Table of contents for June 2017 in BBC Science Focus Magazine

I’ve never been one for food fads. I tried a wheatgrass shot once. But I could probably save myself £3 and lick the bottom of a lawnmower if I wanted to repeat the experience. I feel the same way about spiralisers, paleo diets and something called freekeh. To me, these culinary crazes feel like marketeers trying to sell us something that’s been around forever, but at a premium price. I’m just not interested in how kale, or any other brassica, is going to change my life. But how healthy are everyday foods? That’s something I do want to know. I consume a lot of salt, butter, eggs, coffee and bacon (and now I want breakfast). Nothing deadly, and often not all in one sitting, but all of the above continually…

“This study takes the focus away from tackling disease-specific proteins to restore brain function and points to a global pathway that can be targeted to benefit a range of brain diseases. Encouragingly, treatment with a currently available antidepressant prevented brain cell death in different mouse models of brain disease. In addition, and of interest to the Alzheimer’s community, the authors present evidence that the drug can prevent memory loss typically seen in a model of dementia in mice. The study presents a strong scientific basis for this global approach, but it remains to be seen if a single drug can provide widespread benefits for an array of human brain diseases. Indeed, while this antidepressant is ready for human clinical trials, the timing of diagnosis of dementia or Parkinson’s and treatment…

“THE IDEA THAT THE HORN OF AFRICA PROVIDES A SHOCKING INSIGHT INTO GLOBAL WARMING IGNORES HISTORY” Desperate for some good news during these dark times? Then look no further than drought-stricken Ethiopia, currently in the grip of what looks like devastating climate change. Yes, really. The Horn of Africa suffers major droughts so often that even aid organisations concede it’s hard not to just tune it all out. The rains have failed repeatedly in recent years, with 2011 being the region’s worst drought in 60 years. And where there is drought, there is always famine – and death on an appalling scale. At least, that’s the story trotted out ever since the drought in Ethiopia that prompted the famous Band Aid concerts of the early 1980s. Yet virtually all of…

1931 Abbey Road Studios opens as the first purpose-built recording facility anywhere in the world. 1932 Composer Sergei Prokofiev makes his first record at the studios. 1944 Big band leader Glenn Miller’s last-ever recording session takes place at Abbey Road Studios. 1952 Cowpuncher’s Cantata is the first single recorded at Abbey Road to feature on the brand new Official UK Singles Chart. 1953 Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation is recorded at Abbey Road via a private landline. 1955 The first stereo record is released, two decades after Alan Blumlein was granted a patent for the technology. 1966 Abbey Road engineer Ken Townsend invents the process of artificial double-tracking at John Lennon’s request. 1967 The world’s first live global satellite broadcast features The Beatles playing All You Need Is Love at Abbey…

“I think I worked harder, partied harder, and just did everything that much more. That was my not-very-evolved coping strategy!” Vanessa, when did your sight begin to disappear? VP: Two weeks before it all happened, I’d had a horrendous flu-like virus, but I recovered enough to go on a day out with family friends. On the way home, though, my eyeballs began to hurt. When I woke up the next day, on 1 October 2012, I opened my eyes but couldn’t come to consciousness. I had a static kind of disturbance. I could still see, but my vision had gone dark – it was knocked out. What happened next? VP: I spent a day in hospital but they couldn’t find anything and sent me home. When I woke up the…

THE LISTENER Classical music certainly won’t make your plants grow bigger, but that doesn’t mean they are completely indifferent to sounds in their environment. Playing recordings of chomping caterpillars toArabidopsis plants is enough to make them flood their leaves with chemicals designed to ward off attackers. THE CARNIVORE Venus flytraps rely on touch to know when they should close on a victim, and they have even learned to count in order to avoid false positives. To ensure that they’re capturing a living, wriggling creature, traps only shut after two taps, and will only begin digesting prey after three more distinct touches. THE STRANGLER A parasitic plant known as the dodder vine locates its prey by scent. When odours from a tomato plant are wafted towards the vine, these chemical cues…

Symmetry is helpful because it allows us to complete the picture of a snowflake even though we only have half a picture. The same idea is relevant when it comes to writing down the mathematical equations that govern how the elementary particles of nature behave. Just like with the snowflake, a mathematical symmetry called ‘gauge symmetry’ means that the maths coloured in red can be written down starting with the maths in white. Remarkably, these red parts are entirely capable of explaining the interactions between the elementary particles. In a tad more detail, the Greek symbol Ѱ›(pronounced ‘psi’) represents the particles of nature (those in the first three columns of the Standard Model, such as quarks, electrons and neutrinos). The term on the left describes a world in which particles…

“BUT WHY WOULD A CAR ON A WET ROAD SOUND DIFFERENT TO A CAR ON A DRY ROAD?” It’s the details that astonish me. We humans live inside a complicated deluge of information, with constant light and sound waves whooshing through an environment that is defined by temperature, texture and smell. Yet sometimes your brain manages to pluck something incredibly subtle out of the flood. Recently, I woke up in the morning in an unfamiliar city, and before I had even opened my eyes, I knew that it had rained overnight. When I poked my subconscious a bit to find out why I was so sure, I realised that it was the traffic noise. The sound of cars going past was softer than normal, but I couldn’t hear rain. My…

SALEYHA AHSAN A&E doctor Saleyha is a familiar face as a member of the Trust Me, I’m A Doctor team. This month, she reveals which foods to dodge and which to devour. ›p40 BELLA BATHURST Bella, a writer and photojournalist, lost her hearing. Then, it slowly returned. We introduce her to Vanessa Potter, who lost and gained her sight. ›p58 JOSS GABBATISS Science writer Josh loves the quirky side of nature. And what could be weirder than a subterranean social network used by plants? ›p62…

So far astronomers have found more than 3,600 extrasolar planets orbiting distant stars, but it has been impossible to tell if the Earth-like planets had an atmosphere. Until now. A team at Keele University has found a planet around 1.4 times the size of Earth that shows clear signs of an atmospheric layer. Dubbed GJ 1132b, the planet orbits a star around 39 light-years away. “While this is not the detection of life on another planet, it’s an important step in the right direction,” said lead astronomer Dr John Southworth. One of the best potential indicators of life is the make-up of a planet’s atmosphere. Earth’s oxygen, for example, was almost entirely produced by living organisms. Detecting GJ 1132b’s atmosphere was possible because the 2.2m MPG/ESO telescope at the European…

UNIVERSITY STUDENTS It’s not just low beer prices that affect university students’ performance in early morning classes. Young adults’ body clocks don’t allow them to concentrate fully until 11am, researchers at the Open University have found. UK PARENTS Over 29 per cent of UK babies suffer from colic – defined as crying for more than three hours a day for at least three days a week – in the first weeks of their lives, a team at the University of Warwick has found. Only Canadian babies cry more.…

Did your billion-times great grandfather look something like this eerie bag of jelly? Evolutionary biologists at Vanderbilt University in Nashville certainly think so. The researchers compared the individual genes of comb jellies with those of 18 other organisms, as part of a technique dubbed ‘phylogenetics’. The team determined that comb jellies have more genes supporting their claim to be the first animal to diverge than sponges. Sponges were previously thought to be the earliest form of animal life, due to their simplicity. “In these analyses, we only use genes that are shared across all organisms,” researcher Prof Antonis Rokas explained. “The trick is to examine the gene sequences from different organisms to figure out who they identify as their closest relatives. When you look at a particular gene in an…

ALTEC LANSING BOOMJACKET There’s little you could throw at the Boomjacket that it wouldn’t take in its stride. It’s been designed for the Great Outdoors, with mounting gear in the box for securing to your bike or kayak and a mega 40-hour battery life. Even its sound is tuned for purpose, with a crisp, forward presentation that’s loud enough to be heard above the chaos. It’s a little congested at volume, but such critical listening isn’t always top priority when you’re hurtling down the side of a mountain. 8/10 £129.99, alteclansing.com JABRA SOLEMATE MAX Somewhere between super portable and the Monster (see right) sits Jabra’s Solemate Max. It makes rugged look good, mixing textured rubber bumpers with sturdy metal grilles, and a carry handle for easy…

Short-haul flights that are up to 80 per cent cheaper and 80 per cent faster sound too good to be true; factor in an 80 per cent reduction in carbon emissions, too, and we’re clearly in cloud cuckoo land! Except Boeing clearly doesn’t think so, because along with US domestic airline JetBlue it has just pumped significant amounts of cash into Zunum Aero, a three-year-old start-up that promises its hybrid electric-kerosene aero engines will offer all of the advantages listed above. The company is currently working with the US Federal Aviation Authority and hopes its planes will be certified for operation in the US by the end of next year, with a view to providing domestic flights within five years. Early versions of the planes will have a range of…

COFFEE There have been numerous claims over the years that drinking coffee will increase your risk of succumbing to a whole range of terrible things. Yet when scientists followed over 120,000 men and women for more than 20 years they found something altogether more surprising. The study, The Relationship Of Coffee Consumption With Mortality, concluded that “regular coffee consumption was not associated with an increased mortality rate in either men or women”. In fact, they found moderate coffee consumption appears to be mildly protective. Based on this and other studies, the most effective ‘dose’ seems to be two to five cups a day. More than that and any benefits drop off. But we simply don’t know what it is in coffee that helps. The amount of coffee you can safely…

Like them or not, rules govern our lives. Some we make, and some we break. But zoom out, and there’s one set of rules that overrides them all. These are the rules of particle physics, and if we get to grips with them, we can understand what everything in the Universe is made from, and why everything in the Universe behaves as it does. The Universe is built from elementary particles. This simple idea has survived intact since the time of the Ancient Greeks. In the preceding article in this series, we talked about the counterintuitive ways in which these particles behave. The basic rules are not complicated though: each particle can hop around, and in doing so can emit or absorb other particles. For example, an electron can hop…

ELEMENTARY PARTICLE This is a particle that is not thought to be composed of any smaller particles. ELECTROMAGNETIC FORCE This force is responsible for electricity and magnetism. It governs how fridge magnets work, how atoms stick together, and how light interacts with matter. WEAK FORCE This force is responsible for the nuclear fusion processes that cause the Sun to shine. STRONG FORCE This force is responsible for holding protons and neutrons together inside atomic nuclei. SYMMETRY This is the idea that something looks the same before and after a particular transformation. For example, a square looks the same before and after it is rotated through an angle of 90°. GAUGE SYMMETRY This specific symmetry governs the equations that describe how the elementary particles interact with each other. STANDARD MODEL This…

DR ALASTAIR GUNN Astronomer, astrophysicist ALEXANDRA CHEUNG 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, writer DR CHRISTIAN JARRETT Neuroscientist, writer EMMA DAVIES Heath expert, science writer LUIS VILLAZON Science/tech writer DR AARATHI PRASAD Biologist, geneticist PROF ROBERT MATTHEWS Physicist, science writer Why can’t we reach the end of a rainbow? TOM ROBERTS, LIVERPOOL A rainbow isn’t a fixed object that hangs in the sky. It’s an illusion formed between the sunshine, the rain and your eyes. Light bounces out of the raindrops at an angle of 40° for red light, and 42° for blue. And that’s true wherever you stand, so as you move, the…

1. VY Canis Majoris Size: 1,800-2,100 x Sun (so massive that its light takes eight hours to travel around its own equator) Distance from Earth: 3,900 light-years 2. RW Cephei Size: 1,535 x Sun Distance from Earth: 3,500 light-years 3. V354 Cephei Size: 1,520 x Sun Distance from Earth: 9,000 light-years 4. KY Cygni Size: 1,420- 2,850 x Sun Distance from Earth: 5,000 light-years 5. Mu Cephei Size: 1,260 x Sun Distance from Earth: 6,000 light-years 6. VV Cephei A Size: 1,050 x Sun Distance from Earth: 4,900 light-years 7. KW Sagittarii Size: 1,009 x Sun Distance from Earth: 7,800 light-years 8. Betelgeuse Size: 887 x Sun Distance from Earth: 643 light-years 9. Antares Size: 883 x Sun Distance from Earth: 550 light-years 10. V838 Monocerotis Size: 380 x Sun…

1. Planthoppers are insects of the Issidae family. They feed by sucking sap from the stems of plants and normally walk very slowly to avoid attracting attention from predators. 2. When threatened, planthoppers can leap over a metre, and can take off with an acceleration of more than 700G. When not jumping, the hind legs are ‘cocked’ back against a small spur. 3. The legs have to be fired backward within 0.03 milliseconds of each other to prevent the insect spiralling out of control. This level of precision isn’t possible using ordinary nerve impulses. 4. Instead, they are mechanically synchronised by a pair of cogs with teeth just 80 microns wide. This is the first documented case of working gears in nature.…

Naked mole rats can turn themselves into plants UK babies cry more than infants from most other countries. Lucky us Up to five cups of coffee a day can be mildly protective Some plants like eating bat Manchester’s Beetham Tower sounds like a UFO CONTACT US Advertising neil.lloyd@immediate.co.uk 01173008276 Lettersforpublication reply@sciencefocus.com Editorialenquiries editorialenquiries@sciencefocus.com 01173147388 Subscriptions focus@servicehelpline.co.uk 08448440257* Othercontacts sciencefocus.com/contact WANT MORE ? FOLLOW SCIENCEFOCUS FACEBOOK TWITTER PINTEREST GOOGLE+…

Some 850,000 people currently suffer from dementia in the UK. And with this figure set to reach one million by 2025, the scale of the problem facing health services is obvious. Now, researchers at Cambridge University have found that trazodone hydrochloride, a drug already prescribed as an antidepressant, may be able to prevent the brain shrinkage and cell death caused by neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease. So far the drug has only been tested in mice, but as it has already been approved for human use it could be fast-tracked into clinical trials. “We know that trazodone is safe to use in humans, so a clinical trial is now possible to test whether the protective effects of the drug we see on brain cells in mice with neurodegeneration also…

Naked mole rats are neither moles or rats. They are more closely related to porcupines and guinea pigs. The rodents are native to the tropical grasslands of East Africa, including Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia. They are the longest-lived of all rodents, with a lifespan of more than 30 years. 5km Colonies of naked mole rats can contain as many as 300 individuals with tunnel systems running up to 5km in length. Their colonies are organised socially in a manner similar to that of ants and wasps. There is a single queen and many soldiers and workers.…

Talk about starting with a bang! Scientists at the Atacama Large Millimeter Array in the Chilean desert have observed the collision of at least three protostars (one loner and a binary pair) in the Orion Molecular Cloud 1. This vast expanse of gas, 1,350 light-years from Earth, is home to a collection of protostars – infant stars that have yet to properly ignite. Though these bodies are not dense enough to undergo full-scale nuclear fusion, they can radiate in the infrared region because shockwaves are produced as extra material is pulled into the star. According to lead author John Bally of Colorado University, the collision took place around 1,850 years ago and sent the Orion Molecular Cloud 1 into explosive turmoil. Bally describes this as “a cosmic version of a…

What’s that? A new high-street print shop? Way off. It’s a digitally composed fingerprint put together by a team at New York University. It can act as a skeleton key to unlock phones equipped with fingerprint sensors. How does that work? Full fingerprints are difficult to falsify, but the scanners found on smartphones are so small that they can only read partial prints. Phones therefore take several photos, with only one match required to unlock the device. Tell me more. Although everyone’s fingerprints are unique, they do contain common features. The team studied 8,200 partial fingerprints and found several prints that matched at least 4 per cent of the others. They analysed these ‘masterprints’ and built an algorithm to create synthetic prints capable of matching many more. This sounds worrying.…

CHIMPS DON’T APPRECIATE MUSIC Sorry,fans ofTheJungle Book, apes aren’t musical. Researchers in York have found that music, be it Beethoven or Bieber, has no positive effect on captive chimpanzees’ welfare. The research echoes an earlier study that found orangutans are unable to distinguish music from white noise. TALLEST HUMANS ARE DESCENDED FROM MAMMOTH HUNTERS Standing at an average of six feet tall, men from the Netherlands, Montenegro and Denmark are the tallest in the world. Their lofty stature is likely due to their ancestors consuming nutritionally rich mammoth meat, a team at the Czech Republic’s Masaryk University has found. OCEAN CURRENTS ARE CARRYING BILLIONS OF PIECES OF PLASTIC TO THE ARCTIC Researchers at Cadiz University, Spain have found two major ‘dead ends’ in the Greenland and Barents Seas, into which…

Adidas has woven its newest shoes out of synthetic spider silk. This ‘biosteel’ is a product of bacteria, genetically modified to produce a silk-like substrate, which is spun into thread. Though they won’t let you walk up walls, these trainers are fully biodegradable. In fact, Adidas will supply the trainers with a solution that’ll safely dissolve your shoes in a couple of hours. Adidas Futurecraft Fabric, £TBC, adidas.com…

FASTER BANKING The UK’s Cheque & Credit Clearing Company has started implementing an industry-wide, high-res, secure imaging system that will negate the need for banks to physically send cheques for clearing – meaning that cheques will soon clear in 24 hours rather than 72. FLYING SQUAD Devon And Cornwall Police is setting up a ‘drone squad’ that will operate on a 24/7 basis. The squad is the first of its kind in the UK and will use drones to monitor road traffic accidents and search for missing persons. SECURITY IS WRITTEN IN YOUR PALMS Fujitsu is developing a biometric identification system based on the unique pattern of veins in your hand. ‘PalmSecure’ is said to be more accurate than fingerprint or voice identification, and Fujitsu is already working on embedding…

BACTERIA Though they are simple organisms, bacteria can perform complex collective actions. All they need is ‘quorum sensing’, a system by which they release signalling molecules, assess the concentration of these molecules, and respond when a threshold value is reached. This kind of coordination allows bacteria to colonise hosts and defend against competitors. LOCUSTS The experience of being in a crowd encourages locusts to make the switch from solitary insects into members of vast swarms. Cramped conditions initiate an influx of serotonin into their bodies, causing physical changes as well as making them more sociable. EUSOCIAL INSECTS No individual ant or termite has the sense of what their finished nest will look like. Instead, the workers use local information in the form of pheromones to direct their behaviour, allowing incredible…

With its central peak and gracefully sloping sides, the Bell Curve is one of the best-known and important graphs in maths and science. Put simply, it shows the spread of values of anything affected by the cumulative effects of randomness. And there’s no shortage of those: from stock market jitters to human heights and IQ, many phenomena follow at least a rough approximation of the Bell Curve, with the most common value in the centre, and rarer, more extreme values to either side. Many textbooks refer to it as the Gaussian Curve, reflecting the fact that the brilliant 19th-Century German mathematician Karl Friedrich Gauss deduced the shape of the curve while studying how data are affected by random errors. But a French maths teacher named Abraham de Moivre arrived at…

“My dinosaur beers let me share my love of palaeontology with the home brew community” So, is there a link between dinosaurs and beer? There are lots of cool, unexpected connections between brewing and fossils. My favourite is a link between Pilsner beer and the famous half-bird, half-dinosaur fossil, Archaeopteryx. Raw barley grains are traditionally turned into malt by briefly germinating them on stone tiles, followed by a ‘baking’ process. The floor tiles of many European malt houses are classically made from Solnhofen limestone, which is a particular type of rock that formed during the Late Jurassic. These are the same rocks in which Archaeopteryxand other exquisitely-preserved fossils were found. Making a floor from the stuff is the palaeontological equivalent of using Kobe beef in a McDonald’s Happy Meal! Do…