Innehållsförteckning för January 2022 från BBC Science Focus Magazine

What if you didn’t have to get old? What if there was a way to immunise yourself against the inevitable consequences of ageing? No more creaky knees, sore back, or failing eyesight. No more trips to the doctor that end in: “Well, that’s just how your body works now.” Instead, what if you could live in a body that worked as well in your 40s, 50s and 60s, as it did in your 20s? It sounds too good to be true (and being forever 21 might just be out of reach), but the idea that we can treat old age like a disease is a school of thought that’s drawing attention from scientists and policymakers around the world. The theory goes that if we can target the mechanisms that age…

An ash blanket LA PALMA, CANARY ISLANDS This scene shows the vast amount of ash that covered the island of La Palma after its volcano, Cumbre Vieja, started erupting on 19 September. “The first week was chaotic, no one really knew what was going on,” says Ben Ireland, a junior volcanologist with GeoTenerife, who was 120km from the island when the eruption started. “A few months later, even though the volcano was still going, it was a lot calmer.” This is the ninth eruption on La Palma since records began in the 1400s and is the longest running eruption the island has known. “Ash is just tiny fragments of magma,” explains Ireland. “Magma coming up the conduit has got lots of gas in it, and as it rises up and…

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has made history after becoming the first spacecraft to plunge into the Sun’s atmosphere. The milestone journey was made on 28 April 2021, nearly three years after the probe’s launch in August 2018. It happened during Parker’s eighth flyby of the star at the centre of our Solar System. The probe spent a total of five hours travelling amid the plasma and solar winds in the Sun’s upper atmosphere, or corona. The landmark event was not announced until 14 December because the data recorded by the probe took several months to reach Earth, and then several more to be processed and analysed by scientists. “We were fully expecting that, sooner or later, we would encounter the corona for at least a short duration of time,” commented…

SCIENCE BEHIND THE HEADLINES CO2 pawprints | Omicron variant | Havana syndrome “How about providing edible toys for your dog or recyclable wooden ‘trees’ for your cats to climb on?” WOULD IT BE BETTER IF WE FED OUR CATS AND DOGS A VEGGIE DIET? Cats and dogs get more of their protein from meat and fish than we do. In the US alone, they account for about a quarter of all the calories consumed from animal products, emitting the CO2 equivalent of around 13 million cars through livestock production, according to a 2017 study. Our pets would certainly be more environmentally friendly if they went plantbased, but can we make that choice for any species that has different dietary needs to us? Domestic cats are obligate carnivores – they need…

NANOMEDICINE DRUG DELIVERERS A lot of research into nanotechnology in medicine focuses on the delivery of drugs. Researchers at Purdue University are testing out a wearable patch that uses silicon nanoneedles to deliver chemotherapy to the skin to treat melanomas. WOUND HEALERS Through the use of nanogenerators, researchers at the University of Wisconsin have found a way to make a bandage that applies electrical pulses to the site of a wound, speeding up the healing process. The method uses the body’s own motions to supply the energy needed. CANCER DETECTORS Northwestern University scientists are working on a method of detecting cancer cells in the bloodstream. Called NanoFlares, they are designed to bind to genetic targets in cancer cells and light up when that target is found.…

...a unique, modular action cam Like most action cameras, DJI’s new device is small, tough and captures surprisingly high-quality shots in fastmoving environments. Where the DJI Action 2 is slightly different to the competition is in its modular design. Thanks to some magnets, you can snap on a host of accessories, mounts and features. While DJI is making the most noise about tripods, head mounts and other pretty standard features, it’s the add-ons like the macro lens, power module and microphone that have us pretty excited. DJI Action 2 From £349, dji.com ...a modern-day analogue camera Yes, instant cameras that can print out your photos immediately are still a thing. Fujifilm has been working overtime trying to keep them alive for decades now, bringing digital camera features to a distinctly…

These incredible organisms feature in the first episode of Sir David Attenborough’s new show, The Green Planet, which is available to watch now on BBC iPlayer. THE LEAF-CUTTER ANTS RELY ON THEIR FUNGUS FOR FOOD. WHY DON’T THEY JUST CUT OUT THE MIDDLEMAN AND EAT THE LEAVES THEMSELVES? Digesting plant material is a difficult process, even for us humans. It’s a hard thing to do. Think about herbivores, carnivores and omnivores, and just look at, for example, the lengths of their intestines. If you take a tiger – a carnivore – the length of its intestines is about six metres. But if you look at a cow – the perfect example of a herbivore – the intestine is about 24 metres long, and cows also have multiple stomachs. It’s a…

Starter for 10: What’s 97 per cent water, eats its own offspring and has a ‘transient anus’? Meet the warty comb jelly, a cannibalistic creature with the world’s weirdest party trick. Most of the time, this jellyfish-like animal has no anus. Then, hey presto, just when it needs one, one magically appears, only to disappear moments later when defecation is done. It’s the only animal known to science to have such a bit of anatomy. The anomalous animal, which is native to the east coast of America, belongs to a group of creatures called ctenophores. Members have translucent, blobby bodies and rows of iridescent cilia, which they use to propel themselves around the ocean and hoover up microscopic prey. But where other ctenophores have one, or sometimes even two permanent…

WHAT IS HAWKING RADIATION? In the 1970s, physicist Stephen Hawking tried to answer an apparently simple question: do black holes have a temperature? His analysis led to the concept which now bears his name: Hawking radiation. Not only did Hawking show that black holes radiate energy, he showed that they shrink incredibly slowly and eventually explode in a flash of gamma rays. The idea of Hawking radiation is based on the fact that empty space isn’t actually empty. This is perhaps a difficult concept to grasp. Although empty space contains no mass, no particles or quanta of energy, the quantum fields which define them still exist in the vacuum of space. The usual explanation is that these fields, because they are not required to have zero energy, can create pairs…

reply@sciencefocus.com BBC Science Focus, Eagle House, Bristol, BS1 4ST @sciencefocus www.facebook.com/sciencefocus @bbcsciencefocus “THE BIG TECH COMPANIES ARE PROPELLING THE METAVERSE FORWARD WITH VIGOROUS PRESS RELEASES AND STARRY-EYED HOT TAKES BORDERING ON THE MESSIANIC”DR ALEKS KROTOSKI, P62 Great red... whirlpool? Is Jupiter’s Great Red Spot really a storm (December, p20)? Could it instead be caused by an object protruding above the surface or a hole beneath it, creating a whirlpool effect more like a liquid? Personally, I think a storm is a misnomer because what storm stays in the same place for years? Conversely, what whirlpool or maelstrom moves (Corryvreckan, Saltstraumen, Moskstraumen, for instance)? Tony Sandy The atmospheric conditions on Jupiter are very different from those on Earth. There are strong atmospheric currents (which we see as the planet’s stripes) that…

Antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest threats to our health today. But by studying tuberculosis, a team of scientists at University College London and Great Ormond Street Hospital have found a way to establish which bacteria are likely to become resistant to antibiotics in the future. It’s a breakthrough that could help doctors to select the best treatments for infections. Tuberculosis is a bacterial lung infection that is estimated to have killed more than one billion people over the past 200 years and is still one of the world’s most deadly diseases. In 2020 it was the second leading infectious cause of death after COVID-19, killing 1.5 million people. While tuberculosis can be cured with the right antibiotics, treatment can take a long time and many people do not…

Ever wanted to live out your own Innerspace experience? This camera is roughly the size of a grain of salt and could one day find itself working its way around your digestive system to give doctors a clearer picture of your health. Built by researchers at Princeton University and the University of Washington, the camera is able to pump out clear, full-coloured images equivalent to what you would usually see from a camera 500,000 times the size! To build a working camera at this scale, the scientists had to completely reimagine the tech that you would find inside a camera. “In order to shrink down the size of the camera, you really have to look at the optics,” says Felix Heide, the study’s senior author. “If you look at other…

NEIL CRIMMINGS, SWANSEA can we recycle concrete? Concrete can be recycled by grinding it up, then using screens to separate fine and coarse materials, magnets to remove steel, and water floatation to remove other unwanted materials. It can then be used to form hardcore sub-bases underneath new structures, gravel for paths or driveways, or even act as the aggregate for new concrete. It’s harder to recycle concrete if it contains lots of contaminants, but it’s really worth trying: recycling means less gravel mining and less landfill, so recycling one tonne of concrete could save 6,182 litres of water and 900kg of CO2. Sometimes only about 30 per cent of the materials in new concrete is recycled, because its performance may otherwise be reduced. But new processes using chemical additives can…

MARCUS CHOWN Cosmology writer Marcus takes a closer look at some of the biggest explosions in the Universe (from a safe distance). →p70 DR HELEN PILCHER Scientists have discovered a group of drugs that seem to slow the effects of ageing. Biology writer Helen finds out how long it’ll be before we can get a dose. →p52 HAYLEY BENNETT Pets scoff nearly a quarter of all the meat consumed in the US. Science journalist Hayley finds out how we could reduce the carbon pawprint of our beloved pets. →p30 DR PEPIJN KOOIJ For millennia, the tropical forests of South America have cultivated an unlikely friendship between ants and fungi. Evolutionary biologist Pepijn tells us more. →p64 CONTACT US → Advertising David.DSouza@immediate.co.uk 0117 300 8110 → Letters for publication reply@sciencefocus.com →…

As males are unable to produce milk or lay eggs, the ability to breed cows and hens that produce all-female offspring is likely to be high on most dairy and poultry farmers’ wishlists. Now, scientists at the Francis Crick Institute and the University of Kent have come a step closer to realising this goal after successfully using CRISPR gene-editing techniques to produce all-female or all-male litters of mice. Females normally have two X chromosomes (XX). A female inherits one X chromosome from her mother and one X chromosome from her father. Males normally have an X and a Y chromosome (XY). A male inherits an X chromosome from his mother and a Y chromosome from his father. To make the breakthrough, the researchers took advantage of the fact that CRISPR…

HOW DID THIS PROJECT START OUT? This project started as a collaboration between developmental biologists and roboticists. Our goal was to learn about how animals grow and regenerate by building robots with similar abilities. We made our first robots out of silicone rubber, which could change shape and volume to mimic growth. From there, we simply followed the scientific questions we found to be the most interesting, and our curiosity led us to the idea of building robots out of biological cells. Specifically, cells from the African clawed frog Xenopus laevis. Hence their nickname, xenobots. YOU FIRST DESIGNED THE SHAPES OF THE XENOBOTS USING A COMPUTER SIMULATION, DIDN’T YOU? That’s correct, I built a simulation that tries to predict how cells will behave when arranged into different structures. If you…

In December, Engineered Arts, a robotics company based in Cornwall, took Twitter by storm with a video of one its latest creations, a humanoid robot named Ameca (check it out at engineeredarts.co.uk/robot/ameca/). The video was shared by thousands of people on Twitter, who were disturbed and amazed in equal measure by its human appearance and lifelike expressions. We spoke to Will Jackson, CEO of Engineered Arts, about how Ameca was made, what the robot will be used for, and whether he finds his own creation unsettling. A LOT OF PEOPLE SAW THE VIDEO OF AMECA ONLINE, BUT WHAT IS THE ROBOT FOR? With Ameca, we wanted to create an intuitive and straightforward way to communicate with a machine. It’s essentially a humanoid designed as a platform for AI. There are…

Picture the scene. After a routine blood test, you visit your GP for the results. “It’s all good,” says the doctor reassuringly. “The only problem is that you’re getting older.” Then, with a flourish of the prescription pad, the doctor adds: “But I can help you with that. Take these tablets. They’ll slow the ageing process and help you to stay healthy. Oh, and they might just make you live longer too.” A drug that extends your life, slows ageing and staves off the ravages of old age, including frailty and disease? It sounds too good to be true, and yet, an increasing weight of evidence suggests not just that these drugs are within reach, but that they may already be here. Some can be found on the shelves at…

last month, I spent my valuable column inches predicting what we would be obsessed with over the next 12 months. Already I’m proving to be a terrible fortune teller, because the one thing that I should have known was coming was so obviously on the cards that I ignored all the signs. How could I not foresee the metaverse? You may have heard this word recently, perhaps for the first time. The big tech companies are propelling it forward with vigorous press releases and starry-eyed hot takes bordering on the messianic. Briefly, a metaverse is a virtual reality that exists in a layer above the physical, and yet reflects and replicates the things that we need for society to function: economies, hierarchies, judicial systems, and so on. In other words,…

... HOW DO WE KNOW THE SHAPE OF THE UNIVERSE? ... WHY DO KIDS THROW UP SO MUCH? ... CAN WE RECYCLE CONCRETE? ... DO NOOTROPICS REALLY WORK? ... DOES DYSLEXIA EXIST IN WRITING SYSTEMS LIKE CHINESE AND JAPANESE? ... WHY DOES LEFT AND RIGHT MATTER ON HEADPHONES? ... WHY AM I SUCH A CREATURE OF HABIT? ... DOES DRINKING MILK CREATE PHLEGM? ... HOW DOES CONCUSSION AFFECT YOUR VISION? ... IS SUNCREAM BAD FOR CORAL REEFS? ... WHY DO DIFFERENT PLANTS IN THE SAME ECOSYSTEM EVOLVE DIFFERENT-SHAPED LEAVES? Email your questions to questions@sciencefocus.com or submit on Twitter @sciencefocus OUR EXPERTS ALEX FRANKLINCHEUNG Environment and climate expert DR PETER BENTLEY Computer scientist DR ALASTAIR GUNN Astrophysics lecturer DR CHRISTIAN JARRETT Psychologist and neuroscientist PETE LAWRENCE Astronomy expert DR HELEN PILCHER…

From the big, flat paddles of the South American monstera to the tiny, round bobbles of the African string-of-beads plant, leaves come in a bewildering variety of shapes and sizes. Their main job is to harvest sunlight and then use this energy to help the plant make food via photosynthesis. Carbon dioxide and water are converted to glucose and oxygen inside specialised structures called chloroplasts. Leaf structure has a big impact on this process. Leaves with bigger surface areas, for example, can pack in more chloroplasts and absorb more sunlight, which means they can make more glucose. It sounds like a good thing, only those same large leaves may be more prone to heat loss, which is a problem if the plant lives somewhere chilly. There’s a trade-off to be…