Indholdsfortegnelse for June 2023 i BBC Science Focus Magazine

No, this isn’t the aquatic version of Royal Ascot. The hat-wearing goldfish pictured here is actually one of the stars in a new study explaining how the fish navigate in water – something we haven’t been able to understand, until now. This “cyborg fish”, as Prof Ronen Segev, a neuroscientist at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University, calls it, was one of several used in the study. “Studying fish presents a real opportunity for brain science,” Segev told BBC Science Focus and it’s all thanks to that hat. For the study, published in PLOS Biology, the team Segev was part of used recording devices to measure a neuron in a part of the fish’s brain that is associated with navigation. Recording the fish as it swam along channels in a tank helped the…

25 POTENTIAL ANTIDOTE FOR DEATH CAP MUSHROOM POISONING Foragers, rejoice. A substance found to reduce the toxicity of the death cap mushroom has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for use in human cell lines and mice. Death caps are the world’s most poisonous mushroom, responsible for over 90 per cent of deaths by mushroom poisoning around the world. Alphaamanitin, the toxin produced by the death cap, causes irreparable liver and kidney damage but until now, there have been no antidotes. A research team at Sun Yat-sen University, China used genome-wide CRISPR screening (a gene-editing technique) to test a substance called indocyanine green as an antidote and found that it increased the probability of survival in human cell lines and mice. The next steps will be assessing the…

Passwords | All-female missions | One meal a day REVIEW COMPUTER PASSWORDS: IS THERE A BETTER WAY TO SECURE YOUR DEVICES? Google's new passkey software offers a biometric replacement for old-fashioned passwords. So can we finally forget about having to remember all those sequences of numbers, letters and symbols? “Security experts prefer methods that perform authentication of your identity instead of just authentication of your device” Visit the BBC’s Reality Check website at bit.ly/reality_check_ or follow them on Twitter @BBCRealityCheck WHAT'S WRONG WITH PASSWORDS? The very first digital passwords were invented by an MIT professor in the mid 1960s who needed to give multiple users private access to the same giant computer. Passwords soon became ubiquitous in our computers and it’s easy to see why – a simple, memorable word is quick…

Earth’s core can trace its history back to the formation of the planet. When the Sun sparked out of a cloud of interstellar gas and dust, a band of leftover material formed around it. This protoplanetary disc was laced with the iron ejected into the Universe by the cataclysmic supernovae that mark the end of the lives of the most massive stars. Gradually, gravity fashioned this material into lumps of rock and metal called planetesimals and they smashed together to form planets. The impacts were so forceful that the rock and metal melted and gravity could round out the new object into a sphere. The heavy iron sank to the middle and the lighter rock floated to the top. As the planet cooled, a crust formed on the surface but…

Don’t replace it – swap it for a brush. That’s one interpretation of a 2022 study, which found more bacteria on the average washing-up sponge than there are people on the planet. The authors claim it’s impossible to stop bugs growing on a wet kitchen sponge unless you change it daily, whereas a brush harbours fewer germs because it dries out faster between uses. If you do prefer a sponge – and you’re not alone, as people in eight out of ten European countries do – then you might be relieved to know that neither tends to collect the kinds of germs that cause diseases. (Which is enough to convince me that I never need to replace it. But that’s our dirty little secret, right?)…

Many of us have experienced those hot summer days which start off with sunshine, before towering cumulonimbus clouds bubble up through the day, eventually bringing thunder, lightning and torrential downpours. In some instances, those thunderous clouds can also deliver hail – small balls of ice that fall to the ground. But how does hail form? When clouds reach the dizzy heights of cumulonimbus status, their peaks can ascend to 10-15km in the sky. By this point, they aren’t full of just ice crystals, but also supercooled water droplets; water still in liquid form, despite its temperature being below freezing. Within cumulonimbus clouds, the air is very turbulent – moving up and down, causing updraughts and downdraughts, which are strong enough to bounce ice crystals around inside the cloud. As these…

Cravings are something many mamas-to-be are familiar with. Whether it's ice cream, chocolate, pickles, or something obscure, the body knows what it wants during pregnancy and makes sure we know about it. While pregnancy cravings are not fully understood, there are a few theories about why women might feel these hankerings, one of which is due to changes in hormone levels. Rising oestrogen and progesterone during pregnancy can increase the sensitivity of taste buds, making certain flavours – like sweet and sour – more appealing. As a result, foods that are normally not enjoyable, may become new favourites. These hormones also increase the production of another hormone, dopamine, which is involved in the body’s reward system and promotes feelings of happiness. This means women may experience greater pleasure from certain…

We tend to define dominance in terms of tool use, language and culture, and the ability to modify our environment. This is a very anthropocentric view that prizes the things we happen to be good at and ignores those we aren’t. Bacteria outnumber and outmass us, have colonised more of the planet and will likely be here long after we have gone. For 99.9 per cent of the history of life on Earth, the planet has managed perfectly well without human-style intelligence and if we disappeared, there is no particular reason to suppose that anything would necessarily step up to take our place. Octopuses and dolphins are both already very intelligent, but living in the water rules out fire and electricity, so refining metals and building machines would be impossible…

ACROSS 7 Struggle to take leaders out some fruit (5) 9 Old Scot catches socialist forecast (7) 10 Curl developed on that woman’s dog (7) 11 Game girl, good at heart (5) 12 In igloo, Myles is downhearted (6) 13 Cunning, bad-tempered woman and daughter (6) 16 Lets us organise fight (6) 17 Artist on jetty - that’s sharp (6) 19 Beg to remove strange tree (5) 21 Almost tolerating a replacement (5-2) 22 Prefer a slope (7) 23 Owns German domain within terrible place (5) DOWN 1 Note with an insult to Victorian setting (8) 2 Yours truly put bleach, foolishly, around sauce (8) 3 Small wine, just for fun (5) 4 Dam is almost strange (4) 5 Determined to be unmarried and looked after (6-6) 6 Go off course without right support (4) 8 Preposition for one section of lecture (4,2,6) 14 Senior teacher handled each…

Back when our ancestors were just rat-sized creatures crawling along the floors of prehistoric forests, super-giant sauropod dinosaurs browsed the treetops. But how, and when, did they get so big? Palaeontologists at Adelphi University, in the US, have figured out that they reached their exceptional sizes in order to fill the available niches, and that they managed it by evolving many more times than previously thought. “There is no one key factor, event or evolutionary innovation that led to sauropods becoming the largest animals ever to walk the Earth,” Dr Michael D’Emic, an associate biology professor at Adelphi University, told BBC Science Focus. “Instead, it seems that it was ‘right place, right time, right circumstances’.” Rather than each species changing its size a couple of times throughout its evolution, D’Emic…

While we search for signs of life beyond Earth, radio signals ‘leaked’ from our mobile phone towers could be helping extra-terrestrials find us. According to a new study, these radio signals are not currently strong enough on their own to be detectable by alien civilisations – assuming they’re using the same technology as we are to find them. But if these civilisations have more advanced technology, and are looking at radiation from additional sources (such as Wi-Fi networks), we could soon be discovered by extra terrestrials in nearby star systems. “I believe that there’s every chance advanced civilisations are out there, and some may be capable of observing the human-made radio leakage coming from Earth,” says Dr Nalini Heeralall-Issur, a physicist from the University of Mauritius and co-author of the…

The likes of Porsche and Ferrari are banking on synthetic fuel to ensure their cars are exempt from the EU ban on the sale of new combustion engine vehicles by 2035. Synthetic fuel - or electrofuel (e-fuel) - is a form of petrol made using hydrogen from water and carbon from air. The problem is the electricity that’s required to extract these elements. Nevertheless, companies are already producing e-fuel on a small scale, including some in the UK. So will we see e-fuel in petrol stations soon and can we, and the planet, afford to use it? We spoke to Prof Patricia Thornley, Director of the Energy and Bioproducts Research Institute (EBRI) at Aston University, to find out. WHAT ARE E-FUELS? E-fuels are synthetic fuels. We create them from the…

COMMENT Menopause is when the ovaries stop working, after which ovulation, periods and the production of the hormones oestrogen, progesterone and testosterone ceases, and women can no longer become spontaneously pregnant. Human women are one of the few species that go through menopause; the only others we know of being female short-toothed whales (belugas, short-finned pilots, orcas and narwhals). Almost all other animals retain the ability to reproduce throughout their lifespan. Why humans are almost unique in experiencing menopause is not yet fully understood. But, in evolutionary terms, there must be a reason why female humans have developed to stop reproducing and continue to live afterwards. One theory is the ‘grandmother hypothesis’, which suggests that older non-reproductive females benefit the group - they can concentrate on seeking food and caring…

"That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”. Neil Armstrong’s famous declaration tellingly illustrates that the first generation of Moon landings were a maledominated affair. Perceptions back then were that women simply did not have ‘the right stuff’ to make it in space. This was, of course, nonsense. These days progress has been made and now the world’s astronaut corps are much more balanced in terms of gender. But could it be the case that females have the edge when it comes to putting humans back on the Moon, or travelling to Mars and beyond? A recent study by the European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) medical team, concluded that “there may be a number of operational advantages to all-female crews [for long-duration missions].” The work considered a theoretical…

Ring Video Doorbell 4 £139.99, en-uk.ring.com Ring (owned by Amazon) has been making doorbells for a decade now and the Ring Doorbell 4 is its most recent model. Compared to brands like Google Nest or Arlo, the Ring doorbell isn’t the most aesthetic option, offering as it does a purely utilitarian design. However, what you lose in design, you gain in a long list of features. The Ring has a fantastic battery life, lasting for up to six months at a time from an 8-hour charge. Equally, the camera produces clear audio and video both in the day and night. There are options to detect packages, leave pre-recorded messages, interact with people at the door and even set up a threat deterrent when you go away. While some of these…

ALGORITHMIC ART Nature takes advantage of the way that wood responds to its environment. We see this when a pine cone falls from a tree and its scales begin to peel open as it dries out, allowing it to release its seeds. It’s a result of the wood’s hygroscopicity - its ability to take up and release moisture and the predictable change in shape that it undergoes when this happens. But such shape-shifting behaviour can also be harnessed by humans. Based on an in-depth understanding of how the moisture content and grain direction of wood affects its shape, German architects programmed this ‘climateresponsive’ wooden exhibit to open the bud-like structures on its surface in response to rising humidity levels. The humidity inside its glass housing at the Centre Pompidou art…

How long is a day? 24 hours? 86,400 seconds? The answer is no two days are ever the same. A day is defined by how long it takes Earth to complete one rotation on its axis and many factors affect the speed of our spin. The gravitational influence of the Moon has dragged on the day, lengthening it from just under 19 hours 1.4 billion years ago to the more familiar 24 hours today. This is not only predicted by the physics of tidal forces but also backed up by studies of 430-million-year-old fossilised coral. As the coral grew, it laid down a new line of calcium each day. These lines are arranged in patterns that represent the seasons. There are 420 lines within those patterns, meaning 420 days annually.…

MEGAN HARRISON, HERTFORDSHIRE Your airway has two important defences to prevent this. First, the trachea (airway) is coated with mucus that will tend to trap small insects, with tiny hair cells that constantly sweep trapped particles back up. Secondly, we have a very sensitive reflex that causes a coughing fit when anything touches the walls of the trachea. To suppress this reflex, you would normally need to be drugged or unconscious and it’s unlikely you’d be taking deep breaths. Any bug that did make it inside would not survive long, but its tiny corpse could cause an infection leading to aspiration pneumonia which is a serious condition if untreated.…

DUNCAN DAVIDSON, VIA EMAIL The supine position is simpler than it may sound. It describes the position of the body when lying flat on the back, with the face and torso facing up. In this position, the limbs are generally straight, with the palms facing upward. It’s commonly used in medical procedures, such as surgical operations, physical examinations, and diagnostic tests, as it allows easy access to the body and provides a clear view of the patient’s face and chest. You’ll likely come across it in yoga, Pilates, or other forms of low-impact exercise, as it’s a useful way to find neutral spine and neck postures. In some cases, and with the proper support, it can improve sleep quality by allowing a better oxygen flow and relaxing the diaphragm, although…

Social prescribing is a way for primary care staff and other agencies to refer patients to a link worker. These are highly trained and have time to explore the person’s health and wellbeing needs in a more holistic way. They can connect them to community groups and services for support. In particular, those with mental health problems, complex needs, multiple long-term conditions, or who are socially isolated, might benefit. The link workers explore what really matters to the individual, and work in collaboration with local partners. Examples of social prescribing options include volunteering groups, financial advice services, group learning, arts activities and a range of sports. Green social prescribing entails linking people to more nature-based interventions such as local walking groups, gardening communities, and food-growing projects. Studies have previously pointed…

DISCOVERIES NEUROSCIENCE A machine that reads your thoughts is now more science fact than science fiction, following a breakthrough discovery by neurotechnologists at the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin). The machine doesn’t require its subject to be wired up with implants and electrodes. Instead, the ‘decoder’ is non-invasive, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure the changes in blood flow around the subject’s brain to translate their ideas into words. “We’re decoding something that’s deeper than language,” said Alexander Huth, an assistant professor of neuroscience at UT Austin. The decoder can grasp the intangible – the various shapes our thoughts take – and turn them into something understandable and, crucially, communicable. This means that the person who is having their mind ‘read’ doesn’t have to say what…

A team of scientists have built an ice-rink-sized arena in Zambia to investigate how mosquitoes find humans to bite from far away. And they’ve discovered that body odour makes some people more attractive than others. The study, published in the journal Current Biology, is one of the first to test how the Anopheles gambia mosquitoes (the most efficient vectors for malaria in Africa) locate human hosts in a ‘real-world’ setting rather than in a lab. Over six consecutive nights, 200 mosquitoes were released into the arena, outside which six human volunteers set up small tents. Pipes leading from the tents brought the sleeping participants’ smells onto landing pads inside the enclosed arena, where mosquito activity was monitored with infrared cameras. In the future, the body odours of people more attractive…

Society has an ongoing fascination with the constantly shifting trends in celebrity diets. The one meal a day (or OMAD) diet is one such trend, reportedly championed by the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, football pundit Gary Lineker and even the prime minister, Rishi Sunak. But does the science back up the claims? OMAD is an extreme fasting diet. As the name suggests it involves eating just one big meal a day, with fasting, or very minimal eating, in between. The key focus of this kind of diet is weight control and simplicity. There are many celebrity anecdotes surrounding OMAD and from an evolutionary point of view, it can seem reasonable to suggest that human biology is better suited to less frequent meals. This theory is based…

FEATURE WHALE CONSERVATION O n a calm, cold afternoon in early March, in Neko Harbour on the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula, a humpback whale is making a series of moves that - to me, at the time - have no obvious purpose. First, the humpback raises one of its outsized pectoral fins - which can reach up to 5m in length, longer than a typical estate car - as if asking for permission to speak in class, before diving and resurfacing. Then it raises the fin again, carrying on like this for another 15 minutes. Chris Johnson, oceans science manager for WWF-Australia, is watching from a nearby boat and releases a drone equipped with a video camera. The footage transforms what appears from sea level to be a…

JOHN HEWITT, VIA EMAIL A power pose is essentially any kind of body position that involves taking up more space. Imagine standing with your legs astride and your hands on your hips, or - as used in the seminal research on power poses from 2010 - leaning back in your chair with your legs up and your hands behind your head. The opposite is a contractive pose that involves taking up less room, such as hugging yourself with your legs crossed. The idea that power posing can give you a jolt of extra confidence was popularised by Harvard psychologist Amy Cuddy’s 2012 TED talk: “Your body language shapes who you are,” which has been viewed over 68 million times. Cuddy was a co-author on that 2010 research paper which claimed…

ASTRONOMY FOR BEGINNERS WHEN: JUNE If you’ve never seen Mars in the night sky before, you’ve just about got time as it’s visible low above the westnorthwest horizon shortly after sunset. It’s currently near to bright Venus, which has also become rather low after the Sun sets. Mars is fading in brightness as the distance between it and Earth increases. Currently it looks like a middle-bright star, its salmon-pink colour being the one characteristic that really makes it stand out. At this time of year from the UK, there’s a bright star visible low above the southern horizon in the early evening as darkness descends. This is the brightest star in the constellation of Scorpius, the Scorpion, and is named Antares. Star names can sometimes give a clue to their…

Trovants are bulbous, otherworldly stones that grow over time, thus appearing to be alive. Parent rocks can even push out baby trovants, which then grow independently. The sandstone structures are found mainly in Romania, with the most famous cluster in and around a village named Costeşti. There, a Trovants Museum Natural Reserve celebrates and protects them. The stones’ smooth curves give the appearance of modern, man-made sculptures. They feature heavily in local folklore, with people at one time believing them to be giant dinosaur eggs, plant fossils or alien creations. The word trovant was coined by a naturalist and means cemented sand. The stones are formed from sand grains or rocks bound together by a limestone – calcium carbonate – cement. Geologists think that the trovants were shaped by earthquakes…

It's all in the eyes Containing more than 100 million light-sensitive cells and some of the fastest muscles in our bodies, our eyes are capable of picking up everything from starlight beaming across the galaxy to the full gamut of human emotion. But it's in their coupling with our minds through the approximately one million nerve fibres connecting each eye to our brains - that we gain the ability to synthesise slick visuals and interpret what's going on around us without getting distracted or overwhelmed. What's inside my eye? 1. PUPIL It looks like a black dot but it's actually a gap that lets light pass through to the back of your eye. 2. CORNEA A transparent dome at the front of your eye, the cornea refracts light, helping to…