Indholdsfortegnelse for January 2021 i BBC Science Focus Magazine

Living for periods at low gravity may alter your DNA, according to a new study of nematode worms aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The Caenorhabditis elegans worms – animals with a length of 1mm and a life expectancy of two weeks – showed alterations in an estimated 1,000 genes. While most changes were subtle, scientists noticed microgravity had a stronger effect on genes associated with the nervous and immune systems. “These changes might help explain why the body reacts badly to spaceflight. It also gives us some therapy targets in terms of reducing these health effects, which are currently a major barrier to deep-space exploration,” said the University of Exeter’s Dr Timothy Etheridge, one of the lead researchers on the new project. “Our findings should provide foundations for a…

This stunning image was taken by the Daniel K Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) in Maui, Hawaii. It shows the rich, deep-brown heart of a sunspot surrounded by red and orange streaks flaring outwards, giving it the appearance of a psychedelic sunflower. The Sun has a powerful magnetic field that slowly flips its poles every 11 years. Throughout this cycle, the electromagnetic activity varies across the Sun’s surface. Since a new solar cycle began last year, researchers at the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the US have been working to better capture intricate details of sunspots using DKIST, which despite being the world’s largest solar telescope, with an aperture measuring four metres across, is still under construction. “It’s really exciting to see the Sun and sunspots with this extremely high resolution,…

Within a year of COVID-19 appearing in the UK, the seemingly unthinkable has happened: vaccines for it have started being administered to people across the country. The first of the vaccines, developed by Pfizer/ BioNTech, was approved by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) as safe to use on 2 December 2020. This assessment was made, according to the MHRA’s chief executive Dr June Raine, after “a rigorous scientific assessment of all the available evidence of quality, safety and effectiveness.” For some people, however, the news was too good to be true. A YouGov survey indicated that one in five British people (and 42 per cent of those aged between 25-49) say they’re unlikely to take the vaccine. The majority of those surveyed cite safety concerns as the…

By the time you read this, a group of friends at a restaurant in Singapore will have shared a three-course meaty meal, which was made without slaughtering any animals – potentially a landmark moment for an industry coming to terms with its impact on the environment. The cultured chicken used for the meal was grown in bioreactors, similar to the kind used to make beer or yoghurt, by US start-up Eat Just. The meat, branded as GOOD Meat, was approved for sale by the Singapore Food Standards Agency in December, and is the world’s first cultured meat product to be sold commercially. The meals were served up by a restaurant called 1880, which aims to stir up debate around what we eat. “THE CULTURED CHICKEN IS GROWN IN BIOREACTORS, SIMILAR…

January can suck the wind from our sails in the best of years, but this is not just any January – it’s our very first pandemic January. This doesn’t necessarily mean it will be worse than ever. Life can be gloriously contrary and you might end up having a pleasant, cosy month. But there’s no denying that, even among those who aren’t grieving or recovering, from infection, COVID burnout is real and as contagious as the virus itself. No one should beat themselves up about feeling fatigued right now. Burnout was already doing a swift trade before the pandemic came along, steadily spreading as technology allowed everyone to carry their inboxes in their pockets. The term was even added to the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases in 2019,…

You don’t need lots of expensive equipment to see incredible things in the night sky. With just a bit of guidance, you’ll soon be able to spot planets, stars, meteors, nebulae and even another galaxy. Throughout 2021, there will be plenty of opportunities to witness some wonderful cosmic sights, like the Andromeda Galaxy, located some 2.5 million light-years away. Here’s what you need to know to get started… DO I NEED TO BE OUTSIDE? Not necessarily. There are plenty of beautiful views of otherworldly objects that you can see from the comfort of your house or car. The key is making sure you reduce the light around you as much as possible. If you want to stargaze from home, go to the highest window you have and turn off all…

WHY IS MY WIFE ALWAYS COMPLAINING THAT THE HOUSE IS TOO COLD? There are some studies that claim that women feel colder than men. For example, in 2015, a widely reported study by two Dutch scientists suggested that women are comfortable at a temperature 2.5°C warmer than men. But their sample size was small, and other studies have shown no difference between the sexes. That hasn’t stopped theories emerging as to why women might feel colder. Some have suggested that women’s blood vessels shut down sooner and for longer compared to men in response to the cold, possibly because they have more oestrogen. Others claim that women produce less heat because they have a lower metabolic rate (the rate of energy expenditure per unit of time). Another theory is that…

EMILY HUNTER, LEICESTER COULD THERE BE FOSSILS ON MARS? If life ever existed on Mars, and was of a form that could leave fossilised impressions, there is every reason to suppose that fossils exist on Mars. As yet, there is no evidence at all that life has ever existed on the Red Planet. (A key ingredient for life, water, does exist in the form of ice.) In 1996, a team of scientists claimed to have found evidence of fossilised bacteria in a fragment of Martian meteorite, but the claim was later rejected. Although NASA’s Perseverance rover, about to arrive at Mars, is designed to look for chemical traces of life, it is not equipped to find fossilised remains. That will require a sample return mission. AG WINNER Emily wins a…

DISTRACTION ISN’T ALL BAD. If we get distracted at work, it’s not great for productivity, but distraction has a positive side. If we were always so focused that we never got distracted, we’d miss potential changes, such as threats, in our environment. Imagine if you were concentrating so hard on a book that you didn’t hear a fire alarm going off. Distraction is vital for survival. SILENCE IS BEST. Of course, there are plenty of times when you do need to concentrate and noise becomes a problem. For example, we’ve found that people do worse on tasks such as mental arithmetic when there’s background noise to disturb them. SOME SOUNDS ARE MORE DISTRACTING THAN OTHERS. Complex noises that are acoustically varied are more distracting than less varied sounds. We found…

Cheetah Family And Me Gordon Buchanan meets a family of wild cheetahs in the Kalahari wilderness, South Africa, and witnesses their fraught world. BBC iPlayer CrowdScience The CrowdScience team will be investigating whether there are any downsides to deep cleaning, the effect of alcohol on fertility, and more. BBC World Service, Fridays, 8:30pm I Am Greta From her first school strike outside Swedish Parliament to her wind-powered journey across the Atlantic Ocean, the life of climate activist Greta Thunberg is revealed in this documentary. On BBC iPlayer…

VIDEO ASSISTANT REFEREES The VAR needs glasses! After analysing 600,000 tweets made during 129 Premier League games, a team at the Technical University of Munich found that the general mood of comments dropped for 20 minutes following decisions made by VAR. ALIEN HUNTERS Don’t bank on meeting ET anytime soon. Researchers at the University of Oxford have theorised that the emergence of life on Earth was due to a series of highly unlikely ‘evolutionary transitions’. It turns out that we’re rather special.…

As if the idea of a giant rat wasn’t weird enough, a group of scientists have discovered that the African crested rat, a rabbit-sized rodent whose fur carries a poison strong enough to fell an elephant, cultivates its toxic coat by chewing on the bark of the poison arrow tree (Acokanthera schimperi). While the toxins are still in its mouth, it licks its fur, making it the only mammal known to sequester plant toxins as a chemical defence from predators. The scientists, which came from the University of Utah, National Museums of Kenya and the Smithsonian Institution, placed the rats in a specially built enclosure, to observe their behaviour. They watched as the critters gnawed on the plants to draw out the toxin, then licked and chewed the poison into…

“Children, if left to their own devices, are likely to seek out the foods that are high in calorie density, like fat and sugar” On 10 November 2020, the UK government launched a consultation for a total ban on online adverts for ‘junk’ food. The proposed rules, following on from a broader antiobesity strategy published earlier in the year, surprised many for being far tougher than expected. All of this sound and fury, after years of relative inaction, was thought to have resulted from Prime Minister Boris Johnson experiencing a Damascene conversion after he caught COVID-19. He blamed the severity of his symptoms on his elevated weight. Obesity is indeed one of the biggest public health crises the UK faces, with almost two-thirds of adults either overweight or living with…

Our homes are evolving. Smart speakers, like Amazon’s Echo or Google’s Nest devices, are flying off the shelves and into the hearts of our homes. Our appetite for digital home assistants didn’t even seem to slow during the pandemic, with 30 million sold worldwide over the summer of 2020. So if you’ve invited a virtual butler into your home, here’s our pick of what we think are the key products you should install if you are looking to make the leap from a smart speaker to a smart home. Once you have these in place, you can start stringing them together and automating much of your home life. Best Smart Security System – Abode Smart Security Kit FROM £299.99 | BUY FROM GOABODE.CO.UK | WORKS WITH AMAZON ALEXA, GOOGLE HOME, APPLE HOMEKIT…

Until recently, the general consensus was that burnout left those who had experienced it a little bit broken. But in late 2019, Dr Judith Semeijn, professor of sustainable human resources management at the Open University in the Netherlands, and her colleague Greet Vonk, who works clinically with people recovering from burnout, discovered that it doesn’t have to be this way. Although it may not feel like it at the time, recovering from burnout can leave you even stronger than before. In the study, which was published in the International Journal Of Workplace Health Management, 166 research participants who had all been previously clinically diagnosed with burnout and had all fully recovered already, were each scored on their markers for post-traumatic growth – having gained new insights and resources as a…

Ancient Egyptians identified three seasons based on cycles of the Nile River: inundation, emergence and harvest. In tropical countries, it’s the rain that tends to divide the year in two: a wet and a dry season. Elsewhere the calendar demarcates four seasons: autumn, winter, spring and summer. But now, researchers at Stanford University have found that human biology, rather than rivers, rainfall or calendars, could be used to determine the seasons. In their study, published in the journal Nature Communications in October 2020, the Stanford researchers discovered our bodies seem to set their own rhythm, splitting the year into two seasonal time periods. Or at least that’s the case if you live in California, where the study was carried out. Since every geographical location has unique environmental conditions, their approach…

HOW SUCCESSFUL WERE THE DINOSAURS? By every objective measure, dinosaurs were hugely successful. During much of the Mesozoic Era (252-66 million years ago), they dominated ecosystems on land, living in every conceivable environment from the poles to the equator, and from the seashore to the river valleys to the deep mountains. They diversified into thousands of species, ranging in size from feisty carnivores like Microraptor (about the size of a crow) to behemoth plant-eaters like Brontosaurus, with the heft of a jet aeroplane. Some were specialised runners, others diggers, and some even glided and flew. Some species were covered in armour and spikes, others had endless varieties of horns and crests for display, many lived in groups and had big brains and keen senses, and it seems like many dinosaurs…

Mother Alexa In your article on the capabilities of AI and Alexa (November, p43), you talked about how smart technology not only responds to human commands but is also ‘predictive’ and ‘proactive’ in its actions. As humans are naturally unpredictable beings, is it really possible for an AI system to calculate all possible circumstances and carry out the correct actions? You wrote that the system can develop and adapt – like when a baby is crying, Alexa turns on the light. What if the baby is crying because it is hungry? A parent can develop an acute knowledge of the different sounds a baby makes and what they mean, often instinctively. Would it really be possible for an AI system to memorise each individual crying noise and determine what each…

Scientists from the University of Virginia School of Medicine have discovered that a mouse’s first gasp after birth triggers a signal in the brainstem that activates a critical breathing support system as a baby exits the womb. Neither mice nor human babies need to breathe in the womb as oxygenated blood is circulated by the mother through the umbilical cord. Amniotic fluid fills the newborn’s lungs at birth and is expelled as their lungs inflate with the first breath. “Birth is traumatic for the newborn, as the baby has to independently take control over various important body functions, including breathing,” said Prof Douglas Bayliss, one of the scientists who made the discovery. “We think that activation of this support system at birth provides an extra safety factor for this critical…

The funny bone, or humerus, is known to most of us because of the unique tingling sensation you feel when it’s bumped. But thanks to its relative abundance in the fossil record, this bone has also helped scientists trace how vertebrates moved from water to land. A team of researchers at Harvard University and the University of Cambridge analysed 3D models of 40 fossilised specimens that were thought to be alive during the time of the water-to-land transition. You might expect the fossil records to show changes in the humerus that preceded emergence onto land, such as animals with limbs suited to crawling in the mud before they ever left the water, but the team showed this is not the case. “Just looking at the fossils, you can see the…

A new species of bird that lived around 68 million years ago has been discovered on the island of Madagascar, and its unusual beak could give fresh insights into how modern birds evolved. Discovered from a single, nearly complete skull that was fossilised after it was buried in muddy debris, Falcatakely is a crow-sized bird with a scythe-shaped beak. This is not at all unusual in modern birds, and is similar to the beaks of hornbills and toucans. However, there’s a gap of tens of millions of years between these species evolving. “What is so amazing is that these lineages converged on this same basic anatomy, despite being very distantly related,” said Dr Ryan Felice, lecturer in human anatomy at University College London and one of the study’s authors. In…

“Out of the 62,000 people who were diagnosed with COVID-19 in the study’s cohort, one in five went on to receive a diagnosis for depression, anxiety or insomnia” The lockdown and social-distancing measures applied around the world to manage the pandemic have led to high rates of mental health problems, including depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This makes sense: we know that social isolation can have negative psychological consequences, as can economic uncertainty, rising unemployment and widespread financial struggles. Aside from the social and economic effects of the pandemic, could catching COVID-19 lead to mental health problems? And if so, would it mean that the virus was finding its way into our brains? Using data from 69 million individuals in America, researchers at the University of Oxford compared…

-OMICS When added to a molecular or microbial term, the suffix ‘-omics’ refers to the comprehensive analysis of a collection of those molecules or microbes. For example, genomics is the comprehensive study of all of an organism’s genes. Genomics is different from genetics, which considers single genes or their variants. Scientists often talk informally of ‘omics’ or ‘omics groups’, which may include genomics, metabolomics, proteomics, transcriptomics, epigenomics, microbiomics and others. MULTIOMICS Multiomics, which formed the basis of the study led by Prof Michael Snyder, is a branch of molecular biology in which researchers combine and analyse large data sets representing different omics groups. The goal of multiomics is to highlight relationships among the collections of molecules and their functions.…

Abigail is a freelance science and space journalist. Her latest book is The Art Of Urban Astronomy: A Guide To Stargazing Wherever You Are (£12.99, Trapeze). URSA MAJOR The constellation of Ursa Major is visible from most parts of the northern hemisphere all night, all year round. It’s easy to spot using the asterism known as the Plough in the UK. Always near the general direction of north, the Plough is recognisable by the three stars in its ‘handle’, and four in its ‘bowl’. From this asterism you can find lots of different things in the sky. ARCTURUS From the Plough, a really simple star hop, and an easy one to remember, is following the arc of the handle to the star Arcturus. Draw an imaginary line from the star…

HOW DO I SPOT GEMINI? WHEN: JANUARY TO MARCH The constellation of Gemini is one of the few that actually looks like what it represents: a pair of twins. Once you know how to spot them, the twins - with their two brightest stars Castor and Pollux - are easy to see from most parts of the world. Gemini is one of the 13 zodiacal constellations, defined by where they sit in the sky. These constellations all sit within an imaginary line in the sky called the ecliptic, which is the path the Sun traces across the sky in a year. In the northern hemisphere, Gemini is visible all night from January to March, but can be seen until May. This makes January and February, with their long, dark nights,…

ACROSS 1 Blue-collar handbook (6) 4 Organised tour around Edward’s second house (5) 8 Show indifference to a short jacket (5) 9 Swears about acquiring new pain (7) 10 Rich performance includes old singers (5) 12 Fruit set out to be most unattractive (7) 13 Honestly blond - also old-fashioned (4, 3, 6) 15 Tribe getting a knock and a laugh (7) 17 Tree, thinner on top? No top! (5) 19 Motoring obstacle gives elegant article energy (7) 20 Robber starts to take hostages in every fraud (5) 22 Sheet of glass left on board (5) 23 Immediately make amends, getting cold (2,4) DOWN 1 Art form has inspiring figure endlessly in charge (5) 2 And not out of ignorance (3) 3 Country brewed lager with excellent backing (7) 4…