New Scientist - May 31 2014

INDEPENDENCECan science help a new nation nd its way in the world?

The trouble with acetaminophen

YOUR INNER TADPOLEUnlocking the power to grow new limbs

WIMPS IN CRISISDark matter hunt comes to a head

ECO RESURRECTIONLost sea came back from the dead twice

PUSHING YOUR BUTTONS How game designers get you hooked and keep you hooked

WEEKLY May 31 - June 6, 2014

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31 May 2014 | NewScientist | 3

CONTENTS Volume 222 No 2971This issue online newscientist.com/issue/2971

News6 UPFRONT Europe swings to the right. Syrian refugees

go home for cancer therapy. RIP UK fracking?16 THIS WEEK

Lost sea came back from the dead twice. Origins of gut flora in newborns. Hacked brain cells soothe seizures

18 IN BRIEF Dancing bees assess ecosystems. Longer

life for mice that feel less pain. Planet eaters

Coming next weekThe memory fixWiring your mind to heal itself

Ahead of the radiation curveThe unexpected benefits of nuclear bomb tests

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WIMPs in crisisDark matter hunt comes to a head

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The problem with acetaminophenHas the worlds favorite drug haditsday?

Pushing your buttonsHow game designers get you hooked and keep you hooked

Technology21 App to stop sexual harassment. Saving lives

in prison. Ethical app. Radar spots pirates. Curvy gadgets. Health-tracking dog collar

News

On the cover

Features

Opinion28 A no vote for science Michael Brooks on

how UKIPs win might prove sciences loss 29 One minute with Robert Schwartz Older

astronauts are go, says Mars One shortlister30 We can regrow Michael Levin plans to plug

into bioelectric fields to grow new limbs32 LETTERS Quantum quirks. Robot minds

Features34 The problem with acetaminophen

(seeabove left)38 Pushing your buttons (see left) 42 The secret language The tribe that

doesnt want to be heard

CultureLab46 Join it up From climate change to economic

busts, our problems need holistic thinking47 On hoverflies Knowledges gentle pleasures 48 The world, for free How technology creep

is starting to undermine market certainties

Regulars5 LEADER Dont let new boundaries

cutoffBritishscience 56 FEEDBACK Mammoth politics57 THE LAST WORD Lemon, and on, and on50 JOBS & CAREERS

Aperture26 Twitter user spots galactic coyote

Four futures for Scotland12 Oil investment paradise Offshore riches High-tech hub Rev up the start-ups Green beacon All-renewable by 2020 Sickest state in Europe If the dream fails

38 Pushing your buttons Games you cant put down

12 Independence Can science help a new nation find its way?

8 WIMPS in crisis Hunt for dark matter

16 Eco resurrection Lost sea came back from the dead twice

30 Your inner tadpole Power to grow new limbs


LEADERS

WHEN Louis Pasteur remarked that science knows no country, he clearly wasnt thinking of research funding. In principle, scientists dont pay much attention to the nationality of their collaborators: they simply seek out people who can help advance their studies. In practice, the choice of research partners is constrained by migration policies, funding regimes and political will. Today, the potential choices are greater than ever which is why it is frustrating that the constraints may now be tightened.

Ungainly though it is, the European Union is on balance good for science, and particularly for science in the UK. That is now threatened by the surge in support for Eurosceptic parties in last weeks elections (see page 6). If the UK Independence Party (UKIP) gets its way, and the UK steps away from the European Union, the countrys researchers may find themselves cut off from their former collaborators (see page 28). There is no sign that UKIP is bothered about this: it has failed to respond to New Scientists repeated requests for comment.

That is not the only question mark over the future of UK science. In September, the Scots

Science sans frontires

Ungainly though it is, the European Union is good for science, and particularly for science in the UK

Dont kill the painkiller

Dont let new boundaries cut off UK science

will vote on whether they want their country to secede from the UK. As we report on pages 12-15, science and technology would play important parts in shaping an independent Scotlands future, just as they have shaped its history: think of Alexander Graham Bell, James Clerk Maxwell, James Watt and Lord Kelvin, among others.

But todays Scottish science is rarely done by lone geniuses.

Rather, it is conducted at world-leading research institutes, such as the Roslin Institute, the UK Astronomy Technology Centre and the Higgs Centre for Theoretical Physics, where researchers from around the globe can come together to collaborate. Again, it is unclear how cross-border access to funding and facilities will be arranged if Scotland goes it alone.

This is worth thinking about, particularly because UK leaders have recently been vocal in their support of a resurgence in science and technology in pursuit of a

more balanced economy. Last month, chancellor George Osborne outlined a plan to encourage the development of research clusters including one stretching across southern Scotland and pledged to invest 7 billion in science infrastructure over the next parliamentary term.

This avowed enthusiasm for science, from so close to the top of government, is encouraging, even if the details remain to be thrashed out and opinions differ on how big an economic benefit such a strategy might yield. But if UK science is to succeed, Osborne, his colleagues and his successors must address its international dimensions too. So far, science has gone unmentioned in both the Scottish and European debates. That needs to change.

Once, nations guarded the prowess and achievements of their researchers jealously. But forgoing narrow definitions of national interest in favour of collaboration has proved hugely productive. It would be a setback if scientists found themselves facing those barriers again, when their ideas so clearly benefit from being taken up by anyone, anywhere in the world. As Pasteur also said, knowledge belongs to humanity.

WHOEVER first described the UK and US as two nations divided by a common language probably wasnt thinking about a molecule called N-acetyl-p-aminophenol. But there is possibly no better example of the cultural divide. Brits call it paracetamol; Americans call it acetaminophen. And attitudes towards the painkiller are equally divergent.

People in the UK are aware that

a paracetamol overdose can kill. That goes back to 1998, when the government restricted the number of tablets that could be bought in one purchase and ran an information campaign explaining the change. The measures prevent an estimated 1000 deaths a year.

US awareness is much lower. When investigative journalism group Propublica revealed last year that 1500 Americans die

from accidental overdoses annually, it was big news.

The drug is now facing further problems over safety and effectiveness (see page 34), leading some to call for it to be withdrawn from over-the-counter sale.

That would be an overreaction. As the British experience shows, people can understand and act on nuanced messages. Paracetamol doesnt need to be banned: people simply need to be made aware of its limitations and dangers so that they can make the right call.

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6 | NewScientist | 31 May 2014

THE UKs new oil rush may have ended before it even began. There are several billion barrels of shale oil under south-east England, according to a recent report, but it may not be worth drilling for it.

The British Geological Survey (BGS) estimates there are between 2.2 billion and 8.6 billion barrels of oil, but little gas, in the rocks of the Weald basin, south of London.

Energy companies will have to resort to fracking to get the oil, but they may not bother because little of it can be extracted, says Andrew

Aplin of Durham University, UK.Looking at data from the US,

the exploitable amount of oil from fracking is normally around 5 per cent, Aplin says. That means only 110 million to 428 million barrels of oil could be extracted.

Even that might be optimistic. The 5 per cent figure comes from areas rich in limestone. In clay

STEP aside, Higgs boson. A US panel has concluded the best way for the nation to contribute to particle physics is to create a world-leading neutrino programme.

Neutrinos are elusive particles that rarely interact with other matter. They come in three flavours, each thought to have a different mass, but our ability to study those masses with current detectors is limited. Precision measurements could help answer big mysteries about the universe,

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UPFRONT

If only 1 per cent of the shale oil is extractable, thatdoesnt seem like avery big prize

areas, like the Weald, the figure is lower. Whats more, the oil in the Weald comes from similar rocks to North Sea oil, which is heavy and viscous. If Weald oil is the same, extraction will be difficult.

So Aplin estimates only 1 per cent of the Weald reserve between 22 million and 86 million barrels can be extracted.

Britain consumes about half a billion barrels of oil per year, so if only 1 per cent is extractable that would be about two months consumption, says Aplin. It doesnt seem like a very big prize.

Northern England looks more promising. An earlier study by the BGS found evidence of large deposits of shale gas, perhaps 37.7 trillion cubic metres. The south-west also has deposits. In theory, these could meet the UKs gas needs for 40 years, but US figures suggest that only 10 per cent can be extracted.

So youre talking about only a few years of potential UK consumption, says Aplin. Thats not to be sniffed at, but it doesnt change the basic message that we as a country will be continuing to import oil and gas in future.

such as why there is more matter than antimatter.

Last week, the Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel issued a report mapping the next 10 to 20 years of US particle physics research. It recommends pursuing greater international collaboration to build a neutrino experiment of exceptional physical length, centred at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois.

The report also recommends boosting the energy of Fermilabs existing neutrino beams.

Right-wing Euro winIT WAS called a black day for Europe, as far-right parties gained an unprecedented share of the vote in last weeks European elections.

Right-wing swings are sometimes attributed to harsh economic times, but data from 12 European countries showed that right-wing parties in half of them were doing worse after the 2008 economic crisis. This makes the suggestion that economic recovery may counter the lurch seem less likely.

Theres definitely a role played by the economy in this, but its not the full picture by a long way, says Marley Morris of political research consultancy Counterpoint in London.

Higher voter turnouts in national compared with European elections could help make the political landscape less extreme. Typically in

the UK, for example, only a third of the electorate votes in the European elections. If you get very low turnouts, its much easier for smaller parties to make an impact, says Ed Fieldhouse of the University of Manchester, UK, who directs the British Election Study.

He says that many voters who backed the UK Independence Party (see page 28) may well return to supporting their usual party when the UK holds its national election next year. However, his latest study showed that 60 per cent of those who said they intended to vote UKIP in last weeks election said they would also vote UKIP in the general election. Before the corresponding European elections in 2009, only 25 per cent said they would do the same.

French nationalists celebrate

Space worms on the menuMAYBE theres a reason we call them mealworms. Three volunteers in China have just spent three months eating beetle larvae as part of a project to test life-support systems for deep-space travel.

Last week, one man and two women emerged from Moon Palace1, an artificial biosphere at the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. The volunteers grew and harvested grain, vegetables and fruit, feeding the inedible leftovers

to mealworms. Along with some meat, the mock crew ate dozens ofmealworms each day, trying outdifferent seasonings and cookingstyles.

Kim Binsted at the University of Hawaii works on HI-SEAS, another project that simulates long trips to space. Her team also considered growing mealworms for food, but ran into problems: In the end we decided against it, because apparently theyre little escape artists.


FROM one crisis to the next. Many refugees from middle-eastern countries like Syria are unable to get treatment for cancer and other non-infectious diseases. So says a report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) published this week.

In past conflicts, medical care for refugees has focused on infectious diseases and nutrition. However, recent waves of refugees from middle-income countries often

have costlier needs. The UNHCR offers financial help to host countries, but a shortage of funding has caused it to tighten its criteria, capping spending at $2000 per person per year.

Paul Spiegel of the UNHCR and his colleagues assessed applications for Iraqi and Syrian refugees living in Jordan between 2010 and 2012. They found that around a quarter were for help with cancer treatment costs. More than half of these were declined, either because the patient faced a poor prognosis or the costs of treating them were too high (Lancet Oncology, doi.org/f2rzzt).

As a result, many refugees

living with long-term illnesses like cancer are having to forgo treatment or face crippling debts, trying to pay for it themselves. Some are forced to return home.

Given limited funding, Spiegel says that more emphasis needs to be placed on cancer prevention. Health insurance systems have also proved to be effective in other refugee settings.

Refugee care costs

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For new stories every day, visit newscientist.com/news

Ebola epidemicAN OUTBREAK of deadly Ebola virus in west Africa has so far killed 174 people, and this week more cases were confirmed in Sierra Leone. And deep in the nearby forest many gorillas and chimps

could also be dying of the virus.This strain of Ebola has been

spreading since 1995, killing thousands of gorillas and chimps. There is now hope: on Monday researchers announced that an experimental Ebola vaccine is safe and induces a strong immune response in captive chimps (PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1316902111). The vaccine, based on a surface protein from the Ebola virus, had already been shown to protect monkeys.

But there is a new problem, says Peter Walsh of the University of Cambridge, who led the work. We need to test ways to get the vaccine into wild chimps, but such tests may not happen. The US is the only country that permits biomedical research on chimps, but last year, after a campaign by the Humane Society of the US, government agencies proposed ending it. That could stymie research on the Ebola vaccine.

This will be a conservation catastrophe, says Walsh.

60 SECONDS

Canada flexes robo-armAstronauts on the International Space Station can now leave routine repairs to a robot. Canadian-made Dextre has replaced two cameras onfellow bot Canadarm2, a job that normally entails a human spacewalk. This time, astronauts chucked the cameras into an airlock and let Dextre get to work.

Speedier gene trialsGene therapy clinical trials in the USno longer need to be reviewed by a special federal advisory board, the National Institutes of Health has announced. The Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee will only review high-risk therapies, with most proposed trials going through existing regulatory channels.

Vape alarmIn a letter to the World Health Organization, 48 scientists have accused the body of either overlooking or purposefully marginalising the idea that e-cigarettes could be a low-risk alternative to cigarettes. They saythe WHO is treating e-cigarettes in the same way as traditional tobacco products.

Toad invasionMadagascar has been invaded by toads, which could cause havoc to its delicate ecosystem, much as cane toads have in Australia. Biologists collected six Asian common toads (Duttaphrynus melanostictus) in the country in late March and are calling for them to be eradicated (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/509563a).

AtomfallWhat do you get when you throw two clouds of frozen atoms off a tower and grab a stopwatch? A German experiment timing the fall of rubidium and potassium atoms inanextreme quantum state has confirmed Einsteins prediction that different types of atoms fall at the same rate (Physical Review Letters, doi.org/sxt).

An experimental Ebola vaccine for chimpanzees issafe and induces a strong immune response

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Deep space dine

The choice is debt or disease

CARS are pricey enough, but they take another toll. Smog from road transport drains $0.8 trillion yearly from a group of 34 wealthy nations.

A report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates that air pollution costs OECD countries $1.7 trillion a year in healthcare and premature deaths. Road transport accounts for half of this.

The most harmful emissions come from diesel engines, so the OECD wants governments to remove incentives to buy them.

Air pollution also costs $1.4 trillion in China and $0.5 trillion in India. Both have seen deaths due to smog rising faster than the global average.

Many nations are trying to cut smog by making cars more efficient, but any gains have been overwhelmed by the rising number of cars in fast-expanding cities in China and India.

Costly exhaust

Refugees with cancer and other long-term illnesses have to forego treatment or face crippling debts


ROADS may soon diverge in the dark matter wood, and some physicists want to take the ones less travelled.

The most promising candidate for a dark matter particle could be about to show itself at last, as it is running out of places to hide. But should the hunters fail to bag one of these WIMPs, or weakly interacting massive particles, the search for dark matter could be thrown into crisis.

At a meeting in Cambridge, Massachusetts, last week, researchers debated the best paths forward into the wilder landscape of less-favoured candidates, from alternate particles to changes to our theory of gravity.

Its really refreshing, says Lisa Randall at Harvard University. For years I went to conferences where people said, We know what dark matter is and were just cutting out the parameter space. I thought that was strange, because we really dont know what dark matter is.

So far we have only sensed dark matters presence through its gravitational effects. But theory says that WIMPs should also brush shoulders with normal atoms occasionally, producing signals we can detect. WIMP champions are pinning their hopes on more sensitive underground detectors that are running or under construction.

This is a golden decade for dark matter because of detector sensitivity, says Kathryn Zurek at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

The trouble is that background

noise can prevent us noticing the impact of a WIMP. Beyond a certain sensitivity limit, the signal would be swamped by neutrinos, nearly massless particles that are constantly streaming from the sun and from particle collisions in our atmosphere. After just a few more upgrades, WIMP hunters will hit this limit and the desired particles may no longer be detectable.

Indirect methods for spotting WIMPs offer the best chance of a sighting. When WIMPs collide they should annihilate, shattering into other particles. This includes

gamma rays, and an excess of these high-energy photons spotted in the centre of our galaxy seems to fit nicely with the simplest models for WIMPs. But one criticism is that the rays could just as easily come from fast-spinning dead stars called pulsars.

So if not WIMPs then what? Some theories modify the classic particle, changing its properties and offering new places to look. Others focus more on runner-up particles, such as axions or sterile neutrinos. And still others say dark matter might not exist at all, and we just need to modify the laws of gravity (see right).

Its always possible WIMPs are just around the corner, says Avi Loeb at Harvard University. But when there is no evidence, you have to be careful. Were looking for a black cat in a dark room.

THIS WEEK

Time to blaze new trails in the search for the dark stuff? Lisa Grossman checks them out

When there is no evidence, you have to be careful. Were looking for a black cat in a dark room

WELCOME TO WIMP CITY

Dark matter hunt at crisis point

There are good reasons to build up a metropolis around WIMPs.

Our best models support the theory that dark matter is the scaffold around which normal matter formed galaxies and clusters. If so, dark matter must have existed since the dawn of the universe.

Early theories hinted that dark matter particles should annihilate themselves, so physicists knew they must have certain properties, in order for enough of the particles to still exist and make up the amount of dark matter we detect today. A particle that interacts via gravity and the weak force but not with photons fits the bill and that is a WIMP.

Theres a simplistic beauty to the WIMP model. Thats why its so compelling, says James Bullock at the University of California, Irvine.

Signs of exactly this kind of particle are showing up as an excess of gamma rays coming from

the galactic centre, says Dan Hooper at the Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois. But alternative explanations have not been ruled out, and other detection techniques have yet to pan out like waiting for a WIMP to smack into an underground detector such as LUX in South Dakota (pictured above) or creating one at a particle accelerator, for example.

If WIMPs remain elusive even as we whittle down the places to look, the hypothetical particles become less attractive candidates, says Bullock. Then you start to worry.

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In this section Four futures for Scotland, page 12 Lost sea came back from the dead twice, page 16 Radar spots pirates, page 23

MOND OFF-ROADING

AXION FARMS

NEUTRINO PARK

WIMPY SUBURBS

Its still possible that the search for any sort of particle is misguided. Instead, modified Newtonian dynamics, or MOND, suggests rewriting one of our most cherished theories: gravity.

The first evidence for dark matter came from the ability of rotating galaxies to hold themselves together, even though they do not have enough mass in their planets, stars and gas to act as the only gravitational glue.

According to MOND, gravity simply works differently on galactic scales than on the scale of solar systems, and we just need to figure out how.

Some observations of mass in dim

galaxies and the motions of dwarf galaxies agree better with MOND than with Newtonian physics, a mystery that convinced Stacy McGaugh at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, that it could be the way to go. But starting afresh with gravity continues to make many physicists uncomfortable including some of MONDs grudging supporters.

At the Cambridge conference (see main story), McGaugh made the case for MOND but then left his colleagues with an impassioned plea: Please detect this stuff! Put me out of the misery of having to give this talk over and over again!

In the absence of WIMPs, the runners-up are axions, which behave more like an all-encompassing field than single particles. Theoretically speaking, axions are just as likely as WIMPs but are much harder to find.

Classical WIMP detectors, such as the XENON100 project at Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy (pictured below), can also hunt for axions. The best limits so far have been set by the ADMX experiment at the University of Washington in Seattle, but it is only sensitive to a small range of possible particles.

Last April, Peter Graham at Stanford University, California, and his colleagues devised another way to hunt them using the same technology as MRI scanners. There is still a lot of work to be done, but I think they deserve a similar effort.

Neutrinos seem like natural candidates for dark matter: they have mass, yet they flit through normal matter as if it werent there. The three known types of neutrinos dont add up to enough mass to explain all the dark matter we see in the universe. But what if there is a fourth flavour of the particle?

This sterile neutrino could fit the bill. Hints of it have popped up and vanished again in several experiments, including the Borexino detector at Gran Sasso (pictured below).

A whiff of X-rays from the centre of the galaxy could be yet another sign of them. In February, two teams saw extra X-rays in data from two telescopes, and a sterile neutrino with a mass of 7 kiloelectronvolts could explain the sighting. If confirmed, the next test would be to see if there is enough of these particles to account for dark matter.

With classical WIMPs in a bind, theorists have started expanding their descriptions of the particle, creating a sprawling landscape of WIMP-like alternatives.

One idea is asymmetric dark matter, which would invoke a dark anti-particle. We exist because something in the early universe allowed more matter than antimatter to survive after the big bang. The mechanism for this asymmetry is still unclear, but if something similar happened for dark matter, it should be made of

lightweight particles of about 5 to 10 gigaelectronvolts just below what WIMP detectors can see.

Other models say that dark matter may be a mix of classic WIMPs and WIMP-like cousins that would interact with each other via a hypothetical dark force. Self-interacting dark matter would be harder to find in detectors, but it would build structures.

Some astronomers are already hunting for signs of this shadow cosmos in the motions of stars and colliding galaxies.

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Rob Edwards, Grangemouth

AS DUSK falls, Grangemouth starts to glow. Cloaked in clouds of steam and lit by flares like giant candles, Scotlands biggest oil refinery has a strange beauty. Situated roughly halfway between Edinburgh and Glasgow on the Firth of Forth, the 700-hectare petrochemical complex is a vital hub of UK oil production. Should Scotland vote for independence, it will be one of the new governments key assets.

According to the industry, there are between 15 and 24 billion barrels of recoverable oil and gas left under the North Sea. About 42bn barrels have been extracted since production began there in 1967. Because prices have risen, 24bn barrels could be

FOUR FUTURES FOR SCOTLAND

Oil and gas is at heart of Scots future wealth

dotcom bubble burst and companies headed east in search of lower costs.

Such scenarios are plausible futures for Scotland, and there is also a fourth future; one that is more troubling. Without a plan or a sense of where to takethe nation, it is possible that an independent Scotland may drift into business-as-usual. Or perhaps from an economic point of view, it would bemore accurate to call this business-and-financial-services-as-usual the time-honoured British model of an economy run by bankers, built on debt and managed to the timetable of the quarterly financialresults.

As the experience of Iceland and the Republic of Ireland shows, this is a perilous path, especially for asmall country. Its partly about risk: as we have seen, the financial services sector can act as an engine for the economy, but it has a nasty habit ofblowing up on the motorway.

There is also something deeper at stake: if Scotland makes the wrong decisions about its own economic future, it risks ending up as a backwater tothe rest of the UK, with England and London inparticular sucking away its brightest and best.

Independence offers a chance for Scotland to shape its destiny, but whatever future it aims for, itmust avoid clinging to the old British habit of muddling through.

Stian Westlake is executive director of research atNesta in London. Nestas report, When Small is Beautiful: Successful innovation in smaller countries, will be published on 30 June

SMALL nations can shape their own destiny, and this can be both a blessing and a curse. If the Scots opt for independence, they would do well to heed other small nations before them.

Research by the innovation-fostering charity Nesta has looked at small countries that have prospered in the last few decades. Take tiny Estonia, with a population one-quarter the size of Scotlands. It is the poster child for newly independent states. Estonias government took advantage of freedom from the USSR in 1991 to turn the country into a technology superpower in miniature. From the free public Wi-Fi in Tallinn to compulsory coding lessons in schools, Estonia bet big on IT. And it paid off: Estonians built the technology behind Skype and run a host of cool start-ups.

But for every Estonia theres an Iceland. Around the time the Estonians embarked on their technological adventure, the Icelanders set themselves up as the buccaneers of international capitalism. It ended badly, with the countrys bankscollapsing and the country facing years ofpainful austerity.

So an independent Scotland must choose its pathcarefully. There are a number of directions it could decide on: oil-investment paradise, renewable-energy Mecca, high-tech playground.

None of these three scenarios is a sure-fire hit. High-tech industries could always go the way of Silicon Glen, a region in central Scotland where electronics manufacturers once flocked. In its heyday in the mid-1990s, it was claimed that Silicon Glen produced 35 per cent of PCs in western Europe. But this success vanished almost overnight when the

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In 16 weeks time, the people of Scotland will decide whether their country should become independent of the UK. It is not an easy decision: the political, economic and cultural questions have been debated for months. There are other dimensions to consider, too, including science, technology and the environment. These can shape any countrys fate just as much as the social factors perhaps more so, for a small new nation looking to carve out its place in the world. New Scientist looks at how an independent Scotland might reinvest its oil riches, become a high-tech hub, a green beacon or the sickest country in Europe

Take the high road?


30bn oil fund over a generation.Norways equivalent, the

Norwegian Pension Fund Global, has amassed over 500bn from oil and gas revenues since it was set up in 1990. It is the worlds largest sovereign wealth fund and owns 1.3 per cent of all the worlds listed companies.

According to Bjrn Vidar Leren, anadviser to Norways industry body,

Norwegian Oil and Gas Association, there was political consensus on thefund from the start. The oil belongs to the people and revenues from oil production shall be used to build a better society, he says. The Norwegian fund has a wide-ranging ethical policy that forbids investments in more than 60 companies involved intobacco, arms, environmental or

For more on this, visit newscientist.com/special/scotland

Jessica Griggs, Edinburgh

EDINBURGH, Scotlands bustling and aspiring capital, has dubbed itself the Athens of the North. If Scotland gets independence, the new government should instead consider looking across the Mediterranean Sea, to Israel, for some high-tech inspiration.

Israels nickname is the Start-Up Nation, thanks to a 2009 book of the same name that explored how a small country with 7 million people became a global player in the tech scene. Today, Israel is thought to boast the highest number of start-up companies per person in the world.

So could Scotland follow

human rights abuses. Ironically, it is now reviewing whether to disinvest from fossil fuel companies because of the damage they do to the climate.

But there is one way in which Scotland would probably not be able to copy Norway: the Norwegian governments 67 per cent ownership of the oil company Statoil. To try to nationalise companies would not be politically possible either in Scotland or the UK, says Uisdean Vass, an oil specialist at legal firm Bond Dickinson in Aberdeen.

Perhaps the biggest conundrum, though, is the climate. According toWWF Scotland, burning 24bn barrels of oil and gas could put more then 10bntonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere more than 120times Scotlands current annual emissions. The science is clear, says the environmental groups director, Lang Banks. The planet certainly cant afford to allow all the oil left inthe North Sea to be burned.

Aping Israel: how to build a start-up nation

Alex Salmond promises to put aside about 1 billion of oil money ayear, to create a 30billion fund

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worth 1.5 trillion more than the value of all the oil and gas extracted sofar. That gives us one of the best financial safety nets of any country in the world, the Scottish government says. If the UKs Trident nuclear submarine base moves from the river Clyde after independence as Scottish nationalists say it must then prospecting off the west coast could begin too. It is currently banned in case it interferes with naval operations there.

There will be a few other tricky issues to resolve, like where the lines are drawn to demarcate which fields belong to an independent Scotland and which to the UK, and how the 35-50bn cost of decommissioning oldoil rigs would be divided up.

Ultimately the plan is to emulate Norway, and invest at least some of the created wealth for the future. Scotlands first minister, Alex Salmond, has promised to put aside about 1bn a year, with the aim of generating a

Waving the flag for independence


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Israels example? Scotland has fewer people about 5.3 million but it already has the start of a healthy tech scene. In 2006, Edinburgh had just three incubators offices where start-ups can rent desk space, network and hold workshops. Now there are 17. Glasgow is not far behind. Its a pretty vibrant environment, says Danny Helson of Informatics Ventures, a support network set up to work with start-ups spun out from the University of Edinburghs School of Informatics.

The biggest challenge, many involved agree, is scraping together the funding to help companies really take off. What Scotland needs is for a few home-grown firms to make it big. There is nothing like a couple of exemplar projects to encourage

venture capitalists, says Tom Ogilvie of Edinburgh Research and Innovation, the commercialisation arm of the university.

In Israel, trendsetters include Waze, the traffic app bought by Google for $1.1 billion last year.

Edinburgh-based Skyscanner, the flight comparison site, is the closest to aping that success. Last year the companys estimated value was about $800 million.

Letting private investors shoulder the risk seems to work. Government funding kick-started

The biggest challenge is scraping together the funding to help companies really take off

SCOTLAND is arguably one of the greenest countries in Europe. It produces 40 per cent of Scottish electricity demand from renewable sources, and models suggest this could rise to 67per cent by 2018. Thats closing in on the governments goal of producing enough green power to supply the equivalent of allof Scottish demand by 2020.

Some fear that independence means this goal will be too expensive for Scotland because offshore wind is expensive. Its silly to say its going to be expensive, says David Toke of the University of Aberdeen, when in fact it can be done pretty cheaply onshore.

Toke and his colleagues published estimates last year suggesting that independence would ruin Scotlands chances of hitting its green goal. But later that year the team made a U-turn: they now say that it will be cheaper for Scotland to pursue its 2020 target as an independent nation.

What changed? Newly announced nuclear power stations will need funding in the UK and new financial policies heavily favour nuclear over wind power. So it now makes more

sense for a green Scottish consumer to vote for independence, says Toke. Electricity bills will still go up by about 7 per cent, he claims and this will pay for onshore wind power. In the UK, bills would rise by 8to 10 per cent to pay for new nuclear, Toke says.

An independent Scotland will need a close electrical alliance with England and Wales. A power-sharing market that allows all those involved to navigate the peaks and troughs of supply and demand is a tricky business. This balancing act is particularly tough when fickle renewables are involved, but there is a precedent in Scandinavia. Nord Pool is a power-sharing market on a grid that runs largely on renewables. Accordingly, the incumbent Scottish National Party (SNP) has proposed an energy partnership with the UK.

Dont be fooled by all this green ambition Scotland wont be kicking the oil habit. Its target is to produce the equivalent of 100 per cent of Scottish demand with renewables, but the country will remain a big energy exporter. The excess will come largely from its traditional fossil fuel and nuclear power resources.

But the SNP says emphasis will be placed on developing carbon dioxide capture and storage for its fossil fuel power stations. Its not easy being green, but independence might make it a little easier. Catherine Brahic

Wind will power Scotlands green ambitions

Israels tech scene in the early 1990s, but that has since been taken over by private industry, says Naomi Krieger Carmy, director of the UK-Israel Tech Hub at the British embassy in Tel Aviv. The government was able to assume some of the risk, but to a large degree it left the reward to the entrepreneurs, she says.

To emulate this, some want an independent Scotland to scrap Scottish Enterprise, the main provider of public-sector money to Scottish firms. Without this investment competition from the public sector, the thinking goes, entrepreneurs might be keener to invest in Scottish start-ups. Israels example also highlights the economic importance of aligning research with industry. Nearly 80 per cent of research in Israel is done by businesses; in Scotland the figure is closer to 35 per cent.

In the meantime, there are other things Scotland could do to imitate Israel, such as strengthen connections with the US and Canada, says Jamie Coleman, managing director of Codebase, a tech incubator in Edinburgh. Codebase occupies the top floors of an otherwise empty government building and has plans to extend downwards. By the end of the year, it wants to be the biggest incubator in Europe.

If Scotland can mature into a start-up nation, the benefits could be huge. If you can get global companies established then that leads to economic development for Scotland, says Helson.

FOUR FUTURES FOR SCOTLAND

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IT IS 2062, and the youngest people to vote in Scotlands referendum, then aged 16, are now approaching retirement age. A perfect storm of shifting demographics, dwindling oil and poor health has left those north of the border worse off than the rest of the UK, leading many to question whether they were right to vote yes all those years ago

Back in the present, it is impossible to confidently predict what will happen should Scotland decide to go it alone. But three factors will come into play.

The first is an unavoidable fact of life: we are all getting older. Developed nations across the world are set to struggle with the effects of an ageing population over the next 50 years, but demographic projections suggest the impact will be felt even harder in Scotland.

The Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS), a think-tank in London,

predicts that by 2062 Scotlands population will have grown by just 4.4 per cent, compared with 22.8 per cent in the UK as a whole. The problem for Scotland is that its under-65 population will shrink while its over-65s increase, putting big pressure on public finances.

The Scottish government says independence will allow the nation to pursue a very different immigration strategy to the rest of the UK. But if working-age

migrants dont come as hoped, Scotland will find it more difficult to support its ageing population.

Things get worse when North Sea oil and gas are taken into account. Oil revenues will almost certainly fall over the longer term, says David Phillips at the IFS. If it takes decades, that would

Dont look back in anger from 2062

For more on this, visit newscientist.com/special/scotland

WHAT ABOUT SCIENCE?Where would an independent Scotland fit in with the rest of the science world? Could Scottish researchers lose access to other international facilities, including ones in the rest of the UK? Will researchers south of the border stillbe able to do science in Scotland?

The Scottish government says it will be business as usual. It plans to reach an agreement with the rest ofthe UK and will continue funding science through the research councils.

But as with most of the debates over independence, there are claimsand counterclaims. Scottish science receives a disproportionately high share of the UKs research council funds: Scotland is home to 8per cent of the UK population

butreceives over 13 per cent of that cash.In 2012-13, it amounted to 257 million in grants.

The UK government says that an independent Scotland would have to supply its own funding, and that to maintain the status quo would cost 0.23 per cent of Scotlands 2012 GDP. It also warns that Scots would lose out on other funding from UK government departments, such asthe Ministry of Defence.

In truth, nobody knows. In the case of a vote for independence, research funding is one of many details that would need to be hammered out. There would be a negotiation and transition period between the vote on 18 September and the proposed Independence Day of 24 March 2016.

give Scotland time to adjust, although it would still involve some potentially painful choices.

Addressing the shortfall in revenues will mean higher taxes or a fall in living standards something Scotland can ill afford: life expectancy is already 2.3 years lower for Scottish men than those in the rest of the UK. The difference is particularly stark in Glasgow, where life expectancy at birth is just 72.6 years for boys and 78.5 for girls, compared with the UK averages of 78.9 and 82.7 years. Health is Scotlands Achilles heel, says Gerry McCartney of NHS Scotland. And its a relatively recent phenomenon.

The reason for the disparity is not entirely clear, as it is difficult to untangle the interconnected health effects of lifestyle, culture and economics, but inequality in Scotland certainly plays a role. Quite a large proportion of the higher mortality is explicable simply by poverty and deprivation, says McCartney.

The Scottish government says a vote for independence will reduce inequality. But a study by David Comerford and David Eiser at the University of Stirling suggests that new Scottish powers to increase taxes or benefits may have little effect. Thats because small nations can find it difficult to implement radically different policies to their larger neighbours: people can simply decide to cross the border in search of lower taxes, for example. This is particularly problematic when it comes to funding pensions, which depend on a thriving workforce. Raising tax rates to provide pensions could be a self-defeating policy if it leads to an exodus of workers, says Comerford.

The voting age for the Scottish referendum has been lowered to 16 from the normal UK voting age of 18, to let teenagers have a say in their countrys future. If independence goes wrong, a youthful yes vote could prove a big mistake.

A large proportion of Scotlands higher mortality is simply down to poverty and deprivation

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0Fees paid by Scottish students going to university in Scotland

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SCOTLAND IN NUMBERS

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IN LESS than a century, humanity destroyed the Aral Sea. It is one of the emblematic environmental disasters. But now it seems the sea has collapsed at least twice before, and recovered both times.

In 1960, the Aral Sea in central Asia was the worlds fourth largest lake. But massive irrigation programmes begun during the Soviet era diverted water from the rivers that feed it, reducing the lakes volume to just 10 per cent of what it had been and leaving large areas dry (see map). The ecosystem collapsed, the desiccated lake bed is now laced with pesticides spread by dust storms, and drinking water is polluted.

Now geologists have discovered that the Aral Sea has previously recovered naturally from such severe declines.

History tells us dont give up hope, says Philip Micklin of Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, who was not involved in the study. The sea really has dried in the past and has come back.

Sergey Krivonogov of the Institute of Geology and Mineralogy in Novosibirsk, Russia, and his colleagues have compiled data showing how the Aral Sea has changed over the past 2000 years. Researchers had carbon-dated the shelves etched into the shoreline by past waves, and drilled cores to reveal which layers were once exposed.

It turns out that water levels in the Aral Sea have varied widely,

says Krivonogov. Humans may have played a role, because we have been farming the area for 2500 years.

In 1960, the lakes surface was 54 metres above sea level. Yet between AD 400 and 600, it was just 10 metres above sea level, and recovered. Then between AD 1000 and 1500 it fell to 29 metres above sea level. The lake grew again after 1600, until Soviet irrigation began (Gondwana Research, doi.org/svs).

The modern collapse is no worse than the older ones. By 1989, the lake was 40 metres above sea level, and a small northern lake split from the rest.

Since then the northern part has rebounded. In 2005, a dam

separated it from the south, cutting water loss from the north. The north Aral Sea is back up to 42 metres above sea level, and native fish have returned from river refuges, says Nikolay Aladin of the Russian Zoological Institute in Saint Petersburg.

The fish catch is a small fraction of what it was in the mid-1950s, but the rehabilitation of the northern part has been pretty amazing, says Micklin.

The southern part is still shrinking though. It has split into three salty lakes less than 29 metres above sea level. The eastern one is so salty that only brine shrimp live there. No work is under way to restore this southern region. It has always looked like a lost cause. So it will keep shrinking and getting saltier until only brine shrimp are left, says Aladin.

Using less water to irrigate crops could restore the entire Aral Sea, says Micklin. But it would devastate the farms, which have actually increased the irrigated area since the end of the Soviet era in 1991. Some have shifted from water-hungry rice and cotton to winter wheat, but many farmers need the cotton money.

Arid Aral Sea could be resurrected

Shrunken seaSoviet irrigation projects cut off the rivers feeding the Aral Sea, so it has shrunk to one-tenth of what it was in 1960

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Land ahoy!

THIS WEEK


BABIES in the womb are not as sheltered from the outside world as you might think. The placenta harbours a unique ecosystem of bacteria that may have a surprising origin the mothers mouth.

Disturbances of the placentas bacterial community may explain why some women give birth prematurely. It could also be one of the ways that a womans diet affects her offsprings gut bacteria, and as a result, the childs disease risk. Different nutrients [in the mothers diet] are a huge determinant of which microbes take up residence in the placenta, says Kjersti Aagaard of the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

In the past decade there has been growing awareness of the role that our microbiome the bacteria, viruses and fungi that live on and in our bodies plays in our health. Disturbances to the gut microbiome have been linked with conditions ranging from obesity to autism.

Until recently it was generally thought that babies are born with a sterile gut and that they pick up

microbes on their journey through their mothers vagina, which are the first to colonise the gut. This theory was challenged when bacteria were found in the meconium a babys first stool, passed within hours of birth.

We now have a clue to where these bugs are coming from. Aagaard and her team sequenced the DNA of bacteria in the placenta, which transfers nutrients and oxygen from the mothers blood to the fetus. They took samples from inside the placentas of 320 women after they had given birth.

The team found a broad range of bacteria, including those necessary for metabolising nutrients needed by the fetus.

But they were surprised to find that the bacterial species were most similar to those normally found in the adult mouth, as opposed to the vagina or gut. The placenta has its own ecology and these were not the bacteria we were expecting, says James Kinross, a surgeon at Imperial College London, who researches

gut bacteria and was not involved in the new work. Most people would have expected it to be a vaginal flora, he says, because of its proximity.

The fact that it was most similar to the mouth microbiome suggests these bacteria are somehow finding their way through the blood to the placenta. Aagaard suggests that having got that far, they could reach the fetus either by crossing into its blood vessels within the placenta or by passing into the amniotic fluid and being swallowed by the fetus.

The team also found different amounts of some of the bacterial species in women who had given birth prematurely before 37 weeks of pregnancy compared with the typical bacterial profile of the women who went to full term (Science Translational Medicine, doi.org/sv5).

This tallies with previous studies which found that gum disease raises the risk of premature birth. Aagaard speculates that if oral bacteria do reach the placenta through the blood, it is possible that diseased and bleeding gums could allow harmful bacteria to reach and colonise the placenta, possibly triggering an early birth.

In a separate study in monkeys, Aagaards team showed that giving pregnant animals a high-fat diet altered their offsprings microbiome (Nature Communications, doi.org/sv7).

Many studies have shown that a persons risk of obesity and heart disease is affected by their mothers diet, but it was thought this was passed on through epigenetic mechanisms chemical changes that switch the offsprings genes on or off. But layered on top of that are variations in the microbiome, says Aagaard. ClareWilson

THERE is a new way to hack the brain. A technique that involves genetically engineering brain cells so that they fire in the presence of certain drugs has been used to treat epilepsy in rats,and it could soon be tested inhumans.

Chemogenetics builds on optogenetics, which involves genetically engineering brain cells so that they fire in the presence of light. Selected neurons can then be turned on or off with the flick of a switch, but this requires implanting fibre-optic cables in the brain, which is impractical for treating human brain disorders.

In chemogenetics, however, no cables are needed because neurons are altered to fire in the presence of a certain chemical rather than light.

Its got more potential in that you can give drugs to people more easily than you can get light into their brains, says Dimitri Kullmann of University College London.

Kullmanns team tested the approach by using a harmless virus to deliver a gene into the brains of rats. The gene encoded a protein that stops neurons from firing but only in the presence of a chemical called clozapine N-oxide (CNO).

Several weeks later they injected the rats with chemicals that trigger brain seizures, to mimic epilepsy. If the rats were then given CNO, the severity of their seizures reduced significantly within 10minutes. (Nature Communications, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms4847).

Kullmann sees chemogenetic therapy benefiting people with focal epilepsy, a form of the condition that is triggered in part of the brain and then spreads. People with it can often feel when a seizure is about to come on, so at that point they could take CNO as a tablet, or by injection or nasal spray. The effect would only be temporary, Kullmann says, because the drug has a half-life of around 7hours in humans. Clare Wilson

Surprising origin of the gut flora in newborns

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For daily news stories, visit newscientist.com/news

The placenta has its own ecology and these were not the bacteria we were expecting to see

Epilepsy pill to switch brain cells on and off


HUNGRY suns are unlikely to be good hosts. Sun-like stars sometimes devour their Earth-like planets, and astronomers have figured out how to identify the grizzly leftovers.

Stars are mostly made of hydrogen and helium, but they can also contain a spattering of other elements on their surfaces. Analysing starlight lets scientists see which elements are present.

Keivan Stassun at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and his colleagues used telescopes in Chile to look at the light from a pair of sun-like stars (The Astrophysical Journal, doi.org/sv8). Both stars host relatively large planets, with masses between those of Neptune and Jupiter. The team analysed 15 elements, including known building blocks of rocky worlds.

They found that both stars had much higher levels of Earth-like components than our sun, suggesting that these stars ate rocky planets that once orbited alongside the existing gas giants.

Finding stars that show signs of planet-eating can speed up the hunt for habitable worlds, because systems that are unlikely to host life can be quickly ruled out. The one that looks like it swallowed its Earth already is probably not the one to start with, says Stassun.

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Big flightless birds get a shake up of their family tree

HUGE flightless birds like emus and the extinct moa may look alike, but an analysis of ancient DNA reveals they are more distantly related than we expected.

Moas, which lived in New Zealand, and emus belong to a flightless group called ratites. Until now the assumption was that early ratites spread around the world on foot while Africa, New Zealand and Australia were one landmass. When this broke up, the birds were separated and evolved independently, producing everything from Madagascars huge extinct elephant birds to the smallest ratite, New Zealands kiwis.

But their DNA begs to differ. Alan Cooper of the University of Adelaide in Australia sequenced DNA from the bones of Madagascan elephant birds, and compared it with that of other flightless birds. This showed that elephant birds and moas are not evolutionary siblings at all, but evolved separately from small flying birds. And while Madagascars elephant birds are indeed closely related to New Zealands kiwis, their last common ancestor lived much more recently than 100 million years ago, which is when Madagascar and New Zealand split apart. This implies that they must have descended from abird capable of flying across the oceans.

Moas were most closely related to South American flying birds called tinamous, which also supports the idea that it evolved from a flying bird (Science, doi.org/swq).

Planet-munching suns are messy eaters

Unique potter frog packs eggs in mud

A NEWLY discovered frog is the only amphibian that coats its eggs in mud. Doing so might protect the eggs, but beyond that it may also pay the frogs to be different.

The kumbara night frog lives in south India. Kotambylu Vasudeva Gururaja of the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, who found it, saw them pick up mud with their forelimbs and spread it on their eggs (Zootaxa, doi.org/sv6).

They might do it to stop the eggs drying out, says Gururaja, or to hide them from predators. But he thinks the real reason is that the frogs simply need to be different from their neighbours.

Two related species, Jogs night frog and Raos dwarf wrinkled frog, share the area. So each species needs to differentiate itself with distinct behaviours to avoid futile interbreeding. Gururaja found that they all make unique calls, mate differently and care for their young differently.

Fix leaky gut lining to slow HIVs attack

PLUG the gut to stall HIV. It seems the virus damages the gut, allowing bacteria to leak out and spark an immune response, triggering many lethal diseases.

Ivona Pandrea at the University of Pittsburgh and colleagues gave a drug used to treat kidney disease, called sevelamer, to monkeys newly infected with the simian equivalent of HIV. The drug binds to bacteria, keeping them safely inside the gut. Those given the drug had a dramatically reduced immune response compared with a control group (Journal of Clinical Investigation, doi.org/swc).

Because an increased immune response triggers many lethal diseases in people with HIV, giving the drug to people soon after infection may prolong lives.

IN BRIEF


Maths reveals the best football team

PUBS around the world echo with the debate: Which is the best football team of all time? Statistics doesnt have an answer yet but it can crown the best team in the history of the English league.

Ian McHale and Rose Baker at the University of Salford, UK, created a statistical model of team strengths. They used this to analyse goal data from 200,000 matches in England and Wales that occurred between 1888, when the Football League was founded, and 2012. The games cover the top four English leagues, the FA Cup and the League Cup.

The model assessed teams using three measures: attack ability divided by an opposite teams defence, a teams strongest average performance over a 10-year period and the probability of a team winning against the second-best team over a 10-year period.

By the first two measures, the Chelsea team of 2005/06 comes out on top, followed by the Manchester United team of 2007/08. The United team of 1992-2002 had the best odds of beating their next best rival (Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A, doi.org/swd).

Sanjit Atwal, who runs football stats site Squawka, agrees with the result, but says the stats are just more fuel for the debate. Fans will take whatever they can out of the data to win an argument, he says.

Dancing bees report on their habitat

EAVESDROPPING may be rude, but snooping on honeybees could reveal a lot about the environment. Their waggle dance contains clues about the health of their ecosystem.

Honeybees perform the waggle dance to tell hive mates about food sources, so people have wondered whether the dance might identify healthy areas of the landscape and thus evaluate conservation schemes.

To find out, Margaret Couvillon and her colleagues at the University of Sussex in Brighton, UK, videoed 5484 waggle dances from three British honeybee colonies living near

several conservation schemes.Most bees danced to inform

others about a nature reserve rich in wildflowers. They also praised farms covered by Higher Level Stewardship schemes, which set aside wild land. But they were less keen on Organic Entry Level Stewardship farms, where regular cutting means there are fewer flowers (Current Biology, doi.org/sv9).

But honeybees may not tell us all we need to know, says Lars Chittka of Queen Mary, University of London. Whats good for the honeybee is not necessarily good for other species.

NO PAIN, lots of gain? Mice lacking a type of pain receptor live significantly longer than other mice, and have a more youthful metabolism.

Many researchers suspect a link between pain and lifespan. We know that people with chronic pain often die young, and that worms and flies lacking certain sensory neurons live longer than expected. Now Andrew Dillin at the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues have shown that similar findings apply in mammals too.

He found that mice genetically engineered to lack TRPV1 pain receptors which are activated in response to high temperatures and hot chilli peppers in food live almost 14 per cent longer than those with the receptor. Mice lacking the receptors also retain some youthful features into old age, such as efficient oxygen metabolism (Cell, doi.org/swb).

As well as these advantages to lacking TRPV1 there are disadvantages, says Dillin. For example, being able to sense pain helps animals avoid harmful

objects and life-threatening situations. This probably explains why natural selection has retained the pain receptors in mammals.

The lifespan-boosting properties of TRPV1 come as a surprise, says Gerard Ahern at Georgetown University in Washington DC. However, he thinks applying the discovery to human health wont be easy. Drugs that block TRPV1 have failed safety testing, he says, because the people who took them were prone to burning themselves because of an impaired heat sensation.

Lifespan boost for mice that feel less pain

Watch crystal grow one atom at a time

NANO builders rejoice: for the first time scientists have watched crystals grow atom by atom, offering incredible control over their microscopic structure.

In the nanoscale world, rods, spheres and dots made from the same material have dramatically different chemical and physical properties. But until now, our control over such structures has been limited because they grow too fast for even the best electron microscopes to follow.

Nicolas Barry at the University of Warwick, UK, and his colleagues fired a beam of electrons at a thin film of molecules containing the metal osmium, carbon and other elements. Most molecules broke down to release single osmium atoms, and the remaining film fused into a graphene lattice.

Left-over atoms created impurities of boron and sulphur in the graphene, which slowed the osmium atoms enough to let researchers see a crystal grow (Nature Communications, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms4851). The method should make it possible to watch different chemical recipes in action and figure out how to make customised crystals for use in diverse fields.

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For more technology stories, visit newscientist.com/technologyTECHNOLOGY

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Hands offAn app that creates maps of sexual harassment could help womeninBangladesh fight back

Paul Marks

WOMEN walking down the streets of cities in Bangladesh face a daily onslaught of sexual harassment. Euphemistically known as Eve teasing, it takes many forms, from women being told by men to adjust their clothing or headgear to suit religious mores, to sexually suggestive remarks, groping and more serious sexual assaults.

Now a smartphone app has been created to help combat this. While making women feel safer is a major aim of the project, the creators also want to reduce the toll on the political lives of Bangladeshi women. By discouraging access to public space, street harassment silences womens voices and quashes their participation in public life, the team behind the app told a computing conference in Canada earlier this month.

The app has been developed by

teams at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology and North South University both in Dhaka alongside Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

Ishtiaque Ahmed at Cornell says the app called Protobadi, meaning one who protests in Bengali allows women to combat public harassment in three ways. First, it has an on-screen button that if pressed turns the phone into a shrill rape alarm. This action also sends text messages to the womans emergency contacts saying where she is and that she needs help. Lastly, the incident data from all users is collated to create a heat map showing the areas where harassment is at its worst. In addition, the user can annotate the data with a brief blog post about the type of harassment they experienced.

Last summer, after publicising the app on Facebook and at their respective universities, the team

asked 10 of the 110 people who signed up whether they felt the app helped or hindered them day to day. They all felt safer having the app installed on their phone. They loved the fact that they had one-touch emergency access to their friends any time they needed help, says Ahmed. Most of the

participants considered the map useful in choosing their routes around Dhaka city.

Some had concerns, however, saying the maps, while useful, could also create no-go areas for women. But the aim, says Ahmed, is quite the opposite: the idea is to bring such areas to the attention of the authorities so action can be taken. That way no-go areas can never be created.

Thats easier said than done, however, because the definition of sexual harassment is far from a hard and fast one in the subcontinents highly patriarchal societies, says Priya Virmani, a political and economic analyst based in Delhi, India. While she welcomes the app as a great tool with which women can begin fighting street harassment, she points out that the perpetrators could also consult the maps. That could disperse the trouble they might move to other parts of the city. What could improve the app, she says, would be linking it to a radio taxi service, which could prioritise the sending of cabs to women in distress even if they have no cash on them.

The team sees possibilities in expanding the apps use to other countries where women suffer serious sexual harassment. For example, India, where Eve teasing is also common and where the fatal gang rape of a woman on a Delhi bus in December 2012 prompted the Indian government to classify sexual harassment as an offence. Bottom-up initiatives like our app are also necessary to eradicate problems like sexual harassment, says Ahmed.

Phone sensors offer other improvement possibilities, says Samuel Johnston of OpenSignal, a London-based company that crowdsources mobile signal strength maps from apps on users phones. Getting out a phone and pressing a button in a harassment situation could invite violence. So enabling them to do this in less obvious ways could be a huge benefit, Johnston says. Emergency contacts could be triggered by rotating the phone or tapping on the screen in a certain way, he says.

Changing male behaviour could be a far harder task, however: a female Protobadi researcher experienced harassment, abuse and ridicule for posting flyers about the app at a university. The study there was suspended.

The idea is to bring high-risk areas to the attention of the authorities so action can be taken

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Information from the insideA device that keeps tabs on inmates vital signs could save lives in the slammer

Aviva Rutkin

US PRISONS could soon have their fingers on inmates pulses. A new device that can detect a prisoners vital signs from a wall or ceiling metres away could be used to tackle steep suicide rates in the penal system.

The sensor, which was funded by the US Department of Justice, monitors inmates heartbeat, breathing and movements for signs of self-harm.

Suicide is a big problem among inmates in the US, accounting for 35 per cent of deaths in local jails and 5.5 per cent of deaths in state-run facilities in 2011. Inmates who appear to be at risk can be assigned extra personnel to check on them several times every hour, but this is expensive and invasive. Sensors would be cheaper and intrude less, while still alerting prison officers when they need to intervene.

Developed by General Electric, the devices can be mounted inside prison cells, where they keep track

of inmates movements and vital signs using Doppler radar. The company modified standard radar equipment to pick up the delicate movements of the chest caused by breathing and heartbeat. The system can penetrate non-metallic objects such as furniture, which could be useful if an inmate tries to hide under a bed.

The technology was trialled last year at the Western Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland. Ten members of the prison staff spent around 90 minutes locked in cells, moving

around, breathing at different rates and holding their breath as if they had stopped breathing.

The device proved to be 86 per cent accurate at determining whether someone in a cell required assistance.

adapted to look after newborn babies or elderly people that require close monitoring, says company spokesman Todd Alhart.

However, Moeness Amin, an electrical engineer at Villanova University, Pennsylvania, says such applications would be difficult because the environment outside prisons is more chaotic and could trip up the system.

You have many issues in a typical home that do not exist in a cell. An empty room with a person is much easier than a person in a typical bedroom, says Amin.

Standard radar equipment was modified to pick up the delicate movements of the chest caused by breathing

Help in a heartbeat

The technology could help alleviate what is a major issue for prisons, says Kevin Lockyer, a criminal justice consultant in Lincolnshire, UK. But he says it should be combined with preventative services such as therapy to tackle the underlying causes of suicide.

Its got to be part of a holistic response to those individuals and the issues, he says. Do you deal with the symptoms or do you deal with the disease?

General Electric is exploring ways to commercialise the system not just for prisons. It could be

FACING a moral quandary and want to do the right thing? Well, theres now an app for that.

Ethical Decision Making, as the iPhone app is helpfully named, doesnt need the details of your problem or the options youre considering. It simply asks you to consider each solution and rate it

Let your phone help you tell right from wrong

from five standpoints: utility, virtue, rights, justice and the common good. Each is actually shorthand for a framework developed by moral philosophers over the centuries. After that, you assign a weighting to each of these factors. You could, for example, give justice more emphasis than the rest. The app then scores the solution according to the customised moral framework you have just set up.

Distilling ethics down into an app might be problematic for some philosophers, but not for Miriam Schulman, associate director of the

Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University in California, where the app was developed.

How do we use these very ancient traditions to help people who are making these really difficult decisions? she asks. She says people could use the app for anything from weighing up whether to put their parents in a nursing home to choosing ethical investments.

The app has been tested with a group of school principals and in a communications class focused on ethical issues. One student said the

tool changed her mind about how to handle an issue with her boyfriend.

Apps like these arent a one-stop solution but can help initiate discussion, says Evan Selinger, a philosopher at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York.

If you come to this hoping its going work out your ethics for you, youre up the creek, he says. But if you see this as a tool to be used for conversation with other people, thinking out loud and expanding your mental models, it might make sense. Aviva Rutkin


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Mix real and digital with iPad gameiPad games just got real. Osmo is a new accessory that clips onto the iPads camera to track the games children are playing on the table in front of it. Alongside Osmos character recognition software, this blend of physical and digital space lets children play games where they place letters on the table to spell out the name of an object shown on screen. Osmo, which can be pre-ordered for $57, also lets children complete shape puzzles guided by the iPad, or draw on paper to control games and puzzles on the tablets screen.

233 mThe number of eBay users who have had their personal details stolen by hackers, the site admitted last week. The security breach occurred between late February and early March. eBay has told its customers to change their passwords immediately.

Perfect camouflage from every angleGot something ugly you want to hide? An algorithm can generate a skin that could hide unsightly electrical boxes or cellphone towers from every possible angle. The system, developed by Andrew Owens at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, stitches together multiple photos of a scene, taken from different angles, to generate a camouflage pattern that would make an object blend into the background when seen from any direction.

Encrypted email from CERNA team at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, has hit back at the USNational Security Agency with ProtonMail, an encrypted email service. The site is free, anonymous and requires two passwords to log in. Its servers are housed in Switzerland, where they are insulated by the countrys strict privacy laws. ProtonMail also features a special self-destruct option: when users send an email, they can add a time limit before the message disappears forever.

Stop them boarding

BEFORE dawn on 5 May, two pirates armed with knives boarded a ship in the Sierra Leone port of Freetown. They took the duty cadet hostage, stole some mooring ropes then slipped back into the darkness. No one saw them coming, but a new kind of intelligent radar might have done.

The system, called WatchStander, uses radar mounted on either side of aship to scan the surrounding water for small objects that look like they aremoving to intercept. It can automatically sound an alarm and dispense countermeasures to deter the approaching vessels.

The system is meant to tackle one of the biggest issues with preventing piracy at sea: spotting them coming. The problem is that pirates use skiffs small, fast fishing boats with avery low profile on the surface of theocean, says Giacomo Persi Paoli, apiracy analyst with the RAND Corporation in Cambridge, UK.

Large ships radar systems are designed to pick up large objects that are collision risks and to filter out waves. This means they often miss skiffs. By contrast, WatchStanders radar uses shorter radio wavelengths, allowing it to see smaller objects.

If WatchStander detects a skiff thats heading to intercept the ship, itwill automatically target the boat itdeems most threatening with a

countermeasure. The current system shines a powerful strobe light designed to confuse incoming pirates.

In a test earlier this year, WatchStander was deployed on a ship carrying liquid natural gas through the Strait of Hormuz, south of Iran. The system detected a swarm of Iranian fishing boats crossing the ships path long before anyone on board saw them. These were 12 Iranian skiffs that came bowling past us. You couldnt see them at first. We were getting ready to run a test on the

system when all of a sudden the alarm went off, says WatchStander founder David Rigsby. The ships crew said they are smugglers, you see them all the time out in the Strait.

Paoli likes the idea of the anti-pirate system, but worries that allowing it to automatically activate countermeasures might unfairly target innocent fishing skiffs or otherboats. The wakes of these big commercial ships attract fish to the surface, he says. The fishermen wait for ships to pass and then go full speed behind along the wake and catch the fish. Hal Hodson

Pirates incoming! Smart radar stands watch

Pirates are hard to spot because they use small, fast fishing boats with a low profile on the ocean


TECHNOLOGY

THE future looks curvy. A spate of gadgets sporting concave displays hasalready been launched, and the big manufacturers will soon be hurling yet more TVs and smartphones with curved screens on to the shelves. Rumours continue to swirl that even Apples forthcoming iPhone 6 will bend to the craze later this year.

Theres more to the trend than just a novel shape, though. It may be tapping into a deep-seated desire to get away from the hard corners and rectangles that have defined our appliances for decades. The craze for curves is also fueling a search for materials and manufacturing techniques that will help companies exploit it to the full.

The first adjective used by people to describe curves is soft, says OshinVartanian, a neuroscientist at the University of Toronto, Canada. The story about curvature is a real story about emotion in the brain.

Vartanian and colleagues espouse the fledgling field of neuroaesthetics understanding the neurological basis for our appreciation of beauty. Last year, he used functional magnetic

resonance imaging (fMRI) to test peoples reactions to pictures of household interiors, asking them to rate rooms as beautiful or not beautiful. A large majority favoured rooms with curved features and furnishings over ones packed with straight lines. The scans revealed thatcurved contours tended to stimulate the pleasure centres of thebrain, whereas angles activated

circuits in areas that detect threats (PNAS, doi.org/swv).

The findings reinforce a similar study conducted in 2010 at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland, where visitors were shown objects with straight or curved outlines. Here, too, fMRI showed they had a preference for curves.

But electronics has been trapped within a straight paradigm for decades, mostly because of limitations in our manufacturing know-how.

Electronics has been trapped in a straight paradigm, mostly owing to manufacturing limitations

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Bending the rulesSmartphones and TVs with curved screens make our brains light up, says Peter Nowak


For more technology stories, visit newscientist.com/technology

Thats changing. Samsungs Galaxy Round smartphone, released in South Korea last October, uses a bendable version of Cornings Gorilla Glass called Willow. Corning has since announced an upgraded version, its 3D Gorilla Glass, which it says can bend up to 75degrees without breaking. And in an industry where even a small advantage in a products looks can translate into billions in extra revenue, some manufacturers are turning to sheets of artificially grown sapphire for their next-generation screens.

Companies selling curved screens say they offer tangible benefits. The concave shape reflects less light at the viewer, allowing screens to be dimmer and thus extending battery life. Adding a curve to a widescreen TV enhances a screens central sweet spot, giving the viewer the illusion of being immersed in the action.

Not everyone finds curviness a big deal. Its distinct and different and unique. It does create a wow factor, says Paul Gray of industry analysts NPD DisplaySearch. But the reasons for curvature beyond the styling seem to be extremely tenuous.

Some industry-watchers believe the fascination will prove to be a fad, but curved screens remain a fast-growing market. Grays firm projects that global curved TV shipments will grow from 800,000 units this year to more than six million by 2017 proof that we like what we see.

YOUR dog cant tell you when its sick, but maybe this gadget can. Asmart collar studded with wireless sensors can now monitor the vital signs of mans best friend and alert the owner as soon as it starts feeling under the weather.

The device, developed by PetPace in Burlington, Massachusetts, keeps track of temperature, pulse and respiration, as well as activity patterns and the number of calories burned. While the dog plays, eats and sleeps, software compares this information with other breed-specific data. If an animals statistics deviate in a way that indicates a possible problem, an alert is sent tothe owners smartphone and tothe vet.

Many pets instinctively hide their symptoms when they are sick, so the collar could help detect health issues early on, says Asaf Dagan, chief veterinary scientist at PetPace. The smart collar ensures that your pets disease, pain or discomfort will not go unnoticed, he says.

Because the device works in real time, vets have more information on which to base their diagnoses. They can also keep track of how the animal responds to treatment, Dagan says.

The collar costs $150 plus $15 per month for the monitoring service. Lauren Hitchings

Smart collar

New Scientist - May 31 2014

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