Table of contents for April 2019 in BBC Science Focus Magazine

At a certain scale, the Universe is a pretty tidy place. This isn’t just a brilliant excuse to put off the spring cleaning, but a problem that physicists have been working on for the last 20 years. The Universe, specifically the amount of heat and matter in it, is spread out evenly. Too evenly, in fact, to be accounted for by our existing models of physics. For decades, this neatness has been attributed to the idea of inflation: a period where gravity, matter and energy behaved in bizarre yet plausible ways, giving rise to a Universe where everything is uniformly spread out. But now some physicists are beginning to ponder whether there might be another way to explain how it all began. The brilliant Marcus Chown helps us navigate their…

Good with faces? As we enter more deeply into the age of the algorithm, technology is advancing at a pace so rapid that it’s easy to imagine it running ahead of human control. One area where technology is already progressing at such a rate is facial recognition systems, which are often criticised in the media due to their ostensibly high error rates. I expect many of your readers will have experienced some sort of drama while using an airport’s e-passport gate. A solution to this issue is to ensure that we retain skilled humans as the ultimate verifiers of the technology’s function, correcting any errors and maintaining a credible decision-making process. These people are essential for maintaining security at borders and ensuring that human rights and freedom of movement are…

It seems it really is possible for actors to lose themselves in a role. Activity in a part of the brain associated with self-knowledge and self-perception drops off when actors are performing, researchers from the NeuroArts Lab at McMaster University, Canada, have found. The finding suggests that playing the part of another character results in a loss of self, they say. The study focused on a group of 15 third and fourth year theatre studies students recruited from McMaster University, all trained in ‘method acting’ – an approach in which actors aspire to fully embody the emotions of their characters, which has been widely popularised by icons like Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, and Daniel Day-Lewis. The team, led by Steven Brown, placed each of the actors into an MRI scanner…

LOVERS OF OLIVE OIL Mamma mia! Extreme cold snaps due to climate change have led to a 57 per cent plunge in Italy’s olive oil harvest, making it the worst in 25 years, a study by the Euro-Mediterranean Centre for Climate Change has found. WEEKEND LIE-INS If you think that catching up on shuteye over the weekend can make up for missing out on sleep during the week, think again. A team at the University of Colorado, Boulder found it may actually make matters worse, as the changing routine can increase the risk of obesity and diabetes.…

AMUNDSEN’S TEAM MADE IT TO THE SOUTH POLE AND BACK WHILE SCOTT’S PERISHED ON THE RETURN JOURNEY. HOW DID THEIR APPROACHES TO GROUP DYNAMICS DIFFER ? Well, Roald Amundsen actually put people through tests before they set off to make sure that they would take orders and, in particular, whether they would challenge any of them. Amundsen would set up situations where there would be an ambiguous context to see what their responses would be, and if somebody questioned him, they were eliminated. But there was also Adolf Lindstrøm, the cook; he was a key figure. If you read Amundsen’s diary, he writes that Lindstrøm was basically the most important person on the expedition. WHY WAS THAT? Lindstrøm was the comedian. He didn’t actually go to the South Pole, but…

We know that takeaways and highly processed foods are bad for us, but just how bad? I’ve recently been involved in a TV programme, The Junk Food Experiment, in which we asked six British celebs to live on a junk food diet for three weeks. What was so disturbing was just how quickly our guinea pigs became sick, to the point where the series doctor told three of the celebs – Olympic athlete Tess Sanderson, Made In Chelsea star Hugo Taylor and actress Hayley Tammadon – that they had to pull out. In Tessa’s case, it was because her blood pressure had risen so high there were fears she would have a stroke. Hayley developed severe symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome and was in such pain she couldn’t continue, while…

The cyclic universe builds on string theory, which views the fundamental building blocks of matter not as tiny point-like particles but as ‘strings’ of mass-energy vibrating in 10-dimensional space-time. In addition to 1-dimensional strings, the theory requires the existence of 2-, 3-, 4-… dimensional objects known as ‘branes’. The idea has therefore arisen that our Universe may be a 3-dimensional island, or 3-brane, floating in the 10-dimensional space-time. In the cyclic scenario, our brane is not alone but collides with a second brane. Imagine the two branes – empty of matter – coming together like two slices of bread to make a sandwich. As they pass through each other, their energy of motion is converted into the mass-energy of matter on each brane, which is created at a ferocious temperature.…

ADAM KING, HUDDERSFIELD ARE THERE ANY LIVING THINGS THAT CAN FLY WITHOUT WINGS? Depending on how strict you want to be, you might say that flying squirrels, flying frogs and flying lizards all count. But these are really only gliding or parachuting, and the various flaps of skin stretched between their legs, toes or ribs are also suspiciously similar to wings. However, the flying snakes of the genus Chrysopelea are in a different league. They can flatten their body so that it’s twice as wide as normal, and curved inward on the underside. When they leap from a tree, they don’t simply glide passively. Instead, they undulate their body sideways in a way that actually generates lift over their wing-shaped body. Flying snakes can travel up to 100m with this…

Readers of a certain age will remember the story of Mrs Lorena Bobbitt, who in 1993 made world news for taking a kitchen implement to her abusive husband’s private parts. The report remained in the public consciousness for a number of years, which explains why in 1996 a lowly and largely overlooked ocean worm was finally bequeathed a common name – the bobbit worm (Eunice aphroditois). The bobbit worm is a worm, weaponised. Found in warmer oceans around the world, it buries itself into sediment, leaving only its mouth exposed with its huge, scissor-like jaws open wide. Five antennae protruding from its head act like tripwires. If a fish should accidentally brush past one of them, it has mere milliseconds to flee. The bobbit worm’s razor-sharp mouthparts strike with such…

WHAT I’M READING Sara Rigby ONLINE ASSISTANT ZUCKED: WAKING UP TO THE FACEBOOK CATASTROPHE BY ROGER MCNAMEE (£16.99, HARPER COLLINS) We’ve heard a lot of criticisms of Facebook, from its handling of data to its failure to protect vulnerable people and youngsters, but we don’t often get to hear the inside story. Roger McNamee, an early investor in Facebook and former mentor to co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, gives us that privilege in his book Zucked: Waking Up To The Facebook Catastrophe. McNamee tells the story of how he became involved with Facebook and how he came to believe that there is something fundamentally wrong. He describes how Facebook’s well-intentioned policies became open to exploitation by groups whose intentions were far less pure, and how Facebook’s unwillingness to…

SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH The greatest voice on Earth talks about his new show Our Planet and why, despite imminent climate chaos, he’s still hopeful for the future. p60 DR SUZANNE GAGE Suzi, who studies the relationship between recreational drugs and behaviour, examines whether the online world is turning us all into addicts. p78 DR ALEKS KROTOSKI The way we talk about leprosy needs to change, argues Aleks, who grew up around people suffering from what’s known medically as Hansen’s disease. p68 PROF PETER SONKSON OBE A retired professor of endocrinology, Peter developed the test to detect growth hormone abuse for the London Olympics that caught two athletes. p40…

Dancing poles I read with great interest the article about the magnetic poles moving in the March issue of BBC Science Focus (p28). It reminded me of a question that pops into my mind whenever I come across a mention of the magnetic north pole. We are all taught that opposite poles attract each other and like poles repel. Why is it then that, ignoring deviation, the north pole of a magnet or compass points to geographic north? Surely either the Earth’s magnetic north pole is in the southern hemisphere or our magnets have north and south wrongly identified. The article states that magnetic north is near geographic north, somewhere over Canada, so something must be amiss. Also, when we draw lines of magnetic flux from the north pole of…

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) shows what the brain is doing, as well as how it looks. Volunteers in fMRI experiments typically carry out some kind of cognitive task – responding to stimuli or calculating, recalling or imagining something – while the scanner measures the blood flow to and from different parts of their brain and superimposes it on an anatomical picture of the brain (similar to an X-ray image). The areas pulling in most blood are assumed to be those that are most active. This is because blood carries oxygen, which is the ‘fuel’ that brain cells use to generate electricity. fMRI is the most common technology used to correlate brain activity with our thoughts, responses and perceptions because it seems to be safe and it is good at…

WHAT IS THE CREW DRAGON? The Crew Dragon is SpaceX’s first human-rated vehicle. Its design is based on the Dragon cargo module which SpaceX uses to run supplies to the International Space Station (ISS). In March, it went through its first flight tests in orbit, a step closer to NASA approving it for human flights. When in operation, the Crew Dragon – along with rival Boeing’s Starliner – will act as taxis, carrying astronauts to and from orbit. They were developed as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Development programme, which aims to provide a way to launch humans into space from US soil. Since the end of the Space Shuttle in 2011, NASA’s relied on Russian Soyuz capsules to reach the ISS. As well as the political ramifications of the…

Chimpanzees’ gestures exhibit two of the same underlying mathematical patterns found in human languages, researchers at the University of Roehampton have found. Gestures are likely to be a step in the evolution of spoken language, the researchers say. The team studied 81 chimps at the Budongo Forest Reserve in Uganda and recorded over 2,000 of their gestures. The chimps’ use of those gestures obeyed two linguistic rules: Zipf’s law of abbreviation and Menzerath’s law. “The chimps’ use of gestures obeyed two linguistic rules” Zipf’s law says that the more frequently we use a word, the shorter it tends to be. For example, the three most commonly used words in English are ‘the’, ‘be’ and ‘to’. The chimps most frequently used the gestures of the shortest duration. Menzerath’s law states that…

The fossilised remains of what could be the earliest example of a passerine bird have been unearthed in Wyoming, USA, according to a paper published in Current Biology. The remains are believed to date back to the early Eocene, 52 million years ago. Passerine birds are those that have feet adapted for perching and account for approximately 6,500 of the 10,000 bird species alive today. But scientists are unsure of their origins.“It’s fascinating because passerines today make up most of all bird species, but they were extremely rare back then,” said Dr Lance Grande, an author of the paper. “This particular piece is exquisite; it’s a complete skeleton with the feathers still attached, which is extremely rare in the fossil record of birds.” Eofringillirostrum boudreauxi, as the bird has been…

Orobates is a member of an extinct group of ancient tetrapods called diadectids and lived around 260 million years ago during what’s known as the Middle Permian period. Diadectids were superficially lizard-shaped, chunky and had a robustly constructed skull adapted for the consumption of tough plant material. They might have eaten small animals too. They were – so far as we know – the very first group of tetrapods to become specialised herbivores and their bulky, barrel-shaped bodies contained the large guts needed for the digestion of plant material. Diadectids were also the first tetrapod group to evolve large size, the biggest reaching three metres and perhaps 150kg. This makes it a giant compared to the majority of other ancient land-living tetrapods. Orobates was not quite so big, at 85cm…

WHAT MAKES OUR PLANET DIFFERENT FROM OTHER NATURAL HISTORY SHOWS THAT YOU’VE WORKED ON? AlastairFothergill: Having completed Planet Earth, Blue Planet and Frozen Planet , the time was right to do a series that dealt with our planet’s environmental and ecological challenges. If there’s any chance of preserving biodiversity, what are the ‘must-saves’? Keith Scholey: In the grasslands episode, for example, it’s about space. Most of the great migrations have disappeared because we took that space away. We say, “If you want to make space for grasslands, this is what you have to do.” It’s actually quite simple – it’s all about the food we eat. If people change their diet or we change the way we produce food, we can have a huge amount more space for nature. This…

French President Emmanuel Macron must have been mistaken when he recently described nationalism as the leprosy spreading across Europe – unless he meant it was really slow-moving, easy to treat, and harmless to everyone but a few. But I don’t think he did mean that. I think that, like most people, he doesn’t understand the disease. He probably just thinks that ‘leprosy’ is shorthand for ‘biblical curse’. But that’s a problem. Because despite being well understood by people in the medical community who treat it, leprosy – or to give it its correct name, Hansen’s disease (HD) – is so misunderstood by many people that comments like Macron’s reinforce the fear of the unknown, and destroy lives that could otherwise be saved with a simple antibiotic. I grew up surrounded…

DR ALASTAIR GUNN Astronomer, astrophysicist ALEX FRANKLINCHEUNG Environment/ climate expert DR PETER J BENTLEY Computer scientist, author PROF ALICE GREGORY Psychologist, sleep expert DR KATE ADAMS GP, journalist CHARLOTTE CORNEY Zoo director, conservationist DR HELEN SCALES Oceans expert, science writer DR CHRISTIAN JARRETT Neuroscientist, science writer DR EMMA DAVIES Chemistry expert, science writer LUIS VILLAZON Science/tech writer JULES HOWARD Zoologist, science writer PROF ROBERT MATTHEWS Physicist, science writer…

TURN IT UP If you’re too cold, you’ll be shivering to generate heat, which uses energy and keeps you in a half-asleep state. TURN IT DOWN If you’re too hot, you’ll be tossing and turning. BANISH THE GADGETS! The light from your mobile devices (or TV) contains blue wavelengths that suppress your body’s production of melatonin – the hormone that regulates sleep. SWITCH TO WATER (1) It takes between three and five hours for your body to reduce the caffeine in your bloodstream by 50 per cent, at which point you might still be feeling the effects. So avoid caffeinated drinks from mid-afternoon onwards. SWITCH TO WATER (2) While alcohol makes it easier to drop off to sleep, it also supresses the production of melatonin (the sleep hormone), meaning that…

AEROPRESS This single-cup coffee maker is highly regarded in the coffee community. The grounds are immersed in water then rapidly filtered when you push the plunger down. The design’s been so successful there’s now an Aeropress world championship, and a documentary about its invention. It was created by Alan Adler, who shifted focus from his Guinness World Record-setting Aerobie Frisbees to making a robust, portable, high-quality coffee maker. £29.99, AEROPRESS.COM CLEVER COFFEE DRIPPER This is like a pour-over, but it’s also got a little bung underneath, which makes it an immersion method of brewing. When it’s done you put it on top of your mug, the bung pushes out, and the paper filter removes all the fine particles. £20, VARIOUS COFFEE RETAILERS DECENT ESPRESSO DE1PRO The Decent coffee machine lets…

Masters of disaster MORE OR LESS: ARE NATURAL DISASTERS ON THE RISE? In this episode of the BBC Radio 4 programme, the More Or Less team tries to find out if natural disasters are becoming more frequent. bit.ly/disasters_rise FLOWAVE OCEAN ENERGY RESEARCH FACILITY Watch a video of Edinburgh University’s Flowave in action. bit.ly/flowave The walk of prehistoric life THE RISE AND FALL OF THE DINOSAURS BY STEVE BRUSATTE (£9.99, PAN MACMILLAN) In this accessible book, dinosaur expert Steve Brusatte takes us through the real story of how the dinosaurs came to dominate the planet and looks at the legacy they left behind. TETRAPOD ZOOLOGY Darren Naish and John Conway devote this regular podcast to discussion, research, discovery and speculation regarding amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, and all of their extinct…

Vibrant fibres DUKE UNIVERSITY, USA This rainbow explosion is a map of a mouse kidney, as revealed by diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) – a type of magnetic resonance imaging. DTI tracks the motions of water molecules as they pass through the fine tubes inside the kidney. The fluid that travels through these ‘tubules’ has nutrients removed and waste products added as it’s turned into urine. The colours of the fibres in this image represent their orientation, building a three-dimensional representation of the architecture of the kidney. MRI scans produce images by applying strong magnetic fields to tissue, and can be performed safely on living organisms. This photo is the winner of 2018's BMC Research In Progress photo competition. Bat cave TEXAS,USA Bracken Cave, outside San Antonio, Texas, hosts the world’s…

THE TEAM EDITORIAL EditorDaniel Bennett ProductioneditorAlice Lipscombe-Southwell CommissioningeditorJason Goodyer OnlineeditorAlexander McNamara StaffwriterJames Lloyd EditorialassistantHelen Glenny Online assistantSara Rigby ScienceconsultantRobert Matthews ART ArteditorJoe Eden Deputyart editorSteve Boswell PictureeditorJames Cutmore CONTRIBUTORS Kate Adams, Robert Banino, Hayley Bennett, Peter Bentley, Dan Bright, Paul Butt, Marcus Chown, Charlotte Corney, Emma Davies, Sam Falconer, Alexandra Franklin-Cheung, Malcolm Ferguson-Smith, Suzi Gage, Alice Gregory, Alastair Gunn, Jules Howard, Jinhwa Jang, Christian Jarrett, Jeff Johnson, Aleks Krotoski, Michael Mosley, Darren Naish, Other Peter, Helen Pilcher, Dean Purnell, Jason Raish, James Round, Helen Scales, Peter Sonksen, Luis Villazon, Joe Waldron, Elena Xausa ADVERTISING&MARKETING GroupadvertisingmanagerTom Drew AdvertisingmanagerNeil Lloyd Senior brandsalesexecutiveJonathan Horwood SeniorsalesexecutiveAnastasia Jones NewstrademanagerRob Brock SubscriptionsdirectorJacky Perales-Morris DirectmarketingmanagerKellie Lane MOBILE Headofapps anddigitaledition marketing Mark Summerton INSERTS Laurence Robertson 00353 876 902208 LICENSING&SYNDICATION Director oflicensing andsyndicationTim Hudson InternationalpartnersmanagerAnna Brown PRODUCTION ProductiondirectorSarah…

WANT TO AVOID THE WINTER SNIFFLES? GET YOUR FLU JAB IN OCTOBER As the protection offered by the flu jab slowly wanes as the season progresses, it may be best to wait a little before getting your flu jab, a study at the University of Pittsburgh has found. The team ran computer simulations and determined that getting the jab in October offered the most protection. However, getting vaccinated is always better than not getting vaccinated, whatever the time of year, the researchers said.…

#web30 On 12 March 30 years ago, Tim Berners-Lee (below) submitted a memo titled Information Management: A Proposal to CERN management, laying down the foundations for the World Wide Web. CERN @CERN #Web30 Thirty years ago, an unimaginably powerful tool was invented by Sir Tim Berners-Lee here, at CERN. Jimmy Wales @jimmy_wales In 2001 @Wikipedia was launched. Thank you to the millions of Wikipedians who have contributed to the web’s biggest encyclopedia over the last 18 years. #Web30 #ForTheWeb #PiDay Pi Day is an annual celebration of the mathematical constant observed every year on 14 March as the first three digits of the date are 3, 1 and 4. It was first organised by physicist Larry Shaw at the San Francisco Exploratorium in 1988. NASA…

32 The number of times more deadly ingesting party balloons is to seabirds than eating hard plastics, as found by researchers at the University of Tasmania. 50% The amount that sperm quality has reduced globally over the last 80 years, according to a study at the University of Nottingham. The effect is largely due to environmental pollutants, the researchers say. 2 hours The time it took 10,000 maggots to eat their way through a 16-inch Margherita pizza, as recorded by a team at Georgia Tech.…

THIRSTY ASTRONAUTS The solar wind may provide a water supply for future settlers on the Moon, says NASA. Protons carried by the solar wind (charged particles released by the Sun) interact with free electrons on the lunar surface to create hydrogen atoms. These latch onto oxygen atoms in the lunar soil to create H2O. DEATH METALLERS Despite the aggressive music and graphic lyrical content, death metal does not inspire violence, researchers at Macquarie University have found. They say most death metal fans feel joyful when listening to favourite jams.…

Sir David Attenborough is a broadcasting icon with more than half a century of experience under his belt. He first brought the world of wildlife into our living rooms with BBC’s Zoo Quest in the 1950s, and since then has been renowned for The Life Collection, The Blue Planet, Planet Earth and numerous other documentaries. He’s the only person to scoop BAFTA awards for black and white, colour, HD, 3D and 4K television, is an enthusiastic cheerleader for the environment, and will be narrating Netflix’s Our Planet this spring.…

It’s a widely held belief that some people are just hardwired to be hooked. But is there actually any evidence for this? According to addiction expert Prof Robert West, there isn’t. However, there are personality characteristics, like anxiety, depression and impulse control problems, that might make a person more vulnerable to addiction. He says this is an important distinction, because the term ‘addictive personality’ implies that if a person stops one addictive behaviour, they’ll just start another, and that’s not what happens. If a person has underlying risk factors for addiction, whether it’s related to their mental health, their personality, or other factors such as a family history, then stopping one behaviour will not then make them immune to the risk of other addictions. But they won’t be more at…

Coffee could soon be extinct – or at least the wild varieties of the coffee plant could be. The first full assessment of the threats to the 124 different species of wild coffee was published earlier this year by scientists at Kew Gardens, who found that 60 per cent of species are threatened with extinction due to climate change, deforestation, pests and diseases. The proportion of coffee species at risk is three times the figure for plants generally, which suggests that coffee is an especially vulnerable plant. Cultivated coffee beans are all of two species: either arabica (Coffea arabica) or robusta (Coffea canephora). Although the new study didn’t look directly at the threats to these two species, it’s likely that the same environmental pressures that apply to wild coffee will…

Today, the unicorn is a famous mythical beast. Back in the 5th Century BC, though, Greek scholars wrote about the unicorn as an exotic, but very real animal that lived in India. Early reports of unicorns were probably describing rhinos. But in the Middle Ages, long, thin, spiral ‘unicorn horns’ sold at great prices for use in magic and medicine. These were actually narwhal tusks. Narwhals are a kind of toothed whale that grows to around 5m long. But in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, the author Jules Verne imagined a narwhal 20 times larger that could sink ships. Verne’s novel featured a submarine called the Nautilus. This anticipated features that were only added to real subs much later, including hydroplanes to control diving angle, and battery-driven motors.…

ILLNESS HAVI CAREL (£21.99, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD) An elegant and thoughtful account of illness by a philosopher who developed a rare lung disease and whose thinking combines moving insights with scholarship, presented in an engaging and accessible style. MALIGNANT REBECCA DRESSER (£25.99, OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS) A group of ethicists who have either had cancer themselves, or loved someone who had cancer, reflect on those experiences and the ways in which their thinking and clinical ethics practice has been changed. INSIDE THE ETHICS COMMITTEE bit.ly/ethics_committee This was the first BBC radio programme Deborah Bowman was involved in. It offers an insight into real clinical ethics cases and how they are discussed and resolved.…

HOW CAN WE USE SCIENCE TO IMPROVE OUR COFFEE? Making coffee is a chemical process. We have our solvent, coffee, we have our solute, water, and we create a solution. Within that, there are a myriad of variables that we can control, but there are four key ones that we really need to get a handle on. Water is the first. Ninety-eight per cent of every coffee you drink is going to be water; it carries the bulk of the flavour. The process of drawing out chemical compounds, what we call ‘extraction’, is really just osmosis. Positively charged ions from the minerals in the water latch on to negatively charged ions that are the acids and sugars, and physically draw them out. So by tuning your mineral content, you can…