissists, show

“malicious” envy When a colleague wins apromotion, for example, they feel hostilitytowards that person This, according toCrusius and Lange, is the root of narcissisticrivalry Grandiose narcissists tend to have

a more positive sort of envy This “benign”

envy motivates them to improve themselvesrather than drag down the successful person

It’s what underpins narcissistic admiration,and makes such people more likeable Theyare also less prone to low self-esteem andneuroticism than people with narcissisticrivalry, making them less susceptible tothe anxiety and depression that can affect other narcissists

So there seem to be certain narcissistictraits that might be beneficial to many of us, but assuming we wanted to adjust our level

of narcissism, is it even possible to do that? There might be a clue in reports that reveal changing levels of narcissism

Narcissism is on the rise – in Western countries at least, according to a meta-analysis published in 2008 One of the main reasons may be that Western culture has becomeincreasingly focused on the self rather than

on relationships, says Eddie Brummelman,

a social and behavioural scientist at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands But the picture isn’t that straightforward Research published this year found thatentering adulthood during a time ofrecession – a reality for millions of peopleacross the Western world – is linked to lower narcissism in later life, at least in men

Nature and nurture

If nothing else, this suggests that our levels of narcissism are influenced by some surprising factors “Narcissism is relatively stable over time, like all personality traits,” saysBrummelman, “but it certainly can change.”

In fact, little is known about its origins It seems to emerge at around the age of 7, when children can evaluate themselves as people and compare themselves against others Twin studies indicate there is a genetic component, although we don’t know how many or which genes are involved Parenting style also seems

to play an important role

Last year, Brummelman and his colleagues, including Brad Bushman at Ohio StateUniversity in Columbus reported thatnarcissism is cultivated by parents who

“overvalue” – those who believe their child

is more special and more entitled thanothers Bushman has developed a ParentalOvervaluation Scale to explore the ideafurther It asks parents of children aged

8 to 12 to rate their level of agreement with statements such as “I would not be surprised

to learn that my child has extraordinary talents and abilities”, and “My child deserves something extra in life” Anyone with a child

in that age group can find out where they fall on the scale by taking the test online

HOW TO BE YOUR BEST

* Take 10 minutes before a meeting

or job interview to write about a time

you felt powerful People who did

this went on to fare better in a mock

business-school interview organised

by psychologists at the University of

Cologne, Germany.

* Sit up straight… In a study led by

Richard Petty of Ohio State University

in Columbus, people who wrote down

why they were qualified for a job

while sitting up straight went on to

believe more of these reasons than

people who wrote while slumped over

their desks

* … And stand tall Amy Cuddy at

Harvard University has shown the

power of “power posing” Volunteers

who stood with their hands on their

hips and shoulders back, or who sat

with an open, expansive posture for

just a few minutes before delivering a

speech as part of a mock job interview

performed better and were more

likely to be selected.

* Wear your lucky socks People

who brought in a “lucky charm” to

help them in a memory test run by

Lysann Damisch at the University of

Cologne did better than those without

charms They also set higher goals for

themselves This was because they

felt more confident, Damisch says.