Table of contents for May 2016 in BBC Science Focus Magazine

At last count there were 2.5 million people in the UK living with cancer. In 2020, it’s thought that number will climb to three million (according to Macmillan Cancer Support). The good news is that we’re getting better at treating the condition. The trouble is our most commonly used weapons against cancer are effectively a cannon blast to the body. Take, for example, chemotherapy. It targets cells that reproduce rapidly; putting cancerous cells in its crossfire. But the treatment also kills innocent bystanders like skin and hair cells. What doctors need is a covert operative. This is where nanomachines could come in. With designs modelled on our body’s own defences, microscopic packages could patrol the body incognito and, at the first sign of a cancerous cell, spring open to release…

A team led by genomics pioneer J Craig Venter has synthesised a living bacterium that contains all the necessities for life yet has just 473 genes, making it simpler than any self-replicating cell found in nature. Humans have around 24,000 genes. The researchers hope that the cell will help them to tease out the most basic building blocks of life and begin unravelling the mystery of how complex organisms evolved on Earth, more than three billion years ago. The technique used to create Syn3.0 could also pave the way for the creation of tailor-made organisms that could be used to create new medicines, biofuels or microbes capable of soaking up pollution, the researchers say. Most of Syn3.0’s essential genes perform functions related to expressing genes, passing down genetic information, or…

What’s that? Something to keep your trousers up? Nope. It’s the Siberian Unicorn. Pull the other one. April Fool’s Day was ages ago. No, really. It was a large, shaggy mammal with a pointy horn sitting on the front of its snout. It was previously believed to have died out 350,000 years ago but a skull recently found in Kazakhstan dates to just 29,000 years ago. I want one! Erm, I don’t think you do. Quite apart from the fact that they are now extinct, the animals were around two metres tall, four metres long and weighed about four tonnes, making them similar in size to a mammoth. Not exactly the sort of thing you could keep in your garden.…

WE COULD BUILD A BASE ON THE MOON BY 2022 NASA scientists have suggested that a base capable of housing 10 astronauts could be built on the Moon using existing technologies in the next five to 10 years. It would cost $10bn, which is around half of the space agency’s yearly budget, they say. MANTA RAYS CAN RECOGNISE THEMSELVES IN THE MIRROR Giant manta rays have joined great apes, dolphins and elephants in passing the ‘mirror test’. A study in Florida found that rays presented with mirrors wiggled their fins and blew bubbles, suggesting that they were able to recognise their own reflections. BEING IN SPACE CAN STUNT HAIR GROWTH Researchers in Tokyo have found that being in orbit can turn on genes that decrease hair growth in men. They…

1. Nanobots that detect signs of common diseases are injected into the blood soon after birth. 2. Signs of cystic fibrosis are detected. A modified virus ‘infects’ cells with gene-editing technology, repairing the genes that cause the disease. 3. On developing diabetes at 30, light-sensitive, insulin-producing quantum dots are injected into the body. To top up insulin levels during the day, a special torch is shone onto the blood vessels on the wrist, where the skin is thin. 4. At 60, a scan reveals weak fluorescent light being emitted from deep in the lymph nodes. Nanobots are reacting with molecules found in cancer cells to signal the disease’s presence. 5. To combat the cancer, more nanobots are injected into the body. They accumulate in the tumour, making the cancerous tissue…

“CANNIBALISM HAS ALL BUT DIED OUT. THERE IS SCANT MENTION OF IT ON TV COOKERY SHOWS” There is a lot of negativity towards cannibalism. In the 21st Century, it seems to have all but died out. There is scant mention of it on TV cookery programmes, either as a totemistic or nutritional diet choice. By clumsy chance, as I write this, I am sucking blood – my own – having gashed open my finger while rummaging for my laptop in my rucksack. Several years back, there was the gory news story of a German man who advertised for someone who would volunteer to be eaten. I’m not sure which magazines accept classifieds from hungry human flesh-eaters – these are the loneliest hearts columns. Apparently, the volunteer began to experience regret…

A penny dropped from the top of the Eiffel Tower could kill someone The building used as the basis of this myth varies. Much more constant is the terminal velocity of a penny, which is around 44km/h (27mph). The penny reaches that speed after it has been falling for about 15 metres (50 feet). Once the penny has reached its terminal velocity, it will not accelerate any further. Physicist Louis Bloomfield at the University of Virginia used this calculation to replicate the fall of pennies from tall buildings. He found that pennies at that speed would not break the skin – at most, they would just sting a little. Goldfish only have a three-second memory The life of a goldfish isn’t always filled with joys that are worth remembering: countless…

DR CHRISTIAN JARRETT Christian is a psychology and neuroscience writer. His latest book is Great Myths Of The Brain. DR ALASTAIR GUNN Alastair is an astronomer at the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester. PROF ROBERT MATTHEWS Robert is a physicist and science writer. He’s visiting professor in science at Aston University. DR PETER J BENTLEY Peter is a computer scientist and author who is based at University College London. His latest book is Digitized. LUIS VILLAZON Luis has a BSc in computing and an MSc in zoology. He is author of How Cows Reach The Ground. DR MARK LORCH Mark is a senior lecturer at the University of Hull, where he teaches chemistry and science. Can robots be creative? DAVE ROBERTS, SHEFFIELD Yes they can.…

SODIUM FLUORIDE This helps maintain the strength of tooth enamel and, despite controversies, is perfectly safe at the amounts found in toothpaste. SODIUM LAURYL SULPHATE This detergent crops up in all sorts of products including shampoos, washing powder and washing-up liquids. It helps remove fats, but mostly it’s just included to make a nice foam (which doesn’t actually help with the cleaning but we expect bubbles in cleaning products). It’s this stuff that makes orange juice taste vile after you’ve cleaned your teeth. HYDRATED SILICA This mild abrasive used to rub away stains and debris. Alternatively, your toothpaste of choice might contain calcium carbonate (chalk), magnesium carbonate or aluminium oxides, all of which do the same job. TRICLOSAN This antibacterial agent appears in many toothpastes. It helps prevent gum disease,…

Forty years ago, the consensus was that they could not. Neanderthals didn’t make cave paintings, or flint arrowheads, and their larynx wasn’t positioned low enough to allow them to make the full range of human vocal sounds. But more recent discoveries have shown that Neanderthals had a hyoid bone, tongue nerves and hearing range that was very similar to modern humans, and quite different to other primates. Neanderthals also shared the FOXP2 gene with us, which is thought to be involved in speech and language. Prof Steven Mithen of Reading University has suggested that Neanderthals may have had a ‘protolanguage’ that was halfway between speech and music.…

LIGHT SHOW Even as late as the 17th Century, some people thought the brain was a flabby organ, incapable of thought. But as this artist’s impression of a human brain shows, the organ is filled with a stunning array of neurons, each playing its vital part in helping the brain to regulate and control the mind and body. Rome, 2nd Century AD. An audience of philosophers and politicians has gathered to watch Galen of Pergamon, the ‘prince of physicians’, perform a public demonstration involving a pig. The animal’s squealing falls suddenly silent as Galen severs its laryngeal nerve – the neural link connecting its voice box to its brain. The crowd audibly gasps with astonishment. Why were they so shocked? Galen had just proved that the brain, not the heart,…

Cerebral cortex The outer layer of the brain can be split in half lengthways, and each half is divided into four lobes: the frontal lobe, the temporal lobe, the parietal lobe, and the occipital lobe. fMRI Functional magnetic resonance imaging is used to detect areas of the brain that are working harder than others. Neuron One of the main cell types in the brain. An adult has about 85 billion neurons, forming over 100 trillion connections. Synapse The tiny gap between neurons. Chemical messengers are released by a neuron, travel across the synapse, and get absorbed by the receiving neuron. Ventricles These uid-filled cavities in the brain act as a kind of shock absorption system.…

I grew up in Co Armagh, N Ireland. My father was an architect who did his own surveying. Sometimes, he’d let me come along while he took measurements. Then in the car on the way home, he’d let me reduce the observations. It introduced me to science and taught me how to design a good experiment. In the 1950s, the assumption was that girls would get married and not have jobs. So at secondary school, girls did domestic science and boys did science. My parents had to fight to get me into science class. That first term we did physics and astronomy, and I discovered I was good at physics. I did a physics degree at Glasgow University, where I was the only woman in my honours class. When I…

STUART CLARK Scientists have been on the hunt for antimatter for nearly a century. But where could we find this intriguing substance and could it change our understanding of physics? Stuart Clark investigates. p72 ZOE CORMIER Science writer Zoe Cormier takes a look at new research led by esteemed psychiatrist Prof David Nutt, which has revealed the ways in which LSD can increase connectivity between regions of the brain. p22 TOM IRELAND Nanomedicines are a hot topic in the world of science, and could even make us immortal! We asked editor of The Biologist Tom Ireland to find out what we can look forward to from these micro machines. p34…

Crash course Many years ago I heard a story attributed to Sir Stirling Moss in his heyday. While driving a domestic car in the UK, he was approaching cars stopped at traffic lights when the nearest in front of him decided to reverse. He accelerated up to the car to reduce the time it had to gain speed, stopped just away from its back bumper, allowed it to make contact as he set off in reverse (thus minimising impact), then used his own brakes to slow down and stop the little caravan of vehicles. The story might be apocryphal but I like to think it’s true – but only because of the skill of such a driver. However, a driverless car would be able to do things like this as…

1946 J Craig Venter is born in Salt Lake City, Utah 1975 Venter graduates from the University of California with a doctorate in physiology and pharmacology 1995 In collaboration with Hamilton Smith, Venter determines the genomic sequence of the Haemophilusinfluenza bacterium, marking the first time the complete genetic sequence of a free-living organism is decoded 2001 The Institute for Genomic Research, founded by Venter, helps sequence the genome of the anthrax strain mailed in the attacks that killed five people — evidence that eventually leads the FBI to the source 2003 The Human Genome Project, led by Venter, decodes the human genome for the first time 2004 Venter embarks on a two-year trip around the globe by sailboat, in search of microbes for DNA sequencing 2008 The J Craig Venter…

From the earthy colours and theatrical play of light and shadow to the thick layering of paint, all signs point to this portrait being painted by the Dutch master Rembrandt. However, it was actually created by a computer following a two-year collaboration between the Technical University of Delft, Microsoft and the Mauritshuis and Rembrandthuis museums. The project has been dubbed ‘The Next Rembrandt’. The portrait was created using data from high-res 3D scans of 346 of Rembrandt’s portraits. “There’s a lot of Rembrandt data available,” said the Technical University of Delft’s Joris Dik. “But can we actually create something out of it that looks like Rembrandt? That was an appealing question.” The chosen works were all painted between 1632 and 1642 and featured Caucasian males aged between 30 and 40…

Domino’s, the world’s largest pizza chain, has begun trialling robot delivery of its pizzas in Wellington, New Zealand. The robot in question is known as DRU, which stands for Domino’s Robotic Unit. Developed by Domino’s in conjunction with Australian robotics company Marathon Targets, it stands a metre high, travels on four wheels and can reach speeds of 20km/h (12.4mph), travelling on pavements and cycle paths rather than on the road. It’s equipped with Domino’s own GPS tracking system, and has a LIDAR system of laser sensors that enables it to detect pedestrians, cyclists and any other obstacles in its path. There are also on-board cameras and an alarm system that could be linked to local police, to deter any would-be thieves. “WE ARE CONFIDENT THAT ONE DAY HE WILL BECOME…

With the vinyl revival in full swing, an Austrian company, Rebeat, has filed a patent for a new high-definition vinyl format that will play on standard turntables, yet offers improved sound quality, 30 per cent greater capacity and higher playback volume. The tech for which it’s filed a patent – known for now as ‘HD vinyl’ – involves using 3D topographical mapping and laser inscription to create discs which, as well as having the advantages listed above, can be manufactured more quickly than those made using traditional ‘stamping’methods. Rebeat is now looking to extend its EU-wide patent into a global one, after which it hopes to start creating HD vinyl discs for real – hopefully within two to three years.…

You once said your job involved “swanning around”. On screen you certainly look like you’re having fun… Having fun is not difficult. It’s one of the few talents I have – enjoying myself. So it’s obvious why you do this – you’re having a ball! People say: “But you’re so old. Why are you working?” Well, I’d pay to carry on doing what I’m doing! What’s your favourite possession? The skeleton of a tiny crustacean called Kiwa tyleri is my favourite object – it sits on my desk. It was collected from a hydrothermal vent at the bottom of the Atlantic near South Georgia. No human could ever survive alongside this marvellous little thing. Are there any animals you don’t like? Rats. People might picture you in an idyllic Georgian…

On 9 May 2016, Mercury will pass between the Sun and Earth – the first transit in 10 years. And in 2017, the Japanese and European space agencies will be launching BepiColombo – the third ever space probe to visit Mercury. Space visionaries contemplate Mercury with an eye on the future because the resource-rich world is close to the Sun and all of its energy. We asked Stephen Baxter, renowned science-fiction writer and member of the British Interplanetary Society, to envision how Mercury could be the stepping stone to exploring the Solar System and beyond. STAGE 1 SETTING UP A BASE Mercury, the innermost planet in our Solar System, was once an enigma. For years, its proximity to the Sun made it difficult for astronomers to observe – but the…

“WHY ARE BRILLIANT SCIENTISTS SEDUCED INTO SPENDING TIME ON THE NATURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS?” Everyone has childhood heroes – a brilliant sports star, say, or an adventurer. It’s all part of growing up – as is discovering they weren’t quite as heroic as you thought. My first hero was Captain Scott, whose story of steely determination to reach the South Pole moved me to tears when I read it as a kid. Only years later did I find out that he was an amateurish bungler. My scientific heroes have fared better. Sure, Louis Pasteur sometimes cut corners in his scientific studies of disease, but the outcome saved countless lives. Physicist Richard Feynman was a bit of a show-off, but there’s no doubting his genius. And then there’s Albert Einstein, who just…

1. Caviar is the eggs of a fish called a sturgeon. The best caviar comes from the beluga sturgeon, Huso huso . The fish can live for over 100 years, but caviar harvesting normally kills the female. 2. Like most bony fish, the beluga sturgeon has an organ called the swim bladder. This is a gas-filled oat that can be squeezed by the surrounding muscles to adjust its total volume and control the fish’s buoyancy. 3. The lining of the swim bladder is made from almost pure collagen protein. This is dried to make isinglass. The name comes from the Old Dutch word huizenblass – ‘sturgeon bladder’. 4. Isinglass is traditionally added to cask-conditioned beers to remove the sediment. The collagen causes suspended particles of the brewing yeast to clump…

Scientist: Peter Eriksson etal Date: 1998 Discovery: Adult humans can grow new neurons “Everything may die, nothing may be regenerated.” In 1913, neuroscience pioneer Santiago Ramón y Cajal wrote these words about the prospects for regrowth in the adult human brain. For much of the last century, the evidence seemed to back this view – in fact, Cajal’s “harsh decree”, as he called it, became something of a dogma. But from the 1960s onwards, contrary evidence gradually began to mount, showing that adult rats, cats, birds and even monkeys can grow new neurons – a process known as neurogenesis. Despite this, for many more years the mainstream establishment refused to believe that this was true of humans. Today, however, it is widely acknowledged that neurogenesis does take place…

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14.53 million km2 The size of the Arctic ice cap recorded by NASA’s National Snow and Ice Data Centre. It’s the lowest since records began in 1979. 184 The age of Jonathan, a Seychelles giant tortoise living on the island of St Helena in the southern Atlantic Ocean. He’s thought to be the oldest living terrestrial animal on the planet. 10 trillion degrees That’s one followed by 13 zeroes. The temperature of quasar 3C 273, a mysterious disc of ma er swirling around a supermassive black hole in the Virgo constellation.…

“THE ONLY WAY TO STUDY CONSCIOUSNESS IS TO CHANGE IT” A team led by Imperial College’s Prof David Nutt has discovered that brain networks become ‘desegregated’ under the influence of LSD (also known as ‘acid’). Regions of the brain that do not normally communicate with each other suddenly do so. “The brain becomes much more integrated in a strange sort of way,” said Nutt. “You can pull together things that you wouldn’t normally. This is why LSD could be so powerful in treating conditions where the brain has become ‘locked in’, such as alcoholism or depression.” “You get increased connectivity because you have dampened down the control centres,” added researcher Robin Carhart-Harris. The team picked 20 subjects who had previously used psychedelics, to minimise the risk of them having a…

RELEASE THE CRACUNS A team at Johns Hopkins University has built a ying drone that can live underwater. It’s intended as an extra ‘pair of eyes’ for submarines and has been dubbed CRACUNS (Corrosion Resistant Aerial Covert Unmanned Nautical System). TINY HARD DRIVE Western Digital has created a 300GB hard drive that’s just 6.35mm (0.25in) thick. PiDrive is aimed, as the name suggests, at users of the Raspberry Pi and will retail for just £39.50. FASTER INTERNET A MIT team has designed a way to make web pages load up to 34 per cent faster. The system, Polaris, minimises the number of times your computer has to communicate with a remote server to display a page. CHEVY SAFETY The latest Chevy Malibu includes a ‘teen driver’ mode designed to put…

There are lots of things to love about flying, but a trip to the loo on a crowded 747 isn’t usually one of them. However, the days of smelly, unhygienic cubicles may be numbered, as Boeing has invented a self-cleaning bathroom. The design, for which Boeing has filed a patent application, makes use of ‘far UV’ light. This light matches the resonant frequency of the molecular bonds that hold microbes together, causing the germs to explode. The technique is said to destroy 99.99 per cent of all known pathogens, and remove unpleasant odours in a mere three seconds. Lights are placed throughout the toilet compartment to ensure the UV reaches all surfaces – the toilet lid even opens and closes itself while cleaning is going on to make sure there’s…

POLYMERS Polymers are materials that form hollow balls that can then be filled with tiny amounts of other useful chemicals. GRAPHENE A type of carbon that forms sheets just one atom thick. The material is strong and highly unreactive, so can be used to create a range of tiny objects. CARBON NANOTUBES Sheets of graphene rolled up into tiny tubes (‘nanotubes’) have been a key component in nanotechnology for years. These tubes could be used on the ends of ‘nanoneedles’, allowing them to inject substances into specific areas of individual cells. QUANTUM DOTS Quantum dots are tiny spheres that are small enough to pass freely through cells. They have a metal inner core and an outer casing. Some emit light, which can be used signal the presence of disease. DNA…

1926 – Born David Frederick Attenborough on 8 May. 1933 – Builds collection of fossils and stones, kick-starting a love of nature. 1947 – Achieves natural sciences degree at Cambridge University. 1952 – Joins fledgling BBC. 1954 – Brought into the public eye as the presenter on Zoo Quest. 1965 – Made controller of BBC Two and oversees introduction of colour television to the UK. 1969 – Becomes responsible for both BBC One and BBC Two. 1973 – Resigns his post to concentrate on making documentaries. 1977 – Wildlife On One first broadcast. Runs for 33 seasons. 1979 – Life On Earth. Watched by around 500 million people worldwide. 1985 – Awarded knighthood. 1995 – The Private Life Of Plants. Boasts new time-lapse photography. 2005 – Life In The Undergrowth.…

1 A necklace that listens to what you eat Counting calories is one of the biggest challenges facing fitness trackers. Most wearables ask you to log your breakfast by picking food out of a vast database, and by the time you’ve found your specific meal it’s probably time for lunch. But now a team of researchers in China think they might have solved the problem, with a necklace that recognises food by the way it sounds when it’s being eaten. The AutoDietary smart necklace houses a high-fidelity microphone which, when you start to eat, records the noises, sends the information wirelessly to a smartphone and matches it against a database of sounds that foods make when we bite, grind and swallow them. It sounds highly ambitious, but the team has…

10. Golden eagle Weight:7kg Distribution:North America, Eurasia and North Africa 8= Philippine eagle Weight:8kg Distribution:Philippines 8= Lammergeier Weight:8kg Distribution:Southern Europe, Middle East, China and Africa 6= Steller’s sea eagle Weight:9kg Distribution:Russia and Japan 6= Harpy eagle Weight:9kg Distribution:Mexico, Central and South America 5. California condor Weight:12kg Distribution:North America 4. Himalayan vulture Weight:12.5kg Distribution:Central Asia and Himalayas 2= Lappet-faced vulture Weight:14kg Distribution:Africa and Middle East 2= Eurasian black vulture Weight:14kg Distribution:South Europe and Central Asia 1. Andean condor Weight:15kg Distribution:South America Love our Q&A pages? Follow our Twitter feed @sciencefocusQA…

Calculus is a powerful mathematical toolbox for dealing with phenomena in a state of flux, from the flow of water to the expansion of the cosmos. As such, a better name for it would be ‘fluxions’ – a term coined by Isaac Newton, one of the two 17th-Century mathematicians regarded as its inventors, the other being the German Gottfried Leibniz. Not that Newton saw it that way. Having invented it in secret in the 1660s, he was horrified when Leibniz went public with similar methods, having independently discovered them about 10 years later. Newton launched an unjustified campaign of character assassination against Leibniz, yet could not stop the adoption of his rival’s name for the technique (from the Latin for ‘counting stone’). It’s now known that some basic ideas in…

“CAKES AND BISCUITS BOTH GO STALE, BUT WHAT MAKES ONE GO HARD AND THE OTHER GO SOFT?” The biscuit tin in my office is an essential tool for getting science done. For pondering the thorniest scientific problems, tea alone is not enough and a chocolate biscuit or two is necessary to help the process along. But last week I didn’t put the lid back properly and by Monday morning my stash of biscuits was soft and spongy. Their weedy nature certainly didn’t hit the biscuit spot. At the same time, leftover cake in my kitchen at home was getting closer and closer to the texture of a dry loofah, hard and rigid. Both cake and biscuits were going stale, but what makes one go hard and the other go soft?…

425BC The Hippocratic treatise On the Sacred Disease states, contrary to the dominant cardiocentric view, that “from the brain and the brain only arise our pleasures, joys, laughter and jests, as well as our sorrows, pains, griefs, and tears”. GALEN OF PERGAMON (c.130-210) In the 2nd Century, the philosopher performs the pig demonstration (see main text), showing that the brain controls behaviour. 1543 Renaissance anatomist Andreas Vesalius publishes his landmark book On The Fabric Of The Human Body showing some of the most detailed dissections of the human brain ever produced. 1830s Phrenology reaches the peak of its popularity. This was the mistaken idea that psychological aptitudes and personality traits can be discerned from the bumps on someone’s skull. 1848 Railway worker Phineas Gage becomes one of the most famous…

Manchester is a city of contrasts – world-renowned industrial heritage nestled beside 21st-Century developments, and surrounded by some of the most gorgeous countryside in the UK. Yes, it rains – but that’s why it’s so green! I love wandering around the CASTLEFIELD CANAL BASIN 1 an area that now combines bars with hundreds of years of history – Roman remains, the Bridgewater Canal (1761) and three railway lines (one now a tramway). It’s a stone’s throw from the MUSEUM OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY (MOSI) 2 , the site of the world’s first passenger railway station. Here, the past is so thick you can feel it in the air. I love to visit the MANCHESTER ART GALLERY 3 , which has one of the best collections of Pre-Raphaelite paintings. Sometimes incredibly…