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From disease eradication to accommodation
EDITORIAL
Learn to love your fat Pieces of the obesity jigsaw are beginning to fit together to cast the role of fat in a new light
start to break down, leading to a toxic spill into the bloodstream. This sets off an inflammatory response that causes various kinds of damage to body tissues. In this way, every excess calorie takes people closer to metabolic syndrome. So what can we do to stop a superabundance of fat triggering the syndrome? Of course there’s no substitute for a healthy diet and exercise, but exhortations to this effect seem to be of limited use. As with cigarettes and alcohol, a tax on calories – pricing foods by their energy content – is increasingly seen as another “lever” to change behaviour by making obesity too costly.
AS PEOPLE in rich countries know very well, eating too much food and burning too few calories is why a substantial number of us are overweight or obese. Now, however, a remarkable change in perspective has come from the discovery that obesity actually “Body fat may be a barrier that stops provides people with temporary protection millions of portly citizens from from the harmful effects of fat. developing metabolic syndrome” The insight has come from re-examining the common assumption that fatness itself drives the development of metabolic The new research may even suggest syndrome, which is what causes so much treatments to combat metabolic syndrome, of the actual damage. The syndrome comes such as anti-inflammatory drugs. One with a mixture of life-threatening effects, promising candidate is salsalate, an arthritis with cardiovascular disease and type 2 drug related to aspirin, and the Joslin Diabetes diabetes being among the most serious. Center in Boston is now considering largeIn fact, it now seems that body fat may scale trials. be a barrier that stops millions of Americans What might be more helpful, though, is and portly citizens elsewhere from going on simply a wider recognition that fatty and to develop the syndrome. sugary foods are more directly toxic than As we report on page 8, the real damage we had assumed. Ideally, people should be as is caused by the inflammatory effect of high well informed about the harmful effects of levels of fat in the bloodstream. And ironically, what they eat as, for example, pregnant it’s fat cells that protect us from this by serving women are about drinking and smoking. as toxic dumps, locking away the real villains There is a consolation – you have your fat of the modern diet. tissue to protect you when you consume that The problem is that this protection only extra burger or sweetened soda. But now you lasts so long, until there is simply no more know the perils of pushing your friendly fat room inside the fat cells. That’s when they cells beyond their natural limits. ■
The diseases that just won’t go away IT’S almost time to crack open the champagne. Guinea worm, one of humanity’s most painful and gruesome parasites, is on track to be eradicated – the first human infection to be wiped out since smallpox in 1980 (see page 39). Rinderpest could be the next disease to go, with the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization predicting that this devastating viral infection in cattle could be gone a year from now. Yet dreams of eradicating most infectious diseases, including measles and malaria, remain as far away as ever. Now only polio is still targeted, and even this has been called too optimistic by some. Viruses and bacteria lurk in too many hard-to-reach places to kill them all. The answer is to find ways to stop them killing us, so we can coexist in peace. ■
Uncertainty rules DESPITE our attempts to define, measure and make life black and white, the world turns out to be unexpectedly vague (see page 46). It’s not just that things we think of as well-defined are actually a series of approximations, like the metre. More profoundly, vagueness is a key part of communication: unless we get to grips with it, robots will never “talk” naturally to people and the much-hyped semantic web won’t work at all. Just as well, then, that we have finally started to think precisely about vagueness. ■
What’s hot on NewScientist.com PHYSICS Journeys to Earth’s extremes From Antarctica to the Chilean Andes, via the Atacama desert, mount Wilson observatory in California and the Large Hadron Collider, Anil Ananthaswamy’s unique travelogue attempts to unlock the secrets of the universe ZOOLOGGER Mummy, can I have some more carrion soup? Squeamish readers, look away now: the life cycle of the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides is a tale of
decaying corpses, regurgitation and excellent parenting skills TECHNOLOGY Baby robot gets an upgrade See smarter legs, more sensitive hands and a better brain developed for a toddler-sized robot – it’s designed to test theories about the development of real children LIFE For a long life, smile like you mean it If you want to live to a ripe old age, then smile – and make sure
you don’t fake it. Pro baseball players in the 1950s who genuinely beamed in their official photographs tended to outlive more sullen-looking sportsmen and those who put on fake smiles TECHNOLOGY Sneaky app raises spectre of zombie cellphones Researchers have made a weatherforecasting app for the iPhone and Android phones that secretly passes them a user’s location and phone number. Criminals could use the same approach to take control of your
cellphone, harvest its address book, and even send emails ENVIRONMENT Which climate changes can be blamed on humans? Our “fingerprints” have been detected on a variety of aspects of the climate, from rainfall to the salt content of the oceans. We look at the latest evidence from the UK Met Office For video, comment and online debate visit newscientist.com
13 March 2010 | NewScientist | 5
Learn to love your fat Pieces of the obesity jigsaw are beginning to fit together to cast the role of fat in a new light
start to break down, leading to a toxic spill into the bloodstream. This sets off an inflammatory response that causes various kinds of damage to body tissues. In this way, every excess calorie takes people closer to metabolic syndrome. So what can we do to stop a superabundance of fat triggering the syndrome? Of course there’s no substitute for a healthy diet and exercise, but exhortations to this effect seem to be of limited use. As with cigarettes and alcohol, a tax on calories – pricing foods by their energy content – is increasingly seen as another “lever” to change behaviour by making obesity too costly.
AS PEOPLE in rich countries know very well, eating too much food and burning too few calories is why a substantial number of us are overweight or obese. Now, however, a remarkable change in perspective has come from the discovery that obesity actually “Body fat may be a barrier that stops provides people with temporary protection millions of portly citizens from from the harmful effects of fat. developing metabolic syndrome” The insight has come from re-examining the common assumption that fatness itself drives the development of metabolic The new research may even suggest syndrome, which is what causes so much treatments to combat metabolic syndrome, of the actual damage. The syndrome comes such as anti-inflammatory drugs. One with a mixture of life-threatening effects, promising candidate is salsalate, an arthritis with cardiovascular disease and type 2 drug related to aspirin, and the Joslin Diabetes diabetes being among the most serious. Center in Boston is now considering largeIn fact, it now seems that body fat may scale trials. be a barrier that stops millions of Americans What might be more helpful, though, is and portly citizens elsewhere from going on simply a wider recognition that fatty and to develop the syndrome. sugary foods are more directly toxic than As we report on page 8, the real damage we had assumed. Ideally, people should be as is caused by the inflammatory effect of high well informed about the harmful effects of levels of fat in the bloodstream. And ironically, what they eat as, for example, pregnant it’s fat cells that protect us from this by serving women are about drinking and smoking. as toxic dumps, locking away the real villains There is a consolation – you have your fat of the modern diet. tissue to protect you when you consume that The problem is that this protection only extra burger or sweetened soda. But now you lasts so long, until there is simply no more know the perils of pushing your friendly fat room inside the fat cells. That’s when they cells beyond their natural limits. ■
The diseases that just won’t go away IT’S almost time to crack open the champagne. Guinea worm, one of humanity’s most painful and gruesome parasites, is on track to be eradicated – the first human infection to be wiped out since smallpox in 1980 (see page 39). Rinderpest could be the next disease to go, with the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization predicting that this devastating viral infection in cattle could be gone a year from now. Yet dreams of eradicating most infectious diseases, including measles and malaria, remain as far away as ever. Now only polio is still targeted, and even this has been called too optimistic by some. Viruses and bacteria lurk in too many hard-to-reach places to kill them all. The answer is to find ways to stop them killing us, so we can coexist in peace. ■
Uncertainty rules DESPITE our attempts to define, measure and make life black and white, the world turns out to be unexpectedly vague (see page 46). It’s not just that things we think of as well-defined are actually a series of approximations, like the metre. More profoundly, vagueness is a key part of communication: unless we get to grips with it, robots will never “talk” naturally to people and the much-hyped semantic web won’t work at all. Just as well, then, that we have finally started to think precisely about vagueness. ■
What’s hot on NewScientist.com PHYSICS Journeys to Earth’s extremes From Antarctica to the Chilean Andes, via the Atacama desert, mount Wilson observatory in California and the Large Hadron Collider, Anil Ananthaswamy’s unique travelogue attempts to unlock the secrets of the universe ZOOLOGGER Mummy, can I have some more carrion soup? Squeamish readers, look away now: the life cycle of the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides is a tale of
decaying corpses, regurgitation and excellent parenting skills TECHNOLOGY Baby robot gets an upgrade See smarter legs, more sensitive hands and a better brain developed for a toddler-sized robot – it’s designed to test theories about the development of real children LIFE For a long life, smile like you mean it If you want to live to a ripe old age, then smile – and make sure
you don’t fake it. Pro baseball players in the 1950s who genuinely beamed in their official photographs tended to outlive more sullen-looking sportsmen and those who put on fake smiles TECHNOLOGY Sneaky app raises spectre of zombie cellphones Researchers have made a weatherforecasting app for the iPhone and Android phones that secretly passes them a user’s location and phone number. Criminals could use the same approach to take control of your
cellphone, harvest its address book, and even send emails ENVIRONMENT Which climate changes can be blamed on humans? Our “fingerprints” have been detected on a variety of aspects of the climate, from rainfall to the salt content of the oceans. We look at the latest evidence from the UK Met Office For video, comment and online debate visit newscientist.com
13 March 2010 | NewScientist | 5