Innehållsförteckning för October 2022 från BBC Science Focus Magazine

It started with E.T. It’s the first film I can remember. My cousin sat me in front of a TV, slotted the tape into the VHS player and that was that: I fell in love with movies about aliens. Years later, a science teacher (who I now realise might have been feeling the after-effects of a big night out) darkened the room and put Independence Day on laser disc into the TV on wheels to silence a classroom full of 12-year-olds. It worked, and I realised then that aliens may not be so friendly after all. And then I watched Alien. As any aficionado of extraterrestrials will tell you, it doesn’t tend to end well for us when we cross paths with beings from another planet. We usually end up…

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reply@sciencefocus.com BBC Science Focus, Eagle House, Bristol, BS1 4ST @sciencefocus www.facebook.com/sciencefocus @bbcsciencefocus Science soothes in difficult times We all heard the devastating news that Queen Elizabeth II passed away a few hours after doctors raised concerns for her health. But it made me think that the royal family wouldn't have been able to rush to be by her side if it wasn't for the progress made possible by science and technology. Imagine if they had to receive the news by post and travel to Balmoral using carriages. But the benefits of such progress are not exclusive to the royal family. Nowadays, I can travel by air from London to Tehran in six hours to be with my family, something I couldn't have done a hundred years ago. It seems science…

REALITY CHECK REVIEW “A hard-nosed neuroscientist might dismiss the idea of an inner child as fanciful. But in other fields the notion is long established” Visit the BBC’s Reality Check website at bit.ly/reality_check_ or follow them on Twitter @BBCRealityCheck Have you noticed the spate of advice articles claiming to help you tap into your ‘inner child’? Some of them suggest this inner infant could be to blame for your relationship troubles, and there are others that promise to show you ways to start ‘healing the wounds’ your child within may have suffered. Online influencers are apparently tuned into the trend – you can find many of them posting photos of themselves riding tricycles or doing other seemingly childish things alongside boasts that they’re tapping into their inner child. So, what’s this all…

For years now, smartwatches from various brands have allowed you to track your health and wellness. They let you count your steps, check your heart rate and set reminders to stand up now and then or, if you somehow forget, they’ll give you a gentle nudge to breathe. But recently, the likes of Apple, Withings and Fitbit have begun to move from wellness to more detailed health analysis. You can perform an ECG, monitor for irregular heart rhythms and, most recently, measure your temperature to track ovulation. These advances take health tracking into a new, grey area. As well as providing basic measures of fitness and performance, they’re now starting to gather the kind of data that could be used to predict illnesses or health issues. In fact, companies including…

…CREEPY FACES IN THE METAVERSE The metaverse was a huge gamble for Mark Zuckerberg's Meta, and right now, he seems to be losing that bet. While showing off Meta’s new game Horizon Worlds for the Rift S and Quest 2 VR headsets, Zuckerberg unveiled his avatar for this metaverse experience. Stood in front of a blurry Eiffel Tower, the low-resolution, terrified-looking version of Zuckerberg was met with much hilarity and scorn online. Early reviews of the game report non-stop bugs, but at least it can successfully replicate Zuckerberg's dead-behindthe-eyes stare. Horizon Worlds oculus.com …FOOTBALL SCARVES WITH PRIVACY PROBLEMS Football is intense, even if you're just an onlooker. Sweat, tears and an increased heart rate are all accepted side effects when you're watching your team play. Now, though, your chosen club can…

Q&A GEOFF WINSTANLEY, BLANDFORD FORUM In short - yes, it is thought that there is some individual variation in the response to a particular painkiller. But pain is a complex perception. Sensation is influenced by so many factors, including variation in the type of pain, genetic factors, stress-related physiological responses, socio-cultural influences, our prior experience, emotional state, and by the context it occurs. So it is difficult to attribute our response to a painkiller to something as simple as painkiller receptors alone, but these are likely to play a part.…

ARE VIRUSES THE KEY TO FIGHTING INFECTIONS? Yes and no - there are some viruses that are solely designed to fight bacterial infections, called bacteriophages (phages). These viruses attach to bacterial cells and inject their genome into the cell. The bacteria then produces the viral genome instead of its own, and this interferes with its ability to function, effectively halting the bacterial infection. There are thought to be billions of phages on Earth; they have co-evolved with the bacteria they prey on for millennia, keeping their numbers under control. Phage therapy is the use of active phages to kill bacteria that cause human diseases, while leaving other bacteria unaffected. Phages have been around for a long time - they were officially discovered in 1915-17 and they have been used ever since…

People Fixing The World: Sustainability In Death We're running out of space for the dead. Cremation releases hundreds of kilos of CO2, and traditional burials leach poisons into ground. The team explores the cutting-edge, sustainable alternatives out there. BBC World Service 11 October, 3pm Also available on BBC Sounds Costing The Earth: The Prehistoric Hitchhiker's Guide To Climate Change How did early humans survive a changing climate? Eleanor Rosamund-Barraclough (pictured) joins an archaeological dig in Malta to see whether there are lessons we can learn from our history. BBC Radio 4 11 October, 3:30pm Also available on BBC Sounds Frozen Planet II If you can withstand the heartache, the new series will be available on iPlayer in its entirety. Just watch through your fingers when you see a baby seal…

EYE OPENER DENVER, COLORADO, USA This is what one of the two solar arrays for NASA's Lucy probe looked like during testing, ahead of its launch in October 2021. It's actually similar to what one of the arrays looks like now, after it failed to fully deploy. The circular arrays were designed to open like fans, but one got stuck, reportedly around 10° short of its 360° target. The arrays will gather solar power for Lucy during its mission to explore the Trojan asteroids, which sit on Jupiter's orbital path and are believed to remnants of the material that formed the outer planets of the Solar System. Lucy's still got a long way to go to reach them (its ETA is August 2027), but, by the time you read this,…

Titan is the largest of Saturn’s moons. At 5,150km in diameter it is larger than Mercury, the Solar System’s smallest planet. Enceladus is Saturn’s sixth-largest moon. It is of huge scientific interest as it is thought to have liquid oceans flowing beneath its frozen outer shell. This makes it one of the prime targets in the search for biological life in the Solar System.…

In August 2022, the UK government announced a £100m plan to speed up the development and deployment of self-driving vehicles. The plan also calls for new safety regulation, including a bold objective to hold car manufacturers accountable. This would mean that when a vehicle is self-driving, the person behind the wheel will not be responsible for any driving errors. This rule stands in contrast to the US, where courts have faulted human ‘backup drivers’ for robot-caused accidents. The UK has the right idea – as long as companies don’t weasel their way out. Fully self-driving cars have been on the horizon for quite some time, but are taking much longer than promised to be fully realised. Despite pouring massive resources into research and development, car companies have struggled to account…

DJI OM 5 £139, dji.com Small, lightweight and pocketsized, the DJI OM 5 is a three-axis phone gimbal featuring a unique detachable magnetic phone clamp, allowing you to attach and detach your phone quickly and easily. Meanwhile, a 215mm telescopic arm makes the gimbal longer to provide greater distance between you and your phone, which is ideal for vlogging and selfies. The companion DJI Mimo app provides functionality and control for both photos and videos, along with useful tutorials. The controls are well positioned and responsive, while the powerful motors do a great job of keeping your phone steady. The OM 5 comes with a storage bag, wrist strap and a small tripod that can be used to stand the gimbal independently. The OM 5 also includes Active Track 4.0…

Millions of years ago, sometime during the dinosaur era, ancient arthropods experimented with an unusual new diet: blood. Those ancestors of today’s mosquitoes, ticks and bedbugs were some of the first, but certainly not the last, to try haematophagy. Though relatively rare as far as diets go, haematophagy - or blood-feeding - isn’t something that evolved once, or even in a small collection of closely-related animals. Haematophagy evolved independently at least 20 times in arthropods alone, as well as in a bunch of worms, some fish, and a few birds and mammals. Despite all this diversity in animal form, each coven of vampires had to tackle similar problems to refine their grisly lifestyle. THE RED STUFF A diet as specialised as blood, a renewable but not easily accessible resource, doesn’t…

The International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) SETI Permanent Committee is the world's only international forum for the discussion of SETI. It meets every year at the international Astronautics Congress. In 1989, it adopted a set of nine principles concerning what happens after the detection of an extraterrestrial signal. Paraphrased, those guidelines say: 1 Anyone who thinks they have detected an extraterrestrial signal should not rush to make a public announcement. Instead they should first seek to verify their conclusion. 2 Once the discoverer has completed their due diligence, other organisations signed up to the guidelines should be informed (and the discoverer's government) so that they too can seek to confirm the discovery. 3 If these partners find that the signal is credible evidence of extraterrestrials, the discoverer should then inform…

… HOW SOON AFTER GETTING COVID-19 CAN YOU CATCH IT AGAIN? … HOW IS COLOUR ADDED TO JWST IMAGES? … WHAT IS WHITE, PINK AND BROWN NOISE? … DO PAINKILLERS WORK DIFFERENTLY FOR DIFFERENT PEOPLE? … CAN CONTACT LENSES GET STUCK BEHIND YOUR EYE? … HOW MUCH ENERGY DOES A SMART METER USE? … CAN YOU MAKE A FUNCTIONAL CANDLE FROM EARWAX? … WHAT IS THE MAILLARD REACTION? … OWLS VS LARKS: WHEN IS THE BEST TIME OF DAY TO EXERCISE FOR SLEEP? … WHY DOES NASAL AND EAR HAIR BECOME MORE PROMINENT AS YOU ACE? Email your questions to questions@sciencefocus.com or submit on Twitter @sciencefocus OUR EXPERTS DR HELEN PILCHER Biologist and science writer PETE LAWRENCE Astronomy expert DR NISH MANEK GP and medical expert DR ALASTAIR GUNN Astrophysics…

There are several parts of a smart meter that use electricity. They have little computers and communications circuits to let them talk to each other and the energy company, which use minimal energy. Your gas meter circuits are powered by a battery, which needs replacing every 10 years or so. Your electricity meter powers itself from the electricity supply, but doesn't charge you for its own energy. You're also given an in-home display to see your usage. In a year, it uses less than 1kW energy, costing about £1. But it's optional - you can also unplug it.…

Q&A DAVID WALKER, VIA EMAIL Often described as non-enzymatic browning, the Maillard reaction gives a wide range of cooked foods their appealing flavours and colours. Sped along by heat, the Maillard reaction is actually a series of reactions, starting with one between protein and a reducing sugar, such as glucose or fructose. The reactions produce flavour chemicals and browning in foods including fried onions, toast, steak and roasted coffee. French chemist Louis Camille Maillard first reported the reaction between proteins and sugars in 1912. In recent decades, scientists have unearthed more of Maillard’s detailed mechanisms. When heat hits food, sugars react with the amino acids that make up proteins to form glycosylamine. This unstable chemical rearranges to create a ketosamine, setting off a cascade of further reactions to produce hundreds…

No. Earwax, or cerumen, is not really a wax. It is mostly dead skin, with some long-chain fatty acids and cholesterol and other compounds binding it. Normal candles burn from the top as the wax melts in the heat from the flame, is drawn by capillary action up the wick, vaporises and burns. Earwax can't do this because keratin in the skin cells won't melt. Instead of a flame at the tip of the wick that burns down it, there would be a flame spreading across the surface until the whole candle was alight.…

There is no way to know. This isn’t just unknown in the way that the existence of life after death, or parallel universes is unknown; it is an unanswerable question. Let's suppose that we are in a computer simulation, either created by a higher intelligence or humans in the future. Now imagine that through some bug left in the code, we are accidentally able to step beyond the constraints of our programming and 'see' the simulation's raw scaffolding, like Neo in The Matrix. How would you be able to decide whether this lay outside the simulation, or was still part of it - as a joke or an Easter egg, put there by programmers? Could you even definitively say that the columns of ones and zeros scrolling past your eyes…

When they were first created in the 1960s, Doctor Who’s Cybermen were a vision of a nightmare future, where humanity has become more machine than flesh. But as time goes by, and more advances are made in bionics and neural implants, this vision doesn’t seem so far-fetched. As the Cybermen return for Doctor Who’s Centenary Special, Timothy Constandinou, professor of bioelectronics at Imperial College London and the UK Dementia Research Institute, is cautious about us being upgraded to a race of cyborgs. “We’re very far from the science fiction notion of enhancement,” says Constandinou. “All implants available now, either clinically or commercially, exist to solve medical problems. But if you look at something like cochlear implants, which help people who are profoundly deaf to hear, or experiments with brain computer…

Why does nasal and ear hair become more prominent as you age? →p80 DR KATIE MACK Dark matter outweighs the visible stuff six to one, yet we still don't know what it's made of. Cosmologist Katie reveals why that doesn't keep her up at night. → p32 DR DEAN BURNETT The UK grieved together over the death of the Queen. Neuroscientist Dean explains why national mourning is such a fundamental part of being human. → p40 DR BRITTNEY BOROWIEC Biologist and zoologist Brittney gets stuck in to the grisly world of vampirism, just in time for Halloween. → p52 DR HELEN PILCHER Did you know that, genetically, we're more like fungi than plants? If not, then you might want to check out biologist Helen's guide to the fungal world. →…

Scientists have discovered a new mechanism through which tiny pollutant particles in the air may trigger lung cancer, even in people who have never smoked. This identification could now be used to develop new prevention measures or even therapies for lung cancer. The particles, which are typically found in vehicle emissions and fossil fuel smoke, are associated with the most common form of lung cancer, accounting for over 250,000 lung cancer deaths each year worldwide. The research was funded by Cancer Research UK and was carried out by scientists of the Francis Crick Institute and the University College London. “The same particles in the air that derive from the combustion of fossil fuels, exacerbating climate change, are directly impacting human health via an important and previously overlooked cancercausing mechanism in…

SAVING THE PLANET SAVES CASH The world could save £10tr by 2050 by switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy, a study involving decades of years of energy data carried out at the University of Oxford has found. Thanks to the soaring prices of natural gas and the falling costs of renewables, going green makes more economic sense than ever, the researchers say. YEARS TO GO 25 CASH BOOST FOR BRAIN MAP PROJECT Researchers planning to create a map describing the human brain in unprecedented detail have received a $126m (approximately £115m) grant from America’s National Institutes of Health. The funding will be used to launch the Center for Multiomic Human Brain Cell Atlas, where researchers will work to better understand how human brains function and age. 20 AN AI…

…a drone that makes you feel like a bird Want to soar through the sky like an eagle? You could strap on a wingsuit, but for those of us looking for a somewhat safer option, DJI’s new first-person-view drone could do the trick. The DJI Avata uses a headset to allow you to see exactly what the drone ‘sees’. While this is nothing new, DJI has beefed up the drone and included a host of safety features, which means that newbies can rocket through the sky without fear of crashing. You even get a motion controller, allowing you to move the drone with hand gestures. DJI Avata £989, store.dji.com …innovative phone technology Do you need a smartphone that can fold? Do you need a device that costs a £1,649? For…

Attitudes towards consuming blood vary widely across cultures and individuals. For many around the world, blood is just 'liquid meat’, and as common a cooking ingredient as a cut of steak. For example, variations of blood sausage, a dish where the fluid is cooked down, thickened, and mixed with spices and filler, occur across the Americas, Asia, Europe, and elsewhere. Blood can be stewed, deep-fried, congealed, and occasionally sipped raw. Beyond blood as 'meat', there is a small but widespread community of sanguinarians, people who collect and consume blood from willing donors to self-medicate chronic fatigue, headaches, and gastrointestinal issues. The blood drinkers are far from edgy goths, and many wish to find more socially acceptable treatments. Blood-feeding is taboo for many others for religious, cultural, or personal reasons. Both…

In days gone by, sailors thought ships' cats could predict the weather. Perkiness indicated fair conditions. Sneezing foretold light rain, while weird behaviours, like licking their fur in the wrong direction, were suggestive of storms. Some even thought that cats caused the storms via magic stored in their tails. Although science has yet to disprove the latter, some modern-day owners do notice that their felines act 'oddly' before a downpour. It's thought the cats' inner ears are sensitive to the atmospheric pressure reduction that precedes precipitation (when water falls from the sky), but a word of caution. With their famous mood swings, how can you ever really know if your cat is acting oddly?!…

We are seeing more people getting COVID-19 a second, third or fourth time. Often it is months between infections, but some people can catch it again within a few weeks. The likelihood of this occurring depends on two factors: how your immune system responds to the infection; and what variants are spreading locally. For most people, the infection generates an immune response that lasts three to 12 months. After that, some people are more likely to be infected again, unless immunity is boosted with vaccination. The reason that some people catch it again within a few weeks is down to local virus transmission. During the pandemic, some communities have had two or more variants spreading (like Delta and Omicron), with immunity from one not protecting from the other. Some people…

What are fungi? Fungi are decomposing, fermenting, edible, toxic, carbon-sequestering, disease-causing, disease-curing, pollutant-busting, mind-bending, rain-generating, zombie-making marvels. They underpin almost all life on Earth, but are mostly situated underground and often overlooked. When we think of fungi, mushrooms spring to mind, but these are just the small 'above ground’ portion of the organism. Mushrooms are the fruiting body of the fungus, like the apples on a tree. Most of the fungus is hidden underground in the form of a branching network of tubular filaments called mycelium. If you took a teaspoon of healthy soil and lined up all the mycelium within it, it would stretch up to 10km. Plant or animal? Neither. Fungi belong to their own kingdom of life. It contains an estimated 2.2 to 3.8 million species, of…