- Email: [email protected]
Greenland ablaze
ALYSSA SCHUKAR/EYEVINE
UPFRONT
Leaked US climate report AMERICANS are already feeling the effects of climate change, according to a leaked US report. Since 1980, the average temperature in the US has risen significantly, with the past few decades the warmest for 1500 years. The report, written by scientists from 13 federal agencies, is still awaiting approval from the Trump administration before it can be officially published, but a draft copy was obtained by The New York Times. “Evidence for a changing climate abounds, from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans,” say the authors in the draft report, with thousands of studies contributing to an irrefutable body of evidence. “Many lines of evidence demonstrate that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse
(heat-trapping) gases, are primarily responsible for recent observed climate change,” they say. The report points out that the ability to attribute some extreme weather events to climate change is improving. It says there is relatively strong evidence that humans contributed to the European heatwave in 2003 and the record temperatures in Australia in 2013. Globally, it is extremely likely that humans are responsible for over half the mean temperature increase since 1951, the authors say. The leak comes as it was reported by The Guardian on Tuesday that senior officials at the US Department of Agriculture are now instructing staff to speak about “weather extremes” instead of climate change.
Drug resistance
between 2007 and 2013 has found a fall in the number of antimalarials prescribed for people with a fever, but a rise in antibiotic use (American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, doi.org/cbmw). Non-malarial fevers can be treated with fluids and painkillers, but less than 25 per cent of people get this option. There is a high risk that antibiotic resistance could emerge rapidly if antibiotics are overused, says Clare Chandler at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
–The needle is rising–
Deleting past sins
protection laws will face stronger penalties. Firms responsible for a serious breach could be forced to pay up to £17 million or 4 per cent of global turnover. The current maximum fine is £500,000. “The bill will give people more control over their data, require more consent for its use, and prepare Britain for Brexit,” said Matt Hancock, UK digital minister, in a statement. “We welcome the government’s intention to bring European data protection laws into UK law,” said Javier Ruiz, policy director at Open Rights Group.
SOME things can be unsaid. People in the UK might soon be able to get all record of their embarrassing social media posts wiped from existence, according to proposals outlined on Monday.
The new bill would transfer the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation into UK law, as well as making a few additions and amendments. The proposals include provisions to make companies get explicit consent from people to process any of their sensitive personal data and make it easier to withdraw that consent. They will also expand the existing definition of personal data to include IP addresses, cookies and even DNA, and make it easier for people to find out what information a company holds about them. Companies that breach data 4 | NewScientist | 12 August 2017
COPERNICUS SENTINAL -2B/PIERRE MARKUSE/ESA
“The new law would expand the existing definition of personal data to include IP addresses and even DNA”
TESTING for malaria has led to a drop in unnecessary prescriptions for malaria drugs, but may have bumped up antibiotic use instead. Rapid malaria tests have recently become more available as part of the World Health Organization’s drive to reduce the overuse of antimalarial drugs, which can foster drugresistant malaria. Now an analysis of 500,000 medical visits in Tanzania, Ghana, Uganda, Nigeria, Cameroon and Afghanistan
Greenland ablaze THE largest wildfire ever detected by satellites in Greenland continues to spread. Wildfires are extremely rare in the country, and it is not clear that the local authorities have the resources necessary to deal with the blaze. “It certainly is the biggest one in the satellite record,” says remote-sensing scientist Stef Lhermitte of Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. –Land of ice and fire– Most of Greenland is covered
For new stories every day, visit newscientist.com/news
Google sacking
by ice up to 3 kilometres thick, but there is some tundra around the coastline. The wildfire is burning on tundra in the west of the country, near the small town of Sisimiut. Based on the colour of the smoke and the fact that the fire is spreading slowly, Jessica McCarty of Miami University in Ohio thinks that what is burning is not just the sparse surface vegetation, but also the peat underneath. According to local news reports, there are fears that with no rainfall expected, the fire could keep burning for a long time to come.
A GOOGLE employee’s 10-page memo criticising the firm’s efforts to increase workplace diversity has caused a stir in Silicon Valley. The memo was posted to an internal company discussion board last week by a software engineer, and shared widely. It suggests that Google’s efforts to promote gender diversity ignore biological differences between men and women. Such differences mean women have a stronger interest in people than in things, the author argues, which means they generally prefer jobs that
60 SECONDS
involve people rather than coding. He also says men have a higher drive for status, which is why they have more leadership roles. While it has historically been claimed that male and female brains are different, there is little in the way of modern neuroscience to support this idea. The public outcry in response to the document comes at an awkward time for Google, which is under investigation by the US Department of Labor for violating federal law by having gender disparities in salaries. On Monday, Google announced the employee had been fired.
Engineered salmon now on sale
THE “three-parent baby” technique offered by a New York fertility clinic should no longer be marketed, says the US Food and Drug Administration. Last year, New Scientist revealed that John Zhang of the New Hope Fertility Center had used his own mitochondrial replacement technique to create an embryo from a couple’s egg and sperm, plus mitochondrial DNA from another woman. This meant the couple didn’t pass on a fatal genetic mitochondrial disorder to the resulting child. Because the FDA had denied Zhang’s application for a licence to perform this procedure in people, the embryo was created in the US, but implanted into the mother’s uterus in Mexico. Now Mary Malarkey of the FDA has written to Zhang, saying that “such human subject research cannot legally be performed in the United States”. The websites of Zhang’s clinic and his biotech company Darwin Life promote the procedure as “the first proven treatment for certain genetic disorders” and “a cure for mitochondrial disease”. But mitochondrial replacement therapies cannot be marketed without a valid licence, says the FDA.
IT HAS taken 25 years, but after repeated controversies and much opposition from environmentalists, genetically modified salmon have made it to the marketplace. AquaBounty Technologies in Maynard, Massachusetts, announced last week that it has sold 4.5 tonnes of GM salmon fillets to unnamed customers in Canada, where the authorities last year approved the produce for sale as food. “The sale and discussions with potential buyers clearly demonstrate that customers want our fish,” said Ronald Stotish, chief executive of AquaBounty, in a statement. The engineered Atlantic salmon are equipped with a growth hormone gene from chinook salmon that PAUL DARROW/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX/EYEVINE
3-parent warning
dramatically increases how fast they grow. A second gene added from another fish, the ocean pout, accelerates growth by keeping the hormone gene on permanently. AquaBounty says the salmon grow twice as fast as typical salmon and consume 20 to 25 per cent less food per gram of new flesh. But the salmon, the first GM animal to go on sale in the world, has faced fierce resistance from environmental groups. They fear that any escapees from the tanks where the fish are reared on Prince Edward Island in eastern Canada would upset natural ecosystems by breeding with native salmon. The company says this shouldn’t happen because the fish are rendered sterile.
Hunting cosmic waves The LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) detector first heard the echo of two black holes colliding in 2015. Now, the Virgo detector in Italy has joined LIGO in the hunt for gravitational waves that warp space-time. Adding a planned third detector will help better pinpoint where the wavemaking collisions originate.
Trump’s Paris exit Last week, the US sent the UN official notification of its intention to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change as soon as possible. The official rules of withdrawal mean the US must stay in the pact until at least 2020, and the UN secretary general says the US would be welcomed back if it changed its mind in future.
Catching cancer in time If your genes say you are likely to get cancer young, can you do anything about it? A study suggests annual whole-body MRI scans can catch tumours while they are still curable. Scans of 30 people at high genetic risk identified 16 hidden tumours – three of which were new cancers discovered in time to treat them (JAMA Oncology, doi.org/cbms).
Early-death divide People in northern England are 20 per cent more likely to die before the age of 75 than those in the south. An analysis of mortality data found that deaths between the ages of 25 and 44 have been rising in northern England since the mid1990s ( Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, doi.org/cbmt).
Guide dog training Puppies receiving the most maternal care grow into adult dogs that lack the self-control and problem-solving ability of a successful guide dog – perhaps in part because overmothered pups aren’t sufficiently challenged early in life (PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1704303114).
–Bulk buy– 12 August 2017 | NewScientist | 5
UPFRONT
Leaked US climate report AMERICANS are already feeling the effects of climate change, according to a leaked US report. Since 1980, the average temperature in the US has risen significantly, with the past few decades the warmest for 1500 years. The report, written by scientists from 13 federal agencies, is still awaiting approval from the Trump administration before it can be officially published, but a draft copy was obtained by The New York Times. “Evidence for a changing climate abounds, from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans,” say the authors in the draft report, with thousands of studies contributing to an irrefutable body of evidence. “Many lines of evidence demonstrate that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse
(heat-trapping) gases, are primarily responsible for recent observed climate change,” they say. The report points out that the ability to attribute some extreme weather events to climate change is improving. It says there is relatively strong evidence that humans contributed to the European heatwave in 2003 and the record temperatures in Australia in 2013. Globally, it is extremely likely that humans are responsible for over half the mean temperature increase since 1951, the authors say. The leak comes as it was reported by The Guardian on Tuesday that senior officials at the US Department of Agriculture are now instructing staff to speak about “weather extremes” instead of climate change.
Drug resistance
between 2007 and 2013 has found a fall in the number of antimalarials prescribed for people with a fever, but a rise in antibiotic use (American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, doi.org/cbmw). Non-malarial fevers can be treated with fluids and painkillers, but less than 25 per cent of people get this option. There is a high risk that antibiotic resistance could emerge rapidly if antibiotics are overused, says Clare Chandler at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
–The needle is rising–
Deleting past sins
protection laws will face stronger penalties. Firms responsible for a serious breach could be forced to pay up to £17 million or 4 per cent of global turnover. The current maximum fine is £500,000. “The bill will give people more control over their data, require more consent for its use, and prepare Britain for Brexit,” said Matt Hancock, UK digital minister, in a statement. “We welcome the government’s intention to bring European data protection laws into UK law,” said Javier Ruiz, policy director at Open Rights Group.
SOME things can be unsaid. People in the UK might soon be able to get all record of their embarrassing social media posts wiped from existence, according to proposals outlined on Monday.
The new bill would transfer the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation into UK law, as well as making a few additions and amendments. The proposals include provisions to make companies get explicit consent from people to process any of their sensitive personal data and make it easier to withdraw that consent. They will also expand the existing definition of personal data to include IP addresses, cookies and even DNA, and make it easier for people to find out what information a company holds about them. Companies that breach data 4 | NewScientist | 12 August 2017
COPERNICUS SENTINAL -2B/PIERRE MARKUSE/ESA
“The new law would expand the existing definition of personal data to include IP addresses and even DNA”
TESTING for malaria has led to a drop in unnecessary prescriptions for malaria drugs, but may have bumped up antibiotic use instead. Rapid malaria tests have recently become more available as part of the World Health Organization’s drive to reduce the overuse of antimalarial drugs, which can foster drugresistant malaria. Now an analysis of 500,000 medical visits in Tanzania, Ghana, Uganda, Nigeria, Cameroon and Afghanistan
Greenland ablaze THE largest wildfire ever detected by satellites in Greenland continues to spread. Wildfires are extremely rare in the country, and it is not clear that the local authorities have the resources necessary to deal with the blaze. “It certainly is the biggest one in the satellite record,” says remote-sensing scientist Stef Lhermitte of Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. –Land of ice and fire– Most of Greenland is covered
For new stories every day, visit newscientist.com/news
Google sacking
by ice up to 3 kilometres thick, but there is some tundra around the coastline. The wildfire is burning on tundra in the west of the country, near the small town of Sisimiut. Based on the colour of the smoke and the fact that the fire is spreading slowly, Jessica McCarty of Miami University in Ohio thinks that what is burning is not just the sparse surface vegetation, but also the peat underneath. According to local news reports, there are fears that with no rainfall expected, the fire could keep burning for a long time to come.
A GOOGLE employee’s 10-page memo criticising the firm’s efforts to increase workplace diversity has caused a stir in Silicon Valley. The memo was posted to an internal company discussion board last week by a software engineer, and shared widely. It suggests that Google’s efforts to promote gender diversity ignore biological differences between men and women. Such differences mean women have a stronger interest in people than in things, the author argues, which means they generally prefer jobs that
60 SECONDS
involve people rather than coding. He also says men have a higher drive for status, which is why they have more leadership roles. While it has historically been claimed that male and female brains are different, there is little in the way of modern neuroscience to support this idea. The public outcry in response to the document comes at an awkward time for Google, which is under investigation by the US Department of Labor for violating federal law by having gender disparities in salaries. On Monday, Google announced the employee had been fired.
Engineered salmon now on sale
THE “three-parent baby” technique offered by a New York fertility clinic should no longer be marketed, says the US Food and Drug Administration. Last year, New Scientist revealed that John Zhang of the New Hope Fertility Center had used his own mitochondrial replacement technique to create an embryo from a couple’s egg and sperm, plus mitochondrial DNA from another woman. This meant the couple didn’t pass on a fatal genetic mitochondrial disorder to the resulting child. Because the FDA had denied Zhang’s application for a licence to perform this procedure in people, the embryo was created in the US, but implanted into the mother’s uterus in Mexico. Now Mary Malarkey of the FDA has written to Zhang, saying that “such human subject research cannot legally be performed in the United States”. The websites of Zhang’s clinic and his biotech company Darwin Life promote the procedure as “the first proven treatment for certain genetic disorders” and “a cure for mitochondrial disease”. But mitochondrial replacement therapies cannot be marketed without a valid licence, says the FDA.
IT HAS taken 25 years, but after repeated controversies and much opposition from environmentalists, genetically modified salmon have made it to the marketplace. AquaBounty Technologies in Maynard, Massachusetts, announced last week that it has sold 4.5 tonnes of GM salmon fillets to unnamed customers in Canada, where the authorities last year approved the produce for sale as food. “The sale and discussions with potential buyers clearly demonstrate that customers want our fish,” said Ronald Stotish, chief executive of AquaBounty, in a statement. The engineered Atlantic salmon are equipped with a growth hormone gene from chinook salmon that PAUL DARROW/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX/EYEVINE
3-parent warning
dramatically increases how fast they grow. A second gene added from another fish, the ocean pout, accelerates growth by keeping the hormone gene on permanently. AquaBounty says the salmon grow twice as fast as typical salmon and consume 20 to 25 per cent less food per gram of new flesh. But the salmon, the first GM animal to go on sale in the world, has faced fierce resistance from environmental groups. They fear that any escapees from the tanks where the fish are reared on Prince Edward Island in eastern Canada would upset natural ecosystems by breeding with native salmon. The company says this shouldn’t happen because the fish are rendered sterile.
Hunting cosmic waves The LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) detector first heard the echo of two black holes colliding in 2015. Now, the Virgo detector in Italy has joined LIGO in the hunt for gravitational waves that warp space-time. Adding a planned third detector will help better pinpoint where the wavemaking collisions originate.
Trump’s Paris exit Last week, the US sent the UN official notification of its intention to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change as soon as possible. The official rules of withdrawal mean the US must stay in the pact until at least 2020, and the UN secretary general says the US would be welcomed back if it changed its mind in future.
Catching cancer in time If your genes say you are likely to get cancer young, can you do anything about it? A study suggests annual whole-body MRI scans can catch tumours while they are still curable. Scans of 30 people at high genetic risk identified 16 hidden tumours – three of which were new cancers discovered in time to treat them (JAMA Oncology, doi.org/cbms).
Early-death divide People in northern England are 20 per cent more likely to die before the age of 75 than those in the south. An analysis of mortality data found that deaths between the ages of 25 and 44 have been rising in northern England since the mid1990s ( Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, doi.org/cbmt).
Guide dog training Puppies receiving the most maternal care grow into adult dogs that lack the self-control and problem-solving ability of a successful guide dog – perhaps in part because overmothered pups aren’t sufficiently challenged early in life (PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1704303114).
–Bulk buy– 12 August 2017 | NewScientist | 5