Table of contents for Xmas 2016 in BBC Science Focus Magazine

A tiny mirror spider, no more than 5mm across, scatters light through a Singapore forest thanks to a collection of small ‘mirrors’ on its abdomen. This species is a lesser-known member of the genus Thwaitesia. Despite their blinged-up appearance, the spiders are actually masters of disguise. The mirrors provide camouflage by reflecting the surrounding environment, dispersing light like a disco ball and giving the spiders the appearance of water droplets lying on the plants. “A spider that even an arachnophobe could love, these sequined or disco ball spiders reveal just how rich and diverse the spider fauna of the world is,” says Prof Adam Hart, BBC broadcaster and entomologist at the University of Gloucester. The silvery patches are made up of guanine crystals, a substance that also gives fish scales…

“THESE LANDFORMS CAUGHT OUR EYE BECAUSE THEY’RE WEIRD-LOOKING” It might not look like the most hospitable place to live, but this strangely shaped depression could have once been home to Martian life. The crater is perched on the rim of the Hellas basin, in the southern hemisphere of the Red Planet, and was probably formed by a volcano beneath a glacier. It could have been a warm, chemical-rich environment well suited for microbial life, says Joseph Levy, a researcher at the University of Texas say. “These landforms caught our eye because they’re weird-looking. They’re concentrically fractured so they look like a bull’s eye. We were drawn to this site because it looked like it could host some of the key ingredients for habitability – water, heat and nutrients.” It first…

Thanks to its distinctive pattern of rings, Saturn is one of the most recognisable and spectacular sights in the Solar System. But exactly how the gas giant’s signature halo got there has always been something of a mystery. Now, researchers from Japanese and French universities have found that the chunks of ice and rock that make it up may have come from collisions with thousands of Pluto-like bodies. Around four billion years ago, the orbits of the giant planets in the Solar System – Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune – became unstable. It is thought that this created a change in the gravitational pull on thousands of Pluto-sized bodies in distant orbit around the Sun, drawing them into the deeper into the Solar System where they collided with the planets.…

One hundred years after they were first predicted by Albert Einstein’s General Relativity, gravitational waves were directly detected for the first time ever by researchers at LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) in February. Gravitational waves are ripples in the fabric of space-time generated by violent events such as the collision of massive objects like black holes. They travel across the Universe stretching and squeezing space-time as they go. It took so long to find them because their effect is so weak – even Einstein doubted we would ever be able make an instrument sensitive enough to pick them up. The waves observed by the team were generated by the collision of two black holes, about 29 and 36 times the mass of the Sun, which occurred 1.3 billion light-years away,…

Both Apple and Microsoft have launched new flagship computers, in the form of the new MacBook Pro and the Surface Studio. While the two products aren’t direct competitors, both sport a number of technological innovations that open up new fronts in the two companies’ eternal battle. In Apple’s case, the headline news is the introduction of the new Touch Bar that runs along the top of the keyboard (though this is absent from the entry-level 13-inch model). This touch-sensitive OLED strip replaces the function keys with context-specific buttons and menus that appear depending what software you’re using at the time. It’s designed to GNKOKPCVG›VJG›PGGF›VQ›TGOGODGT› MG[DQCTF›UJQTVEWVU››CPF›YKNN›CNUQ›UJQY› K15›UV[NG›3WKEM›6[RKPI›UWIIGUVKQPU››+H› [QWoTG›CVVCEJGF›VQ›VJGO››VJG›GZKUVKPI› HWPEVKQP›MG[U›ECP›DG›OCFG›VQ›CRRGCT›QP› VJG›UVTKR›D[›RTGUUKPI›VJG›(WPEVKQP›MG[›› 1VJGT›KPPQXCVKXG›HGCVWTGU›QP›VJG›PGY› /CE$QQM›2TQ›KPENWFG›C›RQYGT›DWVVQP›VJCV› FQWDNGU›CU›C›6QWEJ+&›UGPUQT››CPF›C›OWEJ› NCTIGT›VTCEMRCF››5Q›HCT››UQ›IQQF›s›DWV› VJGTGoU›C›TCVJGT›NCTIG›nDWVo›EQOKPI› 6TWG›VQ›KVU›QPIQKPI›QDUGUUKQP›YKVJ› OCMKPI›GXGT[VJKPI›UNKOOGT›CPF›NKIJVGT›› #RRNG›JCU›UGTXGF›WR›C›PGY›/CE$QQM› 2TQ›VJCVoU›CNOQUV›FGXQKF›QH›RQTVU››6JGTGoU› PQ›/CI5CHG›RQYGT›RQTV››PQ›*&/+››PQ› &KURNC[›2QTV››PQ›5&›ECTF›UNQV›CPF›PQ›75$› s›LWUV›VYQ›75$›%›RQTVU›QP›VJG›GPVT[›NGXGN› ›››KPEJ›OQFGN››CPF›HQWT›QP›VJG››››KPEJ› CPF›JKIJGT›GPF››››KPEJ›OQFGNU›› 6JG›TGUWNV›KU›C›OCEJKPG›VJCVoU›UNKIJVN[› UNKOOGT›VJCP›KVU›RTGFGEGUUQT››DWV› YJCVGXGT›YGKIJV›[QW›UCXG›KU›NKMGN[›VQ›DG› OQTG›VJCP›OCFG›WR›HQT›D[›VJG›PWODGT› QH›FQPINGU›CPF›CFCRVQTU›[QWoNN›PGGF›VQ› ECTT[›CTQWPF›s›GCEJ›QH›YJKEJ›CNUQ›CFFU› VQ›VJG›EQUV››››››JGTG›QT›››››VJGTG›OKIJV› PQV›UQWPF›C›NQV››DWV›IKXGP›VJCV›GXGP›C›…

Croatia’s Rimac Automobili has unveiled what is currently the world’s longest-range electric bicycle. The Greyp G12H can go up to 240km (150 miles) on a single charge of its 3kWh battery – which will cost you a mere 29p, making the Greyp G12H one of the cheapest forms of powered transport there is. Other than that super-efficient battery, the bike retains many of the same features as its predecessor, the Greyp G12S. Both feature a fingerprint-based biometric lock and built-in cycling computer, and both have a ‘street mode’ that limits you to 25km/h. This is to avoid being classed as a motorbike under EU law; the actual top speed of is 70km/h, because as their styling suggests, the bikes are really built for dirt track riding. There’s no word yet…

Until about a century ago, it was thought that not much lived in the deep sea. With its average depth of around 3.5km, crushing pressures and permanent darkness, few people bothered looking there – what could hope to survive in such an environment? According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 95 per cent of the oceans are still completely unexplored. But today’s scientists have ditched the old ideas of a deep, empty ocean and flat, featureless seabed. They’re keen to take a closer look beneath the waves, and the latest generation of research equipment is opening up the depths like never before. New technology is helping scientists uncover the oceans’ vital role in global climate, and find bizarre creatures that offer clues about the origins of life…

“It’s as close to being in space as you can be on the Earth,” says Oxford University’s Prof Alex Rogers, as he recalls his journey to a depth of 3,380m inside the Japanese submersible Shinkai 6500. “You are so remote from your normal environment. There’s a real sense of isolation.” Rogers is science director of a new deep-ocean research initiative called Nekton. On the first Nekton expedition in 2016, he explored the deep sea around Bermuda inside a Triton submersible. This two-person, three-tonne sub is relatively small and lightweight compared to many other submersibles, and highly manoeuvrable. It also has a huge acrylic dome, giving scientists fantastic views of the ocean for observation and research. “The submersibles are absolutely fantastic. It’s very James Bond,” says Rogers. Among the things that…

A GROWING BODY OF RESEARCH SUGGESTS WE ARE BORN TO DANCE. WHY ELSE WOULD WE MAKE OURSELVES LOOK SO RIDICULOUS AT SCHOOL DISCOS OR THE OFFICE PARTY? WATCH STRICTLY COME DANCING BBC ONE, EVERY SATURDAY UNTIL 17 DECEMBER Dancing is in our DNA. It is found in every culture around the world throughout history, and is enjoyed by people of every age, from toddlers to the elderly. From a scientific perspective, dance is an important human activity. Actually, from any perspective dance is an important human activity. It’s important for enjoyment, for interpersonal communication, for social bonding and for our general health and wellbeing as well. Scientists have long been interested in dance because it can tell us about our innate responses to music, about why some people get dizzy…

Scientist:Nicolaus Copernicus Date:1543 Discovery:Earth and the planets revolve around the Sun It is hard to see how astronomers could have formed their current picture of how our Solar System came to be if we still thought everything orbited the Earth. Copernicus’s breakthrough is rightly lauded as one of the greatest scientific revolutions in history. And yet it wasn’t inspired by astronomical observation, but by mathematical elegance. The ancient idea of geocentrism – that everything in the Universe orbited the Earth in perfect circles – ran into a problem when observing the night sky. Some of the planets appeared to double back on themselves – hardly the behaviour of worlds circling the Earth. So the Ancient Greek polymath Ptolemy introduced ‘epicycles’ which saw the planets move in smaller circles, which in…

Trying to concentrate? Try upping the tempo. A study at the University of Toronto compared IQ test performance while students listened to two pieces of music. The first, by Mozart, was around 130 beats per minute (BPM), while the second, by Albinoni, was about 80 BPM. Participants reported improvements in mood while listening to the faster piece, and performed better on the test. Concentrating to music is a bit of a Goldilocks situation: to find the sweet spot, you can’t go too loud, or too quiet. Instead, you need to get it just right. A joint study by researchers at the Universities of Illinois, Virginia and British Columbia found that high and moderate volumes increased participants ability to think abstractly, but found that higher volumes also decreased the brain’s ability…

This ‘brown pebble’ found by a fossil hunter in Sussex more than a decade ago has been confirmed as the first known example of dinosaur brain tissue. The brain is thought to have belonged to a species closely related to the Iguanodon, a large plant-eating dinosaur that lived during the Early Cretaceous period, about 133 million years ago, and has many features in common with the brains of modern day crocodiles and birds. Finding fossilised soft tissue, especially brain tissue, is very rare due to the conditions required to create it. The researchers say this piece is so well preserved as it was ‘pickled’ in an acidic, oxygen-deprived body of water shortly after its death, causing the soft tissue to become mineralised. “What we think happened is that this particular…

Meet the Brazilian free-tailed bat, the fastest horizontal flier in the animal kingdom. Researchers at Germany’s Max Planck Institute have clocked the small mammal speeding through the air at more than 160km/h (99mph), smashing the previous record of 111km/h (69mph) held by the common swift. Key to the bats’ speed are their aerodynamic, projectile-like bodies, light bones and long, narrow wings. Peregrine falcons hold the overall speed record reaching around 390km/h when diving, but they can only manage 90km/h during horizontal flight. “Initially, we could hardly believe our data, but they were correct: at times, the female bats, which weigh between 11 and 12 grams, flew at speeds of over 160 kilometres per hour – a new record for horizontal flight,” said researcher Kamran Safi. The team clocked the record-breaking…

It seems our brains really are all wired up differently. The structural connections in our brains are so unique to each individual that they can be used to identify us like fingerprints, a team at Carnegie Mellon University has found. The researchers scanned the brains of nearly 700 volunteers, using a new method of non-invasive MRI that enabled them to capture the brain’s ‘connectome’ – the point-by-point connections that join together all of the white matter – in much more detail than ever before. They discovered that even identical twins only share about 12 per cent of structural connectivity patterns, and that the brain’s unique local connectome is sculpted over time, changing at an average rate of 13 per cent every 100 days. “This confirms something that we’ve always assumed…

This is Tongtianlong limosus, or ‘muddy dragon on the road to heaven’ – a new species of feathered dinosaur that was recently unearthed near Ganzhou in southern China. The fossil was found by researchers from the University of Edinburgh and the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences on a construction site where a new school was being built, lying on its front with its wings and neck outstretched. It’s believed the dinosaur may have died in this pose after becoming stuck in a pool of mud around 70 million years ago. Despite being accidentally subjected to a dynamite blast, it is almost complete and remarkably well preserved. Tongtianlong limosus belonged to the oviraptorosaur family. Oviraptosaurs were flightless, feathered creatures that are thought to have been one of the last groups to…

In July, NASA’s Juno space probe completed its five-year journey to Jupiter. A month later the probe successfully executed its first flyby of the gas giant, travelling at more than 200,000km/h and passing within 4,200km of the planet’s swirling clouds. Scientific instruments onboard the space probe are designed to measure the planet’s magnetic field, atmospheric composition and landscape. At the time of writing, Juno has so far beamed back stunning pictures of Jupiter’s poles, aurorae, and violent atmospheric storms. The probe is scheduled to complete a total of 36 flybys before finally plummeting into the planet’s surface at the end of its mission in February 2018.…

Another world first was announced in October, when Japanese researchers reported that they were able to raise healthy mouse pups from eggs created in the laboratory using stem cells. The team, led by Katsuhiko Hayashi at Kyushu University, took skin cells from the tails of adult mice and transformed them into induced pluripotent stem cells. These are cells that have been genetically modified to behave like embryonic stem cells, which are capable of forming any adult cell type. The team then treated these stem cells with growth factors and hormones taken from mouse ovaries to coax them into growing into eggs, before fertilising them using IVF and implanting them into the wombs of living mice. Though the method has so far only been proven in mice, and even then only…

Internet of Things (IoT) devices are starting to sell in large numbers. But that increased uptake, it turns out, isn’t entirely free of scaling problems. For that reason, various technology companies are now working on improving IoT infrastructure. Intel, for instance, has introduced two new Atom processors, with the E3900 built specifically for wearables and other connected devices while the A3900 is aimed at automobile computers. But new chips are small potatoes, if you’ll pardon the pun, compared to building whole new mobile data networks, which is what the likes of Orange and Vodafone are doing. This is because existing networks, which were built for carphones, rely on your phone contacting the nearest mast many times per second, which drains battery life. The new networks use lower-power radio chips which…

Buddy bot ANKI COZMO This tiny robot is controlled by an iOS/Android app, comes with light-up blocks for playing games, and has both an AI system that means it learns as it goes along, and an ‘emotion engine’ that gives it uncannily human-like responses to different stimuli. It willbe love at first sight, trust us! £180, anki.com Digital PA system AMAZON ECHO Echo plugs into any ‘smart’ device, from cars to lights to your heating, and lets you control them with voice commands. It’s great for playing music or searching the web, but do bear in mind that Alexa, the AI assistant inside Echo, will remember everythingyou ask. Forever. £49.99/£149.99, amazon.co.uk World shut your mouth SENNHEISER PCX550 These wireless, noise-cancelling cans are…

The concept of dad dancing gets a bad press. Even its dictionary definition is disparaging: “Awkward or unfashionable dancing to pop music, as characteristically performed by middle-aged or older men.” In 2011, I carried out a survey of almost 14,000 people (including over 8,000 men), looking at dance confidence and dancing styles at different ages. I found that men’s dancing confidence typically starts at a very low level in the early teens, steadily increasing with age, peaking and plateauing in the mid-to-late thirties before coming down again after 40. At the same time, their freestyle dance movements tend to become larger, less coordinated and more random the older they get. Eventually, it’s like they’re dancing to music that only they can hear. This slightly awkward dancing style may be evolution’s…

Evolutionisa progressive marchfrom primal originstothe all-singing, all-dancing, all-Tweeting specimens oftoday Ian is a lecturer in the anthropology department at the University of Durham. His research interests include evolutionary ecology, human biology and natural selection. Back in 1965, Rudolph Zallinger created an illustration for Time Life books, which has been much-imitated and satirised. The original image, called The March Of Progress, depicted a chimpanzee-like creature on the left, and ended with what can be fairly described as a healthy-looking and athletic man of European ethnicity on the right. The message from this influential image and its title was clear: human evolution is a progressive march from primal origins to the final, all-singing, all-dancing, all-Tweeting specimens that we are today. We represent the pinnacle of Mother Nature’s achievements. She can now rest,…

Now this really is a hot shot. The gently glowing lava flows of Mount Kilauea volcano, Hawaii are capped by the faint streak of a shooting star, the sprawling majesty of the Milky Way and a gleaming full Moon. “What’s special about the volcanoes of Hawaii is that they sit on a giant hotspot, which is the origin of the very islands themselves,” says Prof Dougal Jerram, a volcano expert and BBC presenter. “A hot plume of material from deep within the Earth feeds the volcano, and as the Pacific plate slowly moves over this hot spot you get the chain of Islands that form the Hawaiian archipelago.” Mount Kilauea is the most active volcano on Earth – its current eruption has lasted for more than 30 years. Its gently…

Determining the sex of a dinosaur HQUUKN›KU›KPETGFKDN[›FKHƂEWNV›CU› bones tell us very little about the animals’ sexual characteristics. However, this year, a 68-million-year-old T.rexfossil became one QH›VJG›ƂTUV›VQ›DG›FGƂPKVKXGN[› KFGPVKƂGF›CU›HGOCNG›VJCPMU›VQ›VJG› discovery of its medullary tissue – material found within a bone that supplies the calcium to create eggshells in pregnant females. The fossil was originally excavated from Montana’s Fort Peck Lake in 2003. Researchers suspected that the specimen’s femur contained medullary bone but they were unable to send it for chemical analysis. But a tissue analysis carried out in March found that the sample contained keratin sulphate, a substance not found in other types of bone. The researchers also compared the sample to medullary tissue taken from modern ostriches and chickens and found similarities in composition and structure. Identifying the dino as female…

A Wildlife Conservation Society survey has found there are now just 3,800 eastern lowland gorillas left in the world. That’s a big drop from the 16,900 that were counted 20 years ago – and it’s mostly down to our addiction to smartphones and computers. Such devices feature circuits built using the metal tantalum, which is extracted from the mineral coltan. The survey says it’s coltan mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that is largely responsible for decimating the gorilla population. Not only are large chunks of their habitat being destroyed, but miners have developed a taste for gorilla meat in recent years. Conservationists are now calling for a crackdown on illegal mining in the area, and for manufacturers to use minerals from less problematic sources.…

Tagging huge elephant seals on an Antarctic beach isn’t a job for the faint-hearted. Mature males weigh up to four tonnes, and can easily mistake a human for another seal looking for a fight. “Elephant seals don’t have good vision,” says Dr Horst Bornemann, a researcher from Germany’s Alfred Weneger Institute for Polar and Marine Research. “You want a team who can anticipate their behaviour and fend off advancing territorial males.” There’s a good reason for working with such colossal, bad-tempered animals in remote, sub-zero conditions, though. Southern elephant seals, the deepest-diving seal species, can dive below 2,000m for hours at time, so fixing small, electronic sensors to their heads can transform them into a fleet of researchers. These sensors gather data on the seals’ movements – how deep they…

Measuring 1.5m in length and weighing 180kg, OceanOne is quite unusual for a remotely operated underwater vehicle. Described as a ‘robo-mermaid’, it has a head, two cameras for ‘eyes’ and a pair of fully articulated arms, complete with wrists and fingers. OceanOne acts as an underwater avatar, allowing people to feel like they’re diving to inaccessible depths while remaining safe and dry. A human pilot can see what the robot sees via stereoscopic cameras, and feel what it’s holding via sensors in the robot’s hands that transmit haptic feedback to a controller on the surface. To a certain extent, OceanOne can even think for itself. Onboard processors analyse camera footage and adjust the thrusters in the robot’s tail to make sure it doesn’t bump into anything. If sensors detect an…

The obesity epidemic sweeping the world has led to a surge in the use of bariatric surgery to help the most seriously obese. The idea seems simple enough: by removing up to 75 per cent of a patient’s stomach, even small meals will be filling. But studies of patients undergoing such operations have revealed a more subtle effect: the surgery also affects the vagus nerve connecting the enteric nervous system with the brain. This has opened the way to less radical methods of tackling obesity, by blocking the vagus nerve signals controlling appetite. A study published earlier this year reported that by using an implanted device developed by US company EnteroMedics, obese patients lost around a third of their excess weight over a year, with a quarter losing at least…

01 EXPLORE A FOREST OF 10,000 TREES As far as forests go, this is one of the more unusual ones we’ve stepped inside. Each of these pieces of wood has been gathered from a different tree – 10,000 in total, from almost every country on the planet, and spanning millions of years of history. Together, they form Hollow, a public artwork by Scottish artist Katie Paterson and architects Zeller & Moye at the University of Bristol. Visitors are invited to step inside this miniature forest (there’s enough space for one or two people at a time), taking a moment out of the daily grind to think about the stories that these trees might tell. There’s also an accompanying website featuring a beautifully rendered version of the artwork and information on…

1 KARLSPLATZ This large square is a major transport and tourist hub in central Vienna. 2 KARLSKIRCHE Located on the south side of Karlsplatz, this church is one of the city’s most spectacular buildings. Kreuzherrengasse 1 karlskirche.at 3 WIENER MUSIKVEREIN Concert hall, home to the Vienna Philharmonic, and the city’s most famous place to see live classical music. Musikvereinsplatz 1 musikverein.at 4 CAFÉ AMACORD Cosy restaurant with vaulted ceilings, located just across the street from the Naschmarkt. Rechte Wienzeile 15 amacord-cafe.at 5 GASTHAUS WOLF Restaurant serving classical Viennese food. Grosse Neugasse 20 gasthauswolf.at 6 BLAUE BAR Stylish bar in the fashionable Hotel Sacher. Ideally located for a pre-opera drink. Philharmonikerstrasse 4 sacher.com/hotel-wien-2/kulinarik/blaue-bar Of course I’m biased, but in my opinion Vienna is one of the most charming cities in Europe.…

PALAEONTOLOGY UNSOLVED MYSTERIES OF THE DINOSAURS We know more than ever about the dinosaurs, but there’s still a great deal to learn. What colour were they, how did they learn to fly, and why did T.rex have such tiny arms? CRYONICS WHO WANTS TO LIVE FOREVER? Deep within Texas, work is underway on project Timeship – an ‘immortal village’ that will store 50,000 frozen people with the hope of bringing them back to life. Just how realistic are its aims? PSYCHOLOGY MEET THE WORLD’S HAPPIEST PEOPLE 2016’s UN World Happiness Report says Denmark is the most contented place on Earth. So just what do the Danes know that we don’t? ENVIRONMENT CAN WE SAVE OUR FISH? Poor fishing practices are putting marine life at risk. In fact, one study…