SCIENCE•HISTORY•NATURE•FOR THE CURIOUS MIND

STRETCHY SWEAT-POWERED

BATTERY MADE OUT OF FABRIC

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ASIA EDITION | VOL 10 ISSUE 5

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PPS 1875/01/2016 (025609)MCI (P) 002/09/2017 ISSN 2529-7503

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CAN WE STOP NATURAL

DISASTERS? p73

WHAT IFTHE DINOSAURSHAD SURVIVED?

p28

Take a peek into the lives of the one-of-a-kind red squirrels, native to the Scottish Highlands p38

SEEINGREDS

TV HIGHLIGHTS

Six disabled people ride out on an epic journey along Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh trail to discover a country of contrasts and a place to fi nd themselves. Together they travel over 1,000 miles – three on motorbikes, the others sharing the driving of a 4x4 – through diverse landscapes from jungles and rice fi elds to ancient cities and remote villages.

Premieres 16 May Wednesdays at 8.55pm (JKT/BKK) 9.55pm (SIN/HK/MY/TW)

Without Limits: Vietnam

Xploration Awesome Planet

Philippe Cousteau Jr., grandson of the legendary Jacques Cousteau, explores the most spectacular

places – on the earth, inside the earth, and above the earth – in this riveting earth science series.

Premieres 24 MayThursdays at 8.55pm (JKT/BKK)

9.55pm (SIN/HK/MY/TW)

Building Cars

James May goes behind the scenes to reveal the science, engineering and people that keep us all on the road, with access all areas to the MINI plant in Oxford where a car is built every 68 seconds.

Premieres 4 May Fridays at 8.55pm (JKT/BKK)9.55pm (SIN/HK/MY/TW)

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Y Send us your letters to bbcearth@media-group.com.sg

Experts in this issue…

Robert A.J. Matthews is a British physicist and science writer. He is a graduate of Corpus Christi College, Oxford University. (p50)

Writer and Editor Simon specialises in health, science and social issues for the past 30 years. Together with his journalism knowledge, he has helped voluntary organisations on their communications issues (p68)

Hayley Bennett is a freelance science writer based out of Bristol, UK. In this issue, she talks about the real effects of climate change. (p80)

Neil McIntyre is an award-winning Scottish Highland Wildlife and Landscape Photographer. He has received many awards for his work, published in several magazines. (39)

ROBERT MATTHEWS

SIMON CROMPTON

HAYLEY BENNETT

NEIL MCINTYRE

WELCOME

It is true that experience is one of the best teachers in life, and what better way to gather more of those than by travelling beyond the boundaries we reside within? After proving their mettle at the 2017 BBC Earth School Challenge Singapore, the winning team joined us on an educational expedition through the Indonesian island of Bintan. Spanning nature, wildlife, culture, and a wealth of learning experiences, they embarked on a journey of learning with joy and laughter. It is a pleasure to learn, especially when it involves travel and adventure. Read on about their exciting encounters on page 14.

While we continue to travel to extraordinary new destinations around the world, we also begin to slowly unravel the visible impact of climate change in the world today. But there are some lesser-known of these effects that can have tumultuous impact on our world. It could worsen allergies, lead to an increase in lightning, and has already resulted in grolar bears – the hybrid between grizzly and polar bears. Find out more on page 80!

As we contemplate the future of the earth and its species, this month we also posit an interesting question for you to consider. What would our world look like if dinosaurs had survived extinction 66 million years ago? Explore the possibilities with John Pickrell on page 28.

That’s it from this month! Until next time, cheers!

IMPORTANT CHANGE:The licence to publish this magazine was acquired from BBC Worldwide by Immediate Media Company on 1 November 2011. We remain committed to making a magazine of the highest editorial quality, one that complies with BBC editorial and commercial guidelines and connects with BBC programmes.

The BBC Earth television channel is available in the following regions: Asia (Cambodia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan)

Know more. Anywhere.

SCIENCE • HISTORY • NATURE FOR THE CURIOUS MIND

BBC Earth Magazine provides trusted, independent advice and information that has been gathered without fear or favour. When receiving assistance or sample products from suppliers, we ensure our editorial integrity and independence are not compromised by never offering anything in return, such as positive coverage, and by including a brief credit where appropriate.

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LEARNING THROUGH TRAVEL

BBC Earth MagazineIncludes selected articles from other BBC specialist magazines, including Focus, BBC History Magazine and BBC Wildlife Magazine.

www.sciencefocus.com

www.historyextra.com

www.discoverwildlife.com

14 Journey through BintanSome of the highlights from the adventurous journey to Bintan undertaken by the winners of the BBC Earth Asia Magazine School Challenge 2017

12 Witness wildlifeAbundantly endowed with natural wonders, Australia is the perfect destination for experiencing nature and wildlife in its truest element

FEATURES

28 What if the dinosaurs had survived?A glimpse into what the world would look like if Dinosaurs hadn’t undergone mass extinction

38 Seeing redsNeil McIntyre has visited the Caledonian forest of Cairngorms National Park to photograph the lively native red squirrels

46 Cricket, curry and cups of teaShompa Lahiri explores how Queen Victoria helped popularise India’s cultural influence on British society

VOL. 10 ISSUE 5

64 Where was the battle that saved England?Michael Wood offers an intriguing new take on the puzzle surrounding the location of the battle of Brunanburh

68 The science of fighting fatInformed tips from the experts on how to shed those unwanted kilos

73 Can we stop natural disasters?Science may be able to help us prevent natural catastrophes before they occur

80 Prepare for grolar bearsIt’s time to uncover some of the lesser known impacts of climate change

56 Ghost of the grasslandsA peak into the life of the Pallas cat, which has conquered one of the most remote environments on Earth

3 WelcomeA note from the editor sharing her thoughts on the issue and other ramblings

98 Comment & Analysis Helen Czerski on champagne corks

97 My Life ScientificHelen Pilcher chats to ethnobotanist James Wong about the magic of plants

6 SnapshotStunning snaps from across the fields of history, nature or science

REGULARS

96 Time OutCrossword puzzle to stimulate your brain

94 Book ReviewThis month, we discuss Sleepy Head by Henry Nicholls, a book that discusses narcolepsy – a disorder that causes people to fall asleep without warning

RESOURCE

UPDATE19 The Latest IntelligenceSynthetic DNA made in lab, interstellar asteroid captured entering the Solar System, Stretchy sweat-powered battery made out of fabric…

85 Q&AWhy is air invisible? Why do dogs wag their tales? How thick is the thickest fog? How large a telescope was needed to image an exoplanet? Why do we get dizzy when we spin?

50 Should you invest in cryptocurrency?Prof Robert Matthews helps examine if it’s worth taking the plunge into this emerging currency 38

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4 Vol. 10 Issue 5

CONTENTS

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BBC Earth Magazine, MCI (P) 002/09/2017, ISSN 2529-7503, PPS 1875/01/2016 (025609), is published by Regent Media Pte Ltd under license from Immediate Media Company Bristol Limited. Copyright © Immediate Media Company Bristol Limited. No part of this publication is to be reproduced, stored, transmitted,

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Lesser flamingos, Phoeniconaias

minor, flock en masse above an

African salt lake. The water can

reach temperatures of more than

40°C and is alkaline enough to burn

human skin but this doesn’t bother

the birds, who gather to feed on the

nutrient-rich bacteria and shellfish

found on its shores.

The smallest of the six species

of flamingo, lesser flamingos are

highly nomadic and move between

suitable breeding and feeding

sites according to changes in

weather conditions. They are highly

gregarious birds and gather in large

groups bound together by intricate

and elaborate social structures.

“Pairs or trios or small subgroups

will feed together and remain in

close proximity without squabbling.

Rival flamingos, or those that do

not get along, will squabble, joust

with bills and necks, or push and

shove each other,” said Paul Rose,

a biologist at the University of

Exeter. “Birds that are in breeding

condition will gather in large

groups to perform courtship

displays – wing salutes, head

flagging and marching are

common in lesser flamingos.”

However, the birds are extremely

sensitive to variations in weather

and water supply. Droughts and

changes in water conditions

caused by climate change are

already threatening flamingos that

traditionally gather to breed around

Lake Nakuru in Kenya.

PHOTO: Phillip Chang /Solent

Flamboyant flockLake Natron, Tanzania

8 Vol. 10 Issue 5

Snapshot

9Vol. 10 Issue 5

With burial space running out,

Jerusalem’s largest cemetery is

expanding beneath the soil. Each of

these holes will provide a final resting

place for one of the city’s dead, with

some 22,000 graves in total in the

1.5km-long tunnel system.

A shortage of burial space is

an issue in crowded cities and in

regions where religion discourages

cremation. This means that

engineers are having to come up

with innovative solutions.

These hive-like crypts were bored

into the rock, 50 metres below the

original cemetery. “The deceased

will be buried inside the rock, just

as they were in Biblical times,” says

Arik Glazer, chief executive of Rolzur

Tunnelling, the company behind the

project’s construction. Visitors will

enter the tunnels via elevators, with

floors at different levels providing

access to the stacked graves,

while golf carts will be on hand

to transport people around. The

company plans to start burials by the

end of 2018.

PHOTO: Shutterstock

City of the deadHar HaMenuchot, Jerusalem

10 Vol. 10 Issue 5

Snapshot

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12 Vol. 10 Issue 5

SPECIAL FEATURE

WITNESS WILDLIFEYour guide to Australia’s wealth of unique natural and wildlife experiences

NATURAL WONDERSSURREAL SEA CLIFFSStanding majestically over the crashing waves down below, the 300m high dolerite sea cliffs at the bottom of the Tasman Peninsula are a true vision to behold. The cliffs are one of the many attractions that make the Tasman National Park a must-see stop for visitors. Not only does the park showcase some of Australia’s most beautiful natural landscapes, it is also home to a wide variety of land and marine animals. Look out for brushtail possums, Australian fur seals, dolphins as well as migrating whales in their natural habitat.

THE PINNACLES, NAMBUNGA desert known also for it’s beautiful beaches, Pinnacles Desert at Nambung National Park showcases the continent’s wondrous coastal dune systems. The park bursts into bloom from August to October, and the flowers are a sight to behold. Located just two hours from Perth, The Pinnacles constitute a collection of weathered limestone pillars that protrude from the desert. A desert that exists so close to the water is the first of many wondrous anomalies in the natural landscape of Australia.

STROMATOLITES OF HAMELIN POOL, SHARK BAYThe oldest stromatolites in the world are found in Western Australia, known to be 3.7 billion years old. The Hamelin Pool in Western Australia is one of four remaining places on the planet where marine stromatolites exist, and the location is also known to contain its biggest colony on

Earth. The marine stromatolites of Hamelin Pool are also known to be the best example of their kind on Earth.

LAND DWELLERSCROCODILE DUNDEEEqual parts intimidating and fascinating, the sight of saltwater crocs swim by is thrilling experience. The massive Northern Territory crocodile with a ridged back moves through the water noiselessly, leaving only minor ripples as it slides just under the surface. Head on a two hour cruise on Yellow Water Billabong at the heart of Kakadu National Park to witness these predators in their natural habitat.

WOMBAT WATCHINGNative to Australia, the wombat is a solid, rotund animal with short legs and twitching noses. These marsupials are essentially nocturnal creatures, but they emerge from their burrows at dusk to feed on grasses. Head to the Wilsons Promontory National Park in Victoria to catch a glimpse of wombats at the entrance to the main beach, and on the camping grounds. The park is also home to other furry friends, including kangaroos, as well as birds such as emus and echidnas.

GREET A TASMANIAN DEVILThe largest carnivorous marsupial in the world, the Tasmanian devil is yet another furry buddy you’ll want to meet on your Australian adventure. The luxury hotel Saffire Freycinet in Tasmania runs a retirement home for the Tasmanian devils. Here, guests are welcome to observe the endangered animals in all their natural glory.

Swim alongside playful sea lionsPhoto: Tourism Australia

Watch wombats feed on grassesPhoto: Tourism Australia

Limestone pillars at the Pinnacles, Nambung National ParkPhoto: Tourism Australia

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HUMPBACK HIGHWAYKnown for their plaintive songs that can often go on for hours on end, Queensland’s beautiful Sunshine Coast is the perfect place to visit the magnificent humpback whales. Sunshine Coast is part of the ‘Humpback Highway’, a route that these whales swim past each year on their way north to the breeding grounds. Go whale watching with Sunreef Mooloolaba, and get ready for the phenomenal experience of coming eye to eye with a whale, one that is often described as a highly emotional one.

GREAT WHITE SHARK DIVE IN SOUTH AUSTRALIAGet stoked on thrills as you cage-dive to witness the great white shark in its natural abode. You will enter a cage that is lowered underwater, keeping safety a priority of course. Experience adrenaline-pumped action as the shark powers towards meat dangled in front of you. While the cage is secure, the experience is sure to make you jump. If you’re looking to stay dry as you plunge into the ocean, try the glass aqua-sub. But if you’re looking to really brave it, amp the fear factor by going for the dive at twilight.

INTO THE OCEANPADDLE ALONGSIDE DWARF MINKE WHALESGain a friendly swimming companion as you dive into the waters of the Great Barrier Reef. The only place on the planet where they’ve been known to congregate and feed, the experience leaves each one of its witnesses speechless and in awe of these inquisitive creatures. Head here between May and August each year to meet the minke whales yourself on a day trip, overnight expedition, or on a boat departing from Cairns or Port Douglas.

BE PLAYMATES WITH SEA PUPPIES If you’re looking to play a bit of Marco Polo in the water, find a playmate in the friendly sea lions. These chirpy and playful creatures may even swim right up to befriend you before putting on an aquarobics show, with antics that justify their reputation as “puppies of the sea”. Go for a swim with these cute critters in the clear waters of South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula. Don’t forget to pack an underwater camera to capture them in all their playful glory.

Witness saltwater crocodiles as they hunt mulletsPhoto: Kakadu National Park

Watch magnificent whales in their natural habvitatPhoto: Tourism and Events Queensland

The dolerite sea cliffs of the Tasman peninsulaPhoto: Sean Scott Photography

elishing the fruits of their labour, the winners of our annual BBC Earth School Challenge celebrated

their break from school by heading for an educational adventure through the island of Bintan. Just a short ferry trip from Singapore, this Indonesian island boasts a rich blend of history, culture and abundant nature, making for an exciting journey for

JOURNEY THROUGH BINTAN: THE BBC EARTH SCHOOL

CHALLENGE 2017 TRIP Last month, we took the champions of the BBC Earth School Challenge 2017 on an adventurous trail through the island of Bintan. The trip was part of their prize for

winning last year’s challenge, competing against other schools in Singapore. Take a look at some of the highlights from their journey…

Rthe champion students from Nanyang Girls’ High School.

Lodged at Bintan Lagoon Resort, the girls started their adventure from the get-go, as they launched off for a joyful ride on the beach atop massive ATVs. After familiarizing themselves with the vehicle under the guidance of the resort staff, they surged forward

with confidence into a serene track in the jungle. On the very next day, the girls were delighted to partake in the sport of golf at Ria Bintan, the award-winning 27-hole championship course designed by Gary Player, set facing the South China Sea.

Taking in an extra dose of history, the girls marvelled at the wonders of Penyengat Island, just 10 minutes away from Tanjung

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Pinang, Bintan, via a pompong (water taxi). Amidst getting the opportunity to dress up like Malay royalty and witnessing this abode of the kings (from the Malay kingdom), the girls also learnt about the unique Masjid Raya Sultan Riau (Sultan of Riau’s Grand Mosque), rumoured to have been built by using egg whites as a binding agent.

From lavish accommodation settings to mouth-watering spreads of local cuisine, cultural experiences with native villagers to interactions with nature and wildlife during the Mangrove Discovery Tour and Safari Lagoi and Eco Farm visit, the adventure was choc-a-bloc with memorable experiences. But don’t take our word for it! Here’s what the girls and one of their teachers had to say about their educational expedition:

HENG RUI QINGThis was my first trip to Bintan and will certainly not be the last. I have always imagined Bintan to be limited to only beautiful beaches, without knowing that

there are actually a great deal of other aspects there worth exploring. This includes the rescued animals zoo and the Orang Laut village we visited. The trip to this small village was honestly very memorable as it really showed us how people utilised the sea for survival. I wish I had been better versed in the local language so as to talk more to the children and other villagers, and learn more about their personal insights, culture and way of life.

Additionally, it was extremely fun trying to learn how to play golf. I may not have excelled at it just yet, but it was a great chance for me to take a look at the beautiful landscape of the place and have fun!

I also really enjoyed the local food. There is a unique mix of Chinese and Malay cuisines, with many having a slightly different style from their Singapore counterparts. All in all, this was a very meaningful and educational trip. It was the perfect chance to de-stress and spend quality time with my teammates.

15Vol. 10 Issue 5

MATILDA MAG JIA LINThe short getaway to Bintan was truly one that allowed me to take a breather, and one that opened up my eyes to the world beyond the borders of Singapore. It was a trip that was fulfilling both in terms of leisure and learning.

Firstly, to have the chance to be in such close proximity to nature increased my appreciation for planet Earth and all that she has to offer exponentially. Simply standing by the empty beach and watching the waves of the South China Sea crashing into the rocks gave me a feeling of tranquillity, unparalleled to anything I’ve experienced

before. As we cruised on the little boat through the mangroves watching reptiles and little squirrels scurrying by, not only did I gain factual knowledge, I also gained insight on a natural setting that is extremely hard to find in the concrete jungle we live in.

Other highlights were of course the times when we assimilated into the local culture. Navigating our way through the narrow pathways of the fishing village, sitting on the becaks (motorised trishaw) and admiring the intricate designs of the temples and monasteries truly allowed me to be in touch with the extensive and deeply rooted culture of Bintan. From Christianity to

Buddhism, I’ve gained more understanding and sensitivity to religions and races. It was as if I finally stepped beyond my textbook and I’m extremely grateful to have had this opportunity to be in touch with the world.

In summary, this trip affirmed my love for nature and my commitment to preserve its beauty for future generations to appreciate as well. Thank you teachers, tour guides and friends for being such wonderful companions throughout this journey!

CHLOE KOK YING-XUANThe BBC trip was very meaningful and interesting. Through this trip, we were

16 Vol. 10 Issue 5

able to immerse ourselves in nature and the culture of the locals. This was done through visiting mangrove reserves, as well as temples on the surrounding islands, where we got to have first hand experience learning about the rich history of Bintan. It was an eye opening experience to see the local culture, such as the Sea Gypsies. Seeing how they live and how they use fishing as their livelihood was truly a meaningful experience. In addition, we were also able to try new things such as golf and local gado gado. The trip is indeed one that I will not forget and will always be very grateful for!

RACHEL GOHThe Bintan trip was an eye-opener with a balance of culture and nature visits, which we found to be extremely enjoyable. In particular, the visit to the Sea Gypsy village was something I enjoyed tremendously – interacting with the locals and immersing in the atmosphere of a fishing village. This is especially significant as we are fortunate enough to be living in a modernised city such as Singapore, so much so that we rarely get a chance to see how other people live. In addition, this trip really gave us a much-needed break from the hustle and bustle of everyday life, taking us golfing

and riding ATVs, something that we don’t often get to do in Singapore. For me, it was getting in touch with nature and taking things slow which I really enjoyed during the trip, immersing in the local culture and trying the different cuisine was also really memorable.

17Vol. 10 Issue 5

IRENE (Teacher and mentor to the students):I realised through this trip that Bintan offers a varied range of experiences.

I had fun being taught to drive the All Terrain Vehicle, and plucked up the courage to ride it on sandy paths and forest trails, under the watchful eyes of the Bintan Lagoon Resort staff. The golf clinic at Ria Bintan was a great bonding experience for the group, as the trainers set reasonable targets that enabled us to cheer one another on. We were thrilled when a curious deer stayed to watch us swing our golf clubs. As we zipped around in a golf buggy, it felt like we were on a scenic trip with beautiful ocean views.

Visiting the sea nomads gave me a new respect for their traditional way of life. Chapels, mosques and temples provide a snapshot of religious diversity.The historical significance of Penyengat Island was palpable – as our tour guide told stories of the ancestors of its modern residents, we understood why the island is deemed worthy of being listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

A boat ride among the mangroves was

great for spotting wildlife in a natural habitat. By contrast, the beautifully landscaped Safari Lagoi and Eco Farm Tour provided a chance to enjoy the antics of its rescued animals.

There is a variety of food at different price points, including inexpensive fare at the Rimba Jaya Night Market and a food centre (Pujasera) frequented by resident workers. All in all, it was a learning experience not just for the students, but for me as well.

Organiser: Official Magazine: Trip Sponsor:

18 Vol. 10 Issue 5

19Vol. 10 Issue 5

UpdateTHE LATEST INTELLIGENCE

SYNTHETIC DNA MADEIN LABAlien organism created by adding new letters to the genetic alphabet could lead to more effective designer drugs

BIOLOGY

A team of scientists at the Scripps Research Institute in the US have created a living ‘semi-synthetic’ organism capable of producing proteins never seen before on Earth by adding new letters to the genetic code. The synthetic proteins created by such organisms could pave the way for a new generation of made-to-order drugs and therapies, the team said.

The regular genetic ‘alphabet’ consists of four letters, or bases: A, T, G and C. These stand for adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine, which are the four chemicals that make up DNA. These letters can combine in different sequences to form 20 naturally occurring amino acids – the building blocks of proteins.

PH

OTO

: LG

ET

TY

Update THE LATEST INTELLIGENCE

20 Vol. 10 Issue 5

1944Oswald Avery (pictured),

Colin MacLeod and Maclyn McCarty demonstrate that

DNA is the material that makes up genes and

chromosomes.

1952Rosalind Franklin

captures a detailed image of

DNA using X-ray crystallography.

1953Francis Crick, James Watson and Rosalind Franklin discover the double helix structure

of DNA.

1966Marshall Nirenberg discovers that the genetic code is made

up of just four bases – adenine, cytosine, guanine

and thymine.

In 2014, the Scripps team created two more ‘letters’, X and Y, making it theoretically possible to create a further 152 synthetic amino acids. However, they were unable to make an organism that could produce proteins. Now, they have successfully created an organism capable of producing so-called green fluorescent proteins by modifying Escherichia coli – a single-celled, rod-shaped bacterium commonly used in the lab-based manufacture of proteins.

“This is the first time that proteins have been produced in any cell by the decoding of a six-letter genetic alphabet, instead of just the natural four-letter alphabet,” said study leader Dr Floyd Romesberg. “The limited combinations of the natural DNA bases, A, T, G, and C, have restricted the types of new protein therapeutics that could be made. Adding X and Y to the genetic alphabet, we now have an expanded vocabulary to be able to generate a variety of new proteins that might be developed for a wide range of applications, including as new therapeutics.”

It was previously believed by many researchers that our specific DNA structure was essential for the evolution of life. However, the breakthrough by the Scripps team opens up the possibility that life could have evolved in a different way on another planet.

The organism is completely safe and has no chance of spreading out beyond the lab and contaminating natural life forms as it is incapable of producing the X and Y bases it needs to live by itself, the researchers said.

EXPANDING THE GENETIC ALPHABET

PROTEINS are large, complex molecules that are essential for life. They perform many different tasks inside our bodies such as acting as antibodies, transporting smaller molecules within cells, and transmitting signals to coordinate biological processes between different organs. They also help form many of the body’s intricate structures, such as hair, skin and muscle.

There are hundreds of thousands of different proteins in the human body and many, many millions more throughout the natural world. Differences in our genes causes variation in the proteins our cells produce, which leads to diversity in our physical characteristics.

Proteins are formed when small organic compounds called AMINO ACIDS link together in long chains. There are only 20 naturally occurring amino acids but each protein molecule contains hundreds of them joined together in a unique sequence. This gives each protein its own individual properties.

Each strand of DNA is made from chemicals known as BASES. There are

four different bases – thymine, adenine, guanine and cytosine. The two strands that make up DNA’s double helix are joined together by chemical crosslinks between the different bases. Thymine always pairs with adenine, and guanine with cytosine. However, the Scripps team created two new bases: X and Y. The order of the bases running along the strands forms a chemical code or set of instructions for creating proteins. Each section of DNA that codes for a particular protein is called a GENE.

The process of manufacturing a protein has two major steps. First, information in the DNA needed to make a specific protein is transferred to an mRNA (messenger RNA) molecule by a process known as transcription. During this process, thymine (T) is converted to uracil (U). A second type of RNA, tRNA (transfer RNA) picks up specific amino acids and returns them to the mRNA. The amino acids are lined up according to instructions on the mRNA and join together to form a protein.

Adding additional building blocks to the DNA of E.coli bacteria has enabled researchers to create synthetic life forms capable of producing entirely new types of protein. Here’s how they did it…

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1976Frederick Sanger (pictured) and Alan Coulson devise a

method for sequencing DNA. They name it the Sanger

Coulson technique.

2014Floyd Romesberg at the

Scripps Research Institute creates a strain of E.coli

bacteria with two non-naturally occurring bases

and names them X and Y.

2017The scientists at Scripps Research Institute use their expanded genetic code to create a living

‘semi-synthetic’ organism.

2003The Human Genome Project successfully

maps all of the genes in the

human genome.

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Four nucleotides (bases) are present on a DNA molecule. These are T, A, G and C. T always

pairs with A, and G always pairs with C.

Two synthetic bases, X and Y, have been created by the Scripps team.

X will always pair with Y.

Groups of three RNA bases are called ‘codons’. There are 64 of these in total, which are capable of coding for 20 amino acids.

The additional two bases allow the creation of 216 codons, which can code for up to

172 different amino acids.

These 20 amino acids can link up together in long chains to form

different proteins.

A greater variety of amino acids results in a more diverse

selection of proteins.

NATURAL DNA DNA mRNA tRNA PROTEINS

NOVELPROTEINSmRNA tRNA

AMINOACIDS

AMINOACIDSNATURAL DNA DNA

Update THE LATEST INTELLIGENCE

22 Vol. 10 Issue 5

INTERSTELLAR ASTEROID CAPTURED ENTERING THE SOLAR SYSTEM

ASTRONOMY

An oddly shaped asteroid has entered the Solar System, and is the first confirmed object from another star. Officially dubbed 1I/2017 U1, but known as ̀ Oumuamua (`Oumuamua comes from the Hawaiian word for ‘scout’), the space rock was captured by the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope in Hawaii. First thought to be a comet thanks to its trajectory and high speed, ̀ Oumuamua had already passed its closest to the Sun when it was detected, so the race was on to gather as much data as possible. At New Year, the asteroid was roughly three times the distance of the Earth from the Sun and is currently speeding away from our planet at 90,000km/h.

Telescopes can’t get a good picture of `Oumuamua, but astronomers managed to determine its shape from variations in the brightness readings as the asteroid spins once every 7.3 hours.

“This unusually large variation in brightness means that the object is highly elongated: about 10 times as long as it is wide,

with a complex, convoluted shape,” said researcher Karen Meech. “We also found that it has a dark red colour, similar to objects in the outer Solar System, and confirmed that it is completely inert, without the faintest hint of dust around it.”

`Oumuamua appears to have come from the direction of Vega, a bright star about 25 light-years away. It’s estimated that such visitors arrive roughly once every year.

“We are continuing to observe this unique object,” said researcher Olivier Hainaut, “We hope to more accurately pin down where it came from and where it is going next on its tour of the Galaxy. And now that we have found the first interstellar rock, we are getting ready for the next ones!”

MAIN IMAGE: Artist’s impression of the

elongated asteroid named `Oumuamua

INSET: `Oumuamua (marked by blue circle) photographed through

telescopes

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RASTEROID

OR COMET?Asteroids and comets were born during the early days of the Solar

System. Asteroids formed closer to the Sun and are made up of metals and rocky material. Comets formed

further away and consist of ice, dust and rocky particles. It is the

melting of the ice as a comet approaches the Sun that gives

it a distinctive tail.

23Vol. 10 Issue 5

IN NUMBERS

37YEARS

3,239

The time that NASA’s Voyager 1 probe’s thrusters lay dormant before being briefly fired up in

November.

13.1BILLION

LIGHT-YEARSThe distance from Earth to

ULAS J1342+0928, a quasar containing a supermassive

black hole 800 million times the mass of the Sun. It’s the

most distant object of its type ever detected.

The height in metres of the UK’s tallest mountain, Antarctica’s Mount Hope.

Though films such as Jurassic Park show dinosaurs with tough, leathery, rhino-like skin, it has since been proved that many of them were feathered. Now, though, it seems that some dinosaurs were fluffy.

A team at the University of Bristol have studied the fossilised remains of bird-sized dinosaur Anchiornis, part of the same paravian group as Velociraptor that lived 160 million years ago. The specimen has particularly well-preserved feather details, which is something that’s usually lost during fossilisation.

Covering its body, Anchiornis had unusual ‘contour feathers’ – plumage not used in flight – that were soft and V-shaped, and around one to two centimetres in length. Longer flight feathers emerged in layers from all four of the animal’s limbs. Anchiornis seems to have needed extra flight feathers because their feathers were not ‘zipped together’ like a bird’s feathers, so generated less lift.

The Bristol team worked closely with scientific illustrator Rebecca Gelernter, who produced this image of Anchiornis. The illustration shows how the dinosaur probably clung onto branches with its forelimbs, rather than perching like a bird.

“Fossil feathers in particular are very hard to interpret, even for scientists, because they preserve as flat stains derived from the feather pigments,” said researcher Evan Saitta. “We could only describe the new feathers due to a fluke where some contour feathers separated from the main plumage. This drawing is likely the most accurate depiction of a dinosaur ever.”

SOME DINOSAURS WERE FLUFFY

PALAEONTOLOGY

This drawing is likely to be the most accurate depiction of a dinosaur ever, according to the University of Bristol team

NEUROSCIENCE

“THE PROCESS OF VOCAL LEARNING IN

SONGBIRDS IS REALLY SIMILAR TO SPEECH

LEARNING IN HUMANS”

Are the acoustic patterns that allow humans to produce language influenced by nature as well as nurture? Research on birds led by Dr Jon Sakata of McGill University reveals some clues

24 Vol. 10 Issue 5

THE LATEST INTELLIGENCEUpdate

What are ‘universal’ patterns in human speech?Linguists studying languages around the world find they’re quite diverse in structure, but there are also common features called ‘universal patterns’. Why do we have these? It’s possible there are cultural influences that lead to their propagation. That’s one hypothesis. The other is that it’s biological in origin.

Why study acoustic patterns in songbirds?The ideal experiment is to expose babies to patterns and see what they end up producing, but that’s difficult to interpret in humans, so you do this in animal model systems. Most animals are actually born with the ability to produce vocalisations, but songbirds – like humans – learn during development.

The process is really similar to how humans learn to speak: a bird hears an adult sing, memorises it, then starts babbling. It sounds terrible initially, as if you were squeaking a rubber duck, but with time and practice their vocalisations become more species-typical. We’re studying the zebra finch, endemic to the desert grasslands of Australia. Not unlike human languages, there are common features in acoustic

patterns across different populations of birds. There are these universals in acoustic patterns, but we don’t know whether they’re cultural or rooted in biology.

How do you remove the influence of culture?We raise zebra finches devoid of song. When the eggs hatch, we leave mum and dad in the nest for less than a week. Only the males produce complex songs, so we remove the father and just the mother takes care of the offspring. When the youngsters are able to feed themselves, we house them individually. At that point, we take five syllables common in zebra finch songs and present those to them in every sequence possible – 120 different permutations – in equal proportions and in random orders all the acoustic patterns you can produce with those five syllables. We do this for about 50 birds.

We found there were consistent patterns that birds ended up producing as adults. For example, there’s what’s called a ‘distance call’, a long syllable that has a downward sweep. If they produce those syllables, they put it at the end of their phrases. These birds are bought from pet stores but, despite that, these are patterns you P

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see in wild birds. That suggested at least some biological component underlies these population similarities in acoustic patterning.

So what’s the biology behind learning?Maybe the brain likes to hear particular patterns because that allows it to remember more robustly [or] maybe there is something about the vocal apparatus that makes it easier to produce those patterns – humans have a larynx or ‘voice box’ and birds have the syrinx, but the general properties of

expiration through a pipe that has a membrane is all the same.

The brain pathways involved in vocal learning in birds are similar in humans. What we can do in songbirds is probe those neural circuits. There are hypotheses you can’t experimentally test in humans that we can test in birds, to think about these burning questions in the neuroscience of speech and language, and to help lend insight into potential mechanisms.

BELOW: The syrinx of a male zebra finch. As the song of the male is more complex, the syrinx is heavier because the muscles are larger

BINGE-WATCHING COUPLESDo you love settling down with your partner to watch a TV boxset? Good news – a study at the University of

Aberdeen has found that watching TV shows with your other half may help engender feelings of closeness.

RETIREESRetirees sleep an average of 20 minutes longer per night

and have more restful sleep than working people, a study at the University of Turku, Finland has found. This could be

because retirees have more flexible schedules and less stress.

THE ENTIRE HUMAN RACEIt might not feel like it on a Monday morning, but you may be one of the greatest examples of the human race that will ever live. A study at Paris Descartes University has found that the limits of human lifespan, height and physical performance

have been reached and are currently in decline.

FRY-UP LOVERSHere’s yet another reason why muesli is a healthier breakfast option than a full English. Droplets of oil that are released into the air when food is shallow fried can be damaging if inhaled,

a team at Utah State University has found.

B A D M O N T H

G O O D M O N T H

Update THE LATEST INTELLIGENCE

26 Vol. 10 Issue 5

What did they do?Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania had a group of children, aged between four and six, pretend to be Batman. They then assigned them a repetitive task and told them it was important. They encouraged the children to concentrate on the task but allowed them to take a break to play with an iPad whenever they wanted.

What did they find?When pretending to be Batman, more than 30 per cent of the four-year-olds and more than 50 per cent of the six-year-olds spent significantly more time on the task. It’s unclear whether this effect was due to the fun aspect associated with pretending to be Batman or the children identifying certain traits, such as concentration and perseverance, with being a superhero.

Why did they do that?With more research, the team hopes to determine whether it is possible to use roleplay scenarios to teach young children valuable life skills such as perseverance.

CHILDREN ENCOURAGED TO BE BATMAN

THEY DID WHAT?!

This flexible, fabric-based

biobattery could be integrated

into clothes

Soon you could be charging your smartphone with your sweaty socks. A team at Binghamton University, State University of New York, have created a fabric-based, bacteria-powered biobattery that could be integrated into wearable electronics.

According to the team, the microbial fuel cells could be powered by sweat generated by the human body, and produce more electricity than previous textile biobattery designs, which could be useful for wearables. “There is a clear and pressing need for flexible and stretchable electronics that can be easily integrated with a wide range of surroundings to collect real-time information,” said research

lead Dr Seokheun Choi. “If we consider that humans possess more bacterial cells than human cells in their bodies, the direct use of bacterial cells as a power resource interdependently with the human body is conceivable for wearable electronics.”

The fuel cells use Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a small rod-shaped bacterium, along with a pair of electrodes coupled with a silver and silver oxide solution to produce electricity. The fuel cells were able to generate electricity in a stable manner, even when subjected to the stretching and twisting exhibited over a long lifetime.

STRETCHY SWEAT-POWERED BATTERY MADE OUT OF FABRIC

MATERIALS

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WHAT IF THE

DINOSAURS HAD

SURVIVED?

Artist’s impression of how dinosaurs could have looked, if they had survived

If the dinosaurs hadn’t been wiped out in a mass extinction 66 million years ago, the world would look very different today

WORDS BY JOHN PICKRELL ILLUSTRATIONS BY JAMES GILLEARD

Scan this QR Code forthe audio reader

SCIENCE

28 Vol. 10 Issue 5

29Vol. 10 Issue 5

“Given that arms were non-critical for hunting, it’s possible a tyrannosaur could have been armless”

round 66 million years ago, a 14km-wide asteroid smashed into our planet. An estimated 15 billion tonnes of soot spread through the

atmosphere, creating one long night that lasted several years and made photosynthesis all but impossible. It heralded an endless winter that saw average temperatures fall by as much as 28ºC. These are the conditions that the few wretched creatures that survived the initial impact had to endure – not to mention the earthquakes, tsunamis, wildfires and volcanic eruptions that swiftly followed in its wake.

Around three-quarters of all species went extinct and no animal bigger than a Labrador dog survived. But according to researchers at the University of Texas, things could have been very different. They reported findings that had the asteroid struck Earth just a few minutes earlier, it would have hit the deep ocean rather than the shallow sea of the Yucatan Peninsula in present-day Mexico.

Had that been the case, then the damage would have been more localised. Some of the dinosaurs far from the impact site might have survived, and the world would be a different place today. In our own history, only the feathered theropod dinosaurs (a group of bipedal dinosaurs) we know as birds made it through the calamity, but how would things have turned out if their

larger relatives had joined them? Would dinosaurs still be alive today and could mammals such as humans have evolved? What would our world look like if we shared it with the descendants of animals like T. rex and Triceratops?

“I’m sure a fairly nice diversity of non-avian dinosaurs would still be here,” says Dr Stephen Brusatte, a palaeontologist at the University of Edinburgh. “If there was no sudden, catastrophic shock of the asteroid, I really don’t see anything that’s happened since – whether it was the spread of grasslands; changing ocean currents; the separation of Antarctica from South America, which caused a cold snap; or the more recent Ice Ages – that would have knocked off the dinosaurs.”

Over the years many have tried to imagine what kind of creatures dinosaurs might have evolved into had

A

SCIENCE

30 Vol. 10 Issue 5

they survived. The most famous attempt is a 1988 book called The New Dinosaurs: An Alternative Evolution, by Scottish geologist and author Dougal Dixon. For this magnificent work of speculative zoology, Dixon conjured up creatures such as the ‘cutlasstooth’ – a pack-hunting, sabre-toothed predator from South America; the ‘cribrum’ – a flamingo-like, filter-feeding theropod from Australia; and the ‘gourmand’ – a relative of T. rex that lost its front limbs entirely and developed a distensible jaw to allow it to rapidly swallow prey whole, much like a snake.

Perhaps this last idea isn’t entirely wide of the mark. Dr Tom Holtz, an expert on theropod dinosaurs at the University of Maryland in the US, says that both tyrannosaurs and abelisaurs, the two types of big meat-eater present in the Late Cretaceous, are notable for their tiny forelimbs. “Given that arms were non-critical for hunting, it’s possible that a Cenozoic [current geological era] tyrannosaur could have been armless,” says Holtz.

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1 Dino-monkeys Once flowering plants appeared in the Cretaceous, there was no stopping them. Fruit became abundant during the Cenozoic, so tree-dwelling, primate-like feathered dinosaurs may have evolved to take advantage of the sugary goodness.

2 Burrow dwellers Curiously, few known dinosaurs appear to have used burrows – perhaps given more time, rodent- or mole-like species may have evolved to exploit the subterranean environment.

3 Woolly wonders Many theropod dinosaurs had feathers and we know some lived at Arctic latitudes – perhaps both carnivores and herbivores would have developed thick, shaggy pelts during the Ice Ages, something akin to musk ox, woolly rhinos or mammoths.

4 Grassland grazers As the world cooled 34 million years ago at the end of the Eocene, forests retreated and grasslands spread globally. Slender, speedy dinosaurs with teeth specialised for cropping grasses would likely have evolved to devour this new resource

5 Whale-o-saurs Unlike their relatives – the mosasaurs, ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs – few dinosaurs exploited marine environments. Perhaps creatures similar to Spinosaurus could eventually have become dinosaurian filter-feeding equivalents of baleen whales.

If the dinosaurs had continued to evolve, all kinds of new body forms might have developed

THE DINOSAURS THAT COULD HAVE BEEN

SCIENCE

32 Vol. 10 Issue 5

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“You can’t underestimate the importance of that extinction really hitting the reset button for mammals and clearing the playing field”

Certain dinosaurs might have gone back into the oceans, like the manatee did

The beginning of the Cenozoic Era (which spans the period from 66 million years ago until the present day) might essentially have been an ecological extension of the Late Cretaceous. Various creatures such as titanosaur sauropods (huge, long-necked dinosaurs like Argentinosaurus), hadrosaurs (duck-billed dinosaurs like Edmontosaurus), ceratopsians (horned, beaked dinosaurs like Triceratops), and predators such as the tyrannosaurs would still have remained common.

But as we head further from the Cretaceous towards the present day, there would likely have been significant changes, says Dr Andy Farke at the Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology in Claremont, California. “If dinosaurs were still around today they’d be pretty different to what we think of at the end of the age of the dinosaurs – things like T. rex and Triceratops,” he argues. “You might still recognise them as a dinosaur, but who knows what kind of body shapes and body plans might have come up in the past 66 million years.”

Many of the mammals with which we’re familiar might not have had the opportunity to evolve. “You can’t underestimate the importance of that extinction 66 million years ago in really hitting the reset button for mammals and clearing the playing field,” adds Farke.

TREE HUGGERSAlready in the Cretaceous there were numerous fluffy, feathered theropods scampering in the trees. Assuming that flowering plants continued to spread and thrive as they did in our history, then could primate-like dinosaurs have specialised to take advantage of the fruit they produced? Prof Matthew Bonnan, a palaeobiologist at Stockton University in New Jersey, argues that primates evolved large, forward-facing eyes with colour vision to forage for fruit.

“Is there a connection between being frugivorous [fruit-eating] and having a larger brain? We don’t know, but one could imagine arboreal dinosaurs that formed a co-evolutionary relationship with flowering plants by eating their fruits and dispersing the seeds,” he says. “Whether these fruit-eating dinosaurs would have evolved complex social groups like primates is pure speculation.”

Other ecological spaces little explored by dinosaurs were aquatic environments. “In mammals we’ve seen a

return to the sea, in several different iterations,” says Farke. “We’ve had things like whales and manatees that have gone back into the oceans, and things like otters that spend a lot of time in the water. It’s cool to think about what dinosaurs could have looked like if they’d gone in a cetacean direction.”

But if their giant marine reptile relatives – the mosasaurs and plesiosaurs – had survived, then dinosaurs might have found it hard to get a foothold.

There could also have been other consequences of dinosaurs and their reptilian relatives, such as the flying pterosaurs, not petering out at the end of the Cretaceous. Although birds co-existed with dinosaurs for a long time in the Cretaceous, their diversity was low compared to today. “Modern bird groups underwent an explosive radiation after the mass extinction, maybe because pterosaurs went extinct and opened up new niches,” says Dr Victoria Arbour, a palaeontologist at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. “Without the mass extinction, maybe birds wouldn’t be as diverse and successful as they are today, and maybe we wouldn’t have things like songbirds, parrots, hawks, or hummingbirds at all.”

33Vol. 10 Issue 5

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Most experts seem to agree that the largest land mammals such as elephants, mammoths, giant relatives of rhinos and sloths, and perhaps even horses and giraffes, probably couldn’t have evolved if large dinosaurs had remained to occupy the niches they came to fill.

But perhaps smaller mammals such as rodents, bats and primates would have been just as successful. If that had been the case, then some of those primates could have climbed down from the trees onto the grasslands and savannahs that eventually replaced the thick forests of the Cretaceous, and evolved into hominids, as our ancestors did.

“If we speculate that humans had evolved alongside dinosaurs, then they probably would have been able to co-exist,” says Farke. “Humans already evolved in ecosystems that had large land animals and predators.

We probably would have done okay.”“Unarmed, solitary humans are still easy targets for large

predators like bears and lions,” agrees Arbour. “But overall humans are pretty good at surviving alongside large, dangerous animals.”

CENOZOIC EXTINCTIONDinosaurs might not have been so lucky though, as humans seem to have a special skill for killing off large animals. Perhaps the biggest dinosaurs would have gone the way of the mammoth and the dodo. “Humans are really good at extinguishing megafauna – through hunting, climate change or habitat destruction,” Arbour says. “Dinosaurs in the 21st Century, just like modern animals, would probably have reduced populations and face the threat of extinction.”

Big dinosaurs would perhaps only persist in protected reserves, such as national parks and wildlife refuges – modern-day equivalents of Jurassic Park.

Smaller dinosaurs that infringed on crops or livestock would probably be hunted as ‘nuisance’ animals, as wolves and dingoes are today, adds Arbour. “It would be really hard for large sauropods to survive alongside us. They’re so big and would require so much food, that I doubt we could set aside enough wild spaces for them to thrive.”

“If we speculate that humans had evolved alongside dinosaurs, then they probably would have been able to co-exist”

If dinosaurs had survived into the Ice Ages, could they have developed thick pelts like modern musk ox?

SCIENCE

34 Vol. 10 Issue 5

In the cartoon The Flintstones, Fred Flintstone works as a ‘bronto crane operator’, riding a sauropod

that does the heavy lifting in a quarry. Yet it seems unlikely that we would ever have been able to persuade dinosaurs to work for us in agrarian societies – as humans did with oxen and horses. “Given the brainpower of some of these dinosaurs, I can’t imagine that a lot of them would be in the realm of things that would domesticate easily,” says palaeontologist Dr Andy Farke.

But there may have been other ways that humans could have exploited dinosaurs.

“Animals that have been domesticated by humans are often

those that have group social structures like wolves, caribou and cattle,” says palaeontologist Dr Victoria Arbour. “For dinosaurs, herding species like ceratopsians and hadrosaurs might have been good candidates for cattle analogues. There’s less evidence for social behaviour in small carnivores, but perhaps some little predatory, feathery theropods might have filled the spots in our homes reserved for dogs and cats today.”

Had we exploited some of these larger herbivores to toil in our fields, then surely we would have hunted and farmed some for meat too? This begs the question: what would dinosaur meat have tasted like? Of course, if you eat chicken or turkey

today, then you are already eating theropod dinosaur, but the flesh of these sedentary domesticated creatures is a poor analogy for T. rex meat – a better one might be emu or ostrich, which is packed with lean muscle due to the animals’ sprinting abilities.

“Just as with modern farming there’d probably be the whole thing with wanting to get organically raised or free-range dinosaur meat – or corn-fed Triceratops,” quips Farke.

Ostriches are farmed today, so some of the fast, ostrich-like ornithomimid dinosaurs, such as Gallimimus (famous from the stampede scene in Jurassic Park), could have populated ranches in the same way. Battery farms of

egg-laying dinosaurs could also have been a possibility. “The glorious thing about dinosaurs is that they grew very quickly,” says Farke.

Today, there are certain types of wealthy gun-lovers who will pay significant sums of money to shoot lions, rhinos and giraffes on private game reserves. Therefore, had dinosaurs survived to the present, then they would surely be the ultimate in big game.Horned dinosaurs, duckbills and even carnivores like T. rex could have been targets, argues Arbour. “Big ceratopsians, hadrosaurs and theropods would probably be highly sought after for trophy hunting,” she says.

Had dinosaurs survived, might we have used them for labour and food, or hunted them as trophies?

DOMESTICATED DINOSAURS

35Vol. 10 Issue 5

A T. rex would probably make a terrible house pet (just think of the litter tray!). But could some smaller species have made more fitting companions?

JURASSIC BARK?

CITY DWELLERSThe dinosaurs that might do particularly well in the modern era are those that could learn to live and thrive alongside people. In our world today, the vast majority of animal biomass is made up of the species that we farm or have domesticated, or those that live around our cities and developments – and so it would also have been in a reality where humans and dinosaurs co-existed. There might have been dinosaur equivalents of seagulls, pigeons, rats, raccoons and foxes – all very well adapted to take advantage of the resources available in urban environments.

“Small, scrappy dinosaurs might have been able to eke out a living on the margins of housing developments,” suggests Farke. You can just imagine little beaked herbivorous dinosaurs nibbling at the roses and hydrangeas in your garden.

“Animals that do well in urban environments today tend to be those that are good at eating whatever we’re throwing away, and making use of the structures

If all the dinosaurs had survived, their descendants could have given Mr Seagull some competition for your chips

Microraptor Dark and iridescent plumage, with large flight feathers on its hind and forelimbs. Likes to preen, nap and observe everything with its hawk-like watchful eyes. SIZE: One of the tiniest dinos at less than 1kg in weight and about 80cm in length.PROS: Has four wings of awesomeness. It’s intelligent and responds well to commands. CONS: Can attempt to disembowel the cat with its sickle-shaped second claw; requires falconry hood during initial training.

SinosauropteryxThe first known feathered dinosaur, discovered in 1996. Has fluffy ginger plumage and enjoys scratches and strokes. Likes to chase toys in lieu of fast-moving prey. SIZE: A metre in length, including the long tail. But it’s very dainty, weighing just 0.5kg.PROS: Loves to snuggle. Has fetching ginger-and-white tail stripes.CONS: Can be neurotic and restless, and requires frequent exercise.

SCIENCE

36 Vol. 10 Issue 5

we build,” agrees Arbour. “Small omnivorous or predatory theropods would perhaps have been lurking around garbage cans.”

Obviously, we might have domesticated dinosaurs to exploit for meat and eggs or agricultural labour, and we would very likely have taken them into our homes as pets – the feathery or scaly equivalents of dogs and cats.

Perhaps, though, the idea that humans could have evolved in a world filled with dinosaurs is simply too far-fetched. “I have no doubt that we would not be here,”

says Brusatte. “The asteroid was one of those dominoes that set in motion a chain of events that led to us. Without the dinosaurs disappearing, mammals would not have had the same opportunity.”

He argues that mammals had already existed with dinosaurs for 160 million years or more when the asteroid struck. But they were mostly “marginal, shadowy little creatures” and – had the asteroid not caused a mass extinction – would likely remain that way today.

As Brusatte points out: “What’s another 66 million years when it had already been like that for 160 million years already.”

John Pickrell is a science journalist, and author of Flying Dinosaurs.

“Without the dinosaurs disappearing, mammals would not have had the same opportunity”

PsittacosaurusThis parrot-beaked herbivore would make a good pet. It lives in herds in the wild, so it’s highly sociable and has a fairly gentle temperament. SIZE: Up to 2m in length and 20kg in weight – about the same as a medium-sized dog.PROS: Has fluffy tail bristles and cute facial horns; helps to keep the lawn tidy by mowing grass with beak.CONS: Has an unfortunate tendency to gnaw the furnishings.

Yi qiThis teeny, pigeon-sized tree-dweller is the only dinosaur known to have adopted a bat method of flight. Has wings formed of skin membranes, but also tight, downy plumage and four pretty, ribbon-like tail feathers. SIZE: Positively minute for a dinosaur at 80cm in length and just 380g in weight.PROS: Small, with short, dense feathers so it doesn’t shed much around the house. CONS: Prone to screechiness; needs large aviary to glide back and forth within.

CompsognathusThe smallest known dinosaur until the 1990s when a variety of dainty, feathered relatives began to turn up in China. Lightly built, so great for small apartments. SIZE: Turkey-sized but much lighter. It’s up to 1m in length but just 3kg in weight.PROS: Smaller size makes it an ideal lap-dinosaur; it lives in packs so is highly social. CONS: Needs constant supply of small, live lizards to snack upon; bit of a finger nibbler.

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A red squirrel sits in a lichen- and snow-covered oak tree in December. Scotland is home to about 120,000 red squirrels, 75 per cent of the total UK population. Contrary to popular myth, these hardy mammals do not hibernate. In the autumn they store surplus food either just below the ground or in the gaps of tree trunks to feed on in the colder months.

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NATURE

38 Vol. 10 Issue 5

NATURE

Cairngorms National Park in the Scottish Highlands is a stronghold for

our native red squirrels. Neil McIntyre has visited its Caledonian forest

throughout the seasons to photograph the behaviour of

these lively little crowd-pleasers

SEEINGREDS

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TOP: Red squirrels inhabit both pine forest (pictured) and broadleaved woodland. Like grey squirrels, they make roughly spherical nests called dreys, and each individual may use several dreys within its home range. Dreys tend to be built from twigs 6m above the ground in holes in trees or set between trunks and branches. They are snugly lined with moss and grass

ABOVE LEFT: Stripped bark is collected as bedding material for a drey. Red squirrels mate between January and March and have litters of three to four kittens, which are born in the drey following a gestation period of 36 to 42 days. Females can have two litters a year

ABOVE: Often the only sign of red squirrels in winter is their prints in the snow. On the ground they move in jumps like a rabbit, placing their front feet first, and then the hind feet in front of them. Pawprints are 3–4cm long, and about 2cm wide

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LEFT: In winter red squirrels hunt for food buried in the snow. Their varied diet consists of spruce and pine seeds, hazelnuts, acorns, berries, fungi, bark and sap tissue. In spring and summer, they will also take insects and occasionally birds’ eggs and young

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ABOVE: Spring is in the air for this red squirrel as it leaps between tree stumps in March. The species can jump more than 2m and has double-jointed ankles that allow it to climb down trees head-first. The rodent’s bushy tail is an aerofoil that also provides balance and warmth

RIGHT: Mineral-rich deer antlers provide an extra source of calcium and phosphorus for squirrels, as well as helping them to sharpen and trim their incisors. This antler, cast off by a red deer, is covered in teeth marks from the gnawing rodents

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RIGHT: Two young red squirrels leave the natal drey to explore their surroundings. Summer litters are weaned in August to early October. The juveniles are capable of breeding at around 10 to 12 months and most females will wean their first litter when two years old

ABOVE: During the summer months red squirrels lose their characteristic ear tufts, and many sport a streamlined blond tail, which returns to the more familiar rufous coloration in autumn

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LEFT: In autumn when food is abundant, squirrels have plenty of spare time to collect nuts one at a time in their mouth. They scrape a small hole in soft earth and bury their prize, patting the soil down on top to hide it from birds. The caching is not random: a particular place will be chosen that they can find later

LEFT: Sessile oak leaves and acorns on moss. Red squirrels can recognise ripe food by smell: squirrelling away food is a waste of effort if it is not nutritious. The rodents will reject acorns and hazelnuts that have been hollowed out by weevils, acknowledging that they are too light

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Neil Mcintyre is a wildlife and landscape photographer based in Cairngorms National Park, where he runs wildlife photography tours. See more of his images at www.neilmcintyre.com.

ABOVE: Less than two per cent of Scotland’s wildwood – the forest that would once have allowed a red squirrel to travel from Lockerbie to Lochinver without touching the ground – remains intact. Expanding and reconnecting the country’s fragmented woodland is essential for this species and other wildlife

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HISTORY

Cricket, curry and cups of teaAs Queen Victoria’s friendship with her Indian attendant is

explored in the new film Victoria and Abdul, Shompa Lahiri examines how the queen helped popularise India’s cultural

influence on all areas of British society, from polo to pyjamas

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FAR LEFT: An advert from the 1890s exhorts Britons to “drink and enjoy” Lipton’s teas

LEFT: Indian princes and British Army officers in a polo team, c1880

BELOW: An 1888 painting of Abdul Karim, Queen Victoria’s Indian assistant

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Indians were visible everywhere from Britain’s docks and buses to Inns of Court and medical schools

hey cooked up Indian curries, played Indian sports, draped themselves in Indian textiles and

even voted for Indian politicians. The Victorian era saw Britons falling in love with the culture of the subcontinent, and it seems that the people took their prompt from the very top. Queen Victoria herself declared a great interest in the empire’s largest possession and greatest trading partner, so helping to popularise Indian delicacies, fashion, jewellery and architecture.

The genesis of this passion for India can be traced back to the 16th century, when British merchant adventurers began to import spices, dyes and, most importantly, textiles from India via newly discovered sea routes. From 1600, the East India Company controlled this trade, and from the 1750s the commercial interests of the company were consolidated into outright political and territorial domination. After a massive rebellion against foreign rule in 1857, the British government decided to place India

under the direct control of the crown the following year. Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India in 1877.

Victoria’s interest in India sprang, at least in part, from her Indian assistant Abdul Karim, who came to Britain in 1887 to serve the queen. He rose within Victoria’s affections, as well as in status to the title of ‘Munshi’ (teacher or clerk), teaching the queen Hindi and Urdu and advising on all matters concerning India.

Karim was one of a steady stream of Indian migrants coming to Britain during the 19th century (estimates suggest more than 110,000), including domestics, maritime workers, petitioners, performers, royalty, social reformers, students and travellers. Concentrated in Britain’s port cities, especially London, Indians were visible in Britain’s streets, docks, buses, trains, Inns of Court, medical schools, universities, exhibitions and parliament.

Britons were most attracted to those aspects of Indian culture that they could

readily consume, such as food and textiles. But this relationship wasn’t always mutually beneficial. While consumers profited from innovations in textile production in Britain, British machine-made textiles destroyed the Indian textile industry that had inspired them, and impoverished Indian weavers.

For good and bad, Indian influences were discernible in all aspects of Victorian society, from novels such as the The Moonstone (1868) by Wilkie Collins to politics, sports, popular culture, fashion and diet. Turn the page to find out more…

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HISTORY

A woman wears a Kashmir shawl in c1810, before mass-produced imitations flooded the market

POLITICS

FOOD AND DRINK

FASHION AND HOME

The Victorian era saw the election of two Indians to the House of Commons. Dadabhai Naoroji became Liberal MP for Finsbury Central in 1892, while Mancherjee Bhownagree was elected Conservative MP for Bethnal Green in 1895.

Naoroji was elected by just a few votes, earning him the nickname ‘Dadabhai narrow-majority’. Despite this, he was to become a household name – thanks, in part, to the Tory prime minister Lord Salisbury’s public declaration of doubt that Britons would elect “a black man”.

It was during the Victorian period that Britons fell in love with curry, a culinary concoction that is today Britain’s favourite dish. Though it was initially the preserve of the elite, by the 1860s spicy food had percolated down into the middle and working-class diet. During that same period, curry powder, pastes, chutneys and pickles became available on a mass scale, manufactured by companies such as Crosse and Blackwell. Curry was also perceived to be nutritious and economical – particularly when used with leftover meats.

Curry wasn’t the only Indian delicacy to delight the British palate. By 1900, Indian and Sri Lankan tea accounted for 90 per cent of Britain’s tea imports, a fact reflected in a marketing campaign for Lipton tea, which featured an Indian female plantation worker and sandwich-board men dressed as Indians.

Like other colonial goods from India, tea was no longer restricted to an affluent minority. In fact, it became a staple of Victorian Britain, playing a central role in the rituals of daily life. It helped to structure the working day in the form of the tea break, and, among working-class families, it was even employed as a term to describe the meal at the end of the day. New forms of sociability developed around the beverage, which was drunk in a wide range of locations, including family gatherings, political meetings and, of course, tea shops.

Victorian fashion was heavily influenced by India – thanks to the use of Indian fabrics, including cotton and silk, in the making of British clothes. Britons also adopted and imitated Indian patterns, style, motifs and even garments – such as pyjamas and the Kashmir shawl.

British women had worn the Kashmir shawl – to provide a little extra warmth

over short-sleeved, lightweight dresses – since

the mid-18th century. Soon it had become a

symbol of status, respectability and fashion, but one that was well out of the reach of all but

the wealthiest women.

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Naoroji was a fierce critic of the Raj, arguing that British rule was draining India of up to £300m in the form of lost revenues, interest on loans and excess of exports over imports. By contrast Bhownagree, known in India as ‘Bow-and-Agree’, was a supporter of British colonialism in India.

The two men may not have shared the same views on Britain’s relationship with their homeland but their rise to power ensured that India was discussed and debated at the symbolic heart of Victorian political life: parliament.

century everything changed. By then, the demand for the shawl had reached such a crescendo that mills in Norwich, Edinburgh and Paisley, near Glasgow, began producing imitations. Suddenly women of limited means could acquire shawls that, to the untrained eye, appeared to be made in India.

Several emporiums opened in London to cater to the demand for both British and Indian-made shawls, among them the Liberty department store. Opening on Regent Street in 1875, it had soon expanded its range of Indian goods to stock not just shawls, cloaks, scarves and jewellery to adorn the body, but Indian fabric, furniture, carpets, rugs, incense burners and brasses to decorate the home.

Indians storm the barricades of parliament......and they ask difficult questions about Britain’s attitude to their homeland

Curry finds favour…… plus, it’s thanks to cheaper Indian tea that the Great British tea break is invented

A craze for the eastVictorians loved ‘Indian’ designs, which were produced all over Britain

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FAR LEFT: An advert hails Indian curry relish as

“delicious, piquant and appetizing”, 1890s

LEFT: A shoemaker at the Empire of India Exhibition

in White City, one of Victorian Britain’s many

displays of Indian culture

Kumar Shri Ranjitsinhji’s prowess on the cricket

pitch earned him 15 test caps and the adoration

of the British public

Shompa Lahiri is a research fellow at Queen Mary, University of London. Her books include Indian Mobilities in the West, 1900-1947 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) and Indians in Britain (Frank Cass, 2000)

POPULAR CULTURE

SPORT

Britons were continuously exposed to imperial propaganda through advertising, the press, education and the church, as well as popular culture. Theatrical productions with Indian themes – such as The Grand Mogul (1884), The Nautch Girl (1891) and Carnac Sahib (1899) – enjoyed long runs. The Indian pageant performed at Earl’s Court’s 6,000-seat Empress Theatre was particularly successful.

Outside the theatre, Victorians were entertained by Indian street jugglers and musicians – or ‘Tom Tom players’, as the drummers were known in London. According to the Strand Magazine: “Ask the average man for what India is most celebrated, and chances are ten to one that he will ignore the glories of the Taj Mahal, the beneficence of British rule, even Mr Kipling, and will unhesitatingly reply in one word, ‘Jugglers’.”

Another way ordinary Victorians encountered India and Indians was through exhibitions. Some 5.5 million people visited the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in 1886. All aspects of Indian art, architecture, commerce and industry were exhibited, including a living exhibit of Indian ‘village’ artisans, who were in fact prisoners of Agra gaol. As this example proves, it was not just Indians who were put on display during the exhibition: Britons’ ignorance about Indian life was also subjected to the harsh light of satirical scrutiny.

Kumar Shri Ranjitsinhji was arguably the most celebrated of all Indians in the Victorian and Edwardian periods, feted as a sporting hero and adored by the British public. And that was because he was a master of a British obsession: cricket.

Ranjitsinhji – or Ranji, as he was popularly known – achieved three notable firsts. He was the first Indian to gain a place on a university cricket team, Trinity College, Cambridge; the first to captain a county cricket team, Sussex; and, most significantly, the first to represent England in test cricket. Widely acknowledged as one of the finest batsmen of the Victorian era and beyond, he brought innovation and style to cricket and changed the face of British sport.

Yet, despite his legions of fans,

Ranjitsinhji remained exotic, described in the British press “as graceful as a panther”, with “wrists supple and tough as a creeper of the Indian jungle” – a man who turned cricket “into an oriental poem of action”.

While cricket would go on to be widely popular, polo was a more elite activity, introduced to Britain by Indian army officers in the 1870s. Another subcontinental pastime brought to Britain in the 19th century was Indian club swinging.

Originating from Hindu physical culture, this became a very popular form of gymnastic exercise for both men and women, spreading from the upper to the middle classes. Club swinging spawned exercise classes and competitions and became a part of physical education in schools.

Passion – and ignoranceIndia’s style was everywhere, yet Britons still knew very little about the country

Reinventing cricket…… and how the ancient art of Indian club swinging entered the classroom

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SHOULD YOU INVEST IN

Bitcoin value is climbing all the time, with one Bitcoin now worth about

$10,000. We find out whether it’s worth taking the plunge into this emerging

form of currencyWORDS BY PROF ROBERT MATTHEWS

Scan this QR Code forthe audio reader

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“To some, cryptocur-rencies are the future of money, to others they are a disaster waiting to happen”

hey’re everywhere from glossy magazines to scuzzy emails, and are accepted by multinationals and assassins. To some, they are the future of money; to others, they are a disaster waiting to happen. Either way, there’s

no denying the current buzz over cryptocurrencies. From Bitcoin, Litecoin and Ethereum to newcomers like Zcash and Ubiq, there are over 1,000 different varieties to choose from. But should you plunge in or stay well clear? It’s a question that’s been asked ever since January 2009, when the grandaddy of them emerged from literally nowhere: Bitcoin.

A few months earlier, a message had popped up on a technical mailing list describing a new form of electronic payment. That in itself wasn’t particularly exciting: over the years there have been many ideas for new forms of digital cash which for one reason or another have never caught on. But according to its inventor, the elusive Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin was different. It was, he claimed, able to operate completely independently of governments, regulators or banks, yet still be totally trustworthy.

The sheer magnitude of this claim becomes clear as soon as you think how conventional money works. Hard cash – in the form of coins and notes – is physically produced by national mints, and crammed with anti-counterfeiting features to stop people simply making their own whenever they need more. But electronic money, like stocks, shares and any online transactions, isn’t real: it’s just digital signals, which can just be copied and pasted. To combat this, the global financial system relies on electronic clearing houses that keep tabs on every transaction in an

attempt to stop fraud. Or at least, that’s what they are supposed to do. In reality, fraudsters and insiders can – and have – found ways to cheat the system. But Nakamoto claimed to have found a way to prevent this. Put simply, Bitcoin works by converting the information about each new transaction into a form that’s mathematically almost impossible to read or change, and then entered into a permanent electronic ledger, known as a blockchain.

TIGHT WADAs well as being secure, the blockchain doesn’t exist in a single place. Instead, it’s spread across a virtual network, producing a global system of electronic currency that is fast, efficient and trustworthy – and out of the hands of governments or banks. Cutting out the financial establishment seems to have been a big motivator for Nakamoto. When Bitcoin was launched, the world was in the grip of the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. Banks were widely seen as the culprits, yet governments were racing to bail them out. This infuriated many, who believed the banks should suffer the consequences.

TAt the heart of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin is the electronic ledger, or blockchain, which keeps a permanent and unalterable record of every transaction ever made. It’s this that prevents people creating counterfeit Bitcoins. The whereabouts of every genuine transaction is updated on the blockchain, along with a version of the same information that’s been mathematically transformed – ‘hashed’ – in a way that produces a radically different outcome if the information is tampered with. Any attempt to amend a transaction will produce a mismatch that’s instantly spotted. For added security, the hashed version of each transaction also depends on parts of the previous transaction, plus some extra ingredients.

Maintaining the blockchain is the job of so-called ‘miners’, who generate the hashed information using computers and are rewarded for their work with newly minted Bitcoins. It’s getting to be a tougher job, as the process of updating the ever-growing blockchain gets more demanding. While once the task could be completed using a home computer, it now requires vast processor farms.

This was all envisaged by Satoshi Nakamoto, the originator of Bitcoins. He wanted to limit their total number to around 21 million, so that they would keep their value over time. That target should be reached by 2140.

What he may not have foreseen were the myriad other uses of the blockchain idea in creating trusted records. Traditional banks are investigating its use for verifying electronic transactions, while hospitals and energy companies are eyeing its use for patient and customer databases.

WHAT IS BLOCKCHAIN?

SCIENCE

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1 There are more than 1,000 cryptocurrencies, but Bitcoin is the most familiar

2 In 2014, Newsweek announced that this man was the creator of Bitcoin, but he claimed to have no involvement with it

3 Enormous servers like this one at a Chinese Bitcoin mine are required if you want to mine for Bitcoins

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“Bitcoins became the currency of choice for drug dealers and money launderers”

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“One reason Bitcoin has captured the imagination of so many people is that it holds the promise of democratising finance,” says David Orrell, co-author of the The Evolution Of Money.

One key appeal of cryptocurrencies is the ability to perform transactions completely outside the standard banking system. Two ‘mainstream’ benefits of this are an ability to carry out transactions and dodge the fees levied by banks, like when you want to send money abroad, and also to avoid sales taxes like VAT.

Intriguingly, when Nakamoto ‘mined’ the first Bitcoins, they came embedded with the text of a headline describing how the UK government was about to give banks a second bailout. Was this an early hint of Nakamoto’s motivations in launching an independent currency? It’s impossible to know, as no one knows who or where Nakamoto is; he (or she) vanished in 2010. Attempts to extract clues from his postings have come to naught. In 2014, Newsweek seemed to have found him in California, but the person insisted he knew nothing about Bitcoin. Some suspect ‘Nakamoto’ is a pseudonym for a team of cryptocurrency experts.

Whatever Nakomoto’s motivation, there’s no doubt it was shared by others. At first, Bitcoins were limited to a small community of enthusiasts. With relatively few in existence and little interest, the economic law of supply and demand meant that Bitcoins were virtually worthless. When one developer performed the first-ever cryptocurrency transaction in May 2010 – the purchase of two pizzas – they cost him 10,000 Bitcoins.

But within months, the mainstream media started covering the idea. Demand soared, and by February 2011

a Bitcoin was worth the same as $1, and in June 2011 the price hit almost $30 – making those two pizzas the costliest in history. But days later, disaster struck. A Tokyo-based Bitcoin exchange called Mt Gox announced it had ‘lost’ hundreds of thousands of Bitcoins. Exactly where they went is still disputed. What isn’t in doubt is that the incident dealt a severe blow to trust in Bitcoin. Early adopters of the cryptocurrency quit, and the value of Bitcoins plunged. By the end of 2011, the whole idea seemed dead.

LEGAL TENDER?Yet Bitcoin’s ability to make and receive payments without using banks remained attractive to one sector of the economy: criminals. They were drawn to Bitcoin thanks to its ability to perform transactions completely outside the standard banking system. Of course, this means no one knows who’s getting what, which is great if you’re up to no good.

Bitcoins became the currency of choice for drug dealers, money launderers and users of the ‘dark web’. While these propped up Bitcoin, other cryptocurrencies started to emerge, lacking the image problem of the original.

In 2015 a team of leading developers led by Vitalik Buterin, a brilliant 21-year-old Russian-Canadian programmer, launched Ethereum, which combines a cryptocurrency known as Ether with other features like virtual contracts. These allow the cryptocurrency to be used in crowdsourcing campaigns, eliminating the need to use platforms like Kickstarter.

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There are two basic ways of getting involved in cryptocurrency: as a means of paying for stuff, and as an investment. But however you do it, you need to proceed with care. Cryptocurrencies exist only electronically, making them targets for a global network of sophisticated digital scammers, thieves and hackers. And as the whole idea of cryptocurrency is to offer an alternative to official money, if something goes wrong you won’t be able to run to your bank for help. If you’re still undeterred, then here’s what to do…

GET A DIGITAL WALLETThis is where you keep your currency, allowing you to send or receive payments from your computer or smartphone. Digital wallets include security features designed to keep your currency safe. One of the most popular and well-regarded wallets is operated by Blockchain.info in Luxembourg.

ACTIVATE THE SECURITY MEASURESOnce you’ve registered your wallet, you’ll need to secure your account to prevent the contents of your wallet being hijacked or blocked by hackers. To do this, you’ll need a unique Wallet ID and extremely strong access passwords that have to be stored offline. The two-step verification involves your mobile phone, among other features.

CONVERT YOUR CASH INTO CRYPTOCURRENCYThis involves finding a so-called broker. This is essentially a bureau de change, where instead of buying holiday money you’re buying cryptocurrency. There are many to choose from, and sites like BittyBot provide price comparisons. Making the right choice depends on many factors and can be intimidating.

BUY STUFF, OR HOARD AND HOPEA growing number of retailers now accept cryptocurrency as payment, though the black market still offers the most opportunities. But increasingly people are viewing cryptocurrency like gold: something to be bought and kept in the hope its value goes up. The huge swings in value can, however, make investing in cryptocurrency a terrifying experience.

HOW TO GET INVOLVED

Prof Robert Matthews is a visiting professor in science at Aston University, Birmingham. His latest book is Chancing It: The Laws Of Chance And How They Can Work for You.

Yet like Bitcoin, Ethereum has faced challenges. It has been attacked by hackers, and its value has lurched violently since its launch. Even so, it has created a sense that cryptocurrencies are here to stay.

“Central governments are obviously concerned about losing control,” says Lars Kroijer, former hedge fund manager and author of Investing Demystified. “But the kind of technology cryptocurrencies represents is hard to put back in the box.”

Bitcoin and Ether are now just the best known of hundreds of cryptocurrencies currently in existence. At the time of writing, there are around 17 million Bitcoins, each worth more than $10,000. The main driver for this growth is simple speculation, with people piling in just because they think they can make a profit before everyone wakes up and realises it makes no sense. There’s some evidence of other, more technical drivers, but these seem less important. With conventional currencies, reliability is linked to political stability and strong economies, like those of Norway and Switzerland. These rules simply don’t apply to cryptocurrencies, as there’s no political structure or underlying economic strength. So, the exchange rate is determined entirely by sentiment, which can change in an instant, leading to huge volatility.

So, will cryptocurrency be the Next Big Thing in the long history of money? With the Japanese government now accepting Bitcoin as legal tender, and household names like Microsoft and Expedia allowing them as payment, there are signs they’re shaking off their shady past. But many experts remain unconvinced. “Cryptocurrencies can and do fulfil the function of money, but few consumers will want to use currencies whose value swings around quite so wildly,” says Russ Mould, investment director at stockbrokers AJ Bell. He believes their use as an alternative to ‘official’ money is being overshadowed by attempts to simply hoard them in the hope they’ll gain value. “This is rarely a good sign,” warns Mould, who points to historical parallels with speculative ‘bubbles’ that burst, leaving investors destitute.

Yet while the future of cryptocurrencies remains in doubt, their underlying blockchain technology is already finding uses beyond finance. Ironically, its ability to digitise trust may prove the mysterious Mr Nakamoto’s greatest legacy.

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GHOST OF THE

Here, kitty, kitty: the BBC crew watch a shy Pallas’s cat kitten raise its head above a boulder after weeks of searching for the elusive felines. The real-life Bagpuss has a wide but fragmented distribution in the grasslands and montane steppe of Central Asia.

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NATURE

It may look like an outsized domestic tabby, but it has conquered one of the most remote environments on Earth. BBC producer Paul Williams plays hide and seek with Pallas’s cat on the Mongolian steppe

GRASSLAND

WORDS & PHOTOS BY PAUL WILLIAMS

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HIGH UP ON A HILL, A CAMERA POSITIONED ON A ROCKY OUTCROP REVEALED KITTENS

ABOVE: the little faces of three Pallas’s cat kittens peer out from their rocky den

BELOW: griffon vultures are common on the Mongolian steppe

sk someone to name a wild cat and they’ll likely mention the tiger, lion or one of the other big cats. Or failing that, the cheetah or

mountain lion, which taxonomically speaking are small cats. Hardly anyone will refer to any of the other small cats, yet they make up 33 of the world’s 40 wild felines. They include some of the most fascinating and beautiful of all carnivores – and we were determined to film as many as possible.

Though our new BBC series planned to include spectacular footage of the ‘Big Seven’, from the outset we wanted to give their more diminutive relatives a fair share of the limelight. Jaguarundi, bay cat, rusty-spotted cat, guina, black-footed cat... these are creatures few people have even heard of. Their combined weight is less than that of a single adult tiger, and much about their lives remains mysterious. Several have never been seen on television before.

Images of fluffy, Bagpuss-like cats with endearing, almost human facial expressions have popped up online in recent years. Nearly all were taken in zoos. These are Pallas’s cats, and despite their recent fame, virtually nothing is known about their movements and social organisation.

Often called the “small ghost of the mountain”, the species’ range partly overlaps with the equally elusive snow leopard but its stronghold is the high steppes of Mongolia and neighbouring Chinese provinces at up to 4,000m.

SETTING UP CAMPThis inhospitable, sparsely populated grassland region is three times bigger than the UK, and it’s where Bariushaa Munkhtsog of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences has been studying Pallas’s cats for the past 17 years. It took our small film crew, including top camerawoman Sue Gibson, three days travelling to reach Dr Munkhtsog’s study site, a remote valley six hours south of the capital city of Ulaanbaatar.

Tucked away at the base of a hill was our camp, comprising four gers (known as yurts in Russia) hired from a nomadic Mongolian family. As they added the final layer of fleece to the ger walls, our Mongolian team introduced us to the ins and outs of these ingenious

structures – when it was cool we could light a fire; when hot, we could lift up the heavy sides. Out

on the steppe the weather can switch from one extreme to another and our guide Gaana warned

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BELOW: a remote- controlled filming vehicle was built to get close-up shots of the cats; the crew travelled in a Soviet-era

TOP: Mongolian horses graze under a dramatic sky, a view that could be seen from camp

ABOVE: a steely gaze from a female with one of her two-month-old kittens

RIGHT: the young are full of energy but will suddenly freeze when an eagle passes overhead

us “you should be prepared for anything”.In his early 30s, Gaana is a stout, strong man with a cheeky

sense of humour. It didn’t take long before he was trying to wrestle with me – “training for Nadam” he said, referring to the upcoming festivities in which wrestling would be the centrepiece. “You know it’s never easy finding a manul,” he admitted, using the Mongolian name for our target. Its English name honours Peter Simon Pallas, the naturalist-explorer who first described the species for science in 1776.

“Since I was a young boy, I’ve practised watching for movement far, far in the distance,” Gaana went on. He confidently claimed that he could now spot a Pallas’s cat 5km away. We were clearly in the best possible company. Not only has Gaana spent more time watching wild Pallas’s cats than almost anyone else, but he confesses that he’s still “always excited” to see one. “I love the manul, especially the kittens.”

Gaana and Dr Munkhtsog’s team of researchers had already been searching the area for several weeks, and we wasted no time in heading out to check footage from their camera-traps. We piled into a Purgon, a Soviet-era off-road vehicle that our driver cheerfully described as “indestructible” – and bumped off across the steppe accompanied by Gaana’s rendition of a traditional song.

off-road vehicle called a Purgon; Paul and the team stayed in gers, which were hired from a Mongolian family.

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1 FISHING CATFILMED: BangladeshIUCN STATUS: VulnerableWorking with local conservationists, we used underwater remote cameras to film one of these leggy spotted cats and her kittens as they learned to hunt in the monsoon wetlands. The mother stealthily tracked and pounced into the water to catch fish, but her offspring were more interested in playing with the aquatic plants.

2 RUSTY-SPOTTED CATFILMED: Sri LankaIUCN STATUS: Near-threatenedUnsurprisingly, the world’s smallest cat (it weighs just 1–1.5kg) is rarely seen. So we teamed up with conservationists in Sri Lanka to film a young male on the verge of independence in a remote rainforest reserve. Regular downpours, deep shade and a nimble cat all conspired to present us with a huge challenge.

3 SERVALFILMED: South AfricaIUCN STATUS: Least concernEquipped with a night-vision surveillance camera and thermal scopes, we spent several weeks filming inside the secure buffer zone that surrounds Africa’s biggest fuel plant. Lakes created to cool the plant have resulted in an explosion of rodents in this wasteland. With no competitor big cats to worry about, it has led to the densest serval population on the continent.

4 BORNEO BAY CATFILMED: BorneoIUCN STATUS: EndangeredTo get images of the least-known of all the cats, we’d have to take a different approach. Our only hope was to join forces with Oxford University’s Andrew Hearn, who is using camera-traps in rainforest to carry out the first ever long-term study of the species. Watch Big Cats to find out if we were successful.

5 CANADA LYNXFILMED: CanadaIUCN STATUS: Least concernIn the Yukon, our team stripped the film kit to the basics and headed out on showshoes to track lynx being studied by scientists (my photo shows a cat tagged for the study). Despite temperatures plunging below –20°C and record-breaking snowfall, we filmed intimate scenes of the species’ unique relationship with its prey, the snowshoe hare.

6 BLACK-FOOTED CATFILMED: South AfricaIUCN STATUS: VulnerableAfrica’s deadliest cat, with the highest hit rate when hunting, is also the smallest. Using specialist night cameras we joined researchers in South Africa’s Karoo desert to track an individual they have named Gyra. Two hundred times smaller than a lion, she would be almost impossible to find in this landscape, but a radio collar allowed us to follow and film her nocturnal pursuits.

Producer Paul Williams introduces six extraordinary small-cat sequences from the new BBC One series

PAUL’S SMALL CAT DIARY

WHENEVER I THOUGHT I’D SPOTTED A CAT, GAANA RADIOED BACK TO SAY: “SORRY, IT’S A MARMOT!”

Even with camera-traps, locating well-camouflaged cats just 50–60cm long in a seemingly endless dry, stony grassland is a formidable challenge. But eventually, high up on a hill, a camera positioned on a rocky outcrop revealed what we had hoped – kittens. And there were four of them.

No movement had been detected for the past 24 hours, so Gaana knew that the cats had probably moved on. “Pallas’s cats frequently change their den site,” he explained, a strategy to avoid detection by predators such as eagles and wolves. A pair of golden eagles were nesting close by the abandoned den, which pretty much confirmed Gaana’s suspicions. The cats could have headed in any direction, but since the

kittens were only a couple of months old they wouldn’t be able to walk far.

The tried-and-tested technique to find Pallas’s cats is to climb a hill and sit still for hours on end, scanning the landscape with binoculars for the slightest movement. It is like looking for a boulder in a field of boulders. There’s lots of activity among the grass, but more often than not it turns out to be a rodent. The steppe is rich with prey, including marmots, pikas, ground squirrels, voles, gerbils and hamsters – some of the densest populations of small mammals on the planet. Ground-living birds, mainly sandgrouse, partridges and larks, are also on the menu.

As I scanned for cat-like shapes, voles frequently popped out in front of me. If I kept

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still, they jumped on me. One even nibbled at my coat. It took a few days before my eyes were accustomed to the subtle nuances of this environment. Even then, whenever I thought I had spotted a cat, Gaana radioed back to say: “Sorry, it’s another marmot!”

PAW PATROLEvery day we headed out before sunrise, climbing dozens of hills in eager anticipation. At last, when our driver Lkhagva was cleaning his Purgon, he glanced up to see a cat’s angular head peering at him over the top of a boulder. Lkhagva told us that as the cat slinked away, it seemed to be heading towards a distinctive pile of rocks.

At first light the next day, Gaana and I monitored the area from a distant hillside while Sue and the rest of the team continued searching elsewhere. Gaana saw the cat first, using his little pair of antique Russian binoculars. We watched,

relieved, as the mother left her den. Through our telescope, I observed her creep up to a big boulder and slowly raise her head to peep over it. She was on the hunt.

Having spotted her quarry, the cat ever-so gradually lowered her head back behind the rock. This behaviour has been coined ‘periscoping’, just one in a catalogue of covert manoeuvres that helps the Pallas’s cat hide from prey and predators alike. With her body flattened so that she appeared angular in profile, the cat now began creeping forwards, her underside pressed to the ground. Since the species’ ears are positioned very low on the sides of the head, she almost disappeared amid the short grass.

Closer and closer crept the female to her prey, sometimes freezing for minutes between each little movement. Finally, with a sudden burst of speed, she sprang into the open to seize the rodent. This time, however, she appeared to miss.

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1 TAIL Thick and bushy, with a

black tip and five or six black rings reminiscent of those in the Scottish wildcat. Almost half as long as the body.

2 FUR COAT Luxuriously soft and denser

than that of any other species in the genus Felis. The silvery or orangey-buff coloration offers camouflage among the steppe terrain.

3 EARS Positioned very low, giving the

broad head a strikingly flat-topped profile. Thickly furred to ward off the biting winds and severe winter cold on the steppe.

4 LEGS Relatively short for the cat’s

size, suited to ambushes and short stalks rather than running. Broad paws provide cold-protection and act as ‘snowshoes’.

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ANALYSING A SPECIALIST PURRFECT FOR THE STEPPE

Eagle-eyed Gaana could somehow make out the tiny shapes of kittens jumping around back at the den. So several of the team, who had caught up with us, kept an eye on the mother while Gaana and I belly-crawled towards them in a clumsy approximation of the mother’s hunting technique. After we reached the cover of a large boulder, 75m downwind from the den, Gaana nudged me excitedly: four tiny faces were looking in our direction through cracks in the rocks.

The kittens’ movements were jerky and in staccato, as if they were checking to see if the coast was clear. But they soon relaxed and started pouncing on each other, clumsily running around the rocks. They even chased voles that were brave enough to make an appearance. The naturalist in me was excited by this privileged

view, but as a film-maker I was also itching for Sue to be capturing decent footage.

HELLO KITTYWhen to move closer to film an animal is always a difficult decision to make, but we trusted Gaana’s experience. As we watched, the kittens would occasionally freeze, and each time we’d notice a golden eagle pass overhead, or a corsac fox (like a pale, chunky red fox) trot by in the distance. Clearly the youngsters were alert to potential threats, yet they didn’t seem to have noticed us.

After a few hours, the litter suddenly all looked up and leaped off their rocks. I was worried that we had been spotted, but the excitement was aimed at their mother, who was coming up the hill carrying a large ground

RIGHT: Camera-woman Sue Gibson (left foreground) and

the rest of the team search for

a ‘fluffy grey boulder’ in a field

of boulders.

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Paul Williams is a BBC natural-history producer and photographer whose recent credits include Big Cats and Earth’s Greatest Spectacles

5 EYES Black-rimmed and high-set,

perfect for peering over rocky terrain to surprise prey. Two thick black stripes reach from each eye down to the cheeks.

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squirrel. She walked within 20m of where we were hiding, then led her kittens into the den. It was around midday and Gaana said that the cats would spend the next few hours asleep. He set up a camera-trap, and we left in the hope that the cats would see our construction as just another part of the natural landscape.

Lying prone, we could keep out of sight, but with a big camera and tripod Sue was much more visible. A usual filming hide would flap too much in the incessant wind, so with the family in their den we made good use of the rocks and built a makeshift stone hide. We left in the hope that the cats would see our construction as just another part of the natural landscape.

The following day Sue took position inside her stone den, covered in camouflage netting with only a small opening to point the camera through. It wasn’t long before she was filming the playful kittens – just as we had seen them the day before.

We planned to return on subsequent days to film the kittens as they grew up and became more confident, but the unpredictable steppe environment was to change our new-found fortune. A severe weather front moved in, forcing us to stop filming and retreat to camp. So strong was the wind that it threatened to

strip the walls from our gers. Lightning struck around us. Our dining tent was obliterated; our toilet tent was blown to the other side of the valley.

How would our Pallas’s cat family fare? It was soon clear that they had moved on, and Gaana suggested that the den may have been too exposed. The search was on again. Over the next few weeks, Gaana and the research team helped us to refind and follow the family as the kittens became more active. In time we managed to film the mother hunt and the kittens hone their own predatory skills through play.

Pallas’s cat may always have been uncommon and thinly spread, but hunting for its thick fur and for use in traditional Asian medicine remains a serious threat and populations are in decline. Our hope is that our new sequences – the first wild footage to reveal a detailed insight into the species’ life – will contribute to the conservation of this elusive and very unusual small cat.

BELOW: a Pallas’s cat and kitten occupy an abandoned marmot burrow, which is used for refuge and rearing young

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It’s one of the biggest mysteries of British history. For centuries, historians have puzzled over the location of the battle of Brunanburh – the clash between a West Saxon army and its Viking-led enemies in AD 937 that helped secure the future of England. Now, having re-examined the sources, Michael Wood offers an intriguing new take

WHERE WAS THE BATTLE THAT SAVED ENGLAND?

King of British kings Æthelstan shown in a c1321

manuscript. By the mid-930s, following a string of military

victories, the West Saxon monarch had established himself as the most powerful British ruler since the Romans

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Gathering in eastern Ireland was the biggest Viking fleet ever seen in British waters. Its object was the invasion of England

y early August 937, the news must have made its way across the Irish Sea to the trading shore at Meols,

where well-to-do Viking settlers of the Wirral bought their luxuries. It must also have reached the melting pot of Chester, where King Æthelstan’s port officials received Irish merchants and pilgrims. No matter how the West Saxons got wind of what was unfolding around 140 miles to the west, it surely made their blood run cold. For, gathering in the harbours and bays of eastern Ireland was the biggest Viking fleet ever seen in British waters. Its object was the invasion of England.

The Vikings’ leader was Anlaf Guthfrithson, ‘pagan king of Ireland and many islands’. He was head of a grand alliance drawing in the peoples of the Irish Sea and northern Britain – Vikings, Norse-Irish, Scots and Strathclyde Welsh. At Anlaf’s side stood Constantine, the grizzled king of Alba, whose daughter Anlaf had married. Together they would strike against the overweening power of the ‘king of kings’, Æthelstan of Wessex. And now the time had come. As a Welsh poet wrote in faraway Dyfed: “We will pay the Saxons back for the 404 years.”

Ten years earlier, Æthelstan had invaded Northumbria, occupied York and expelled Anlaf’s kinsmen, the rulers of York and Dublin. Æthelstan’s court poets could now boast of “this completed England”. In grand assemblies at Eamont Bridge near Penrith and at Hereford, Æthelstan forced all the kings of Britain to submit to him. On his coins he was now rex totius Britanniae: king of all Britain. To

enforce his hegemony, in 934 Æthelstan invaded Scotland by land and sea as far as Moray and Caithness. By now, he was the most powerful British ruler since the Romans.

This was simply too much for the West Saxons’ enemies to stomach, and so, in the summer of 937, Anlaf and Constantine launched their truly massive invasion. But Æthelstan stood firm and won a crushing victory at a place called Brunanburh. One of the decisive events in British medieval history, the battle was “immense, lamentable and horrible”, according to the Annals of Ulster. Fifty years later, people called it simply ‘the Great Battle’, or even ‘the Great War’. The clash was commemorated in Anglo-Saxon and Latin poetry, in Norse saga, and folk tales, in miracle stories about Æthelstan’s hour of “dread and blind confusion”.

But where was Brunanburh? For 300 years, historians have puzzled fruitlessly over the clues. More than 30 sites have been suggested, from the Solway to

Northamptonshire. The situation was summed up by the medievalist Alistair Campbell in 1938. Without new evidence, he said, “all hope of localising Brunanburh is lost”.

Over the last few years, however, a consensus has grown that the battle was fought in the Wirral – at a place called Bromborough, which has the same name, ‘Bruna’s fort’. The Today programme on BBC Radio 4 recently announced, “the birthplace of Britishness has been found”. And a 500-page casebook has been published to lay the controversy to rest.

But the case for Bromborough (first recorded in the 12th century) rests on the place name alone. It has no support in any of the sources. In fact, in c1122 John of Worcester reported that Anlaf’s fleet landed in the Humber. His circumstantial account must derive from pre-Conquest Northumbria – and that is exactly what we would expect, for York was surely the invaders’ first goal.

SUBMITTING TO INVASIONJohn of Worcester’s version of events has been accepted by most leading authorities over the last 200 years, so to reject it needs good reason, especially as other texts point to the same area. Two sources, one Irish and one English, say the invaders were helped by Danes within England, who could only have come from Northumbria or the east Midlands. A lost 10th-century poem quoted by William of Malmesbury says the Northumbrians submitted to the invaders, which must have happened at, or near, York.

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Sailing into trouble A 19th-century illustration shows Æthelstan’s enemy, the Viking king Anlaf, entering the Humber at the head of a huge coalition of forces drawn from Ireland and northern Britain

Clash of the titansÆthelstan’s West Saxons

crush the invasion army at a place called Brunanburh,

shown in a c1923 illustration. For decades,

the encounter was referred to simply as the

‘Great Battle’

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Picking his moment Æthelstan shown in a

medieval manuscript. The king’s initial reluctance to

confront the marauding invasion force in AD 937 drew sharp criticism. But when he did go on the offensive, the results were devastating

Opposite sides of the countryIn recent years, a consensus has emerged that Brunanburh is in the Wirral. But a site near Went Hill – on the main route from York down into England’s Danish heartland – cannot be discounted, argues Michael Wood

The medieval sources suggest that York was the invasion’s first goal. So what were the Vikings doing in the Wirral?

Bromborough, then, needs some explaining. If the goal of the Norse-Irish leadership was to re-establish their kingdom in York, what were they doing in the Wirral? And how did a Scottish army end up in Cheshire? Fascinating as it is, the Norse colony in the Wirral, to which the supporters of Bromborough have devoted a lot of attention, has no demonstrable relevance to the war of 937. The medieval sources, on the other hand, strongly suggest a location south of York. And if York was the first goal of the invasion, then the search for Brunanburh really needs to focus on the main route from York down into the Danelaw (the part of England where the Danes held sway) – the axis of the wars between the 920s and 950s.

But can we get any closer than that? It might be thought that nothing new can be said on such a well-trodden controversy. But it is worth going back to basics, even when all possibilities seem to have been exhausted. I am now going to focus on two place names.

A HILL LOOMS LARGEFirst there is an alternative Northumbrian name for the battle, Wendun. Surprisingly, this has never been closely examined. It appears in a set of short annals written in Chester-le-Street in the second quarter of the 10th century, the Historia Regum, which contains circumstantial place-name evidence about Æthelstan’s northern campaign of 934.

Wendun has never been identified, but the suffix dun means a prominent hill, and the first element, wen, could derive from a proper name, or a landscape feature – for example, a river name. Looking at the map, it doesn’t take a moment to see the river that fits the bill perfectly: the Went, one of the

tributaries of the Humber, at one time in the early medieval period the southern boundary of the Northumbrians.

The obvious explanation of Wendun is ‘Went Hill’. If so, every traveller on the Great North Road will know it: Went Hill rises precipitously 150 feet above the valley, a crucial strategic site near the Northumbrian frontier.

Now let’s look at the name Brunanburh itself: ‘Bruna’s fort’. This spelling first appears in the famous poem about the battle in the ‘A’ manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (written c 955) in Corpus Christi College Cambridge. In his 1938

edition of the poem, Alistair Campbell thought it was “evidently the original form” and has been followed unquestioningly by everyone ever since.

But the poem in the ‘A’ manuscript has many errors and corruptions. Manuscript ‘B’ has a better text, and ‘B’ spells the name Brunnanburh (with a second ‘n’), as too does the ‘C’ manuscript. Intriguingly, even ‘A’ has a second ‘n’ added above the line: indeed most editors of the poem before Campbell preferred to signal this to readers by reading either Brunnanburh or Bru’n’nanburh, in the ‘A’ manuscript too. So three manuscripts of the Chronicle poem have double ‘n’. And they are not the only ones. Simeon of Durham in c1107 has brunnanbyrig and brunnanwerc.

GREAT NORTHERN MYSTERYWhat are we to make of this? Are these all merely scribal errors, as has been claimed, or do they have a significance we have

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Michael Wood is professor of public history at the University of Manchester. He has presented numerous BBC series over several decades. His new study, ‘The Spelling of Brunanburh’, is in the journal Notes and Queries (Oxford, September 2017)A

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A letter changes everythingAn excerpt from the Anglo-Saxon

Chronicle. The key to solving the Brunanburh riddle may lie in the way the battle’s name is spelled. Give it an extra ‘n’ – as the Chronicle does on a number of occasions – and ‘Bruna’s fort’ becomes ‘the Fort at the Spring’

Mystery solved?A new interpretation of the meaning

of ‘Brunanburh’ – or ‘Brunnanburh’ – makes Robin Hood’s Well, just south

of Barnsdale Bar in South Yorkshire, a viable contender for the

site of the battle

The allied army was beaten, with five kings and seven earls among the dead, along with the prince of Scotland

missed? For this is not just a matter of different spelling: it completely changes the meaning. It would mean the site was called not ‘Bruna’s fort’, as we have always believed, but ‘the Fort at the Spring’.

Let’s just run with this as a hypothesis for a moment, keeping our two place names in mind. Just south of the Went on the hill now called Barnsdale Bar is a Roman fort which straddles the Great North Road, from where you can see all the way into Nottinghamshire. It is called ‘Burg’ in Domesday Book. Inside the fort was a famous spring, St Helen’s Well, today Robin Hood’s Well. The well head has been moved to its present position on the A1, but the spring still flows copiously into the fields below. So was this place in the Anglo-Saxon era the ‘Fort at the Spring’? If it was, then so many aspects of the mystery that have perplexed us for so long fall into place.

A BORDER WAR?One final piece of evidence may also be relevant here. The area of the Went valley and Barnsdale was the traditional assembly place for Northumbrian military musters, submissions and royal ceremonies, from the 10th century through Edward I’s campaigns right down to the Tudors. It was here that the northern army assembled during the popular uprising against Henry VIII, known as the Pilgrimage of Grace. Had Anlaf, the newly proclaimed king of the Northumbrians, elected to fight on the border of the kingdom he claimed?

If so (and I must stress the ‘if’), then the campaign might have unfolded something like this. Anlaf left Dublin in early August. Joined by the Viking king of the Hebrides, he sailed round Scotland and landed in the Humber in early September. There he met his north British allies under Constantine,

king of the Scots, who had come overland with Owain, king of the Strathclyde Welsh. In York, the Northumbrians chose Anlaf as king. Then from a camp on the Northumbrian frontier, they might have launched plundering raids into the east Midlands.

A long delay followed, perhaps with negotiations to broker a peace. William of Malmesbury’s lost poem says that Æthelstan was criticised for his failure to act while his lands were being devastated. But maybe he was biding his time while he gathered his forces, not attacking precipitately, like, say, King Harold at Hastings 130 years later.

Then at some point late in the year – maybe in November – Æthelstan advanced out of Mercia and attacked the main allied army “around Brun(n)anburh”. West Saxons against the Scots and north British; Mercians against the Vikings and Norse-Irish. In a savage battle in which the English suffered heavy losses, the allies were beaten, with five kings and seven earls among the dead, along with the prince of Scotland, and many other leaders from the Irish force. Anlaf was able to escape by sea, but too late in the year to get back to Dublin,

where his arrival is recorded the next spring. The following year, the Scots and

north British submitted to the West Saxon king. It had been touch and go but it meant that Æthelstan’s England survived.

My reconstruction is, I hardly need to say, speculation, but the debate has been obscured by poor source criticism – even in major recent works on Æthelstan – and by a failure to interrogate the texts, which may still have things to tell us. We still can’t be sure, of course, as the sources are so fragmentary and elusive. The historian’s job, though, is to try to make sense of the evidence without bias, to keep an open mind. When the facts are uncertain, you proceed by hypothesis, and then put it out to be tested. Bromborough, I think, has not survived testing. But if the battle was really fought not at ‘Bruna’s fort’ but at ‘the Fort at the Spring’, then the whole game changes. And a solution to the centuries-old mystery may finally be at hand.

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THE SCIENCE OF FIGHTING

We navigate through the minefield of misinformation to find out what the experts really say about losing weight.

Turn to page 72 for smart tips on how to shed that spare tyreWORDS BY SIMON CROMPTON

SCIENCE

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WHAT IS THE BEST DIET, ACCORDING TO SCIENCE?

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he statistics tell their own story. One in four people in England are now classified as obese, compared with

one in six in the 1990s. Fifty-eight per cent of women and 68 per cent of men are now overweight.

Being overweight makes us less healthy: a new study published in Lancet Public Health shows a clear relationship between hospital admissions and body weight. But it also matters because being overweight makes many people unhappy.

A British Social Attitudes survey revealed that people who are overweight suffer significant stigma, and that 53 per cent of the British public are intolerant, believing that most overweight people could lose weight if they tried. But the science shows that it’s not simply a matter of being weak-willed.

“There are very clear reward pathways for food in the brain, and so if something is rewarding and constantly available, why wouldn’t you?” explains Prof Susan Jebb, a nutrition scientist at Oxford University. “In busy and stressed lives, you have to make a constant conscious effort to say no.”

Fortunately, science is now providing some answers on weight control. Just a decade ago, there weren’t enough scientific diet trials to allow doctors and dietitians to provide evidence-backed advice. Now, there are clear scientific pointers on how to fight fat, and what the studies find may surprise you.

When it comes down to it, the science of dieting is simple: eat less. You can do it with a low-fat diet (like the raw food diet), or a low-carb diet (like the Atkins or paleo diet). But the problem with diets is not so much losing weight, but finding a way to do it that is effective, safe, fits in with your lifestyle, and is sustainable so that your weight doesn’t rocket up again.

Diet academics (as opposed to product pushers) avoid prescriptive advice because different diets fit different people’s lifestyles and personalities. But recent research indicates that one particular group of diets is most effective for the greatest number of people. These are the supervised diet programmes, like the Cambridge Weight Plan, LighterLife and Optifast diets, consisting entirely of pre-prepared snack bars, shakes and other food products. You might assume these fast-acting diets would be condemned by scientists as drastic, unhealthy and gimmicky. Yet research is finding that these very low-calorie diets, also known as total food replacement diets, are effective and safe if applied correctly. A major analysis of trials last year, headed by Birmingham

University’s Centre for Obesity Research, showed that these diets brought an average weight loss of 10kg after 12 months. This compares with research showing that behavioural programmes (focused on changing eating habits and exercising), such as Slimming World and Weight Watchers, bring a weight loss of 4kg after one year.

Jebb explains that, although research indicates that all dieters gain weight afterwards (no matter which regime you embark on), the more weight you lose the longer you stay beneath the ‘obese and unhealthy’ bar. “The research shows that the food replacement programmes which provide weekly or monthly behavioural support are associated with the best long-term success,” she says.

And though food replacement diets may look extreme, they do contain a balance of nutrients that some do-it-yourself diets – for example, the milk diet or the lemonade diet – might not.

“Food replacement diets are easy, and if you want to lose weight, why not do it quickly? What’s not to like?” Jebb says.

Verdict: Try a supervised diet programme to safely shed excess weight.

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“If you want to try and sustain your weight loss, the worst thing you can do is try and starve yourself for three weeks”

DO CRASH DIETS WORK?It depends what you mean by ‘crash diet’. There is evidence that supervised food replacement diets work very well for many people. But what about the more DIY crash diets that claim to make your weight plummet? Diets like the cabbage soup diet, the grapefruit diet, and juicing and cleansing diets?

The evidence behind these is currently slim. However, there is less scientific opposition to losing weight quickly than there used to be. Australian research has indicated not only that more people achieve their weight loss goals if they lose weight fast, but also that losing weight quickly doesn’t mean you’ll regain it quickly as well. Rapid weight loss can motivate people to stick with some programmes, the researchers suggest.

But maintaining a healthy nutritional balance while on these diets can be a problem: advice from the UK’s NHS is still that “crash diets make you feel very unwell and unable to function properly… crash diets can lead to long-term poor health”.

And both our biology and lifestyles may condemn many extreme crash diets to failure. Dr Giles Yeo, principal research associate at Cambridge University’s Institute of Metabolic Science, specialises in the molecular mechanisms underlying the control of food intake and body weight.

“If you want to try and sustain your weight loss, the worst thing you can do is try and starve yourself for three weeks,” he says. “Rather than taking

a huge pendulum swing that will inevitably swing back in the other direction, I think people have to find some balance to lose weight long-term.”

In particular, we have to address the fact that crash diets generally make us feel hungry. Yeo’s research examines how the brain responds to hormones and nutrients that are released from the gut into the blood. These reflect the body’s nutritional status, and the brain turns them into what we experience as ‘fullness’ or ‘hunger’. You can find more advice for feeling fuller for longer at the end of this feature.

“One of the universal truths of weight loss is that if you want to eat less then you have to have a strategy to make you feel more full, otherwise you are simply fighting hunger for the rest of your life,” Yeo says. “What we now know is that the longer something takes to be digested, the fuller it makes you feel – because as food goes down the gut, different hormones keep being released, most of which give us a feeling of fullness. That’s why high-protein diets can work, because protein is more complex than fat or carbohydrate and goes further down the gut before it’s broken into its constituents.”

Verdict: Crash diets are not nutritionally balanced and will make you feel awful.

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DO INTERMITTENT FASTING DIETS WORK?Intermittent fasting diets – for example, the Fast Diet and 5:2 diet – revolve around eating what you want some days a week, and then eating very little on the other days. They have become popular over the past five years. But are they more effective than other weight loss diets? The latest research suggests not.

A study published in an American Medical Association journal in 2017 found that, after a year, weight loss was not significantly different than for daily calorie-restricted diet groups.

Supporters of fasting diets claim they provide health benefits beyond weight loss. Indeed, animal studies have indicated that fasting prolongs life and reduces the risk of diabetes, cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer’s disease. But human studies are scarce and contradictory.

A University of Southern California study of 71 adults published recently found that intermittent fasting reduced blood pressure and risk factors for cardiovascular disease, cancer and diabetes, and reduced body fat too. But another new study, from the University of Illinois, suggests it improves cardiovascular risk no more than any other diet.

What is undoubtedly true is that intermittent fasting diets suit many people because they don’t disrupt lifestyles or family meals too much. “It’s not particularly dangerous because you’re essentially not changing what you’re eating on most days, yet over a week you end up eating less,” says Yeo. “They are very effective for some people.”

Verdict: Intermittent fasting is no more effective than other calorie-restricted diets, but it works for many people as it isn’t too disruptive.

CAN YOU BE FAT AND FIT?For decades, scientific debate has raged about the role of exercise in diet loss. Today, there is greater scientific consensus that food intake is more important than exercise for losing weight. But the debate goes on about whether being fit mitigates the health risks of being overweight.

Central to the controversy is research from the Cooper Institute for Preventive Medicine in Dallas, which shows that over-60s who exercise have lower mortality regardless of how much body weight they carry. American health psychologist Dr Traci Mann from the University of Minnesota is currently the most prominent figure in asserting that overweight people can live healthy lives as long as they exercise.

She says there is no evidence that overweight people have shorter lifespans, there is just evidence that people who are sedentary, poor and medically neglected (who are also often obese) live shorter lives. “Obesity only really leads to shorter

lifespans at the very highest weights,” she says.

There is no point in dieting, she claims. “To reduce your risk for cardiovascular disease and diabetes, you don’t actually have to get thin, you just have to exercise.”

But the ‘fat but fit’ camp has few supporters in the UK, and the theory has received a new setback from a recent study of 3.5 million GP records by the University of Birmingham. This found that ‘healthy’ obese people, who had normal blood pressure and cholesterol levels, were still at higher risk of serious disease than healthy people of normal weight. The obese people had 49 per cent increased risk of coronary heart disease, 7 per cent increased risk of stroke, and 96 per cent increased risk of heart failure.

Verdict: Obese people with healthy blood pressure and cholesterol still have an increased risk of heart problems and strokes.

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Simon Crompton is a freelance writer and editor who specialises in science, health and social issues. He tweets from @Simoncrompton2

ARE ANTIBIOTICS MAKING US FAT?

DO FAT-BURNING TABLETS WORK?

The past five years have seen interest in the idea that our gut bacteria play a crucial role in regulating weight, and killing them off with antibiotics is causing obesity.

The most recent evidence is fascinating but inconclusive. Studies in prestigious medical journals have produced contrasting results. One found that three courses of antibiotics before the age of two was associated with increased risk of early childhood obesity, while the other found that exposure to antibiotics in the first six months of life was not associated with early childhood weight gain.

Yet recent research is indicating a link between gut fauna and our body mass index. People with higher levels of Christensenellaceae bacteria – one in 10 of us – appear less likely to put on weight than those with lower amounts. Scientists from King’s College London have found that levels of this bacteria are partly genetically determined.

According to Yeo, who investigated the possibility of microbial transplants to cure obesity for a BBC programme, this new field is important and requires research. “But I have yet to see convincing evidence that there are lean bacteria and obese bacteria,” he says.

Verdict: More research needs to be done, but our gut bacteria may affect how readily we put on weight.

Dozens of ‘metabolism-boosting’ supplements – including ingredients such as caffeine, capsaicin, L-carnitine and green tea extract – claim to stimulate energy processing in the body, increasing the rate at which we burn calories. But there’s little evidence that these products work, and most of their claims are not subject to scientific scrutiny because they are classed as food supplements rather than medicines.

Some studies have indicated that people burn more calories when they take caffeine but, according to the Mayo Clinic, this doesn’t appear to have any significant effect on weight loss. There is little data on most other ‘fat-busting’ pill ingredients, although there is some evidence from small studies that capsaicin, which is found naturally in chillies, can promote loss of abdominal fat and make people feel fuller.

There is a constant stream of news stories about food types that can apparently provide a shortcut to weight loss by boosting metabolism, reducing fat levels or promoting healthy gut bacteria. Cayenne pepper, apples, cider vinegar and cinnamon have all been in the news recently. The problem is that most of these stories are based on small or isolated studies, often in rodents not humans. There may be something in them, but it’s still very early days.

Verdict: There is no easy fix for burning fat. Sorry!

TIPS TO HELP YOU FIGHT FAT1 EAT SLOWLYResearch presented at a recent American Heart Association meeting has found that eating quickly expands your waistline and increases heart disease risk. According to obesity expert Dr Giles Yeo, eating too quickly means you’re not leaving enough time for your gut to release hormones signalling to the brain that you’re full. So hunger continues and you keep on eating.

2 AVOID ‘EMPTY’ CALORIESEmpty calories are sugary foods that make you gain weight, but don’t make you feel full. Fizzy drinks and fruit juices deliver large concentrations of sugar to the gut so quickly and easily that your intestines barely register it’s hit them. Proteins and complex carbs, like beans, wholegrains, nuts and leafy vegetables, take longer to break down – so they’re in your gut longer and produce lasting ‘fullness’ feelings.

3 DON’T EAT ALONERecent research published in a leading obesity journal found that men who eat alone at least twice a day increase their risk of

developing obesity. The link seems to be less clear in women. This follows other studies indicating that loneliness can increase the likelihood of making unhealthy food choices.

4 CONSIDER YOUR CROCKERYHeadline-grabbing studies have suggested that plate size, shape and colour, as well as cutlery size and weight, can affect how much you eat. Health experts continue to debate the merits of these findings. But there is little doubt that large portions contribute to weight gain, and an analysis in the British Medical Journal recommended smaller tableware.

5 GRAB SOME SLEEP More than 50 studies have looked into a possible link between sleep loss and weight gain, and recent reviews of the evidence have concluded that there is an association in both adults and children. Lack of sleep seems to disrupt the way we regulate hormones and metabolise glucose, and can cause increases in the hormone ghrelin, which stimulates appetite.

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In 2017, there were 10,000 deaths due to natural disasters. But could science help us prevent these catastrophes before they happen?

WORDS BY PROF BILL MCGUIRE

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ellowstone is no ordinary volcano. Three times in the last couple of million years, this so-called supervolcano, located in the western US, has blown itself apart in some of the

biggest explosions ever known. The last, which happened around 630,000 years ago, pumped out enough ash to cover most of the country, and left behind a giant crater – the Yellowstone Caldera – more than 70km (44 miles) across. The huge volumes of sulphur gas blasted into the atmosphere by the eruption would have blotted out the Sun, causing global temperatures to plunge and spawning a volcanic winter that lasted for several years.

But Yellowstone is still restless. Earthquakes are common, the ground repeatedly swells and sinks, and the area is peppered with boiling springs, mud pots and geysers. A gigantic body of magma still lurks beneath the volcano, so another massive eruption could happen some time in the future. There are concerns that the resulting volcanic winter might destroy our civilisation, but not if we can take action to try and stop it first. And that’s just what Brian Wilcox and a team of researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have proposed. The idea is to drill into Yellowstone to ‘let off steam’. I’ve often been asked

about this particular solution, and my answer has always been that such a venture would be akin to sticking a drawing pin in an elephant’s bottom. In other words, the effect would be pretty much zero. But NASA has given the idea a little more thought and come up with something that might actually work. This is geoengineering on a huge scale.

In NASA’s plan, the drawing pin becomes an 8km-deep borehole drilled into Yellowstone’s hydrothermal system. This is the vast body of hot groundwater that surrounds the magma chamber and feeds the springs and geysers. The hydrothermal system absorbs more than two-thirds of the heat generated by the magma. In NASA’s scheme, huge quantities of cold water would be pumped down the borehole, helping the hydrothermal system suck out even more heat; the idea being that the magma would cool, get stickier, and start to congeal. This, in turn, would mean that it was too viscous to rise towards the surface and feed an eruption.

If Yellowstone were ready to blow, it would need to be cooled by 35 per cent to stop the eruption in its tracks, and this wouldn’t come cheap. NASA estimates the cost would be $3.5bn. It would take

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Tungurahua, also known as ‘Throat of Fire’, is an active volcano located in Ecuador

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hundreds, or even thousands, of years to accomplish, which is a long time to keep the politicians who hold the purse strings on board. Wilcox acknowledges that this would not be easy, and cautions against doing anything without a detailed study of the pros and cons. “I think it would be unlikely and even foolish to attempt this at any scale, unless a thorough modelling effort had been conducted which shows that the possibility of triggering an eruption was low, almost zero,” he says.

But there’s good news. Superheated water, returned to the surface via the borehole, could be used to drive turbines and generate energy for the region, which could cover much of the cost. “If it appears possible that economically competitive geothermal power could be produced as part of the ‘defanging’ of a supervolcano, [this] could close the economic equation sufficiently that people might attempt it,” Wilcox observes, perhaps a little optimistically.

There are dangers, of course, and there’s the possibility that drilling into a volcano that’s primed and ready to go might trigger the blast it’s trying to prevent. But with the catastrophic consequences for humans of a future super-eruption, it may turn out to be a risk we have to take.P

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Springs and geysers at Yellowstone, like the Grand Prismatic Spring pictured here, hint at the volcanic activity below ground

NASA wants to pump water into the Yellowstone volcano to make the magma too sticky to rise.

HOW IT WORKS

1 An 8km-deep borehole is drilled into the hydrothermal system. This vast body of hot groundwater surrounds the shallow magma chamber and absorbs more than two-thirds of the heat generated there.

2 Huge quantities of water are pumped down the borehole, cooling the hydrothermal fluids so that they can suck out even more of the magma’s heat.

3 The magma cools and starts to congeal, making it more difficult for it to reach the surface and feed an eruption.

4 Superheated water returned to the surface via the borehole could be used to drive turbines and generate electricity.

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Shallow magma chamber

Lower magma reservoir

Hydrothermal system

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Last year will go down in history as the year of the hurricane. In 2017, three storms in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean – Harvey, Irma and Maria – together took more than 300 lives and caused damage totalling $450bn, making it the costliest Atlantic hurricane season ever. As climate change bites ever harder, the most powerful hurricanes are forecast to become more frequent, so years like this may become the norm in decades to come. This has focused minds on ways of stopping hurricanes in their tracks, or even preventing them from forming at all.

One idea – known as the Salter Sink – has been patented by British marine engineer Prof Stephen Salter and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates. The plan is to float thousands of tyre-like rings in the tropical Atlantic, connected to giant tubes that suck warm surface waters down into deeper water, to be replaced by cold water from below. Hurricanes need sea-surface temperatures of at least 26.5°C to form. If Salter and Gates’s gizmo was able to bring surface temperatures down below this, then hurricane formation would be impossible.

A modified version, patented by Gates and others, has the

surface waters being cooled via tubes connected to a line of barges strung out in front of an oncoming storm. Yet a further scheme, put forward by the University of Manchester’s Dr John Latham and colleagues, visualises a fleet of unmanned ships roaming the tropical Atlantic. These would spray tiny droplets of seawater into the atmosphere, which would make the clouds brighter so they reflect more of the Sun’s heat back into space. This would cool the sea surface beneath and hinder hurricane formation.

Esoteric geoengineering plans that involve messing about with ocean temperatures or cloud formation may, however, hold nasty surprises for global weather patterns. A less risky way forward, then, might be to make use of a technology that is already being developed for a different purpose. At least, that’s what engineer Prof Mark Jacobson of California’s Stanford University and his co-workers think. If sited appropriately, they say, offshore wind farms could protect coastlines from approaching hurricanes. Jacobson and his team used a computer model to simulate three of the most devastating hurricanes in recent years: Sandy, which P

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Tacloban was flattened after Typhoon Haiyan roared through the city in November 2013

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battered New York in 2012, plus Isaac (2012) and Katrina (2005). Then they ran the simulations with giant, offshore windfarms strung across the paths of the storms, and the effect was by no means small. They found that a huge wind turbine array off the coast of New Orleans could have reduced the peak wind speed of Hurricane Katrina by an astonishing 145km/h or so, and the accompanying storm surge, which caused massive flooding, by close to 80 per cent. Offshore wind turbines could have tempered the impact of Sandy too: the computer model projected a fall in wind speed of up to 140km/h, along with a storm surge two-thirds smaller.

Offshore wind farms sound like a tempting way of killing two birds with one stone, but there may be an issue with the huge numbers of turbines required: 78,000 would be needed to curb the impact of a Katrina-sized storm, for example. The highest concentration of offshore wind farms today can be found in the North Sea, and consists of fewer than 1,500 individual turbines. Still, it’s good to know that a green technology could be used to tackle the hurricane threat, and that it’s there if we want to use it. IL

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Simulations suggest that wind farms could slow the speed of hurricanes.

Other ideas to stop natural disasters have had mixed results

HOW IT WORKS HOW IT WORKS

1 A giant wind farm, made up of tens of thousands of turbines, is constructed across one of the paths favoured by hurricanes in the tropical Atlantic or Gulf of Mexico.

2 As the hurricane approaches the wind farm, the spinning turbine blades hinder and slow down the rotating winds in the outer parts of the storm. This reduces the height of the sea waves beneath the outer parts of the storm, which slows the movement of air towards the centre of the hurricane.

3 This results in a rise in atmospheric pressure at the centre of the hurricane, reducing the pressure differential across the storm, slowing wind speeds throughout and dissipating the hurricane faster.

4 As a bonus, the wind turbines generate enormous amounts of low-carbon energy.

PROJECT STORMFURYBetween 1962 and 1983, US scientists tried

to weaken hurricanes by seeding them from aircraft using silver iodide. The chemical was supposed to freeze supercooled water in the hurricane, thereby disrupting its structure. Nice idea, but unfortunately

there was not enough supercooled water for the silver iodide to act upon, so the project

was a failure.

BOMB A VOLCANOBefore his exploits in WWII, US General

George Patton fought a battle with the lava flowing from Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano, which threatened the town of Hilo in 1935. The plan was to disrupt the lava channels and tubes that carried fresh lava to the flow front. Unfortunately, the

bomb craters just filled up with lava. Hilo was saved, but only because the eruption

had coincidentally stopped.

JUST ADD WATERDuring 1973’s eruption of the Eldfell volcano

on the Icelandic island of Heimaey, a lava flow that was threatening to destroy the harbour was kept at bay for five months by spraying it with water, causing the flow front to solidify. Luckily, the lava was slow-moving and there was

unlimited water. If the eruption hadn’t stopped, the harbour would eventually have

been overwhelmed.

NUKE A HURRICANEThere is always someone out there for

whom a nuclear blast is the solution, in this case for stopping a hurricane in its tracks. The problem is that the energy locked up in a hurricane dwarfs that of even the biggest nuclear bomb. In fact,

an established hurricane releases as much heat energy every 20 minutes as a

10-megatonne nuclear device.

STOP A TSUNAMI IN ITS TRACKSMathematician Dr Usama Kadri thinks that

tsunamis could be weakened with deep-ocean acoustic waves. These

naturally occurring waves travel at the speed of sound – if they could be

focused on a tsunami, they could reduce its height. But translating it into practice

would likely prove impossible.

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Portland, Oregon, lies near a geological fault, making it susceptible to earthquake damage like this

As the planet’s population becomes more urbanised and the number of people living in megacities in earthquake zones grows, the threat from seismic activity rises. So far this century, earthquakes have taken 750,000 lives, and it’s only a matter of time before a single quake causes a million deaths.

Seismologists have been trying to predict earthquakes for more than 50 years and are no closer today. It would solve all our problems, however, if we could just stop them happening. One possible way of doing this would be to pump water into a fault so that it lubricated the fault plane, allowing it to move more easily and frequently. This would generate small, non-damaging quakes, rather than storing up all the strain for a ‘big one’. Fault lubrication is, however, largely untested and hit-and-miss. Stopping an earthquake in this way is clearly a long way off, and may never be feasible at all.

But there is another way of using tech to protect buildings, and that is by shielding them from damaging seismic waves. Leaders in this field are Dr Sébastien Guenneau at Marseille’s Fresnel Institute and Dr Stéphane Brûlé at the geoengineering company Ménard. In 2012, at the foot of the French Alps, they drilled a line of boreholes arranged in

such a way that the properties of the soil were changed so that incoming earthquake waves would be reflected. By generating artificial earthquake waves using a piece of ground-vibrating kit, they were able to demonstrate that seismic energy crossing the line of boreholes was slashed by up to 80 per cent.

Guenneau, Brûlé and co-workers propose that modifying the density and other properties of the soil around a building could form a shield that stops potentially destructive seismic waves from reaching it. And that isn’t the end of it. While Guenneau admits that the seismic waves reflected by the shield could be a problem, damaging any buildings that lie in their path, he tantalisingly goes on to reveal that “we have looked at an alternative solution – so called invisibility cloaks for seismic waves”.

There has been plenty of research in recent years on cloaking devices that seek to make people or objects invisible by bending the light around them, but could this work for earthquake waves? Guenneau thinks it can, and already has the theory worked out. He believes that judiciously placed concrete pillars dug into the soil could act as an effective seismic cloak, and might only need

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Managed forests could make earthquakes less destructive.

HOW IT WORKS

1 A barrier of trees is planted between the building or facility to be protected and the likely earthquake source.

2 Tree height is managed so that the forest takes on a wedge shape, with the highest trees closest to the potential seismic source and tree height gradually decreasing away from this.

3 When an earthquake takes place, potentially destructive Rayleigh waves are generated, which travel close to the surface.

4 The forest resonates in response to the arrival of the Rayleigh waves, converting them into less destructive shear waves which travel down into the Earth’s interior where they can do no harm.

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Prof Bill McGuire is a professor of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London and author of Waking The Giant

Sensors sitting on top of concrete blocks measure how boreholes drilled into the ground can affect seismic energy

some modification in the design of building foundations. But according to Guenneau, there is an environmentally friendly way too. “I have been involved in some work on the conversion of Rayleigh waves into downward-propagating shear waves, thanks to a forest of trees of varying heights,” he says. Rayleigh waves travel close to Earth’s surface rather than through the deep interior, and are some of the most destructive of all seismic waves. If specially planted forests, like the ones Guenneau is experimenting with, can transform the Rayleigh waves into a less destructive type of wave and divert them down into the ground, then they provide the perfect green solution: a seismic cloak that protects buildings and sucks carbon out of the atmosphere.

On the grandest of scales, future cities could be designed to control the passage of seismic waves through them. Seismic energy travelling through an urban space can be increased or reduced as a consequence of the form and arrangement of skyscrapers. According to a recent paper by Brûlé, Guenneau and others, specially designed curved streets or blocks of buildings could guide incoming seismic waves so they are directed around sensitive areas in the city, such as power plants, hospitals, stadiums and schools.

There is still a lot of research needed before these techniques can be used to protect against real earthquakes, but if they prove to be successful then the implications are huge.

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PREPARE FOR GROLAR BEARS...

GROLAR BEARS

WE ALL KNOW ABOUT RISING TEMPERATURES AND MELTING ICE CAPS, BUT WHOEVER HEARD OF THE GROLAR BEAR? HERE ARE SOME OF THE LESSER-KNOWN IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE

WORDS BY HAYLEY BENNETT

Some say ‘grolar’, others prefer ‘pizzly’. Whichever it is, this grizzly-polar bear cross, or hybrid, is the result of two habitats colliding under the influence of climate change. While melting sea ice is forcing the remaining polar bears ashore, the previously frigid Arctic is becoming increasingly bearable to grizzlies venturing north.

Encounters with grolar bears – including one shot by a hunter in northern Canada in 2016 – seem to be on the rise, suggesting the two

species may be mating more often. The hybrid bears are fertile, so there’s been talk of a new species emerging. However, Dr Andrew Derocher, a bear biologist from the University of Alberta, Canada, doubts this will happen. “Predicting evolution is a fool’s game,” he admits. “However, my best guess is that we won’t see a new species. Grizzly bears could easily absorb a bit of polar bear DNA and keep on going.” In fact, he adds, grizzlies in some of

the islands off the north coast of Venezuela have carried DNA from polar bears since polar bears were further south tens of thousands of years ago. A 2017 study suggests that hybrids prefer to mate with grizzlies over polar bears, which should protect the polar genome – though polar bears themselves may die out. Other climate-driven crosses include a number of different seal hybrids, as well as beluga-narwhal whales spotted in western Greenland.

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MORE MURDERS WORSE ALLERGIES

MORE LIGHTNING

MESSED-UP

WORSE-TASTING COFFEE

MARINE SOUNDS

(AND WINE, AND BEER!)

Crime and aggressive behaviour are often noted to increase during heatwaves. This could be a physical reaction to changes in, for example, heart rate and hormone levels, or it could be a psychological reaction caused by discomfort and stress; scientists are still trying to work it out. In 2014, however, a study in the Journal Of Environmental Economics And Management went one step further, predicting that climate change in the US will cause 22,000 more murders, 180,000 more rapes and 1.2 million more aggravated assaults between 2010 and 2099. Researchers have even tied wars and the collapse of societies such as the Mayans to climatic changes.

Changes in weather patterns will leave less land suitable for coffee-farming. Half of Ethiopia’s coffee-growing regions could be lost, and those areas most suited to coffee production will be the hardest hit, according to one 2017 study. The changing climate will affect other drinks, too. Some craft beers need cool overnight temperatures to draw in wild yeasts from the air, while in vineyards, temperature determines when the grape harvest starts. So far, hotter summers have made for earlier harvests and better-tasting wines, but experts think we’ll soon reach a point where the heat, coupled with increasing rainfall, will reduce quality.

There’s bad news for those of us who suffer from sneezing or wheezing. Hotter summers and higher levels of carbon dioxide encourage plants to produce more pollen for a longer stretch of the year. Climate change is also interfering with the spread of pollution, which can trigger asthma symptoms. These changes could lead to more frequent and intense episodes of hayfever and asthma, the World Allergy Organization warned in 2015.

Lightning strikes will increase by about 12 per cent for every 1°C rise in temperature, according to a study in Science. In theory, a warmer atmosphere is capable of holding on to more moisture, which creates conditions more conducive to lightning. Additional strikes could pose a serious risk as lightning also sparks off wildfires.

In water, sound travels faster at warmer temperatures. If the ocean is warmer or colder than we expect, it throws out our underwater communications systems. This could lead to problems finding an aeroplane’s black box, or make it hard to avoid whales and dolphins. It could also interfere with animals’ own communication systems, crucial in mating and migration. Researchers have already discovered an area of the Arctic Ocean where sound travels four times further than it did a decade ago.P

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TINY ANIMALS

Animals shrink during periods of warming. Over generations, that is, not before your eyes. It’s thought to be because increasing their surface-area-to-volume ratio makes them more efficient at getting rid of heat, though whether this happens through natural selection or other factors such as lack of food isn’t known.

Last year, Abigail Carroll of the University of New Hampshire published a

study on prehistoric ‘dwarfing’ based on fossils from mammals similar to horses, rabbits, lemurs and weasels. During two hot periods around 54 million years ago, these animals tended to be tinier than at other times in the fossil record, but not quite as tiny, the study found, as during an even hotter period around two million years earlier. She says the same thing is likely to happen under current global warming. “There are already

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MIGRATING NORTH POLE

Climate change is shaking our world to its core, almost literally. Changes to the way water is distributed across the planet – including the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, which contain 99 per cent of the world’s freshwater ice – are shifting the Earth’s axis. Although the axis hasn’t always stayed put, recent changes caused by humans are altering its trajectory. Since 2000, the North Pole has been heading in the direction of continental Europe at a rate of about 16 to 18 centimetres a year. If this continues, geographic north, which is calculated from the long-term average position of the Earth’s rotational axis, may eventually have to be updated. (Though a compass will always point towards magnetic north.) The shift itself may not be too concerning, but it is yet another reminder of our influence on the planet.

mammals that seem to be responding in this way,” she says. “The red squirrel in California is showing it, and the red deer.” She adds that domesticated animals like horses and dogs will be far slower to respond as they’re under our influence more than that of the climate. Meanwhile, in the event that climate change causes a mass extinction, some scientists are predicting (somewhat dubiously) that we will see scavengers such as gigantic rats evolve in order to fill any empty niches.

83Vol. 10 Issue 5

BUMPIER PLANE RIDES

DISRUPTED SEX LIVES

Jet-setters, beware. Travelling by plane could be riskier in the future due to an invisible type of turbulence. Clear-air turbulence is increasing because of the way the jet stream – a fast-flowing air current high up in the atmosphere – is speeding up as a result of climate change, explains Prof Paul Williams, who studies atmospheric sciences at the University of Reading. “We have evidence that the jet stream over the north Atlantic, at flight levels, is blowing at a few miles an hour faster than it was a few decades ago,” he says. The faster the jet stream blows, the more likely the air is to become unstable, and when it becomes unstable, it results in turbulence. Clear-air turbulence is more dangerous than turbulence created by clouds because pilots can’t spot it ahead of the plane, so the seatbelt sign is usually off. Williams is one of the authors of a recent study that predicts a doubling of clear-air turbulence over North America, Europe and the North Pacific by the end of this century. Laser detection systems offer a possible solution, but they’re currently heavy and expensive. “It would cost an airline more money to retrofit their fleet with this technology than they would save from the avoided injuries,” says Williams.

Rising temperatures could have a profound influence on the sex lives of reptiles, making it harder for them to find a mate. In green sea turtles, for example, hatchlings from eggs incubated above 29°C are female, while those from eggs incubated at cooler temperatures are male. Populations are usually female-dominated, but in 2016, a study in the Caribbean found that only 16 per cent of green sea turtles are male, and predicted that by 2030, the percentage will fall to just 2 per cent due to climate change.

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QA&BY OUR EXPERT PANELYOUR QUESTI0NS ANSWERED editorial-bbcearth@regentmedia.sg

DR CHRISTIANJARRETTNeuroscientist, writer

DR AARATHI PRASADBiologist, geneticist

DR ALASTAIR GUNNAstronomer, astrophysicist

ALEXANDRA CHEUNGEnvironment/ climate expert

PROF ROBERT MATTHEWSPhysicist, science writer

DR HELEN SCALESMarine biologist, writer

DR PETER J BENTLEYComputer scientist, author

PROF ALICE GREGORYPsychologist, sleep expert

LUIS VILLAZONScience/tech writer

CHARLOTTE CORNEYZoo director, conservationist

PROF MARK LORCH Chemist, science writer

EMMA DAVIESHeath expert, science writer

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Air is made up mostly of nitrogen and oxygen molecules that are spread too thinly to affect light noticeably by, say, altering its colour or intensity. Even so, air’s presence is revealed in hot weather through the shimmering effect called ‘heat haze’. This is the result of the heat causing fluctuations in the density of the air, which in turn affects its optical properties. RM

Why is air invisible?

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The number of named storms in 2017.

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The percentage of light absorbed by black feathers on birds of paradise. This

rivals Vantablack, the darkest material on Earth.

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The percentage of green sea turtles being born female on the

northern Great Barrier Reef.

99It’s an immune response designed to protect the oyster from a parasite or an injury (not just a grain of sand as is commonly believed). Cells from the mantle of the oyster form a pearl sac around the irritation. The pearl sac then secretes calcium carbonate and conchiolin protein that builds up in layers to form an impermeable barrier.. LV

Although heat should not be used for a fresh injury, it can certainly be beneficial for long-term conditions. Heat patches dilate blood vessels, promoting blood flow and helping to relax painful muscles. Tissue injury activates nerve endings in the skin called nociceptors, which transmit signals to the brain to inform it of pain. At the same time, neurotransmitters initiate a reflex that causes muscles to contract at the injury site, often to the point of spasm. Fortunately, heat can activate temperature-sensitive thermoreceptors, which initiate nerve signals to block those from nociceptors. Applying pressure also helps, by triggering nerve endings called proprioceptors. Activating the sets of receptors helps painful muscles to relax. ED

Not normally, but there is a condition called nocturnal lagophthalmos where a sufferer is unable to shut their eyelids when asleep. According to one review, this occurs in up to 5 per cent of adults. This can be due to a variety of factors, including protruding eyes or abnormalities of the eyelids. There are also cases in which the cause has not been established. Noctural lagophthalmos can lead to certain difficulties, from sore eyes to more severe problems such as the development of ulcers on the cornea. Do talk to your doctor if you are waking up with red or sore eyes or have been told by someone that you sleep with your eyes open. AGr

No. Wood is mostly cellulose, lignin and water. If you heat wood, the water boils away first and then the lignin and cellulose (both long-chain organic molecules) will react with oxygen and burn. Even in a vacuum, these molecular chains are too long and tangled to wiggle free into the liquid phase before they reach temperatures high enough to break their bonds. Instead they break down into smaller substances, like methane and organic compounds containing carbon and hydrogen. RM

Do heat patches really help with muscle pain?

Is it possible to sleep with your eyes open?

WHY DO OYSTERS MAKE PEARLS?

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Can you melt wood?

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W H AT H A P P E N S I N M Y B O D Y…

Your skin’s most important job is to keep out the billions of harmful bacteria that swarm over every surface. Any wound that penetrates the dermis layer and causes bleeding will allow bacteria to get in, so we have evolved a precisely coordinated mechanism to seal up the gap as quickly as possible. The healing process uses extra collagen protein for the repair, so the new skin is actually stronger than before. This shows as a visible scar.

Yes, but not enough to make it worth doing. A metal spoon in a cup of tea will act as a radiator, conducting heat to the air. If you stir it as well, you are bringing the hotter liquid from the centre of the cup to the edges, where it can cool faster. But experiments have shown that stirring a cuppa continuously for 10 minutes will only drop the temperature by 2°C, compared with just leaving it to stand. The fastest way to cool your tea down is to add a bit more milk, or a splash of cold water. LV

Dogs ‘talk’ with their tails. The position of the tail can tell us a lot about how a dog is feeling; hung low suggests fear and submission, whereas held high is a sign of dominance and arousal. A wagging tail often conveys happiness and excitement but neuroscientists at the University of Trento in Italy have found that the speed and direction of wag is important in ascertaining if the dog is either negatively (slow and to the left) or positively (fast and to the right) stimulated. CC

Does a cup of tea cool quicker if it’s stirred?

...WHEN I GET A CUT?

SMALL CUT

LARGE CUT

1. HaemostasisWhen the skin is punctured, blood vessels contract and platelets release fibrin proteins that tangle together to form a clot and seal the wound.

1. Keep it cleanWash the open cut to prevent bacteria getting trapped inside. Don’t use disinfectant because this will kill your own cells that are trying to repair the wound.

2. Seal itA plaster keeps dirt out and helps the clot form. If the wound is still bleeding after 10 minutes with a plaster on, you may need stitches.

3. ScarringThe skin continually rebuilds the collagen matrix for up to a year after the cut. This scar tissue will fade slightly for another year after that.

2. InflammationNext the blood vessels expand again to allow white blood cells to flock to the wound site. These attack any bacteria that got past the clot.

3. ProliferationAfter a few days, fibroblast cells arrive and produce collagen. This protein acts like a scaffold, while the dermis cells reproduce to close up the wound.

Why do dogs wag their tails?

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Nitrogen makes up 78 per cent of the air we breathe, and it’s thought that most of it was initially trapped in the chunks of primordial rubble that formed the Earth. When they smashed together, they coalesced and their nitrogen content has been seeping out along the molten cracks in the planet’s crust ever since. Nitrogen can only be used by living organisms after it has been ‘fixed’ into more reactive

compounds such as ammonia or oxides of nitrogen. Nitrogen fixation is carried out by bacteria, algae and human activity, and once organisms have benefited from it, some of the nitrogen compounds break down and go back into the atmosphere as nitrogen gas. Along with top-ups from volcanic eruptions, the ‘nitrogen cycle’ has kept the level pretty constant for at least 100 million years. RM

When you move your head, the acceleration is detected by hairs lining the side of fluid-filled tubes in your inner ear. If you spin for long enough, the brain gets desensitised to the constant turn signals

from your ear, and adjusts to zero them out. When you stop, the ears correctly report zero turning, but your brain is still actively cancelling this out and so it thinks you are now spinning in the opposite direction. LV

Where does the nitrogen in the air come from?

Why do we get dizzy when we spin?

The first-ever image of a planet beyond the Solar System was taken in 2005 by astronomers using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. Known as 2M1207b, the planet is about 1.5 times bigger than Jupiter and around 170 light-years away. It was detected using one of the VLT’s four gigantic telescopes, whose light-gathering mirrors are an impressive 8.2 metres across. RM

How large a telescope was needed to image an exoplanet?

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The ESO Very Large Telescope is located in the Atacama Desert, Chile

Experience of pain is highly subjective so it is difficult to say which are the best painkillers. Studies tend to focus on particular aches and pains. For example, an analysis by The Lancet of thousands of trials suggested that paracetamol doesn’t touch pain from osteoarthritis but a max dose of a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory (NSAID) called diclofenac does the job. NSAIDs such as ibuprofen reduce inflammation and are best suited to muscular pain relief. The drugs block enzymes that produce hormone-like chemicals called prostaglandins, which promote inflammation, pain and fever. Meanwhile, paracetamol is most suited to headaches and reducing a high temperature. ED

Are there any studies on the best over-the-counter painkillers?

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Only one bird has ever actually laid an egg in space. A quail aboard the Russian Soyuz TM-10 spacecraft laid an egg while travelling to the Mir space station in 1990. It seems likely that other birds would be able to physically lay eggs in zero-g, but successfully incubating those eggs is much harder. Experiments with both quail and chicken eggs in space show much higher rates of birth defects in the bird embryos. LV

Is it possible for chickens to lay eggs in space?

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Kiwi (egg) (1/2)

Giraffe (1/10)

Beluga whale (1/17)

Human (1/22)

Elephant (1/26)

Giant clam (1/500,000,000)

Ocean sunfish (1/1,500,000)

Red kangaroo (1/100,000)

Honey possum (1/2,400) Giant panda (1/900)

By definition, fog has a visibility of less than 1km, but it can get much thicker than that. The Met Office visibility scale runs down to a Category X fog, where visibility is less than 20m. If fog gets mixed with industrial pollution, it becomes smog and can be thicker still. During the Great Smog of 1952, drivers couldn’t see their own headlights! LV

How thick is the thickest fog?

Since the days of the Roman Empire, wild animals have been slaughtered to prove power and wealth. Bigger is better when it comes to this ‘sport’, which means that dominant, mature male rhinos, elephants, lions, leopards and other animals are the prime targets of hunters. The artificially premature loss of strong, healthy individuals takes vital genes out of the breeding pool which, over time, can result in

an overall decline in body size and, where applicable, also horn or tusk size. Removing these frontline animals also undermines social cohesion and can leave members of prides and herds vulnerable to attack by other members of their own species. Although some argue that money from trophy hunting can help with conservation, there is not enough evidence to convince us that it can. CC

Despite a kiwi being about the size of a chicken, the female lays an egg that is about half her weight! It’s so big because it has an enormous yolk, which sustains the chick for the first week of its life.

Here you can see some other animals that have enormous babies, as well as those that have teeny tiny offspring (with humans thrown in for good measure). LV

How does trophy hunting affect wild animal populations?

By weight, which animal has the largest baby relative to body size?

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Wahweap HoodoosNope, these aren’t weird, oversized toadstools. They are a group of rock structures called ‘hoodoos’, which

started forming more than 100 million years ago. The columns, which are located in Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, are

made of soft white sandstone that has slowly eroded away over the years, leaving caps consisting of a type of

harder brown sandstone.

W H AT I S T H I S ?

W H O R E A L LY I N V E N T E D ?

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THE MRI MACHINE

With its ability to image the internal organs and functioning of the body without using X-rays, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) ranks as one of the biggest medical breakthroughs, and its development led to a Nobel Prize in 2003 for two scientists: Paul Lauterbur of the State University of New York and Peter Mansfield of the University of Nottingham. But within a month of the prize being announced, a full-page advert appeared in The New York Times insisting MRI was actually invented by a New York doctor named Raymond Damadian.

MRI exploits so-called nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) in which hydrogen nuclei in our bodies are first gripped by powerful magnetic fields, then stimulated into producing radio waves. As these signals are affected by the nature of the tissue, Damadian was among those who thought NMR might help with the early detection of cancer. By the early 1970s the idea had shown promise, and Damadian was granted a patent for this use of NMR. However, others were already going further, and trying to create clear visual images from the signals. Lauterbur and Mansfield are widely regarded to have carried out the most work towards solving the extremely challenging technical issues involved, turning MRI into the versatile technique it is today. RM

PETER MANSFIELD PAUL LAUTERBUR

RAYMOND DAMADIAN

In a word, ‘no’. Domestic dogs evolved between 17,000-33,000 years ago. Most ‘breeds’, which have been artificially selected by humans, have arisen very recently within the last 200 years. Visually, a Chihuahua is the chalk to a Great Dane’s cheese, yet they are still the same species, Canis lupus familiaris, and are direct descendants of the grey wolf. All domestic dog breeds are able to interbreed to give

birth to reproductively viable offspring. This is because their genomes remain relatively unchanged, despite their physical characteristics appearing so different. This key evidence tells us that various dog breeds are not in the running to become a new species any time soon. It takes a long time for mutations, which cause inheritable changes to characteristics, to arise within populations. CC

It is sometimes argued that being in a relationship can offer health benefits. The research cited in support of this argument says that those who are married are on average healthier than those who are not. However, the situation is likely to be much more complex than this. For example, it is not clear whether being in a relationship offers health benefits or whether there are other explanations for this association. Furthermore, whereas being in a relationship may be linked to

certain health advantages, it could bring health risks too. Research suggests, for example, that people who are married are more likely to be overweight than those who are not. Finally, one size does not fit all. Whereas being in a happy relationship may bring certain advantages, being in a dysfunctional one is unlikely to do so.  AGr

Are any dog breeds close to becoming a new species?

Is being single bad for your health?

Q U E S T I O N O F T H E M O N T H

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The asteroid that caused the extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous period struck Earth with 60,000 times the energy of the world’s entire nuclear arsenal. The atmosphere would have glowed red hot for several hours and all the large dinosaurs that couldn’t burrow underground or hide underwater were immediately roasted. When the smaller species came out of hiding they found a charred landscape and the air so thick with soot and sulphur dioxide clouds that sunlight was almost completely blocked out for the next year. It was too dark for photosynthesis, so the herbivores died, then the carnivores. Birds are descended from the maniraptoran dinosaurs but they had two important adaptations that helped them survive. First, they had beaks instead of teeth, which allowed them to crack open seeds and nuts buried in the topsoil. Second, their relatively large skull capacity suggests that they were more intelligent than the other reptiles. They may have lived in more complex social groups that could cooperate and adapt to find new food sources in the radically different post-apocalyptic landscape. This allowed them to eventually outcompete any other species of small dinosaur that might have survived the initial impact LV

Why were birds the only dinosaurs to survive the mass extinction?

How far do germs travel when we cough?

Caudipteryx was an early maniraptoran feathered dinosaur

Powered by the diaphragm, abdominal and rib muscles, coughing is highly effective at clearing irritants or mucus from the lungs.

Each cough expels thousands of saliva droplets at up to 160km/h (100mph).

Coughed droplets can enter the nose or mouth of innocent bystanders.

Meanwhile, germs in settled droplets can live on some surfaces for hours, ready to

transfer to an unsuspecting victim.

Each droplet is potentially laden with viruses or bacteria

and can travel up to two metres, depending on size.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US, have

discovered that an invisible gas cloud helps cough droplets to spread around a room. Smaller droplets in the gas cloud are swept around by eddies, travelling

further and taking longer to settle.

RESOURCE A FEAST FOR THE MIND

What exactly is narcolepsy?Most people know that those with narcolepsy have an irresistible need to sleep at inappropriate moments during the day. This was my first symptom when I was diagnosed – I’d find myself dozing through tutorials at university and overdosing on caffeine. But that’s probably the least interesting of the symptoms. Most people with narcolepsy also experience cataplexy, which is where the emotional centre in the brain causes a sudden loss in muscle control. It’s the same process that happens during sleep to stop you acting out your dreams, but during the day, it can mean that even a small emotion has you collapsed on the floor.

What triggers it?It can be any emotion, but the most common trigger is humour – I have a friend who only needs to raise an eyebrow to have me on the floor. What’s fascinating is that you retain consciousness throughout. You’re in a crumpled heap on the floor, laughing your head off inside, but you just look asleep or dead. And then someone comes up and says, “Is he okay? Does he need an ambulance?” That’s even funnier, and it keeps you under for a while longer. The attacks usually last only 10 or 20 seconds, but there’s very little warning, and it can be exhausting. If you’re collapsing 100 times a day, it can be an extremely disabling condition where you become fearful of leaving the isolated safety of your home.

What are the other symptoms?Many people with narcolepsy also experience sleep paralysis and hallucinations when they’re waking

UNDERSTAND NARCOLEPSYHenry Nicholls is more qualified than most to write about the science of sleep. At the age of 21, he was diagnosed with narcolepsy – a rare disorder that causes people to fall asleep without warning. But, he tells James Lloyd, it’s a largely misunderstood condition

up or dropping off. It happens when the brain is in rapid eye movement (REM), dreaming sleep, but you’re awake, unable to move. The brain often manufactures petrifying visions. I used to see an axe murderer – I’d feel the axe as it slammed into my chest, and the blood trickling down my sides. Paradoxically, people with narcolepsy tend to experience fractured night-time sleep too, waking up as many as 20 or 30 times a night: it destroys your sleep quality.What causes narcolepsy?The vast majority of cases are caused by an infection such as flu or, as in my case, a streptococcal infection. The immune system destroys the invaders, but in some cases it also takes out a population of cells in the brain’s hypothalamus that produce proteins called hypocretins, which play a crucial role in sleep regulation. At the moment, there’s no cure, because once you’ve lost these cells they’re gone. We’re only able to treat the symptoms. There are stimulants such as modafinil and dexamphetamine that help to keep us alert, and small doses of antidepressants can treat the cataplexy. I’ve found drugs to control most of my symptoms, but I’m fortunate – not everyone responds to them.

How common is narcolepsy compared to other sleep disorders?At any one time, chronic insomnia affects about 10 per cent of the population. Sleep apnoea is the other common one, which is when a person’s breathing is interrupted during sleep – snoring is often a sign of this. Narcolepsy is a rarer disorder, affecting

SLEEPYHEADBY HENRY NICHOLLS

about 1 in 2,500. There are stories of people going 20, 30, even 60 years before being diagnosed, by which time the psychological damage can be serious. We still need to get much better at spotting these disorders.

Why is it so important to get good sleep?Sleep is doing so many things for us: P

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it’s strengthening connections in the brain, making new ones, pruning ones we don’t need. It’s a time to replenish and recharge. Chronic sleep deprivation puts you at greater risk of a whole host of conditions: cancer, stroke, type 2 diabetes, depression, hypertension, obesity, the list goes on. It’s no coincidence that every organism on Earth with any kind of neural cluster resembling a brain performs something akin to sleep.

Any top tips for a decent night’s sleep?This isn’t going to be popular, but the most important thing you can do is stick to a routine. That means going to bed and waking up at the same time every day, even the weekend! For insomnia, my trick is to repeat a neutral word like ‘the’ over and over – not out loud,

but in your mind. You’ll find that your brain can’t think about anything else, and racing thoughts will stop.

I’ve managed to get snatches of good sleep now for the first time in 20 years, and it’s been so empowering. That’s the upbeat revelation of this book – we really can change our sleep habits, even those of us with sleep disorders.

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TIME OUT

CROSSWORD PUZZLE GIVE YOUR BRAIN A WORKOUT

ACROSSANSWERS

Solution to crossword in the previous issue

8 Leave playwright to kill top predator (7)9 Performance of choirs, sir, gets a complaint (9)13 Concentrate on what’s in front of you (5)14 Spoke repeatedly of raid carried out at one (5)15 Crawler to stop at the surface (7)16 Bully to mistake a flower (7)17 Quietly warn about seafood (5)18 Right to boot out an automaton (5)20 Get Russian support included (5)22 A feline in charge at a very small level (6)23 Signal to have English breakfast outside (6)25 Husband and wife have time for some poetry (7)27 Notice keys to place of germination (7)

30 Name is altered to that of a French city (6)31 Atoll in two pieces (6)32 Instrument to fix stair (5)35 Criticise Sigourney removing middle viola (5)36 Muscle protein to do something at home (5)37 Coat fashioned with bark, initially, and

firm leaves (7)39 Fertiliser expense involves old politician (7)41 Starts to get edifice clean, kicking out lizard (5)42 Strange graduate routine (5)43 Drama had developed with unknown nymph (9)44 Played role in a part of the wing (7)

DOWN1 Supremo scowls about capital (6)2 His play’s about Chinese lantern (8)3 Happy, say, with surface temperature

on Pluto (5,6)4 Using fingers, get one small drug (9)5 Wife of Dionysus has a drain moved east (7)6 Policeman finds dean a crawler (10)7 Fraudulently manipulate a city (4)10 Leaving copper time to get remnant (6)11 Travelling road to get suitable,

useful item (7)12 Mark takes the first cholesterol-reducer (6)19 European race pursuing US singer and

dramatist (7)21 Idealistic to turn to best Scot (7)24 Toxic period averted by turning

to the right (11)26 Majestic girl, originally one of the

Mint family (10)28 That man has rags to distribute in graph (9)29 British coin is spent on

mechanical organs (7)30 Overturn a limit on the French animal (6)32 Minor variant of sandwich to reproduce (3-5)33 Managed to get coordinate alright

for Japanese inn (6)34 Assault an energy supplier (7)38 Everyday green (6)40 Consume a lemon with lunch, say (4)

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MY LIFE SCIENTIFIC

James Wong is a Kew-trained botanist

What is ethnobotany?Ethnobotany looks at the ways humans use plants. Plants provide us with food, medicine, air and solutions to complex problems. For example, there’s a way to extend the life of satellite

solar panels that’s based on the fibres of edelweiss flowers.

Do you know all the plants? No one knows all the plants. We think there are around 300,000 species, but new ones are being found all the time. I’d like to be in The Matrix, where you could get a chip with all the plants on and plug it directly into your brain.

Tell me something surprising…Plants can count. The Venus flytrap

as conscious, but they’re making us rethink intelligence.

Yet some people find plants boring… I’m always surprised by this. My mates who aren’t into plants tell me that their first experience of them was being dragged round garden centres at five years old, looking at trays of bedding plants. It’s no surprise then. They think about plants like shopping for soft furnishings!

What’s your garden like?I live in a tiny flat in central London so I don’t have a garden, but I do grow a lot of plants indoors. Then one day I discovered I couldn’t fit any more in. So I converted my coffee table into a giant terrarium. Now I grow plants in there.

What do you grow? Things that are weird and wonderful, things I feel nostalgic about. I grow a lot of tropical plants from when I was a kid in Borneo. I’m currently interested in a Malaysian begonia with iridescent leaves that look electric blue or pink depending on the angle of the light.

Where is your favourite place?The mountain rainforests of Latin America. These are pockets of forest, high above the regular rainforest, which have an incredibly high density of floral plants. There are hummingbirds and flowers with neon petals. It’s like walking onto the set of Avatar.

Have you ever killed a plant?Yes, I kill plants all the time. The most talented horticulturalists that I know all kill plants. There’s this idea that people like me are born with green fingers, but we’re not. We’re just more persistent. If I can’t get something to grow the first time, I just keep on trying.

JAMES WONG

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This New Year, ethnobotanist James Wong talks to Helen Pilcher about the magic of plants

has hairs that sense insects, but the trap only shuts if the hairs are touched twice within 10 seconds. It then takes a further three touches, when the insect is struggling, for digestive enzymes to start being produced. The plant is counting two things: time and touches.

So plants are clever?Plants can make decisions; they have complex social lives and can communicate with one another. Trees can detect plants that are closely related. They can shunt sugar along to feed their young, or stop growing their roots in that direction to avoid competition. If they detect an unrelated plant they react differently. I’m not describing plants

According to James, eating more fruit and veg is the single best thing that you can do for your health in a dietary context. Don’t bother with a faddy detox plan, though!

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COMMENT & ANALYSIS

here was never a conscious decision to start a collection. But I’m a bubble physicist,

so I notice champagne (usually as a toy first and a drink second), and some years ago I started picking up the corks. I put a couple of them in a bowl in my living room, with the matches and tealights and other such miscellany, and every so often another one would come along. Eventually, the corks outnumbered everything else, and the rest got booted out. I looked at them properly for the first time this week, and wished it hadn’t taken me so long to appreciate them. Form and function are so beautifully intertwined, and it all starts with an obvious question: why do they have that peculiar mushroom shape?

Champagne corks are distinctive, and it’s all down to the bubbles in the drink. The pressure inside a bottle of champagne is around six times atmospheric pressure, and the small region of gas at the top of the bottle is entirely filled with carbon dioxide at that pressure. But there’s even more carbon dioxide dissolved in the champagne itself – you would need a five-litre balloon to hold it all – and the high pressure is essential to keep it there. You can’t afford to let gas leak through the cork, because if the pressure drops, you’ll have flat champagne. And the cork also has to stay put even though there’s all that pressure pushing outwards on it.

The solution is a brilliant natural material from the outer layer of the cork oak. It’s got a honeycomb-like structure made of tiny empty cells with zigzag walls. If you squish it, the walls will compress like a concertina and then recover their shape when you let go. Champagne manufacturers take a cylinder with a diameter about 1cm greater than the neck of the bottle, squash it inwards until it’s slender enough to fit, and then let go. The section sticking out from the top of the bottle springs back to its original diameter, and the bit inside the neck springs back as much as it can,

pushing strongly outwards and sealing the bottle. This does a pretty good job of sealing the gas in, although a little does escape – an older champagne has about 25 per cent less gas in it than one 15 years younger. You can recover the cork’s original shape if you put it in boiling water.

But a champagne cork that’s been removed from the bottle has a waist – it’s wider at the base than in the middle. Why?

When I looked at my corks, I noticed that they all have the same structure. They’re made from lots of tiny bits of cork all compressed together to form a conglomerate, but they have two whole disks of cork at the bottom, each about 6mm thick. These are the highest quality natural cork, and you can see dark channels running along the sides of the disks, showing themselves as dots at the bottom. These are lenticels, and they run from the inside of the tree to the outside to let it breathe. When you cut the disks this way, they are extremely springy sideways – fabulous for sealing the wine in. But the channels are a problem. So the manufacturers stack two disks on top of each other. This means they keep the springiness, but the channels don’t line up so gas can’t escape. And this is the reason for the mushroom shape. When the cork escapes from the bottle, the disks return to pretty much exactly their

original diameter. But the conglomerate cork above isn’t as elastic, and stays compressed.

So if you hear a ‘pop!’ anywhere near you, go and find the cork. The pop and the fizz are exciting, but the cork itself has a story to tell too.

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HELEN CZERSKI ON … CHAMPAGNE CORKS“THE POP AND FIZZ OF CHAMPAGNE ARE EXCITING, BUT THE CORK ITSELF HAS A STORY TO TELL TOO”

Dr Helen Czerski is a physicist and BBC presenter. Her latest book Bubbles will be available later this year

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