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CONTENTS

Volume 205 No 2742

NEWS 5 6

Time to open up DNA databases UPFRONT Celebrity science gaffes, Recruiting "vyomanauts" for India's space flight programme

8

THISWEEK

COVER STORY

EDITORIAL

Before the stars Did black holes once rule the cosmos, paving the way for light and life?

Secrecy of DNA databases may be harming justice, Crystal mountains found on moon, Exotic stars may mimic big bang, No signs of virus in people with chronic fatigue, Hormones drive boys'toy preferences, Monogamy may suit men after all. Battle with ocean's red devils 11 INSIGHT Is the fish on your plate sustainable? 16 IN BRIEF Egg wh ite protection for fetuses, Pass the buck in public at your peri l

Cover image

19 TECHNOLOGY

Ablestock,com/jupiter

Automating border patrols, Artificial leaf to provide green fuel. Get gaming with your body

34

OPINION 24 Sprinting tiger As China gets set to dominate

scientific research, the west had better get its house in order, says Jonathan Adams 25 One minute with... Frank Drake, the man who made the search for aliens respecta ble science 26 LETTERS Same-sex strategies, Alcohol test 28 Consciousness, not explained We won't crack the mystery any time soon, for one very good reason, argues Ray Tal l is

Let's get physical The low-down on fitness, by the scientists who study it

FEATURES 30 Before the stars (see right) 34 Let's get physical (see right) 40 Lose the booze A pill for problem drinking is on

the horizon, but not everyone is happy about it 44 Beetle vision Night-sight secrets of the

Vl l:J Z

hu mble dung d iners

REGULARS

Coming next week Funny feelings

26 ENIGMA 48 BOOKS & ARTS The Road Joe Penhall on turning Cormac McCa rthy's post-apocalyptic novel into a movie script, plus a review of the final product 49 Personalised revolution Cheerlead ing for genetical ly ta ilored medicine - even by a wo rld- lead ing geneticist - may be mistimed 56 FEEDBACK Now sanitise you r hands 57 THE LAST WORD Speed freaks

Emotions you never

knew you had Squid invasion!

The sinister rise of the IIred devilsll

PLUS Why knowledge really is a dangerous thing

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EDITORIAL

Time for full and frank disclosure Data hoarding must end, particularly when lives depend on the reliability of the science DNA profiling technology has improved by leaps and bounds since its potential was first glimpsed by geneticist Alec Jeffreys in 1984. But as DNA databases grow, so does the risk that coincidental matches will lead to false convictions. This week we report on the publication of a letter in Science, signed by 41 scientists and defence lawyers, demanding access to CaDIS, the US national DNA database, which is controlled by the FBI. The signatories want to test some of the underlying assumptions about the likelihood that two or more people share the same DNA profile (see page 8). Few of their arguments are new. Similar concerns were raised during the "DNA wars" of the mid-gos, by some of the same individuals who have signed the new letter. This latest request for access to the database, like previous requests, has been refused on the grounds of privacy, though the FBI did agree this week to explore ways to address some of the concerns raised in the letter. The ongoing reluctance to allow independent scrutiny of CaDIS has consistently stymied efforts to confirm the rigour of the statistics which are used to present DNA evidence in court. As a result,

the sceptics haven't gone away. And recent studies of DNA databases from several US states and Australia have prompted these concerns to surface yet again. In some ways, the Science letter raises many of the same issues as "climate-gate". If the UK's Climatic Research Unit had released its data for independent scrutiny from the outset, it would have immediately quashed suspicions of any "climate conspiracy". Unfortunately, the reluctance to share data has also hindered other fields of intense public interest. It has reduced our ability to prepare for "Like climate change and flu pa ndemic resea rch, the relia b i l ity of forensic DNA stu d ies ca n mean l ife or death"

outbreaks of diseases like bird flu, for example. Until the authorities involved in DNA profiling are transparent about how often database matches occur, scepticism will remain. And, like research into climate change and flu pandemics, the reliability of forensic DNA studies can be a life-or-death issue. In the US, at least, people have been executed largely on the basis of DNA evidence. Transparency and independent replication of results are central tenets of science, and there is no justifiable reason why forensics should be exempt from this. It must not be allowed to disregard the standards voluntarily held up by other areas of science. If the FBI has got its statistics wrong, the consequences are so profound that we need to know about it. If they are right, further research will only strengthen DNA evidence. Either way, justice wins .•

Ditch the dodgy eco-Iabels A GROWING number of supermarkets and restaurants proudly declare that the fish they sell is "sustainable" or "responsibly sourced". This is a welcome sign that consumers are exercising their marketplace muscle to stop threatened species ending up on their plates. The trouble is that no consensus exists over what these labels mean - making it hard for consumers to distinguish genuine conservation efforts from dubious practices that hide behind ambiguous phraseology (see page 11). The issue of declining fish stocks is too important to allow these initiatives to be undermined by specious or exaggerated claims, so-called "bluewashing". Only sound science will allow marine stewardship groups and governments to thrash out what constitutes a sustainable fishery.•

Get the big picture WHY is golf like red wine? Because sometimes it is good for you and sometimes it is not depending on which news stories you read. The same goes for coffee, vitamin E and more. This impression that health research is a mass of contradictory findings arises from reports of small, one-off studies. These cannot provide definitive answers: it's the totality of evidence that matters. Look at that, and it's clear that we do know the answer to the golf question, and lots of others too. So is golf good for you? You can find out on page 34.•

What's hot on NewScientist.com SPACE PHYSICS Instant Expert:

OLD AGE Monkeys listen to their

Black holes They are among the

elders Teenagers: learn from yo ur

wei rdest and most myste rious objects in the universe. Find out all a bout these cosmic vacuum cleaners with our comprehensive guide to black holes

primate cousins. Campbell's monkeys pay most attention to the ca lls of older members of the i r s pecies TECHNOLOGY Typing style

� •

2009 REVIEW Favourite

2009 REVIEW Most popular

picture ga IIenes · S ee

articles From female ejacu lation

.

carnivorous robots eager to eat insects, sna pshots from inside exp loding stars and bizarre devices from med icine's dark past in a collection of last years picture galleries

reveals stress levels A person can HEALTH Dilute disinfectant

boosts bacterial resistance

Some microbes and vi ruses become resistant to disinfectant if exposed to dilute solutions, which may be accelerating their spread in hospitals

be identified just from their typing style. A stressful environment affects keyboard rhythms too. It could provide a way to tel l if a person was forced to access, say, a bank account under duress

2009 REVIEW Top videos

D The best of our video coverage, including a tiny hovering robot, bionic pengu ins, software that can make home movies look professional, and plasma ejections from the sun

to the discovery of vampires in mass graves, read the year's most clicked-on stories. Also see the most popular space and physics sto ries - including how to get to Mars in 39 days and the best way to slice a pizza If you wou ld like to comment on line about any of the articles in this issue, you can do so by visiting the article at newscientist.com

9 January 2010 I N ewScientist 1 5

UPFRONT

Gene rice on way in China CHINA could become the first country

damage trade by contaminating

to allow the commercial cultivation of

exports, pointing out that exports

genetically modified rice, which could

account for less than 1 per cent of the

go on sale as early as next year.

country's total rice production.

Field trials of two G M varieties, called Huahui 1 and Bt Shanyou 63, are under way after they received official

poised for commercialisation,

safety clearance in November. Both

showed that they benefited poor

contain " Bt" proteins from the Bacillus

farmers and decreased their

thuringiensis bacterium to protect

exposure to harmful pesticides.

them against the rice stem borer, the most serious rice pest in China. Precisely how long the final tests

Vyomanauts a re go NOT s o long ago, people in space were either astronauts or cosmonauts. Then the Chinese gave us taikonauts. Now, another billion-strong nation with an ambitious space programme ­ India - is seeking a new breed of spacefarers: vyomanauts, according to Indian media. The tongue-twisting term comes from the Sanskrit for sky or space (vyoma, pronounced veeohma). The closest Sanskrit word to astronaut would have been vyomagami, for something that passes in the sky. The other word for an Indian spacefarer that had been bandied about was gaganaut (gagan is also Sanskrit for sky). But, "vyoma is very " I n d ia is in the process of choosing four vyoma na uts from a pool of 200 fig hter pilots"

good", says Choudury Upender Rao, a professor of Sanskrit studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. "It's an appropriate choice." 6 1 NewScientist 1 9 January 2010

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is now in the process of choosing four vyomanauts from a pool of 200 fighter pilots, P. Madhusoodanan of the Indian Air Force told DNA, a daily newspaper, this week. India's first crewed space mission is scheduled for 2015, designs for which were unveiled last year by Madhavan Nair, former chairman of ISRO. The three-person vehicle will initially carry two vyomanauts into 275-kilometre low-Earth orbit. Before this flight, ISRO will launch its second moon mission in 2013.

Previous trials of GM rice varieties in China, including the two now

Bob Zeigler, director of the non-profit International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Los

will take is not known, butJikun

Banos, the Philippines, says GM rice

Huang, director of the Center for

can deliver unique traits that are

Chinese Agricultural Policy in Beijing,

otherwise unobtainable. Farmers in

expects large-scale production in

India and the Philippines have this

Hubei province in 2011, followed by

year begun receiving a flood-tolerant

rapid commercial approval elsewhere

rice developed at the IRRI which is

in the country. He rejects the

non-GM but was developed using

suggestion that the GM varieties may

knowledge from GM studies.

at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, FOR smokers under pressure to Maryland, found that the risk of give up in 2010, it will seem like diabetes is highest straight after quitting and gradually reduces to the ultimate excuse: quitting smoking appears to increase the that of non-smokers (Annals of Internal Medicine, vol 152, p 10). risk of diabetes. Smokers are on average 30 per This is most likely because cent more likely than non-smokers quitting makes people more likely to develop type 2 or adult-onset to put on weight, which is known to increase the risk of diabetes. diabetes. Now a 10-year study of 10,892 adults has found that in The results shouldn't discourage the first six years after giving up, people from quitting, but former former smokers are 70 per cent smokers should gradually increase more likely than non-smokers to the amount of exercise they do, develop the disease. suggests Martin Dockrell of the Hsin-Chieh Yeh and colleagues UK anti-smoking charity, ASH.

Ex-smokers' risk

Sil ly celebs DID you know that meat stays in your gut for 40 years, putrefies and leads to a disease that kills you? "That is a fact," according to charity campaigner Heather Mills, one of several celebrities whose statements have been scrutinised and challenged by the charity Sense About Science in its latest "celebrity watch" review. Other celebs have been pulled up for apparently not realising that hormones are chemicals, and

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

60 SECONDS

that ovulation is suppressed by pregnancy and prolonged breastfeeding. Actress Suzanne Somers, for example, criticised the contraceptive pill "because is it safe to take a chemical every day, and how would it be safe to take something that prevents ovulation?" Actor Roger Moore, meanwhile, was taken to task for claiming that foie gras causes Alzheimer's disease, and Sarah Palin for dismissing evolution. Any readers disturbed by Mills's meaty claims can be assured that any meat protein not broken down before reaching the colon is expelled in faeces within days.

Paint soaks u p CO2

will provide extra strength and insulation, she says. How much CO2 could be removed from the atmosphere in this way has not yet been tested. Armstrong wants to adapt the technique for use underwater to

GROWING grass on your roof and other attempts to make homes carbon neutral are mere "green bling". So says Rachel Armstrong of University College London (UCL), who suggests that her smart paint can turn buildings "The paint wou l d react with into carbon sinks. carbon dioxide in th e air to Armstrong created the paint produce 'biol ime', which by dissolving salts and esters in cou ld h e l p insu late h o m es" oil droplets. Repeated coatings react with carbon dioxide in the create an artificial limestone reef atmosphere to produce calcium beneath Venice to stop the city carbonate - which is the main sinking. She will present her work constituent of limestone - and at a workshop at UCL's Bartlett alcohol. The resulting "biolime" School of Architecture next month.

Deflated galaxy We are surrounded by a flattened beach ball of dark matter, according to results presented at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington DC. The halo appears to be roughly perpendicular to the galaxy's disc of stars. "It begs the question of how our galaxy formed in its present orientation," says David Law of the University of California, Los Angeles.

Four legs old The oldest known footprints made by a four-legged vertebrate have been found in the Holy Cross mountains, Poland. The tetrapod tracks are 397 million years old, pushing back the previous record

Styrofoa m world

Troops protect chimps from lava

CALL it the polystyrene planet. This bloated exoplanet is just one of a clutch NASA's Kepler telescope has trained its beady eye on. Kepler has been scrutinising 100,000 stars since April 200g, searching for telltale dips in starlight created by planets passing in front of their host stars. During its first six weeks on the job, Kepler found five new planets, according to results presented on Monday at the American Astronomical Society's meeting in Washington DC. Kepler 7b is about 1.5 times as wide as Jupiter, though only a tenth as dense - similar to polystyrene - making it one of the most diffuse planets yet found. Heat is thought to have caused the planet to bloat, but how it did this is not yet understood. "We think this has something to do with the fact that they are all very close to their host stars... but we haven't found the smoking gun," says team member Dimitar Sasselov of the Harvard­ Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. While the new planets are inhospitably hot, mission members say finding them bodes well for Kepler's ability to detect Earth's twins.

UN PEACEKEEPERS in the Democratic

are classed as endangered because

surrounding rock is of marine origin,

Republic of the Congo (DRC) are

their numbers are dropping steadily,

hinting that our ancestors may have

using their aircraft to help protect

mainly due to deforestation,

invaded land from the sea, rather

endangered chimpanzees and other

although the Ebola virus poses

than rivers and lakes.

by around 10 million years. The

wildlife following a volcanic eruption

an added threat. In total they may

in Virunga National Park.

number as few as 76,000, all living

Spidery eyesore

in east and central Africa.

Exotic spider -handlers should wear

Nyamulagira, one of two active volcanoes inside the park, started erupting on 2January. The lava has

The UN multinational force is stationed in the DRC to protect

eye protection or risk the same fate as a hapless tarantula owner whose

moved 4 kilometres in three days­

civilians in a war that has killed

pet blasted him with a "mist" of

though luckily this has been away

5 million people. Now it is using its

barbed hairs (The Lancet, vol 375,

from major human settlements and

Indian planes and helicopters to

p 92). The hairs severely irritated his

Virunga's famous mountain gorillas.

monitor the Virunga area.

corneas and took months to clear

But 40 eastern chimpanzees on Nyamulagira itself could still be at

Richard Carroll, head of African

risk both from lava flows and abrasive

if the eruption destroys people's

volcanic ash, which is coating the

livelihoods, they will be more likely

plants they rely on for food.

to hunt or cut wood for charcoal

Eastern chimpanzees, a subspecies of the common chimp,

with steroids.

programmes for the WWF, fears that

in Virunga, increasing the threat to wildlife.

Prions 'evolve' The rogue proteins that cause brain diseases such as the human form of BSE seem able to alterthe way they fold in response to changes in their environment. The alterations, which can be passed from prion to prion, may help them to develop drug resistance (Science, 001: 10.11261 science.1183218).

Solomons shake A 3-metre-high tsunami struck the Solomon islands this week. The region, east of Papua New Guinea, experienced a series of powerful earthquakes - one at magnitude 7.2. Early reports suggested more than 1000 people had been left homeless when 200 houses were destroyed.

9 January 2010 1N ewScientist 17

THIS WEEK

For justice, share DNA databases Giving scientists access to offenders' DNA profiles is the only way to ensure their fair use in court Linda Geddes

WHEN a defendant's DNA appears to match DNA found at a crime scene, the probability that this is an unfortunate coincidence can be central to whether the suspect is found guilty. The assumptions used to calculate the likelihood of such a fluke - the "random match probability" - are now being questioned by a group of 41 scientists and lawyers based in the US and the UK. These assumptions have never been independently verified on a large sample of DNA profiles, says the group. What's more, whether some RMPs are truly as vanishingly small as assumed has been called into question by recent insights into DNA databases in the US and Australia. The group, led by Dan Krane of Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, is demanding access to CODIS - the US national DNA database, which contains over 7 million profiles - so that they can test the assumptions behind RMPs. They have outlined their arguments in a letter, which was published in Science in December (vol 326, p 5960). "The national US database is a truly enormous source of data," says signatory Larry Mueller of the University of California, Irvine (UCI). Such research could reveal if incorrect RMPs are prompting jurors and judges to attach undue weight to DNA evidence, possibly leading to miscarriages of justice. Even if these fears are not borne out, independent checks on the DNA held in large databases like CODIS are vital to maintaining 8 1 NewScientist 1 9 January 2010

confidence in DNA evidence presented in courts all over the world, the group says. Access would also allow the number of errors in CODIS to be measured. DNA evidence, considered the gold standard in forensic science, is typically used in two ways: to link a known suspect to a crime, or to find new suspects - known as a "cold hit" - by searching for a match in a DNA database of known criminals. Before a match can be sought, a profile is generated from a DNA sample by analysing specific "Offender databa ses revea l shocking d ifferen ces between what you see a n d what you wou l d expect"

locations on the chromosomes, called loci, and looking at short sections of non-coding DNA, known as short tandem repeats (STRs), which vary between individuals. An RMP is then arrived at using the estimated frequencies of these STRs, or alleles, at all the loci investigated. The more loci that are analysed at once, the more comprehensive the profile and the smaller the RMP. Labs in the US typically look at 13 loci, while UK labs tend to look at 10. One thing that researchers would like to use CODIS to verify is whether the allele frequency estimates are correct. Most of these estimates are based on data from small studies conducted during the early years of DNA forensics. But there are signs that these studies did not capture the true frequencies of certain alleles

in some populations, which could mean that the RMPs presented in court are wrong. "When you look at real offender databases you see that there are shocking differences between what you actually see and what you would expect to see," says Krane. The first clue that something might be amiss came in 2005, when limited data was released from the Arizona state database, a small part of CODIS. An analyst who compared every profile with every other profile in the database found that, of 65,493 profiles, 122 pairs of profiles matched at nine out of 13 loci and 20 pairs

matched at 10 loci, while one pair matched at 11 loci and one more pair matched at 12 loci. "It surprised a lot of people," says signatory Bill Thompson of UCI. "It had been common for experts to testify that a nine-locus match is tantamount to a unique identification." Unexpected matches Similar tests have since been conducted on the Illinois state database (of 220,000 profiles, 903 pairs matched at nine or more loci) and the Maryland state database (of the 30,000 profiles,

In this section

• Crystal mountains found on moon, page 10 • Monogamy may suit men after all, page 12 • Battling the ocean's "red devils", page 14

32 pairs matched at nine loci, and three matched on all 13 loci). One possibility is that some are duplications of the same profile in the databases - although this is not the case with the Arizona matches. Alternatively, assumptions about the frequency of alleles in populations, such as how independent these variations are of each other, might be wrong. If this is the case, access to the database is vital if these assumptions are to be corrected. "We need to learn how DNA profiles cluster by race, ethnicity and even geography," says Krane. A third possibility is that the

surprisingly high number of matches found in these databases is the result of large numbers of relatives in the database, who are more likely to have similar DNA profiles than non-relatives. This could mean that in areas of the US and other parts of the world with more closely related populations, the RMPS may need to be tweaked. So if CODIS provided new knowledge of the frequency of certain alleles in related or unrelated people, what would the subsequent adjustments of RMPs lead to? Even with such tweaks, in cases where all 13 loci are matched, the chances of it

being a coincidence will still be vanishingly small. But a 13-loci match is not always possible. If only small amounts of DNA are recovered from crime scenes, or if samples are degraded or mixed with other people's DNA, the number of loci available for comparison is often much lower than 13. This means that the statistical weight attached to a match is lower - and the probability of a coincidental match higher. "I would say 5 to 10 per cent of database searches involve evidence profiles with fewer than 10 loci and/or that are mixtures," says Mueller. For such cases, RMPs will be much higher, so tweaks to these estimates could make a big difference to how a jury interprets them. "I've been involved in cases where these are 1-in-67 or 1-in-83," says signatory Bill Shields of the State University of New York at Syracuse. "If those numbers are off by 50 per cent, then that could make a big difference to a jury." Bruce Budowle, former senior scientist at the FBI, which controls CODIS, argues that fears sparked by the Arizona database are overblown. Selecting a known suspect's profile and comparing it against a crime scene profile is a bit like taking a person whose birthday is 9 January and calculating the chance that a specific other person shares that birthday, which is about 1 in 365. The comparisons made within the Arizona database were the equivalent of asking how many people in a room share any birthday - a different statistic altogether. With just 23 people, for example, the probability that any two share any birthday exceeds 50 per cent. With 60 people, it is nearly 100 per cent. The signatories insist that this "birthday problem" can't explain all the matches, however. In 2008, Mueller developed a computer model of the Arizona database that showed that the birthday problem could account for a few, but not all of the matches (Journal of Genetics, vol 87, p 101).

Access to DNA databases is not just about preventing potential miscarriages of justice. In 2003, when Krane was given limited access to the DNA database for the Australian state of Victoria as part of the inquest into the death of a toddler, he noticed a cluster of 32 profiles that seemed to match at 17 of the 18 alleles tested for. This was odd because far fewer matched at just 16 alleles - you would expect the opposite to be the case. Krane says the most likely cause is mistakes made "We n eed to learn h ow DNA profiles cluster by race, ethn icity a n d even geogra phy"

when the samples were entered into the database, which he estimates may be present in as many as 1 in 1000 samples. Access to CODIS would reveal if it contains errors, too, which could be causing investigators searching for a cold hit to miss potential suspects. "If you have mistyped an allele or a locus, then you have a person in a database whose profile would not match his own DNA," says signatory Bicka Barlow at the San Francisco Public Defender's Office. Will the FBI grant scientists access to CODIS? Director of the FBI Laboratory, Christian Hassell, says he appreciates the concerns the Science letter raises. "We are exploring ways to investigate some of the topics," he adds. But he has turned down the request for access, citing concerns about genetic privacy. The letter's signatories point out that medical researchers who work with DNA overcome privacy issues regularly, for example by signing an agreement promising not to divulge the data and taking certain security measures. Without external scrutiny of the databases, doubts will remain, Mueller argues. "All of this... can be resolved by letting scientists have access to the data to do what they need to do." • 9 January 2010 1 NewScientist 1 9

THIS WEEK

Crystal hills speak of turbulent lunar past Rachel Courtland

SUPERMAN'S sparkling Fortress of Solitude they're not, but giant outcrops of crystals, found on the moon by India's Chandrayaan-l probe, prove that a roiling ocean of magma once engulfed the rocky body of our satellite. The moon is thought to have coalesced more than 4 billion years ago from the molten debris of an impact between the Earth and a Mars-sized object. Models suggest that heat from that impact, as well as from material compressing to form the moon, created a sea of magma that lasted for a few hundred million years. Heavy, iron-bearing minerals should have sunk through this magma to form the moon's mantle, while lighter, iron-poor minerals called plagioclases should have crystallised and floated to the surface. But it has been difficult to find direct evidence of the moon's primordial crystalline crust, as it was likely jumbled by meteoroid impacts and paved over by lava flows early in the moon's history. Until recently, the only evidence came from lunar samples collected at a few

sites by the Apollo astronauts. Last year, however, Japan's Kaguya probe spotted patches of the stuff inside a number of craters (Nature, DOl: 10.1038/ nature08317). Now, it seems Chandrayaan-l, which orbited the moon for almost 10 months until

it failed in August, found the mother lode - vast outcrops of plagioclase crystal along a mountain range inside the moon's 930-kilometre-wide Orientale basin (below). Lava has resurfaced less of Orientale than other craters of its size. In 1994, the US orbiter Clementine found regions inside Orientale that seemed to be virtually iron-free, hinting at plagioclase. But Chandrayaan-l was able to detect the light absorbed by the crystal itself. It

found that the rock containing the crystal spans at least 40 kilometres and is quite pure - less than 5 per cent of it is composed of iron-rich minerals. That is purer than a number of Apollo samples, which until now have been the primary source of information on the moon's ancient crust. "This is a game­ changer," says Paul Warren of the University of California, Los Angeles. "We now have to rethink a lot of lunar science; issues such as the way the crust originally floated over the denser melt of the magma ocean [and] the extent to which the crust was jumbled by large impacts." In an alternative to the magma theory, the moon formed with much less energy, and its surface "Th e rock conta i n i n g the crystal spans at l east 40 kilometres a n d i s q u ite pu re"

solidified quickly. In that case, plagioclase would have reached the surface in a series of volcanic events. But finding widespread, pure plagioclase suggests a more global process. "It really pretty much ties up the magma ocean part of the story," says Carle Pieters of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, who presented the Chandrayaan-l results at the American Geophysical Union meeting in December in San Francisco.•

Cores of exotic stars may mimic big bang

have argued that some supernovae

between the electromagnetic and

survive for at least 10 million years,

may leave behind even denser quark

weak nuclear forces breaks down.

the researchers calculate. But

stars, in which neutrons dissolve into

This allows quarks to turn into

Sanjay Reddy of Los Alamos National

their constituent quarks.

ghostly particles called neutrinos,

Laboratory in New Mexico says

releasing energy that props up the

they might not be stable. "The idea

Dai of the State University of New

star against further collapse. The

is interesting, but to determine if

A NEW class of star may recreate

York in Buffalo says the deaths

reactions would take place in an

this is plausible, more work is

the conditions of the big bang in

of very massive stars may lead

apple-sized region in the core

needed," he says.

to "electroweak" stars that creep

weighing about two Earths.

its incredibly dense core. Pack matter tightly enough and gravity will cause it to implode into a black hole. Neutron stars were

Now, a team led by De-Chang

even closer to the black hole limit (arxiv.org/abs/0912.0520). The cores of these stellar corpses

The stars might show up in data

If the stars do exist, their cores are the only places in the modern

as neutron stars that are heavier

universe where matter naturally

than allowed. Unlike normal neutron

returns to this primordial state, says

once thought to be the densest form

can reach the same density as that of

stars, though, their internal energy

team member Glenn Starkman of

of matter that could resist such a

the universe 10-10seconds after the

source would prevent them from

Case Western Reserve University

collapse. More recently, physicists

big bang. At that point, the distinction

cooling over time. The stars could

in Cleveland, Ohio. David Sh iga .

10 1 N ewScientist 1 9 January 2010

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

INSIGHT Smart buying alone wil l not save the world's endangered fisheries ACTRESS Greta Scacchi posed naked clutch ing a large dead cod, The upma rket London restaurant Nobu was publicly shamed for selling an endangered species of tuna, And the Pret A Manger sandwich cha in sto pped se lling sushi made from yellowfin tuna in branches worldwide, Campa igns to encourage di ners and shoppers to q uestion whether the seafood they buy is sustai nable have hit the mai nstream, thanks i n no sma l l part to The End afthe Line, a 2009 documentary about overfishing, However, the advice g iven to consumers over susta inable seafood is inconsistent at best, and at worst, misleading, " Putting too much emphasis on consumers is not an effective strategy" for prese rvi ng fisheries, saysjenn ifer Jacquet of the Un iversity of British Columbia Fisheries Centre in Vancouver, Ca nada, who is lead author of a study comparing dozens of sustainable seafood in itiatives publ ished in this month's Oryx(DOI :

1O.1017/S0030605309990470), 'T here is simply too much misla belling, too much misleading information, too ma ny i nconsisten cies and, so fa r, too few results," There is little co nsensus on what constitutes a "sustainable" fishery. Jacquet poi nts out that while most schemes agree on hig h-profile species such as the Atlantic bluefin tuna, six organisations ra nk Atlantic hali but as a species to avoid, w h i le Friends of the Sea and the Monterey Bay Aq uari um recommend it as sustai nable,j acquet identifies conflicting advice for other species including bigeye tu na, lingcod, Atlantic haddock and al bacore tuna, Fisheries researchers question the accuracy of counting methods and model ling, Fo r example, in one of the best-managed fisheries in the world - the eastern Beri ng Sea - o ne study identified 30 per cent fewer wa lleye pollock than models had predicted, sug gesting the mode l l i ng was flawed (Science, vol 326, p 1340), Even when accu rate i nformation is

No sign of virus in chronic fatigue patients in the UK THE theory that chronic fatigue syndrome could be caused by a virus that jumped from mice to humans has been dealt a blow by a British study that has found no evidence of the virus in people diagnosed with CFS. Health officials are also warning people with the condition of the dangers of dosing themselves with antiretroviral drugs. CFS affects more than a million people in the US and a quarter of a million in the UK. Its symptoms include persistent, severe tiredness, but its cause remains mysterious and contentious. The debate on its origins took

How much to put sustainable fish on my dinner table?

ava i lab le, classification usua l ly depends not just on species, but on location and fishing method, As a result, the average co nsumer could easily find the advice confusing, A wallet card produced by the Mo nterey Bay Aqua rium, for example, has 12 different entries for tuna, The study's authors fear that the inconsistency and confusion could be exp lo ited to sell products that do not meet rigorous standards, The

"We do not share the conviction that XMRV may be a contributory factor in the pathogenesis of CFS, at least in the UK," McClure's team says. XMRV is a retrovirus, and viruses of this type have a history of claims linking them to diseases about 25 at the last count - that have later been questioned.

a new turn in October, when DNA from xenotropic murine leukaemia virus-related virus (XMRV) was found in the blood of about two-thirds of 101 people with CFS, compared with just 4 per cent of healthy people (Science, "(FS websites a re abuzz DOl: 10.1126/science.1179052). The with q ueries from patients researchers, led by Judy Mikovits of on h ow to obta i n th e the Whittemore Peterson Institute a nti retroviral d r u g AZl" in Reno, Nevada, suggested that Mikovits still stands by the XMRV might be causing CFS. conclusions in her paper. She Now a second study, led by Myra McClure of Imperial College suggests that XMRV may be less London, has failed to find XMRV common in Europe and so might in blood samples from 186 people not be causing cases of CFS there. in the UK with CFS (PLoS ONE, DOl: At least one US lab is offering to test people with CFS for XMRV, 10 .1371/journal. pone.0008 519).

greenwashing that some compan ies have employed to fa lsely boost their eco-credentials "could turn into 'bluewashi ng' today", they say. They conclude that governments, not consumers, should take the lead to protect fisheries by legislating on the amount of seafood used in animal feed, for instance, "We do not argue agai nst the principle that consumers should make a point of choosing products that reflect their idea ls," adds Jacquet " However, worki ng with household consumers alone ca nnot save fish," Nic Fleming.

while websites are abuzz with reports from patients who say they have been tested and queries about how to obtain zidovudine (AZT), the antiretroviral drug used to combat HIV. In lab experiments reported last month, AZT was found to block replication of XMRV (Virology, DOl: 10.1016/ j.viro1.2009.11.013). But Richard Baker, head of the group that wrote the official UK guidelines on CFS, warns patients against taking AZT, which can have side effects. "Anyone who uses it on themselves is taking a real risk with their health," he says. Mikovits says it is unlikely to be effective against CFS. Other researchers are trying to further establish whether there is a link between XMRV and CFS. Clare Wilson and Ewen Callaway.

9 January 2010 I NewScientist 1 11

THIS WEEK

Boy toy preference driven by hormones Linda Geddes

PARENTS hoping to shield their children from sex stereotypes by giving them gender-neutral toys may be fighting a losing battle, especially if their offspring are boys. It seems that hormones released both before birth and well into the first few months of life may dictate the type of toys and play that boys are drawn to. By the age of 3, boys and girls show differences in their play preferences. Boys are more strongly drawn to balls, vehicles and construction toys than girls and tend to prefer playing with

121 NewScientist 19 Jan uary 2010

larger groups, whereas girls are more likely to prefer play with a few individuals. To what extent these differences are biologically programmed rather than a result of social pressure is hotly debated. Recent research hints that exposure to differing levels of hormones in the uterus might sway the preferences that both boys and girls have for "boy-like" toys later on. No one had looked at whether the surges in testosterone and oestrogen that boys and girls experience in the early months of life also affect behaviour. "We tend to think of early development as a time when

hormones aren't having effects," (Hormones and Behavior, DOl: says Gerianne Alexander of 10.1016/j.yhbeh.200g.08.003). The children in the experiment Texas A&M University in College Station and colleagues. were too young for these To investigate the effects preferences to translate into of these hormone surges on actual choices about how they behaviour, Alexander and her play. However, Alexander says colleagues used eye-tracking that even at the tender age of software to measure levels of 3 months, such innate visual interest in animations of a ball preferences could drive future versus a doll and a group of behaviour. The next step is to test figures versus an individual figure, in 21 boys and 20 girls aged " Boys exposed to more 3 to 4 months. The researchers prenata l testostero n e sh owed a p ro n o u n ced measured levels of oestrogen in the girls' saliva and testosterone preference for the ba ll" in the boys' and compared the lengths of their index and middle if visual preferences at 3 months fingers - a guide to prenatal predict behaviour later on. testosterone exposure. "It's a very interesting paper Girls' behaviour appeared and I think it will motivate a lot of unaffected by current or additional research," says Melissa prenatal hormone levels. Boys' Hines of the University of preferences, however, seemed Cambridge, who researches the affected by both, in slightly role of hormones in prenatal different ways. Those with higher development. If confirmed by larger groups circulating levels of testosterone had a stronger preference for of children, the results would the groups of figures over the also suggest that aspects of individuals, while those whose behaviour or even gender identity finger lengths indicated that they might be skewed by exposure to hormone-disrupting chemicals had been exposed to more testosterone in the uterus showed like phthalates or pesticides, a more pronounced preference both in the womb and early for the bouncing ball over the doll in life. Linda Geddes.

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

Monogamy and marriage may suit men after all SOME couples come together for

intense, because men would risk

love, others for money, pregnancy

diluting the value of their property

or because they're told to. Whatever

by dividing it up among too many

the reason, socially prescribed

offspring and heirs. "Having a plot

monogamy and its ultimate cultural

of land that is not big enough to

expression, marriage, may have

support your family is not clever,"

emerged because of the evolutionary

says Fortunato.

benefits that both offer. By providing men with increased

The pair modelled the behaviour of populations incorporating

assurance that their wives' children

monogamous and polygynous men

are their true heirs and women with

over two generations. They made

the confidence that their kids will

the assumption that women in early

benefit from a decent inheritance,

agrarian cultures did not provide

monogamous marriage is a win-win

much in the way of material resources.

situation, argue Laura Fortunato at

Monogamy won out over polygyny,

University College London and Marco

in terms of reliably passing resources

Archetti at Harvard University. Their view challenges theories of marriage that emphasise the role

to the most genetically related family members, so long as property remained precious, women mostly

of religion and the societal benefits

faithful and men shrewd - that is,

of keeping men from fighting over

they transferred property exclusively

women. Such theories also contend

to the children of faithful wives

that by giving up multiple wives or

Uournal of Evolution Biology,

partners, men sacrifice their interests

vol 23, p 149}. So far, real-world

for those of the group.

support for this model is anecdotal.

" But there are actually some

Fortunato suggests that the

situations where monogamous

advent and spread of agriculture

marriage is a better strategy for

about 10,000 years ago played an

men as well as for women," says

integral role in the emergence of

F ortunato, who created a

monogamy, since until then owning

mathematical model to find out

specific land was largely pointless.

how such scenarios might work. The emergence of social

Population growth and technological advances allowed farmers to grow

monogamy - where monogamy

crops more effectively, increasing the

is socially enforced and polygamy

value of land to future generations.

is forbidden - is a mystery. The

Fortunato also reckons that

Babylonian king Hammurabi prescribed it in his ancient law code around 1790 BC, though the practice probably stretches back thousands of years further. Fortunato

"Men a n d women will tend to form exclusive pa i rs wh en land is sca rce a n d its cu ltivation i nten se"

distinguishes this from pair bonding and sexual monogamy, which was

cultures adopt religions that fit their

practiced by early humans and their

monogamous or polygamous values,

ancient ancestors. She says the fact

rather than the other way around.

that many populations around the

"I think the evidence must come from

world practice some form of polygyny

archaeology and changes in marriage

is a clear indication that social

systems," she says.

monogamy is not inevitable and therefore needs explaining. Fortunato and Archetti conclude

Anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy at the University of California, Davis, says humans are flexible and

that men and women will tend to

opportunistic in other aspects of their

form socially monogamous pairs

lives, "so why shouldn't their marriage

when land is scarce and its cultivation

customs reflect this?" Ewen Callaway .

9 January 2010 1 NewScientist 113

THIS WEEK Vl LJ Z

to hide. Here in Monterey Bay, this layer lies some 500 metres below the surface, and its migration upwards could be one reason for the invasion. "As seas get warmer, there's a lot less mixing, so oxygen in the atmosphere has a harder time getting transported down," Gilly explains. But climate change is unlikely to be the whole story: removing rival predators such as tuna by fishing has also been implicated. By sunset, we have only landed the one animal that Stewart tagged and released. With darkness our fortunes begin to change, just as Gilly said they would, for this is when the squids' prey leave the oxygen-poor layer and migrate to the surface. Landing a Humboldt squid requires a line with a spiked lure called a "jig". Those we are using are fluorescent, and are charged under the Fulmar's halogen lamps before being lowered into the that they often swim in dense black waters. From here on, brute schools of at least 100 individuals. strength is needed. "When they "We've seen densities as high as jet, you really feel it; they really eight per cubic metre," says want to pull the pole right out of William Gilly, Stewart's supervisor your hands," says Field. at Stanford's Hopkins Marine Soon, my rod bends sharply, and I'm doing battle with the Station in Pacific Grove. Within a minute or so, Stewart Humboldt squid are voracious red devil. But I lose the beast by and her colleague John Field of predators that historically have letting the line go slack, so decide the US National Oceanic and inhabited the lower latitudes of to leave it to the experts. In total, Atmospheric Administration the eastern Pacific, from Mexico they bring 14 on board. One more have attached an electronic device down to Chile, apparently is tagged and released, two are to one of its fins. It's time to return venturing further north only in kept in a tank for study back in the the devil to the depths. conjunction with the disturbance lab, and others are measured, We are out on the Fulmar on of currents and sea temperatures sexed and dissected so that Field this bright December day to learn known as EI Nino. But since 2002, can study their stomach contents. about the animals' movements. Unfortunately, the squid don't When the device detaches and reveal their secrets easily: one liThe squid flashes wh ite to maroon. It's 1.5 metres long, radio tag pops off after only a day, surfaces, it should send a radio signal to reveal its location, and i n c l u d i n g the tentac les, and the other never sends the transmit data revealing how the which flail in Stewart's hair" anticipated signal. But previous animal has been migrating up and efforts have revealed that the down in the water. This is key to they have established themselves squid can cover huge distances: understanding why the Humboldt off the coast of central California. one tag surfaced off Tijuana, squid (Dosidicus gigas) has Their arrival coincided with a Mexico, after 17 days - a journey invaded the waters off central decline in Pacific hake, which are that required the animal to cover California, and how it may affect among their prey. "That's a huge over 20 miles a day. the region's valuable fisheries. commercial fishery," says Gilly. Still, the landed squid provided While the total size of the So far, radio-tagging indicates further valuable data points in the invading horde is still unknown, that the squid spend the daylight effort to monitor this marine observations from autonomous hours near the top of an oxygen­ invasion. And there was calamari submersibles and sonar indicate poor layer in which their prey try steak for anyone who wanted it. •

My struggle with the red devil Peter Aldhous

MEXICAN fishing fleets call them diablos rojos, or "red devils" - and when Stanford University graduate student Julie Stewart wrestles the first Humboldt squid aboard our research vessel, the Fulmar, in California's Monterey Bay, it becomes obvious why. This beast is angry, and has flashed from white to a deep maroon. It's nearly 1.5 metres long, including the tentacles, which flail in Stewart's hair until she can offload the catch into a cooler filled with seawater. That only gives the squid ammunition, as it can now fire a powerful jet of water and ink at anyone who strays into its sights. "Ink in your eye stings," warned Stewart earlier. She is also careful to avoid the animal's sharp beak, which can deliver a nasty bite. 14 1 NewScientist 19 January 2010

New Sc ientist video - the l ist kee ps getting longer.

Sea rc h from h u n d reds of t h e m ost a m azi ng, m i n d b l ow i ng a n d coo l est vi deos . Ta ke yo u r seat a n d prepare to be a m azed ! So w h at a re yo u wa i t i n g for? Watc h exc l us i ve v i d eos tod ay.

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NewScientist

IN BRIEF

Ghost ga laxies haunt Milky Way

Egg whites: meringues today, baby saviours tomorrow?

to purified, treated white from chicken eggs, which they had already used to repair holes in balloons and condoms. They took discarded human amnions and stretched

THOUGH telescopes routinely spot galaxies billions of light years away, they may be missing many in our own cosmic backyard. Astronomers have bagged some extremely faint galaxies near the Milky Way in recent years, including one just 350 times as bright as the sun. But hundreds more have probably been overlooked, say James Bullock of the University of California in Irvine and his colleagues (arxiv. org/abs/0912.1873). Galaxies with less dark matter than those found to date would have weaker gravity, allowing their stars to spread out more. That would make them harder to spot amid the clutter of foreground stars in our galaxy, the team says. Beth Willman of Haverford College in Pennsylvania says this is an exciting possibility, adding that future observatories could uncover the hidden population.

each across the bottom of an open-ended glass tube, BETTER known for giving meringues and souffles their

which they then filled with human amniotic fluid. Next

texture, egg white is being tested as a sealant for the

they ruptured the membrane with a needle, and after

amnion, a membrane that surrounds developing fetuses.

30 seconds applied purified egg white. Of 21 tubes,

The amnion can rupture spontaneously, but can also

19 stopped leaking immediately. The others stopped after

tear after amniocentesis - in which a needle is used to

a second application (AmericanJournal o/Obstetrics &

extract amniotic fluid to test for genetic diseases - or

Gynecology, 001: 10.1016/j.ajog.2009.10.862).

fetal surgery. Such a breach can cause the mother's waters to break prematurely, resulting in miscarriage. Noting its stickiness and its role in protecting a

Moise had to use antibiotics to quell microbial infections caused by the procedure, which would complicate using it in the body. But as other attempts

developing chick, Ken Moise and his colleagues at the

to seal or patch amnions have been disappointing,

Baylor (ollege of Medicine in Houston, Texas, turned

the development is a positive step, he says.

Seats of emotional i ntel ligence fou n d HEAD injuries sustained by Vietnam veterans have revealed parts of the brain vital for two types of emotional intelligence. Depending on the site of their injuries, the veterans studied were poor either at "experiential" emotional intelligence (the capacity to judge emotions in other people) or "strategic" emotional intelligence (the ability to plan socially appropriate 16 1 NewScientist 1 9 January 2010

responses to situations). Led by Jordan Grafman at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Maryland, researchers gave standard tests for measuring emotional intelligence to 38 injured vets and 29 healthy controls. The 17 vets with injuries to their dorsolateral prefrontal cortex performed worse on experiential

tasks but performed normally on strategic tasks. In the other 21 vets, who had damage to their ventromedial prefrontal cortex, the situation was reversed (Proceedings of the National Academy ofSciences, DOl: 10.1073/pnas.0912568106). Damage to these regions didn't affect cognitive intelligence, suggesting that emotional and general problem­ solving tasks are handled independently in the brain.

Single lig ht wave from fi bre laser A PULSE of light so short that it contains just a single oscillation of a light wave has been produced. The flash is almost as short as a light pulse can be, according to the laws of physics, and could be used to sense a photon interacting with an electron, says Alfred Leitenstorfer of the University of Konstanz in Germany, whose team pulled off the feat. The researchers split pulses from a single fibre laser between two sets of fibres containing atoms of erbium, which amplified the light waves. Each fibre had a second stage, one stretching, the other shrinking the wavelength by about 40 per cent. The two fibres then converged, causing the light beams to interfere, leaving a cycle lasting 4.3 femtoseconds.

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

Don't pass the buck in public BULLYING bosses take note: simply witnessing people blame others is enough to set up a blame culture. "We already know that people are more likely to blame others when they themselves have been blamed - a 'kick-the-dog' kind of effect," says Nathanael Fast of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. According to his latest results, a blame attitude spreads to witnesses of a dressing-down too. "Leaders who want to prevent such a culture from spreading

Chimp's da nce sugg ests a mental g rasp of fi re CHIMPS have been reported dancing in rainstorms - and now it seems our closest relation has a "fire dance", too. A dominant male chimp performed such a dance in the face of a raging savannah fire in Senegal. Anthropologist Jill Pruetz of Iowa State University in Ames recounts that the male faced the fire with "a really exaggerated slow-motion display" before redirecting his display at chimps sheltering in a nearby baobab tree. Barking vocalisations from the male, never heard in more

than 2000 hours of monitoring the group, were also heard. Pruetz and co-author Thomas LaDuke at the East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania suggest that the chimps were cognisant enough to predict the fire's movement, retreating short distances at a time while staying calm (AmericanJournal of Physical Anthropology, DOl: 10.1002/ajpa. 21245). Other animals, in contrast, panic when fire approaches. "If chimps with their small brain size can conceptually deal with fire, then maybe we should

rethink some of the earliest evidence for fire usage," Pruetz says. The earliest confirmed evidence of controlled fire use dates to several thousand years ago but some palaeoanthropologists argue control began as far back as 1 to 2 million years ago. The chimps' responses to two fires - set for land clearance - were seen in 2006. Primatologist William McGrew at the University of Cambridge is wary of granting chimps a "conceptualisation of fire", but further work could yield interesting results, he says.

should be careful not to be seen pointing the finger," he adds. In one experiment, his team asked one group of volunteers to watch footage of California

Beetles mummified by sti ng less bees

governor Arnold Schwarzenegger blaming others for a failed strategy and another to view him accepting personal responsibility for it. When asked to write about a failure of their own afterwards, those in the first group were 30 per cent more likely to blame this failure on others than those in the second Uournal

of Experimental Social Psychology, 001: 10.1016/j.jesp.2009.10.007}. In a further, similar experiment, blame was less contagious if people wrote down values they held dear before they saw others blamed. Fast says this may have reminded them of why they made certain choices, reducing the need to defend themselves by blaming others.

IT IS not so much eternal life, more a case of instant death. Parasitic beetles that invade the hive of certain stingless bees end up entombed forever in resin. "They're stopped in their tracks, and they dehydrate and shrivel up like a mummy," says Mark Greco of the Swiss Bee Research Centre in Berne, who discovered this behaviour in a species of Australian stingless bee, Trigona carbonaria, living in the wild. To investigate this peculiar defence, Greco's team put parasitic small hive beetles, Aethina tumida, near the entrance of laboratory beehives. Guard worker bees instantly attacked the parasites, but the thick-skinned beetles had little trouble warding them off. Faced with such a resilient foe, a group of worker bees resorted to coating the beetles in a sticky mix of resin, mud and wax. From computerised tomography (CT) scans of hives taken at 5-minute intervals, Greco's team found the mummifications are completed in less than 10 minutes (Naturwissenschaften, DOl: 10.1007/s00114-00g-0631-g). The beetles rarely got very far from the entrance before being mummified.

Just when you thi n k it ca n't get colder VOSTOK Station i n Antarctica currently

Turner. After that big chill, the

holds the crown for the coldest place

temperature bounced up by

on the planet. It recorded -89.2°C on

over 20 °C in one day Uournal of

21july 1983. But it could get even

Geophysical Research - Atmospheres,

colder, with temperatures dropping

001: 10.1029/2009j0012104}.

to about -96 °C, if "perfect" cold-weather conditions prevail. john Turner of the British Antarctic

If the wind speed were lower and a similar vortex centred on Vostok, Turner reckons that the temperature

Survey and colleagues analysed the

could drop by a further 6 °C or so. But

weather conditions that brought

the researchers say that the coldest

about the record chill and found

place of all might be nearby Dome

it was caused by an unusual,

Argus, where a higher elevation

near-stationary atmospheric vortex.

could mean temperatures fall beyond

"This isolated Vostok and prevented

-100 °(, Understanding temperature

the waves of warm air that normally

swings is important for interpreting

come up f rom the ocean," says

Antarctic ice-core records, says Turner.

9 January 2010 I NewScientist 117

TECHNOLOGY

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

Smart ba l l s m a ke a bowl er bette r

Delays l oom ove r fu l l - body sca n n ers

IF YOUR tenpin bowling is a bit off-target a smart training ball might one day keep your shots out of the gutter. Sports scientist Franz Fuss of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia fitted aluminium tubes in the thumb and finger holes of a regular bowling ball. Each tube had a strain gauge at the bottom to measure and log the forces the players' fingers were applying on each shot. Ten players of differing abilities used the ball to attempt various shots. Fuss found that the strain gauge measurements from the ball enabled him to identify the characteristics of successful shots (Sports Technology, DOl: 10.1002/ jst.104). For instance, better bowlers consistently pinch the ball with much greater force immediately prior to release, to allow a faster delivery.

IN THE aftermath of the incident aboard a US-bound airliner on Christmas Day, in which a passenger attempted to detonate explosives hidden in his underwear, governments are rushing to install full-body scanners at airports, to thwart similar attacks. But their efforts could be stymied by the fact that the scanner technology has not yet been certified as fit for purpose by national governments - and manufacturers will not invest in mass production until it has. So says Colin McSeveny, a

370 Passwords banned by social networking we bsite Twitter for being too easy to guess

spokesman for Smiths Detection of Watford, UK, which makes millimetre-wave body scanners. "Politicians like Gordon Brown want to get a move on but these technologies are still in trials. They are not ready yet. They have not yet been certified by the Transportation Security Administration in the US or the European Union, for example," says McSeveny. "We're not going to make sOO of these £100,000 machines until they are certified." The issue of certifying body scanners - and their use as a primary screening method alongside metal detection is expected to be raised at the EU Transport Council when it meets this week.

"Th i s shows that existi ng GSM secu rity is in adeq uate" Com puterscientist Karsten Nohl claims a tea m he asse mbled has cracke d the e ncryption used by m a ny mobile networks, showing that eavesd roppers a re able to l isten i n to ca lls (The New York Times, 2 8 Decem ber 2009)

9 January 2010 1 NewScientist 1 19

TECHNOLOGY

Robo-g ua rds and the borders of the futu re If your nation's border allows unwanted visitors to cross with impunity and foot patrols aren't cutting it, try a network of radar, cameras and agile robots where foot patrols are being augmented with new people­ A MIGRANT makes a furtive dash sensing technologies. across an unwalled rural section Libya has an agreement with of a national border, only to be the European Union to try to confronted by a tracked robot limit the flow of immigrants from that looks like a tiny combat tank ­ sub-Saharan Africa traversing with a gimballed camera for an its borders before crossing the eye. As he passes the bug-eyed Mediterranean and entering droid, it follows him and a border Italy. To help it enforce this deal, guard's voice booms from its Libya is spending €300 million loudspeaker. He has illegally on technology for what it calls a entered the country, he is warned, "large border security and control and if he does not turn back he system", made by Selex Sistemi will be filmed and followed by the robot, or by an airborne drone, until guards apprehend him. Welcome to the European border of the not-too-distant future. Amid the ever-present angst over illegal immigration, cross-border terrorism and Paul Marks

"More than one of the g round - based robots w i l l approach people, as g ro u ps often sp l it u p"

contraband smuggling, some nations are turning to novel border-surveillance technologies, potentially backed up by robots, a conference on state security in Leeds, UK, heard in November. The idea is to scatter arrays of sensors in a border area in ways that give guards or robots plenty of time to respond before their targets make good an escape. The need to secure borders is evident across the globe, from India - which is constructing a 3400-kilometre, 3-metre-high barbed-wire and concrete border wall to close itself off from Bangladesh - to Libya, 20 1 NewScientist 1 9 January 2010

Integrati, part of Italian aerospace firm Finmeccanica. Selex says its command, control and communication technology will include all the computers and software necessary to make sense of the data gathered by a raft of different sensors on the Libyan border. Project details remain under wraps, but Selex already makes acoustic, infrared and remote-imaging sensors, which could find uses in border control. Elsewhere, the US Department

of Homeland Security, along with Boeing Intelligence and Security Systems, is fielding sensors on the border with Mexico, in an $8 billion project called the Secure Border Initiative network. SBInet will eventually comprise some 400 25-metre-high towers similar to cellphone masts and containing an array of remote­ controlled optical and infrared cameras. The towers will also carry a primary sensor designed to detect humans. This sensor is a 10-gigahertz, or "X-band", ground surveillance radar made by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) in Tel Aviv. The towers will be dotted along the US's 3000-kilometre triple-layered border fence. The radar will supplement acoustic and vibration sensors strewn around the border zone that pick up voices and footfalls, and will provide patrols with early warning of activity in the border area - as far as 10 kilometres

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

from the fence. So says Mark Borkowski, who directs the SBInet project for the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency in Washington DC. The idea is that robotic cameras will zoom in automatically on any activity detected by radar or sensors. "Then we classify the event to gauge our response: is it just a stray cow? A person? If so, are they carrying weapons or maybe drugs?" says Borkowski. "We're not foolish enough to think a fence alone will work: we know people can build ramps and cut through it." A prototype SBInet system, based on nine temporary towers, has been tested on a 45-kilometre stretch of the US-Mexico border near Sasabe, Arizona, for the past three years. Called Project 28, it had problems: the X-band radar produced too much signal clutter from the ground, making it tough to detect human activity. And the

satellite links it used took too long to send sensor data to base - so people had often disappeared by the time an alert was raised. The radar has been modified and satellite links abandoned in favour of fast ground-based microwave links, says Tim Peters, Boeing's SBInet project chief. The project moves to its deployment phase in mid-20l0, when 17 permanent towers near Tucson will be turned on. Magnetic sensors will be added to detect vehicle movements and weapons, too. CBP is also trialling Predator drones on the border to feed surveillance pictures into SBInet. IAI is a partner in the EU's Transportable Autonomous Patrol for Land Border Surveillance (TALOS) programme, which eschews static ground sensors and border walls in favour of the aforementioned bug-eyed robots - replete with human­ sensing radar - and aerial drones. TALOS is needed because the expanded 27-nation EU has a porous eastern border that it cannot afford to monitor conventionally, says Agnieszka Spronska of the Industrial Research Institute for Automation and Measurements (PIAP), based in Warsaw, Poland. PIAP is leading the la-nation TALOS consortium, which is spending €20 million on developing the architecture for a mobile network of ground robots, drones and the command centres from which they are run. "TALOS will be very scalable depending on the terrain - you can use as much of it as you need without static elements," says Spronska. More than one ground robot will approach people, she says, as groups often split up. But where does this deep­ probing 24/7 surveillance technology leave residents who are living near borders, in terms of privacy? "We protect the camera and sensor systems from any kind of illegal or unauthorised use," says Borkowski. "But it is indeed a balancing act. People are right to be asking such questions." •

Artif i c i a l l eaves cou l d be futu re so u rce of energy HIDDEN detail i n the natural world

hydrochloric acid, allowing them to

could hold the key to future sources

replace magnesium atoms - which

of clean energy. So say materials

form a crucial part of plants'

scientists who have created an

photosynthetic machinery - with

artificial leaf that can harness light

titanium (see illustration).

to split water and generate hydrogen. Plant leaves have evolved over millions of years to catch the energy

Then they dried the leaves and heated them to 500 °C to burn away most of the remaining plant material.

in the sun's rays very efficiently.

This left a crystallised titanium

They use the energy to produce food,

dioxide framework plus many of the

and the central step in the process

leaves' natural structures. Titanium

involves splitting water molecules

dioxide is commonly used in solar

and creating hydrogen ions. By mimicking the machinery plants "Mimicking the machinery use to do this, it is possible to create a miniature hydrogen factory, says Tongxiang Fan of The State Key

pla nts use to captu re sun light can c reate a m i n i hyd rog e n fa ctory"

Laboratory of Metal Matrix Composites at ShanghaiJiao Tong University,

cells to enhance their efficiency, and

China. "Using sunlight to split water

in the leaf it catalyses the splitting

molecules and form hydrogen fuel is

of water molecules.

one of the most promising tactics for kicking our carbon habit," he says. The idea is not new, but until

The leaf retained features such as the lens-like cells at its surface, which catch light coming from any

now researchers have focused

angle, and veins that help guide

on trying to modify or mimic the

light deeper into the leaf. The replicas

molecules directly involved in

also captured very fine detail,

splitting hydrogen. "We'd like to

including structures called thykaloids,

adopt an entirely different concept,

which increase the surface area

to mimic photosynthesis by copying

available for photosynthesis and are

the elaborate architectures of green

just 10 nanometres thick.

leaves," Fan says. Fan and his colleagues used

It is these features which make the artificial leaves so efficient at

several types of leaves as a template,

generating hydrogen, Fan says. The

including the grape-leaved anemone

team immersed the artificial leaves

(Anemone viti/olia). First, they

in a solution containing 20 per cent

treated the leaves with dilute

methanol - which acts as a catalyst and zapped them with near­

Plant

power

Harn essi n g a p l ant's photosynthetic

ultraviolet visible Iight. Compared with a commercially available form

mach i ne ry cou l d l ea d to a n efficient

of titanium dioxide called P25 that

way of p ro d u c i n g hyd rog e n

can be used to create hydrogen, the

Leaves a r e treated w i t h d i l ute acid to rep l ace the magnesi um

artificial leaves absorbed more than twice as much light, and gave off more

i n c h l o rophyl l's porphyrin ring

than three times as much hydrogen,

with hydrogen

Fan reports (Advanced Materials,

The leaves are treated with tita n i u m tri c h l o ride, which re places hydrogen with tita n i u m Rem a i n i n g pl ant mate ri a l i s

001: 10.1002/adma.200902039). The work is a "good beginning", says Chinnakonda Gopinath of the National Chemical Laboratory in

burned away, leaving a

Pune, India. "Complex structures

crysta ll ised tita n i u m d i oxide

found in leaves should be utilised

scaffold that preserves much of the leaves' natural structure

further for enhancement in light harvesting." Mason In man .

9 January 2010 1NewScientist 121

TECHNOLOGY

M i crosoft rea dy to make games co ntro l l ers obsolete A LONG-lived videogaming skill could be on the way out this year as Microsoft hones an add-on to its Xbox 360 console aimed at making button-studded games controllers obsolete. The device, called Natal after the city in northern Brazil, allows players to control a game using only their body movements and voice. Microsoft unveiled Natal in June 2009 at the E3 games industry expo in Los Angeles, but revealed little about how it works. Now the company has allowed New Scientist access to the device and its creators to discover more details. A player standing anywhere between 0.8 and 4 metres from Natal is illuminated with infrared light. A monochrome video camera records how much of that light they reflect, using the brightness of the signal to approximate their distance from the device and capture their movements in 3D. This means Natal doesn't require users to wear markers on their body - unlike the technology used by movie studios to animate CGI figures. Motion capture normally requires massive processing power, and paring down the

software to run on an everyday games console was a serious challenge, says Natal's lead developer, Alex Kipman. "Natal has to work on the existing hardware without taking too much hardware processing away from the games developers." Microsoft collected "terabytes" of data of people in poses likely to crop up during game play, both in motion capture studios and their own homes. Frames from the home videos were manually labelled to identify key body parts, and the data was then fed into "expert system" software running on a powerful cluster of computers. The result was a 50-megabyte software package that can recognise 31 different "We t h i n k i n p ut using existing contro l lers is a barrier. All you need to play is l ife experien ce"

body parts in any video frame. "When we train this 'brain' we are telling it: this is the head, this is the shoulder. And we're doing that over millions of frames," says Kipman. "When it sees a new image it can tell you the probability it's

seeing a certain body part based on that historical information." Natal also includes software that has a basic understanding of human anatomy. Using its knowledge that, for example, hands are connected to arms, which are attached to shoulders, it can refine its guesses about body pose to recognise where body parts are even when they are hidden from Natal's camera. "It correctly positions your hand even if it's held behind your back," Kipman says. "It knows the hand can only be in one place." That's important because during multiplayer games there won't always be a clear

Race to enter the third dimension Microsoft is not alone in trying to

its PlayStation in which players will

There is a video of BiDi in action at

add depth to the way we interact

wave a coloured wand that will be

newscientist.com/article/dn18286.

with computers. In November, Sony

tracked by a camera.

and Swiss firm Atracsys launched a

At the Massachusetts Institute of

While Microsoft's and Sony's systems are designed for

system called ICU that uses stereo

Technology, a team has modified a

applications in which people stand

cameras to track a person's

standard LCD panel to sense both

at a distance from a screen, BiDi

movements in 3D. "We cannot at

touch and 3D gestures. Their prototype

team member Douglas Lanman

present detect 'finger signs' but we

BiDi - short for "bidirectional" - was

at Brown University in Providence,

can detect the raw position of your

unveiled in December. It is made by

Rhode Island, points out that some

arms or legs," says Gaetan Marti, CEO

building cameras into the panel,

3D interactions take place in a more

of Atracsys. ICU will be used initially

which look out at the user between

restricted environment. Approaches

in interactive advertising displays,

frames and capture their movements.

like that used in BiDi are more

rather than the more demanding home entertainment market. Sony is also planning a system for

22 1 NewScientist 19 January 2010

A user can move objects both

suitable to gesturing on the go: they

by touching the screen and by using

could, for example, allow mobile

sweeping oft-screen gestures.

gaming on an iPhone-style device.

view of both players at all times. He says Natal consumes just 10 to 15 per cent of the Xbox's computing resources and it can recognise any pose in just 10 milliseconds. It needs only 160 milliseconds to latch on to the body shape of a new user stepping in front of it. The system locates body parts to within a 4-centimetre cube, says Kipman. That's far less precise than lab-based systems or the millimetre precision of Hollywood motion capture. But Douglas Lanman, who works on markerless 3D interaction at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and is not involved with Natal, says that this will likely be accurate enough for garners. Lanman is watching closely to see what kind of games Natal makes possible, and how they are received. "Will users find them as compelling as they found the Wii games? Is it important to have physical buttons? We'll know soon." Those kind of questions, and a desire to move away from the controller-focused interaction that has dominated for decades, are central to Natal, Kipman says. "We think input using existing controllers is the barrier, and by erasing that we can realistically say: all you need to play is life experience." Colin Barras.

E ve ry m o n t h O Ve r 3 m i l / io n p e op l e * v i s it WW w. N

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m fo r th e en c e a n d te c h n o lo gy n e ws, re v i e ws , d e ve l o p m e n ts a n d op i n io n s . W hy d o n 't yo u j o i n th e m ? Vis it la tes t s c i

WWW. Ne wS

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c ie n tis t. co 09)

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tO d ay.

OPINION

Science heads east The coming decade will see China overtake the US as the world's research superpower, What does that mean for science, asks Jonathan Adams

SINCE its economic reform began in 1978, China has gone from being a poor developing country to the second-largest economy in the world. China has also emerged from isolation to become a political superpower. Its meteoric rise has been one of the most important global changes of recent years: the rise of China was the most-read news story of the decade, surpassing even 9/11 and the Iraq war. Yet when it comes to science and technology, most people still think of China as being stuck in the past and only visualise a country with massive steelworks and vast smoking factories. That may have been true a few years ago, but it is no longer the case. Very quietly, China has become the world's second­ largest producer of scientific knowledge, surpassed only by the US, a status it has achieved at an awe-inspiring rate. If it continues on its current trajectory China will overtake the US before 2020 and the world will look very different as a result. The historical scientific dominance of North America and Europe will have to adjust to a new world order. In the west, we are largely familiar with research systems in which money, people and output stay roughly the same from year to year. Research spending in Europe and North America has outpaced economic growth since 1945, but not by a dramatic amount. Not so with China. Data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development shows that between 1995 and 24 1 NewScientist 1 9 January 2010

f.

(

( (

2006, China's gross expenditure on R&D (GERD) grew at an annual rate of 18 per cent. China now ranks third on GERD, just behind the US and Japan and ahead of any individual European Union state. Universities have experienced similar growth. China's student population has reportedly reached 25 million, up from just 5 million nine years ago. China now has 1700 higher education institutions, around 100 of which make up the "Project 211" group. These elite institutions train four­ fifths of PhD students, two-thirds of graduate students and one­ third of undergraduates. They are home to 96 per cent of the country's key laboratories

powerhouses of Japan, Germany and the UK. Last year it exceeded 120,000 articles, second only to the US's 350,000. Compare that rate of growth with the US, where research output increased by about 30 per cent over the past decade, and it is clear that normal ideas about science management simply do not apply to China. China is also diversifying ") r its research base. A traditional industrial economy would focus its research on physical sciences , " and engineering, and our findings confirm that this is where China has been concentrating. But it is also rapidly shifting out of the old economy into new areas. China produces 10 per cent of the world's publications in engineering, computer sciences and earth sciences, including minerals. It now also produces 20 per cent of global output in materials sciences, with a leading and consume 70 per cent of position in composites, ceramics scientific research funding. and polymer science and a strong What impact has this had? presence in crystallography I recently authored a report and metallurgical engineering. analysing China's research The implications for future strengths and its patterns of industrial development are international collaboration. enormous, as China makes the The data was drawn from transition from a manufacturing Thomson Reuters, which indexes economy to a knowledge economy scientific papers from around based on research coming out of 10,500 journals worldwide. its own institutions. In 1998, China's research output Agricultural research is also was around 20,000 articles per expanding as China takes a year. In 2006 it reached 83,000, scientific approach to its vast overtaking the traditional science food demand and supply. Its relatively small share of "Ch ina's stu d ent popu lation molecular biology and related has rea ched 25 m i l l ion, areas - around 5 per cent - has u p from just 5 m i l l ion suddenly become an investment focus too. If growth in biomedical nine years ago"

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

sciences is as rapid and substantial as it has been elsewhere then China's impact on gene and protein research will be profound. An obvious word of warning needs to be made here: quantity is not the same as quality. Measuring the volume of China's scientific output is clearly both valuable and surprising but it doesn't tell us whether that research was any good. For that we turn to a useful proxy: China's scientific collaboration with other countries better known for the high quality of their science. The results here, too, are eye-opening. China is not doing science behind closed doors; its international collaborations are growing. Nearly 9 per cent of papers originating from Chinese institutions have a US-based co-author. Japanese and British co-authorship is also growing. Collaboration with South Korea and Singapore almost trebled between 2004 and 2008 and collaboration with Australia expanded too - signs, perhaps, of an emerging Asia­ Pacific regional network. So what does this all mean? Firstly, China's emergence as a scientific superpower can no longer be denied, and it is a question of when rather than if it will become the world's most prolific producer of scientific knowledge. Perhaps more importantly, China's expanding regional collaborations show that Asia-Pacific nations no longer rely on links to the European and American institutions that have traditionally led the science world. The question for the EU and the US as we enter the new decade is no longer about whether we should collaborate with China, but what we can bring to the table to ensure that China wants to collaborate with us .• Jonathan Adams is director of research

evaluation at Thomson Reuters in London, He is co-author of Global Research Report: Chino

One minute with ...

Fra n k D ra ke The founder of Proj ect Ozma kick-started the search for intelligent extraterrestrial life just 50 years ago

What gave you the inspiration to set up Project Ozma?

In 1957 1 was studying the Pleiades sta r cluster at Harvard Un ive rsity's radio obse rvatory, On one occasion we saw an added feature in the data, It turned out to be an amateur radio enthusiast near the observatory, but at the time I thought we had detected clea r evidence of another civi lisation, You feel a very strong emotion that you never feel otherwise, It's a combi nation of elation and excitement and the sense that everything we know is going to change, How optimistic were you when it all began?

In 1960, when Ozma started, every sta r in the sky could have been radiati ng signals, for all we knew, There was a cha nce we'd succeed al most immed iately. But we knew so little of the u n iverse that one could not seriously speculate,

PROFILE

Frank Drake is director of the Ca rl Sagan Center at the SETl lnstitute in Ca l ifornia, He fou nded Project Ozma, a search for intel ligent radio signa ls from Tau Ceti and Epsilon Erida n i

You kept Project Ozma secret: was that because your peers would be sceptical?

Back in 1960 it was ta boo to thi n k about extrate rrestrial life; it was something done by bad scie ntists, H owever, we were fearless, We did not feel we should be emba rrassed in any way.

o n e more signal t o that cacophony would be frosting on the cake, T here is also an argument that broadcasting could elicit an invasion.

Fifty years on, do you think we should have heard something?

Over the years, I've gotten more real istic. The equation I devised [the Drake equation] says that we're going to have to look at 10 million stars before we fi nd one that might host l ife, Even then there's no guarantee they're transmitting, or on the freq uency we're looking at. We've done a lot of searching to date but it doesn't add up to 10 m i l l ion stars, In a way what we've been doing until now is buyi ng a ticket in the lotte ry, There's no reason to think we should have succeeded yet. Should we start broadcasting in a coordinated way?

Frankly, no, A civi lisation not much more advanced than ours could build a telescope that could detect the signals we already transmit such as television, Fo r us to spend our resou rces add ing

Yes, and if that happens it might be my fault! Back in 1974 1 broadcast a signal from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, which is still the strongest signa l ever sent. That stimu lated a major outburst from the Astronomer Royal at the ti me, He was very co ncerned, What do you think an alien would look like?

Our physiology and morphology are certa inly not u nique, Humans are basically a good design: it's good to stand u pright because it frees our hands to ma nipu late tools, for instance, It's best to have the head on top, so you can see prey. Our two arms are arguably not opti mum, however, as anyone who has tried to carry groce ries from their ca r to their house will find! So my hypothetica l E T looks a lot l i ke us but h a s four arms, Then again, who knows what evo lution will lead to elsewhere? Interview by Richard Fisher

9 January 2010 1 NewScientist 1 25

OPINION LETTERS device until hours after the P 5). This begs the question of the source of human morality. You apparent drinking (when the From Stephen Wilson say that "we have no need for wearer moves into range of the Kate Douglas's article on same-sex fallacious arguments to support modem in their home), which coupling in nature (5 December, basic human rights", but what may be too late for a regular would be a non-fallacious blood-alcohol concentration test. p 49) touches on such behaviour in humans, but omits a possibility argument for basic human rights? To clarify, my suggestion was that relates to the species and not Although we could agree on that a person who claims to have the individual. a code of behaviour that would been wrongly accused of drinking produce more benefits to people should be allowed to pay for a $25 In order to replenish a human population in times of disease than harm, that would not tell us urine test for measurement of an or disaster, it is important what is right and wrong. We could alcohol biomarker, such as ethyl J that human sexual desire is logically tell someone to obey the glucuronide, or a blood test for code or be punished, but we could phosphatidyl ethanol. These collectively always "on". However, such mating behaviour is not collective adjustment in the not logically say, "you ought markers can still be measured for desirable at all times. I posit that to obey the code", because there 36 to 72 hours after blood-alcohol frequency of breeding in accordance with ecological is no justification for such a content has gone to zero. the astonishing number of ways AMS, the manufacturer of for sexual release to be achieved pressure and resource availability. statement. Any claim that our by the human body, where there This leads to better control over code of conduct is also a code of SCRAM, could facilitate the is no possibility of conception, population size, but also means morality is just another assertion. collection, freezing and shipping suggests that we have evolved a of specimens to a certified that sexual preferences and If we encountered intelligent bonds will be formed by some social survival strategy that will aliens with a different moral code laboratory. In my view, without members of any population result in some same-sex pairing. we would have to accept their a confirmatory test, the There is a wide variety of where conception can never take code as having equal status to interpretive algorithm has methods of stimulation, whether place. This is not a disadvantage our own: asserting that our code too much authority. AMS is a with a partner or without, and to the larger group, so long as is superior would involve making responsible company with a good irrelevant of that partner's gender. there are enough people who a claim of universal morality. product, but the SCRAM algorithm For example, the fact that the desire heterosexual sex. What is it about human beings can be very good without being that makes us want to say things foolproof because it is based on external clitoris is connected to a London, UK mass of erectile tissue within the like, "you ought to be good", or probability and patterns. From John Hastings body adds to the argument that "people ought to be unselfish" ? Calverton, Maryland, US sexual release without conception In your editorial you rightly state Whence comes the conviction that we are indeed tapping into has evolved for good reason. Why that we "cannot draw inferences some sort of universal code of otherwise would we grow so much about what is right from what Memory fades tissue for an unimportant issue? behaviour, that there really are happens in nature. Penguin behaviour tells you nothing about "basic human rights"? This strategy, evolved by the From Bryn Glover I was disturbed to read in Joerg human species, allows for human morality" (5 December, Whittlesey, Cambridgeshire, UK Heber's article on computer supermemories that a chip is defined as "stable" if it does Alcohol test not degrade for at least a decade Enigma N u m ber 1577 (5 December, p 40). A decade seems From Paul Marques Jim Giles's summary of the issues a disastrously short time. What Happy New Year surrounding the detection of possible use is that for one's entire RICHARD ENGLAND drinking using the SCRAM skin­ collection of family photographs monitoring anklet refers to our I have written down three 3-digit numbers which between them study of the accuracy of these use nine different digits, One of the numbers is a perfect sq uare and devices (5 December, p 44). another is a triangular number, The sum of the three numbers is 2010, Giles quotes my suggestion What, in ascending order, are the three numbers? that a person detected as having consumed alcohol be notified WIN £15 will be awarded to the sender of the first correct answer opened on Wednesday 10 February. The Ed itor's decision is promptly so he or she could have an independent alcohol final. Please send entries to Enigma 1577, New Scientist, Laco n House, biomarker test if they want to 84 Theobald's Roa d, London WClX 8 NS, o r to [email protected] dispute the SCRAM evidence. (please i nclude your posta l address), Answer to 1571 Just la dders: The starts and fin ishes of all the ladders The article then casts doubt on this idea by suggesting that the are 4-79, 9-53, 16-97, 25-89, 36-73, 49-71 and 64-83 positive detection might not be The winner Del phine Dobler of Steve nage, Hertfordshire, U K transmitted to the makers of the

Same-sex relations

26 1 NewScientist 1 9 January 2010

��--....

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

or II every book we would ever want to read or refer to", as he suggests is possible in the rest of the article? Carved stone will last forever. Ink on paper may last for millennia. Silver deposited in cellulose has proven itself over a century. If we switch wholesale to faster and more compact ways of storing information, then we will also continue to need to store that same information on long­ term back-up. It's an appealing idea that all my family's photographs may be held on a piece of plastic no bigger than my little finger, but if it means that we will be able to enjoy them until only 2020, then I'll be relying on printed copies for some time to come. Cracoe, North Yorkshire, UK

interesting, but also depressing. We should not need to pay attention to such things, and the vast majority of us will not. Urging individuals to act towards the collective good is a waste of time. People are simply too selfish or ignorant for that to be effective. The free market works; all we need to do is harness its power. We need strong price signals to be sent via a carbon tax. That would result in the targets of Reay's article - from coffee to laundry ­ becoming more expensive. People would then adjust their behaviour accordingly. Montreal, Quebec, Canada

notion of quantum psychology (Feedback, 28 November). Before becoming editor of The Psychologist, I spent a few weeks on a placement in the New Scientist offices, and I will always remember being told that you experienced a spike in sales each time the word IIquantum" appeared on the cover. I've realised I missed probably

From Andrew Jonkers Based on New Scientist articles, I fully expect airline costing to shift to lIequivalent coffee cups per passenger-kilometre" as the new measure of carbon efficiency. Carbon solutions Dave S. Reay's article tells me that a flight from Rome to London my only opportunity to put this From Richard Platt In his article IIlnconspicuous to the test in another publication. is equivalent to one year of a consumption", David S. Reay The situation made me wonder six-cup-a-day coffee habit. By suggests that IIwe can each be if there are any words that you my calculations, London to New feel have been responsible for part of the solution" to climate York is a 24-cup-a-day habit. But change if we drink fewer lattes, an actual drop in sales? in Jim Giles's special report wash our clothes less often, and IIA low-carbon future" (5 December, Birstall, Leicester, UK buy different lavatory paper p 8), I am assured my bad carbon The editor writes: (28 November, p 43). This is habits can be solved by, among dangerous tokenism. While it is other things, a 1 per cent increase • The only word we can think of true that making small sacrifices in food prices. So, assuming a is IIpotato", though our sample can cut carbon emissions, the generous £2 per cup, fixing my size for that is limited to one. problem is much bigger. carbon woes for my 24-cuP habit The unpalatable reality is that will cost me 48 pence per day, or to reduce our energy use far £175 over the year. By the magic Plane cemetary of coffee-cup equivalence, £175 enough and fast enough to make a difference, everyone in the should also assuage my guilt over From John Relph developed world needs to make that London to New York flight. I have just read Feedback's note about the strange and wonderful large, rapid and uncomfortable Why, then, does a London to cuts in their standard of living. New York flight in the low-carbon residents of the fictional island No politician will ever be elected future described in Giles's special of liZero Zero" - where the prime with a manifesto of banning most report cost £490 more than it meridian and the equator long-haul flights, car journeys does today? Think I'll stick with intersect (Feedback, 28 October). and out-of-season food, so the the coffee for now. I used to be an airline ground only energy-saving measures Bellbowrie, Queensland, Australia mechanic at London's Heathrow they mention in their speeches airport. When 747 jumbos were introduced in 1970 I heard Zero are at worst mildly inconvenient. Zero jokingly referred to by flight Tunbridge Wells, Kent, UK Quantum cover crews as the IIjumbo graveyard". From Ben Haller From Jon Sutton The navigation system in these planes used magnetic core Dave S. Reay's assessment of I was interested to see your lesser-known ways we can reduce coverage of Jonathan Rowles's memory and capacity was very limited, so flight crews had to load our carbon footprints was letter to The Psychologist on the

new waypoints during flight. Once in a while they inadvertently loaded and activated all the zeros as a waypoint and were thereafter alarmed when they headed off in an unexpected direction. Fortunately, the problem was easily corrected once checks had been performed and, like the elephants' graveyard, this jumbo graveyard remained mythical ­ no one ever ended up there. The real jumbo graveyards are of course in the south-west US, where planes are retired during economic downturns, awaiting their fate as sources of metal when the recovery comes. Teddington, Middlesex, UK

Self-heating roads From W. Ray Paul Marks's article on electrically heated roads (28 November, p 26) reminded me of an article published in your excellent magazine about an electricity­ generating road developed by the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa (10 December, p 25). Would it be possible to combine the two ideas to produce a totally self­ sufficient heated road? Liverpool, UK

For the record • The Solar Impulse was not, as we

stated, the first crewed solar aircraft to take off under its own power, rather it was the first to do so while carrying enough batteries to fly through the night on stored solar energy (5 December, p 21).

Letters shou Id be sent to: Letters to the Edito r, New Scientist, 84 Theobald's Road, London WClX 8NS Fax: +44 (0) 20 7611 1280 Email: [email protected] Include your full postal address and telephone num ber, and a reference (issue, page n u m ber, title) to articles, We reserve the right to 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.

9 January 2010 1NewScientist 127

OPINION THE BIG IDEA

Consciousnesst not yet expla i ned We won't crack that mystery any time soon, argues

Ray Tallis, because physical science can only do its

wor k by discarding the contents of consciousness

MOST neuroscientists, philosophers of the mind and science journalists feel the time is near when we will be able to explain the mystery of human consciousness in terms of the activity of the brain. There is, however, a vocal minority of neurosceptics who contest this orthodoxy. Among them are those who focus on claims neuroscience makes about the preciseness of correlations between indirectly observed neural activity and different mental functions, states or experiences. This was well captured in a 2009 article in Perspectives on Psycholog ical Science by Harold Pashler from the University of California, San Diego, and colleagues, that argued: '�.. these correlations are higher than should be expected given the (evidently limited) reliability of both fMRI and personality measures. The high correlations are all the more puzzling because method sections rarely contain much detail about how the correlations were obtained." Believers will counter that this is irrelevant: as our means of capturing and analysing neural activity become more powerful, so we will be able to make more precise correlations between the quantity, pattern and location of neural activity and aspects of consciousness. This may well happen, but my argument is not about technical, probably temporary, limitations. It is about the deep philosophical confusion embedded in the assumption that if PROFILE

Ray Tallis trai ned as a doctor, u lti mately becoming professor of geriatric med icine at the Un iversity of Ma nchester, UK, where he oversaw a major neuroscience project. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Medica l Sciences and a writer on areas ra nging from co nsciousness to medical ethics

28 1 NewScientist 1 9 January 2010

you can correlate neural activity with consciousness, then you have demonstrated they are one and the same thing, and that a physical science such as neurophysiology is able to show what consciousness truly is. Many neurosceptics have argued that neural activity is nothing like experience, and that the least one might expect if A and B are the same is that they be indistinguishable from each other. Countering that objection by claiming that, say, activity in the occipital cortex and the sensation of light are two aspects of the same thing does not hold up because the existence of "aspects" depends on the prior existence of consciousness and cannot be used to explain the relationship between neural activity and consciousness. This disposes of the famous claim by John Searle, Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley: that neural activity and conscious experience stand in the same relationship as molecules of Hza to water, with its properties of wetness, coldness, shininess and so on. The analogy fails as the level at which water can be seen as molecules, on the one hand, and as wet, shiny, cold stuff on the other, are intended to correspond to different "levels" at which we are conscious of it. But the existence of levels of experience or of description presupposes consciousness. Water does not intrinsically have these levels. We cannot therefore conclude that when we see what seem to be neural correlates of consciousness that we are seeing consciousness itself. While neural activity of a certain kind is a necessary condition for every manifestation of consciousness, from the lightest sensation to the most exquisitely constructed sense of self, it is neither a sufficient condition of it, nor, still less, is it identical with it. If it were identical, then we

Consciousness in action? It is tempting to think that's what is going on - but wrong

would be left with the insuperable problem of explaining how intracranial nerve impulses, which are material events, could "reach out" to extracranial objects in order to be "of" or "about" them. Straightforward physical causation explains how light from an object brings about events in the occipital cortex. No such explanation is available as to how those neural events are " about" the physical object.

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Biophysical science explains how the light gets in but not how the gaze looks out. Many features of ordinary consciousness also resist neurological explanation. Take the unity of consciousness. I can relate things I experience at a given time (the pressure of the seat on my bottom, the sound of traffic, my thoughts) to one another as elements of a single moment. Researchers have attempted to explain this unity, invoking quantum coherence (the cytoskeletal micro-tubules of Stuart Hameroff at the University of Arizona,

and Roger Penrose at the University of Oxford), electromagnetic fields (Johnjoe McFadden, University of Surrey), or rhythmic discharges in the brain (the late Francis Crick). These fail because they assume that an objective unity or uniformity of nerve impulses would be subjectively available, which, of course, it won't be. Even less would this explain the unification of entities that are, at the same time, experienced as distinct. My sensory field is a many-layered whole that also maintains its mUltiplicity. There is nothing in the convergence or coherence of neural pathways that gives us this "merging without mushing", this ability to see things as both whole and separate. And there is an insuperable problem with a sense of past and future. Take memory. It is typically seen as being "stored" as the effects of experience which leave enduring changes in, for example, the properties of synapses and consequently in circuitry in the nervous system. But when I "remember", I explicitly reach out of the present to something that is explicitly past. A synapse, being a physical structure, does not have anything other than its present state. It does not, as you and I do, reach temporally upstream from the effects of experience to the experience that brought about the effects. In other words, the sense of the past cannot exist in a physical system. This is consistent with the fact that the physics of time does not allow for tenses: Einstein called the distinction between past, present and future a "stubbornly persistent illusion". There are also problems with notions of the self, with the initiation of action, and with free will. Some neurophilosophers deal with these by denying their existence, but an account of consciousness that cannot find a basis for voluntary activity or the sense of self should conclude not that these things are unreal but that neuroscience provides at the very least an incomplete explanation of consciousness. I believe there is a fundamental, but not obvious, reason why that explanation will always remain incomplete - or unrealisable. This concerns the disjunction between the objects of science and the contents of consciousness. Science begins when we escape our subjective, first-person experiences into objective measurement, and reach towards a vantage point the philosopher Thomas Nagel called "the view from nowhere". You think the table over there is large, I may think it is small. We measure it and find that it is 0.66 metres square. We now characterise the table in a way that is less beholden to personal experience. Thus measurement takes us further from

experience and the phenomena of subjective consciousness to a realm where things are described in abstract but quantitative terms. To do its work, physical science has to discard "secondary qualities", such as colour, warmth or cold, taste - in short, the basic contents of consciousness. For the physicist then, light is not in itself bright or colourful, it is a mixture of vibrations in an electromagnetic field of different frequencies. The material world, far from being the noisy, colourful, smelly place we live in, is colourless, silent, full of odourless molecules, atoms, particles, whose nature and behaviour is best described mathematically. In short, physical science is about the marginalisation, or even the disappearance, of phenomenal appearance/qualia, the redness of red wine or the smell of a smelly dog. Consciousness, on the other hand, is all about phenomenal appearances/qualia. As

"Science begins when we escape our first-person subjective experience" science moves from appearances/qualia and toward quantities that do not themselves have the kinds of manifestation that make up our experiences, an account of consciousness in terms of nerve impulses must be a contradiction in terms. There is nothing in physical science that can explain why a physical object such as a brain should ascribe appearances/qualia to material objects that do not intrinsically have them. Material objects require consciousness in order to "appear". Then their " appearings" will depend on the viewpoint of the conscious observer. This must not be taken to imply that there are no constraints on the appearance of objects once they are objects of consciousness. Our failure to explain consciousness in terms of neural activity inside the brain inside the skull is not due to technical limitations which can be overcome. It is due to the self­ contradictory nature of the task, of which the failure to explain "aboutness", the unity and multiplicity of our awareness, the explicit presence of the past, the initiation of actions, the construction of self are just symptoms. We cannot explain "appearings" using an objective approach that has set aside appearings as unreal and which seeks a reality in mass/energy that neither appears in itself nor has the means to make other items appear. The brain, seen as a physical object, no more has a world of things appearing to it than does any other physical object. • 9 January 2010 1 NewScie ntist 1 29

"It's eve n poss i b l e fo r a si n g l e q u asa r to tri g g e r the fo rmati on of n ot j u st o n e, b ut m a ny g a l axies"

this indicates that the quasar jet actually gave birth to the galaxy," he says. This is a radical shift from the standard view of galaxy formation, in which galaxies came first and supermassive black holes follow (see diagram, right). Elbaz and his colleagues think the opposite is true: supermassive black holes trigger galaxy formation. In the case of HE0450-2958, they think it started off as a supermassive black hole that Naked quasar sucked in gas from intergalactic space until Yet nearby galaxies all seem to follow an it became a quasar. It kept growing until a elegant but unexplained relationship: all critical moment about 200 million years seem to have central bulges of stars about ago when its jets switched on. One of the jets 700 times as massive as the black holes at their slammed into a gas cloud 23,000 light years hearts. This relationship between galaxies and away, sending shock waves through the gas. supermassive black holes suggests that the This triggered star formation, resulting in growth of one influenced the other. Further the galaxy we now see. evidence of a link comes from the fact that star The team knew how controversial their formation and quasar activity both peaked idea would be. So before they announced around the same time, 8 to 10 billion years ago. their theory, they checked there was no So how could something so small affect a other explanation for the association between galaxy? Elbaz and his colleagues knew one way the quasar and the galaxy that its jet points towards. First they considered the idea that a supermassive black hole could punch above its weight: when it squirts out matter in two HE0450-2958 had been kicked out of the oppositely directed, thread-like jets. This is galaxy. Simulations have shown that when because the jets of matter can travel within a two galaxies merge, their central black holes whisker of the speed of light for the first few can ricochet off each other, with one ejected light years, allowing them to break out of the into intergalactic space. surrounding galaxy and travel millions of However, Elbaz points out that it would be light years into intergalactic space. To find out more about the influence of these jets, Elbaz's team began studying an SU PERMASSIVE unusual quasar called HE0450-2958 and BLACK HOLE BASICS its jets. Located 5 billion light years away, HE0450-2958 is the only known "naked Every galaxy is thought to harbour a quasar" - a supermassive black hole without supermassive black hole, ranging from a surrounding galaxy (Nature, vol 437, p 381). millions to many billions of times the mass of the sun. The black hole sucks Some astronomers have speculated that HE0450-2958 does have a surrounding galaxy, in gas to form a swirling disc of hot but that it is hidden from view by large amounts matter around it. How bright the core of a galaxy shines depends on the of dust. As dust glows at infrared wavelengths, amount of gas it contains. Galaxies Elbaz's team used the infrared instruments on the Very Large Telescope in Chile to investigate. like the Milky Way appear dormant That's when they made a startling discovery. because their diet is gas poor. In very As they looked more closely, they noticed active galaxies, the amount of gas is so vast that the core outshines the stars that the quasar's jets stabbed like a laser in the galaxy. Quasars are the most beam into a galaxy 23,000 light years away. extreme examples of active galaxies, That galaxy is rich in bright, young stars and in which the galactic core can produce is forming them at a rate equivalent to 350 suns per year, a hundred times more up to 100 times more light than the than you would expect for galaxies in that rest of its galaxy - from a volume not area. Elbaz reckons this frantic pace of star much bigger than the solar system. formation is no coincidence. "We think parent galaxies. Despite their name, supermassive black holes are very compact objects so you wouldn't expect one to hold much sway over its parent galaxy. Take the Milky Way, for example. We know it is a dense disc of stars and gas 150,000 light years wide, whereas the black hole lurking at its heart would fit inside the orbit of Mercury.

32 1 N ewScientist 1 9 January 2010

an odd coincidence if the quasar was ejected in the same direction as one of its jets. What's more, to escape a galaxy as big as the one in question - which is about the mass of our Milky Way - it would have to be kicked out at about 500 kilometres per second. Not only is there no evidence of a galaxy merger within the past few hundred million years, but the velocity of the quasar is only about 200 kilometres per second, making it too slow to be a galactic escapee. In fact, the slow speed of the quasar means that, over time, it will fall into the galaxy it apparently created. "Rather than the supermassive black hole growing in the centre of a galaxy after the galaxy has formed, a supermassive black hole creates a galaxy from outside, then later takes its place at the heart of the galaxy," says Elbaz. Astrophysicist Joseph Silk of the University of Oxford is impressed with the work. "It's definitely a new and important advance," he says. Others agree. "HE0450-2958 certainly fits the scenario for quasar-induced galaxy formation and that's what makes it so exciting," says Kevin Schawinski of Yale University. However, he cautions that it is only one example from recent cosmic history. "The epoch of massive galaxy formation and quasar activity occurs at early times," he says, "so it will be interesting to see if other systems like HE04502958 will be found in the early universe." For others, it's a leap too far. David Merritt at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York state has made detailed studies of HE0450-2958. "Elbaz's team does a good job of showing that the quasar is affecting conditions in the companion galaxy," he says. "However, it is a leap from there to the idea that the quasar is basically responsible for the companion galaxy." Undeterred, Elbaz and his team have already begun looking for other, earlier examples. The beauty of their scenario is that it does not rely on finding more naked quasars like HE04502958. "By virtue of their jets, supermassive black holes have the power to transform gas clouds into galaxies whether they are naked or deep in the heart of a galaxy," he says. He thinks it's even possible for a single quasar to trigger the formation of not just one, but many galaxies. Some quasars have jets that sweep around the heavens like a lighthouse beam - this is thought to happen when another supermassive black hole is in the process of merging with the quasar. As the jets sweep around they could awaken one sleeping gas cloud after another, says Elbaz. That would certainly explain why normal galaxies are often seen clustered near quasars. Astronomers, most notably Halton Arp at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany, and Geoffrey Burbidge of the University of California, San Diego, have claimed that this clustering is evidence that

W h i c h ca m e fi rst, g a l ax i e s o r s u p e rmass ive b l a c k h o l es? Acco rd i n g to o u r stan d a rd view of the u ni verse, ga l ax i es form first. David El baz's tea m s u ggests q uite the oppos ite

GALAXY FIRST

Gas cloud col lapses under gravity. Stars form and ignite as gas compresses

Galaxy forms

Stars end their lives in supernova explosions, leaving behind stellar- m ass black holes

Black holes in dense central star cluster merge, creating a supermassive black hole weighing m i l l ions of solar masses

Depending on the amount of gas it feeds on, the central black hole can unleash jets of matter far into space

The jet compresses the gas and unleashes a burst of star formation

Newly formed ga laxy and black hole drift together

Galaxy left with a supermassive black hole at its centre

B LACK H O LES FIRST

A bright object called a quasar, powered A passing gas cloud is za pped by a supermassive black hole, emitsjets by a jet of matter at ultra-high speeds

galaxies give birth to quasars, then eject them. "We're suggesting the exact opposite," says Elbaz. "It's quasars that give birth to galaxies." One intriguing possibility is that galaxy formation may not even require the presence of a sleeping gas cloud to be brought to life by a quasar jet. That's because such jets can eject up to 100 million solar masses of matter per year and stay switched on for a few hundred million years. This means that, in their lifetime, they may eject enough material to build a large galaxy from scratch.

maximum mass early on in cosmic history. This suggests that there was an epoch preceding galaxy formation when supermassive black holes grew and ruled the universe - the opposite to what the standard view posits. "This supports our idea," he says. Of course, if supermassive black holes did form first and then gave birth to galaxies, the $64,000 question is: where did the supermassive black holes come from? "This is the one missing jigsaw piece," admits Elbaz. While no one knows for sure, there are some ideas on the table. Observations of quasars show that monster black holes weighing Look to the clouds 10 billion solar masses formed within a billion So how can the theory of quasar-induced years of the big bang. For years, various teams galaxy formation be proved? Elbaz says we have been puzzling over how they could have should be looking for objects at an earlier grown into such behemoths so quickly. One idea is that they grew from the much stage of evolution than HE04S0-29S8 and its nearby galaxy, in particular quasars that are smaller black holes which form when a star offset from clouds of cold molecular gas - the reaches the end of its life and collapses. In a stage prior to star formation. superdense cluster of stars, several of these In fact, Elbaz thinks some such systems have black holes might merge to create a huge one already been found. "Astronomers have been that continues to grow by feeding on gas. But puzzled to find quasars offset by clouds of critics of this idea point out that there was carbon monoxide," he says. "In our scenario, simply not enough time in the first billion there is no puzzle. It makes perfect sense." years after the big bang for stellar-mass black Further support for Elbaz's theory comes holes to merge into something big enough. in the form of evidence showing that An alternative idea involves the formation supermassive black holes had reached their of single, supermassive stars, a scenario first

envisaged by the astronomers Fred Hoyle and Willy Fowler in 1963- If a star like this ever formed, it would be so massive that the heat generated by nuclear burning at its core would not be enough to oppose the gravity trying to crush it. The whole thing would collapse at once, creating a supermassive black hole. Mitchell Begelman at the University of Colorado in Boulder has studied this scenario in detail and believes that something even stranger happened (New Scientist, 16 May 2008, p 30). According to his calculations, the seeds of supermassive black holes formed inside the supermassive stars, growing at a faster rate than they could support in the void of space. Eventually, the outer layers of these curious stars explode to reveal the black hole hidden within. To test the idea, we'll have to wait for the next generation of telescopes. Hoyle famously showed that we are all made of stardust. We may soon want to add that we all come from black holes, too.• Marcus (hawn's latest book is We Need to Talk About Kelvin (Faber & Faber, 2009)

Further readi ng: "Quasar induced galaxy formation: a new paradigm?" by David Elbaz, Knud Jahnke, Eric Pantin, Damien Le Borgne and Geraldine Letawe (Astronomy and Astrophysics, vol 507, p 1359) 9 January 2010 1 NewScientist 1 33

If you wa nt to stay hea lthy yo u n eed to stay fit - b ut h ow, a s ks Clare Wi lson

Let's get physical 34 1 NewScientist 1 9 January 2010

D

OES an activity have to get you out of breath to count as exercise? Do you really have to do half-an-hour a day? Is pumping iron a good way to keep your heart healthy? These are just some of the dilemmas many of us face when working out the best way to get fit. The good news is scientists do broadly agree on the best ways to get fit, they just haven't been very good at telling us what they've discovered. "We haven't done a great job of distilling down a large number of studies and say what this means for the average person who's trying to get in shape," acknowledges Simon Marshall, a specialist in exercise and sports psychology at San Diego State University in California. Whether because of a lack of information, or because some of us are just plain lazy, most of us don't do enough exercise. One recent survey in the UK found that only a third of

What cQu nts as exercise? The standard advice is we should aim for 150 minutes a week of moderate-intensity exercise. The tricky question here is what "moderate" means. Gauging the intensity of an activity by measuring how fast it makes your heart beat is old hat. These days, metabolic rate is the preferred measure. It is usually represented in units known as the metabolic equivalent, or MET. This is the metabolic rate during the activity in question divided by the rate when sitting doing nothing. Moderate exercise is defined as anything that clocks up between 3 and 6 METs (see chart, page 36 ). Gauging your metabolic rate precisely requires having your oxygen uptake measured in a lab, but you can just look up the average MET for your chosen activity in

The Compendium of Physical Activities (bit. ly/8BZaUf). It even answers the hoary old question about golf: yes, it does count as exercise, notching up a respectable 4.5 METs if you walk round the course, or 1 MET less if you ride round in a golf buggy. Musicians may be dismayed to learn that playing the flute gets a mere 2 METs, though drummers earn a more respectable 4. Walking gets anywhere from 2 to 12 METs, depending mainly on speed and terrain. Fiona BUll, joint head of the National Centre for Physical Activity and Health at Loughborough University in the UK, says moderate intensity

adults meet the recommended goals for physical activity. Though we all know that exercise is a good thing, only recently was the extent of its influence on our health established. In the early 20th century, heart attacks were growing steadily more common in the west, and they were seen as a sinister new epidemic. It is now thought there are several explanations for this, ranging from a fall in infectious diseases enabling heart attacks to take the lead, to various changes in society that made lifestyles less healthy. A key insight into the importance of lifestyle came from a 1953 study of London bus conductors. At the time, London buses not only had a driver but also a conductor, who sold tickets to passengers after they had boarded and sat down. Most of the buses were double-deckers, so the conductors spent a lot of their day walking up and down the stairs.

The landmark study published in The Lancet (vol 265, p 1053) showed that conductors suffered half as many heart attacks as their driver colleagues. "It was the first hint that this new frightening epidemic could be linked to the way we live," said Jerry Morris, at the time an epidemiologist at the UK's Medical Research Council, who led the study. Since Morris's study, hundreds of other investigations have confirmed the benefits of exercise on the heart and circulation, as well as on almost every other systern of the body. Diseases that are prevented by exercise include stroke, cancer, diabetes, liver and kidney disease, osteoporosis and even brain diseases such as dementia and depression. So how should you go about getting fit? Over the next six pages, we have set out the latest evidence and exploded some myths along the way. Read on, and you can > decide for yourself.

means "walking purposefully". "There should be a slight elevation in your heart rate but you should be able to talk easily," she says. However, people tend to underestimate how fast they have to walk to achieve this. So last year Marshall and his colleagues came up with a way to check your pace without having to think about oxygen uptake or heart rate. They showed that for most people, 3 METs equates to about 100 steps a minute

(American Journal of Preventive Medicine, vol 36, p 410), so all you need to check your performance is a pedometer and a watch. Marshall suggests that you select a walk you often take - to work or to the shops, for example - and use the pedometer to gauge how many steps it takes. From this you can easily calculate your target time. "You can give time-based goals and weave it into your lifestyle," he says.

9 January 2010 1NewScientist 135

What's the best way

H ow m u ch, and how often?

to get fit: one long run, or seve ra l short ones?

Half-an-hour of moderate-intensity exercise at least five days a week used to be the required regime to keep fit. Now the consensus is that exercise doesn't have to be portioned out in daily doses. If you aim for 150 minutes per week you can divide it up however you like. That has to be good news for those of us who find it difficult to fit regular exercise into the daily schedule. So, if you can manage a one-hour hike and an hour of some energetic sport at the weekend, you only have to find time for another half-hour bout during the working week. "There's not compelling evidence that 150 minutes across five days is any better than across three or four," says Simon Marshall of San Diego State University. Another hot question in sports science is what is the shortest period of exercise that is worth dOing. The latest evidence suggests that three lots of 10 minutes, for example, are just as good as one continuous 30-minute bout (Sports Medicine, vo139, p 29). "Ten minutes is as far as the data takes us," says Steve Blair, who helped write the US guidelines on exercise, at the University of South Carolina, Columbia. "If you ask for my wild speculation I think five-minute bouts would be fine too, but we just don't have data yet."

Energy to burn Exercise raises yo ur meta bolie rate, A commo n way of measurin g the ill ensity of

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