Table of contents for October 2020 in BBC Science Focus Magazine

The COVID-19 symptom of the loss of the sense of smell, or anosmia, is unusual in the way that it differs from that of the common cold or flu. With colds and flu, a blocked nose is usually the culprit, caused by inflammation of the area. However, for some people that have COVID-19, anosmia is their only symptom. The reason for this could lie in the mechanism by which the virus infects our cells, new research suggests. The ‘entry point’ for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is thought to be a protein found on the surface of some human cells, which are present in the heart, lungs, gut, throat and nose. The protein, a type of enzyme called the ‘angiotensin converting enzyme II’ (ACE-2), has a particular shape that…

Reef mantas (Mobula alfredi) are one of the world’s biggest ray species, inhabiting tropical and subtropical regions of the Indian and West Pacific Oceans. Their habit of frequenting shallow waters around coastal reefs makes them an iconic animal for ecotourism, but also makes them a target for the fisheries that hunt them for their body parts, which are highly prized in traditional medicine. The ocean giants are listed as ‘vulnerable’ on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Their migration movements are little understood, so a team of researchers from Australia wanted to change that in order to help with conservation efforts. They used satellite tags and more than a decade’s worth of photographic data to identify 1,121 individual animals that live and travel between Ningaloo Coast and Shark Bay…

They may be little more than 10cm long, but mantis shrimp pack a serious punch. They are able to whip out their club-like forelimbs at a whopping 23 metres per second, smashing them into their prey with the force of rifle bullet. Yet despite this tremendous impact, these ancient crustaceans can throw blow after blow, without sustaining damage. Now, material scientists at the University of California, Irvine, have discovered that these clubs have a uniquely designed nanoparticle coating that absorbs and dissipates energy. This finding could have significant implications for engineered materials in the automotive, aerospace and sports industries, they say. “Think about punching a wall a couple of thousand times at those speeds and not breaking your fist,” said lead researcher Prof David Kisailus. “That’s pretty impressive, and it…

1. The spider’s supper by Jaime Culebras, Spain A wandering spider chows down on the eggs of a giant glass frog in a stream in Manduriacu Reserve, northwestern Ecuador. 2. Head start by Dhritiman Mukherjee, India Male gharials, like this one photographed in the National Chambal Sanctuary in Uttar Pradesh, northern India, mate with several females who all nest close together to produce a huge brood of hatchlings. 3. Paired-up puffins by Evie Easterbook, UK Every spring, the Farne Islands off the coast of Northumberland attract more than 100,000 breeding pairs of seabirds. Here, a pair of Atlantic puffins sit nestled in their burrow. 4. Treetop douc by Arshdeep Singh, India This red-shanked douc langur was snapped near Son Tra Nature Reserve, Vietnam’s last coastal rainforest. Found only in Vietnam,…

BLUETOOTH, AIRPLAY, CHROMECAST... DOES IT MATTER HOW I CONNECT TO MY WIRELESS SPEAKERS? It depends on your priorities. All of these connections will ultimately allow you to play music from your device wirelessly, but there are pros and cons to each of them that might sway your decision. For a start, what device you own might make a difference. Bluetooth is pretty universal, and also arguably a lot more straightforward. Google’s Chromecast and Apple’s Airplay both work using your home Wi-Fi network, whereas Bluetooth is a different, standalone technology. It works via a direct connection between wherever you have your music stored – such as your phone or laptop – and your speaker. That means Bluetooth is the thing to use outside of the house, as it isn’t reliant on…

WHAT IS SLEEP? Sleep is a state of altered consciousness in which we become less aware of what’s going on around us. Sleep can take different forms in different animals. Dolphins, for example, sleep just half a brain at a time, and can even continue to swim while asleep. For humans, sleep involves four stages, called N1, N2, N3 and rapid eye movement (REM). N1 is the lightest stage of sleep. It usually occurs right after you fall asleep, and typically lasts less than 10 minutes. During N2, you sink deeper into sleep. This stage is characterised by brief, high-amplitude brainwaves called ‘K-complexes’ and bursts of lower-amplitude waves called ‘sleep spindles’. The N3 stage is the deepest stage of sleep, and is characterised by slow brain waves called delta waves.…

ACROSS 1 Robbery and rip-off by a city’s borders (6) 4 Building material prisoner left somewhere in the Med (5) 8 Scandinavian food (5) 9 Country changes are in another (7) 10 Live like a headless chauvinist (5) 12 Boy conceals desire to be a doctor (7) 13 Performing in calm cabaret with two humps (8,5) 15 Paid no attention to soldier returning with negative socialist (7) 17 Old nuisance, starting sauce (5) 19 The first opponent has one, but it’s inconsequential (7) 20 Search for a tiny amount (5) 22 Foe has Yemen mobilised (5) 23 Musical agreement (6) DOWN 1 Fake jewellery is finished, to a point (5) 2 About to have nothing but eggs (3) 3 Inventor of smashed rare cot (7) 4 Trouble by registered minder…

The Touch Test Psychologist and All In The Mind presenter Claudia Hammond reveals the results of the Touch Test, a questionnaire put to the British public exploring people’s changing attitudes towards touch. BBC Radio 4, 5 October Why Do Some Planets Spin? Could Earth be flung off-balance? Why do we only ever see one side of the Moon? The CrowdScience team reveals the answers to listeners’ cosmic questions. BBC World Service, 9 October, 8:30pm Mountain Vets The vets of Mourne mountains – the idyllic rural area in the east of Northern Ireland, where animals outnumber citizens 10 to 1 – return to our screens this month with six new episodes. BBC Two, Fridays at 8:30pm…

Rooster tooter In response to a reader’s question ‘Do birds fart?’ (bit.ly/birds-fart) Charlotte Corney wrote that there is no known evidence of birds farting. Obviously, chicken owners weren’t included in the research. Our chickens fart a lot, sometimes wet, sometimes dry. Either way they are not subtle in sound nor smell! William Cowan Cycle fast Dr Michael Mosley has previously written of the benefits of time-restricted eating (TRE). I’ve been on a TRE regime for some time now, giving myself a four-hour eating window per day. Next year I’ll be cycling from Land’s End to John o’Groats, and I’m wondering if there have been any studies done on TRE and endurance events like this? I know the general advice seems to be a steady intake of food (for example, a…

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have mapped the enormous halo of gas surrounding the Andromeda Galaxy - the closest large galaxy to our Milky Way. The map, which is the most detailed of its kind, shows that the halo of plasma (electrically charged gas) surrounding this spiral galaxy extends about 1.3 million light-years towards the Milky Way (about half of the distance), and as much as two million light-years in some directions. The halo is invisible, but the researchers say that if it could be seen, it’d be about three times the width of the Plough, making it the biggest feature in the night sky. “Understanding the huge halos of gas surrounding galaxies is immensely important,” said team member Samantha Berek at Yale University. “This reservoir of gas contains…

The first 3D scan of a sauropod embryo’s skull has revealed what these gigantic dinosaurs looked like as tiny hatchlings. Sauropods are a group of dinosaurs that are instantly recognisable by their small heads and their long, sweeping necks and tails - Diplodocus and Brontosaurus are two of the best-known examples. The first sauropod embryos were discovered around 25 years ago in an 80-million-year-old nesting ground of titanosaurs (a group of especially large sauropods) at a site called Auca Mahuevo in the Patagonian region of Argentina. The newly analysed skull also belongs to a titanosaur from Patagonia, although the researchers don’t know the exact location, as the fossilised egg it was found in was originally smuggled out of the country, and only came to the researchers’ attention later on. The…

More than 400 different species of vertebrates, including birds, fish, amphibians, reptiles and mammals, could potentially contract the virus that causes COVID-19, researchers at the University of California, Davis have found. The team used genomic analysis to compare the main cellular receptor for the virus in humans – angiotensinconverting enzyme-2, or ACE2 – in 410 different species of vertebrates. ACE2 is found on many different types of cells and tissues, including cells lining the nose, mouth and lungs. In humans, 25 amino acids that make up ACE2 are involved in the mechanism by which the virus binds to and gains entry into cells. The researchers therefore wanted to investigate any similarities in animals. “Animals with all 25 amino acid residues matching the human protein are predicted to be at the…

If you believe some recent headlines, an asteroid is threatening to derail democracy by blasting into Earth on 2 November – the day before the US elections. In reality, the space rock, called 2018 VP1, has only a 0.41 per cent (1 in 240) chance of hitting us. And even if it does, it’s only around two metres in diameter, so it’ll disintegrate in the atmosphere long before it’s had chance to ruffle any presidential hairdos. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS As its name suggests, 2018 VP1 was discovered in 2018, and it’s just one of around 23,500 ‘near-Earth objects’ (NEOs) being tracked by NASA’s Center for NEO Studies (CNEOS). NEOs are Solar System bodies which have orbits that bring them in close proximity to us (defined as coming within around 200 million…

Tron-style electric scooters will feature in the Electric Scooter Championship (eSC), an event launched by a team of motorsports enthusiasts including Formula E champion Lucas di Grassi and ex-Formula 1 driver Alex Wurz. Details are yet to be finalised, but the group says the event will launch sometime in 2021. The newly announced deal will see Williams Advanced Engineering (WAE) exclusively developing and supplying the eSkootr chassis, battery system and powertrain for the eSC’s first two seasons. “Williams Advanced Engineering has already demonstrated its pioneering approach to battery powertrain solutions in other motorsport series,” says Iain Wight, the business development director at Williams Advanced Engineering. “The opportunity to further explore the sector with the eSkootr and eSC provides an opportunity for us to refine the packaging, ergonomics and systems required…

The Paris Zoological Park opened an exhibit like no other in october 2019. Inside the glass tank, to the amazement of passers-by, was an organism that could think yet had no brain. That could remember without experiences. That could build information networks with an efficiency unmatched in the history of the human species. It was a slime mould. They called it ‘Le Blob’. Slime moulds rarely feature in pub quizzes or nature documentaries, so why should we care about them? Let’s start with the basics. First, slime moulds aren’t just one kind of organism, but are rather a collective of organisms that closely resemble amoebae. Most slime moulds live out their lives as single-celled microorganisms, so small that they can’t be seen with the naked eye. But when they’re ready…

Before COVID-19, loneliness was considered a national epidemic, and as bad for you as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. But by the middle of June this year, social isolation had become the ‘new normal’ for more of us, with 7.4 million British people having experienced ‘lockdown loneliness’, according to the Office for National Statistics. The knock-on effects that stress and loneliness could be having on our physical health are potentially vast, although they can be hard to spot when we’re in the thick of challenging times. A panic attack is relatively easy to identify, but the slow and steady creep of rising blood pressure or inflammation is less obvious. Step forward, a little-known health marker called heart rate variability (HRV). HRV is a measure of the degree of variation in…

MAKE IT IN A MUG… … or a tea cup. Avoid disposable Styrofoam cups. They’re the worst. Styrofoam is porous so it will absorb some of the flavour compounds and affect the taste. If you’re on the go, opt for reusable cups made from inert materials like ceramic or glass. Plastics can absorb flavours over time, so will kill the flavour of what you’re drinking. IF YOU LIKE YOUR TEA SWEET, GO FOR AN ORANGE MUG. There’s a huge amount of psychology involved in the way we perceive taste. For example, hot drinks taste sweeter if they’re in an orange or red mug, compared to if they’re in a blue or white mug. Similarly, if you were to drink from a fine bone china cup, you’d probably associate that with…

Dear descendant… After reading your article on faster-than-light travel (July, p33), it got me thinking about how when we look at distant, potentially habitable planets we are looking at them thousands of years in the past. Therefore, if humans eventually travel many light-years away from Earth and then look back, they will see Earth as it was in the past. Does this mean that, right now, there could be future humans looking down on us and watching me eat my porridge?! I imagine they would also study and record us - which could end up being a future beamed-into-the-brain VR series for people to eat popcorn to. I don’t know about you, but I’m staying inside for a bit longer to avoid our voyeuristic descendants!…

A newly discovered 410-million-year-old fossil of an ancient armoured fish could turn the evolution of sharks on its head. Today, the majority of vertebrates have skeletons made of bone. But sharks and their relatives, such as rays and skates, have lighter, more flexible skeletons made of cartilage. Conventional wisdom has stated that cartilaginous fish evolved first, with bony fish (like tuna and mackerel) evolving later. Sharks, however, retained their cartilaginous skeleton. The new fossil, which was discovered by an international team of researchers, has been named Minjinia turgenensis. It belongs to a group of armoured fish called the placoderms, and is closely related to the last common ancestor of both sharks and bony fish. When the team uncovered part of its skull, including its braincase, they found that it was…

“Our ichthyosaur’s stomach contents weren’t etched by stomach acid, so it must have died quite soon after ingesting this food item” A 240-million-year-old fossil has revealed that dolphin-like ichthyosaurs could gobble up animals almost as big as themselves. It’s the first direct evidence of ‘megapredation’ - one large animal eating another - in the ancient world. Ichthyosaurs were marine reptiles that lived during the time of the dinosaurs. The fossilised ichthyosaur in this new study was uncovered in a quarry in southwestern China. It’s an almost complete skeleton, around five metres long, with the bones of another marine reptile called a thalattosaur preserved inside its stomach. The thalattosaur was around four metres long and more lizard-like than the ichthyosaur, with four paddling limbs. The bones found inside the ichthyosaur’s stomach…

According to a paper by scientists in Lebanon and Qatar, transmission of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has been more aggressive in temperate regions during winter months. If this pattern persists, it could mean that transmission peaks in winter, becoming a seasonal virus like flu, and other respiratory viruses that cause the common cold. The seasonality of viruses is affected by a number of factors. Flu tends to peak in winter because people spend more time indoors in close proximity to each other; our immune systems are often weaker in the winter; and the flu virus is more stable at lower temperatures. The latest knowledge on the stability and transmission of SARS-CoV-2 suggests that COVID-19 might follow a similar pattern. “We think it’s highly likely, given what we know so far, that…

Meditation has escaped both the religious cells of monks and nuns and the labs of scientists. An increasing number of people are using meditation apps to deal with mental health problems, such as depression and anxiety. Although there is no clear estimate of how many people are practising meditation, last year one single app had close to 40 million downloads. But now my new study, which reviews over 40 years of the science of meditation and mindfulness-based therapies, suggests that these practices can also lead to negative effects in about 8 per cent of individuals – from increases in anxiety, depression and stress, to unusual experiences like hallucinations. This sounds counterintuitive, given the thousands of scientific studies exploring the positive effects of meditation. But this study also indicates that scientists…

Soundbars are a fantastic way to improve the sound from your super-slim TV, without filling your living room with speakers. They’ll give dialogue a boost in clarity, bump up the bass and add in the detail that goes missing when sound is left in the hands of the tiny speakers built into your TV. But what started out as an easy way of improving your sound has slowly got more complicated as manufacturers have tried to make soundbars more and more capable. There’s a host of new technology dedicated to simulating the surround sound you’d experience in the cinema, and at the top of the pile is Dolby Atmos - tech that’s made its way out of the cinema and into your living room via the latest soundbars. Here’s our…

SAMSUNG HW-Q800T PRICE: £699 | CHANNELS: 3.1.2 | DIMENSIONS: (HWD) 6 X 98 X 11.5CM | WEIGHT: 3.6KG | SEPARATE SUBWOOFER: YES (40 X 20 X 40CM, 9.8KG) | BLUETOOTH: YES | WI-FI: YES | ATMOS: YES Samsung’s mid-range soundbar is a feature-packed option that’s accompanied by a wireless subwoofer to add some kick to the low end. This helps it to be slender enough to slide under the front of most TVs without issue, but it does come with brackets for wall mounting if you prefer. Samsung’s Acoustic Beam technology works wonders here, with 56 holes that act as individual speakers to direct sound high and wide from two upward-firing speaker arrays. The result is an impressive wall of powerful yet insightful sound that easily extends to the listening…

AFFECT LABELLING This is one of several psychological techniques you can use to help diminish the impact of negative emotions, which can make it easier to cope with unavoidable stress. It involves expressing in words, either in writing or out loud, the feelings that you’re experiencing. An analysis published in 2018 of 42,000 tweets supported the effectiveness of this trick. It found that tweets containing a form of affect labelling, such as ‘I feel sad’, tended to be followed in the ensuing hours by tweets from the same person suggesting they were feeling calmer. Dr Golnaz Tabibnia, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Irvine, who studies resilience, adds that affect labelling doesn’t just help in the moment, but can also help in the long-term. She conducted research with her…

Blood banks are a vital part of any health service, giving doctors rapid access to this life-giving fluid. But blood is notoriously hard to store. Left to itself, it clots and loses vital components like platelets. It is also delicate. Red blood cells rupture if badly handled, and any contamination can make it potentially lethal. In 1940, these were the challenges facing Dr Charles Drew, a brilliant 36-year-old African-American surgeon based in New York. Having just finished a doctorate on blood preservation, Drew had been asked to help get blood supplies to wartime Britain. He quickly focused on plasma, the liquid component of blood, which could keep longer without refrigeration than blood cells, and be given to anyone, regardless of blood group. Drew pioneered a blood bank network which separated…

SEDA PIREFENDI HOW DO SEA TURTLES REMEMBER WHAT BEACH THEY WERE BORN ON? Hatchling sea turtles emerge from their nests, scramble down the beach and swim off into the open sea, where they feed and grow. Many years and thousands of miles later, mature turtles return to their birthplace, to mate and produce their own offspring. It’s an incredible navigational endeavour, which has probably evolved to give hatchlings the best chance of survival (if a turtle successfully hatched on a beach, then there’s a good chance the beach will still be a suitable nesting site when it comes back). To pull off this feat, turtles call on a range of senses. Swimming through open seas, there’s evidence that turtles can navigate using the position of the Sun. Smells are also…