new-scientist-magazine-6-12-february-2010

CO NTE NTS

NEWS 5 EDITORIAL We've much still to learn about

"vegetative" patients 6 UPFRONT Clinical trials should include the

elderly, Stem cell science "stifled", NASA hit in US budget. Pacific waves are getting taller

B THIS WEEK

How to communicate with people who seem

unconscious, Huge impact of exported UK emissions, Concern over DIY sperm counters,

Can headache pill save trauma victims? Quantum secrets of photosynthesis

16 IN BRIEF The warming power of water. How Asians got the booze-battling gene,

Complex smells make food more satisfying, Laser fusion breakthrough, Comets doomed

19 TECHNOLOG Y

Internet telescope inspects web's dark heart.

Elegant photos for all. Sun-storm warnings from a chip-sized spacecraft

OPINION 24 Neurons for peace Neuroscientists must stop

their work being used to advance torture and aggressive wars, says Curtis Bell

25 One minute with .. , Rob Hopkins, promoter of the Transition Towns movement

26 LETTERS Alternatives to robot border guards, Pitfalls of consciousness studies

2B Rewriting Darwin Let's admit that natural selection isn't the whole story, say Jerry Fodor

and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini

FEATURES 32 Why water is so weird (see right) 36 On the origin of Earth's oxygen (see right)

40 The age of the whale Vast numbers of the mighty mammals once ruled the oceans

43 Bye-bye wires Will beamed power finally free your appliances from the socket on the wall?

REGULARS 26 ENIGMA

46 BOOKS & ARTS

Reviews What liberal democracy owes to science, A history of death by poison, Bacteria

and fungi galore, A Nobelist's musings 56 FEEDBACK

57 THE LAST WORD

4B JOBS & CAREERS

USA

225 Wyman Street. Waltham, MA 02451 Tel 781 734 8770 Fax 720 3569217 201 Mission Street 26th Floor, Sa n Fra ncisco, CA 94105 Tel 415 908 3348

Fax 415 704 3125 UK

Lacon House, 84 Theobald's Road,

London, WCIX 8NS Tel +44 (0)20 7611 1200

Fax +44 (0)20 7611 1250

AUSTRALIA

Tower 2, 475 Victoria Avenue,

Chatswood, NSW 2067 Tel +612 9422 2666 Fax +51294222533

Editorial .. media enquiries

Tel 781734 8770

[email protected]

Enquiries

Tel +44 (0) 20 75111202 [email protected]

Display Advertising

Tel 781 7348779

joe,[email protected]

32

36

. ' . "' .. - . . ..

Speaking to the brain We can now communicate with people once thought to be unconscious

RecruitmentAdvertising TO SUBSCRIBE

Tel 781734 8770 Tel 888 822 3242 nssales@newscientist com [email protected] Permissions for reuse An annual subscription in the USA Tel +442075111210 is $154 including delivery. Marketing An annual subscription in Canada Tel 781734 8778 is CAN$182 including delivery,

marketing@newscientis t .com Canadian subscriptions distributed by RCS International, 12182 Belden

For a full list of who's who at Ct Lr"onia, M148150. new Scientist go to Newsstand

newscientist,com/people Distributed by Curtis Circulation Company, 730 River Road, New

Milford, NJ 07646 3048

Tel 201634 7400

Volume 205 No 2745

COVER STORY

'-. ' Why water .. issow eird

•

Secrets of the strangest liquid revealed

Cover image BIWNGa liery Stock

Life's a gas

Where did all the oxygen come from?

Coming next week Impossible star Rel ic from a long lost un iverse

PLUS A marriage made in endocrinology

Syndication New York, NY 10010,

Tribune Media Services Periodicals postage paid at

International New York, NY and other mailing Tel 213 237 7987 offices. Postmaster: Send address email [email protected] changes to New Scientist, © 2010 Reed Business po Box 3805, Chesterfield, MO Information Ltd, England , 53005 9953, USA,

Regi stered at the Post Office

New Scientist ISSN No, 0262 4079 as a newspaper and printed in USA is published weekly except forthe by FryCommunications Inc, last week in December by Reed Mechanicsburg, PA 17055 Business Information Ltd, England.

Reed Business Infonmation, rio (]. Reed Business Schnell Publishing Co. Inc" 360 Park

Avenue South, 12th Floor, Information

6 February 2010 I NewScientist 13

EDITORIAL

A peek into the twilight zone We may now be ab le to commun icate with peop le who seemed to be u n responsive

IT TOOK Jean-Dominique Bauby hundreds of thousands of blinks to dictate his book about how a stroke had left him paralysed yet still aware. Now comes the remarkable news that neuroscientists have communicated with a man presumed to be in a vegetative state, by studying the activity in his brain with functional magnetic resonance imaging, fMRI.

Vegetative usually means awake but unresponsive and devoid ofintellectual activity. However, a handful of people have defied that diagnosis. The Anglo-Belgian team led by Adrian Owen and Steven Laureys describe how they scanned the brain of one of the group as he thought of one of two different activities - tennis and navigating his way round his house. Different brain areas lit up, depending on whether he wanted to answer yes or no to questions about his family (see page 8).

To discover awareness in someone who is supposedly vegetative will be unsettling for friends and family. But surely ignorance can't be preferable to understanding their plight. Some argue that the discovery that a "vegetative" person actually possesses a degree of consciousness suggests they can suffer and may increase pressure to discontinue their life support. However, this

research now offers a way to ask someone if they wish to end their life. The ethical issues surrounding assent to suicide will be just same as for someone who is terminally ill. The central question remains: are they capable of making a life-or-death decision and deciding their own fate.

Bauby had locked-in syndrome, which means his mind was intact but trapped inside an almost useless body. But many other people exist in a twilight zone between consciousness and coma. The new study underlines arguments by bioethicists such as Joseph Fins of Weill Cornell Medical College,

"The central question remains: are these individuals capable of deciding their own fate"

New York, that scanners will be critical for categorising disorders of consciousness, on which there is little consensus at the moment.

Excitement about the ability to communicate with some people who have been unreachable until now should also be tempered by pragmatism. Doctors will now need to find cheap ways to read minds ifthese patients are to have any chance of rejoining society.

Many groups around the world, including the one led by Owen and Laureys, are now working on cheaper and more portable alternatives to fMRI, based on EEG recordings.

In the short term, the study will ease fears that we may be withdrawing life support when there is a chance of recovery. At least now there is a way to respond to these patients' needs, even if we do not know how to make them happy. In this new era of consciousness science, we can explore the twilight zone .•

What's hot on NewScientist.com

TE(H Hidden twin NEW ZOOLOGGER'Living (YBER-SAFETY

holds hydrogen- S(IENTISTTV beach ball' is largest Secret questions not

storage clue Two Ou r latest video structure made by so secure Standard

crystals with identical round-up In the New a single cell Our security questions

appearance, chemistry Scientistvodcast for column highlighting used to protect bank

and basic structure February, we reveal extraordinary and emai l accounts can

prove to have very what makes locusts organisms from around be guessed relatively

different appetites switch from awkward the world th is week easily using censuses

for hydrogen, thanks lone insects to swarming features a mysterious, and pet registr ies, warn

to subtle differences party animals, explore single-celled marine security researchers

in the arrangement the insides of our giant thatforms a

of their atoms. The ancestors'teeth and find huge and complex For breaki ng news,

discovery cou ld boost out about a mystery network of tubes video and debate visit

future fuel tanks orchid-po l l inator made of sand newscientist.com

Holster the harpoons till we have the facts

WHEN settlers arrived in the New World in the nth century, they found waters so thick with whales it was said you could walk across the bay of Cape Cod on their backs. Such stories have been dismissed as fantasy. Nevertheless, it appears that the whale population was once vastly bigger than we thought, and that our slaughter of them was more thorough than history records (see page 40). This matters because commercial whaling may be allowed to resume once populations reach 54 per cent of their "historic" levels. This is generally assumed to be the population of the mid-19th century, before the explosive harpoon was invented. But if this historic benchmark is too low, the whaling moratorium must continue. Ironically, the vast slaughter of whales past may yet help to secure their future .•

Quantum visionaries QUANTUM biology has come in from the cold. First came news that birds may see magnetic fields, thanks to quantum effects. Now it seems that pigments used in photosynthesis use quantum calculations to harness light (see page 12). Physicists had ruled this out at lifefriendly temperatures because heat disrupts an effect called quantum coherence. The implication is that we, too, could possess quantum computers. We may only need to look into our own eyes to find the evidence, in the form of the pigment rhodopsin .•

6 February 2010 I NewScientist 1 5

UPFRONT

US abandons moon shot DREAMS of a moon base wil l have to

remain just that. The US is cancelling

Constellation, the Bush-era p lan to

return humans to the moon by 2020.

The programme is a victim of cuts

announced by President Barack

Obama in his 2011 budget request.

The cancellation will leave

NASA without its own rocket capable

of sending astronauts into space

after the retirement of the space

shuttle later this year. Instead,

NASA is betting that astronauts will

be able to pay for rides to and from

the International Space Station on

commercial launch vehicles.

The new p lan must now be

approved by Congress. The White

House faces fierce opposition from

officials who represent areas with

thousands of jobs tied to the

Referee or rival? WOULD top-flight scientists stoop so low as to sabotage disclosure of rival research that threatens to scoop their own?

Although short of proof, a group of senior stem cell researchers warn that it may be ha ppening. They are calling for journal editors to be alert to referees who might abuse their position in the peer-review process to discredit or block rival research.

"It's all done in secret, so it's very hard to gather information

"If all peer-review comments were published, it would hopefully make biased refereeing less common"

on this," says Robin Lovell-Badge of the National Institute for Medical Research in London.

He and Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University, Japan, who famously reprogrammed ordinary cells to become similar to embryonic stem cells, are among 14 signatories to a letter of complaint sent in July 200g to major scientific journals,

6 1 NewScientist 1 6 February 2010

Constellation programme.

It was not all bad news, however.

The space station wi l l now be

funded until 2020, rather than being

abandoned after 2015 to free up

money for the moon shot. A nd NASA

is to invest $7.8 bil l ion overthe next

five years on new technology for

human space exp loration, such as

orbiting fuel depots that could act as

staging posts for future missions.

Science as a whole also fared

well. Obama is seeking $61.6 bi l l ion

for research in 2011, 5.6 per cent

more than in 2010. Among the

winners is clean-energy research,

with $300 mi l lion requested for the

new Advanced Research Projects

Agency-Energy, created to make

investments in potentially game

changing energy technologies.

including Nature and Science. Frustrated by the lack of res ponse, some signatories decided to publicise the letter's content more widely this week.

The letter called on journals to publish anonymised comments from referees alongside published papers, so that the fairness and scientific validity ofthe comments can be judged by all, a practice already adopted by The EMBO Journal. "Because all comments would be published, it would hopefully make biased or careless refereeing less common, and it would embarrass journals if people could spot biased or stupid comments," says Lovell-Badge.

The fact that only two signatories were from the US hinted that most disenchantment lies elsewhere, he adds. "There does seem to be this bias against groups from the rest of the world."

Philip Campbell, editor-in-chief at Nature, says TheEMBOJournal model " is still on the table", but says it's up to journal editors to decide if referees' demands for extra experiments are justified, and to spot referees who appear to be causing delays.

Emissions dance

THE Copenhagen climate dance continues. This week, 55 nations representing 78 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions from energy use, submitted pledges to the UN to cut emissions by 2020.

The commitments were made to meet a deadline set at the climate talks held in Copenhagen in December. But they mostly reiterate national pledges made before the summit, and are steeped in conditions. The US, for instance, reaffirmed its

commitment to cut emissions to 17 per cent below 2005 levels, contingent on legislation being passed at home. China repeated that it would "endeavour to lower its carbon dioxide emissions per unit of G DP by 40 to 45 per cent" between 2005 and 2020.

"The vast majority of nations has failed to seize this opportunity to make their pledges more ambitious," says Niklas Hahne, a policy analyst at ECofys in Cologne, Germany. "Our analysis suggests that the world is still on track for a 3-5 °C rise."

Pacific waves are getting bigger GOOD news surfers: waves in the

north-east Pacific are getting taller,

and the height of the most extreme

"lOO-year" waves is increasing fastest.

Previous data had shown

wave height to be increasing in

the north-east Pacific and north

Atlantic since the late 19805. Now

measurements from a deep-water

buoy moored off the Oregon coast

since the mid-1970s indicate that

the "lOo-year" waves - the monster

waves with a 1 per cent chance of

occurring in any given year - could

be 40 per cent larger than previous

estimates, at 14 metres high.

Peter Ruggiero of Oregon State

University, who carried out the

analysis, found that average wave

heights increased at the rate of

1.5 centimetres per year, while each

year's biggest wave increased by an

average of 10 centimetres per year.

He says c l imate change is a l i kely

culprit, but more measurements

are needed to confirm this.

For daily news stories, visit www.NewScientist.com/news

Wanted: the elderly

CLINICAL trials must include more older recruits if thousands of lives are to be saved, say researchers who have drawn up a charter calling for such a change.

"Non-steroidal antiinflammatory drugs are not trialled in the over-70s but are prescribed to them"

The team told the British Medical Association on Monday that the elderly are underrepresented in clinical trials, and that in a quarter of cases the reasons for excluding them are unjustified. Paul Dieppe at the University of Bristol, UK, says that non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, which are not trialled in patients over the age oho but are prescribed to people of this age, may have caused thousands of avoidable deaths because these drugs are more toxic in over-70s.

Andrew Beswick ofthe UK's Medical Research Council says that the elderly may experience more underlying health issues and interference from other drugs, but that this isn't a reason to exclude them as it " represents the real-life situation".

The charter calls on trial sponsors, regulators and ethics committees to offer support to those with communication or mobility problems that might hamper their participation.

Mass overdose pact

NOTHING more thana sugar rush was reported by hundreds of volunteers who took part in a mass-overdose stunt around the world. The aim was to show that homeopathic remedies are nothing more than sugar pills.

"There were no casualties at all, as far as I know," says Martin Robbins of the 10: 23 campaign, created to highlight the alleged ineffectiveness of homeopathic remedies. "No one was cured of

"Each pillule is a tiny sugar pill dabbed with a drop of homeopathic remedy at 'infinite'dilution"

anything either." Like an estimated 300 volunteers in several cities in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US, Robbins swallowed a bottleful of around 80 "pillules" at exactly 10.23 am on 30 January. Each pillule is a tiny sugar pill dabbed with a drop of a homeopathic remedy, produced by " infinite" dilution. This involves diluting a solution so much that not one molecule ofthe " active" component is likely to remain, according to the Avogadro constant - the origin of "10:23".

Robbins says that the aim was to draw attention to homeopathic medicine's lack of scientific

foundation and to embarrass the British high-street pharmacist Boots into withdrawing its treatments. Boots said: "Many people believe in the benefits of complementary medicines and we aim to offer the products we know our customers want."

Robbins said that the campaign would be a success if it led others to question homeopathy more.

Climate and Gates

THE world's richest man has been funding geoengineering research, it emerged last week. According to a report posted online by Science, Bill Gates has committed $4.5 million of his own money to funding a number of climate scientists interested in geoengineering.

It is not clear whether all of that has gone to geoengineering studies. Atmospheric scientist Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, California, says he received $1.1 million over three years for "blue skies" research. He estimates about one-third ofthat was spent on investigating geoengineering.

Caldeira says he sees no moral dilemmas in Gates funding geoengineering. "There is no attempt to profit from this," he says. He contrasts Gates's involvement with commercial geoengineering ventures.

60 SECONDS

Oil nay, nuclearyea ... Big oi l took a hit and nuclear got

a boost from US president Barack

Obama's budget proposal. It calls

fo ra $36 bil l ion i ncrease in loan

guarantees for nuclear power plants

and cuts $36.5 bi l l ion in subsidies to

oil and natural gas companies over

10 years. If app roved by Co ngress,

the money could be used to finance

six new nuclear power plants.

... but not in Yucca The US is finally abandoning plans

to store high-level nuclear waste in

an underground repository in Yucca

mountain in Nevada, having putthe

programme on hold last year after

a decade of local oppositio n. The

waste will now be stored above

ground for the foreseeable futu re.

A whole latta vaccine An "unprecedented" donation of

$10 bi l l ion towards vaccine research

and delivery could dramatically

reduce child mortality, says the

World Health Organization. The

Bi l l and Melinda Gates Foundation

p ledged to donate the sum overthe

next decade, to protect chi ldren in

poor countries against big ki l lers

such as diarrhoea and pneumo nia.

Finch bucks evolution Things are looking up forthe

rarest of Darwin's 13 finches.

A three-year programme to ki l l

black rats on Isabela Island in the

Galapagos has resulted in fewer

nests being raided (Philosophical

Transactions Of the Royal Society B, vol 365, p I). Researchers have seen

yearling mangrove finches for the

first time in 10 years.

Autism paper dumped The discredited 1998 paper linking

the measles, mumps and rubella

(MMR) vaccine to autism has been

retracted byThe Lancet. The journal

cited falsehoods that were exposed

last week by the UK General Medical

Council following a lengthy

i nvestigation of lead autho r A ndrew

Wakefield and two co-authors.

6 February 2010 1 NewScientist 1 7

THIS WEEK

A voice for the voiceless It is now poss ib le to "ta lk" to people who seem to be u n conscious, by tapp ing i nto the i r bra in activity

Celeste Biever

THE innervoice of people who appear unconscious can now be heard. For the first time, researchers have struck up a conversation with a man diagnosed as being in a vegetative state. All they had to do was monitor how his brain responded to specific questions. This means that it may now be possible to give some individuals in the same state a degree of autonomy.

"They can now have some involvement in their destiny," says Adrian Owen of the University of Cambridge, who led the team doing the work.

In an earlier experiment, published in 2006, Owen's team asked a woman previously diagnosed as being in a vegetative

Talking tothe brain

state (VS) to picture herself carrying out one of two different activities. The resulting brain activity suggested she understood the commands and was therefore conscious.

Now Owen's team has taken the idea a step further. A man also diagnosed with VS was able to answer yes and no to specific questions by imagining himself engaging in the same activities.

The results suggest that it is possible to give a degree of choice to some people who have no other way of communicating with the outside world. "We are not just showing they are conscious, we are giving them a voice and a way to communicate," says neurologist Steven Laureys of the University of Liege in Belgium, Owen's collaborator.

By asking people to imag ine one activity for yes and another for no, researchers can use brai n imag ing techniques to identify the answers to simple questions in both hea lthy volunteers and some "vegetative "patients

c: w w IZ :> .. o >

When someone is in a VS, they can breathe unaided, have intact reflexes but seem completely unaware. But it is becoming clear that some people who appear to be vegetative are in fact minimally conscious. They are in a kind of twilight state in which they may feel some pain, experience emotion and communicate to a limited extent. These two states can be distinguished from each other via bedside behavioural tests - but these tests are not perfect and can miss patients who are aware but unable to move. So researchers are looking for ways to detect consciousness with brain imaging.

In their original experiment, Owen and his colleagues used functional MRI to detect whether a woman could respond to two spoken commands, which were expected to activate different brain areas. On behavioural tests alone her diagnosis was VS but the brain scan results were astounding. When asked to imagine playing tennis, the woman's supplementary motor area (SMA), which is concerned with complex sequences of movements, lit up. When asked to imagine moving around her house, it was the turn of the parahi ppocampal gyrus, which represents s patial locations. Because the correct brain areas lit up at the correct time, the team concluded that the woman was modulating her brain activity to cooperate with the experiment and must have had a degree of consciousness (Science, DOl: 10.1126/science.1130197).

In the intervening years, Owen, Laureys and their team repeated the experiment on 23 people in Belgium and the UK diagnosed as being in a VS. Four responded positively and were deemed to possess a degree of consciousness.

IZ w

� a:

To find out whether a simple � conversation was possible, the � researchers selected one of the � � four- a 29-year-old man who had � been in a car crash. They asked � him to imagine playing tennis

B 1 NewScientist 1 6 February 2010

ifhe wanted to answeryes to questions such as : Do you have any sisters? Is your father's name Thomas? Is your father's name Alexander? And if the answer to a question was no, he had to imagine moving round his home.

The man was asked to think of the activity that represented his answer, in la-second bursts for up to 5 minutes, so that a strong enough signal could be detected by the scanner. His family came up with the questions to ensure that the researchers did not know the answers in advance. What's more, the brain scans were analysed by a team that had never come into contact with

In this section

• Concern over DIY sperm counters, page 10 • Quantum secrets of photosynthesis, page 12 • Can headache pill save trauma victims? page 15

the patient or his family. The team found that either

the SMA orthe parahippocampal gyrus lit up in response to five of the six questions (see diagram). When the team ran these answers by his family, they were all correct, indicating tha t the man had understood the task and was able to form an answer (The New England Journal of Medicine, DOl: lO.los6/nejmoaogoS370). The group also asked healthy volunteers similar questions

"We are not just showing that people are conscious -we are giving them a way of communicating"

relating to their own families and found that their brains responded in the same way.

"I think we can be pretty confident that he is entirely conscious," says Owen. "He has to understand instructions, comprehend speech, remember what tennis is and how you do it. So many of his cognitive faculties have to have been intact:'

That someone can be capable of all this while appearing completely unaware confounds existing medical definitions of consciousness, Laureys says. "We don't knowwhat to call this; he just doesn't fit a definition:'

Doctors traditionally base these

diagnoses on how someone behaves: iffor example, whether or not they can glance in different directions in response to questions. The new results show that you don't need behavioural indications to identify awareness and even a degree of cognitive proficiency. All you need to do is tap into brain activity directly.

The work " changes everything", says Nicholas Schiff, a neurologist at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, who is carrying out similar work on patients with consciousness disorders. "Knowing that someone could persist in a state like this and not show evidence of the fact that

they can answer yes/no questions should be extremely disturbing to our clinical practice."

One of the most difficult questions you might want to ask someone is whether they want to carry on living. But as Owen and Laureys point out, the scientific, legal and ethical challenges for doctors asking such questions are formidable. "In purely practical

"One of the most difficult questions you might want to ask someone is whether they want to go on living"

terms, yes, it is possible," says Owen. "But it is a bigger step than one might immediately think."

One problem is that while the brain scans do seem to establish consciousness, there is a lot they don't tell us. "Just because they can answer a yes/no question does not mean they have the capacity to make complex decisions," Owen says.

Even assuming there is a subset of people who cannot move but have enough cognition to answer tough questions, you would still have to convince a court that this is so. "There are many ethical and legal frameworks that would need to be revised before fMRI could be used in this context," says Owen.

There are many challenges. For example, someone in this state can only to respond to specific questions; they can't yet start a conversation of their own. There is also the prospect of developing smaller devices to make conversation more frequent, since MRI scans are expensive and take many hours to analyse.

In the meantime, you can ask someone whether they are in pain orwould like to try new drugs that are being tested for their ability to bring patients out of a vegetative state. "For the minority of patients that this will work for, just for them to exercise some autonomy is a massive step forward - it doesn't have to be at the life or death level," Owen says .•


THIS WEEK

Home test for sperm count could leave men in a mess GENTLEMEN, ever been curious about your sperm count? If so, a home fertility test could be just the thing.

Loes Segerink and colleagues at the MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology at the University of Twente in Enschede, the Netherlands, have developed a 10-centimetre-long "lab-on-a-chip" which could determine fertility in a matter of seconds. While undeniably useful, such kits also raise the ethical issue of whether diagnosis without the professional advice that normally accom panies it could do more harm than good.

Male fertility analysis can be embarrassing for the person in question and time consuming

Helium clue found in echo of the big bang THE subtle signal of ancient hel ium

has shown up forthe firsttime in

light left over from the big bang. The

discovery will help astronomers work

out how much of the stuff was made

during the big bang and how much

was made later by stars.

Hel ium is the second-most

abundant element in the un iverse

after hydrogen. The l ight emitted by

old stars and clumps of hot pristine

gas from the early universe suggest

hel ium made up some 25 per cent of

the ordinary matter created during

the big bang.

The new data provides another

measure. A trio of telescopes has

found helium's signature in the

cosmic m icrowave background (CMB,

pictured), radiation em itted some

3BO,000 years after the big bang.

The patterns in this radiation are an

important ind icator of the processes

at work at that time. Helium affects

the pattern because it is heavier than


for medical staff. The ejaculate must be submitted for analysis within an hour -which generally precludes men from producing the sample at home - and once submitted, a lengthy manual count remains the" gold standard" for spermatozoa concentration analysis.

"With our system we overcome these problems," Segerink says. Their microfluidic chip contains a tiny channel through which the spermatozoa are drawn by pressure flow. The sample is first doped with a known concentration of polystyrene beads, and as beads and cells are drawn along the channel they pass between two electrodes, altering the electrical impedance.

hydrogen and so alters the way

pressure waves must have travelled

through the young cosmos. But

hel ium's effect on the CMB was on a

scale too small to resolve until now.

By combin ing seven years of data

from NASA's Wi lkinson Microwave

Anisotropy Probe with observations

by two telescopes at the South Pole,

astronomers have confirmed its

presence. "This is the first detection

of pre-stellar hel ium," says WMAP's

chief scientist, Charles Bennett.

The chip tallies the electrical perturbations due to the beads and cells, and comparing bead concentration to that of the spermatozoa provides the sperm count (Lab on a Chip, in press).

Segerink says the chip could take just 12 seconds to determine sperm concentration with the same measurement error as a manual count. But while she

"Self-diagnosis could be harmful if the patient does not understand the impact of a positive result"

stresses that the chip would be used as part of hospital-run fertility treatment, it could be adapted to produce a cheap and easy-to-use version for self-diagnosis at home.

Michael Dunn, a healthcare ethics researcher at the University of Oxford, says this is a concern.

These observations are in l ine with

earlier measurements, although less

accurate. "I think CMB measu rements

wi l l surpass them eventual ly," says

team member David Spergel.

More accurate numbers cou ld

reveal how quickly the early universe

expanded. Hel ium forms from the

interaction between protons and

neutrons. This is constra ined by the

number of ava ilable neutrons, which

would have dropped during the ti me

the brand new universe was

"There would be the potential for harm to be caused to patients ifthey were not provided with the relevant information about the impact of a positive result for infertility," he says.

As other research teams develop similar devices, this is becoming an increasingly important issue. Hywel Morgan and colleagues at the University of Southampton in the UK are developing microfluidic chips that could hel p diagnose conditions from viral infection to anaemia using a pinprick of blood. "Devices of this nature allow you to distribute healthcare into the community," he says. "But if you're diagnosing disease, the answers you're providing have to be handled appropriately."

"Even if the technology is ready for the marketplace," says Morgan, "whether society is ready to use it is an issue." Colin Barras.

expanding as they decayed into

protons. 50 the amount of hel ium

that formed places important l imits

on how qu i ckly this expansion took

place. That could help test theories

that postulate extra di mensions or

as-yet-unseen particles.

Better data should be ava i lable

in the next few years. The European

Space Agency's Planck satellite,

which launched last year, is poised to

measure the amount of helium even

more precisely. Rachel Courtland .

THIS WEEK

Imports mean UK emissions are up not down THE UK government is sitting on a

report that shows its emissions rose

by 13.5 per cent between 1992 and

2004. It previously claimed they fell

by 4.6 per cent overthe same period.

The d iscrepancy appears when

emissions from goods that are made

abroad and imported into the UK are

included. "We seem to emit less

because we don't produce much here

any more," says Giovanni Baiocchi, an

economist at Durham University, UK.

"But more emissions are released now

in other countries because of our

consumer demands."

Baiocchi and his team were asked by

the UK Department for Environment,

Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) to carry

out an audit of the nation's emissions.

They found that efforts to decrease

national CO2 emissions, mainly by

sh ifting from coal to natural-gas power

plants, cut148 megatonnes between

1992 and 2004. But this was

outweighed by a 217-megatonne rise

in CO2 emissions from imported goods.

"This undermines the whole

Kyoto process," says Glen Peters of

Norway's Center for International

Cl i mate and Environment Research.

Under the Kyoto protocol, developed

nations are only required to cut

emissions produced within their own

borders. "The UK can pat itself on the

back and say they reduced carbon

dioxide emissions, but they just

pushed those emissions elsewhere."

DEFRA has not yet publ ished the

report, whose results now appear in

Environmental Science &- Technology

(DOl: 10.1021/es902662h). "[It] was

finished six months ago," says Peters,

who reviewed the study for DEFRA. "It

could be a slow bureaucratic process

or it could be that they are worried

about the impact of the reSUlts."

"Unfortunately it has taken longer

than anticipated to publ ish the report

due to the techn ica l nature and

terminology used in initial drafts,"

DEFRA told New Scientist. DEFRA

a ims to pub lish the report later this

year. Phil McKenna .

111 NewScientist 1 6 Feb ruary 2010

He who draws last, draws his last breath

Debora MacKenzie

NIELS BOHR once had a theory on why the good guy always won shoot-outs in Hollywood westerns. It was simple: the bad guy always drew first. That left the good guy to react unthinkingly and therefore faster. When Bohr tested his hypothesis with toy pistols and colleagues who drew first, he always won.

Andrew Welchman of the University of Birmingham, UK, has now taken this a step further. Bohr may have won a Nobel prize for his work on quantum mechanics, but it turns out the answer to this puzzle is more complicated than he thought.

Welchman pitted pairs of

people against each other. The task? Lift your hand off a button, push two other buttons, then return to the first (Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 001: 1O.lOg8/ rspb.200g.2123). There was no start bell. "Eventually, one decides it's time to move," Welchman says. "The other player will then try to move as fast as possible."

The players who had to react took 21 milliseconds less time to move, on average, than the first ones. Welchman thinks reaction movement involves a faster brain pathway than intentional movement. So Bohr was right? Not quite.

There was also a " reaction time", a delay of 200 milliseconds before the players started to

respond to their opponents' actions. So although they moved faster, they never won.

Is there any truth in the Hollywood version of the gunfight, where the last guy to draw is the winner? If there were, a gunslinger would have to wait for the hotheaded villain to move first. But that couldn't have worked when two clued-up cowboys faced each other.

Now Welchman says neuroscience doesn't support Hollywood's portrayal either. The only way the last guy to draw

"It would be hard to get fast enough to recover the time it takes to react to your opponent"

could win is if the reactive part of the brain makes him move so fast that the time it takes him to draw, plus his reaction time, is less than the time it takes the first guy just to draw.

"[ t would be hard to get fast enough to recover the time it takes to react to your opponent," says Welchman. He thinks fast reactions evolved for avoiding unexpected danger, or for confrontations in which animals are in a face-off and the second to move needs speed.

"Voluntary and reactive movements differ in basic ways," says Florian Waszak, who studies movement at the University of Paris Descartes, France. The system has evolved so that reactions may be very fast but perhaps less accurate, Waszak speculates.

Indeed, Welchman's "reactive" players hit the buttons less accurately than the "intentional" players, another reason fast reactions may not win gunfights.

So it was all Hollywood legend. "I've found little evidence forface-to-face duels on the streets of Dodge," Welchman says. And Bohr? "Maybe he was just a good shot." Or maybe everyone just expected the great Niels Bohr to win .•

THIS WEEK

Hot green quantum computers revealed Kate McAlpine

WHILE physicists struggle to get quantum computers to function at cryogenic temperatures, other researchers are saying that humble algae and bacteria may have been performing quantum calculations at life-friendly temperatures for billions of years.

The evidence comes from a study of how energy travels across the light-harvesting molecules involved in photosynthesis. The work has culminated this week in the extraordinary announcement that these molecules in a marine alga may exploit quantum processes at room temperature to transfer energy without loss. Physicists had previously ruled out quantum processes, arguing that they could not persist for � long enough at such temperatures � to achieve anything useful. �

Photosynthesis starts when � � large light-harvesting structures '" called antennas capture photons. In the alga called Chroomonas CCMP270, these antennas have eight pigment molecules woven into a larger protein structure, with different pigments absorbing light from different parts of the spectrum. The energy of the photons then travels across the antenna to a part ofthe cell where it is used to make chemical fuel.

The route the energy takes as it jumps across these large molecules is important because longer journeys could lead to losses. In classical physics, the energy can only work its way across the molecules randomly. "Normal energy transfer theory tells us that energy hops from molecule to molecule in a random walk, like the path taken home from the bar by a drunken sailor," says Gregory Scholes at the University ofToronto, Canada,

12 1 NewScientist 15 February 2010

one of the co-authors of the paper published inNature this week (DOl: 10.1038/nature08811).

But Scholes and his colleagues have found that the energyrouteing mechanism may actually be highly efficient. The evidence comes from the behaviour of pigment molecules at the centre of the Chroomonas antenna. The team first excited two of these molecules with a brieflaser pulse, causing electrons in the pigment molecules to jump into a quantum superposition of excited states. When this superposition collapses, it emits photons of slightly different wavelengths which combine to form an interference pattern. By studying this pattern in the

emitted light, the team can work out the details of the quantum superposition that created it.

The results are a surprise. Not only are the two pigment molecules at the centre of the antenna involved in the superposition; so are the other six pigment molecules. This "quantum coherence" binds them together for a fleeting 400 femtoseconds (4 x 10 13 seconds). But this is long enough for the energy from the absorbed photon to simultaneously" try out" all possible paths across the antenna. When the shared coherence ends, the energy settles on one path, allowing it to make the journey without loss.

The discovery overturns some long-held beliefs about quantum mechanics, which held that quantum coherence cannot occur at anything other than cryogenic temperatures because a hot environment would destroy the effect. However, the Chroomonas

algae perform their work at 21°C. "Scholes's work is fantastic,"

says Gregory Engel at the University of Chicago. "The difficultyofthis experiment is extraordinary." Engel demonstrated the same principle in 2007 at the University of California, Berkeley, though at a frigid -196°C. His team examined a bacteriochlorophyll complex found in green sulphur bacteria and discovered that the pigment

"This is going to change the way we think about photosynthesis and quantum computing"

molecules were similarly wired together in a quantum mechanical network. His experiment showed that the quantum superposition allows the energy to explore all possible routes and settle on the most efficient one (DOl: 10.1038/ nature05678). In a sense, he says, the antenna performs a quantum computation to determine the best way to transfer energy.

Engel and his group at Chicago have just repeated the experiment at a more life-friendly 4°C. They found the duration of the coherence to be about 300 femtoseconds (arxiv.orgl abs/1001.5108v1).

Exactly how these molecules remain coherent for so long, at such high temperatures and with relatively large gaps between them, is a mystery, says Alexandra Olaya-Castro of University College London, who has been collaborating with Scholes to understand the underlying mechanisms and apply them elsewhere. She believes that the antenna's protein structure plays a crucial role. "Coherence would not survive without it," she says.

The hope is that quantum coherence could be used to make solar cells more efficient. The work is going to change the way we think about photosynthesis and quantum computing, Engel says. "It's an enormous result." •


At last we wil l know how bright the stars real ly are LIGHT is the bedrock of astronomy,

so it may come as a surprise that

astronomers don't have a very good

handle on measurements of

brightness. That is set to change,

however, as the antiquated

brightness scale undergoes a long

overdue upgrade that could help to

reveal the true nature of dark energy.

More than 2000 years ago, the

Greek astronomer Hipparchus

devised a scale ranking the apparent

brightness of different stars. Today,

astronomers use much the same

system, measuring brightness

relative to a handful of standard

reference stars. The trouble is, the

reference stars' brightness is not

known very accurately, and

measurements of it have not kept

pace with developments in detector

"The most accurate measurements of the bright star Vega date back to the 1970s"

technology. For example, the most

accurate measurements of the bright

star Vega date back to the 1970s.

"It's surprising. There has been

relatively little work on that in the

past couple of decades," says Gary

Bernstein of the University of

Pennsylvania in Philadelph ia .

To redress this, a team led by

Mary Elizabeth Kaiser of Johns

Hopkins University in Baltimore,

Maryland, is planning to launch a

rocket-borne telescope to make the

most accurate measurements yet of

the reference stars' brightness (arxiv.

org/abs/1001.392S). Ca l led the

Absolute Color Calibration

Experiment for Standard Stars

(ACCESS), the NASA-funded mission

will lift off in a yea r or two a nd make

four suborbital fl ights, each taking it

above Earth's distorting atmosphere

for a few minutes ata time.

During these brief jaunts,

ACCESS wil l gauge the brightness of

four common reference stars - the

sky's brig htest star, Sirius; Vega; and

a couple of much dimmer ones - to

a precision of 1 per cent or better.

That is twice the accuracy of current

measurements, an advance that will

be possible thanks to the ca l ibration

of the telescope's sensors with

artificial l ight sources before launch.

The measurements ACCESS makes

will serve as a benchmark to cal ibrate

the observations of other telescopes.

This wi l l a l low the brightness of

supernovae and other objects to

be measured more accurately.

Such precision wil l be key to

finding out the secrets of dark

energy, a mysterious entity that

is causing the universe to expand

at an ever faster rate. The existence

of dark energy was deduced in

199B when astronomers noticed

that distant supernovae were

fainter - and thus farther away

than expected.

Astronomers still don't know

where dark energy comes from.

It could spring from a fundamental

new force, or it might point to a flaw

in our understanding of gravity.

To better understand it, researchers

are examining the history of cosmic

expansion, searching for s l ight

variations in the expansion rate

over time. This req u i res more

accurate measurements of the

brightness of supernovae at different

cosmic epochs.

ACCESS team member Adam Riess

of Johns Hopkins University, one of

dark energy's discoverers, says subtle

errors can crop up when combining

brightness data from multiple

telescopes, potentially misleading

astronomers about the nature of the

acceleration. "You cou ld think that

dark energy is changing with scale

ortime, but it's only an artefact of the

fact that your observatories have not

all used the same reference poin!'''

he told New Scientist.

The ACCESS mission wi l l help

astronomers avoid this pitfall, he

says. "It doesn't measure dark energy

itself but it makes your scale more

accurate." David Shiga .


THIS WEEK

Cannibal bonobos Ineeded the food' Ewen Callaway

SO MUCH for the "hippy chimp". Bonobos, known for their peaceable ways and casual sex, have been caught in the act of cannibalism.

An account of a group of wild bonobos consuming a dead infant, published last month, is the first report of cannibalism in these animals -making the species the last of the great apes to reveal a taste for the flesh of their own kind.

The account comes from a group ofprimatologists led by Gottfried Hohmann of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. The team has studied bonobos in the wild at a site in Salonga national park in the Democratic Republic ofthe Congo on hundreds of days since 2002.

Among the most eventful were 9 and 10 July 2008.

Early on the morning of 9 July, Andrew Fowler spotted anape known as Olga with her two daughters, 5 or 6-year-old Ophelia and Olivia, three years her junior. "By 8 o'clock Olivia was dead," says Fowler. She showed no obvious traces of blood or bruises, so it seems unlikely she had been killed by other members of her grou p.

Fowler's team lost sight ofthe apes not long afterwards, but early the following day he saw Olga join them carrying Olivia's body, which had already begun to decompose. "It was smelling, limp and wet," he recalls. Olga and seven others spentthe rest ofthe day devouring the corpse (American Journal of Prima to logy,

"In all of the great apes except for the chimpanzee, all documented cases of cannibalism are outliers"

DOl: 10.1002/ajp.20802). "We've never seen anything like

this," says Vanessa Woods at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, who studies semi-captive bonobos at a reserve. "The last time I saw an infant die, the mother held onto it for days and the keepers had trouble taking the body away."

Though bonobos mostly eat fruit and leaves, they are known to hunt monkeys and the small antelopes called duikers. But Fowler noted signs that this meal was somehow different. More individuals got a taste of the infant than is typical when the apes share meat. They also spent 7'/, hours eating the body - longer than they take over a similar-sized

WH EN PRIMATES EAT THEIR OWN Nothing has been reported since.

ORANG-UTANS Two instances have

been documented in orang·utans

living wild in Sumatra. In both cases,

the mothers ate their infants after

carrying their corpses around for

monkey. Some even played with it. "If they just think ofit as another piece of meat, why do they behave differently with it?" he asks.

Fowler warns against overinterpreting the events, and reckons that the need for nourishment was the animals' main driver. "If you eat meat and you can see [the infant I as a

Spain, and more recent Neanderthal

fossil bones suggest that our d istant

ancestors ate the flesh of their own

species. More recently, thousand

year-old bones discovered in the

American Southwest bear clearsigns

CHIMPANZEES Of all the great apes,

chimpanzees resort to cannibal ism

most often. Typically, males wi l l ki l l

and eat the infant of another female,

usually in their own group but

occasionally in another. When chimps

kill adults from other groups in a

fight, they do not eat the body.

GORILLAS In the 1970s,

several days. David Del latore of Oxford of butchery. There are even signs of

Brookes University in the UK, who

observed both events, thinks they

cannibalism in the human genome:

a mutation has been found in Papua

primatologist Dian Fossey found were due to stress. New Guineans that protects them

remains of two gorillas in the faeces HUMANS Cut marks on BDO,OOO-year- form kuru, a prion disease

of a mother gorilla and her daughter. old hominin remains from Atapuerca, transmitted through cannibalism.


reasonably large piece of meat, you may as well eat it," he says. " It's perfectly normal that you would eat the meat that's available, even if it's in the form of a dead infant:'

Frans de Waal at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, agrees. "It may be that bonobos are craving animal proteins and fats more than we realise!'

Bonobos are studied far less in the wild than chim panzees, and it is impossible to tell from this one observation whether cannibalism is a regular feature ofbonobo behaviour. David Dellatore, a primatologist at Oxford Brookes University in the UK, who last year became the first to document an instance of cannibalism in orangutans, doubts it. "In all of the great apes except for the chimpanzee, all documented cases of cannibalism are outliers," he says. (see "When primates eat their own") .•


Headache pill could save earthquake crush victims JUST one tab let of paracetamol

(acetaminophen) could help save

earthquake survivors who otherwise

risk dying from kidney failure after

rescue. Experi ments in rats have

shown that the drug prevents "crush

syndrome", or rha bdomyolysis, in

which muscle debris from crushed

l imbs floods the kidneys soon after

the l imb is freed from rubble, causing

them to fa i l .

"When you release the pressure on

muscle through rescue, debris goes

to the kidney. It's l ike a chain reaction,

and acetaminophen blocks it,"

says Olivier Boutaud of Vanderbilt

University in Nashvi l le, Tennessee,

and head of the research team.

The destruction of muscle through

crushing leads to the release of

myoglobin, a protein vital for

delivering oxygen to muscle and

other tissue. When the myoglobin

reaches the kidneys it clogs the

tubu les and produces harmful

chemica l agents called free radicals.

These free radicals destroy

fatty membranes in the kidney,

which d ie and turn black. They

a lso trigger constriction of blood

vessels, cutting off blood flow to

the kidney and halting filtration

of blood, rapidly leading to death

through kidney fai l u re.

After inducing crush syndrome

in rats via muscular injections of

sugar, Boutaud and colleagues

demonstrated that the human

equivalent dose of acetaminophen

successful ly b locked both of these

processes, whether given before or

shortly after the injury (Proceedings

of the National Academy of Sciences,

001: 10.1073/pnas.0910174107) .

"We don't know whether it would work, but we must try because it could save thousands of lives"

Although the finding has (orne too

late to save lives following the quake

in Haiti, Boutaud is hopeful that the

treatment can be val idated in humans

before, or even during, the next big

quake. "We don't know yet whether

it wou ld work, or how soon we'd need

to give it to prevent kidney damage,"

he says, "but we must try because

it could save thousands of l ives."

Martin de Smet of Medecins Sans

Frontieres wil l refer Boutaud's results

to the International society of

Nephrology's Renal Disaster Relief

Task Force, which has developed

validated protocols for treating crush

syndrome victims, involving the rapid

infusion of sa l ine fluids. The drug

might be testable as a supportive

treatment, he says. Andy Coghlan .


IN BRIEF

Beware of geoengineering using volcanoes' tricks

WE HACK the c l imate at our peril. Volcanoes spewed so

much sulphate into the atmosphere 94 mil l ion years ago

that the oceans were starved of oxygen and 27 per cent

of marine genera went extinct. Geoengineering our

climate (ould inflict a similar fate on some lakes.

50 claims Matthew Hurtgen at Northwestern

University in Chicago, who with his colleagues measured

sulphur isotopes in sediments on the floor of the Western

Interior Seaway. The WIS was a vast body of water

that divided the continent of North America down the

middle at the time. The team also developed a model to

simulate the impact of volcanoes on ocean chemistry.

Before oceanic oxygen levels tumbled, something

caused a big change in atmospheric sulphate levels. "That

something was probably volcanoes;' says Hurtgen. He says

their su lphate emissions triggered vast phytoplankton

blooms and much of the ocean's oxygen was gobbled up

as these died and decomposed. According to the team's

model, oceanic sulphate was extremely low prior to the

eruptions (Nature Geoscience, 001: 10.1038/ngeo743).

This has impl ications for geoengineering, says

Hurtgen. "Like the mid·Cretaceous ocean, most

modern lakes are poor in sulphate, so it's possible that

geoengineering the climate [using sulphate aerosols

to reflect sunlight] could trigger blooms and ultimately

anoxia in some la kes."

Water vapour fingered in climate change that happened in the 1990S (Science 001: 1O.1126/science.1182488) .

A RISE in water vapour in the atmosphere fuelled 30 per cent of the global warming that took place during the 1990S. This discovery suggests that the potent greenhouse gas plays a bigger role in climate change than we previously imagined.

Susan Solomon and colleagues at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration combined satellite measurements


and weather balloon data to track changes in the concentration of watervapoun6 kilometres up in the stratosphere, between the 1980s and today.

Water vapour levels in the stratosphere increased in the 1990S but dropped by 10 per cent in 2001. After feeding their measurements into a climate model, the team suggests that vapour was to blame for almost a third of the warming

The model also suggests that the decline in water vapour concentrations that occurred in 2001 slowed down the rate of global warming in the last decade by 25 percent.

"This research does not change the consensus view that human emissions drive climate change," says Fortunat loos, a climate modeller at the University of Bern, Germany.

Urban heat islands feel cooler in white

CITIES can battle the "urban heat island" with paint. Highly reflective white roofs could cool cities by an average of 0.6 ·C, according to a global simulation.

Dark city surfaces like roofs and roads absorb and radiate heat, leaving cities up to 3 ·C hotter than surrounding areas. A team at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, combined climate models with a simulation of how temperatures are modified by city landscapes.

They found that ina hypothetical world in which cities sported highly reflective white roofs, urban temperatures were on average 0.6 ·C cooler than in cities with existing, mostly black roofing materials. In the real world, says lead author Keith Oleson, the benefits might be slightly less as rooftops get covered in dust (Geophysical Research Letters, in press).

Fusion fuel gets round a big problem

PAN CAKES have been getting in the way of nuclear fusion: the process comes unstuck when fuel pellets end up spread out flat. Now the world's largest laser complex has solved the problem.

Fusion should start if a laser pulse heats a fuel pellet and squeezes it very tight. But if the nuclear fuel spreads out from the implosion zone, input energy is lost. Using the huge laser power of the US National Ignition Facility, a team led by Brian MacGowan of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California have managed to squeeze fuel into spheres for the first time. The next step is to create spherical pellets of deuterium and tritium -the key ingredients for fusion (Science, 001: 1O.1126/science.u8s634).

For new stories every day, visit www.NewScientist.com/news

Feeling stuffed is a complex matter

Did rice wine lead to flushed faces across Asia?

INCORPORATING complex smells

into what you eat may produce more

satisfyi ng foods.

That's the conclusion of Ria nne

Ruijschop at Nizo Food Research

in Ede, the Netherlands, and

col leagues, who were investigating

what effect different aromas have

on the feeling of ful lness.

The team added two different

strawberry aromas to smal l pots of

yoghurt and asked volunteers which

was the most fi l l ing. Although to

the u ntrained nose the smells were

ind istinguishable, one pot conta ined

a simple aroma from one chemical.

and the other a more complex

aroma made up of 15 chemicals.

All 41 volunteers reported

feeling more satiated after eating

the yoghurt with the complex

aroma. However, in a separate

experiment, Ruijschop found

that given a much larger supply,

volunteers ate the same amount

of both yoghurts (Chemica/ Senses,

001: 10.1093/chemse/bjp086).

Jennifer Coelho, a cli n ical

psychologist at Maastricht university

in the Netherlands, says this is not

surprising since we don't necessarily

stop eating when we feel satiated.

Ruijschop ad mits that aroma is

only one contributing component

and hopes next to alter the texture

of the yoghurt, with the a im of

developing more satiating foods

to help dieters eat less.

A MUTATION that causes some Asians to flush red when they drink alcohol may have evolved to help their ancestors cope with rice wine. A genetic study suggests that it evolved around the same time as Asians were starting to farm rice and ferment it into boozy drinks.

Bing Su, a geneticist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Kunming, studied the genes of 2275 people from 38 east-Asian populations. Hewas looking for a mutation that modifies the gene res ponsible for the enzyme

Chikungunya foiled by copycat 'virus'

A VACCINE that masquerades as chikungunya virus might finally defeat the mosquito-borne disease.

In 2006 a single mutation in the virus allowed it to burst out of Africa via a new species of mosquito. Chikungunya now infects about 1 million people a year around the Indian Ocean and causes intense joint pain which can persist for years. It could invade temperate regions as the mosquitoes' range expands.

Gary Nabel of the US National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, and colleagues put genes that code for the virus's protein coat into cultured human cells. The proteins assembled themselves into virus-like particles (VLPs), which mimic the virus but aren't infectious. "We got structures that beautifully replicated the natural virus," Nabel says.

Rhesus monkeys injected with the VLPs produced antibodies that gave them complete protection against the virus. Their antibodies also worked for immune-deficient mice that are normally killed by chikungunya (Nature Medicine, 001: lO.1038/nm.2lOS). Nabel hopes the vaccine will be tested in people in one to three years.

alcohol dehydrogenase (BMC Evolutionary Biology, VOl lO, p IS).

The mutation causes alcohol to be metabolised 100 times faster than it otherwise would be. As a result, it protects people from the harmful effects of booze. Those who have the mutation also tend to flush red when they drink.

The mutation is most prevalent inAsia and least frequent in Europe and Africa, but the reason for this has remained a mystery. Su's analysis shows that it cropped up between lO,OOO and 7000 years ago, is virtually ubiquitous in

south-eastern China but becomes less common further north and west - dates and locations that dovetail with archaeological evidence of early rice cultivation. Pottery shards from the same period show traces of alcohol.

The mutation in alcohol dehydrogenase would have protected those who had it from some of the nefarious effects of alcohol and alcoholism. As a result, Su says, natural selection for the mutation caused it to spread west in near-synchrony with rice paddies.

Planetary nebulae snack on comets

WHEN the sun dies. it's not just

Earth that will be doomed - the

destruction will reach as far as the

results. a d iscrepancy that has

baffled astronomers for decades.

Now Wil l iam Henney of the

comets in the outer solar system. National Autonomous University of

That's according to a new explanation Mexico in Mexico City and Grazyna

of the behaviour of planetary

nebulae - bubbles of gas sloughed

off by dying stars (pictured).

There are two methods

for calculating the abundance of

elements in planetary nebulae:

looking at l ight emitted when

electrons and ionised atoms

Stasi nska of the Paris Observatory

i n France suggest that material from

vaporised comets could be skewing

the recombination method's result.

This is because pockets of gas rich in

heavy elements would be created if a

comet in the outer regions of a solar

system got vaporised by a dying star

recombine, or looking at the energy in its red giant phase or by the

emitted by atoms excited by expanding planetary nebula that

collisions. Yet they yield very d ifferent follows it (arxiv.org/abs/1001.4513).


TECHNOLOGY

Hybrid v ideo to a id search and rescue COULD seeing with heat and light simultaneously improve searchand-rescue missions? Nathan Rasmussen of Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, thinks so. He has created a hybrid video system that integrates visible and infrared footage into a single shot.

Search drones already use visible and infrared cameras, but making sense of two videos at once is hard. So Rasmussen has devised a way to calibrate the feeds from two such cameras on a model aircraft, and then overlay the infrared images on the visible stream.

In tests, subjects were better able to carry out tasks simultaneously when watching the hybrid stream than when viewing separate videos, suggesting that the new dis play is easier to interpret. The findings were presented at the Applications of Computer Vision conference in Snowbird, Utah.

64 hours. The time it takes to fill the tank of Honda's FCX fuel cell vehicle at its new solar hydrogen station in Los A ngeles

For daily technology stories, visit www.NewScientist.com/technology

We see through a g iassl da rkly IT'S not quite X-ray vision, but a way has been found to transmit simple images through opaque objects using ordinary light. Researchers have used the method to project an image through glass covered in thick paint.

Some things we consider opaque actually allow a small amount of light through. But it is scattered so much as it bounces around inside the opaque material's lattice of atoms that it was considered beyond practical use for transmitting an image.

But by reverse engineering the scattering process, physicist

Sylvain Gigan and colleagues at Ecole Superieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles in Paris, France, have transmitted a simple image through a painted slide and reconstructed it on the far side (arxiv.org/abs/091O.5436).

They worked out the slide's transmission matrix - how light bounces around inside it -by hitting it with a laser beam more than 1000 times, changing the shape ofthe beam each time and recording the different light patterns that made it through to a digital camera beyond. They then used the information to decode an image sent through the slide. "Once the matrix is known, reconstructing the image is very quick," Gigan says.

" It i s ve ry s i m i l a r to an a i rp lane f ly i n g i n the sea" Richard Branson unveilsthe Necker Nymph, the prototype for a three- person submarine, which he hopes to rent to people wanting to enjoy spectacular underwater

sights - without having to get wet (TheSun.co.uk, 29 January)


TECHNOLOGY

A telescope that sets its s ights on cyber-crime

As govern ments become increasi ng ly awa re of the threat from cyber-wa rfare, new ideas are be ing deve loped to combat it

Paul Marks

A TELESCOPE that can peer into the depths of the net to spot the gathering threat of a bot net could help combat cyber-attacks.

Botnets-networks of compromised computers that are controlled by someone with malicious intent - are an increasingly common feature of the internet. They can be used to flood a target website with useless data to bring it down, launch spam, or spyon computer users by looking for their banking logins and passwords.

To combat this threat, Endgame Systems of Atlanta, Georgia, has come up with a system, called the internet telescope, that can map the physical location of computers infected with the malicious software, or malware, used to run botnets. It can even identify the type of malware on the machine and pre-empt its next moves.

Cyber-criminals use the internet to plant malicious code on computers that lack up-to-date security patches. Thousands of such machines, known as bots, can then be controlled by the botnet operator without the owner realiSing their computer has been recruited into a bot net. Endgame passively tracks these compromised PCs from the botnet traffic they disgorge, geotagging the data to create a global threat map.

It then dissects the malware to work out the web addresses of the next few domain name servers each bot is programmed to seek


instructions from once the current control domain expiresa trick they play to evade detection. Once these domains are known, Endgame buys them up before the person controlling the botnet, or "botmaster", does, ensuring that it seizes control of the entire botnet when it switches to its new control address.

Endgame can then either kill the botnet -by ordering all bots to cease activity - or try to catch the botmaster by interfering with the botnet's activity in such a way as to blow their cover. The botmaster might, for example, contact their domain registrar to find out what's wrong with their domain. This would provide the registrar with contact

information which could be passed onto law enforcers.

Endgame's CEO, Chris Rouland, presented his company's work at the Cyber Warfare conference in London last week. The firm's customers include government agencies and companies who

"The skill set of botnet creators is underestimated. They are persistent, well organised and focused"

want to know if the organisations they plan to do business with could infect their computers.

In his presentation, Rouland gave the exam pie of a company that wanted to know whether an energy firm it was planning to

work with was a cyber-security risk. Using the internet telescope, it zoomed in on the geotagged data to determine that some of the proposed partner company's computers had indeed been compromised by a botnet.

UK government officials told the conference that more realworld countermeasures like Endgame's are needed - and fast. Without them, today's attacks on crucial infrastructure, such as banking networks, may encourage nation-on-nation cyber-warfare in future.

"We underestimate the skill set of organised cyber crime. It is persistent, very well organised and focused," says Amit Yoran of cyber-forensics firm NetWitness based in Herndon, Virginia.

It is also increasingly successful. Over $1 trillion was stolen online in 2008, according to computer security firm McAfee. "That's because we are using technology designed to fight the cyber-threats OfI99S," Yoran says.

Most security software impedes known threats, but the most skilful botnet operators don't use known malware. A survey by communications company Verizon, based in New York City,

For daily technology stories, visit www.NewScientist .com/techno logy

Disorderly measure beats encrypted viruses

Computer virus recognition needs

an overhaul if online attacks are to

be fought successfully, security

expert J im Butterworth told the

Cyber Warfare conference.

A common way to fight viruses

is to use an algorithm to create a

"hash" signature - a nu mber derived

from a string of its instruction

text - that un iquely identifies it.

To check for a particular virus,

software only needs to look for this

hash, rather than trawl through all

its instruction code for all possible

viruses. The problem, however, is

that antivirus software won't

recognise the virus if it has been

encrypted. So multiple iterations

found that 59 per cent of cyberattacks involve custom-written programs that bypass existing security systems.

Some excellent programmers are behind these attacks, says Jim Butterworth, a director at computer forensics firm Guidance Software of Pasadena, California. "Some malware code has been through far more quality assurance than a lot of commercial software."

of viruses evolve, each needing

to be assigned a un ique signature

before they can be stopped.

However, encrypting a virus does

not change the degree of disorder,

or "entropy", in its program code. By

working out a figure for the disorder

in the sequence of Is and Os that

constitute a virus, Butterworth's

firm, Guidance Software of

Pasadena, California, assigns

itan entropy value.

Paul Dickens, a cyber·operations

planner with the UK's Ministry of

Defence in Corsham, Wi ltshire,

believes it is an approach worth

checking out. "looking for a single

score seems a good idea," he says.

Developing countermeasures is being made tougher by the speed of online developments, says Yoran. The shift to mobile computing platforms and social networks such as Twitter helps malware to spread in milliseconds, he says.

The speed of cyber-attacks has also had an effect. In the US, the newly established 24th Air Force heads up the military's cyber security operation. Charles Shugg, the 24th's second in command, says his "hunter" teams, who fend off online attacks or preemptively seek out online vulnerabilities, often have no time to develop countermeasures. "Things ha ppen so qUickly in the cyber-domain that the hunter teams' offence and defence are often one and the same thing."

Tools such as Endgame's internet telescope may have a role to play in providing the intelligence needed to combat botnets as this type oflocationaware technology may slash the number ofbots available to launch cyber-attacks.

Without action, says Gerard Vernez, a cyber-securityexpert with the Swiss army, the networks we depend on will be vulnerable. "Wha t are we doing now? I call

At risk from c yber -attack it plug and pray," he says .•

Softwa re doctors bad photos to make them look l i ke a pro's IT MAY seem crude to reduce

aesthetics to number crunching,

but software can now manipulate

an amateu r's photographs to make

them more p leasing to the eye.

Algorithms score a photo's

aesthetics using simple composition

rules widely used to guide budding

photographers. The i mage is then

automatically cropped, or parts of it

moved and resized, to boost its score.

Developed by Daniel Cohen-Or and

Lior Wolf at Tel·Aviv University, Israel,

with colleagues at Zhejiang U niversity

in Hangzhou, Chi na, the software

any distortion is not so noticeable so

there's more freedom to alterthe size."

In trials, the team manually

cropped professional photos to

destroy their aesthetics. When the

software processed the i mages, the

"The image is automatically cropped, or parts of it moved and resized, to boost its aesthetic score"

results were simi lar to the orig inals.

Martin Constable at Nanyang

Technological University in Singapore

spots the key features of an i mage says the new softwa re fits with a

based on their colour and shape. The recent trend for easy-to-use creative

position ing of those elements is used

to judge a photo, then tweaked to

improve it, says Wolf (see below).

"In regions without key features,

Photo composition by num bers

software. ''This is a h igh- level

example. Doubtless we wil l see

such things in future versions of

Photoshop." Colin Barras .

New software can alte r a photograph taken by an amateu r to obey some basic aesthetic guidelines on howto compose shots

One such guidl ine is the "rule of thi rds". It says that the main e lements of an image

should be positioned near the four "power poi nts" created by d ividi n g it i nto n i n e

e q u a l parts using horizontal a n d verti cal l ines

The software recrops the image and wi l l even move or resize ind ividual e l ements to

bring them closer to the power points. The result reta ins the features of the original

image but should make for a better looking ph oto


TECHNOLOGY

If a space storm is com ing the 'smart dust' wi l l know A SWARM of "smart dust" spacecraft, positioned at a sweet spot between the Earth and the sun, could alert us to the approach of dangerous space storms well before a conventional craft can. The first prototypes are due for launch into low-Earth orbit this year, perhaps as early as May.

Mason Peck, a mechanical

"They can edge closer to the sun than a larger craft monitoring solar activity, buying an extra 13 minutes"

engineer at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and his colleague Justin Atchison have designed a l-centimetre-square spacecraft that is 25 micro metres thick and weighs under 7.5 milligrams. The craft is modelled on the dust particles that orbit the sun and are propelled by the photons streaming out from the sun. This solar radiation pressure would have a negligible effect on

INSIGHT

normal-sized spacecraft but is significant at the millimetre scale. The grooved edges ofthe "spacecraft-on-a chip" deflect incoming photons in such a way as to ensure it always faces the sun.

The craft's miniature size would let it hitch a ride into space on the back of another satellite mission headed for the Lagrange point between the Earth and the sun. A Lagrange point is a kind of gravitational sweet spot, where a small object can be stationary relative to two larger objects.

The chips are essentially small solar panels with a radio antenna, and could act as a solar wind sensor (Acta Astronautica 001 : 10.1016/j.actaastro.2oog.12.008).

The team envisage sending a whole swarm of these "smart dust" chips to the Lagrange point, where they would monitor the strength of the solar wind. They would also warn of any oncoming gusts of charged particles that

The world wide web wants to know where you are right now

THAT the i nternet is the same for

everyone, wherever they are, is

one of its defining features, But

increasingly your location maners,

and wi l l alter what you see onl ine,

Two events last week offer a

preview of the web's location-aware

future, Social network Twiner started

tel l ing users the most talked-about

topics in thei r vicin ity, Meanwhile,

Canadian newspaper publisher Metro

teamed up with location-based social

network Foursquare to offer users

restaurant reviews based on the ir

GPS-enabled phone's location,

Those may seem sma l l changes,

butthey mean people's web

22 1 NewScientist 1 6 Feb ruary 2010

experience is becoming inextricably

l inked with where they are, not j ust

who they are, It's not just the addition

of new features to these services that

is making them more location- based;

users are add ing to the trend by

changing their onl ine behaviour,

People are now thinking locally

about the ir use of the global network,

says John Breslin, co-author of

The Social Semantic Weband an

electronic engineer at the National

University of Ireland, Galway, adding

location-awareness to their own

contributions, For example, by tagging

a Twiner update about an event

you are anending with its location,

could disrupt communications and electronic systems on Earth.

After the tiny craft has been dropped off at the Lagrange point, the effect of solar radiation moves it closer to the sun. Peck estimates that this could give an extra 13 minutes' notice of a storm compared with larger solar monitoring craft such as NASA's Advanced Composition Explorer.

The prototype is in the final stages of development, and in the next few months will undergo tests at the terrestrial testbed at Cornell to examine its communication capabilities and durability.

"you're beginning to go beyond

fun" and are add ing important

contextual information to the filters

you apply to streams of data,

That could be empoweri ng for some

people, says Bharat Bedi, an emerging

technology consultant at IBM Hursley

in Hampshi re, UK, For example, people

At least one chip capable of sending back temperature data will be launched later this year. "At this stage we're just hoping to demonstrate that a spacecraft the size of a fingernail is feasible," Peck says.

Colin McInnes from the University of Strathclyde in the UK says: "There is a strong international interest in 'spacecraft-on-a-chip' concepts. Peck's group have some great ideas which are firmly grounded in terrestrial applications of microelectromechanical technology." Jessica Griggs .

The location-aware internet can

suggest where to go for d inner

with physical d isabilities

could easily obta in i nformation about

accessible places and routes based

on where they are, he says,

Whi le location-based services have

been tried before - typically from

businesses looking to advertise their

wares - what is significant today "is

the intent", says Bedi. Users are actively

sharing their location as a way to

specify the information they want to

recei ve, whether restaurant reviews or

the most-shared gossip in their city,

Advertisers may gain too, but for

now the growth of the location-based

web depends on users' appetitefor

new ways to filterthei r onl ine

experience, Gareth Morgan .

OPI N ION

Neurons for peace It's time for neuroscience to catch u p with other professions and p ledge not to support aggressive war and torture, says Curtis Bel l

NEUROSCIENTISTS can take pride in the many contributions that their work can make to enhancing human life. These include improved treatment of illness, better education, creation of sophisticated informationprocessing machines and new insights into ancient human mysteries such as the nature of the mind and the self.

But there is also a dark side to neuroscience. Like any body of knowledge, it can be used for good or ill. Yet neuroscientists often seem unaware of the potential of their field to threaten or damage human life.

Aggressive wars and coercive interrogation methods such as torture are two particularly egregious ways in which human life is damaged or threatened. Not only are both immoral, they are also illegal under national and international laws. At the Nuremberg trials following the defeat of Nazi Germany, aggressive war was judged to be not only an international crime, but the supreme international crime. Prevention of such wars was a major reason for the founding of the United Nations.

Neuroscience can be of service to both aggressive war and to coercive interrogation methods. Potential contributions to aggressive war include pharmaceutical agents that enhance the effectiveness of one nation's soldiers or damage the effectiveness oftheir enemy's. In addition, war is becoming more and more dependent on robots such as the MQ-g Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles now


being used in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Autonomous robots that can move, perceive, decide and kill on their own are in the offing, as political scientist and military commentator Peter W. Singer describes in his book Wired for War. Neuroscientific work on motor control, perception, and cognition can be readily applied to the construction of such robots.

Potential neuroscience contributions to torture are also clear. These include the creation of drugs that cause extreme pain, anxiety or unwarranted trust, as well as manipulations such as focused brain stimulation or inactivation.

A pledge is being circulated

among neuroscientists around the world with the aim of creating greater awareness of the potential dark side of neuroscience. Those signing the pledge commit to two things. First, to make themselves aware of possible applications that would violate international law or human rights, and second, to act in accordance with national and international law by refusing to knowingly participate in the application of neuroscience to such violations. Thus signers of the pledge are committing to

"Neuroscience can be of service both to aggressive war and to coercive interrogation methods"

acting responsibly, morally and in obedience to the law.

Once signatures have been gathered, neuroscience organisations, such as the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies and the Society for Neuroscience, will be asked to amend their ethics statements to forbid knowing participation in such applications.

Similar pledges and petitions have been signed by scientists from other disciplines. The majority of members ofthe American Psychological Association have signed a petition declaring that "psychologists may not work in settings where persons are held outside of, or in violation of, either International Law (e.g. the UN Convention Against Torture and the Geneva conventions) or the US Constitution". The governing bodies of the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association have also condemned participation in torture.

Many anthropologists have signed a pledge issued by the Network of Concerned Anthropologists in relation to the US's "war on terror", declaring that "anthropologists should refrain from directly assisting the US military in combat, be it through torture, interrogation or tactical advice". The American Association of Anthropology's executive board has issued a statement in accord with the pledge.

Unlike psychologists, physicians or anthropologists, neuroscientists are unlikely to provide direct assistance to

Comment on these stories at www.NewScientist.com/opinion

combat forces fighting an aggressive war or participate directly in torture. They could provide tools for such purposes, however, and thus act as accessories to the crime.

Opinions may vary as towhether a given application constitutes torture and whether a given war is an aggressive war. Here one can be guided by international law as embodied in the UN charter, the Geneva conventions and the Convention Against Torture. Aggressive war, for example, is defined as a war that is not in selfdefence, with the corollary that all peaceful means of resolving a conflict must be pursued before a war is begun.

Opinions will be especially varied concerning aggressive war, but the pledge simply commits signers, once convinced that a war is aggressive, to refuse to provide the government conducting the war with additional tools.

Signing this pledge will not stop aggressive wars or human rights violations, or even the use of neuroscience for these purposes. But by signing, neuroscientists will help make such applications less acceptable.

The pledge gives neuroscience the opportunity to join with other professions in moving away from militarism and violence toward a culture of peace and respect for human life. Professionals and their organisations have a special responsibility in this regard, because they are members of a respected elite with knowledge and influence.

Our goal as neuroscientists and human beings should be to create a culture that encourages a pplications that enhance human life while discouraging those that damage it. If you are a neuroscientist and you agree, sign the pledge .•

Curtis Bel l is a neuroscientist and

Senior Scientist Emeritus at Oregon

Health and Science University in

Portland. The pledge can be signed

at tinyurl .com/neuroscientistpledge

One minute with . . .

Rob Hopkins A prime mover beh ind the Transition Towns movement expla ins why he is opti m istic about our ab i l ity to wea n ou rselves off o i l

Can you tell m e more about the Transition

Towns movement?

A Transition Town is formed when a group

of i ndividuals gets together to ask how their

community can mitigate the effects of a potential

reduction in oil and drastically reduce their carbon

emissions to offset c l imate change. The scheme

has become so successful we now have 250

official Transition Towns and Cities worldwide,

with many more interested in becoming involved.

Transition Towns have set up bartering

systems l ike local currencies and seed

exchanges; what other in itiatives are

they taking?

In England, Totnes and Lewes are setting up

the first energy companies owned and run by the

community - Transition Stroud has written the

local council's food strategy. One group in Scotland

has managed to get access to land for new

a l lotments in their area and the first university

scheme has just been set up at the Un iversity of

Edinburgh.

You're about to launch an Energy Descent

Action Plan for Totnes. What is it?

It's based on the idea that the way out of our

current economic situation isn't to carry on as

normal. We have to look at the local economy and

askwhat a town could look l ike i n the next 20

years if o i l production has peaked - "peak o i l" - and

c l imate change is a real ity. So the vis ion for food

might be that people have a local food economy

with more urban agriculture employing local

people. We then work out how we might achieve

this. For instance, we look a t the land ava i lable,

how it is used and to what degree the area could

be self-reliant.

When do you think we're going to run

outof oil?

We're probably not going to run out of oi l in our

l ifetime. There won't be a mythical moment when

someone in Leicestershire pours out the last drop

into thei r car and that's it; what matters is the

poi nt at which we move from havi ng more cheap

PROFILE

Rob Hopkins taught a permaculture course

in Ireland before found ing his community-led

response to peak oil and climate change, the

Transition Towns movement

oil ava i lable to having less cheap oi l ava i lable each

year. It's the shift from a time when our economic

success, our personal prowess and wealth is

directly l inked to how much fossil fuel we

consume, to a time when our degree of oi l

dependency is a vulnerabil ity. By 2030 we wil l be

enter ing a time of increasing volatil ity in terms of

price and avai labi l ity. For an economy which is

designed to function on a plentiful supply of cheap

oil, that's a histor ic transition.

Are there specific characteristics that make

a Transition Town more likely to succeed?

We have a thing called the "cheerful disclaimer" -

which means we have no idea if the idea is going

to work or not. It's an invitation to have a go.

If the majority of people in a Transition Town

were on-board, are they more l ikely to survive

peak oil or climate change?

There are no guarantees thatyour community wi l l

b e immune to cl imate change. But I think human

beings have an i n-bui lt survival mechanism.

Interview by Jessica Griggs


OPINION LETTERS

Hig h-tec h b ord ers

From Christos Giannou Paul Marks ends his article on robot border guards (9 January, p 20) with a question about the privacy implications of such surveillance technologies for people who live close by.

There are other questions we should be asking, such as whether technology really is the answer to controlling illegal immigration. The main reasons people leave their homes, often under dangerous circumstances, are poverty, war, tyranny, corruption and injustice. Are better radar and sensors the way to deal with these issues? If the world tackled the socio-economic problems behind illegal immigration, perhaps rich countries would not have to hide behind high-tech borders. Kastro, Monemvasia, Greece

From Tim Sprod Regarding the emergent high-tech border guards reported by Paul Marks, it strikes me that if we

spent more money and effort ensuring that the "have nots" had more access to what the "haves" have, then we could spend less on keeping the "have nots" away from the "haves". Taroona, Tasmania, Australia

In your head

From Stuart Leslie Ray Tallis gets it right when he argues that we are a long way from explaining the origin of consciousness (9 January, p 28), but while he does a very good job

Enigma Number 1581

Daley's Gold T H O M A S D A L E Y

G O L D RICHARD ENGLAND

I n Ju ly 2009, 16 months after

winning the individual divi ng

gold medal from the lO-metre

platform board at the European

Championships at the age of 13,

Thomas Da ley won the gold medal

at the World Championships. So it is

filling that I can offer this puzzle:

In this subtraction, digits have

been consistently replaced by

I ellers, with different lellers

representing different d igits.

No number starts with a zero.

Since there are 11 different lellers,

everythi ng is in base 11 - use the

dig its 0 to 9 as normal and add a

symbol of your choice for the

extra d igit.

Please send in the 6-digit

number (sti l l in base 11) that

is represented by THOMAS.

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

answer opened on Wednesday 10 March. The Editor's decision is final.

Please send entries to En igma 1581, New Scientist, Lacon House,

84 Theobald's Road, London WClX 8NS, orto [email protected]

(please include your postal address).

Answer to 1575 All our days: the FAMOUS number is 528941

The winner Doug Fenna of Ryde, Isle of Wight, UK


of deconstructing some of the research and assumptions surrounding this topic, he fails to address the biggest hurdle: what does he, or indeed anyone else, mean by "consciousness"?

Humanities students are taught to carefully define their terms before beginning to discuss them. Philosophers have wrestled inconc!usivelywith the term "consciousness" for centuries.

The concept of consciousness may seem self-evident. Indeed, most people will think that they have understood it until they try to describe exactly what they mean. The difficulty arises because we are dealing with an abstract idea, and a simple definition like "self-awareness" immediately runs into trouble because it uses more abstractions without concrete reference points to define another term which also lacks such reference points. Dorrigo, New South Wales, Australia

From Gerald Rudolph Perhaps Ray Tallis could have gone a bit further in his article on consciousness. He wrote of science beginning when we escape our first-person subjective experience. Yet the conceptual understanding of science itself, with its logical and mathematical thinking, consists of activities occurring in that same piece of flesh that the neurophysiologists are exploring.

Even if we believe that we have a form of scientific objectivity, each one of us is still limited by the fact that we are corporeal human beings, and consequently are constrained by the particular types of chemical activi ty tha t take place in our brains as we reason about their perceptions.

However objective neurophysiologists try to be, their research still boils down to consciousness studying consciousness. Lexington, South Carolina, US

From Derek Bolton When discussing the "unity" of consciousness, Ray Tallis says he "can relate [experiences I at a given time (the pressure of the seat on my bottom, the sound oftraffic, my thoughts) to one another as elements of a single moment". Maybe he can, but I can't. I can contemplate each different input in turn, but to wha t extent am I really aware of them all at once?

There are known limits to how well we can discern the order of two sensory inputs of different types. An explanation of continuity of experience and the simultaneous nature of events could be that they are illusions constructed from memory.

Tallis further maintains, when talking about the biology of the brain, that " there is nothing in the convergence . . . of neural pathways that gives us this . . . ability to see things as both whole and separate". Not so. For example, it is possible to experience the whole of a piece of music when I listen to it : I am aware of the melody and the rhythm, and the synthesis of the two, because each ofthese three aspects ofthe music can have its own neural correlate. Birchgrove, New South Wales, Australia

From Tim Wilkinson As Ray Tallis suggests, any account of consciousness based on brain function will lack a plausible explanation for how the cold unconscious world of particles and forces is able to perform the trick of generating a subjective, self-aware experience. Nevertheless, if we show that the brain can generate consciousness, it is not necessary to know how it does so to rule out supernatural sources. We can be sure that the provenance of consciousness is entirely natural.

By what means we will solve the difficult "how" question we cannot say at this stage. The answer may involve completely

For more letters and to join the debate, visit www.NewScientist.com/letters

new phenomena, hitherto unnoticed. Perhaps we will never know, but while we wait for the answer, philosophers are justified in claiming that a proper explanation of consciousness cannot come from any possible rearrangement of the kind of physics we already have.

We should be pleased : even if space and matter yield their secrets to the Large Hadron Collider, we have something even more fascinating to investigate. Houghton-Ie-Spring, Tyne and Wear, UK

F e el the music

From Georg Pedersen, Sydney Conservatorium of Music The list of obscure or little-studied emotions in jessica Griggs's article (16 january, p 26) barely scratched the surface.

As any music-lover knows, there is a world of intense emotions out there that are impossible to verbalise or conceptualise. To experience music is to experience a separate universe, one created entirely by humans. The deeper we penetrate this world, the more subtle it becomes and the harder to describe.

Perhaps in trying to understand our experience of music we are faced with the same kinds of problems we encounter when trying to understand consciousness - in other words, we have little idea how it comes about or even how to talk or think about it. But for anyone who listens to music, there is a

glory, a passion, an intensity that constitutes a marvellous synthesis of both intellect and emotions. Sydney, Australia

Weather isn't climate

From Michael Payton Michael Le Page roundly turns on anyone who dares to suggest that the current severe winter conditions throughout the northern hemisphere put a question mark over the existence of global warming (16 january, p 20). Ifthat were right, he says, the sceptics would have to accept that a spell of hot weather would mean the climate was getting warmer -equally nonsensical, since extreme weather proves nothing about climate change.

Yet don't those who subscribe to the idea of climate change regularly fall into the same trap, using extreme weather scenarios -or the lack of them to make their case? For example, in 2000 David Viner, then of the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit, claimed a consequence of global warming would be that within a few years children in the UK "just aren't going to know what snow is".

Would Le Page also dismiss Viner as "intellectually challenged or plain dishonest"? London, UK

Rac e to m etric

From Ross Richdale I was disappointed by David Cohen's article about the 1000 mph car (21 November 2009, p 38): surely in this day and age you could use metric units. In New Zealand and Australia we gave up the archaic imperial measurements about 30 years ago.

I know that the US and, to a lesser extent, the UK insist on staying in the dinosaur age but how can they be expected to join the rest of the world if a

scientific magazine such as yours condones the continued use of this anachronism? Palmerston North, New Zealand

The ed itor writes: • "The 1609.3 kph car" would have lacked charisma. The teams we reported chose 1000 mph as their target, so just this once, for ease of comparison, we used miles per hour throughout the article.

Blink of a butterfl y

From Bern ie Mason I was astounded to read in The Last Word piece about how high butterflies fly (16 january) that commercial airline pilots have reported seeing monarch butterflies at between 3000 and 4000 metres. What I would give for eyesight that good: commercial airlines cruise at about 250 metres per second. How do pilots manage such feats of observation? Flowerdale, Tasmania

Mac attack

From Kevin Sheldrake In Paul Marks's article on the dangers of hackers using networks of computers to eavesdrop on conversations on your laptop or smartphone (16 january, p 17), an anonymous " security expert" claimed that such attacks are too crude to pose a serious threat. "It is unlikely any worthwhile target will use Windows unpatched," he says, "and few

Apple Mac users would voluntarily install unknown software."

I must assume that this expert either works in academia, where the world may look different, or has had little exposure to commercial security testing. There is little evidence that Apple Mac users are any more security conscious than anyone else. Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, UK

Pizza perfect

From Michael Shaw

As an employee of a chain of pizza restaurants, I initially found Stephen Ornes's article on the mathematics of preparing perfect pizza portions highly insightful (12 December 2009, p 48).

However, as soon as I began to attempt the method it described I floundered. This only appears to work with margherita pizzas and others with a strictly uniform distribution of toppings.

Alas, I found it oflittle help when sharing pizza with my fellow employees. Bristol, UK

For the r ec ord

• Possessing a "grid" of bra in cells

that helps us to navigate might

explain why some people are better

at finding their way around than

others (23 Janua ry, p 15). Although

these ce l ls provide a virtual grid on

which locations in the world can be

represented i n the brain, we should

have made it clear that the celis

themselves are not arranged i n a

physical grid.

Letters should be sent to:

Letters to the Editor, New Scientist,

84 Theobald's Road, London WClX 8NS

Fax: +44 (0) 20 7511 1280

Email: [email protected]

Include you r full posta I add ress a nd telephone number, anda reference (issue, page number, title) to articles. We reserve the rightto edit letters. Reed Business Information reserves the right to use any submissions sent to the letters column of New Scientist magazine, in any other format.


OPI N ION THE B IG IDEA

Surviva l of the fittest theory Darwi n was only half-r ight about evo lution : evidence agai nst natu ra l se lection is mount ing u p, argue Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattel l i-Palmarini

READERS in search of literature about Darwin or Darwinism will have no trouble finding it. Recent milestone anniversaries of Darwin's birth and ofthe publication oWn the Origin of Species have prompted a plethora of material, so authors thinking of adding another volume had better have a good excuse for it. We have written another book about Darwinism, and we urge you to take it to heart. Our excuse is in the title: What Darwin Got Wrong.

Much ofthe vast neo-Darwinianliterature is distressingly uncritical. The possibility that anything is seriously amiss with Darwin's account of evolution is hardly considered. Such dissent as there is often relies on theistic premises which Darwinists rightly say have no place in the evaluation of scientific theories. So onlookers are left with the impression that there is little or nothing about Darwin's theory to which a scientific naturalist could reasonably object. The methodological scepticism that characterises most areas of scientific discourse seems strikingly absent when Darwinism is the topic.

Try these descriptions of natural selection, typical ofthe laudatory epithets which abound in the literature: "The universal acid" (philosopher Daniel Dennett inDarwin's Dangerous Idea, 1995); "a mechanism of staggering simplicity and beauty . . . [it] has been called the greatest idea that anyone ever had . . . it also happens to be true" (biologist Jerry Coyne in Why Evolution is True, 2009); "the only workable theory ever proposed that is capable of explaining life we have" (biologist and ethologist Richard Dawkins, variously). And as Dennett continues in Darwin's Dangerous Idea: "In a single stroke, the idea of evolution by natural selection unifies the realm oflife, meaning, and purpose with the realm of s pace and time,


cause and effect, mechanism and physical law:' Golly! Could Darwinism really be that good? Darwin's theory of evolution has two

connected parts: connected, but not inseparable. First, there is an explanation of the taxonomy of species. It is an ancient observation that if you sort species by similarities among their phenotypes (a phenotype being a particular creature's collection of overt, heritable biological properties) they form the hierarchy known as a " taxonomic tree".

This is why most vertebrate species are more similar to one another than they are to any invertebrate species, most species of mammals are more similar to one another than they are to any species of reptiles, and so forth. Why is this? It is quite conceivable that every species might be equally different from every other. What explains why they aren't?

Darwin suggested a genealogical hypothesis: when species are relatively similar, it's because they are descended from a relatively recent common ancestor. In some ways, chimps seem a lot like people. This is not because God created them to poke fun at us, or vice versa; it is because humans and chimps are descended from the same relatively recent primitive ape.

The current consensus is that Darwin was almost certainly right about this. There are plaUSible exceptions, notably similarities

PROALE Jerry Fodor is a phi losopher and cognitive scientist

at Rutgers Un iversity, New Jersey, Mass imo

Piatte l l i Pa lmar in i is a cognitive scientist at the

University of Arizona, Tucson. This essay draws

on material from their new book, What Darwin Got Wrong, pub lished in the US by Farrar, Straus,

and Giroux, and in the UK by Profi le

For more opinion articles and to add your comments, visit www.NewScientist .com/opinion

that arise from evolutionary convergence, but evidence from a number of disciplines, including genetics, evolutionary developmental biology and palaeontology argues decisively for Darwin's historical account of the taxonomy of species. We agree that this really was as brilliant an idea as it is generally said to be.

But that cannot be the whole story, since it is not self-evident why species that have a recent common ancestor- as opposed, say, to species that share an ecology - are generally phenotypically similar. Darwin's theory of natural selection is intended to answer this question. Darwinists often say that natural selection provides the mechanism of evolution by offering an account of the transmission of phenotypic traits from generation to generation which, if correct, explains the connection between phenotypic similarity and common ancestry.

Moreover, it is perfectly general: it applies to any species, independent of what its phenotype may happen to be. And it is remarkably simple. In effect, the mechanism of trait transmission it postulates consists of a random generator of genotypic variants that produce the corresponding random phenotypic variations, and an environmental filter that selects among the latter according to their relative fitness. And that's all. Remarkable if true.

Compelling evidence

But we don't think it is true. A variety of different considerations suggesting that it is not are mounting up. We feel it is high time that Darwinists take this evidence seriously, or offer some reason why it should be discounted. Our book about what Darwin got wrong reviews in detail some of these objections to natural selection and the evidence for them; this article is a brief summary.

Here's how natural selection is supposed to work. Each generation contributes an imperfect copy ofits genotype - and thereby of its phenotype- to its successor. Neo-Darwinism suggests that such imperfections arise primarily from mutations in the genomes of members of the species in question.

What matters is that the alterations of phenotypes that the mechanisms of trait transmission produce are random. Suppose, for example, that a characteristic coloration is part of the phenotype ofa particular species, and that the modal members ofthe ith generation of that species are reddish brown. Suppose, also, that the mechanisms that copy

phenotypes from each generation to the next are " imperfect" in the sense given above. Then, all else being eq ual, the coloration of the i + lth generation will form a random distribution around the mean coloration of the parent generation: most of the offspring will match their parents more or less, but some will be more red than brown, and some will be more brown than red.

This assumption explains the random variation of phenotypic traits over time, but it doesn't explain why phenotypic traits evolve. So let's further assume that, in the environment that the species inhabits, the members with brownish coloration are more "fit" than the ones with reddish coloration, all else being equal. It doesn't much matter exactly how fitness is defined; for convenience, we'll follow the current consensus according to

"Much of the vast ne oDarwinian literatur e is distressingly uncritical"

which an individual's relative fitness co-varies with the probability that it will contribute its phenotypic traits to its offspring.

Given a certain amount of conceptual and mathematical tinkering, it follows that, all else again being equal, the fitness of the species's phenotype will generally increase over time, and that the phenotypes of each generation will resemble the phenotype of its recent ancestors more than they resemble the phenotypes of its remote ancestors.

That, to a first approximation, is the neoDarwinian account of how phenotypes evolve. To be sure, some caveats are required. For example, even orthodox Darwinists have always recognised that there are plenty of cases where fitness doesn't increase over time. So, for example, fitness may decrease when a population becomes unduly numerous (that's density-dependent selection at work), or when a species having once attained a "fitness plateau" then gets stuck there, or, of course, when the species becomes extinct.

Such cases do not show that neo-Darwinism is false; they only show that the "all else being equal" clauses must be taken seriously. Change the climate enough and the next generation of dinosaurs won't be more fit than its parents. Hit enough dinosaurs with meteors, and there won't be a next generation. But that does not argue against Darwinian selection, as this claims only to say what happens when the ecology doesn't change, or only changes very gradually, which >


OPI N ION THE B IG IDEA

manifestly does not apply in the case of the dinosaurs and the meteorite strikes.

So much for the theory, now for the objections. Natural selection is a radically environmentalist theory. There are, therefore, analogies between what Darwin said about the process of evolution of phenotypes and what the psychologist B. F. Skinner said about the learning of what he called "operant behaviour" - thewhole network of events and factors involved in the behaviour of humans and non-human animals.

Driven from with in

These analogies are telling. Skinner's theory, though once fashionable, is now widely agreed to be unsustainable, largely because Skinner very much overestimated the contribution that the structure of a creature's environment plays in determining what it learns, and corres pondingly very much underestimated the contribution of the internal or "endogenous" variables - including, in particular, innate cognitive structure.

In our book, we argue in some detail that much the same is true of Darwin's treatment of evolution: it overestimates the contribution the environment makes in shaping the phenotype of a species and correspondingly underestimates the effects of endogenous variables. For Darwin, the only thing that

30 I NewScientist 1 6 February 2010

organisms contribute to determining how next-generation phenotypes differ from parent-generation phenotypes is random variation. All the non-random variables come from the environment.

Suppose, however, that Darwin got this wrong and various internal factors account for the data. If that is so, there is inevitably less for environmental filtering to do.

The consensus view among neo-Darwinians continues to be that evolution is random variation plus structured environmental filtering, but it seems the consensus may be shifting. In our book we review a large and varied selection of non-environmental constraints on trait transmission. They include constraints imposed "from below" by physics and chemistry, that is, from molecular interactions upwards, through genes, chromosomes, cells, tissues and organisms. And constraints imposed "from above" by universal principles of phenotypic form and self-organisation - that is, through the minimum energy expenditure, shortest paths, optimal packing and so on, down to the morphology and structure of organisms.

Over the aeons of evolutionary time, the interaction ofthese multiple constraints has produced many viable phenotypes, all compatible with survival and reproduction. Crucially, however, the evolutionary process in such cases is not driven by a struggle for

If Darwin had known

what we know now,

he might have come to

differentconciusions

survival and/or for reproduction. Pigs don't have wings, but that's not because winged pigs once lost out towingless ones. And it's not because the pigs that lacked wings were more fertile than the pigs that had them. There never were any winged pigs because there's no place on pigs for the wings to go. This isn't environmental filtering, it's just physiological and developmental mechanics.

So, how many constraints on the evolution of phenotypes are there other than those that environmental filtering imposes? Nobody knows, but the picture now emerging is of

"Eve ry case of fr e e-riding is a c ounter- exampl e to natural sel ecti on"

many, many of them operating in many, many different ways and at many, many different levels. That's what the evolutionary developmental school of biology and the theory that gene regulatory networks control our underlying development both suggest. And it strikes us as entirely plausible.

It seems to us to be no coincidence that neo-Darwinian rhetoric in the literature of experimental biology has cooled detectably in recent years. In its place, we find evolutionary biologist Leonid Kruglyak being quoted in Nature in November 2008 (vol 456, p 18) thus: "It's a possibility that there's something [about the contributions of genomic structure to the evolution of complex phenotypes 1 we just don't fundamentally understand ... That it's so different from what we're thinking about that we're not thinking about it yet."

And then there is this in March 200g from molecular biologist Eugene Koonin, writing in Nuc/eic AcidsResearch (vol 37, p 1011): "Evolutionary-genomic studies show that natural selection is only one ofthe forces that shape genome evolution and is not quantitatively dominant, whereas nonadaptive processes are much more prominent than previously suspected." There's quite a lot ofthis sort of thing around these days, and we confidently predict a lot more in the near future.

Darwinists say that evolution is explained by the selection of phenotypic traits by environmental filters. But the effects of endogenous structure can wreak havoc with this theory. Consider the following case: traits t1 and t2 are endogenously linked in such a way that if a creature has one, it has both. Now the core of natural selection is the claim that phenotypic traits are selected for their adaptivity, that is, for their effect on

For more opinion articles and to add your comments, visit www.NewScientist .com/opinion

fitness. But it is perfectly possible that one of two linked traits is adaptive but the other isn't; having one ofthem affects fitness but having the other one doesn't. So one is selected for and the other "free-rides" on it.

We should stress that every such case (and we argue in our book that free-riding is ubiquitous) is a counter-example to natural selection. Free-riding shows that the general claim that phenotypic traits are selected for their effects on fitness isn't true. The most that natural selection can actually claim is that some phenotypic traits are selected for their effects on fitness; the rest are selected for... well, some other reason entirely, or perhaps for no reason at all.

It's a main claim of our book that, when phenotypic traits are endogenously linked, there is no way that selection can distinguish among them: selection for one selects the others, regardless of their effects on fitness.

That is a great deal less than the general theory ofthe mechanics of evolution that the Darwinists suppose that natural selection provides. Worse still, there isn't the slightest reason to suppose that free-riding exhausts the kinds of exceptions to natural selection that endogenous structures can produce.

"All right," you may say, "but why should anybody care?" Nobody sensible doubts that evolution occurs -we certainly don't. Isn't this a parochial issue for professional biologists, with nothing cosmic turning on it? Here's why we think that is not so.

Natural selection has shown insidious imperialistic tendencies. The offering of posthoc explanations of phenotypic traits by reference to their hypothetical effects on fitness in their hypothetical environments of selection has spread from evolutionary theory to a host of other traditional disciplines: philosophy, psychology, anthropology, sociology, and

Notall the traits

passed on between

generations haveto be

selected for their

adaptive value

even to aesthetics and theology. Some people really do seem to think that natural selection is a universal acid, and that nothing can resist its powers of dissolution.

However, the internal evidence to back this imperialistic selectionism strikes us as very thin. Its credibility depends largely on the reflected glamour of natural selection which biology proper is said to legitimise. Accordingly, if natural selection disappears from biology, its offshoots in other fields seem likely to disappear as well. This is an outcome much to be desired since, more often than not, these offshoots have proved to be not just post hoc but ad hoc, crude, reductionist, scientistic rather than scientific, shamelessly selfcongratulatory, and so wanting in detail that they are bound to accommodate the data, however that data may turn out. So it really does matter whether natural selection is true.

That's why we wrote our book .•


No l i qu id behaves qu ite as odd ly as water, but a controvers ia l new theory may fina l ly have wrung out its secrets, says Edwin Cartl idge

. "

•

.. •

· ., .�) , .

,/

. A . .. .

••

.. " . '

-,

•

� .

. . . . • •

,. ,, " ', It' •

'.

. '

'"


. '. , .. " ', . .. . . .

. _ 4 •

.....

.. '

.' . .. .

. , '. '.

'V • • •

• • •

f

• • •

-" .. .

,

•

.�

• • , .

of Stockholm University, Sweden, and their • colleagues, we could at last be getting to the

bottom of many of these anomalies.

.,. � "e-

. •

• -

• I •

..

":!". we are confronted by many mysteries, • from the nature of dark matter and . .

the origin of the universe to the quest � for a theory of everything. These are all puzzles

on the grand scale, but you can observe

another enduring mystery of the physical world - equally perplexing, if not quite so

• grand -from the comfort of your kitchen.

Simplyfill a tall glass with chilled water, throw .- in an ice cube and leave it to stand.

The fact that the ice cube floats is the first oddity. And the mystery deepens if you take a thermometer and measure the temperature of the water at various depths. At the top, near the ice cube, you'll find it to be around 0 °c, but at the bottom it should be about 4 0c. That's because water is denser at 4°C than it is at any other temperature - another strange trait that sets it apart from other liquids.

Water's odd properties don't stop there (see "Water's mysteries", right, and page 34), and some are vital to life. Because ice is less dense than water, and water is less dense at its freezing point than when it is slightly warmer, it freezes from the top down rather than the bottom up. So even during the ice ages, life continued to thrive on lake floors and in the deep ocean. Water also has an extraordinary capacity to mop up heat, and this helps smooth out climatic changes that could otherwise devastate ecosystems.

Yet despite water's overwhelming importance to life, no single theory had been able to satisfactorily explain its mysterious properties - until now. Ifwe can believe physicists Anders Nilsson at Stanford University, California, and Lars Pettersson

Their controversial ideas expand on a theory proposed more than a century ago by Wilhelm Roentgen, the discoverer of X-rays, who claimed that the molecules in liquid water pack together not in just one way, as today's textbooks would have it, but in two fundamentally different ways.

Key to the understanding of water's mysteries is the way its molecules - made up of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atominteract with one another. The oxygen atom has a slight negative charge while the hydrogen atoms share a compensating positive charge. As such, the hydrogen and oxygen atoms of neighbouring molecules are attracted to one another, forming a link called a hydrogen bond.

Hydrogen bonds are far weaker than the bonds that link the atoms within molecules together, and so are continually breaking and reforming, but they are at their strongest when molecules are arranged so that each hydrogen bond lines up with a molecular bond (see diagram, page 35). The shape ofa water molecule is such that each HP molecule is surrounded by four neighbours arranged in the shape of a triangular pyramid - better known as a tetrahedron.

At least, that's the way the molecules arrange themselves in ice. According to the conventional view, liquid water has a similar, albeit less rigid, structure, in which extra molecules can pack into some of the open ga ps in the tetrahedral arrangement. That explains why liquid water is denser than ice -and it seems to fit the results of various experiments in which beams of X-rays, infrared light and neutrons are bounced off samples of water.

True, some physicists had claimed that water placed under certain extreme conditions may separate into two different structures (see "Extreme water", page 35), but most had assumed it resumes a single structure under normal conditions.

Then, 10 years ago, a chance discovery by Pettersson and Nilsson called this picture into question, They were using X-ray absorption spectroscopy to investigate the amino acid

COVER STORY

WATE R'S MYSTER I E S Picturing water as a l iquid that can form two

types of structure, one tetrahedral and the other

disordered, could explain many of water's unusual

properties. Here are 10 of them

Water is most dense at 4 O(

EXPLANATION: Heating reduces the number

of ordered, tetrahedral structures in favour of a

more disordered arrangement in which molecules

are more densely packed. However, the heat also

agitates the molecules in the disordered regions,

causing them to move further apart. Above 4 0(,

this effect takes precedence, making the water

less dense

Water has an exceptionally high specific heat

capacity: it takes a lot of heat energy to raise

water's temperature by a given amount

EXPLANATION: Much of the extra heat energy

is used to convert more molecules from the

tetrahedral structures to the disordered

structu res, rather than into increasi ng the

kinetic energy of the molecules, and hence

the temperature.

Specific heat capacity is at a minimum at 35 O(

but increases as the temperature falls or rises,

whereas the heat capacity of most other l iquids

rises conti nuously with temperature.

EXPLANATION: Between 0 and 35°(, increasing

the temperature steadily removes regions of

ordered, tetrahedral structure, reducing water's

abil ity to absorb heat. Above 35 0(, so few of the

tetrahedral regions are left that water behaves

like a reg ular l iquid .

Water's compressibility drops with increasing

temperature unti l it reaches a minimum at 46 0(,

whereas in most l iquids, the compressibil ity rises

continuously with temperature

EXPLANATION: As the temperature rises,

the dense, disordered regions become more

prevalent, and these are more difficult to

compress. However, rising temperature also

forces molecules within these regions further

apart and hence makes them more compressible.

This effect takes precedence beyond 46 0(,


IIWhat we saw i n the water was sensationa l, so we had to get to the bottom of itll

XPbANATION: The strong attraction between

water molecules keeps them more closely packed

than the molecules of many other liquids.

Th is effect is particularly marked when the

higher-density disordered structure dominates

The speed of sou nd in water increases with

temperature up to 74 0(, after which it starts

to fa I i again

EXPLANATION: This isthe result of the

interplay between water's unusual density

and compressibil ity profiles, which d irectly

stem from the changing balance between the

two types of structure.

Water molecules diffuse more easily, not less

easily, at higher pressures

EXPLANATION: High pressure converts more

molecules to the d isordered structure, in which

they are more mobile.

Unlike many liqu ids, water becomes less viscous,

not more viscous, at higher pressures

EXPLANATION: Molecules are freerto move when

in the disordered structures, which are favoured

at higher pressures, than when they are in the

ordered, tetrahedral structure.

Increasing the pressure increases the amount

by which water expands on heati ng

EXPLANATION: Rising temperature causes

disordered regions to expand more rapidly than

ordered, tetrahedral ones, and high pressure

favours fluctuations to the d isordered regions.

Properties such as viscosity, boi l ing point and

melting poi nt are significantly d ifferent in

"heavy" water - made from the heavier hydrogen

isotopes deuteri um and tritium - compared with

their equivalents in normal water.

EXPLANATION: The heavier isotopes change

the quantum mechanical properties of water

molecules, altering the balance of the disordered

and tetrahedral regions.

David Robson


glycine. The peaks in the X-ray absorption spectrum can shed light on the precise nature of the target substance's chemical bonds, and hence on its structure. Importantly, the researchers had got hold of a new, high-power X-ray source with which they were able to make more sensitive and accurate measurements than had ever been possible. They soon realised that the water containing their glycine sample was producing a far more interesting spectrum than the amino acid. "What we saw there was sensational," Nilsson recalls, "so we had to get to the bottom of it."

Dramatic implications

The feature that sparked their interest was a peak in the absorption spectrum that is not predicted by the traditional model ofliquid water. In fact, in a paper published in 2004 they concluded that at any given moment 85 percent ofthe hydrogen bonds in water must be weakened or broken, far more than the 10 per cent predicted by the textbook model (Science, vol 304, p 995).

The implications of this finding are dramatic: it suggests that a total rethink of the structure of water is needed. So Nilsson and Pettersson turned to other X -ray experiments to confirm their claims. Their first move was to enlist the help of Shik Shin of the University ofTokyo, Japan, who specialises in a technique called X-ray emission spectroscopy. The key thing about these spectra is that the shorter the wavelength of the X-rays in a substance's emission spectrum are, the looser the hydrogen bonding must be.

The team struck gold: the spectrum of emitted X-rays included two peaks that might correspond to two separate structures. The spike of the longer-wavelength X-rays, the researchers argued, indicates the proportion oftetrahedrally arranged molecules, while the shorter-wavelength peak reflects the proportion of disordered molecules.

Importantly, the shorter-wavelength peak in the X-ray emissions was the more intense of the two, suggesting that the loosely bound molecules must be more prevalent within the sample - an assertion that fitted the team's previous models. What's more, they also found that this peak shifts to an even shorter wavelength as the water is heated, while the other peak remains more or less fixed (Chemical Physics Letters, vol 460, p 387).

That suggests that the hydrogen bonds connecting molecules arranged in a disordered way are more likely to loosen upon heating than those linking the more regularly arranged molecules -which again is what the team had predicted. They then reanalysed older experimental data that had seemed to support the traditional picture of waterand now argue that these results, too, are consistent with the new model.

If the team is right, another question arises: how large are the different structures within the liquid? To find out, they turned to the high-power X-rays generated at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource in California, this time measuring how water scatters rays arriving from various angles. The results, they say, reveal that water is dotted with small regions of tetrahedrally

arranged molecules, each region being The two faces of water 1 to 2 nanometres across (Proceedings of the

National Academy of Sciences, vol 106, p 15214). Combined with further measurements

carried out by Uwe Bergmann at Stanford University, they concluded that the ordered structures consisted of roughly 50 to 100 molecules, on average, surrounded by a sea of the more loosely bound molecules. These regions are not fixed, however. In less than a trillionth of a second, water molecules are thought to fluctuate between the two states as the hydrogen bonds break and reform.

Each water molecule has the potential to form hydrogen bonds with four neigh bouring molecules: one via each of its hydrogen atoms plus two via its oxygen atom, Fluctuations betwe en the two resulting structures could explai n waters un ique prop erties

Explaining the inexplicable

The changing balance between Nilsson and Pettersson's two types of water provides an explanation for the way water's density peaks at 4°C. In the disordered regions, water molecules are more closely packed, making them denser than regions where the molecules are arranged in a tetrahedral structure. At 0 °C these disordered regions should be relatively uncommon, but as the water is warmed the extra heat energy tends to shake the more ordered structure apart, so molecules spend less time in the tetrahedral structure and more time in the disordered regions, making it more dense on average.

Counterbalancing this, the loosely bound molecules will move around more vigorously as the temperature rises, gradually forcing them further apart from each other. Once enough ofthe molecules become loosely bound - at 4 °C -this expansion effect will dominate, and the density will fall with increasing temperatures.

According to Pettersson, the theory offers equally tidy explanations for many of water's other previously inexplicable anomalies something they say that no other theory can

EXTRE M E WATER

With a l l fou r hydrogen bonds i n place, the result is a regu lar tetrahedral structure

MOLECULAR BOND HYDROGEN ATOM

yet achieve (see "Water's mysteries", pages 33 and 34). Martin Chaplin, a chemist at London South Bank University, agrees. Explanations based on the conventional one-component system have to "go round the houses" to try to accommodate the maxima and minima in various properties as the temperature of water changes, he says. "The dual-structure idea is strongly supported by experiment and can explain water's anomalies far more readily than the conventional picture," Chaplin says.

Nilsson and Pettersson's 2004 paper in Science has now been cited over 350 times by other researchers. Yet many remain sceptical. One criticism is that the team's explanation of their X-ray spectroscopy results is based on simulations of at least 50 interacting water molecules- an immensely complex model that can only be resolved approximately. "We need a much more accurate theory

The dual structure of water proposed by

Anders Nilsson of Stanford U niversity,

California, and Lars Pettersson of Stockholm

University in Sweden may be a ghostly

echo of the strange properties of

"supercool" water - water that has been

cooled to below O°C withoutfreezing.

seen as fluctuations i n water's density. Sure

enough, the size of the fleeting high and

low-density regions seen in Nilsson and

Pettersson's X-ray scatteri ng experiments

are consistent with his theory's predictions.

Eugene Stanley of Boston University

and his colleagues have long claimed that

at temperatures below about -50°C and

pressures of more than 1000 times

atmospheric pressure, distinct high and

low-density forms of supercool water should

exist. Several research groups cla im they

have found evidence for these two structures.

Stanley, however, believes there should

be small but discernible traces of this

behaviour at higher temperatures too -

However, physicist Alan Soper at

the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in

Oxfordshire in the UK is not convinced that

these density d ifferences are anyth ing

other than the density fluctuations that

can occur in any l iquid.

The crux of this dispute concerns the

precise statistical distribution of regions of

different denSity. According to Nilsson and

Pettersson's model, there should be two

peaks attwo distinctly different densities,

but Soper believes only one continuous

distribution is possi ble.

Water m o lecu l es are more densely packed when they are i n a more random, disordered structure

in order to make such drastic claims," says Richard Saykally at the University of California, Berkeley. He claims that minor ad justments to the arrangement of the hydrogen bonds in the conventional structure are enough to explain Nilsson and Pettersson's X-ray results. One member oftheir group, Michael Odelius of Stockholm University, even left the collaboration because he disagreed with their interpretation of the X-ray emission data.

One detail that alienated many sceptics was an assertion in the 2004 paper that the more loosely bound molecules form rings and chains - and indeed Nilsson and his colleagues are now less specific about the structure ofthe disordered molecules. Eugene Stanley of Boston University, however, does not believe that this fatally damages the team's case. "I don't think they should be condemned forever," he says. Though their argument is not yet watertight, the X-ray scattering results provide "one more piece of supporting evidence", he says.

There is no doubt that Nilsson and Pettersson still face stiff opposition, but the rewards of a comprehensive understanding of the structure ofliquid water could be considerable. It could lead to a better understanding of how drugs and proteins interact with water molecules within the body, for example, and so provide more effective medicines. And by giving us a better idea of how water behaves around narrow pores, it might improve water desalination attempts and so increase access to clean water.

"Our understanding of water is an evolving picture," Pettersson says. "Further research by many different groups is needed before this exciting and important journey can end." With so much to gain, who could disagree? •

Edwin Cartl idge is a journalist based in Rome,

Italy. To enjoy more stunning images of water in

motion by Shin ichi Maruyama, visit his website:

www.shinichimaruyama.com


Oxygen made us, But what made oxygen, asks N ick Lane

OXYGEN is life. That's true not just for us : all animals and plants need oxygen to unleash the energy they scavenge from

their environment. Take away oxygen and organisms cannot produce enough energy to support an active lifestyle, or even make them worth eating. Predation, an essential driver of evolutionary change, becomes impossible.

It is easy to picture a planet without oxygen. It looks like Mars. Our nearest planetary neighbour was probably once a water world too, primed for life to evolve. But it lacked a vital ingredient: a protective shield of ozone derived from oxygen. Without an ozone layer, the sun's rays slowly atomised the Martian water. The hydrogen floated off into space while the oxygen oxidised the iron-rich Martian topsoil, turning it rust-red. Perhaps there is -or was - life on Mars. But ifso it never progressed beyond the bacterial stage.

So how did Earth get lucky? Ten years ago, when I was writing my book Oxygen, it didn't seem too big a deal. Photosynthesising bacteria were the magic ingredient. These tiny organisms popped up in Earth's oceans early on, sometime between 4 and 3 billion years ago. In the cou pie of billion years that followed, their oxygenic exhaust fumes slowly did the job. By 600 million years ago, the air was primed for complex animal and plant life.

Now this cosy story has collapsed. We are no longer so sure how Earth's atmosphere got and retained - its oxygen-rich atmosphere. "Photosynthesis by itself was not enough," says Graham Shields, a geochemist at University College London. "It was a complex dance between geology and biology:'

Uncovering life's earliest origins is never an easy task. There are no large animal or plant fossils to draw on: these only make an appearance starting around 600 million years ago. Yet perhaps remarkably, hints of life's humble beginnings do survive in ancient


as rocks, crushed by the weight of sediment and time. With ardour, patience and skill, they can be marshalled into a convincing story.

William Schopf had those qualities. Two decades ago he thought he had the story, too. A palaeontologistat the University of California, Los Angeles, he was investigating the Apex cherts of Western Australia, 3-S-billion-yearold rocks that are among the oldest on Earth. In 1993, he announced that they contained 11 different types of " microfossil" that looked for all the world like modern photosynthesising cyanobacteria (Science, vol 260, p 640).

The finding fitted a global pattern. Other 3.S-billion-year-old Australian rocks contained rippling structures that looked like fossil stromatolites. A few examples of these structures, domed edifices up to a metre high built by cyanobacteria, still eek out a marginal existence in salty lagoons on the coast of Western Australia and elsewhere. Meanwhile, 3.8-billion-year-old rocks from Greenland had reduced levels of one of the two stable carbon isotopes, carbon-13, compared with the other, carbon-12 - a chemical signature of photosynthesis. It seemed that life had come early to Earth: astonishingly soon after our planet formed some 4.6 billion years ago, photosynthesising bacteria were widespread.

This emerging consensus lasted only until 2002, when palaeontologist Martin Brasierof the University of Oxford unleashed a barrage of criticisms. The Apex cherts, he claimed, were far from being the tranquil sedimentary basin evoked by Schopf. In fact, they were shot through with hydrothermal veins that were no setting for cyanobacteria. Other evidence that the rocks had undergone convulsions in the past made the rippling stromatolites no more biological in origin than ri pples on a sandy beach. As for the microfossils Schopf had identified, they ranged from the "almost plausible to the completely ridiculous". >

IIWith a l l of oxygen's ups and d owns, l ife on Earth was even l uck ier than we thought to g et as far as it hasll

Mind the gap If, as seems increasingly l ikely, photosynthesising

cyanobacteria first made an appearance in Earth's

oceans around 2.7 bil l ion years ago, why did they

take so long to make a difference to Earth's a ir?

One possibil ity is that the oxygen's first

chemical mission was to oxidise all the iron and

compounds l i ke hydrogen sulphide in the oceans.

Only after it had done that was it free to escape

into the atmosphere.

Perhaps the most persuasive answer,

though. is purely geologicaL It comes from

veteran geologist Heinrich Holland of Harvard

University. He points the finger at gases such

as methane and hydrogen sulphide that are

constantly spouted out by volcanoes. They

would have reacted with the first free oxygen

to form carbon dioxide and sulphur d ioxides.

effectively removing the oxygen from

circu lation (Geochimica et Cosmochimica

Acta. vol 73. p 5241).

Holland proposed that two processes took

place over geological time. First. the supply of

radioactive fuels in Earth's interior gradually

dwindled. reducing its internal temperature.

That in turn damped down the rate of volcanic

emissions. and the rate at which oxygen

consuming gases entered the atmosphere

gradually fell too.

Second. the volcanic gases themselves

conta ined more oxygen. Oxygen produced by the

first cyanobacteria would have steadily oxidised

surface rocks. As those rocks cycle through the

Earth's mantle through the standard processes

of subduction and convection. rocks with an extra

load of oxygen gradually fed through to the gases

emitted by volcanoes.

As cyanobacteria continued to pump out

oxygen. there came a point where the balance

tipped inexorably towards oxygen. and the

excess finally accumulated in the air. Perhaps it

took the 300 mil l ion years lead ing up to the great

oxygenation eventto getto that tipping point.


This very public spat produced no clear outcome, but since then new evidence has been emerging. In 2006, Thomas McCollom ofthe University of Colorado in Boulder and Jeffrey Seewald of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts found that reactions known as FischerTropsch syntheses can occur in hydrothermal vents, leaving a carbon isotope signature that mimics photosynthesis with no need for a biological explanation. The mere possibility that hot water might have massaged the evidence in Australia and elsewhere was damning enough for the duo. "The possibility must be entertained that complex life was not present on Earth, or at least not widespread, until a much later date," they wrote (Earth and Planetary Science Letters, vol 243, p 74).

That conclusion was supported by a reanalysis of " biomarkers" found in 2.7-billion-year-old Australian shales. These organic molecules had been thought to indicate the presence of cyanobacteria, but in 2008 an Australian team concluded that the shales had been contaminated by ancient oil that had filtered down into the sediments some time after the rocks first formed (Nature, vol 455, p 1101). Even more damningly, in September 2009 a French team discovered living bacteria buried deep down in ancient rocks of a similar age (PLoS One, vol 4, p e 5298).

Cru mbling edifice

Perhaps the decisive blow came inAugust last year, when Daniele Pinti ofthe University of Quebec in Montreal, Canada, and his colleagues announced results from a survey of the Apex cherts using advanced microscopy techniques. They concluded that the rocks had formed ina hydrothermal vent at a searing 250 'c or more -way too hot for cyanobacteria. The "microfossils", they said, were mostly deposits of iron oxides and clay minerals (Nature Geoscience, vol 2, p 640).

These new lines of evidence mean that the oldest undisputed signs of cyanobacteria are now fossils found in rocks from the Belcher Islands in northern Canada dating from just 2.1 billion years ago. So where does that leave our ideas about how life evolved, and the part oxygen played in that evolution?

In one sense it is no bad thing: it removes an embarrassing billion-plus year delay between cyanobacteria arising and oxygen levels in the air first taking a significant upwards turn. In this "great oxygenation event" of around 2.4 billion years ago, levels rose from around 1 per cent of today's levels to perhaps 10 per cent.

Our best guess is still that cyanobacteria were around some time before this event. Persuasive evidence is converging on a date around 2.7 billion years ago (see diagram, right). Research from Linda Godfrey and Paul Falkowski of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, indicates that the modern nitrogen cycle kicked off around this time. This requires free oxygen to form nitrogen oxides, suggesting that a first whiff of oxygennot even 1 per cent oftoday's levels -had just appeared (Nature Geoscience, vol 2, p 725).

That squares with evidence from Robert Frei of the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and his colleagues that the oxidative weathering of rocks kicked off around this time too. They measured levels of chromium in ancient marine rock layers known as banded iron formations. Exposed to oxygen in the air, the metal is weathered from rocks and washed out to sea, where it reacts immediately with iron, settles to the ocean bottom and forms these layers. The chromium signature in them suggests there was essentially no oxidative weathering before 2.7 billion years ago, after which chromium became significantly more mobile (Nature, vol 461, p 250).

If these coordinated changes are the calling cards ofthe first photosynthesising bacteria, there is still a mysterious hiatus of 300 million years before the great surge in oxygen 2-4 billion years ago. The gap is less embarrassing than a billion years, but still needs explaining (see "Mind the gap", left). Yet this puzzle masks a more fundamental new twist to the tale.

It is that the great oxygenation event was perhaps not as decisive an event as we thought. It certainly happened -a suite of geochemical evidence leaves little room for doubt on that score - and it was traumatic, too. Evidence of a sudden drop in ultraviolet radiation penetrating to Earth's surface 2-4 billion years ago indicates it was enough to create the ozone layer- a pivotal event that ensured our planet's history diverged from that of Mars.

It also seems to have been the forerunner to a "snowball Earth". IfJoe Kirschvink ofthe California Institute ofTechnology in Pasadena and many others are correct, the oxygen produced by cyanobacteria oxidised the potent greenhouse gas methane, precipitating a global freeze. "That raises the spectre of one mutant organism being able to destroy an entire planetary ecosystem -the first biogenic climate disaster," says Kirschvink.

And yet the great oxygenation was impermanent. The same chromium record that provides evidence for a first whiff of oxygen 300 million years before this event

Did l i chens help oxygen

to f ina l ly break free?

shows that, by 1. 9 billion years ago, levels of breathable oxygen in Earth's atmosphere were back down to the merest trace.

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

Stin king oceans

Oxygen levels in the atmosphere soon recovered again as rates of photosynthesis and weathering established a new equilibrium, at about 10 per cent of present-day levels. But this was no fresh dawn of a high-octane world: quite the reverse. This time, the oxidative weathering of sulphides on land filled the oceans with sulphate. That in turn fuelled a hardy group of bacteria that filled the oceans wi th sewer gas -hydrogen sui p hide - turning them into stinking, stagnant waters almost entirely devoid of oxygen, rather like the deeper levels ofthe Black Sea today. It was the herald of an extraordinary stasis in Earth's environment lasting nearly a quarter of its history - a period dubbed the "boring billion".

But hang on: what happened to the oxygenic utopia in which life supposedly grew and prospered, evolving the complex cells that went on to make up animal and plant life? The answer is that it probably never existed. If

O2 o n the u p

cyanobacteria did produce the first oxygen in Earth's atmosphere, all the evidence is they lacked the oomph to push levels much above 10 per cent of present levels in the long term.

That has led William Martin, an expert in cell evolution at the University of Dusseldorf in Germany, and others, to come up with a controversial theory: that the boring billion was anything but boring. In fact, the stinking oceans were the true cradle oflife. Evidence behind this idea includes the fact that mitochondria, the powerhouses of all complex, oxygen-respiring "eukaryotic" cells today, were once far more varied, sometimes "breathing" sulphur or nitrogen instead of oxygen, or even emitting hydrogen gas. It seems that these mitochondria originated in the stinking oceans of the boring billion, which were full of the chemical imbalances that power life today in places, like deep-sea hydrothermal vents.

The rise of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere has experienced many setbacks since the

fi rst ph otosynthesising cyanobacteria appeared, probably 2.7 bi l l ion years ago

c ii 10 � y; � ii B a Ll � .s 6 � '+OJ a -E. � 4 :B �

Volcanic hydrogen sulphide and methane keep oxygen down

2.7·2.4 bya

SNOWBALL

EARTH

Oxygen level down to almost zero again

1.9 bya

"BORING BILLION"

STINKING, SEWER

LIKE SEAS

Earth's anoxic stasis was broken in the end by a dramatic series of snowball Earths, indicating bursts of oxygen, beginning about 750 million years ago and recurring over the following 100 million years. They broke the eternal loop : soon afterwards, oxygen levels shot up and never looked back. Animal life soon exploded onto the scene.

What made the difference this time? One intriguing possibility is that it was down to the organisms that had evolved in a leisurely way during the boring billion: terrestrial red and green algae and the first lichens. "I suspect the final big rise in oxygen was caused by the greening of the continents from around 800 million years ago," says Shields. Terrestrial algae and lichens get their nourishment in part by breaking down the rocks on which they live. These nutrients flooded into the oceans, stimulating more and more photosynthesis by both cyanobacteria and the more advanced algae that had evolved in the meantime.

It did not all end in a "bloom and a bust" this time because lichens kept right on eating away at the rocks. They sustained a higher rate of erosion, and constant flow of nutrients into the ocean, even after the scouring glaciers of various snowball Earth phases had melted.

Life's story on Earth is a complex one, perhaps more complex that we ever imagined. After many false starts, a singular combination of chemistry, biology and geology finally came together to unleash the oxygen we breathe. Even then, many ups and downs were to come. To get as far as it has, life on Earth was even luckier than we thought. •

E c 2 .it � Nick Lane is the first Provost's Venture Research OJ .2: 4 2 0 Fellow at Un iversity College London, and author

BILLION YEARS of Life Ascending: The ten great inventions of AGO (bya) evolution (Profile, 2009)


As eager wha lers reach once more for the i r harpoons, reve lations on the former abundance of wha les may yet stay the i r hands, says Fred Pearce


The death toll

exacted by historical

whal i n g could have

bee n staggering

THEY are enigmatic sea monsters - rare, magnificent beasts patrolling the ocean depths. Yet old chronicles tell

of populations of whales hundreds oftimes greater than today. Such tales have long been dismissed as exaggerations, but could they be true? Have humans killed such a staggering number of whales?

New genetic techniques for analysing whale populations, alongside a growing archive of fresh historical analysis, suggest so. Taken together, they indicate that we have got our ideas about marine ecology completely upside down: whales may once have been the dominant species in the world's oceans.

This is not simply an academic question.

. . . � �

It matters now more than ever before. Whale numbers have been recovering slowly since the end oflarge-scale hunting in 1986, but this global moratorium is only temporary. The International Whaling Commission, the club of mostly former whaling nations which maintains the ban, has rules that say it can reconsider hunting a given whale species if its population climbs back to more than 54 per cent of its pre-hunting levels. Right now, according to IWC estimates, Atlantic humpbacks and Pacific minkes may have recovered sufficiently to put them back in whalers' Sights. But, crucially, such decisions rest on the veracity ofthe IWC's estimates of historical whale populations -54 percent of

what, exactly? If the old salts' tales of whale abundance are true, it is way too early to be dusting off those harpoons.

Human pressure on whale stocks "was much earlier, much larger and much more significant than previously thought", environmental historian Poul Holm ofthe University of Dublin, Ireland, told a meeting of the Census on Marine Life (CML) project in 2009.

Most estimates of how many whales were present in the oceans before hunting began come from population modellers, many of them working for the IWe. These estimates are mostly based on combining the size of current populations with numbers caught in the past, as recorded in the logbooks of whalers. There are other ways to calculate historical whale numbers, though.

So far, genetic evidence has received the most attention, in particular the publication of a controversial study in 2003 by Stephen Palumbi and Joe Roman of Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station. This study's high numbers appeared to blow IWC historical estimates out of the water, particularly for humpback whales (Science, vol 301, p 508).

The pair had investigated whales for signs of genetic variation. Geneticists claim to be able to use this to estimate the size of the population in the past since large populations tend to accumulate diversity through random DNA mutations and breeding, while small populations lose it through inbreeding. The results were dramatic.

The IWC believed that before large-scale whaling began, the North Atlantic was home to about 20,OOO humpback whales. With a current population of about 10,000 and rising, this meant that under the 54-per-cent rule hunting could soon resume. But Roman and Palumbi estimated the pre-exploitation population was more than 20 times as great, at 240.000. Globally, they suggested, there may have once been 1.5 million humpbacks, rather than the 100,000 estimated by the IWC.

Hostile reception

Unsurprisingly, Palumbi got a hostile reception when he presented these figures to the IWC in 2004, and the numbers remain controversial. One leading expert, on condition of anonymity, told New Scientist that the estimates were "ridiculous" and privately accused Palumbi of being" more interested in getting papers into Nature and Science than in getting it right".

There are problems with the analysis. It assumes that the particular whale population under scrutiny never bred with others. Critics point out that the now-distinct humpback populations of the North and South Atlantic may well have once done just that. It could be that Roman and Palumbi have inadvertently

estimated the entire Atlantic humpback population, or even the global population rather than that in just the North Atlantic.

Palumbi and Roman are not alone, however. Charles Scott Baker, a conservation geneticist at Oregon State University in Newport, has used DNA analysis to investigate minke whales. IWC estimates put their number today near their historical levels of around 600,000 globally. But Scott Baker reckons that as recently as 300 years ago there were probably close to 1.5 million ofthem. That suggests its recovery is still at an early stage.

Can these conflicting numbers be reconciled? Historical abundance is estimated using a combination of the current population and the total historical catch. The problem is that nobody can be sure how many whales were taken in the past. Some estimate that the total catch for the 20th century was about 4 million. But official whaling records are incomplete, especially post-war logs.

The most dramatic revelations have come from the archives of the former Soviet Union,

itA l a rge n u m ber of wha les esca ped the h u nters to d ie l ater from harpoon i nj u r ieslt

which carried out massive illegal harvesting of whales - especially in the 1950S and 1960s while sending false logbook records to the IWe. Memoirs of Russian whaling inspectors published in the past two years reveal that from 1959 to 1961, Soviet whaling fleets killed 25,000 humpback whales in the Southern Ocean, while reporting a catch of just 2710. This continued well into the 1970S according to new revelations at an IWC conference in 2009 by one of the original whistle-blowers, Yuri Mikhalev of the South Ukrainian Pedagogical University in Odessa, Ukraine.

Earlier records, where they exist, may be more reliable. Tim Smith, who heads the World Whaling History project, says that "the keepers oflogbooks [in the 19th century] had no incentive and little latitude to under-report catches". Even so, there may still be huge gaps in the data used by today's modellers. British whaling records were often dramatically incomplete, for example. Jennifer Jackson of Oregon State University in Newport has studied right whales off New Zealand, which were heavily hunted in both the 19th and 20th centuries. She discovered that British whalers took an estimated 10,000 whales in the South Pacific that had simply not been included in previous catch estimates.

But even after such data gaps are accounted for, the numbers still cannot be reconciled. So what else may have been going on? >

6 Feb ruary 2010 1 NewSc ientist 1 41

Roman points out that whalers' logbooks, even if scrupulously kept, only report some of the killings. For one thing, many whales are killed but never landed. Population modellers have traditionally added a few percentage points to allow for this, but many believe that only a minority of the whales attacked by vessels were killed, landed and logged -a large number escaped their hunters to die later from harpoon injuries. Others died in fishing nets, were struck by ships or used as target practice by naval vessels, says Roman.

Ancient hunters

There is also growing evidence of massive damage to whale populations inflicted by humans long before the industrial era of explosive harpoons and factory ships. Some 70,000 records of whale catches and sightings assembled by the History of Marine Animal Populations project, part of the CML, suggest the impact of pre-industrialised hunting on whale stocks was much greater than previously assumed.

Basque and japanese fishermen were catching right whales 1000 years ago. And for centuries, many other island and coastal communities have harvested the creatures. Whaling was the first global industry, says marine biologist Callum Roberts of York University in the UK. Whalers were hunting deep in Arctic waters long before explorers

Lost g iants

I f Wha les were 'f loati ng o i l we l l s', p rovid i ng o i l fo r ca nd les, street l amps and mac h i ne rylf

showed up. When Darwin reached the Galapagos Islands in 1835, they were already overrun with American vessels pursuing sperm whales.

According to Robert Allen of the University of Oxford, it now appears that many whale populations in the northern hemisphere were ravaged in the 17th and 18th centuries by whalers employing hand-held harpoons and sheer manpower. Back then, whales were essentially "floating oil wells", providing oil for candles, street lamps and machinery, as well as ingredients for perfumes, plus bones for everything from corsets to fishing rods.

The downfall of the Arctic bowhead whale is the best documented. Thousands of Dutch whaling ships headed into the Arctic in the 17th and 18th centuries to catch bowheads off Spitsbergen, until the population collapsed. Whaling then moved to the waters off Greenland where a frenzied hunt soon wiped out what had been the biggest whaling ground in the world. Today there are only about 1000 bowheads swimming west of Greenland - and none at all between

The analysis of genetic diversity suggests that the popu lations of some whales were once far largerthan models suggest

NORTH ATLANTIC H U M PBACK W HALE

Megaptera novaeangfiae

CURRENT POPULATION

POPULATION BEFORE H UNTING, BASED ON H ISTORICAL CATCH RECORDS Calculated using current population plus (known and estimated) catches from whaling records

POPULATION BEFORE H UNTING, BASED ON GENETIC DIVERSITY Large populations accumulate diversity through mutation and breeding. Small populations lose it through inbreeding

11.000

20.000

40.000

240,000


N O RTH ATLANTIC FIN W HALE

Bafaenoptera physafus

350,000

EASTERN PACI FIC GRAY W HALE

Eschrichtius robustus

Greenland and Spitsbergen, says Allen. The emerging history of pre-industrial

whaling, and what it suggests about past whale numbers, raises some important questions. Not just about the wisdom of a return to commercial whaling, but also about ocean life in general. jeremy jackson of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego says the hunting of whales has fundamentally reorganised ocean ecosystems. Today, ocean biomass is dominated by small creatures. But he says this "trophic pyramid", with only a tiny tip of large creatures, may not be natural. Before we intervened, he says, the pyramid was probably the other way up, with large beasts dominating the biomass.

Keeping these big beasts fed would be possible if the turnover of their smaller prey species was fast enough to ensure that fresh food was constantly being produced. And rather than devouring an ecosystem, a greater number of whales might help feed it : when a whale dies, its carcass sinks to the seabed where it could feed a local population of scavenging species for up to 80 years. Peter Karieva, chief scientist at conservation charity The Nature Conservancy in Seattle, Washington, says there is evidence that the decline of sperm whales in the tropical Pacific has moved the entire ecosystem towards domination by species like squid. We don't know what was los t with the whales -or wha t else might reappear if their numbers soared.

All this new research is putting the scientific credibility of the !WC under increasingly scrutiny. Some hope that the issues might be resolved at the IWC's annual meeting in Agadir, Morocco, in june this year. Don't hold your breath: "The discrepancies are unlikely to be resolved in the scientific committee of the IWC," says !WC scientist Sidney Holt.

Until now, says jeremy jackson, the widespread anecdotal evidence of huge numbers of whales and other large animals on the planet has been systematically downgraded by scientists simply because it cannot be proved. He calls the process " scary, unbridled anti-historical determinism". The result, he says, is that "we deny the once-great existence of anything we killed more than a century ago".

The new ecological perspective on the past abundance of whales is, like Palumbi's work, controversial. Nevertheless, the ever-growing body of historical evidence is siding with the DNA. It suggests that even the most "recovered" oftoday's whale populations are mere ghostly reminders oftheirformer dominance.

The whale's past may be shrouded in mist, but one thing's for sure- theirfuture is in our hands . •

Fred Pearce is environmental consultant for

New Scientist

Wi l l beamed power fina l ly unshackle our electron ics from those ug ly power cables, asks David Robson

e w res

LET'S face it: power cables are unsightly dust-traps. pes, TVs and music players are becoming slicker every year, but the nest

of vipers in the corner of every room remains an ugly impediment to true minimalism.

Then there is the inconvenience of charging phones, MP3 players and PDAs. A minor hassle, admittedly, but it is easy to forget to top up the batteries and before you know it you have left the house with a dead gadget. Wouldn't life be simpler if power was invisibly beamed to your devices whenever you walked into a building with an electricity supply? Wireless communication is ubiquitous, after all, so why can't we permanently unshackle our electronics from power cables too?

Poor transmission efficiencies and safety concerns have plagued attempts at wireless power transfer, but a handful of start -ups and some big names, like Sony and Intel - are having another go at making it work. The last few years have seen promising demonstrations of cellphones, laptops and TVs being powered wirelessly. Are we on our way to waving goodbye to wires once and for all?

The idea of wireless power transfer is almost as old as electricity generation itself. At the beginning ofthe 20th century, Nikola Tesla proposed using huge coils to transmit

electricity through the troposphere to power homes. He even started building Wardenclyffe Tower on Long Island, New York, an enormous telecommunications tower that would also test his idea for wireless power transmission. The story goes that his backers pulled the funding when they realised there would be no feasible way to ensure people paid for the electricity they were using, and the wired power grid sprang up instead.

Wireless transmission emerged again in the 1960s, with a demonstration of a miniature helicopter powered using microwaves beamed

from the ground. Some have even suggested that one day we might power spaceships by beaming power to them with lasers (New Scientist, 17 February 1996, p 28). As well as this, much theoretical work has gone into exploring the possibility of beaming power down to Earth from satellites that harvest solar energy (New Scientist, 24 November 2007, p 42).

Long-distance ground-to-ground wireless power transmission would require expensive infrastructure, however, and with concerns over the safety of transmitting it via high-power microwaves, the >

6 Feb ruary 2010 1 NewScientist 1 43

idea has been met with trepidation. While we won't be seeing a wireless

power grid any time soon, the idea of beaming power on a smaller scale is rapidly gaining momentum. That is largely because, with wireless communication, like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and ever-shrinking circuits, power cables are now the only limit to becoming truly portable. "The move was inevitable once wireless communication became popular," says David Graham, a co-founder of Powerbeam in San Jose, California.

With this new impetus, engineers and start-up companies have jumped at the challenge, and while beamed power is still in its infancy, three viable options seem to be emerging. The use of radio waves to transmit electricity is perhaps the most obvious solution, since you can in principle use the same kinds of transmitters and receivers used in Wi-Fi communication. Powercast, based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has recently used this technology to transmit microwatts and milliwatts of power over at least 15 metres to industrial sensors. They believe a similar approach could one day be used to recharge small devices like remote controls, alarm clocks and even cell phones.

A second possibility, for more power-

"With such promis ing demonstrat ions it seems l i ke ly w i re less power wi l l enter our homes in a big way "


hungry devices, is to fire a finely focused infrared laser beam at a photovoltaic cell, which converts the beam back to electrical energy. It's an approach PowerBeam has adopted, but so far its efficiency is only between 15 and 30 per cent. While that could serve more power-hungry appliances, it would in practice be too wasteful.

The technology has been used to power wireless lamps, speakers and electronic photo frames that require less than 10 watts to function. Over time, as both the lasers and photovoltaic cells improve, the company hopes efficiencies of up to SO per cent will be possible. "There's no reason we couldn't power a laptop eventually," says Graham. Unlike some other possible techniques, a sharply focused beam loses minimal energy over large distances, preserving its efficiency: "A hundred metres is no big deal."

Inconven ient beams

Others are sceptical that this technique would be practical for truly portable devices, which are constantly moving around and between rooms. "An infrared beam would not be convenient to charge a mobile phone - it's too directional," says Menno Treffers, chairman of the Wireless Power Consortium in the Netherlands. Powerbeam's solution is to fit a small fluorescent bulb to the receiving device so that a camera on the transmitter can track the light and steer the laser beam accordingly. Another problem is that a separate beam is needed for each device you want to power, which would be tricky to engineer, says Aristeidis Karalis at the Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology, who is developing an alternative wireless power transmission system.

The third possibility for wireless power is magnetic induction - the most attractive option for beefy domestic applications. A fluctuating magnetic field emanating from one coil can induce an electric current in another coil close by, which is how many devices, like electric toothbrushes and even some cellphones, recharge drained batteries. The snag, however, has been that while efficiency is good at close contact, it can drop to zero at even a few millimetres from the transmitter.

Enter Karalis and his colleagues. It has long been known that such mechanical energy transfer is improved enormously if two objects resonate at the same frequency - it's how an opera singer can smash a glass if she hits the right pitch. Karalis wondered whether the same idea could improve the efficiency of magnetic induction at greater distances.

"Sony has tested a wi re less TV a nd Intel is i nvest igat ing the techno logy for a range of devices"

The team's set-up consisted of an inducting coil connected to a capacitor. The energy within this circuit oscillates rapidly between an electric field in the capacitor and a magnetic field in the coil. The frequency of this oscillation is controlled by the capacitor's ability to store charge and the coil's ability to produce a magnetic field. If the frequency in the energy-transmitter's circuit is different from that of the receiver's circuit, they are non-resonant. The result is that the magnetic field coming from the transmitter interferes destructively with the field building up in the receiver, constraining energy transfer. But if the transmitter and receiver are resonant, the team reasoned, the oscillating fields of their two coils would always be in sync, meaning the interference is constructive and the amount of energy transferred is boosted.

They tested their theory in 2007 with great success, transmitting 60 watts across 2 metres, with 40 per cent efficiency (Science, vol 317, p 83). The team has since founded a company called WiTricity to develop the idea. Last year, the firm used two square coils 30 centimetres across, one in the receiver and one in the transmitter, to power a so-watt TV 0.5 metres from the power supply, with an impressive 70 per cent efficiency. "In some cases, the improvement in the effiCiency due to resonance can be more than 100,000 times that of non-resonant induction," says Karalis. Unlike laser-based line-of-sight energy transmission, a magnetic field is not focused and so can pass around or through obstacles between the transmitter and receiver.

The big consumer electronics companies have also been keen to investigate " resonant transfer". Sony, for example, has demonstrated a wireless TV, and Intel is investigating the technology for a range of devices. "Power transfer efficiency scales independently of power, so the same efficiency can be achieved for laptops, consumer electronics such as TVs, and smaller portable devices such as cellphones," says Emily Cooper, a research engineer at Intel's labs in Seattle. In other words, the same proportion of the total energy will be lost for a power-hungry plasma TV as for a tiny PDA.

An e lectri c atmosphere New technologies to beam powerto gadgets could end the days of ugly cables

With such promising demonstrations, it seems likely that wireless power will one day enter our homes in a big way. A technical standard, dubbed Qi, is already being established for the non-resonant magneticinduction technique and compatible charging mats will soon be available. It is early days for the other techniques, but similar standards are likely to emerge.

Damage to the person

The technology is likely to meet some objections along the way, however. For one thing, you would be forgiven for being a little worried about zapping relatively highpower energy beams through the atmos phere. Take laser transmission, for example. "High powers concentrated in a narrow laser beam could cause serious damage to a person," says Karalis. That shouldn't be a danger with PowerBeam's products: if the small camera on the transmitter fails to see the small light bulb ofthe receiver, it shuts down the laser within milliseconds. And as a failsafe, the receiver also sends a message to the transmitter via radio if it notices an unexplained interruption in power reception.

Exposure to radio waves and fluctuating

H IG H POWERED LASER EFFICIENCY: 15 30%

DISTANCE: Less than lOW over distances of 100+ metres USES: Lamps, speakers, e l ectronic ph otoframes, laptops MUST HAVE DIRECT LlNE·OF·SIGHT AND SAFETY CUT-OFF

EFFICIENCY: 70%

RESONANT I N DUCTION EFF ICIENCY: 70%

DISTANCE: SW with close contact to charging pad USES: Phones, PDAs

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

magnetic fields also have their potential dangers. If they transmit heat to our cells, they can damage tissue over a long period of time. "All the technologies pose a potential risk for thermal interaction with the body, in the same way that radiation from cell phones does," says Riidiger Matthes, vice-chairman of the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection in OberschleiBheim, Germany. But, provided the exposure is below the thresholds put forward in guidelines from ICNIRP, which companies like WiTricity are following closely, it should not be a problem.

The fear remains that electromagnetic fields could damage tissue through some other, non-thermal mechanism, a concern raised by many biophysicists about cell phone signals. Without any available cohort studies to test exposure over a long period oftime, though, they have had to rely on lab studies, which failed to find any clear or reproducible biological effects. "The matter is still open to debate," says David de Pomerai at the University of Nottingham in the UK, who studies the effect of microwaves on nematode worms. Ifthe wireless power transmission methods all fall within the ICNIRP's criteria, he says that the exposure should be no more risky than that from cellphones.

Perhaps more pressing, though, are environmental concerns. With global warming an ever increasing issue, most people are looking for ways to improve efficiency and save energy - and therefore reduce power-station emissions of greenhouse gases. To some people, wireless power transmission will seem like a distinctly profligate and retrograde step.

"The fact that these appliances are only 10 to 60 per cent efficient means that go to 40 per cent of the electricity the householder is paying for is wasted," says Paula Owen, who heads the statistics group at the Energy Saving Trust, based in London. "Consider these products next to other typical household a ppliances. Boilers, for example, are now over go per cent efficient. It seems we are going back to the days of incandescent bulbs, which were only 5 per cent efficient at creating light and are now being phased out."

Taking individual gadgets, the energy losses might seem small, but scaling up to a truly wireless home would be a much bigger deal. The question is, would you be prepared to throw away your green credentials for wirefree, minimalist beauty? •

David Robson is a New Scientistfeatures editor


BOOKS & ARTS

Exper iments i n freedom The idea that l i beral democracy owes i ts existence to science is worth exp loring, says A C. Gray l i ng

The Science of Liberty: Democracy,

reason and the laws of nature by

Timothy Ferris, HarperCoilins, $26.99

T I l\IO T H Y HISTORIANS date

FER R I S the beginning of

T H E S C I E NCE modern times to O F LUERTY the period ofthe

late Renaissance, the Reformation and the scientific

revolution. These tectonic shifts in the western mind resulted in the 18th-century Enlightenment and the liberal democracies of the 19th and 20th centuries.

This broad-brush picture is a familiar one, and it is, equally broadly, right; but interesting questions remain about the relationship between the strands involved. In this lucid and captivating study, Timothy Ferris argues that the growth of science and the growth of liberal democracy were not merely contemporaneous, but causally connected. The growth of science, he says, caused the growth of democracy - and science continues to underwrite the political freedoms enjoyed by developed societies today.

His argument is not simply that the technological applications of science have promoted wealthcreation, military prowess and security in those nations that have, as a result, become both dominant and free. This is undeniably part of the story. But the more important point for Ferris is that scientific enquiry demands the freedom to enquire and debate, and that liberal democracy - meaning a pluralistic political system in which individual rights, free speech, privacy and autonomy are


promoted and defended - is itself Inevitably, Ferris also addresses an experimental system requiring the conflict between scientific the same conditions offreedom and non-scientific thought today, and openness as science itself. and the social and political

As he surveys how science urgencies many feel in light of influenced the social and political the revival of dogma, faith and developments ofthe countries non-rational influences. where it flourished, Ferris makes Ferris's clear and educative full and (as he acknowledges account of these matters makes himself) potentially tendentious for an enjoyable read. More use of hindsight. But he keeps importantly, there is a lot to the risks in view, and is able to be said for the thesis he offers. show how matters developed as Science could neither have arisen expected given the influence of nor flourished in circumstances scientific styles of thought on of oppression ofthought. Indeed social and political questions. the churches made strenuous

Benjamin Franklin drawing electricity

from the sky. En l ightenment in action

efforts - persecuting and even executing people - in the early phases of the scientific revolution in an effort to quell it.

The science-freedom link is an intimate one, and the task undertaken by Ferris of specifying its details and describing the causal relations at work is deeply important. That is not merely a rhetorical remark: an understanding of the link could have major utility to societies eager to develop and progress, and wishing to know what conditions would best serve their aims.

I would suggest to Ferris that ratherthan taking the rise of science to be the literal cause of the growth of political liberty, they might be regarded as the joint outcome of an antecedent cause. I argued this in Towards

The Light (Bloomsbury, 2007): aspirations to liberty of religious conscience in the 16th century rapidly evolved into demands for liberty of enquiry in all fields, including science; and once people had asserted the right to think for themselves without conforming to an orthodoxy on pain of death, they were able to ask questions both about nature and sociopolitical arrangements. On this view, science and democracy grew together from a fundamental impulse towards liberty; they are its joint fruits . •

A.C . G rayl i ng is professor of

phi losophy at Bi rkbeck, U niversity

of London, and author of Ideas

That Matter(Weidenfeld & Nicolson,

2009), which wil l be published in the

US by Basic Books in March

For more reviews and to add your comments, visit www.NewScientist.com/books·art

Roguesl d ispensary New Yorl<s poisoners esca ped detection u nt i l two forens ic p ioneers stepped in

The Poisoner's Handbook

by Deborah Blum, Penguin, $25.95 Reviewed by Paul Collins

"NICE woman," toxicologist Alexander Gettler commented to reporters at the trial of Ruth Snyder, New York's infamous "Double

Indemnity" murderer. In 1927 Snyder (pictured) and her lover killed Snyder's husband with alcohol, chloroform, garrote wire and a bash to the skull with an iron sash weight. It was bloody overkill but, as Gettler testified, it was the chloroform that killed him.

In Deborah Blum's The Poisoner's Handbook, we see Gettler and his colleague, chief medical examiner Charles Norris, wield Bunsen burners and flasks against the "nice" denizens of jazz-age Manhattan. Here are the ladies who spiked cocoa with thallium, cooks who dosed

huckleberry pies with arsenic and kindly grannies who poisoned figs. Incompetent medical examiners ensured that these murderers all too often got away with their crimes. But Norris and Gettler belonged to a new generation offorensic scientists who recognised the signs of poison -the cherry-red arterial blood of carbon monoxide, the blue mottled skin of cyanide, and the green " evil dazzle" thallium made under the spectroscope.

Pick your poison: divided by dastardly substance, Blum's Handbook is a fascinating rogues' dispensary that also includes arsenic, radium and mercury. Blum fleshes out the toxicology and method of detection for each with stories from Norris and Gettler's files. !t was through their work, for instance, that millionaire industrialist Eben Myers's skeletal disintegration was traced to his fondness for the radium tonic Radithor. They didn't always catch their killers:

one arsenic poisoner Gettler missed went on to serve her neighbour eggnog laced with Rough On Rats powder.

Blum, a Pulitzer prizewinning reporter and journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison is especially compelling when she traces how Gettler and Norris found their most galling foe in wood alcohol (methanol), a cheap but dangerous high during the years of Prohibition. Norris had split the sternums of too many party goers to support enforced temperance: "Prohibition is a joke," he declared. He was appalled that the government backed the addition of methanol to household products to deter tippling, a move he labelled " Our Experiment in Extermination".

For all the seductive horror of coldly deliberate killing"homicidal poisoning shows us at our amoral worst," maintains Blum - many dangers also lay in plain sight. Gettler and Norris traced deaths to a baby bottle washed with Lysol and a tureen buffed to a shine with arsenic metal polish. And it remains sobering that one com plication the duo faced in carbon monoxide poisonings was that many victims already had it in their blood from smoking. Alas, sometimes the poisoners we seek are ourselves.

Small is beautiful

March of the Microbes: Sighting the

unseen by John L. lngraham, Harvard

Un iversity Press, $28.95/£21.95 Reviewed by Jo Marchant

WE MAY not be able to see them with the naked eye, but we can see- and hear, smell, feel and touch - the effects of micro

organisms all around us. That's the premise oOohn Ingraham, who has written this introduction to bacteria, fungi and other microscopic life forms as a field

guide for " microbe watchers". From the mundane (a smelly

fish, a child with earache) to the exotic (hydrothermal vents), Ingraham presents the microbes behind so much of the world around us. He drives home the point that without these overlooked life forms we wouldn't be here at all.

The bacteriumPsychromonas ingraham ii, current record-holder for growing at the lowest temperature, is testament to the author's academic credentials. March of the Microbes does feel at times like a thinly disguised textbook, but Ingraham's fresh perspective makes it an engaging read nonetheless.

Brave new physics

Lake Views: This world and the

universe by Steven Weinberg, Harvard

U n iversity Press, $25.95/£19.95 Reviewed by Dan Fal k

NOBEL laureate Steven Weinberg has been writing eloquently on modern science ever since The First Three Min utes was published in 1977-

But unless you are a regular reader ofThe New York Review of Books, you may have missed some of his best recentwork. This collection of essays proves once again that Weinberg is more than just a top-tier physicist. He is also one of the few scientists brave enough - and knowledgeable enough - to successfully take on the role of public intellectual.

There is, of course, plenty of physics here. Weinberg examines the pros and cons of string theory, suggests that our universe may be just one of many, and warns that even if we can discover nature's ultimate laws, we will still have no idea why those laws are true. He also weighs in on social and political issues, from terrorism to the politics of the Middle East. It's essential reading.


NewScientist Jobs Incorporating ScienceJobs.com To apply online visit www. NewScientistJobs.com

BIOLOGY

International Bio Threat Reduction Expert Sandia National Laboratories NM New Mexico The department has projects in the following areas: biosecurity and biosafety system analysis and design; biological threat characterization; biological agent risk prioritization; biorisk management systems; biosafety and biosecurity training; and biological information control and management For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job 10: 200700053

Postdoctoral Fellow-in Laboratory of Chromosome Replication Van Andel Research Institute M I - M ich igan A postdoctoral position is available immed iately to study the reg u lation of DNA replication in human celis, Qualified appl icants should have a recent Ph.D. in the biological sciences and experience with DNA replication, chromatin biology, or genetics, For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job 10: 200699393

Postdoctoral research opportunities Mount Sinai School of Medicine NY - New York N IH funded postdoctoral pos itions are available at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City to study thyroid cancer biology and therapeutics, Interested applicants should be highly motivated, have a PhD and/orMD degree, a strong background in cell and molecular biology or mouse genetics, and have track record of publications. For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job 10: 200702063

48 1 NewScientist 16 February 2010

Research Scientist Caledon, Ontario - Plant Biotechnology Pioneer H i -Bred Production LP ON - Onta rio Supervise and evaluate employees' performance as part of effectively managing laboratory - Drive changes to the current process or platform to improve efficiencies and reduce costs Assist in the improvement of laboratory automation projects, LlMS system development and util ization. For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job 10: 200700942

Staff Scientist - Associate Director of Purification, Bethesda, MD National Institute of A l lergy &. I nfectious Diseases (NIAID), National Institute of Health (NIH) MD - Maryland The associate director of purification development directs the activities of two scientists and three chemists/biochemical engineers in the downstream purification group of the Vaccine Production Program Laboratory (VPPL) in the VRC, which includes development of processes to purify recombinant proteins, virus vaccines, and virus-like particles that could be used as clinical vaccine candidates, For more information visit NewScientistjobs,com job 10: 200700777

Staff Scientist - Senior Cell Culture Scientist, Bethesda, MD National Institute of Al lergy &. Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Nat iona l Institute of Health (NIH) MD Maryland The cell culture scientist will lead the activities of up to five cell cu Iture personnel, consisting of research associates and postdoctoral fel lows in the cell culture group. Activities

East Coast Office

225 Wyman Street

Waltham, MA 02451

Email [email protected]

Phone 781 7348770

Fax 7203569217

West Coast Office

201 Mission Street, 26th Floor

San Francisco, CA 94105

Email [email protected]

Phone 415908 3353

Fax 415 543 6789

Calls may be monitored or recorded for staff training purposes

American Association !or (7ancerllesearch

Grants Manager's Position Description The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) seeks a Grants Manager to support the development and coordination of Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C) research projects to ensure effectiveness in al phases of grant funding. The position reports

to the Director of Scientific Review & Grants Administration and serves as project

management and operational expert in establishing and implementing policiesprocedures in alignment with federal regulations, AACR and SU2C guiding principles.

Key Functions - assist with planning, implementation and evaluation of SU2C AACR grants programs and initiatives supporting SU2C principles; evaluating and monitoring business management capability and performance of applicant organizations and grantees, and the internal operating procedures associated with business management

aspects of the grants process; participates in oversight and allocation of budget; allocates resources, determines priorities and new initiatives; maintains & manages grant portfolio; represents AACR and SU2C in contacts with U.S. and international scientifc research community.

Essential Skills and Knowledge - strong project management, grant management,

fnancial knowledge and scientifc knowledge, experience monitoring scientifc

milestones and deliverables, highly collaborative, experience managing relationships across teams; Excellent written & oral communications skills; competency with data management tools, politically savvy, ability to deal with sensitive information, and available for 25% travel.

Education & Training - Masters Degree is required. Ph.D. or advanced degree preferred. 5 years grants management expo

Specialized Knowledge, Competencies and Experiences - knowledge of

science, medicine, drug development, project management and grants administration

management

Apply to: Human Resources, P.o. Box 40138, Philadelphia, PA 19106 e-mail: [email protected], fax: 215-440-1045

include development of virus vaccines, recombinant proteins, and virus like particles (VLPs) that may be used as cl in ical vaccine candidates, For more information visit NewScientistjobs.comjob 10: 200700778

Project ManagerNonproliferation #1214009 U.S, Civi l ian Research &. Deve lopment Foundation VA Virginia CRDF's Nonprol iferation Program is seeking a project manager to support u.s. government efforts to promote the safe, secure and responsible use of biological materials that are at risk of accidental release or intentional misuse, For more information visit NewScientistjobs.comjob 10: 200701867

Cell Biologist Systems Biology - R4/RS Pfizer US MA Massachusetts

We are seeking a highly motivated, team-oriented scientistto join our Systems Biology Group within the BBe. The successful candidate for this position will work with our systems modelerto understand there scientific needs and to design and conduct experiments to answer scientific questions, For more i nformation visit NewScientistJobs.com job 10: 200702413

Faculty positions in Skeletal Muscle Biology and Disease The Un iversity of Iowa lA - Iowa Successful candidates are expected to establish independent laboratories focusing on skeletal muscle biology and disease, We are

TEMPLE UN IVERS ITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE . . . offers opportunities for faculty i n the following c l i nical specia lties: Anesthesiology: genera l, OB, and regional expertise; Cardiology: general , echocardiography, heart fai lure, e lectrophysiology/arrhythmia management, i nterventional/invasive, structural intervention, cardiac imaging; Emergency Medicine: academic and c l inica l ; Family and Community Medicine; I nternal Medicine and its subspecialties, including Cardiology, Endocrinology, Hepatology, Hem<tology, and Rheum<ltology; also a board certified/ el igible Oncologist or Hematologist interested in Bone Marrow Transplant Program; Neurology and its subspecialties of stroke/critic<ll care, epilepsy, and neuromuscu lar disorders; Neurosurgery, inc luding a variety of cerebral , spinal, and peripheral nerve disorders, as we l l as brain and spinal tumors; Obstetrics/Gynecology: general and maternal feta l medicine, gynecologic oncology; Ophthalmology: general , retina, and glaucoma specialties; pediatrics; and plastics, cornea, optometry, and optical sal es/service; Orthopedic Surgery: joint replacement/reconstruction, trauma, spine, hand , genera l , foot, and ankle, and sports medicine; Otolaryngology: genera l , head and neck surgery, neurotol ogy; Pathology: anatomic (surgical , cytology, autopsy, and hematopathology), c l i n ic<ll (microbiology, virology, i mmunology, tr<lnsfusion medicine, c l i n ical chem istry, molecular pathology; H LA tissue typing); Pediatrics: genera l ; Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation: m usculoskeletal medicine <l n d i nterventional physiatry; Psychiatry: adult inp<ltient and outpatient eval uation and treatment, c h i l d a n d adolescent outpatient eval uation a n d treatment, crisis intervention services, and consultation and l i<lison services; Radiology: general and women's imaging; Surgery: v<lscular/endovascular, general, cardiothoracic surgery, breast su rgery, pl<lstic surgery, oncology, trauma and critical care, colon/recta l, hepabi l iary, b<lriatrics, transplant; Section Chief, Vascular Surgery; Urology: urologic oncology, kidney, prostate and bl<ldder cancer, sexu<ll dysfunction of men and women, reconstructive urology, stone d i se<lse, erectile dysfunction, stress ur inary i ncontinence, infertility, neurologic problems of the GU tract, BPH, chronic pelvic pai n , interstiti<ll cystitis, infections; Shriners Hospitals Pediatric Research Center (Center for Neural Repair and Rehabil itation): spinal cord inj ury, neuromuscul<lr inj ury, cerebral palsy, and brain inju ry.

The School of Medicine consists of 7 basic science and 18 cl i nical departments, and a variety of multidisciplinary research programs and institutes. There are approximately 738 medical students, 125 gr<ldu<lte students, 450 full time f<lculty members and 1200 adjunct faculty members. It is affi l iated with Temple U n i versity He<llth System .

To submit curricu lum vit<le o r t o request further inform<ltion <lbout a faculty position, ple<lse cont<lct the Chairperson, Department of (Specialty), Temple University School of Medicine, 3401 North Broad Street, Philadelphia, PA 19140.

Further i nform<ltion about Temple U niversity School of Medicine is ava i lable at http://w.medschool.temple.edu/

School of Medicine TEMPLE UNIVERSI�

Temple U niversity is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer and strongly encourages appl ications from women and m i norities.

particularly interested in individuals who would complement existing strengths in the Center, For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job 10: 200703538

Grants Manager The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) DC D istrict of Co lumbia The position reports to the Director of Scientific Review &: Grants Administration and serves as project management and operational expert in establishing and implementing policies-procedures in alignment with federal regulations, MCR and SU2C guiding principles, For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job 10: 200703499

Signal Transduction Research Department of Surgery Michigan State Un iversity, Department of Surgery MI - M ich igan

Applicants are sought with demonstrated expertise in cellular signal transduction, with preference toward those with a background in mechanotransduction and physical force effects or intestinal epithel ial biology. For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job 10: 200703522

Faculty Position in Immunology and Imaging U nivers ity of New Mexico (UNM) Department of Pathology NM - New Mexico The recruit wi l l develop a dynamic externally funded research program that combines studies in immunology, including immune cell development, immune cell responses to allergens and pathogens, immune surveillance against cancer, or leukemia, with the development and/or appl ication of innovative imaging techniques. For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job 10: 200705210

www.NewScientistJobs.com

TEMPLE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE offers opportunities for faculty in the following basic science disciplines:

Bone/carti lage biology Cancer biology

Cardiovascular biology Developmental biology

Drug abuse and add iction Drug combination studies

Gene therapy Growth regulation

I m m unobiology Molecular biology

Molecular m icrobiology and pathogenesis

Molecular pharmacology Musculoskeletal biology

Neural plasticity and repair Neuroendocrinology Neuroi m m u nology

Neurovirology Neuro-oncology

Neurodegeneration Neuropharmacology

Platelet biology Signal transduction

Stem cell biology Structural biology

Thrombosis and hemostasis Vascu lar biology

Viral oncology

Positions may be ava i lab le in any of several basic sc ience departments a nd/or research programs a n d i nstitutes.

The School of Medicine consists of 7 bas ic science and 1 8 c l i n ical departments, a n d a variety o f mult id iscip l i nary research programs and institutes. There are approx imately 738 med ical students , 125 graduate students, 450 fu l l t i me faculty mem bers a n d , 1 200 adj u n ct faculty members. It is aff i l iated with Tem p l e U n ivers ity Health System, a major healthcare prov ider i n t h e Delaware Va I ley.

To subm it curricu l um vitae o r to request further i nformation about a facu lty position, p lease contact the Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs, Temple U niversity School of Medicine, 3500 North Broad Street, Room l l l 1K, Ph i lade l ph ia , PA 1 9 1 40.

Further informat ion about Temp le U n ivers ity School of Medicine is ava i lab le at hHp:/Iwww.medschool .temple.edu/

School of Medicine TEMPLE UNIVERSITY®

Temple U n iversity is an aff irmat ive action/equal opportunity employer and strongly encourages app l i cations from women and m inorities.

Computational Biologist (Ph.D) Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research (US) MA - Massachusetts As a member of the Quantitative Biology research team in the Department of Developmental and Molecular Pathways, you will be working in a dynamic, agile 'dry-lab' research environment committed to the discovery of novel drug targets, For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job 10: 200704283

PhD Microbiologist Infectious Diseases Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research (US) MA Massachusetts We are seeking a dynamic microbiologistto work in the Infectious Disease department that will characterize novel antibacterial agents. The individual will be responsible for testing the activity of antimicrobial compounds against bacterial

pathogens. For more information visit NewScientistjobs,comjob 10 : 200704347

Postdoctoral Fellow Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research (US) MA Massachusetts This new microfluidic -based technology will be applied to highthroughput screening for nucleic acids, proteins and whole cells, all of which playa vital role in drug discovery. This will be a col laborative effort between Novartis and Prof. Doyle's Lab at MIT For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job 10 : 200704373

Protein Production Scientist Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research (US) MA - Massachusetts The Novartis Institutes of Biomedical Research (NIBR) is recruiting an individual to head a lab in mid-scale protein expression to



support our Biologics research. We are seeking a highly motivated and experienced scientist with a strong background in protein expression in mammalian cells, using both transient and stable systems. For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job 10: 200704398

Process Engineer Pfizer US MA Massachusetts The candidate will work closely with development scientists/engineers, technical operations personnel, and manufacturing to ensure proper transition of processes from benchtop to manufacturing scale. For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job 10: 200705863

Postdoctoral Research Fellow Genentech CA Ca lifornia A Postdoctoral Research Fellow

50 I NewScientist 1 6 February 2010

position is available in Protein Analytical Chemistry department to study conformational and biophysical properties of proteins by using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) techniques. For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job 10: 200706166

Scientist - Neuroscience Genentech CA - Ca l iforn ia We are seeking a highly motivated neuroscientistto join our efforts in developing therapeutics for neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric ind ications. This individual will lead a small team that will use molecular, genetic, imaging and/or biochemical techniques to investigate the molecular mechanisms of nervous system disorders and to participate in drug discovery projects. For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job 10: 200706228

CHEMISTRY

Analytical Chemist Gevo Inc. CO Colorado Bachelor or Masters degree in Analytical Chemistry. Additional expertise in General Chemistry or Biochemistry would be considered a plus. 3 - 5 years of professional work experience with the following items: Reagent & sample prep. Data processing/excel 0 Chromatography (LCor Gq. Method Development(LC or Gq 0 Instrument repair (LC orGC) For more information visit NewScientistjobs.comjob 10: 200700943

Staff Scientist - Director of Analytical Development National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases (N IAI D), National Institute of Health (NIH) MD - Maryland The incumbent will direct the analytical development group of the Vaccine Production Program

Laboratory (VPPL) in the VRC, which includes the development of assays for release and characterization of recombinant proteins, plasmid DNA, virus vectors, and virus like particles that could be used as clinical vaccine candidates. For more i nformation visit NewScientistjobs.com job 10: 200700760

810 CHEMISTRY Sabbatical Replacement Faculty Position Reed College OR Oregon The Chemistry Department invites applications for a two year visiting position within the fields of Biochemistry and/or Analytical Chemistryforthe 2010 2012 academicyears. The successful candidate will be capable of offering courses selected from the following possibilities: structural and metabolic biochemistry, biochemistry laboratory, analytical chemistry, and general chemistry.

AS I A N U N I V E RS I TY FOR WOM E N

Asian Un iversity for Women seeks Vice Chancellor & CEO

The Asian University for Women, a start-up initiative in Chittagong,

Bangladesh with the mission of preparing women of high abil ity and

potential to meet society's cha l lenges and effect positive change locally and

throughout the world, is renewing its search for a Vice Chancel lor. It seeks

an outstanding leader with proven entrepreneurial and organizational skills

in academia, business, government, or non-governmental organizations to

lead the University as its Vice Chancellor and CEO. The incumbent wil l lead

a growing and sophisticated international team to create vibrant and healthy

academic and residential programs for students, oversee a significant facilities

development program, design and implement systems and processes for stable

governance and operations of the Un iversity, and lead an on-going global

fundraising effort. The position calls for a passionate and socia l ly empathic

leader who has exemplary organizational and communication skills and a

deep understanding of the needs of an academic community and intellectual

commitment to free inquiry. Experience in building a start-up in itiative into

maturity would be greatly va lued. A familiarity with developing Asia and an

u nderstanding of the unique chal lenges of establishing a tertiary academic

institution in such a setting will bolster the incumbent's effectiveness.

The Vice Chancellor wi l l have a salary of US $150,000 to $180,000 which

may be tax-exem pted in Bangladesh. In addition, free housing and a

comprehensive package of benefits are offered.

Please direct nominations/applications for this position to Mr. David Pattillo,

VC Search Coord inator at [email protected]. Additional

information on the Un iversity is ava i lable at www.asian-university.org. or

by email request. www.asian-university.org

For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job 10: 200703528

Formulation Chemist (2 Positions) Carestream Hea lth MN - Minnesota We are seeking to hire two (2) Formulation Chemists to jo in our R&D faci l ity located in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, Relocation assistance is available to qual ified candidates, The successful applicant will play a key role in research and development of new product formulations for imag ing and novel film applications, For more information visit NewScientistjobs.comjob 10: 200702293

Nanomaterial Scientist Carestream Health MN Minnesota The successful applicant will play a key role in providing chemical and nanomaterial science expertise and participate in a newly established R&D project involving development

of metal and othersemiconductor nanoparticles and their appl ication in imag ing and other novel film appl ications, For more i nformation visit NewScientistjobs.com job 10: 200702294

Polymer Scientist Carestream Health MN - Min nesota The successful applicant wil l play a key ro le in providing polymer science, material science and engineering expertise and participate in a newly estab lished R&D project involving development of advanced material for imag ing and other novel film app l ications,

For more i nformation visit NewScientistj obs.com job 10: 200702292

ORGANIC CHEMISTRY Sabbatical Replacement Faculty Position Reed College OR Oregon The Chemistry Department invites app l ications for a two-


Internships with the

The Microsoft® Medical Media Laboratory (M3L) Washington, District of Columbia

Microsoft's Health Solutions Group, in conjunction with

Microsoft® Research, is p leased to offer three to six month

internships for individuals holding o r pursuing graduate level

degrees.

The M3L explores the use of information technology in

healthca re, and in particular, the o pportunities afforded by

surface computing, mu lti-media d isp lays, m obi le computing,

un ified communications, human-computer interaction and

decision support.

Interns will have the opportunity to design and build novel

solutions in one of these areas and examine the impact of this

technology in a real-world healthcare environment.

Stipend and expenses paid.

Contact: Hank Rappaport, MD I Email: [email protected]

More information, including an on-line application, can be found at http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/jobs/intern/medicalmedia.aspx

year visiting position within the field of Organic Chemistry at the Assistant Professor level forthe 2010 2012 academic year, The successful candidate wi l l be capable of offering courses in introductory and advanced organic chemistry targeted at chemistry and allied majors, For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job 10: 200703529

Scientific Associate II -Analytical Chemistry Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research (US) MA - Massachusetts Determine effects of pharmaceutical drugs designed to treat heart disease and cancer on tissues and vital processes of l iving organisms. Develop and test new drugs and medications intended for commercial distribution, For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job 10: 200704776

ASSOC Director, Quality

Genentech CA Ca l iforn ia There is an Associate Director position avai lable in Protein Analytical Chemistry. a part of Genentech's Qua l ity B ioana lytica l Development organ ization, to an accomplished individual with experience in method validation for commercial fil ings, For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job 1 0: 200706164

Research Scientist Pfizer US MA Massachusetts The Advanced Drug Delivery group is seeking a qual ified technical scientist to provide technica I expertise in development and evaluation of novel biomolecular conjugates, and their application to new candidate drug products, For more information visit NewScientistJobs.com job 10 : 200705851

Sr Scientist (Chemistry) Genentech



CA - California The successful candidate will accomplish our mission through innovation and teamwork, collaboration with strategic partners, creative problem solving and use of state-of-the-art technology. For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job 10:

200706177

CLIN ICAL Zebrafish Research Associate (BS/MS) Nova rtis Institutes for BioMed ical Research (US) MA - Massachusetts The candidate will participate in the discovery and genetic validation of candidate targets affecting pathways involved in tissue regeneration . The preferred candidate will have strong skills in molecular and developmental biology, includ ing in vivo and genetic manipulations. For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job 10:

200704437

Assistant Medical Director (MD) Genentech CA - Ca lifornia Stays abreast of internal and external developments (scientific, clinical, commercial, competitive, legal, regulatory and l ike) as such developments may impl icate or otherwise impact the product pipel ine and portfolio within the assigned therapeutic area(s). For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job 10:

200706281

Associate Scientist/Scientist - In Vivo Pharmacology AstraZeneca US MA - Massachusetts Seeking a highly motivated, experienced individual for the Bioscience/ Pharmacology Group, within Oncology. Position requ i res conducting pharmacological techniques fordrug discovery research. For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job 10:

200705780


Clinical Scientist Specialist Genentech CA - Ca l iforn ia The Clinical Scientist Specialist is accountable, with support and supervision from their manager or Medical Director, for day-to-day Clinical Science deliverables of clin ical trials and programs, includ ing all Phases (I IV) of clin ical trials throughout their implementation and l imited filing activities. For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job 10:

200706244

Senior Director Clinical Research· Neuroscience Therapy Area AstraZeneca US DE - Delaware The role of Senior Director Clin ical Research provides medical input into the development and/or commercialization of AZ compounds by using detailed disease area knowledge to integrate knowledge into design of drug registration programs and di l igence reviews of l icensing cand idates. For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job 10:

200705761

Senior Research AssociateOncology Biomarkers Genentech CA - Ca l ifornia We are seeking a highly motivated, interactive and flexible Senior Research Associate to perform translational research related to the identification and development of molecular biomarkers of lung cancerthatcan be util ized to pred ict therapeutic outcome and/or support early clinical development. For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job 10:

200706246

Sr Statistical Scientist Genentech CA - Ca l iforn ia Provides statistics leadership for Med ical Affairs projects and is directly responsible for the statistical integrity, adequacy, and accuracy ofthe clinical studies in the project. As part of a clinical development or assessmentteam,

collaborates in the preparation and review of cl in ical assessments. For more information visit NewScientistjobs.comjob 10:

200706286

ENGINEERING Head of Engineering N ovartis Institutes for BioMedical Research (US) MA - Massachusetts Manage al l activities for systems engineering and analysis in the research, engineering, design, manufacturing and testing of new molecular diagnostic tests in the Molecular Diagnostics Unit of Novartis Pharma. For more information visit NewScientistjobs.comjob 10:

200704289

MATHS & IT Statistical Associate Alberta Cancer Board AB Alberta Our team of Research Scientists is engaged in cutting edge population-based cancer research including etiology, molecular epidemiology, cancer screening,

health services and biostatistics. For more information visit NewScientistjobs.comjob 10:

200691129

Pharmaceutical Sales Specialist - CNS AstraZeneca US Knowledge of medical equ ipment territory management di rect and in-d irect sales processes. Possess excellent written and verbal communications skills, and presentation skills. Problem solving skills For more information visit NewScientistjobs.comjob 10:

200704744

SALES Associate Director of Research Management, Program Office N ovartis Institutes for BioMed ical Research (US) MA - Massach usetts The Associate Di rector of Research Management, Program Office will

be responsible for development and implementation of project team and project management training within NIBR targeted project management of discovery projects, and will assist in bui lding a project management competency framework to be used by the organization. For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job 10:

200704276

Contracting Director · Managed Markets AstraZeneca US DE - Delaware This individual is the access point for Account Directors on contract related issues. Responsibil ities also include supporting the Account Di rector throughout the contract negotiation process via financial models and negotiating expertise and provide feedback to the Brand Managed Markets Team. For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job 10:

200705741

Exec Pharmaceutical Sales Specialist · MCl AstraZeneca US CA - Ca l iforn ia Function independently with a high degree of sales proficiency. Develop superior product and disease state knowledge and effectively educate and engage healthcare professionals in dialogue about clinical evidence, approved indications, and product efficacy/ safety profiles to support on-label prescribing for appropriate patients. For more i nformation visit NewScientistjobs.com job 10:

200705765

Regional Sales Specialist AstraZeneca US NY N ew York As a Regional Sales Specialist, you will be hired into any ofthefollowing u.s. regions: Central US, Great Lakes, Mid Atlantic, Northeast, Southeast and West. lnitiaI 6 7 week tra in ing has a three phased focus (disease state, product and professional sel l ing training) For more information visit NewScientistjobs.com job 10:

200705747


I n novat i on at work . Novart i s I n stitutes for B i o M e d i ca l Resea rc h ( N I BR) , the g lobal researc h orga n izat ion of N ovart i s , we a re comm itted to d i scovering i n n ovative m ed ic i nes to c u re d i sease a nd i m prove h u man hea lth . Th i s is today's front ier of sc i ence. O u r c u l tu re of sci ence is open, entrepre n e u ria l , a n d co ,l l egi a l , unwi l l i ng to a ccept barr iers or co nvent ional w isdo m. By h i ri ng the best a ca d e m i c , biotech , and p ha rmaceuti ca l tra ined sC i e n ti sts, we have fostered an atmos phere for drug d i scovery wh e re i n novat ion i s rewarded . We have created a dyna m i c a n d f l ex i b l e cu lture that va l u es a n d leverages each associate 's d i verse backgro u n d , u n iq u e style a n d wea lth of exper ience.

N I B R has s i tes i n C a m br idge, Massac h u setts (headquarters); Emeryv i l i e , CA ; East H a n ove r. N J ; Base l , Sw i tze r l a n d ; Hors h a m , U K; S h a ngha i , C h i n a . D isease a re a resea rc h i n c l u d e s a u to i m m u n ity/tra ns p l an tat i o n / inf l a m m atory d i s e a se o nc o l ogy, c a rdlova.scu lar and metabo l i c diseases, gastro i n t esti n a l d i s e a ses, i n fec t i ous d i seases, m u s culoske l eta l d iseases, op hth a l mol ogy, neu rosc ie nce, a nd res p i ratory d i seases. P l a tfo r m tec h n o l ogi e s I nc l u d e A n a 'lyti c a l a nd I ma g i n g Sc i en ces , B i o l o g i cs, G l oba l D iscovery C h e m i s t ry, Devel o p m e n ta l & M o l ec u l a r Pathways, Proteo m i c C h em istry, a nd E p i ge n et ics .

Tra n s l at iona l S c i e n ces i n c l ude P rec l i n i ca l Safety. B i o marker Deve l o p ment , D rug M etabo l i s m & Pharm acok i neti cs , Tra n s l at i ona l Med i c i ne, and S t rat e g i c P l a n n i n g & O pe rations. Fo r i m m ed i ate c o n s idera t ion p lease v i s i t t h e Caree r sect ion at www. nova rt i s.com/ n ibr .

N OVA RT I S FOR

BIOMEDICAL Novarlis is com m itted to embracing and leveraging d i verse

backgrounds, cultures, and talents to ach i eve competitive advantage. Novartis is an equal opportunity emp loyer M/F ID/V.



Can you make a d -fference?

Good health i s vita.1 to a l l of us, and finding sustai nable solutions to the most pressing health core challenges of our world cannot wait. That's why we at Pfizer ore committed to applying science and Our global reSOurces ta improve health and well-being at every stage of l ife. We st:r ive to provide access to safe. effective and affordable medic ines and related health care servjces to the people who need them.

We have Q leading portfol io of pmducts and medicines that support wel l ness and prevention, as well as treatment and cures for dIseases across a broad range of therapeutic areas; and we have an industry-leading pf pel ine of promising new products that have the potential to challenge some of the most feared diseases of our t i me, l ike Alzheimer' s disease and cancer.

Every day. Pfizer colleagues work across developed and emerging markets to advance wel l n ess, prevention. treatments and cures

that. challenge the most feared d iseases of o u r time. When you begin a career at Pfizer, you Joln a team of dedicated col leagues working around the world to discover, develop,. and deliver Innovative medicines to help treat and prevent disease. Whether )1011 choose an opportunity in research and development, manufacturing, marketing. soles, finonce or technology, you will contribute to our common gool - better health for more people.

At Pfizer, we offer a range of chal lenging and rewarding career opportunities in an open, d iverse. Qnd supportive work environment. If you 're commltte.d to making a sign ificant d lfferenc.e worldWide, we Invite. you to learn more at www.pfizer.comicoreers

We are proud to be on eqwol opportunity employer orld welcome opplicotion5 from people witn different experience5, bockgrou rlds ond ethrlic origin�_


FEEDBACK

OUR colleague Jim Giles subscribes to Google Voice, the Google service which, among other things, transcribes incoming telephone messages and sends them to you as an email. Jim forwards on to Feedback a transcript of a call from the owners of the apartment he rents in London. The message was to enquire about some work being carried out there. It is, he suggests, evidence that computerised dictation has not reached maximum verisimilitude quite yet.

"Good Morning to you on Michael for French forces area so will you go out. Workman in your flight 046 44 life. Pace, Elco we must install a new phone working. I'm coming to tell the cats. I could please celebrate the contract. It's not working. M A D late. Thank you. If you can leave me. Another [phone number]. Thank you."

As you can imagine, Jim was particularly pleased that the cats were being kept in the loop.

IN A report on packaging overkill, we

noted recently that Derek Woodroffe

received a tiny integrated circu it in a

large padded envelope that gave a

ratio of product volume to packag ing

volume of 1:11,947. "Can anyone

beat that?" we asked (16 january) .

john Purser thi nks he can, and

by a factor of four. Mail-order firm

screwfix Direct sent him two

screwdriver bits that they had

omitted from a previous order. They

were about 6 mi l l imetres in diameter

by 15 mi l l imetres long. A n ifty

calculation involving pi gave john an

estimated volume for the two of

them of 0.B5 cubic centimetres. They

arrived in a cardboard box about 50 x

50x 15 centimetres, givi ng a volume

of 37,500 cubic centimetres and a

ratio of goods volume to packaging

volume of about 1:44,000.

So john beats Derek. But wait.

Enter Maurice Chi lds. Dell sent him

a single stick-on barcode label

measuring about 10 x 25 x 0.05

mi l l imetres, or 12.5 cubic m i ll imetres.

It was del ivered in a box measuring

about 350 x 350 x 25 mi l l imetres, or

The sack of organ ic potatoes that Richard Jenn i ngs bought bears a stark message "Warn ing : potatoes - hand le with care", Do they, he wonders, know something we don't?


For more feedback, visit www.NewScientist.com/feedback

3,062,500 cubic m i ll imetres. That's a

ratio of 1 :245,000. Maurice's figures

are from memory, but if they're

close - and we believe Maurice when

he says they are - then he clearly

beats both john and Derek.

So that settles it. Or does it? Enter

Geoff Robinson. The nicely wra pped

box he received at Christmas was

"not particularly large but

unfortunately, and presumably

accidentally, it was empty". That,

Geoff reckons, yields a goods-to·

packaging ratio of infi n ity.

"Difficult to beat," he points out,

"unless a larger empty box means

a larger infinity."

Yes. Wel l . Perhaps it's t ime to

stop this thread.

HOW nice to be an adperson, dreaming up wonderful worlds where the boring constraints of scientific precision can be gleefully ignored.

Despite repeated raps over the knuckles, telecoms companies still advertise broadband speeds of "up to" however many megabits-per-second the person writing the advert cares to pluck from the sky. So the world has had

IV to learn that "up to 8 Mbl s" means nothing more than "anything above a couple of kilo bits per second and guaranteed never to exceed 8 Mbl s".

Meanwhile, Korean company Samsung was recently taken to task by the UK's Advertising Standards Authority for describing TV sets as LED (light emitting diode) TVs, when in fact they are LCD (liqUid crystal display) TVs that are backlit by

LEOs instead of the normal fluorescent lamps. But we are still seeing publicity for LED TVs and LED monitors. Says Samsung: "Samsung will continue to use the term LED as we believe it will continue to be a commonly used industry term."

So the world will now have to learn that LED TVs do not have screens made from LEOs.

As for the new generation of LED torches, these do indeed use white-light-emitting diodes instead offilament bulbs. But Duracell's advertising people seem to have been taking lessons from the broadband folk. The latest LED torch from Duracell boasts "True Beam Optics" and "captures up to 100 per cent of light". So could that mean anything above a mere couple of per cent efficiency? Perhaps Duracell could tell us.

FINALLY, one of the Christmas

presents Patrick Fox-Roberts

received was a Mensa calendar with

a da i ly brain-teaser. Mensa, as

readers wil l know, is an organisation

for very brainy people - but is the

Mensa brain-teaser compi led by

people who are also very brainy?

Each morning since receiving the

calendar Patrick has dutifully solved

the day's puzzle as his "daily workout

forthe brain" - until the Friday

morning last month when he found

hi mself utterly stumped by the

question "Rearrange the letters

'RUSTLED LIKE TARZAN' to give three

am phibians".

Flicking forward to the sunday

page, which gave the answer, he saw

what the problem was. The answer

given forthe Friday question was

''Turtle, lizard a nd snake" - but most

people, brainy or otherwise, know

that these are reptiles, not

am phibians.

You can send stories to Feedback by

email at [email protected].

Please include your home address,

Th is week's a nd past Feed backs can

be seen on ourwebsite,

THE LAST WORD

Big and scar y

While in (osta Rica we were visited

by this beast (see photo). It was

about the size of a cigarette packet

could fly (but not very well), and

dogs seemed nervous of it. We

haven't managed to identify it

and neither could locals or tour

guides. We're not even sure what

sort of insect it is. (an any of your

readers help?

• The insect in the picture is a male dobsonfly, which is in the order Megaloptera and the genus Corydalus. However, a species identification is not possible without the full insect being visible.

Dobsonfly larvae inhabit fresh running watercourses before crawling out and hatching into the adult shown. The genus Corydalus attracts attention throughout both north and south America as a result of its size - its wingspan can reach 16 centimetres. The males possess

Questions and answers should be concise,

We reserve the right to edit items for clarity

and style, Include a daytime telephone

number and email address if you have

one. Restrict questions to scientific

enquiries about everyday phenomena,

The writers of published answers wi II

receive a chequeforf25 (or US$

equ ivalent). Reed Business Information Ltd

reserves al l rights to reuse question and

answer material submitted by readers in

any medium orformat.

very large mandibles, as shown in the photograph, which can be up to 3 centimetres long. They are too long to be a threat to humans, though, as the leverage is too poor to puncture the skin.

Dobsonflies are nocturnal but, like other insects, are attracted to lights, which is probably what attracted this specimen to you. The dogs were most likely bothered by the sight of a large insect fluttering around them.

If you had asked a fisherman to hel p identify the insect you may have had more luck. They tend to have an in-depth knowledge of local insects as they make similarlooking fly hooks to help catch fish. Peter Scott School of Life Sciences University of Sussex Brighton, East Sussex, UK

• The insect is a dobsonfly and part of the Megaloptera order, which also includes the alderflies and fish flies. The individual shown is almost

New Scientist reta ins total editorial control

over the content of The Last Word, Send

questions and answers to The Last Word,

New Scientist Lacon House, 84 Theobald's

Road, London WClX 8NS, UK, by email to

[email protected] orvisit

www.last word.com (please include a

postal address in order to receive payment

for answers),

For a list of all unanswered questions

send an SAEto LWQlistatthe above

address,

Last words past a nd present plus q uestions, at www.last word .com

certainly a species of Co rydal us and its large jaws indicate that it is a male.

Males use their jaws in mating displays and in threat postures directed at rival males, as well as to grasp females during mating. They have little leverage, though, so are not as fearsome as they may seem to the human observer. In contrast, the female's short, pincer-like jaws can inflict a painful nip.

Dobsonflies spend most of their lives as aquatic larvae, hiding under stones and pouncing out at prey. Some fishermen, who use North American species as bait, call the larvae hellgrammites. The larger species can take several years to mature. When mature, the insect can eject a foulsmelling, and no doubt foultasting, secretion from the anus as a deterrent to predators. The adults are short -lived and do not feed.

"While male dobsonflies have mandibles that are 3 centimetres long, they pose no threat to humans"

The larger species of dobsonfly can have a body length of 12.5 centimetres, with males having jaws up to 2.5 centimetres long. There are 30 species of Corydalus, found mainly in Central and South America. Three occur in North America, the most common being Corydalus cornuta. Chris O'Toole Hope Entomological Collections, Oxford University Museum of Natural History, UK

Do Polar Bears Ciet Lonely? Our latest collection -serious enquiry, br i l l iant insight and the hi lariously unexpected

Available from booksellers and at www.newscientist.com/ polarbears

This w e ek's qu esti ons

MEAN GREENS

Of all the vegetables I buy, whole iceberg lettuces have the greatest longeVity. They are edible up to three weeks after their " best before" date. Other vegetables succumb sooner. Why does it last so long compared with, say, tomatoes, broccoli or radishes? Finn de Boer Rotterdam, the Netherlands

TIMELY QUESTION

I look after a pendulum clock at the University of Cambridge which I hope will achieve an accuracy of less than 1 second of error per year (ww.trin.cam.ac. uk/clock). It has a temperaturecompensated pendulum, but is sensitive to air pressure variation. If the mean global temperature was to rise by, say, 4 °C, would there be any change to mean air pressure at sea level? Put simply, would global warming cause the clock to speed up or slow down? Hugh Hunt Keeper of the Clock, Trinity College, University of Cambridge, UK

HOT TOPIC

One suggestion to combat climate change is that we should become vegetarians as livestock is more environmentally damaging than growing crops. However, if we stopped eating meat, livestock would still live, so is the suggestion correct? Or are we expected to cull any remaining pigs and cows? Ella Gribben London, UK

new-scientist-magazine-6-12-february-2010

Documents

usa tel

ns tel

canada tel

media enquiries tel

display advertising

newscientist com

taller b

new milford