Innehållsförteckning för July 2019 från BBC Science Focus Magazine

There’s never been a better time to be a dino hunter. As new dig sites open up around the world, scientists are virtually tripping over near-pristine fossils, identifying totally new species every week. And with each discovery, the past vision of scaly beasts lumbering across vast plains has started to come into sharper focus, revealing a vibrant world populated by the kind of rich biodiversity we see in the wildest places on Earth today. In particular, we’re really starting to understand what these creatures looked like. It’s a crucial part of the picture, since we know that an animal’s appearance is usually a response to the world around it: some species find success in camouflage, while others find flamboyance more useful. So as we start to resolve the finer details…

Bugs bunny AFRICA With its snub ‘nose’, fuzzy hair and large eyes, this moth looks decidedly bunny-like. The African death’s-head hawkmoth, which has a wingspan of up to 12.7cm, is so-named because of the skull-like pattern on its back, which was made famous by the 1991 film The Silence Of The Lambs. Its compound eyes are made up of as many as 30,000 smaller units (called ‘ommatidia’), allowing them to detect rapid movement, while the hairy body is an adaptation for flying at night. “In the insect world, moths are unusually furry – especially the night-flying ones,” says entomologist Prof Adam Hart, from the University of Gloucestershire. “The hairs help them to conserve heat – important during cooler nights – and also to disperse bat sonar, making them harder to…

Research has confirmed that sexuality remains fluid past adolescence. Analysis of surveys of around 12,000 American students showed that changes in attraction, sexual partners and identity are common throughout the 20s. Dr Christine Kaestle at Virginia Tech, who led the research, suggests new categories, expanding on traditional labels of ‘gay’, ‘bisexual’ and ‘straight’. For instance, ‘emerging gay’ and ‘emerging bi’ can describe those who have mostly heterosexual sex in their teens but develop stronger same-sex or both-sex attractions in their 20s. Overall, male participants were more likely to be straight, and females had a more fluid sexuality over time.…

WHAT IS IT? SpaceX’s Starlink aims to bring ultrafast broadband internet to the entire planet via a vast constellation of low orbit satellites. The basic idea is that the network will send messages via a series of ground-based terminals. SpaceX’s CEO Elon Musk describes the terminals as being ‘as big as a pizza box’ and can theoretically be installed anywhere, transmitting signals to the satellites using radio waves. The satellites will then beam the message around the planet using lasers until it reaches the desired destination, it will then be beamed back down to Earth via radio waves again. WHY ARE THEY DOING THAT? Aside from the purely altruistic goal of providing the entire planet with a reliable, affordable internet connection, Musk has previously stated that the considerable revenue he…

The vast majority of cannabinoids, listed as controlled substances under the Misuse of Drugs Act, are illegal. However, CBD derived from industrial hemp that is EU-approved is completely legal in the UK, under certain conditions. The strain must contain no more than 0.2 per cent THC, and the THC must not be easily separated from it. In contrast, cannabis oil, which has a higher THC content than CBD oil, is not legal. With the change of law in November 2018, specialist clinicians are allowed to prescribe cannabis-derived medicinal products for some patients with multiple sclerosis or epilepsy.…

Last year, researchers led by Jasmina Wiemann at Yale University in the US made an unexpected find: the eggshell colour of 15 species of dinosaurs and prehistoric birds. Wiemann first found evidence of dinosaur egg colouration in 2017, using a chemical analysis to detect traces of two modern bird egg pigments (blue-green biliverdin and red-brown protoporphyrin) in fossil eggs of the dinosaur Heyuannia huangi. Then in 2018, she expanded the work to more species, this time using Raman microspectroscopy, which bounces a laser off fossils to reveal their molecular make-up. This uncovered pigments in the eggs of a number of theropod dinosaurs, including a relative of Velociraptorcalled Deinonychus(blue-green eggshells); small, bird-like carnivores called Troodontids (blue-green, beige or white); and the Heyuanniahuangi(deep blue-green). Speckling was also detected on many of the…

Recently, I saw a newspaper headline which claimed that ‘Eating Just Three Eggs a Week Raises Risk of Heart Disease and Early Death’. These headlines were based on a study published in the journal JAMA where researchers followed 29,000 Americans who had filled in food questionnaires decades ago. Over that time quite a few had died. When the researchers compared the food questionnaires with what happened to those people, they concluded that eating an extra half-egg a day increased the risk of developing heart disease by 6 per cent. As someone who eats eggs most mornings, am I worried by these findings? Not at all. Here are the reasons why. First of all, the old idea that eggs are bad for you because they contain cholesterol is now widely recognised…

Tell us about your first episode. I was 13 years old. I was taken to hospital with suspected meningitis. We now know I had really bad flu, and that triggered the onset. I was in hospital for about five days and they ran all sorts of tests and couldn’t find anything. They sent me home saying it was a one-off thing and nothing to worry about. But I was sleeping 18 hours a day for three weeks. It took another three weeks to recover. How were you diagnosed? Three months later I went to Australia. On the third day I couldn’t wake up. I was admitted to the [Queensland] Children’s Hospital in Brisbane. My mum was doing lots of research and came up with KLS at the same time the…

DIAMOND RAIN The atmospheres of some gas giants contain plenty of carbon, created when lightning reacts with methane. At high pressures and temperatures inside the atmosphere, this might condense into crystals of diamond, some as big as blueberries. Experts estimate that, on Saturn, about 1,000 tonnes of diamonds are produced every year. METAL MONSOON The hot Jupiter HD 209458 b, also known as ‘Osiris’, has atmospheric temperatures of several thousand degrees. It’s likely that rains of molten iron or silicate glass pelt down there, falling in wind speeds of several kilometres per second (compared to a mere 70 metres per second for severe hurricanes on Earth). The result is a lacerating blast of hot metal and rock. INFERNAL STORM 55 Cancri e is a rocky planet about twice the diameter…

There’s a 50 per cent chance that, in any group of 23 people, two people will share a birthday. First, we need to work out the probability that everyone in the group has a unique birthday. Considering a ‘group’ of just one person, the chance is 100 per cent. If we add another person, there’s just one birthday that they could share with person one, so their probability of having a unique birthday is 364/365. For person three, it’s 363/365. And so on, until person 23, for whom the probability of a unique birthday is 343/365. To find the probability of everyone in the group having a unique birthday, multiply all 23 probabilities together, giving 0.493. So the probability of a shared birthday is 1 - 0.493 = 0.507, or…

EAT LESS MEAT Lamb and beef have the highest carbon footprint of any food, due largely to the methane that livestock fart and burp into the atmosphere. A 1kg joint of lamb is the equivalent of driving 146km (91 miles) in a car. HANG IT OUT TO DRY Putting a single load of laundry in a tumble dryer produces 1.7kg of CO2. That’s almost three times more than the CO2 produced by washing the clothes. LEAVE THE CAR AT HOME Burning a litre of petrol releases 2.4kg of CO2. If you average eight litres of fuel per 100km (about 35mpg), you could save almost 200g of CO2 for each kilometre of cycling instead of driving. TAKE PUBLIC TRANSPORT A 2005 study at Warwick University found that giving up your car…

1. Long before he became a country music legend, Johnny Cash enlisted in the US Air Force in 1950 at the outbreak of the Korean War. He spent four years stationed in West Germany. 2. He was assigned to the 12th Radio Squadron Mobile, and his keen ear made him one of the best Morse code operators, intercepting coded radio transmissions from the Soviets. 3. On 5 March 1953, he picked up a top secret signal announcing the death of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Although he didn’t know at the time, he was the first Westerner to receive the news. 4. Stalin’s family name was actually Jughashvili. He only adopted the name ‘Stalin’ when he was in his 30s. It means ‘man of steel’ in Russian – which is also…

SHOULD CHILDREN LEARN TO CODE AT SCHOOL? I think they should, but not necessarily for the reasons many people think. People often focus on the future job opportunities that coding could bring, but I make the analogy of learning to write. Everyone learns to write but not everyone becomes a writer or journalist. Coding is much the same. It teaches kids to express themselves creatively, organise their ideas and develop as logical thinkers, which I think is a more important focus. HOW IMPORTANT IS CREATIVE LEARNING? I’ve always been inspired by the way children learn in kindergarten [preschool] – whether it’s building houses with blocks or making pictures with finger paints, children are playfully creating things, often in collaboration with one another. This helps them to develop as creative thinkers.…

Eye opener INSIDE A FUSION DEVICE Take a closer look at the Wendelstein 7-X nuclear fusion facility with these interactive 360° panoramas. As well as showing you inside the guts of a reactor, there are videos of the team explaining their work. bit.ly/fusion_reactor Discoveries (Horizons) WILDING: THE RETURN OF NATURE TO A BRITISH FARM BY ISABELLA TREE (£9.99, PAN MACMILLAN) In this wonderful book, Isabella Tree tells the story of the Knepp Estate. She and her husband turn over farmland to wild pigs, deer and cattle in the hope of providing a little oasis for wildlife in West Sussex. It’s a great memoir that opened our eyes to just how scarce wildlife habitats are in the UK. Reality check IS BODY POSITIVITY THE ANSWER TO BODY IMAGE ISSUES? Check out…

Radio How are we evolving? Can household microbes hurt us? Could dark matter harbour dark life? Tune in to Crowd Scienceon the BBC World Service to find out what the team will answer next. bit.ly/crowd_science BBC Sounds Don’t miss Kevin Fong’s brilliant podcast, 13 Minutes To The Moon, with score from Hans Zimmer (!), in the run up to the Apollo anniversary. bbc.co.uk/sounds iPlayer The showstopping Earth From Space uses cutting-edge satellite and drone tech to give you a unique perspective of the Earth, including a seal colony in Siberia. bit.ly/earth_from_space…

reply@sciencefocus.com BBC Science Focus, Tower House, Fairfax Street, Bristol, BS1 3BN @sciencefocus www.facebook.com/sciencefocus @bbcsciencefocus Two wheels bad I was a bit disappointed in Daniel Bennett’s response to the letter from M Manley regarding irresponsible cyclists (June, p10), where he seems to imply that he would rather see more irresponsible cyclists on the roads than drivers. I appreciate that this is based on the damage caused by a vehicle accident, but I would like to point out that (apart from stolen vehicles, obviously) all drivers are traceable, whereas cyclists are not. The sooner there are national registration and licensing schemes for cyclists and their bikes the better. The argument trotted out against this is that it would put people off cycling, but I have yet to hear of anyone being put…

#MurrayGell-Mann Murray Gell-Mann (below), the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who identified quarks – the subatomic particles that make up protons and neutrons – has died aged 89. Jim Al-Khalili @jimalkhalili Just heard that the physicist who gave us the ‘quark’, Murray Gell-Mann, died yesterday, aged 89. He was one of the greatest scientists of the 20th Century and won the Nobel Prize 50 years ago for classifying the building blocks of matter. Somak Raychaudhury @somakrc Here goes the only physicist who picked the name of his newly postulated particle from the most difficult novel of James Joyce. Such polymaths are rare, and are getting rarer. Peace #MurrayGellMann #LundyIsland The seabird population on Devon’s Lundy Island has tripled in the last 15 years following a successful project to eradicate predatory rats on…

1 IN 7 The number of babies that are born weighing less than 2.5kg (5lbs 8oz) worldwide, as calculated by a study funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The average newborn weight is 3.4kg (7lb 8oz). 10,927m The depth at which a plastic bag was found by the American explorer Victor Vescovo in April this year when exploring the that plastic has been found to date. $ 110tn The global spending on renewable energy sources needed by 2050 to meet climate goals, as estimated by the International Renewable Energy Agency.…

WHAT EXACTLY IS REWILDING? “We’re recognising that farmers need to be supported when we’re looking at ecological restoration” Rewilding is different from traditional nature conservation, where you have a nature reserve or one particular bird or plant that you’re trying to preserve. What rewilding tries to do is bring back the wild over a larger area. To bring back nature in a more self-willed way, where ecosystems can begin to rejuvenate and restore the land so that species can more or less design their own ecosystems, rather than what should be a natural environment. ARE SOME LANDSCAPES MORE SUITABLE THAN OTHERS? In the Rewilding Britain report there was a lot of talk about the UK’s unique ecosystems – particularly upland areas, the peat bogs or blanket bogs, which have been…

@GOrizaola Germán Orizaola is a senior researcher at the Research Unit on Biodiversity (UMIB). He studies the microbiome of Chernobyl. @clairecorkhill Dr Claire Corkhill researches nuclear waste for the Research Unit on Biodiversity (UMIB). @ChernobylG Chernobyl Gallery regularly posts news updates, photos and videos about Chernobyl and the surrounding area. @ProfMikeWood Mike Wood is an environmental scientist at the University of Salford, studying the wildlife in Chernobyl.…

1. Fossil discovered A farmer called Yang Jan in the northeast of China found a beautiful duck-sized fossil specimen that the Paleontological Museum of Liaoning acquired in 2014. Scientists carefully chipped away rock to reveal superbly preserved feathers. Based on the fossil’s location, the experts realised that the dinosaur must be about 160 million years old, from the Late Jurassic. 2. Fossil analysed Palaeontologists led by Dongyu Hu, a professor at Shenyang Normal University, found that the feathers were so well preserved that they could use a scanning electron microscope to reveal tiny structures called melanosomes. In life, these would have been filled with the pigment melanin. Melanosomes are so small that 200 would fit across the width of a human hair. 3. Comparisons made The palaeontologists compared the fossil’s…

There is a famous fight scene in John Carpenter’s iconic 1980s cult sci-fi film They Live that has to be the most over-egged conflict ever put to celluloid. The main character is a working-class guy called Nada, who is deeply frustrated by the injustice of being kept down by the white-collar workers who brush past him on their way to their daily grind. One day, he discovers a pair of black sunglasses, puts them on and sees the world as it truly is: not in beautiful technicolour, but drab black and white, with billboards everywhere that are not advertising aspirational images, but words like ‘MARRY AND REPRODUCE’, ‘OBEY’, and ‘THIS IS YOUR GOD’. The sunglasses reveal a plot to control the masses. Behind the plot are some of the white-collar…

LARRY FITZGERALD, LONDON WHY DO PHYSICISTS TALK ABOUT SYMMETRY SO MUCH? Symmetry is something we usually think of as an aesthetic rather than a scientific concept – repeated patterns of tiles, for example. But in their quest to discover the basic laws of the Universe, physicists have found symmetry useful. That’s because if something possesses symmetry, it means it can be altered in certain ways, and yet remain unchanged. For example, if a square is flipped over or rotated by 90°, it looks as if nothing has changed. Physicists believe that the laws of nature should be similarly ‘invariant’, applying equally well regardless of where in space and time they’re used. Around a century ago, the German mathematician Emmy Noether showed that there’s a deep connection between such symmetries and…

According to a recent survey by the UK Met Office, over 60 per cent of the British public believe that cows lying down is a sure sign of rain. Perhaps the most common theory is that cows are able to sense the approaching rain, either through the increased moisture in the air or the accompanying drop in air pressure, and lie down to keep a patch of dry grass for grazing. Another theory emerged in 2013 when a study in the US showed that cows tend to stand in hot weather, as exposing more skin allows them to cool off more effectively. This led some to hypothesise that the chill in the air that often comes before rain could encourage cows to lie down to conserve heat. In truth, however,…

MAHIKA GAUTAM, LONDON IF WE’RE EVER ABLE TO MAKE ROBOTS AS INTELLIGENT AS US, WON’T FORCING THEM TO WORK FOR US BE AS BAD AS SLAVERY? In short: yes. International law on slavery currently applies to humans only, but if robots become as clever as us, then politicians would need to start thinking about tweaking these laws to include robots, too. We’d be foolish not to treat these robots with respect: history shows us that forcing labour from our equals never ends well. Fortunately, the EU is already piloting ethical guidelines for the use of AI software, so it’s likely that we would implement legislation to ensure the wellbeing of AIs with human intelligence. If we don’t, then they probably will! WINNER Mahika wins a Kodak Printomatic Instant Print Camera,…

ADVENTURES IN HUMAN BEING BY GAVIN FRANCIS (£6.99, WELLCOME COLLECTION) A wonderful – and for me, inspirational – example of how to weave medicine, art and life into a narrative. He eloquently shows how the body is our teacher. THE BEAUTIFUL CURE: HARNESSING YOUR BODY’S NATURAL DEFENCES BY DANIEL DAVIS (£9.99, VINTAGE PUBLISHING) An excellent book on our immune system. His lucid prose lets the science speak for itself, and it beautifully illuminates one of the most exciting, frontiers of modern medicine. ROOK’S TEXTBOOK ON DERMATOLOGY (WILEY-BLACKWELL) The dermatology bible. It comes in four enormous volumes of evidence-based medicine, and it reminds me that I’m standing on the shoulders of giants.…

Not too long ago we thought we’d be living our best lives through virtual reality (VR) by now. But it hasn’t worked out that way. The VR headsets that truly let you leave your fleshy husk behind were expensive and unwieldy, hogging your spare room and demanding powerful gaming computers. Meanwhile an affordable VR experience consisted of glorified goggles clapped on to your smartphone, using whatever grunt your handset could muster to power your experience. A happy medium between cost and power has never been met – the Oculus Quest is out to change this. WHAT IS IT? The Quest is the first all-in-one gaming system from Facebook-owned Oculus, so unlike their previous Oculus Rift, and indeed most of their rivals, all the tracking technology is contained within the headset…

PHILIP BALL Could exoplanet atmospheres reveal hints of distant life? Science writer Philip looks at the research that’s recreating this alien air on Earth. p72 DR JULES MONTAGUE Kleine-Levin Syndrome is a little-understood disorder where people sleep for up to 20 hours a day for weeks on end. Neurologist and writer Jules investigates. p66 DR SALEYHA AHSAN CBD oil is the latest health craze to sweep the nation, but is there any science to back up its claims? Trust Me, I’m A Doctor presenter Saleyha takes a look. p32 PROF NICK BERESFORD The huge success of the drama Chernobylhas inspired adventurous tourists to visit, but is it safe? Nick has been studying the site for three decades. p36…

Language barrier I would like to register how much I appreciated and valued Angela Saini’s insight into the embedded racism in science and other areas of our lives (June, p48). I was taken aback to realise that I too had an ingrained element of racism that I was unconsciously practising in my daily life. I live in East Anglia where there are thousands of immigrants from eastern European countries and Portugal working in the agricultural and food sectors. By and large, they are indistinguishable from the majority of the population in terms of their looks and behaviour. So how was I able to regularly categorise them as being Polish, Romanian, Latvian, etc. By one thing only: their languages. The interview helped me realise that I was immediately categorising them as…

WHAT DID THEY DO? Researchers at Washington State University created an e-tongue lined with sensors to detect spicy, sweet, salty, sour and umami flavours, and then ‘fed’ it cheese of varying degrees of spiciness. WHAT DID THEY FIND? Effectively tasting spicy food can be a problem, even for those of us who regularly snarf down a vindaloo on a Friday night, as human taste buds are quickly overloaded by capsaicin – the compound that gives curries their kick. By contrast, the e-tongue can be used over and over again without succumbing to the numbing effect of spice. It’s also better at determining the difference between two very mild spices or two very hot ones than a human tongue. WHY DID THEY DO THAT? The e-tongue could potentially be used in…

“One of my students has created a very tasty insect ice cream” This gives a whole new meaning to the term ‘grub’. Thanks to a growing worldwide demand for meat, we may soon have to turn to alternative sources of protein, such as sausages made from mashed-up maggots, researchers at the University of Queensland claim. Around 200 years ago there were fewer than a billion humans living on Earth. According to UN calculations there are now more than seven billion of us, with current studies will top 10 billion by 2050. This is likely to put a strain on global food supplies, so the team at Queensland has been investigating the possibility of incorporating alternative protein into our diets using insects. “An overpopulated world is going to are willing to…

The cataclysmic collision that created the Moon also brought water to the Earth, allowing life to develop, according to a study by a team of planetologists at the University of Münster, Germany. The Moon was created 4.4 billion years ago when the Earth collided with a Mars-sized body named Theia. While much of the resulting debris thrown up by the impact coalesced to form our Moon, some of it fell back to Earth and became part of the mantle, the thick rocky layer between the crust and core. The team, led by Dr Gerrit Budde, made the discovery by investigating the composition of the metal molybdenum found in the Earth’s mantle. The composition of molybdenum isotopes (atoms of the element with the same chemical properties but different numbers of neutrons)…

Gary Barker Gary Barker has a PhD in developmental psychology. He studies how we raise and socialise boys and men. He researches what factors cause men to gravitate into harmful behaviours, or more healthy, supportive, non-violent ideas about manhood. In the late 1990s he founded Promundo, which carries out global research into men, boys and masculinities. Promundo uses its findings and data to inform evidence-based programming and advocacy. WHAT STARTED YOUR INTEREST IN THIS AREA? I witnessed a school shooting in my high school in Houston, Texas, and saw negative views around masculinity in a place that was supposed to be safe to me. Ironically, it felt safer for me to talk about masculinity in some violent parts of Latin America – where I have family ties – than it…

There are some young people who are lost to the world. They are locked in a state of slumber, consumed by sleep for 15 to 20 hours each day, sometimes more. Then they finally open their eyes, only to speak monosyllabically or in muddled sentences. In these windows of semi-wakefulness, they sometimes lash out if disturbed, or regress to infancy, clapping their hands and singing nursery rhymes. But soon, somnolence inevitably returns. Eventually, the spell is broken – but by now, weeks or even months have passed. They awaken fully, usually remembering little or nothing of the time they’ve lost. But their journey isn’t over. Another episode will almost certainly follow, on average three months later but often much sooner than that. This is Kleine-Levin Syndrome (KLS), sometimes nicknamed ‘Sleeping…

DR ALASTAIR GUNN Astronomer, astrophysicist ALEX FRANKLINCHEUNG Environment/ climate expert DR PETER J BENTLEY Computer scientist, author DR STEVE BRUSATTE Palaeontologist, dinosaur expert DR HILARY GUITE Former GP, science writer CHARLOTTE CORNEY Zoo director, conservationist DR HELEN SCALES Oceans expert, science writer DR CHRISTIAN JARRETT Neuroscientist, science writer DR EMMA DAVIES Chemistry expert, science writer LUIS VILLAZON Science/tech writer JULES HOWARD Zoologist, science writer PROF ROBERT MATTHEWS Physicist, science writer…

Let’s put your mind to rest about one thing: there is no evidence that we swallow an average of eight spiders a year. Or any other number for that matter. Spiders are generally quite timid creatures and tend to avoid vibrations (from breathing and snoring) and warm, moist environments. Furthermore, this is a completely unverifiable statistic: if you swallowed something whole, in your sleep, how would you ever know? That’s the good news. The bad news is that every orifice other than the mouth is fair game. In 2017, a doctor removed a live cockroach from deep in the sinus cavity of a woman in Chennai, India. Leeches can also work their way into the nose, rectum, urethra and vagina. Endoscopy procedures  have also found ants, ladybirds and wasps in…

LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 Everyone’s favourite colourful building blocks are all grown up in Lego Mindstorms, and the EV3 kit contains all the bricks, motors and sensors you’ll need to build 17 different robots. The EV3 Programmer app helps kids to program it and bring it all to life, while the Lego Mindstorm community is filled with inspiration for rebuilding and re-programming the robot for almost endless opportunities. £249.99, LEGO.COM KANO HARRY POTTER CODING WAND For the budding wizards out there, this magical kit comes with a programmable wand that will respond to your child’s movements in real time. Using the companion app on a phone or tablet, there are over 70 creative challenges and games for them to complete. Then, with a wave, twist or a twirl of the wand,…