Table of contents for February 2018 in BBC Science Focus Magazine

I hate this time of year. While the bright lights of Christmas have faded, the grey days and long nights have blurred into one featureless smudge. Plus, my heating bill is getting worryingly large. I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels this way, so consider this month’s magazine something of a ‘feel good issue’. The magazine’s features have been chosen because we hope they’ll brighten up your February just a little. First up, we’re sharing the science that makes us feel better about the future. On p37 we talk to the scientists working to overcome some of humankind’s biggest challenges – famine, climate change, antibiotic resistance and mass extinction – and find out why their innovative work makes them hopeful about our future. If that doesn’t leave a…

A pair of primate clones bred using somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), the technique used to create Dolly the sheep more than 20 years ago, have been born at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai. The newborns are just several weeks old and have been named Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua after the Chinese adjective ‘zhonghua’, which means Chinese nation or people. They are currently being bottle-fed and are developing normally compared to other monkeys their age. In SCNT, the nucleus is removed from an egg cell and is replaced with a different nucleus from another cell. The egg cell then merges with the implanted nucleus and develops into a clone of whatever it was that donated the nucleus. Previously, in sheep, mice and cows, adult donor cells have…

What did they do? A team of researchers at the University of Tokyo have created Kengoro, a humanoid robot that ‘sweats’ to cool itself down when completing a workout consisting of push-ups, sit-ups and pull-ups. Why did they do that? The robot is designed to have anatomically correct musculoskeletal structures closely resembling those of humans. However, the researchers initially had difficulty in preventing Kengoro’s complex machinery from overheating when performing complex actions. The solution was to punch a network of tiny holes in the robot’s frame and use it to carry water around the various structures. As the robot heats up, the water evaporates, cooling it down in much the same way as sweat cools down humans. What could it be used for? So far, Kengoro can perform around 100…

TEA BOOSTS CREATIVITY Want to get your creative juices flowing? Have a cuppa. A team at Peking University has found that students performed better in creativity tests after drinking a cup of regular black tea. Put a brew on! IT’S MUCH EASIER TO CATCH FLU THAN WE THOUGHT We all know it’s best to steer clear of a friend who is coughing and spluttering in the midst of flu season. However, a team at the University of Maryland has found that infectious particles can be spread simply by breathing. ADOLESCENCE NOW LASTS UNTIL 24 According to research carried out at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, Australia, the recognised age at which adolescence ends should be raised to 24 – up from 19. The study concludes that people are staying…

1 COOL RUNNING Forerunner 645 Music is the latest addition to Garmin’s smartwatch range. It can store up to 500 songs, so runners can listen to music without needing to take their phone out with them. It also does the usual fitness tracking stuff, and there’s Garmin Pay onboard for making contactless payments, too. £400, garmin.com 2 SMART ART The da Vinci 3D Pen Cool is the new model of the company’s 3D-printing pen. Now, the resulting models aren’t as hot to the touch. It’s one of several new 3D-printing products from the company: there’s also the tiny Nano printer and, for business users, the $4,000 full-colour 3D/ inkjet printer AiO. $45 (£33 approx), xyzprinting.com 3 DINKY DRONE Is it a wasp?…

It’s not a good time to be a wild animal or plant. Extinction rates are soaring. Every day, up to 100 species are lost forever, and it’s estimated that around 25,000 species are teetering on the edge of oblivion. We live in a time of mass extinction, and nowhere is safe. In the oceans, it’s thought that 60 per cent of the world’s coral reefs could die over the next 20 years. It’s not all bad news, however. Species can, and have, been rescued from the brink of extinction, and sometimes their saviours can be found in the most unexpected of places, like the bowels of a south London museum. Jamie Craggs, the aquarium curator at the Horniman Museum and Gardens, is brimming with excitement because, very soon, the mini…

At a molecular level, psilocybin works on the serotonin system in the brain. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that sends signals between neighbouring nerve cells. It’s often described as the ‘happy chemical’, but in fact there is a complex and poorly understood relationship between serotonin and mood. Psilocybin sticks to the serotonin 2A receptor – 1 of 14 different types of serotonin receptor found on nerve cells – and appears to induce a state known as plasticity, where systems and pathways in the brain can be reset. A principal system affected by psilocybin is the default mode network, which is involved in higher-level conscious functions including our sense of self (ego) and the story we construct about our identity and place in the world. Depression is characterised by entrenched, intrusive thought…

No matter how good the alternatives to animal testing get, it’s unlikely to be eradicated. “There are certain things you cannot easily test without animals,” says toxicologist Prof Thomas Hartung. This includes studies on psychiatric disorders in which tracking a behavioural change is important, or studies of conditions where regions of a particular organ are affected differently, such as tuberculosis. And even though stem cell technologies are improving fast, they still have some major limitations. Some cell types that are important in disease are difficult to produce, for example. And even linking up human stem cell models representing several organs doesn’t reveal a drug’s response to a living, breathing organism. These systems are simply not well-enough developed for wide-scale use. “In the end, our quest is to give the right…

DR ALASTAIR GUNN Astronomer, astrophysicist ALEX FRANKLINCHEUNG Environment/ climate expert DR PETER J BENTLEY Computer scientist, author PROF ALICE GREGORY Psychologist, sleep expert PROF MARK LORCH Chemist, science writer CHARLOTTE CORNEY Zoo director, conservationist DR HELEN SCALES Oceans expert, science writer DR CHRISTIAN JARRETT Neuroscientist, science writer EMMA DAVIES Heath expert, science writer LUIS VILLAZON Science/tech writer DR AARATHI PRASAD Biologist, geneticist PROF ROBERT MATTHEWS Physicist, science writer Why is air invisible? BRITTNEY W’S GRADE 2 CLASS, VIA TWITTER Air is made up mostly of nitrogen and oxygen molecules that are spread too thinly to affect light noticeably by, say, altering its colour or intensity. Even so, air’s presence is revealed in hot weather through the shimmering effect called ‘heat haze’. This is the result of the heat causing fluctuations…

SUSAN FINKBEINER Butterfly collector, catwalk model and jungle explorer Susan seems to have taken all the good jobs! Read more about her incredible career. p98 ALLA KATSNELSON Alla has been reporting on health and science for over a decade. This issue, she investigates the discoveries that could help leave animal testing in the past. p73 CASSANDRA QUAVE At age three, Cassandra was hospitalised for months after an MRSA infection. We look at her work to create a new way to fight antibiotic-resistant superbugs. p37…

Raisin a drink I commend Michael Mosley’s effort to have a month free of alcohol, as described in his article in the January edition of BBC Focus. I was particularly interested in the small study quoted in the box on p48 in which those drinking the red wine with the alcohol removed appeared to do as well as those drinking the ordinary red wine, suggesting that it was not the alcohol but a constituent of the grapes that was producing the benefit. Grapes, and particularly raisins (dried grapes), have high levels of antioxidants and it would seem this was producing the reduction in blood pressure and C-reactive proteins. Rather than trying to justify the drinking of wine, it would seem better to have raisins rather than crisps and try not…

130 The average sound level, in decibels, of a rooster’s crow. This is equivalent to a jet taking off at a distance of 15 metres. X-ray images have shown that roosters appear to have special flaps in their ears that partially close off the ear canals when they crow, to protect their hearing. 23, 249, 425 The number of digits belonging to the largest prime number ever discovered. It was found on Boxing Day by the Great Internet Messene Prime Search – an international collaboration searching for the largest numbers that are divisible only by themselves and one. 347 The length, in km, of an underwater cave found on the Yucatan Peninsula on the eastern coast of Mexico – the longest ever discovered.…

MICROWAVE COOKS Having a ready meal habit may be just as bad for the environment as it is for your waistline. A study by the University of Manchester has found that the yearly CO2 emissions from just 19 microwaves are comparable to those of a family car. CRIMINALS Bad luck, bad guys! A statistical analysis carried out by psychologists at Johannes Gutenberg in Germany has determined that the so-called ‘CSI effect’, which was once thought to help criminals find out how to conceal their crimes by watching TV crime shows, is a myth.…

“IF YOU BEFRIEND YOUR GUT BACTERIA, COULD YOU HELP YOUR IMMUNE SYSTEM TO THRIVE?” One of the hottest topics in 2017 was the microbiome, and I’m predicting that gut microbes will continue to stir the emotions of scientists and consumers in 2018. For those who are not familiar with the more intimate content of your bowels, the gut microbiome is a term that covers the one to two kilograms of assorted microbes that live in your guts and are essential to your health. There are at least 1,000 different species down there, made up of trillions of different cells. Although that is a big number, in the past it was wildly exaggerated. We are not ‘90 per cent bacteria’ and ‘10 per cent human’, as many books and articles…

Less than 30 per cent of televisions sold worldwide in 2017 featured 4K displays, and 4K broadcasts are still few and far between. But that isn’t stopping manufacturers pushing the next step: 8K. The 8K standard refers to screens with a resolution of 7,680 ◊ 4,320 pixels. That’s four times the pixel count of a 4K screen, or 16 times that of a Full HD (1080p) TV. 8K is the highest resolution available on any current TV set, though 8K models are quite thin on the ground, and likely to remain prohibitively expensive for the foreseeable future. The technology is proving popular with film-makers, though – partly because if you shoot in 8K then crop-and-zoom to 4K, the camera operator needn’t get so close to the subject. Which is handy…

Roaming around southern Italy, picking up interesting plants and having a chat with the locals might sound like a holiday, but ethnobotanist Dr Cassandra Quave assures us it’s not. “You know, it’s not a vacation,” she says. “It’s really hard work.” It’s also vital work – Quave and her team from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, are scouring the Mediterranean for medicines that could help tackle the mounting crisis of antibiotic resistance. In the US and Europe alone, 50,000 people die each year from infections caused by resistant bacteria they picked up during a hospital stay. Without new treatments, global deaths will soon soar into the millions. Quave believes that those treatments can be found in plants. A self-described history of medicine geek, Quave talks to local people about plants…

1 FUNGUS-FARMING ANTS Leafcutter ants keep fungi gardens. They cut leaves to feed to the fungi, which will in turn feed the ants’ larvae. This fungi ‘farming’ attracts lots of unwanted microbes, but the ants combat the bugs with antimicrobials produced by Actinomycetebacteria that grow on their own bodies – a potential source of new drugs being studied at the University of East Anglia. Most antibiotics used today come from the same group of bacteria. 2 CATFISH MUCUS The striped dwarf catfish, found in Asian estuaries, may look unremarkable, but it secretes an antibiotic-filled mucus from its skin. Actually, many fish produce mucus that’s rich in antimicrobials, because it helps protect them from disease. However, Indian researchers found that slime from the catfish was particularly potent against bugs that infect…

We see them almost every day, but there’s a lot we don’t know about clouds. Even to meteorologists, their inner workings are somewhat hazy. And that matters, because clouds play an important role in regulating the planet’s temperature – both reflecting radiation from the Sun and acting like a blanket, keeping the Earth’s heat in. In fact, some clouds are so effective at the reflecting bit that ‘supercharging’ them by making them even brighter and whiter has been suggested as a way to reduce temperatures and fight global warming. It’s an idea that atmospheric scientist Anna Possner is very familiar with. Her research at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, California, will help to answer the question of whether ‘cloud brightening’ might actually work. She’s part of the Marine…

1 SUPERCHARGE THE STRATOSPHERE Instead of making clouds brighter, another idea is to release particles into the atmosphere that can reflect the Sun’s radiation themselves. This year, Harvard professors David Keith and Frank Keutsch, designers of the Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx), plan to launch a high-altitude balloon 20km into the air near Tucson, Arizona, and spray a small quantity of calcium carbonate particles to see what happens. 2 OCEAN SEEDING “Give me half a tanker of iron, and I will give you an ice age,” said the late oceanographer John Martin in 1988. Although he was half joking, Martin stood by his idea of using iron to boost plankton and increase the carbon dioxide taken up from the atmosphere. Since then, several tests have been carried out. A key…

This is the most advanced organ-on-a-chip, designed by Harvard’s Wyss Institute. The chip acts just like a human lung and has already helped scientists test new drugs and look for markers for asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The chip can be seeded with diseased cells from a patient, which retain their ailments when planted in the chip. This allows researchers to find better treatments for a specific patient’s needs. In the diagram below, you can see how Wyss Institute researchers triggered a response to infection in the chip. The lung-on-a-chip is about the size of a memory stick. It is made of clear, rubber material and contains hollow channels Rhythmic suction is applied so the cells contract and relax, to mimic breathing motions 1. Infection is simulated by adding…

Your skin’s most important job is to keep out the billions of harmful bacteria that swarm over every surface. Any wound that penetrates the dermis layer and causes bleeding will allow bacteria to get in, so we have evolved a precisely coordinated mechanism to seal up the gap as quickly as possible. The healing process uses extra collagen protein for the repair, so the new skin is actually stronger than before. This shows as a visible scar. SMALL CUT 1. Haemostasis When the skin is punctured, blood vessels contract and platelets release fibrin proteins that tangle together to form a clot and seal the wound. 2. Inflammation Next the blood vessels expand again to allow white blood cells to flock to the wound site. These attack any bacteria that got…

Why were birds the only dinosaurs to survive the mass extinction? EDWARD SEYMOUR, HOVE The asteroid that caused the extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous period struck Earth with 60,000 times the energy of the world’s entire nuclear arsenal. The atmosphere would have glowed red hot for several hours and all the large dinosaurs that couldn’t burrow underground or hide underwater were immediately roasted. When the smaller species came out of hiding they found a charred landscape and the air so thick with soot and sulphur dioxide clouds that sunlight was almost completely blocked out for the next year. It was too dark for photosynthesis, so the herbivores died, then the carnivores. Birds are descended from the maniraptoran dinosaurs but they had two important adaptations that helped them…

THE MISMEASURE OF MAN BY STEPHEN JAY GOULD (£14.99, W. W. NORTON & COMPANY). “Flawed but readable polemic on everything from IQ tests to how scientists should approach research on intelligence, and if they should do so at all. The updated second edition is considered the classic rebuttal to the book The Bell Curve .” THE BELL CURVE BY RICHARD J HERRNSTEIN AND CHARLES MURRAY (£16.99, SIMON & SCHUSTER). “Controversial analysis of real and claimed group differences in IQ. This is not a recommendation or endorsement, but I felt I should read it to judge for myself. The text is more measured than often claimed but it’s what one can read between the lines that is disturbing.” SWITCHED ON BY JOHN ELDER ROBISON (£9.99, ONEWORLD). “The latest in a series…

A quail laid an egg in space in 1990 p85 Children born by Caesarean section are more likely to develop allergic diseases p24 Part of the Whitechapel fatberg will go on display in the Museum of London this month p95 Scientists can add nanoparticles to plants to make them glow in the dark p20 If the asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs had hit just a few minutes earlier, it’s likely there would be dinosaurs still alive today p62 CONTACT US Advertising neil.lloyd@immediate.co.uk 01173008276 Lettersforpublication reply@sciencefocus.com Editorialenquiries editorialenquiries@sciencefocus.com 01173147388 Subscriptions bbcfocus@buysubscriptions.com 03330162113* Othercontacts sciencefocus.com/contact WANT MORE ? FOLLOW SCIENCEFOCUS FACEBOOK TWITTER PINTEREST GOOGLE+…

Speaking as someone who has been involved in cryptocurrencies for some years, I was pleasantly surprised by your article in the January 2018 issue. Your report was well balanced, kudos. However, there are more ways to become involved without necessarily investing money. While Bitcoin ‘mining’ is now industrial scale and beyond the reach of individuals, there are some cryptocurrencies directly connected with scientific/humanitarian endeavour that average people can use. Gridcoin (gridcoin.science) lets you ‘mine’ Gridcoins by allowing scientists to use your home computer to process data for research projects. Research ranges from cures for childhood cancers, to mapping the Milky Way in 3D, running particle collision data at the LHC and much more. The more research you do, the more Gridcoins you get. FoldingCoin and Curecoin are similar and do…

Why add bionic parts to plants? Plants have a number of properties we don’t encounter in synthetic materials: plants self-repair, they’re easy to recycle, they’re low-cost. But importantly, they harvest energy from the Sun via photosynthesis, then store that energy in the form of sugars and starches. So you can think of a plant as a combination of solar cell and battery. Plant ‘nanobionics’ seeks to work out the ways that you could transform a living plant and use these capabilities. We’re using small nanoparticles that can enter the plant and interact with biochemical pathways to give it new functions. How did you make glowing plants? A light-emitting plant uses three different kinds of nanoparticles. We put them into the plant through pores on the surface of the leaf. The…

After years of hints and speculation, mixed reality start-up Magic Leap (valued at close to $2bn) finally unveiled its first headset at the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. The Magic Leap One system consists of a pair of goggles, a miniaturised, belt-worn PC and a handheld controller. Its creators say the device makes use of lightfield technology, which records a map of how light reaches a camera lens. With this information, the Magic Leap team says it can convincingly mix the virtual with the real. For example, while wearing the specs, animated characters could spring out of your kid’s storybook, or a PC display could load up on your fridge door. There’s still no word as to a commercial release, but developer kits are expected to start…

In the middle of the 20th Century, many parts of the world were on the brink of famine. A growing global population was butting up against the limits of food supply, with disastrous consequences. But the lives of more than a billion people were saved by a ‘Green Revolution’ – the spread of techniques like irrigation, hybridised seeds, and human-made fertilisers and pesticides from industrialised countries to the developing world. Today, we’re facing a similar crisis. “The UN Food and Agriculture Organization says that we’re going to need 70 per cent more food by 2050, and with current rates of crop improvement we’re not going to get there,” says Stephen Long, director of The RIPE Project, which aims to spur a second Green Revolution by engineering crops so that they’re…

1 ZYGO BEETLE In South Africa, farmers have learned to fear the plant Parthenium hysterophorus. It uses natural herbicides to prevent other plants growing near it, causing havoc when it lands in farmers’ fields. But since 2003, the country has been employing the weed’s natural enemy – the Zygo beetle – to reduce its spread. Researchers at Wits University hope the beetle can establish itself throughout problematic regions and curb the weed’s growth. 2 CRISPR/Cas9 Since the discovery of CRISPR/Cas9, a powerful tool for genetic editing, researchers have started figuring out ways to use it to boost crop yields. Geneticists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, for example, have discovered how to restructure wheat genes to make the crops immune to powdery mildew, while researchers at King Abdullah University of…

1 THE FROZEN ZOO At San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research, scientists have created a ‘frozen zoo’ of cells and embryos from endangered and extinct species. As the largest, most diverse collection of its kind, the initiative seeks to preserve the world’s biodiversity in cellular form, and provide material for research and conservation projects. Attempts to rescue the northern white rhino, of which there are just three left, focus on sperm samples stored at the zoo. 2 GENETIC MODIFICATION The endangered black-footed ferret could become the first wild animal to have its DNA deliberately altered. The species suffers from inbreeding and sylvatic plague, which threaten its existence. Scientists from Revive & Restore, a US non-profit organisation pioneering the use of genetics in conservation, want to edit its genome to…

Kirk never got over the death of his mother. When she passed away in 2011 after a long illness, the 47-year-old IT specialist kept himself busy by organising her funeral and dealing with the other administrative tasks that come with a death in the family. But while his father and brother managed to pick themselves up and move on, he struggled to come to terms with the loss. “After the funeral was over there was nothing left to organise or create, and I found myself in a kind of void that just persisted until I was overwhelmed,” he says. “After six months I was still talking about her death, and I wondered whether I should be over it by now. Should I have moved on? Should I be better? But…

1 Dino-monkeys Once flowering plants appeared in the Cretaceous, there was no stopping them. Fruit became abundant during the Cenozoic, so tree-dwelling, primate-like feathered dinosaurs may have evolved to take advantage of the sugary goodness. 2 Burrow dwellers Curiously, few known dinosaurs appear to have used burrows – perhaps given more time, rodent- or mole-like species may have evolved to exploit the subterranean environment. 3 Woolly wonders Many theropod dinosaurs had feathers and we know some lived at Arctic latitudes – perhaps both carnivores and herbivores would have developed thick, shaggy pelts during the Ice Ages, something akin to musk ox, woolly rhinos or mammoths. 4 Grassland grazers As the world cooled 34 million years ago at the end of the Eocene, forests retreated and grasslands spread globally. Slender, speedy…

There are many disagreements in the world of research, but few debates will get as heated as those surrounding animal testing. Many scientists and research advocates contend that animal experiments are crucial for learning about basic biology and disease mechanisms, and are necessary for testing the safety and efficacy of new medicines and chemicals. They point to many potent medicines that exist thanks to animal testing. Opponents, meanwhile, contend that subjecting animals to experiments for human gain is ethically unjustified. What’s more, many argue, such research is often misleading because it compares apples and oranges: results from animal studies often don’t translate to humans because the animals are just too different. “ANIMAL TESTING IS AN IMPORTANT TOOL, BUT AT THE SAME TIME IT HAS OFTEN BEEN MISLEADING” NEW METHODS Animal…

“THERE ARE CLEAR AND FROSTY MORNINGS, WHEN THE OUTSIDE WORLD HAS TRANSFORMED ITSELF INTO A TWINKLING DISNEY SET” The weather at the moment is a bit grim: grey and cold with a generous dash of sleet. But there are clear and frosty mornings that make up for it, when the outside world has transformed itself into a twinkling Disney set. Yet when you look at the frost, it isn’t evenly distributed. Plants and wooden benches are often covered in it, but metal railings and the patches of ground beneath trees aren’t. It looks as though frost is an indicator for something, but what is it? The beauty of frost comes from the moment of its formation. When we think of water cooling, we tend to assume that water vapour…

With its ability to image the internal organs and functioning of the body without using X-rays, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) ranks as one of the biggest medical breakthroughs, and its development led to a Nobel Prize in 2003 for two scientists: Paul Lauterbur of the State University of New York and Peter Mansfield of the University of Nottingham. But within a month of the prize being announced, a full-page advert appeared in The New York Times insisting MRI was actually invented by a New York doctor named Raymond Damadian. MRI exploits so-called nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) in which hydrogen nuclei in our bodies are first gripped by powerful magnetic fields, then stimulated into producing radio waves. As these signals are affected by the nature of the tissue, Damadian was among…

What is it that you do? I study evolution of patterns in butterfly wings. I often spend months at a time working in jungles in places like Costa Rica, Ecuador and Panama. What’s that like? Some of the field sites are really remote. There’s one in Ecuador that takes 15 hours to get to from Quito, via bus, 4x4 and boat. It’s surrounded by scattered indigenous communities so you get the opportunity to see what their way of life is like. Every now and then, the kids bring you cool animals to see like baby monkeys. What do you do in the jungle? Sometimes we just collect butterflies. They’re high in the canopy, so our nets are up to nine metres long. It takes a lot of practice to catch…