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Eat less, live long
Research news and discovery
IMAZ PRESS REUNION/GAMMA/CAMERAA PRESS
In brief– Eat less, live long
To know when it’ll blow, hit the beach and catch a wave The sound of ocean waves lapping on the beach could prove handy for more than just helping people sleep: they may help predict when a volcano is about to wake up. When some land volcanoes are preparing to erupt, telltale changes on the surface can reveal a build-up of magma, but if the magma chamber is at depth there may be little sign of a pending eruption, says Florent Brenguier at the University of Grenoble in France. Now Brenguier’s team has found a way to monitor such inscrutable volcanoes. When ocean waves break, they send
low-frequency shock waves over great distances through the Earth’s crust. The team found that these shock waves slow down if they pass through the magma chamber of a volcano that is experiencing pre-eruption rumbles. Placing about 20 sensors around a volcano could give a detailed picture of any changes at depth, says Brenguier. The team correctly forecasted eruptions of the Piton de la Fournaise volcano on the island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean in July 2006 and April 2007 as much as 10 days in advance (Nature Geoscience, DOI: 10.1038/ngeo104). Other natural seismic sources could also be used, says Brenguier, such as wind battering the ground. Even traffic might work, although its high-frequency waves cannot penetrate as deeply as ocean-generated ones, he says.
The mathematical reason to be lazy EVER lose patience waiting for a bus and decided to walk instead? Next time, stick around, it’s nearly always the best strategy. Scott Kominers, a mathematician at Harvard University, and his colleagues derived a formula for the optimal time that you should wait for a tardy bus at each stop en route before giving up and walking on. “Many mathematicians 18 | NewScientist | 26 January 2008
probably ponder this on their way to work, but never get round to working it out,” he says. The team found that the solution was surprisingly simple. When both options seem reasonably attractive, the formula advises you to choose the “lazy” option: wait at the first stop, no matter how frustrating (www.arxiv.org/abs/0801.0297). The formula does break down
in extreme cases, Kominers says, when the time interval between buses is longer than an hour, for example, and your destination is only a kilometre away. If you do choose to walk, you should make your decision before you start waiting, he says. You will still reach your destination later than the bus you’d have caught, but it will be much less frustrating than waiting for a while and then watching the bus shoot by. “It certainly has changed the way I travel,” Kominers says.
A TWEAK to a couple of genes combined with a low-calorie diet has boosted the lifespan of baker’s yeast by a factor of 10. Valter Longo’s team at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, created a strain of yeast that lacks the genes RAS2 and SCH9. The genes are linked with ageing in yeast and have been implicated in cancer in humans. Keeping the yeast on a calorie-restricted diet extended its life from one to 10 weeks with no evident side effects (PLoS Genetics, DOI: 10.1371/journal. pgen.0040013.eor). Previous studies have shown that calorie restriction can prolong the lifespans of animals, but mutations associated with longevity often cause problems. The team is now trying the technique on mice, and is also studying a group of people from Ecuador who naturally have genetic mutations similar to those of the long-lived yeast.
Bright idea for planet spotters SUNLIGHT glinting off alien oceans may help astronomers spot water on other worlds. Darren Williams of Pennsylvania State University, Behrend, and Eric Gaidos of the University of Hawaii at Manoa modelled the way a distant planet would reflect light towards Earth as it orbits its star. They showed that when a wet planet appears as a crescent, light striking the smooth surface of a large sea or ocean would make it appear brighter. The more uniform scattering from the rough surface of a drier planet means that it would not get brighter in this way. The researchers say this effect could be detected by the next generation of planet-hunting space telescopes. The work will appear in the journal Icarus. www.newscientist.com
IMAZ PRESS REUNION/GAMMA/CAMERAA PRESS
In brief– Eat less, live long
To know when it’ll blow, hit the beach and catch a wave The sound of ocean waves lapping on the beach could prove handy for more than just helping people sleep: they may help predict when a volcano is about to wake up. When some land volcanoes are preparing to erupt, telltale changes on the surface can reveal a build-up of magma, but if the magma chamber is at depth there may be little sign of a pending eruption, says Florent Brenguier at the University of Grenoble in France. Now Brenguier’s team has found a way to monitor such inscrutable volcanoes. When ocean waves break, they send
low-frequency shock waves over great distances through the Earth’s crust. The team found that these shock waves slow down if they pass through the magma chamber of a volcano that is experiencing pre-eruption rumbles. Placing about 20 sensors around a volcano could give a detailed picture of any changes at depth, says Brenguier. The team correctly forecasted eruptions of the Piton de la Fournaise volcano on the island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean in July 2006 and April 2007 as much as 10 days in advance (Nature Geoscience, DOI: 10.1038/ngeo104). Other natural seismic sources could also be used, says Brenguier, such as wind battering the ground. Even traffic might work, although its high-frequency waves cannot penetrate as deeply as ocean-generated ones, he says.
The mathematical reason to be lazy EVER lose patience waiting for a bus and decided to walk instead? Next time, stick around, it’s nearly always the best strategy. Scott Kominers, a mathematician at Harvard University, and his colleagues derived a formula for the optimal time that you should wait for a tardy bus at each stop en route before giving up and walking on. “Many mathematicians 18 | NewScientist | 26 January 2008
probably ponder this on their way to work, but never get round to working it out,” he says. The team found that the solution was surprisingly simple. When both options seem reasonably attractive, the formula advises you to choose the “lazy” option: wait at the first stop, no matter how frustrating (www.arxiv.org/abs/0801.0297). The formula does break down
in extreme cases, Kominers says, when the time interval between buses is longer than an hour, for example, and your destination is only a kilometre away. If you do choose to walk, you should make your decision before you start waiting, he says. You will still reach your destination later than the bus you’d have caught, but it will be much less frustrating than waiting for a while and then watching the bus shoot by. “It certainly has changed the way I travel,” Kominers says.
A TWEAK to a couple of genes combined with a low-calorie diet has boosted the lifespan of baker’s yeast by a factor of 10. Valter Longo’s team at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, created a strain of yeast that lacks the genes RAS2 and SCH9. The genes are linked with ageing in yeast and have been implicated in cancer in humans. Keeping the yeast on a calorie-restricted diet extended its life from one to 10 weeks with no evident side effects (PLoS Genetics, DOI: 10.1371/journal. pgen.0040013.eor). Previous studies have shown that calorie restriction can prolong the lifespans of animals, but mutations associated with longevity often cause problems. The team is now trying the technique on mice, and is also studying a group of people from Ecuador who naturally have genetic mutations similar to those of the long-lived yeast.
Bright idea for planet spotters SUNLIGHT glinting off alien oceans may help astronomers spot water on other worlds. Darren Williams of Pennsylvania State University, Behrend, and Eric Gaidos of the University of Hawaii at Manoa modelled the way a distant planet would reflect light towards Earth as it orbits its star. They showed that when a wet planet appears as a crescent, light striking the smooth surface of a large sea or ocean would make it appear brighter. The more uniform scattering from the rough surface of a drier planet means that it would not get brighter in this way. The researchers say this effect could be detected by the next generation of planet-hunting space telescopes. The work will appear in the journal Icarus. www.newscientist.com