New scientist 23 07

“It’s going to make conservationeasier, and it’s going to be easier tomitigate threats that come to thearea,” he says.. “It offers a window of hope that menopausal women will be able to

The grassroots fight to regain control

and what it means for you

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23 July 2016 | NewScientist | 3

This issue online

newscientist.com/issue/3083

Coming next week…

You are junk

It’s not our genes that make us human

Conquering the deep

The new golden age of ocean exploration

38 Ebola eyewitnessThe man who discovered the world’s deadliest virus

22 Pokémon Go awayBounds of virtual reality

34 No great shakes Stop a quake in its tracks

News

6 UPFRONT

Bald eagles starving in Florida SpaceXsends DNA analyser to ISS GM mozzies beating dengue New World Heritage sites

42 Wild at heart When tech gets too complex

to understand, time to copy field biologists

43 All lit up Finland’s starry art knows its limits

44Red roads Science and the counterculture

Regulars

52 LETTERS Neo-Luddites versus AI

56 FEEDBACKGet a job, why don’t you

57 THE LAST WORDLearn to like your voice

Aperture

24 Storks at all-you-can-eat buffet

Leader

5 Maybe baby doctors and fertility clinics

often contradict each other Who to trust?

HOW old is too old to have a baby?

For many women in their 30sand 40s, that question nags away

at them as they try to strike abalance between their career,their finances and their desire

to start a family

If you ask the medicalprofession for an answer, themessage is clear: don’t delay Getpregnant in your 20s if possible,when female fertility is thought

to peak Any later and you facethe prospect of infertility, orhealth problems associated witholder pregnancy (see page 30)

However, the real world seems

to be ignoring that advice InEngland and Wales, the meanage for a woman to give birth hasbeen rising since the mid 1970sand is now over 30 Women intheir 40s have more babies thanthose under 20, and the highestnumber of births per capita isamong women aged 30 to 34

These demographic shiftsare driven largely by socialand economic trends: theincreasing numbers of women

in professional occupations, forexample, and the spiralling cost

of buying a home But IVF hasalso played a big part, givingcouples the option of delaying

in the knowledge that there is

a plan B – albeit a risky one

Couples will soon have even

One born every minute

Who should we believe when it comes to fertility?

more alternatives Egg freezing,for instance, allows women tosquirrel away eggs from theiryears of peak fertility and hencedefer IVF without worrying aboutdeclining egg quality

Meanwhile, science keeps onpushing the boundaries of thepossible As we report this week,researchers at a fertility clinic inGreece claim to have rejuvenatedthe ovaries of post-menopausalwomen, enabling them toproduce viable eggs once more

If the technique works – which is

a big if at the moment – it wouldpotentially enable women of anyage to have children (see page 8)

That is way in the future, but it

is clear that the direction of travel

is towards older motherhood

Even if regeneration fails, eggand embryo freezing could openthe door to post-menopausalpregnancy Women could freezeeggs in their 20s and use them

in their 50s, for example

This isn’t an issue yet But never say never A small number

of children are already born to mothers over 50 every year, by IVF using donated eggs If there

was a way for older women to use their own eggs to have genetically related children, demand could increase

Assuming life expectancy continues to rise, the general health of the population carries

on improving and the twin pressures of career and home ownership keep moving in the same direction, women starting families in their 50s might come

to be seen as fairly unremarkable But it won’t become routine Most IVF cycles don’t result in the birth

of a child, whether using fresh or frozen eggs

For the foreseeable future,then, couples will continue toface tough choices They aren’t helped by inconsistent messages emanating from doctors on the one hand and fertility clinics on the other – who are often the same people wearing different hats Faced with this mismatch, it helps to remember that much of the fertility industry is a profit-making business that has been criticised by academics for making excessive promises and offering techniques that havenever been properly validated

Of course, choosing when to have

a child can be the most difficult decision of a lifetime and plan B can be the right one But caveat emptor ■

“Women starting families

in their 50s may come to

be seen as unremarkable, but not routine”

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RUSSIA is facing a complete ban

from the Rio Olympic games

following a damning

investigation into doping claims

made against Russian athletes

competing at major international

events over the past five years

The competitions included the

2012 London Olympics, the Sochi

Winter Olympics in 2014, the

2013 World University Games in

Kazan and the 2013 IAAF World

Championships in Moscow

Media revelations about the scale

of doping first appeared in May

based on evidence from Grigory

Rodchenkov, former director of

the lab in Moscow where athletes’

samples were handled, which was

accredited by the World

Anti-Doping Agency He is now in

hiding in the US

The investigation whose results

were released this week was

launched in the wake of

GENETICALLY modifiedmosquitoes really do seem toreduce disease That’s the finding

of a trial in Piracicaba, Brazil,involving the release of male

Aedesmosquitoes modified toproduce non-viable offspring

Just by eliminating standingwater where mosquitoes breed,Piracicaba halved the incidence ofdengue during the 2015-16 dengueseason, compared with theprevious year But in areas wherethe mosquitoes were released

UPFRONT

“Doped samples from

Russian competitors were

swapped through a mouse

hole drilled in the wall”

Rodchenkov’s allegations

Authored by Canadian lawprofessor Richard McLaren, itclaims that the Russian SportsMinistry devised complex systems

to prevent urine samples fromtesting positive and to secretlyadminister cocktails of steroids

to athletes prior to competitions

The most damning findingsinvolved a scam in the testing labs

at the Sochi Olympics – and withfull involvement of the FSB, thestate security service – which used

a mouse hole drilled in the wall

of the laboratory to swap dopedsamples of Russian competitorsfor clean ones Russia went on toclaim 33 medals in Sochi

The International Olympic Committee, which met on Tuesday to discuss the revelations,expressed its dismay at the findings “They show a shocking and unprecedented attack on the integrity of sport and on the Olympic Games,” said IOC president Thomas Bach in a statement “Therefore, the IOC will not hesitate to take the toughest sanctions available against any individual or organisation implicated.”

too, cases of dengue fell by morethan 90 per cent

The result matters as regulatorswant evidence that this methodcuts disease, not just wildmosquito numbers This smalltrial doesn’t provide the rigorousevidence that epidemiologistsneed, but it demonstratespotential, says Hadyn Parry, chiefexecutive of Oxitec, the UK firmthat developed the mosquitoes.The US Food and DrugAdministration is consideringwhether to approve use ofthese insects

SpaceX delivers again

THE latest bag of goodies has

been launched to the International

Space Station (ISS)

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted

off just after midnight local time on

18 July from NASA’s Kennedy Space

Center in Florida The rocket’s first

stage returned safely to ground just

minutes later, marking SpaceX’s fifth

successful landing

Afterwards, SpaceX boss Elon

Musk tweeted that this stage was

ready to fly again.

The uncrewed Dragon capsule

made its way to the ISS, where it was

due to arrive on Wednesday carrying

a selection of food, water and other

supplies for the station’s astronauts,

along with more exotic cargo.

The other cargo includes a

USB-stick-sized DNA sequencer

called MinION, made by UK firm Oxford Nanopore Technologies It is the first DNA analyser to head into space, and may eventually allow astronauts to directly monitor changes to their genetic code caused by the harsh radiation environment in orbit.

For this first flight, astronauts will just test that the technology works in microgravity by analysing the genomes of bacteria, viruses and mice

Also on board is a new docking port

to be attached to the outside of the ISS This will allow future crewed spacecraft to dock automatically and

is designed to work with SpaceX’s Dragon V2 and Boeing’s Starliner capsule, both of which are expected

to make their first trips to the ISS in the next couple of years.

–Blazing a trail–

Bald eagles go hungry in Florida

IT’S short rations for America’s iconic raptors Eagles at Florida Bay are feeding their young less than twice

a day on average, so the chicks get much less food than those elsewhere

Matthew Hanson and John Baldwin at Florida Atlantic University made the discovery by installing cameras at four bald eagle nests in Florida Bay “Florida has always historically been a stronghold for the species,” says Bryan Watts at the College of William & Mary in

Williamsburg, Virginia So why are bald eagles there in decline?

A collapsing ecosystem may

be to blame in the bay In recent decades, high salt levels have killed off sea grasses, releasing sediments that triggered algal blooms, which

in turn killed fish that eagles eat Development in the Everglades may have led to these problems by disrupting the flow of fresh water

into the bay (Southeastern

Naturalist, doi.org/bmqk).

EIGHT natural sites around theworld have been added toUNESCO’s World Heritage list,celebrating places of outstandingcultural or natural value The sitesinclude sandstone canyons andvalleys in Chad, forests shelteringleopards and Asiatic black bears inChina, and wetlands in Iraq.

The latest additions bring thetotal number of UNESCO sites to

1052 Although they may featurehistorically significant

architecture or “exceptionalnatural beauty”, many are indanger of degradation, forexample, from the effects ofclimate change

Listing an area helpsgovernments and NGOs preserve

it, says Juan Bezaury-Creel atthe Nature Conservancy in Arlington, Virginia

One of the newly designated sites is the Archipiélago de Revillagigedo in Mexico, picturedabove Each of its four islands in the eastern Pacific is the tip of an underwater volcano

The surrounding waters host whales and sharks that will now beprotected, says Bezaury-Creel “It’s

going to make conservationeasier, and it’s going to be easier tomitigate threats that come to thearea,” he says

Richard Thomas of MistakenPoint Ecological Reserve inNewfoundland, Canada, another

of the newly listed sites, says thedesignation will boost tourismand may be an economic “shot inthe arm” for the region

Nature sites listed

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

Shooting for Mars

NASA wants an orbiter worthy

of human missions to Mars The

agency has given contracts to five

engineering companies – Boeing,

Lockheed Martin, Northrop

Grumman, Orbital ATK and Space

Systems Loral – to demonstrate

what kind of spacecraft each one

can build for a potential mission

in the 2020s

Today’s Mars orbiters are vital

for relaying data from rovers back

to Earth To support a human

mission, the next generation will

need to be superior in terms of

propulsion, imaging capabilities

and communication

Solar-electric propulsion will

be key to their design Already in

use in Earth-orbiting satellites,

it works by harnessing the sun’s

energy to accelerate ions,

propelling the craft

Future orbiters must be able

to fly close to the Martian surface

to get high-resolution pictures

of good landing sites They will

also boast high-fidelity

communication systems to

cooperate with a ground crew

NASA would also like to see

orbiters that can return to Earth

with Martian samples sent up by

capsule from a planned rover

60 SECONDS

Cluck off

Don’t want to get bitten? Hang out with a hen Malaria-carrying mosquitoes seem to avoid the odour

of chickens, according to fresh research Isolating the compounds involved may lead to new ways

of repelling the life-threatening

pests (Malaria, DOI: 10.1186/

Zika sex

The Zika virus seems to have passed from a woman to a man via sex This is the first time this has been

reported (MMWR, doi.org/bmqg)

The woman had unprotected sex just after she returned to New York from an affected country Earlier cases of sexual transmission involved men infecting women.

Traffic light party

Fireflies’ flash colours harmonise with their habitats Males in greener, more vegetated habitats evolved yellower flashes to contrast with ambient light reflected from vegetation Females have a different strategy: because they broadcast while sitting on leaves, they use greener flashes that reflect better off leaf surfaces to boost their signal

(Evolution, doi.org/bmn4).

Cuckoo karma

Cuckoos that take a shortcut over Spain are more likely to die than those opting for a longer route over the Balkans This is the first time a population decline in the common cuckoo has been linked to its choice

of migration route Drought at stopover sites in Spain may be to blame for higher death rates over

the Western route (Nature

Communications, doi.org/bmqq)

“Next-gen orbiters will rely

on harnessing the sun’s

energy to accelerate ions,

propelling the craft”

–Emblematic but failing to thrive–

–Better protected, in principle–

SAVING the ozone layer hasinadvertently warmed ourplanet – but the error is about

to be fixed

When nations signed the Montreal Protocol in 1987, the plan was to save the ozone layer

by banning ozone-eating CFCs in aerosols, refrigerators and air-conditioning units Ozone-friendly HFCs were seen as a great substitute But HFCs are potent greenhouse gases, and 30 years later their manufacture is rising globally by 7 per cent each year

Last November in Dubai, signatories to the Montreal Protocol agreed in principle to amend the agreement in order to outlaw HFCs – better alternatives now exist At a meeting in Vienna, Austria, this week, they will begin the task of setting targets and timetables for doing that The hope is that they will eventually

be able to phase them out

Fix the ozone fix

“It’s going to make conservation easier and it’s going to be easier to mitigate threats to areas”

MENOPAUSE need not be the end

of fertility A team claims to have

found a way to rejuvenate

post-menopausal ovaries, enabling

them to release fertile eggs, New

Scientistcan reveal

The team says its technique has

restarted periods in menopausal

women, including one who had

not menstruated in five years

If the results hold up to wider

scrutiny, the technique may

boost declining fertility in older

women, allow women with early

menopause to get pregnant, and

help stave off the detrimental

health effects of menopause

“It offers a window of hope

that menopausal women will

be able to get pregnant using

their own genetic material,”

says Konstantinos Sfakianoudis,

a gynaecologist at the Greek

fertility clinic Genesis Athens

“It is potentially quite exciting,”

says Roger Sturmey at Hull York

Medical School in the UK “But it

also opens up ethical questions

over what the upper age limit of

mothers should be.”

Women are thought to be

born with all their eggs Between

puberty and the menopause, this

number steadily dwindles, withfertility thought to peak in theearly 20s Around the age of 50,which is when menopausenormally occurs, the ovaries stopreleasing eggs – but most womenare already largely infertile bythis point, as ovulation becomesmore infrequent in the run-up

The menopause comes soon for many women, saysSfakianoudis

all-too-The age of motherhood iscreeping up, and more women arehaving children in their 40s thanever before (see graph, below) But

as more women delay pregnancy,

many find themselves struggling

to get pregnant Women whohope to conceive later in life areincreasingly turning to IVF andegg freezing, but neither are

a reliable back-up option (see

“The pregnancy pause”, page 30)

The menopause also comesearly – before the age of 40 – for around 1 per cent of women,

either because of a medical condition or certain cancer treatments, for example

To turn back the fertility clock for women who have experienced early menopause, Sfakianoudis and his colleagues have turned to

a blood treatment that is used to help wounds heal faster

Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) ismade by centrifuging a sample

of a person’s blood to isolate growth factors – molecules that trigger the growth of tissue andblood vessels It is widely used

to speed the repair of damaged bones and muscles, althoughits effectiveness is unclear

The treatment may work by stimulating tissue regeneration

Sfakianoudis’s team has foundthat PRP also seems to rejuvenateolder ovaries, and presented some

of their results at the EuropeanSociety of Human Reproductionand Embryology annual meeting

in Helsinki, Finland, this month

When they injected PRP into theovaries of menopausal women,they say it restarted theirmenstrual cycles, and enabledthem to collect and fertilise theeggs that were released

“I had a patient whosemenopause had established fiveyears ago, at the age of 40,” saysSfakianoudis Six months afterthe team injected PRP into herovaries, she experienced herfirst period since menopause

Sfakianoudis’s team has sincebeen able to collect three eggsfrom this woman The researcherssay they have successfullyfertilised two using her husband’ssperm These embryos are now

on ice – the team is waiting until there are at least three before implanting some in her uterus

The team isn’t sure how this

technique works, but it may be that the PRP stimulates stem cells Some research suggests a small number of stem cells continue making new eggs throughout a woman’s life, but we don’t know much about these yet It’s possible that growth factors encourage such stem cells to regenerate tissue and produce ovulation hormones “It’s biologically plausible,” says Sturmey

“It seems to work in about thirds of cases,” says Sfakianoudis

two-“We see changes in biochemical patterns, a restoration of menses, and egg recruitment and

THIS WEEK

Reversing the menopause

A blood treatment seems to restore periods and fertility to menopausal

women Is it too good to be true, asks Jessica Hamzelou

Older mothers

The percentage of women giving birth in England and Wales who are

40 or older has quadrupled since 1980

1.1

1.7

3.4

4.2 3.8

2.5

1.4 1.0

fertilisation.” His team has yet

to implant any embryos in

post-menopausal women, but hopes

to do so in the coming months

PRP has already been helpful

for pregnancy in another group

of women, says Sfakianoudis

Around 10 per cent of women

who seek fertility treatment at his

clinic have a uterus that embryos

find difficult to attach to –

whether due to cysts, scarring

from miscarriages or having a

thin uterine lining “They are

the most difficult to treat,” says

Sfakianoudis

But after injecting PRP into the

uteruses of six women who had

had multiple miscarriages and

failed IVF attempts, three became

pregnant through IVF “They are

now in their second trimester,”

says Sfakianoudis

Fertility aside, the technique

could also be desirable for women

who aren’t trying to conceive The

hormonal changes that trigger

In this section

■Planet Nine tilted the sun, page 10

■ Psychiatry’s last taboo, page 16

■ Pokémon Go and the limits of VR, page 22

an alternative way to boost thesupply of youthful hormones,delaying menopause symptoms

However, Sfakianoudis’s teamhasn’t yet published any of itsfindings “We need larger studiesbefore we can know for sure howeffective the treatment is,” saysSfakianoudis

Some have raised concernsabout the safety and efficacy ofthe procedure, saying the teamshould have tested the approach

in animals first “This experiment

would not have been allowed totake place in the UK,”says Sturmey

“The researchers need to do somemore work to make sure that theresulting eggs are OK,” says AdamBalen at the British FertilitySociety

To know if the techniquereally does improve fertility, theteam will also need to carry outrandomised trials, in which acontrol group isn’t given PRP

Virginia Bolton, anembryologist at Guy’s and StThomas’ Hospital in London, isalso sceptical “It is dangerous

to get excited about something before you have sufficient evidence it works,” she says New techniques often find their way into the fertility clinic without strong evidence, thanks to huge demand from people who are often willing to spend their life savings to have a child, she says

If the technique does hold

up under further investigation,

it could raise ethical questionsover the upper age limits ofpregnancy – and whether there should be any “I lay awake last night turning this over in my mind,” says Sturmey “Where would the line be drawn?”

Health issues like gestational diabetes, pre-eclampsia and miscarriage are all more common

in older women “It would require

a big debate,” says Sturmey ■

menopause can also make theheart, skin and bones morevulnerable to ageing and disease,while hot flushes can be veryunpleasant Many women are reluctant to take hormone replacement therapy to reduce these because of its link with breast cancer Rejuvenating the ovaries with PRP could provide

SPERM HOME TEST KIT

–Never too old?–

How are the little swimmers doing? Low sperm counts or poor sperm quality are behind around a third of cases of couples who can’t conceive

A visit to a clinic for a test can be awkward, but a smartphone-based system lets men determine whether that’s necessary by checking their fertility at home.

Men often find it embarrassing to give a semen sample at a clinic, says Yoshitomo Kobori at the Dokkyo Medical University Koshigaya Hospital in Japan So Kobori devised

an alternative “I thought a smartphone microscope could be

an easy way to look at problems with male fertility,” he says Kobori and his colleagues came

up with a lens less than a millimetre thick that can be slotted into a plastic “jacket” Clipped on to the camera of a smartphone, it magnifies an image by 555 times – perfect for looking at sperm.

To do a home test, a man would apply a small amount of semen to

a plastic sheet around five minutes after ejaculation and press it against the microscope.

WATCH THEM SWIM

The phone’s camera can then take

a 3-second video clip of the sperm When viewed enlarged on a computer screen, it is easy for someone to count the total number

of sperm and the number that are moving – key indicators of fertility Kobori says the system works as well as the software used in fertility clinics When the team ran 50 samples through both systems, they got almost identical results The work was presented at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology meeting in Helsinki this month The system can’t assess the ability of sperm to fertilise an egg

“This method is only the simple version of semen analysis,” says Kobori But that could be enough for men to identify potential fertility problems, and decide whether to seek help from a doctor.

“One woman had been in menopause for 5 years Six months after treatment, she had a period”

Rebecca Boyle

A JEALOUS Planet Nine may have

shoved its siblings for attention

If a massive ninth planet exists in

our solar system, it might explain

why the planets are out of line

with the sun

The eight major planets still

circle the sun in the original plane

of their birth The sun rotates on

its own axis, but surprisingly, that

spin is tilted: the axis lies at an

angle of 6 degrees relative to a

line perpendicular to the plane

of the planets

There are a few theories to

explain this jaunty slant, including

the temporary tug of a passing

star aeons ago, or interactions

between the magnetic fields of the

sun and the primordial dusty disc

that formed the solar system But

it is hard to account for why the

sun’s spin is aligned the way it is

relative to the planets

Two teams of astronomers

have just announced a new

explanation: a hypothetical

massive planet in the outer solar

system could be interfering with

all the other planets’ orbits

Earlier this year, Michael Brownand Konstantin Batygin at the California Institute of Technology

in Pasadena argued that this Planet Nine could be responsible for some of the erratic

movements of icy worlds in the outer solar system With that planet plugged in to our models, the machinations of the heavens begin to make more sense

Now the idea can be extended

to the orbit of all the planets, saysElizabeth Bailey, also at Caltech,

who did the work together withBrown and Batygin (arxiv.org/

abs/1607.03963v1)

“Because we think Planet Nine has a significant inclination, if it exists, then that means it would tilt things,” Bailey says, and by thejust right amount “It’s one puzzlepiece that seems to fit together, and it really seems to be in support

of the Planet Nine hypothesis.”

The planet would have between

5 and 20 times Earth’s mass and

be in a wildly eccentric orbit, reaching 250 times the sun-Earth distance at its farthest point

That elongated trajectory has led some to suggest that it was once

an exoplanet and was kidnapped

by the sun

If that happened early enough,then its gravitational influence since the solar system was born would be enough to pull the planets’ orbital plane out of alignment with the sun, Bailey says Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune would move as one, so Planet Nine would not be able to shift them individually like pinballs Instead, the entire solar system would tilt as a whole

Planet Nine’s tilt, not its mass, iskey, says Alessandro Morbidelli atCôte d’Azur Observatory in Nice, France, who has independently come to a similar conclusion (arxiv.org/abs/1607.05111) If it were a question of mass, Jupiter would be the prime suspect

“What is important is that the perturbing planet is off-plane

Jupiter cannot cause its own tilt,”

he says

The sun’s tilt doesn’t prove thatPlanet Nine exists, however Thatwould require seeing it with a telescope ■

BLAME grandpa if you get fat eating junk food It seems that the grandsons of pudgy male mice are more susceptible to the health effects

of a bad diet, even if their fathers are lean and healthy.

Last year, a study found thousands

of epigenetic modifications to DNA in the sperm of obese men, as well as differing amounts of short pieces of RNA, when compared with lean men’s sperm Epigenetic changes like these don’t alter the code of DNA, but may affect how active particular genes are Now Catherine Suter at Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute in Sydney and her colleagues have investigated the longer-term effects

of paternal obesity by mating obese male mice with lean females They found that, unlike the offspring of lean males, both the sons and grandsons of obese ones were more likely to show the early signs of fatty liver disease and diabetes when given a junk-food diet

(Molecular Metabolism, doi.org/

bmn3) The same effect wasn’t seen

in daughters or granddaughters Even when the sons of obese males were fed a healthy diet and kept at a normal weight, their own sons still had a greater tendency to develop obesity-related conditions when exposed to a junk diet.

However, the effect didn’t seem

to be passed on to great-grandsons

“This is good news because it suggests that the cycle of obesity can be broken,” says Suter.

As a result, she suggests that junk-food susceptibility is passed on by epigenetics Her team’s research hints that small RNA pieces in the sperm could be to blame, possibly influencing how a male embryo develops Such studies underscore the importance of men’s health at the time

of conception, says Suter “A baby’s health has long been considered the mother’s responsibility, but little attention has been paid to the father’s health.” Alice Klein ■

Planet Nine antics

led to sun’s odd tilt

–All askew in the heavens–

Obesity is passed on down generations

THIS WEEK

What’s the future of business?

We at New Scientist decided to take a look at how three of the key

drivers of business – energy, money and automation – might change

over the next decade To do that, we’ve asked three writers with

deep understanding of these areas to tell us how they think the

future could unfold, and how it might confound our initial

expectations

The author of our second GameChangers report in the series is

Steven Cherry, who for 15 years covered the work sector for IEEE

Spectrum, and now directs TTI/Vanguard, a members-only forum

that explores the impact and implications of future technologies for

senior business leaders

In his report, Cherry examines the arguments for and against the

idea that automation will ultimately outsource every human job,

and explores the paradoxes inherent in both If cognitively complex

jobs are the only ones that are safe, why is there still such high

demand for cashiers? If automation generates new jobs, why is GDP

slowing? And when can you expect the robots to take your job? To

find out, register to download your free copy of GameChangers:

Automation and Artificial Intelligence today.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Steven Cherry is the Director of TTI/Vanguard, a membership forum based in

New York that explores future technologies Previously he was a journalist and

editor at IEEE Spectrum, the magazine of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics

Engineers Prior to that he was an editor at the Association for Computing

Machinery (ACM) He founded and co-hosts the award-winning podcast series,

Techwise Conversations, which covers technology news, careers and education,

and the engineering lifestyle

IN THIS EXCLUSIVE NEW REPORT FIND OUT:

] Why every technological breakthrough takes twice as long as we expected, but we’re still not prepared for its arrival

] Why GDP is an increasingly limited tool for measuring productivity, and what that means for jobs and automation

] Which jobs might be safe – and which won’t

INTRODUCING THE SECOND IN A NEW SERIES

OF WHITE PAPERS FROM NEW SCIENTIST

Joshua Howgego

IT LOOKS like a long way to the

prehistoric dig site, and there’s a lot

of slippery mud separating me from it

But I have more to worry about than

face-planting into the estuary “We

actually need to give you the safety

talk,” says Andy Sherman, an

archaeologist with the Museum of

London Archaeology

As we stand in a battering wind

looking out at the muddy beach at

Cleethorpes in Lincolnshire, he tells

me there are at least three ways to get

killed here: walking on an unexploded

bomb, stepping into quicksand or

ignoring the tide timetable The sea

sweeps in behind the dig, cutting off

anyone foolhardy enough to venture

out at the wrong moment

So why are we here? Well, coastal

archaeology has an urgency you

get nowhere else The sea reveals

whatever our ancestors left in the

mud with no warning, and then, just

as quickly, can wash it away forever

That’s why the Museum of London

Archaeology began its CITiZAN project,

which teaches ordinary people how

to keep an eye out for interesting

artefacts The project’s finds include

footprints of humans and animals,Britain’s first lifeboat station and a40-metre-deep Bronze-Age shaft

Sherman and his colleagueMegan Clement, based in York, trainvolunteers and act as a responseteam when something crops up – as

it did here on Cleethorpes seafront

I put on two fleeces, a coat, two pairs of socks and wellington boots and stick tight behind Clement and Sherman as they pick their way through the shin-deep mud

The residents of Cleethorpes knew there was something out here – the strange black objects that I can now see sticking out of the mud were a giveaway When Clement and Sherman got wind of the rumours last spring, they went to investigate

They found that the black shapes were the petrified tree trunks of

a 4300-year-old forest But there

was something else, too: running straight through the forest was a path that shouldn’t be there That is,

if you subscribe to the conventional idea that Stone-Age people were uncultured nomads, eking out a subsistence living in the wild.It’s clear that is not the case – take Stonehenge, for instance But there

is sparse evidence to the contrary, Sherman says, because Neolithic people had an oral tradition and left behind few artefacts

That makes the trackway a valuable discovery “This is the best thing we’ve found,” says Clement of the CITiZAN project It’s not much to look at – just a few metres of rough strips of intensely black wood, cresting out of the peat.But the strips have been arranged carefully, a bit like a wooden boardwalk Sherman sees it as evidence that the Neolithic people who made it were organised “This isn’t just a path, it’s a wide track, which means they were taking the time to grow the wood and maintain it,” he says “It would have been a lot of effort.”

Sherman and Clement think this section of the trackway will be washed away by tides within two years But

as the peat is eroded further, more

of the track should be revealed.During the Stone Age, this section

of land would have been nowhere near the coast As I stand there with the mud squelching over my wellingtons, I wonder if we’ll eventually

be able to work out where it went ■

–It’s a Stone-Age highway–

“To protect state secrets, governments won’t allow examinations that reveal

a bomb’s blueprint”

THERE’S a new way to identify

fake nuclear warheads, without

revealing what’s inside

The technique offers a way out

of a tricky catch-22: to comply with

nuclear arms reduction treaties,

inspectors need to scrutinise

warheads to verify that real

missiles, not decoys, are being

disarmed The US and Russia alone

Light trick foils

fake nuclear

warheads

have thousands of nukes slated for dismantlement between them But to protect state secrets, governments won’t allow tests that reveal a bomb’s blueprint

R Scott Kemp at MIT and his colleagues used computer simulations to show that shining

a particular beam of light through

a warhead can scrutinise its innards The light makes the nuclei of the warhead’s atoms vibrate, then relax, releasing photons The wavelength of the released light allows us

to determine the warhead’s

elements, right down to their isotopes A hoax warhead won’t pass the test

But that’s only half the trick

To preserve secrecy, instead of detecting the light passing through the warhead directly, the team focused it onto a foil – a slice

of material made of the same elements as a bomb The foil absorbs some of the light, and

the rest is reflected onto detectors that measure its wavelengths The foil’s exact make-up is kept secret from the inspectors But they can compare their results to the scan

of a confirmed missile, to prove

that the weapon isn’t a fake (PNAS,

doi.org/bmqh)

“They’re taking a very big step

in the right direction,” says Glen Warren at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington – but he worries that too many measurements could still give the warheads’ contents away Emily Benson ■

From parallel universes to photosynthesis, entanglement WRbHQFU\SWLRQFRPSXWLQJWRFDWVDQGbPXFKPRUH

TOO much light is bad for your

health So suggests research in

mice, which found that six

months of continuous lighting

led to a range of health problems

In the experiment, 134 mice

experienced no dark for half a

year By the end, they had lost

about half their strength, some

parts of their bones were thinner

and they showed signs of

increased inflammation usually

associated with stress or infection

These effects may be connected

to the disruption of the animals’

internal clocks (Current Biology,

DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2016.05.038)

The findings are worrying forpeople who experience prolongedlight exposure – such as shiftworkers and hospital patients –but fortunately, some of theeffects seem to be reversible

Johanna Meijer of Leiden

University Medical Center inthe Netherlands and her teamfound that the mice – and theirdisrupted circadian rhythms –recovered when dark night-timeswere restored “The clockrecovered near instantaneously,”

says Meijer, while musclesand bones recovered in abouttwo weeks

However, the findings may notdirectly apply to humans Miceare nocturnal, so may suffer morethan us from a lack of darkness

Gorillas are one up in an arms

race against trickster plant

FOOL me once, shame on you Fool me twice… Well,

it looks like gorillas don’t get fooled twice, at least not

by a cheating plant.

The fruit on the Pentadiplandra brazzeana plant is

packed with a protein called brazzein, which mimics the

taste of high-energy sugary fruits but is less

resource-intensive for the plant to make.

Brenda Bradley, an anthropologist at the George

Washington University in Washington DC, thinks the

plant is probably producing cheap, sweet proteins to

“trick” primates into eating the low-calorie berries and

dispersing their seeds It seems to work, she says, seeing

as the berries are sought by primate species But now, Bradley claims, one ape is fighting back: gorillas seem to have lost the ability to taste brazzein, which Bradley thinks has evolved as part of an arms race against the plant.

Her team analysed the DNA sequence of the gene

TAS1R3, which codes for a sweet taste receptor, in 51

primate species, including humans They found that only the gorilla has two mutations that seem to prevent them

from detecting the sweetness of brazzein (American

Journal of Physical Anthropology, doi.org/bmk7).

Monkeys and bonobos have taste receptors primed to find the protein sweet, says Bradley “But gorillas – who are not known to eat the plant – have species-specific mutations that likely prevent the false signal.”

Continuous light weakens bones

Baby stars grow by bursting bubbles

THE same physics that makesmushroom clouds might buildthe universe’s most massive stars.According to simple equations,

a star shouldn’t be able to grow tomore than 20 times the mass ofthe sun – the radiation it emitsshould hold back gas arriving late

in the process and stop it addingmass But we see baby stars thatare 150 times the sun’s mass.Now, a simulation shows themost complete account yet of oneway stars can suck in more gas

As radiation rises from the star, itinflates bubbles that push against the surrounding gas, holding that material at bay

Anna Rosen at the University

of California, Santa Cruz, andcolleagues show that thosebubbles can pop, letting tendrils

of gas drift down towards thestar (arxiv.org/abs/1607.03117)

A similar process is responsiblefor mushroom clouds aroundnuclear explosions

Kiss of death marks ants for kill squad

PAINT a target on his back.Instead of dispatching theiryoung competitors directly,adult male ants smear them withbodily fluids, leaving them with

a bullseye marking them forassassination by worker ants.Most ants seek out mates fromother colonies, but ants in the

genus Cardiocondyla breed within

their nests By staying at home,males vie with one another for achance to reproduce; so they giveyoung rivals the kiss of deathbefore they are big enough to

fight back (Entomological Science,

doi.org/bmmb)

“They let the workers do thedirty job of finishing off all therivals,” says Jürgen Heinze atthe University of Regensburg, Germany

IN BRIEF

Graphene unfolds

into nano-flowers

GIVE graphene a diamond and you’ll

get a flower in return Poking a

sheet of atom-thick graphene with

a diamond tool prompts tiny ribbons

to peel away from the surface, like

flower petals opening.

“I don’t think anyone ever

expected it,” says Graham Cross

at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.

Graphene sheets, which are

made of a single layer of carbon

atoms, are both super-strong and

highly flexible Other teams have

folded graphene into origami

shapes using chemical reactions,

and made tiny tools.

Cross and his colleagues

accidentally discovered graphene’s

hidden talent while trying to

measure its friction by piercing it.

Once their diamond tip punctured

the sheet, the energy from ambient

heat kept the ribbons tearing into a

tapered strip – a process that took

less than a minute.

By changing the initial width of

the tear, the researchers could

control the length of the ribbons,

which tended to grow to five times

their initial width (Nature, DOI:

bmqd).

Graphene’s self-folding ability

could help make better electronics,

says Cross By setting off ribbon

formation in careful patterns, the

sheets could be turned into sensors

and even transistors, allowing for

nanoscale electronics.

Perfect harmony? It’s a matter of taste

THERE’S no such thing as a nasty-sounding chord: it all depends on what you’re used to.

The ancient Greeks discovered that musical harmony seems to be rooted in mathematics, and today we know that many cultures worldwide use mathematically neat chords.

But Josh McDermott at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his team have evidence that a preference for mathematically simple harmonies is not innate They played “consonant”

note combinations – such as perfect fifths – and dissonant combinations,

which are not so mathematically simple and sound harsher to Western ears, to 160 people from the US and Bolivia, and asked them to rate how pleasant each one sounded.

The participants from the US found consonant combinations more pleasant than dissonant ones But people who belonged to the Tsimane – a native Amazonian society in Bolivia – showed no such

preference (Nature, doi.org/bmk3).

“The preference for consonance over dissonance varied roughly in line with the degree of exposure to Western music,” says McDermott.

TWO strange celestial bodiesmight have the clingiest friends inthe cosmos If a pair of pulsars areorbited by very dense objects onceevery few minutes, that mightexplain a strange repeatingpattern interrupting the stars’

radio signals

Pulsars, aka spinning neutronstars, normally emit radio pulseslike clockwork But Joanna Rankin

at the University of Vermont inBurlington noticed anotherpattern she calls a “swoosh”,when signals from certain pulsarsarrived sooner than expected

Minutes later, the signal driftedback to normal Furtherobservations showed theseswooshes sometimes repeat

Now, a study led by Rankin’sstudent Haley Wahl suggestscompanion objects orbiting thepulsars at close range couldtrigger the swoosh

These unseen neighbours, ifthey exist, must orbit the pulsars

at breakneck speed once every fewminutes – a shorter orbital periodthan for any known pair of objects

in the universe, says Rankin Bypassing through the pulsar’s

magnetic field at such a rapidpace, these companions couldcreate the swoosh by disruptingthe radio signal we see (arxiv.org/abs/1607.01737v1)

Such a companion must besomething special, though, like

a small black hole or a hunk ofwhite-dwarf matter Mostordinary objects would be ripped

to shreds by the pulsar’s gravity

“It has to be somethingincredibly dense to stay together,”says Rankin “Even a rock ofnormal material couldn’t doanything but turn into dust.”

Pulsars feel swoosh as companions whizz past

Ducklings dabble in abstract thought

THERE once was a brainy duckling

It could remember whether theshapes or colours it saw just after hatching were the same as each other or different

This feat surprised University

of Oxford researchers, who initially doubted that ducklings could grasp complex concepts such as “same” and “different”

The fact that they could do so suggests that the ability to think

in an abstract way may be more common in nature than we might expect, and not just restricted to humans and a handful of animals with big brains

Ducklings instinctively followthe first things they see, usually

a mother and siblings So AlexKacelnik and Antone Martinhopresented them with a pair ofobjects that were either thesame or different in shape andcolour Later, they offered theducklings the choice of followingcombinations of “same”

or “different” objects

Of the 113 ducklings in theexperiment, 77 trailed thecolour or shape pairing that corresponded to the combination

of “same” or “different” they were primed with after hatching

LIKE many psychiatrists, Paulan

Stärcke sometimes sees patients in

such mental torment that they

have tried to kill themselves Where

Stärcke differs is that occasionally,

after much discussion with the

patient, their family and other

doctors, she helps them to do it

Stärcke prepares a lethal dose

of barbiturate sedatives, either in

the form of an injection or a

medicine that can be drunk She

sits with her patient as they die

and, at the end, certifies their

death She considers this her

final professional duty to them

Stärcke practises in the

Netherlands, one of three

countries – along with Belgium

and Switzerland – that permit

assisted suicide for non-terminalillnesses that are causingunbearable suffering, which hasbeen taken to include mentalsuffering For many, this is astep too far

“This is not compassion – it’s abandonment,” says Stephen Drake of the US group Not Dead Yet, which opposes assisted suicide

So how do doctors navigate this ethical minefield? Is mental illness any less justifiable as a reason for assisted suicide? Or is

there is a long-standing movement

to legalise assisted dying, although

a high-profile bill was rejected byMPs last September In the US, such legislation is being considered by individual states, with five currently allowing it and

a campaign to expand it to the rest

In the main, the UK and US campaigners steer clear of any suggestion they want assisted suicide approved for people who are not terminally ill “This is where the public draws the line,”

says Sarah Wootton of the UK

campaign group Dignity in Dying Wootton points out that a 2007 independent survey found that

80 per cent of people supported assisted dying for the terminally ill, but only 43 per cent did for those who are not terminally ill

“If we see depression as an OK reason to help someone kill themselves, then why bother to put rails on bridges for suicide prevention?” says Drake

Not taken lightly

Stärcke says that accepting assisted suicide for psychiatric reasons in principle does not mean that logically we should cease all suicide prevention efforts, because only a minority of requests are granted For instance,

in 2012 to 2013, only six out of

121 requests from people with a psychological condition were granted at the clinic where Stärcke works At a Belgian psychiatric hospital, they granted 48 out of

100 requests, although only

35 people completed the act The decision is never taken lightly Psychiatrists must believe the person is mentally competent, has had a long-standing wish to die and that there is no prospect

of treatment Typically they have more than one psychiatric diagnosis, which may include depression and a personality disorder

“The suffering from a psychiatric illness can be as unbearable as the suffering from

a physical illness,” says Stärcke But even so, and despite growing campaigns for mental illnesses to

be taken as seriously as physical ones, there remain some important differences between psychiatry and other areas of medicine that colour the debate.Unlike with most physical

Psychiatry’s last taboo

Assisted suicide for those who are not terminally ill is a complex issue, says Clare Wilson

“The mind is a black box

We still don’t know enough

to be able to say how a condition will progress”

–Ethical minefield

-23 July 2016 | NewScientist | 17

illnesses, there are no blood tests

or brain scans that can give

someone a definitive diagnosis

of a psychiatric problem Also,

people with mental illnesses are

frequently given different

diagnoses at different points in

their life, and no one knows if that

means their first diagnosis was

wrong or their condition has

genuinely changed

If someone is dying from cancer

or heart failure, their doctor can

make a reasonable prediction

about the course their illness will

take and roughly how long they

will live Many people who go to

Dignitas, the Swiss organisation

for assisted dying, do so because

they have a degenerative

condition that they know will

leave them physically helpless

By comparison, the mind is a

black box We still don’t know

enough to be able to say how a

condition will progress

The US government-funded

National Institutes of Health has

said that the whole system of

classifying mental illness is

flawed and needs to be based

more on neuroscience It has

launched a major research effort

to base diagnosis and treatments

on the underlying problems at the

levels of genes, neurotransmitters

and brain circuits

This project might lead to more

insights about who is likely to

recover from mental illness and

who isn’t, but it is many years

from bearing fruit For now,

psychiatrists can only grant

requests of assisted suicide for

patients who have been at rock

bottom for years, or more usually

decades, and have exhausted all

potential remedies, such as

antidepressants and

electroconvulsive therapy

Stärcke argues that the fact

someone is not terminally ill

means their situation could be

seen as even worse than if they

had just weeks to live “The

unendingness can be unbearable,”

she says

Dignitas says that for some

people, just having the option of

A father whose daughter was granted her request

to die says it was the right decision for her

Reasons for not-living

Psychiatric conditions were the least-reported reason for euthanasia

or assisted suicide in the Netherlands in 2015

4000 417

311 233 207 183 109 56

Cancer Other diseases Nervous system disorders Cardiovascular diseases Lung diseases Age-related diseases

Dementia Psychiatric conditions

SOURCE: EUTHANASIECOMMISS E.NL

“IT WAS inevitable that she was going

to end her life – this was the best way.”

So says the father of Ellen, a Dutch woman in her 30s, who was recently granted her request for physician- assisted dying.

Ellen had several complex psychiatric problems including a personality disorder, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, after being raped when she was 10 “She was very unhappy,” says her father

Ellen frequently cut herself and made her first suicide attempt at 20

There were so many others over the

drink containing barbiturates; she drank it without hesitation, and the family waited in silence until it took effect Within 5 minutes, Ellen was unconscious Within 20 she stopped breathing.

Beforehand, her brother could not help hoping that she would change her mind – her father felt differently

He expected that if she didn’t go through with it, she would simply attempt suicide by other means in the following days “It was very sad But we all agreed it was the right thing for her “ he says

“I was so happy that the suffering was over for her and we had a real goodbye It was the most acceptable outcome in these difficult

circumstances And we were happy

we could support her in her last moments,” he says.

“It was inevitable”

For daily news stories, visit newscientist.com/news

years her father lost count Several times the police had to bring her home after she had been spotted about to attempt suicide

Her father lived in dread, expecting the police to knock on the door and say she had finally done it By the time Ellen sought assisted suicide, she had tried every treatment:

talking therapies, antidepressants, electroconvulsive therapy Nothing helped long term.

Ellen chose to die at her family home, with her parents and brother and sister present A doctor brought a

assisted suicide can help, even to the extent that they may choose not to take it “It may sound paradoxical: in order to prevent suicide attempts, one needs to say

‘yes’ to suicide,” the organisation said last year in evidence to an Australian inquiry into end-of- life choices

If the patient does go ahead, this is still preferable to most methods of suicide, says Stärcke

“There’s a huge difference between this and a violent, lonely,unplanned death,” she says

But Drake dismisses that argument as society being selfish

“They’re talking about the mess

If we’re going to have suicide, let’s have it neat and tidy,” he says

Along with religious groups, disability rights activists are the main campaigners against euthanasia and assisted suicide, whether for those with mental or physical suffering They believe that legalising assisted dying

sends a message to people whoare disabled, sick or elderly that their lives are worthless, and they see people with psychiatric illnesses as another such group whose rights they must protect

“If help is helping someone to die,

I don’t see that as help,” says Dennis Queen of the UK branch

of Not Dead Yet “For us, this is about human rights.”

Even in the Netherlands, a country with broadly liberal attitudes, two-thirds of doctors have difficulty accepting assisted suicide for psychiatric reasons Stärcke works for a clinic called End

of Life, in The Hague, that provides second opinions for people whose request has been denied by their doctor or psychiatrist

Stärcke understands that some

of her colleagues do not feel comfortable agreeing to requests

of assisted suicide for psychiatric reasons, but calls for them to make their views clear to patients

If doctors aren’t transparent then patients may make a request and submit to a lengthy assessment process, only to be turned down at the end because their doctor objects on moral grounds

“Some psychiatrists would rather not think about this because they’re only human after all,” she says “What I do scares people.” ■

* Need a listening ear? UK Samaritans: 08457 90 90 90 (samaritans.org) Visit bit.ly/ SuicideHelplines for hotlines and websites for other countries.

“We are many years away from better understanding who is likely to recover from mental illness”

Still evolving

The idea that modern humans have transcended the influence

of natural selection is crumbling, says John Hawks

NOT so long ago there was a

consensus on recent human

evolution, or the lack of it The

belief was that culture had

elevated our species above

Darwin’s “hostile forces of

nature”, stopping natural

selection in its tracks 50,000

years ago Today that view is

increasingly questioned

Those who say selection has

ceased point to big gains in life

expectancy However, to pass

on genes, people must not

only survive, but reproduce

Differences in reproduction

are differences in fitness, in

the evolutionary sense

This idea underpins a new

study by Jonathan Beauchamp

at Harvard University, looking

at genetic variants associated

with traits including educational

attainment (PNAS, doi.org/bmnn).

It suggests that natural selection

has been at work on US citizens

in the 20th century

Beauchamp tapped into the 20,000-person-strong US Health and Retirement Study, which includes genetic information Looking at people born between

1931 and 1953, he found that in men and women, educational attainment was correlated with having fewer children

That much may seem obvious For a century, Americans haveforegone family size and earlychild-rearing for more education – part of what is known as the demographic transition What’s new here is the link to genetics Educational attainment is not strongly heritable, with genes accounting for perhaps no more than 20 per cent of the variation

in attainment But Beauchamp found that gene variants predictive of attainment were nearly as strongly predictive of reduced reproduction

Be afraid

Alarm bells ring when we bust a global limit for

safe biodiversity loss, says Georgina Mace

AS EARTH’S population grows,

so too does our use of the land,

converted from its natural,

pre-human state to farms,

roads, quarries and more, with

an inevitable loss of species

At what point does this threaten

the sustainability of society?

Scientists have speculated

about this for decades, but finally

it is possible to start answering that question A major study published last week shed much needed light on how we are doing

(Science, doi.org/10/bmnr) The

outcome should worry us all

It analysed more than 2 millionrecords on around 39,000 species

Researchers were able to work outchanges at the local scale as a

result of human impact, andrelate them to a revised planetarybiosphere boundary proposedlast year It turns out that 10 percent of native species have gonefrom over 58 per cent of all land

Why worry about species loss?

There are moral and aestheticreasons, but here the focuswas species’ functional role – sustaining plant growth rates, for example, or nutrient cycling and decomposition

We know that many of these

roles are best maintained with greater diversity of species, and the global extinction rate is estimated to be at least 100-fold that of prehuman times These metrics underpinned the first biodiversity boundary set in 2009.That was revised last year to reflect several factors: that the global extinction rate does not translate straightforwardly to the local scale (it is local diversity that

is important), and that variety of functional types of species may be more vital than the total number How definitive is the new snapshot? The findings are slightly improved if non-native species are included, while a less

“The planetary boundary may not be perfect… but

we should still worry about breaching it so widely”

COMMENT

He concluded that natural

selection was at work on those

variants, albeit slowly Its impact

is equal to a decline in attainment

amounting to a month and a half

less school per generation, and is

swamped by other factors driving

up attainment at the same time

Of course, Beauchamp’s study

only covers a limited sample of US

citizens In addition, participants

could be women aged 45 or men

in their early 50s, which seems

too young to judge lifetime

reproduction It’s also possible

that the number of grandchildren

or great-grandchildren is a better

measure of fitness

However, it is not outlandish

to imagine that natural selection

may still be acting in this way,

given the pace of change In 1940,

only a quarter of adults born in

the US finished high school By

2000, this was nearly 90 per cent

Our distant ancestors never

knew environments where it

made sense to delay reproduction

to reap the rewards of an

extended education Education

policy may be doing more than

shaping tomorrow’s workforce

It may be shaping the course of

our evolution.■

John Hawks is a professor of

anthropology at the University

of Wisconsin-Madison

precautionary approach suggests

biodiversity could dip more than

10 per cent before being unsafe

On the other hand, the

situation may be worse, as some

of the most vital ecosystem

functions are in biomes where

data is sparse but sensitivity to

species loss may be very high,

such as tundra

Clearly, we need to refine this

planetary boundary But even if

it is not perfect, it is all we have,

and we should worry deeply

about breaching it so widely ■

Georgina Mace is professor of

biodiversity and ecosystems at

University College London

in Dallas, reportedly telling police hewas targeting white officers Threemore officers were killed in BatonRouge this week In the wake of thesetragedies, debates are raging aboutracial profiling and police brutality

These huge, systemic problemswill require sweeping changes Butthere are smaller measures that, whilethey won’t stop the shooting, mightover time have far-reaching effects

For example, why was Castile pulledover in the first place? According toaudio from the officer’s call to thedispatcher, the description he hadbeen given was to look for a robbery suspect with a “wide-set nose”

Much ink has been spilled over the role of police training and the extent

to which it affects behaviour and attitudes Less visible is the role of the person answering the phone

to emergency calls and dispatching

officers as a result Too often, policeofficers are sent out with insufficientinformation

The problem starts whendispatchers don’t ask witnesses thebest questions, says Vickie Mays atthe University of California in LosAngeles (UCLA) “We’re not primingpeople to look for anything beyondsaying what the person’s skin colour is.”

People who have just seen a crimedon’t always know which details arerelevant So asking closed questionslike: “Did the suspect have light or darkskin?” doesn’t yield useful information

It may even play a role in racial

profiling According to a 2013 study bythe US Department of Justice, police are 31 per cent more likely to stop black drivers than white drivers and more than twice as likely to search them Republican senator Tim Scott recently described being pulled over seven times in one year

“What did the suspect look like?” can

elicit better information Dispatcherscould follow up by asking witnesses to focus on more specific characteristics – speech patterns, jewellery, tattoos –

to give patrolling cops more to go on.This open-question technique forms part of a strategy called the cognitive interview, pioneered by Edward Geiselman also at UCLA Other tricks include asking the witness to describe the scene first in chronological order, then backwards, which can trigger further recollections.Geiselman and colleagues described the technique in 1984 Field tests showed that it held up: detectives using cognitive interviews in Florida in 1989 and England in 1996 elicited 63 per cent and 55 per cent more information from witnesses, respectively

But this method has limitations –

it may be difficult with an agitated emergency caller on the line, and some aspects are time consuming Still, elements of the technique could help Dispatchers could be trained to talk to callers in a way designed to calm them and prime them for more accurate recall

No one has yet studied whether the cognitive interview can specifically rein in racial profiling Still, anything that provides better information can hopefully help lessen the effects of institutional racism Better interviews won’t stop people dying, but if institutional racism arises one decision

at a time, perhaps it is vulnerable to death by a thousand cuts ■

Smarterinterviewsmay reduceracialtension

INSIGHT Police shootings

–Protests are sweeping the US–

“We’re not priming people

to look for anything beyond saying what the person’s skin colour is”

For more opinion articles, visit newscientist.com/opinion

THE Israeli army has announced

that by the end of the year all

new infantry soldiers will play

a computer game designed to

prevent post-traumatic stress

disorder The US military is also

reported to be testing the game

Blocking out the details of a

traumatic event is thought to be

one of the causes of PTSD The

game is designed to train soldiers

not to do this

“On a psychological level,

a soldier that does not process

threats in real time is more likely

to develop PTSD later on in life,”

says Yair Bar-Haim at Tel Aviv

University “Flashbacks,

overstimulation and an attempt

to avoid anything that resembles

the traumatic experience are all

results of the inability to properly

process events as they unfold.”

The roll-out is based on the

game’s success in a small trial It’s

not the first time a game hasbeen shown to tackle PTSD

A 2015 study showed that playing

Tetris after a traumatic experience

could prevent the onset of flashbacks But the new game seems to work differently

The game itself is simple

Players must press a key whenever

a dot appears on the screen next

to one of two images One of the images is always threatening – angry faces and negative words like “explosions” and “wounded”–

and the other neutral

The game is based on previous work by Colin MacLeod at the University of Western Australia, who was one of the first to use

such a game to test for attentionalbiases in people with anxiety disorders People react more quickly to dots that appear next

to images they are already looking

at, he says So, if someone is slower at responding to dots nearthreatening images, it suggests they are avoiding them

Bar-Haim adds a twist Rather than testing for bias against threatening images, his game trains soldiers to focus on them

That’s because preliminary work in 2008, which tracked infantry soldiers from basic training to deployment, “found that soldiers who did not pay attention to potential threats on

a computer screen were at greaterrisk of developing PTSD after actual combat”, Bar-Haim says

To develop the technique, Haim teamed up with the Israel Defense Forces’ Medical Corps, the

Bar-Walter Reed Army Institute ofResearch – the US Department

of Defense’s largest biomedical research facility – and the US National Institutes of Health They then asked 719 Israeli soldiers to play the game in four, 10-minute sessions, as part of anadvanced training programme

In July 2014, 14 months later, the same troops were involved in the Israel-Gaza conflict The teammeasured symptoms of PTSD

in the four months followingcombat They found that after

50 days of intense fighting, only 2.6 per cent of the soldiers who had played the game developed PTSD compared with 7.8 per cent

of their peers (Psychological

Medicine, doi.org/bmk6).

No boosters

That a single round of training showed an effect after 14 months

is surprising, says Bar-Haim

“Given the nature of the training

we thought it might be necessary

to provide booster sessions imminently prior to combat,”

he says “However, the effects are deep and basic.”

Bar-Haim says that the training procedure targets a very specific neuro-functional system involved

in threat monitoring – and that neuroimaging shows that such training, even if brief, can induce changes in both brain structure and function “More research is needed to elucidate the underlying mechanisms of change in our preventative intervention,” he says

MacLeod thinks the results are exciting The value of such cognitive training could extend across a wide range of situations where people are exposed to traumatic events, he says However, there may be long-term consequences of heightening a person’s attention

to threats, he warns – especially when soldiers return to civilian life “Perhaps the training should

be reversed once deployment has been completed.” ■

“Soldiers who did not pay attention to threats on a computer screen were at greater risk of PTSD”

Brain training for troops

Soldiers in Israel will soon be playing a brain-training game to prevent

PTSD as part of their combat training, says Oded Carmeli

–Zoning in–

FIELD NOTES Daejeon, South Korea

For more technology stories, visit newscientist.com/technology

House-training Hubo

What’s next for the winner of the world’s toughest robot challenge?

Hal Hodson

THE last time I saw Hubo, it was

zipping around an assault course on

wheeled knees and hacking through

walls with a saw Today, its 80

kilograms hang lifeless from a bright

yellow gantry, arms limp by its sides

It’s been a year since Hubo won

the DARPA Robotics Challenge – the

hardest robotics competition ever

staged – and I’ve come to the Korean

Institute for the Advancement of

Science and Technology to catch up

with Hubo and its creator Jun-Ho Oh

Oh has been busy, getting his

life-size humanoid robot ready for an even

tougher challenge: making the leap

from assault course to your home

An unassuming single-storey

construction, Building N9, houses one

of the most advanced robotics labs in

the world Inside, there are monitors

everywhere, buckets filled with bolts,

and reams of cabling In a side room,

Hubo clones stand around in varying

stages of completion Some are just

legs, wires and metal joints poking

out of robot hips

Since winning the competition,

Oh’s spin-off company Rainbow Robots

has been churning out Hubos for the

international market Most recently,

it has shipped four to labs in the US

Now the company is working on

consumer robots, including domestic

and medical models And this means

making Hubo simple enough for

anyone to operate

Robots like Big Dog, made by US

firm Boston Dynamics, create buzz

They are flashy, scary and look good

in promo videos “These days there

are many fancy robots,” says Oh “But

can they be used by normal people,

without a team of engineers?”

Typically not Robots are still

specialist playthings They go wrong

often and need debugging constantly

At an event like the DARPA RoboticsChallenge, teams of engineers spentdays preparing their robots just to getthem to function for a few minutes

Oh wants Hubo to be different

He has been tweaking it continuously,making it more reliable He has writtenaccessible instruction manuals And hehas addressed the problem of storage:

Hubo can be taken apart into fivepieces and packed away into suitcases

Some of Oh’s team winch Hubodown from the gantry and switch it

on They guide its feet to the floor and,with the click of a mouse, instruct it to

walk over a path strewn with rubble

Hubo walks slowly and steadily, like a human would if their life depended

on stepping in exactly the right spot

Then Oh hands me a thick beam

of wood as long as my leg “Hold thatright at the end,” he says “It’s difficult,isn’t it?” I pass the beam to Hubo,who grasps it at the other end, thentwists its wrist through 360 inhumandegrees, wielding the wood like asword “He’s strong,” says Oh

Unlike other robot demos I’ve seen,I’m standing right next to Hubo There

is no safety harness Such is Oh’sconfidence in Hubo’s reliability

Oh chuckles as I grasp Hubo’soutstretched manipulator and shake

it. In years of writing about robots,this is the first time I have everproperly met one.■

“Unlike other robot demos, I’m standing right next to Hubo There is no safety harness”

–Meet the robot champion–

HERE’S a heads-up: don’t shop for skulls on eBay Over seven months,

a team at the Louisiana Department of Justice in Baton Rouge tracked human skulls being advertised on the site and found that 237 people listed 454 skulls, with opening bids ranging from one cent to $5500 Following the release of their findings, eBay has banned sales of all human body parts except hair.

It’s hard to tell where the skulls were sourced Not all were donated

to science, the team suspects – some are probably archaeological specimens or from forensic investigations, for example

Tanya Marsh at Wake Forest University in Winston Salem, North Carolina, thinks that many could have originated from India and China Although both countries have now banned the export of human remains, Marsh suspects that many imported skeletons could still be on the US market “We should have strong moral problems with that,” she says, as it’s not clear how old each skeleton is and

a visual inspection can’t reveal much either “It’s possible that some of them are disinterred human remains.”

A US law bans the sale of Native American remains, but there is no other federal restriction on the sale

of human skulls online Tightening

up the law might not help as it could divert the trade to less visible locations on the web Conor Gearin ■

Hundreds of skulls sold on eBay for

Since Pokémon Go’s release on

6 July, the augmented reality app

has become a smash hit Players

walk around hunting for hidden

monsters superimposed on the

world around them, and visiting

real-life locations tagged as stops

or gyms in the game So far, it has

been downloaded an estimated

15 million times

But all this enthusiasm has led

to more than a few uncomfortable

interactions in the real world

A police station in Australia asked

people to stop coming in to visit a

Pokéstop – a place where free items

can be found Homeowners have

had players loitering outside their

property day and night Others

were aghast when Pokémon began

showing up at sensitive sites such

as the Auschwitz-BirkenauMemorial and Museum, and theHolocaust Memorial Museum inWashington DC

“We do not consider playing

‘Pokémon Go’ to be appropriate

decorum on the grounds of ANC

We ask all visitors to refrain fromsuch activity,” tweeted theArlington National Cemetery, a

US military cemetery in Virginia

The game has brought to thefore a number of once-speculativequestions about augmentedreality Past court cases havedebated the physical boundaries

of property, from the air above tothe dirt below – what about digitalboundaries?

You do not have a right to any

of the virtual space in and aroundyour home, says Brian Wassom, acommercial litigator in Michigan

and the author of Augmented

Reality Law, Privacy and Ethics.

“Digital objects aren’t really there,” he says “You might see Pokémon on your little screen portrayed as if they’re in themiddle of a street or in themiddle of a park, but all you’re seeing is data that’s stored in aserver somewhere, displayed

And trespassers are still liable

to be arrested, even if they just clambered into your backyard to get a little closer to a rare snorlax

In addition, there’s a potential case for negligence if a company doesn’t act on a problem that theiraugmented reality game has created, says Emily McReynolds, programme director of the Tech Policy Lab at the University of Washington Designers might take

a hint from virtual message board Yik Yak After numerous bullying incidents, it put up “geofences” to block access in and around schools

“I think in cases like this, lawsuits are very likely,” she says

“The question is whether or not they would be successful.”

Niantic, the software company

behind Pokémon Go, has already

proven responsive to concerns, she adds, and it’s in the best interests of the firm to work out issues ahead of time rather than see them go to court ■

“Past court cases have debated the physical boundaries of property – what about digital ones?”

Now that cut on your arm has

a voice A new thread has been developed for stitching wounds that can relay data to doctors about the state of an injury The thread can gather pressure, stress, strain and temperature information to create a picture of how a wound is healing Its developers, at Tufts University in Boston, tested it on rats, beaming data wirelessly to a computer

or phone.

20The average number of messages sent before a phone number is exchanged between people on online dating apps

Safety overseas

Microsoft does not have to hand over data held on servers in Ireland in response to search warrants from US authorities The ruling, made at the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York, is a big moment for the application of privacy rights under the rules of the country where personal data resides, limiting the reach of government data collection

Help, my yard’s a Pokéstop

Pokémon Go‘s success raises tricky questions, says Aviva Rutkin

Search newscientistjobs.com for thousands of STEM

opportunities, from graduate recruitment to CEOs

APERTURE

What a rubbish picnic

IT MIGHT not look that appetising to us, but for white storks, this dump is like an all-you-can eat buffet.

White storks traditionally make an epic annual migration from Europe to West Africa, flying thousands of kilometres to find food But the prospect of an easy meal much closer to home is starting to replace the long-distance pilgrimage Vast landfills in southern Europe and North Africa are too tempting to pass up.

Photographer Jasper Doest has been taking pictures of the birds for years “They are elegant and brutal at the same time,” he says His latest project involved following storks along their western migration route from Europe, over the Sahara to their wintering grounds These birds were snapped on a dump near the city of Beja in Portugal.

Recent studies using tracking sensors have shown that, in the short term, birds who winter

on the rubbish dumps in southern Europe have better survival rates than those who reach West Africa But although food might be plentiful, it can

be dangerous too Toxic metals lurk among the scrap, as well as objects that can choke the birds The long-term impact on the storks is uncertain Doest spent weeks on landfill sites in Portugal, capturing a different story to the one he set out to document “I was shocked to see so many birds foraging on the remains of our consumer society,”

he says “This story is not about storks It’s not even about birds It’s about us.” Greta Keenan

Photographer

Jasper Doest

jasperdoest.com

23 July 2016 | NewScientist | 27

AT THE heart of the internet are monsters

with voracious appetites In bunkers

and warehouses around the world, vast

arrays of computers run the show, serving up

the web – and gorging on our data

These server farms are the engine rooms

of the internet Operated by some of the

world’s most powerful companies, they

process photos of our children, emails to

our bosses and lovers, and our late-night

searches Such digital shards reveal far more

of ourselves than we might like, and they are

worth a lot of money They are not only used

to target advertising and sell stuff back to us,

but also form the building blocks for a new

generation of artificial intelligence that will

determine the future of the web

“Very big and powerful companies own

a huge chunk of what happens on the web,”

says Andrei Sambra, a developer with the

World Wide Web (W3) Consortium at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the

main standards organisation for the web

But we – the ones producing this valuable

data – have lost control

The time has come to push back Sambra

is part of a growing movement to wrest back

control over our digital lives by breaking the

monopolies of the server farms and the people

who own them Tweak the technology on

which the web runs and we can each keep

our own little part of it in our pockets, they

say – and determine who or what makes

money out of who we are

In a sense, that would be just getting back

to the way the web was always intended

The original World Wide Web, invented

by Tim Berners-Lee at the particle physics

centre CERN near Geneva in 1989, was a

“decentralised” affair There were no central

servers; websites ran on individual machines

in universities, offices and bedrooms Hosting

a site just meant plugging a computer into

your internet connection and having it

serve up the HTML code to anyone visiting

No one company ruled the roost

Simple open protocols meant that anyonewho knew what they were doing could be apart of the burgeoning network “A lot of thethings that made the early web wonderfulwere these open standards,” says HarryHalpin, also with W3C “This allowed a level

of decentralisation, and lack of monopolycontrol of the web.”

It sounds utopian, and in many ways itwas – but far too fiddly for most people tofaff about with Those open protocols are stillthere But we were lured away by convenience.Hotmail launched in 1996, allowing anyonewith an internet connection to have an emailaccount with none of the hassle of runningtheir own mail server Within a year,8.5 million people had signed up and it was bought by Microsoft In 2004, Google launched Gmail, helping us manage our personal lives as well as the web, which it had dominated since the late 1990s

Facebook also launched in 2004 It made finding and keeping in touch with friends easier and more convenient than earlier social networks like Bebo and Myspace A decade later, Facebook is used by almost a quarter

of the people on the planet For many, it is all the web they want It’s where they conduct their social lives, get their news and find entertainment

Despite its seemingly infinite nature, the web is largely centred on just a handful of companies Instead of a proliferation of independently run sites, the web is dominated

by global firms with which we have made a Faustian pact In exchange for convenience,

Convenience has made us the pawns of

the companies that run the web - but

there are ways to seize back some control,

says Hal Hodson

>

“THE EARLY WEB WAS UTOPIAN – BUT FAR TOO FIDDLY FOR MOST PEOPLE

TO FAFF ABOUT WITH”

we let companies like Google, Facebook,

Amazon – and, more recently, start-ups like

Uber and Airbnb – conduct their business by

siphoning up and profiting from our data

Why should we get worked up about this?

After all, the most useful things you can do on

the modern web rely on this data Companies

use it constantly to tweak the services they

provide Our data also feeds the

machine-learning algorithms that are behind the many

recent breakthroughs in artificial intelligence

There are some well-rehearsed objections

One is privacy Surveys conducted by

organisations like Pew Research in

Washington DC, for example, which has been

studying this issue for 15 years, repeatedly

show that people have low levels of confidence

in how their personal data is handled by

internet companies “A lot of people aren’t

too sure they know what is collected about

them and how the data is used,” says Lee

Rainie at Pew Research “This makes people

nervous and frustrated, but they still need

to live in the modern world and many feel it

is not an option to be offline.”

Leaving our digital lives in so few corporate

hands also makes us easier to spy on PRISM,

one of many US government surveillance

programmes revealed by the whistleblower

Edward Snowden, consisted of government

agents walking into the premises of large

web companies with a secret court order

and taking what data they wanted

A set-up based around servers that store

our data makes life ridiculously easy for

hackers No matter how good the defences,

the fact that the internet stores its data

at actual physical locations makes those

computers targets Servers are honeypots

GIVING OURSELVES AWAY

Andy Clarke, a philosopher studying artificial

intelligence at the University of Edinburgh,

UK, says that our loss of control goes even

deeper “When we use the internet in the

ways it’s mostly available – through big nodes

like Google and Facebook – we are giving

ourselves away,” says Clarke They are making

big bucks out of us, and we don’t get a penny

Aral Balkan, founder of Swedish tech

democratisation movement Ind.ie, calls

such companies “people farmers” If you’re

not paying, you’re the product

This is worse than you think The increasing

numbers of connected devices in our lives are

all sources of data Soon our data trails won’t

begin and end with the time we spend at our

screens, they will continue via the smart

web with the ease and usefulness of the one

we have today

Sambra is working on a project called Solid, which is led by none other than Berners-Lee himself The idea behind this prototype software is to separate our data from the apps and servers that process it With Solid, you get to decide where your data lives – on your phone, a server at work, or with a cloud provider, as it probably does now You can even nominate friends to look after it “We want to put the data in a place where the user controls it,” says Sambra

Instead of sucking up your data by default, apps will first have to get your permission And rather than having its own database to draw on, an app will pull in data from as many sources as it needs In Solid’s vision, web email and social networking sites would cease to handle personal data and focus instead on building the type of flexible software that can draw on data from anywhere

In particular, Solid aims to give you ownership of one of your most important pieces of data: the list of the people you know, and the people they know – what’s called our social graph A big reason we get locked in to certain sites and services is that it is hard – often impossible – to take this social graph with you if you leave Quit Facebook, Twitter

or LinkedIn and all of your connections and contacts are lost With Solid, you carry your social graph with you from site to site, freeing you from becoming locked in “You have one social graph and you can reuse it in any app,” says Sambra You control which parts to plug into which networks

In Solid, your social graph is a key personal possession, a digital Rolodex not to be handed over to anyone It’s important not just as a list

of who you know, but as a list of who you trust This comes into play when deciding how to distribute your data You could carry this social graph in your phone, says Sambra But

it is impractical to have crucial pieces of data stored only in one place So, like leaving sets of house keys with neighbours, you can choose

to entrust sensitive data to close connections

in your social graph Web services will then need to adapt to such fluid arrangements.Solid is still at an early stage But it is not alone This year, UK start-up MaidSafe launched a peer-to-peer network that relies

on encryption and the blockchain – the distributed ledger technology that underpins bitcoin – to divorce data from servers It already has a few thousand users

MaidSafe’s approach is pretty radical Where Solid would operate as a virtual layer

“ PEOPLE AREN’T TOO SURE HOW

THEIR DATA IS USED THIS MAKES

THEM NERVOUS AND FRUSTRATED”

Web 3.0The new vision for the internet involves going back to the old ways Doing away with the server farms means

we can connect directly and control our data better

Current system

Maidsafe

Companies can proit from stored data

Government agencies can potentially access data without our knowledge

Files split up and shared across a network make it harder for others to access our data

Easy target for hackers

devices in our homes and offices, on our bodies and in public places The artificial intelligences being created by internet companies will make us ever more dependent

on their services Coupled with this is the rise

of decision-making software, which firms are increasingly using to help make calls about loans, job applications and health insurance based on your data

“The public really does need to be aware

of what this means,” says Mohamed Sayed, CEO of German start-up Heuro Labs, which develops health AIs Our data is being used

to train these systems, he says “How does society get back some of that?”

It’s going to require a radical rethink That’s just what Sambra and his colleagues at W3C are pushing for The aim is to combine the control and personal autonomy of the early