Indholdsfortegnelse for Summer 2024 i BBC Science Focus Magazine

NUTRITION Many of us could be suffering from a rapidly ageing brain caused by fibre deficiency. The dietary flaw could explain why Alzheimer's and dementia are the leading causes of death in the UK. That's according to registered dietitian Dr Emily Leeming and nutritional psychologist Kimberley Wilson, who shared the theory during this year's Cheltenham Science Festival. Dementia is “a model of accelerated brain ageing. It's as if you turned the dial up on ageing,” said Wilson. “That's why this is relevant to everybody and not just people who think they may have a risk factor for Alzheimer's.” According to Leeming and Wilson, a fibre deficiency is one such risk factor. Yet most people in the UK are fibre deficient. “We need at least 30g of fibre every day for…

INNOVATIONS PREPARE YOUR SELF FOR TOMORROW Having spent fortunes on extending their lifespans, reversing their ages and blasting themselves into space, the latest trend for the super-rich is prepping for doomsday. More specifically, building massive underground bunkers for themselves. While the rest of us will likely be left to survive as best we can in the post-apocalyptic, Mad Max-style landscape, the super-rich will be safely ensconced in luxury underground shelters. Refuges to ride out the apocalypse are nothing new, but a recent trend has seen bunkers built for billionaires becoming increasingly elaborate. Options range from those with 10-car garages to others with moats, water cannons and rings of fire to ward off intruders. So what exactly are the ultra-rich expecting to happen in the years ahead? And what does a…

For generations of kids raised on Scooby-Doo and Looney Tunes, quicksand was a danger that seemed to lurk around every corner. One false step and you could meet a slow and suffocating demise! Turns out, your chances of being swallowed by a bottomless beach pit are slim-to-none, but quicksand is a real phenomenon and not one to take lightly. Found throughout the UK on beaches, riverbanks and marshlands, quicksand forms when sand (or clay) becomes waterlogged and loses its structure. In saturated sand, friction between the grains plunges. Agitate that sand by walking on it and the grains will slip past one another and the surface beneath your feet will liquefy and collapse. But unlike in the cartoon terrors of yesteryear, you won't be sucked down to your death. Research…

And the gold medal goes to… the horned dung beetle (Onthophagus taurus)! It can pull 1,141 times its own weight, equivalent to an adult human pulling six doubledecker buses full of other humans. How do we know? Scientists from Queen Mary University of London glued thread to the insect's legs and attached it to a mini bucket to which they added drops of water. This Herculean strength is required because males fight for their females. They lock horns in underground tunnels and wage head-to-head pushing matches with their love rivals.…

ACROSS 7 Carry out directions on dramatic section (5) 9 Genuine son went in to do well (7) 10 Get comfortable with republican colonist (7) 11 Thankless, wrapping joint (5) 12 Strange trance from divine drink (6) 13 Credit deity with emergency (6) 16 Remove from French permit, to a point (6) 17 Like a seabird at the back (6) 19 Test for car, or its engine? (5) 21 Movement is characteristic around poles (7) 22 Axe the helicopter (7) 23 Prisoner to leave river (5) DOWN 1 Experienced with salt (8) 2 Loyal beginning, having broken law (8) 3 Afford a supplementary item (5) 4 Fish with a musical tail (4) 5 Mouthpiece of a bicycle factory? (12) 6 It provides shade in street (4) 8 Speech, and how it's put together (12) 14 Investigation concerning south-east construction (8) 15 Authorise a penalty (8) 18 Bird to sort out…

How are you supposed to get 40 winks when it feels like the temperature in your bedroom is pushing 40°C (104°F)? As our climate warms and intense heatwaves become more common, scientists note that temperatures are rising faster at night than during the day. It means climate change is something to lose sleep over, literally. Around 44 hours of lost sleep is attributed to heat each year, and it's happening everywhere. Earlier this year, a team of researchers published the first planet-scale evidence that warmer temperatures are eroding human sleep. The study covered 68 countries, using wrist-based sleep trackers to compare 47,000 adults’ sleep not just against averages, but against their own personal baselines. Unsurprisingly, the hotter it was, the less people slept. “People fell asleep later and woke up…

EYE OPENER What we're looking at here contains more life forms than the human populations of North and South America combined. What makes it even more impressive is that this photo only covers an area around 1mm2 and is something that we usually overlook: soil. The surprisingly colourful sample was collected from the Via Gellia woods in Derbyshire, a quiet place, but one teeming with life. Just a handful of soil contains more than 50 billion microorganisms that we can't see with the naked eye. Beyond the earthworms and beetles, is an ecosystem of bacteria, protozoa, nematode worms and the thread-like hyphae of fungi. After collection, the hordes of microscopic life were taken to the University of Derby's microbiology lab and cultured on nutrient agar in a petri dish. “I…

HEALTH Who doesn't wish for an easier weightloss journey? It can be tricky to make those all-important changes to improve our diet and exercise, and trickier still to know which of the endless weight-loss fads will be the one to work for you. Of course, there is no substitute for healthy eating and regular exercise, but scientists might have found something of a cheat code for burning calories. And it all comes down to a fat-burning mechanism that you already have in your body. It's known as beige fat. Lots of mammals, including humans, have three types of fat cells: white, brown and beige. A team of researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, USA, have discovered a way of getting white fat cells to transform themselves into beige.…

To any alien beings out there: if you terraform a planet (deliberately modify an environment to make it hospitable for life), we might be able to spot you. That's thanks to a new study from the University of California, Riverside, which has identified the artificial greenhouse gases that would be obvious giveaways of terraforming activity. Those gases – fluorinated versions of methane, ethane and propane, along with gases made of nitrogen and fluorine or sulphur – could be detectable in planetary atmospheres outside the Solar System using existing technology. This means the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) could one day find an alien civilisation. In large volumes, such gases would act as pollutants on Earth, but there are reasons why extraterrestrials would potentially use them on an exoplanet. Sulphur hexafluoride,…

REALITY THE SCIENCE BEHIND THE HEADLINES CHECK REVIEW This summer the news has been awash with alarming reports of deaths due to heat stroke in countries all over the globe. According to a recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, extreme heat events are increasing in frequency and duration, and are affecting more people. So how can you tell the difference between someone who's just hot and someone who's health is in danger due to heat stress? WHAT IS HEAT STRESS AND WHY IS IT SO DANGEROUS? Heat stress is caused by a build-up of heat in our bodies, either because of exertion (for example running a 5k race or doing heavy manual labour) or as a result of stressors from the external environment. But it's not just an…

…THE TOUGH CHARGING POWERHOUSE We can all pretend we aren't reliant on tech, but the act goes out the window as soon as our gadgets get low on charge. While a power bank can give you a slight top-up, sometimes you just need something with more juice. That's where the Anker SOLIX C800 Plus comes in. There's an element of overkill here (it has 768Wh when full), but it'll certainly make you the most popular person on your campsite. The portable power station has enough juice to recharge a smartphone almost 50 times, a Bluetooth speaker 17 times or run a heated blanket for close to 12 hours. It has multiple plug sockets, USB ports, and a display to show you how much power is left. It even has an…

FEATURE KILLER WHALES In 2020 sailors off the Iberian peninsula began reporting that orcas were ‘attacking’ their vessels. From the Strait of Gibraltar to the coasts of Galicia and the seas off Portugal and Morocco, the fivetonne apex predators, capable of swimming at 48km/h (30mph) – faster than most yachts – were approaching, investigating, rubbing and then ramming boats, terrifying those on board. Since then, over 670 interactions like this have been documented, all by a group of about 15 orcas. About a fifth resulted in severe damage, scores of boats were disabled and six vessels sunk. A group of experts rapidly gathered and in May they gave their conclusion. The orcas aren't attacking. Instead, according to the experts, the whales may be ‘bored’ and playing with the boats. Our vessels…

NATURE'S WEIRDEST CREATURES With its big, bulbous hooter, the proboscis monkey is one of the most recognisable primates in the world. In the past, it was said that their noses were so big, they had to hold them to one side to eat, but this isn't true. They eat just fine. Endemic to the southeast Asian island of Borneo, these Old World monkeys are social and easygoing. They live in troops; harem troops contain a large, dominant male with his females and their youngsters, while bachelor troops are made up of males with the occasional female. They hang out in the forests by mangrove swamps and rivers, where they forage for fruits, seeds and leaves. Unripe fruits are preferred as the higher sugar content of ripe fruit can cause their…

Ah, the zoomies. There's nothing quite like watching your cat pinging off the walls like a pinball. One minute they're flying across the sofa, the next, they're launching themselves at the lampshade. They're here, there and everywhere, all at once. Then they fall a sleep. Most cats get the zoomies, also known as ‘frenetic random activity periods’ or ‘FRAPs’, at some point. Cats are crepuscular, so the behaviour is more common at the start and end of the day, and occurs more frequently in kittens and younger cats. It also happens after pooping (hence the terms ‘poophoria’ and ‘crapnfrap’) and various reasons have been put forward for this. Some people think it's a reaction to a dirty litter box. Cats are clean animals, so they want to get away from…

Given the influx of news stories, you'd be forgiven for thinking the human race is slowly killing itself off with pollution, microplastics and forever chemicals. Reports of falling semen counts have fuelled talk of a so-called ‘spermageddon’, while fertility treatments and the number of politicians’ promises to pay women to have children are on the rise. So, do we face extinction by infertility? We spoke to Prof Allan Pacey, male fertility researcher and sperm biologist at the University of Manchester, and Prof Sarah Harper, Director of the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing. The bottom line: there are causes for concern, but that doesn't mean we're in the midst of a crisis. WHY DO SOME PEOPLE THINK WE'RE FACING ‘SPERMAGEDDON’? It all goes back to a study published in 1974, which…

COMMENT Observations of record-breakingly distant galaxies by the James Webb Telescope (JWST) have been making the headlines lately. Just fuzzy red dots to us, those early galaxies are so bright and massive that they're challenging our understanding of galaxy formation and the physics of the early Universe. JWST's latest surprise may not sound particularly exciting, but it could be the first direct sign of the ‘Tyrannosaurus rex’ of stars. The spectrum of one of those distant galaxies shows hints of a huge amount of carbon – much more than could have been formed through familiar stellar processes. The first stars ever to form in the cosmos are thought to have been massive, unfamiliar beasts. Carbon, it's believed, might be a spectral fossil of their bodily remains. What makes those early…

ANALYSIS Body-shaping undergarments, more commonly known as shapewear, have exploded in popularity in recent years. In a society increasingly focused on appearance and self-image, shapewear claims to offer a quick and relatively affordable solution to boost confidence by improving your fit and look in various outfits. Shapewear is a bit like modern-day corsetry, but tends to target areas such as the waist, hips, thighs and buttocks instead of the torso. The idea is to compress and shape these areas and, as per the marketing claims, give you a more streamlined silhouette. Modern shapewear is certainly more comfortable and breathable than it used to be due to advances in fabric technology. Hence, it appeals to a broader range of people looking for aesthetic enhancement and functional support for various reasons and…

Are we alone? One of the big questions that people would like to answer is whether life exists elsewhere in the Universe. Given the scale of the Universe, planetary scientists have tended to focus on whether life exists elsewhere in our Solar System. If it does, we think one of the most likely places is under the surface of Europa, an icy moon orbiting Jupiter. It's for this reason that NASA plans to launch its flagship Europa Clipper mission in October 2024. Clipper is intended to study Europa and determine whether there are regions under the ice that are capable of supporting life. The spacecraft will launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy Space Center. It'll spend nearly six years travelling to the Jovian system and another four…

One of the biggest factors that determines where fat is stored in your body is your sex. Men tend to store fat around their abdomen, whereas women are more likely to store it on their thighs, bums and hips. “From the point of view of childbirth and childrearing, having energy reserves in these areas is very useful because of the energy cost of pregnancy and the lactation that follows,” says Dr Adam Collins, associate professor of nutrition at the University of Surrey. “Hormonal differences influence our ability to store fat,” he says. According to some research, it could be the female sex hormone oestrogen, in particular, that plays a huge role in shaping body fat distribution. This means that premenopausal women – who have higher levels of oestrogen than others…

SUMMER METEORS WHEN: SUMMER After a relatively sparse period of meteor activity in the spring, things really ramp up in summer. A number of showers combine to produce decent amounts of meteors throughout this period, the highlight occurring in August as the annual Perseid shower reaches its peak. Meteors come in two basic varieties: sporadic (aka random) meteors and shower meteors. Sporadic meteors occur when a piece of rock, typically no larger than a grain of sand, encounters Earth's atmosphere, vaporises and produces the bright streak of light called a meteor trail. These can happen at any time, anywhere in the sky and from any direction. Shower meteors are different and result from a stream of typically sand-grain-sized particles in solar orbit encountering Earth's atmosphere. The particles are associated with…

Difficulty recalling dreams has been linked with various factors, such as attitude (if you're more interested in dreams you're more likely to recall them). Research also suggests that women can typically recall slightly more dreams than men. The way that our memory works also means that we need to wake up while a trace of the memory remains. This could mean that those who sleep soundly are less likely to remember their dreams than those who wake regularly. If you want to improve your dream recall, don't rush to start the day. Instead, wake slowly and before doing anything else, think about whether you've been dreaming and what you dreamt about. Jotting down the details in a sleep diary can also help. In one study published in The Journal of…

If you're thrown out of a spaceship without a spacesuit, you'll pass out in 15 seconds and die in a couple of minutes from oxygen deprivation. Your corpse will balloon slightly, as the nitrogen in your blood comes out of solution and forms bubbles under your skin, but you won't explode. Over the next few hours, the bacteria in your intestines would migrate into your tissues, feeding and multiplying as you decompose. This would gradually slow to a halt as you lose moisture through evaporation to the vacuum, similar to freeze drying. Since the vacuum slows the loss of body heat, your corpse will take days to cool through infrared radiation. The final equilibrium temperature will depend on how far you are from the Sun, but if you were dumped…