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Latest Hubble snap
AP Photo/Nick Ut
Upfront
California under wildfire CALIFORNIA is burning, again. Eyewitnesses described “raining fire from the sky” and flames racing down a steep hillside “like a freight train” as a raging wildfire left homes in smouldering ruins and forced thousands of people to flee. The fire has destroyed at least 18 houses and a movie set in northern Los Angeles County. Its ferocious power sent so much smoke into the air that firefighting planes had to be grounded at times. “For this time of year, it’s the most extreme fire behaviour I’ve seen in my 32-year career,” county fire chief Daryl Osby said. More than 10,000 homes had been evacuated as New Scientist went to press. A sanctuary for rescued exotic creatures also had to evacuate most of its animals, including Bengal
tigers and a mountain lion. California is going through its worst drought on record, and melting snowpack in the Sierra Nevada may mean even less water will be available in coming years. At least one study has linked the drought to climate change, and we know that global warming is expected to fuel more wildfires in the future. The heat from the wildfires could also be releasing carbon stored in permafrost, fuelling further warming. The wildfire seasons in North America over the last couple of years have been particularly bad. More than 80,000 Canadians were forced to leave their homes when wildfires engulfed Fort McMurray in May, for example.
Special delivery
and improve drone technology. The coming tests will be the first of their kind in the UK. The trials will look at systems that allow drones to be controlled out of their operator’s line of sight, something not currently permitted under CAA rules. The tests will also look at how drones can be flown safely over densely populated areas, and investigate sensors to help avoid obstacles. Last week Amazon also announced a service called Flex, which allows anyone to earn money by delivering packages for the company.
–Raining fire–
The future of Zika
worst-case scenario, but it is impossible to say how much better reality might be. In another study, Neil Ferguson at Imperial College London and his team have calculated that the epidemic will be largely over in three years (Science, doi.org/ bm4b). However, if Zika continues spreading among people who aren’t immune, they say it could explode again after 10 years. As New Scientist went to press, two people in Florida were expected to be confirmed as the first to catch Zika from mosquitoes in the US.
THE Zika epidemic could be over in three years. By then, 93.4 million people may have caught the virus, including some 1.65 million women of childbearing age – and infection during pregnancy can cause birth defects.
Novel infections spread unhindered until so many people have been exposed that the virus is unlikely to encounter susceptible people. This point is the threshold of “herd immunity”. Alex Perkins at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana and his colleagues have modelled how many people would get Zika before it burned out in local areas of Central and South America (Nature Microbiology, doi.org/ bm39). “We wanted to know how much of a given population will have been infected when herd immunity kicks in,” says Perkins. Their figure of 93.4 million is a 6 | NewScientist | 30 July 2016
NASA, ESA, and J. Lotz (STScI)
“If Zika virus hangs on after this epidemic, it could explode again after 10 years”
THERE’S a buzz in the air. Amazon is about to start UK trials to make its home delivery drones safer. As part of its Prime Air initiative, the technology giant has been developing drones that can deliver its parcels to private addresses over short distances. It wants to get parcels to a customer’s door within 30 minutes. This week Amazon announced that it will work with the government and the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to develop better safety regulations
Latest Hubble snap IT’S galaxies galore in this latest deep-field picture from the Hubble Space Telescope, a series of observations that concentrate on a tiny patch of sky to reveal the majesty of the distant universe. Hubble took this image by gazing far out into the cosmos at the galaxy cluster Abell S1063 – the bright smudge visible at the centre – which contains hundreds of galaxies. –Looking back in time– The cluster is 4 billion light
For new stories every day, visit newscientist.com/news
Robot shooter
years away from Earth. And if that wasn’t far enough, its massive gravity helps Hubble to see even further into the universe by warping and magnifying the light from galaxies behind it. This warping is evident in the strange lines that seem to arc around the cluster. These are the distorted images of ordinary galaxies, bent by gravitational lensing. The images form partial Einstein rings, an effect named after the famous physicist who predicted them. The most distant galaxy in this image appears as it did just 1 billion years after the big bang.
WATCH out Mars, Curiosity is firing at will. NASA’s rover, which has been exploring the Red Planet since 2012, can now decide for itself which rocks to zap with its ChemCam laser. ChemCam is an instrument designed to study the chemical make-up of rocks and soil on Mars by shooting them with a laser and studying the gas released on impact. Researchers on Earth had been telling Curiosity where to fire, but the rover has now been upgraded to select its own targets. Its new autonomous software
HIV surge in teens
60 Seconds
analyses images from its navigation camera to spot potential targets. If the software picks out a particularly interesting rock, Curiosity can drive over and zap it without having to wait for the images to be transmitted back to Earth. Curiosity’s new freedom will come in handy when Mars is out of communication with Earth, or when Mars orbiters are otherwise occupied and unable to relay messages to the rover. Fortunately, there aren’t any humans on the planet, so we don’t have to worry about unleashing a trigger-happy robot.
Mars mission on the ocean floor
NASA/Karl Shrives
HIV is on the rise in the young. AQUANAUTS away. On 21 July, six astronauts splashed down into the Last week, attendees at the AIDS Aquarius Reef Base, a research 2016 annual meeting in Durban, station 19 metres below the waves South Africa, heard how many off the coast of Florida. The team’s young carriers caught the virus 16-day mission, called NASA Extreme from their mothers while still in Environment Mission Operations the womb. These teens are now (NEEMO), will test gadgets and skills coming of age. for a future trip to Mars. The most reliable data on this It’s the 21st mission of its kind trend comes from South Africa. since NEEMO began in 2001. This Findings presented at the time, communications between conference reveal that the the crew and ground control imitate number of people in the the 15-minute delay between Mars country aged between 10 and and Earth. The close quarters of 19 who have HIV has increased the Aquarius station mimic the 16-fold – to 237,987 – since the conditions of a spacecraft. mid-2000s. The pattern is likely The aquanauts reached the base to be similar in many other using scuba gear and negotiated countries, particularly those airlocks to get inside. Now inside, in sub-Saharan Africa that also have high rates of HIV. Mhairi Maskew of the University of Witwatersrand in Cape Town says that the number of South Africans between the ages of 15 and 19 with HIV will peak by around 2019. Worryingly, anti-HIV regimes don’t seem to be as effective in this age group. “The reason for this is presumably multifaceted,” says Maskew. It could be that the virus becomes resistant to the drugs after the children have taken them for a decade, but adolescents may also be less likely –The new aquanauts-– to take all their pills regularly.
they are trialling an experimental hands-free headset called mobiPV that streams video back to shore – similar kit might be useful on Mars. On the crew’s first full day, they tried out a miniature DNA sequencing device, which NASA hopes to use on the International Space Station. Other medical experiments involve technology that could regenerate chromosome telomeres – which shorten with age – and remote medicine techniques to use when astronauts are far from home. The aquanauts will also swim out of the base to simulate spacewalks and pilot underwater vehicles. Their first challenge will be to build a coral nursery to practice low-gravity construction.
Get moving Being at your desk shouldn’t mean working yourself to death. Doing at least 1 hour of cycling, brisk walking or other physical activity a day may counteract the increased risk of mortality associated with sitting for 8 hours a day, a study of over a million people finds (The Lancet, 10.1016/S0140-6736(16)30370-1).
Rat-killing race The Pied Piper is coming to New Zealand. Prime Minister John Key this week vowed to rid the country of rats, stoats and possums by 2050, pledging NZ$28 million over the next four years to get the effort started. The aim is to save the 25 million native birds, including kiwis, killed each year by introduced vermin.
No deal on ozone fix Emissions of hydrofluorocarbons – substitutes for ozone-eating CFCs, but greenhouse gases in their own right – will keep rising for at least the next five years. UN talks in Vienna, Austria, last week discussed a ceiling on their use, but failed to agree a date for it to be imposed.
Solar odyssey complete It finally did it. By landing in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, Solar Impulse became the first plane to fly around the world on solar power alone. The 42,000-kilometre trip was divided into 17 legs and took more than a year, using 17,000 solar cells to power motors for day flying and charge batteries for use at night.
Teen brain upgrade MRI scans have revealed the final “edit” of the brain before adulthood for the first time. Scans of 300 young people show how the brain’s cortex layer thins down – probably as a result of pruning out unwanted connections between neurons. At the same time, important neurons gain a sheath that helps them transmit signals more quickly (PNAS, doi.org/bm38).
30 July 2016 | NewScientist | 7
Upfront
California under wildfire CALIFORNIA is burning, again. Eyewitnesses described “raining fire from the sky” and flames racing down a steep hillside “like a freight train” as a raging wildfire left homes in smouldering ruins and forced thousands of people to flee. The fire has destroyed at least 18 houses and a movie set in northern Los Angeles County. Its ferocious power sent so much smoke into the air that firefighting planes had to be grounded at times. “For this time of year, it’s the most extreme fire behaviour I’ve seen in my 32-year career,” county fire chief Daryl Osby said. More than 10,000 homes had been evacuated as New Scientist went to press. A sanctuary for rescued exotic creatures also had to evacuate most of its animals, including Bengal
tigers and a mountain lion. California is going through its worst drought on record, and melting snowpack in the Sierra Nevada may mean even less water will be available in coming years. At least one study has linked the drought to climate change, and we know that global warming is expected to fuel more wildfires in the future. The heat from the wildfires could also be releasing carbon stored in permafrost, fuelling further warming. The wildfire seasons in North America over the last couple of years have been particularly bad. More than 80,000 Canadians were forced to leave their homes when wildfires engulfed Fort McMurray in May, for example.
Special delivery
and improve drone technology. The coming tests will be the first of their kind in the UK. The trials will look at systems that allow drones to be controlled out of their operator’s line of sight, something not currently permitted under CAA rules. The tests will also look at how drones can be flown safely over densely populated areas, and investigate sensors to help avoid obstacles. Last week Amazon also announced a service called Flex, which allows anyone to earn money by delivering packages for the company.
–Raining fire–
The future of Zika
worst-case scenario, but it is impossible to say how much better reality might be. In another study, Neil Ferguson at Imperial College London and his team have calculated that the epidemic will be largely over in three years (Science, doi.org/ bm4b). However, if Zika continues spreading among people who aren’t immune, they say it could explode again after 10 years. As New Scientist went to press, two people in Florida were expected to be confirmed as the first to catch Zika from mosquitoes in the US.
THE Zika epidemic could be over in three years. By then, 93.4 million people may have caught the virus, including some 1.65 million women of childbearing age – and infection during pregnancy can cause birth defects.
Novel infections spread unhindered until so many people have been exposed that the virus is unlikely to encounter susceptible people. This point is the threshold of “herd immunity”. Alex Perkins at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana and his colleagues have modelled how many people would get Zika before it burned out in local areas of Central and South America (Nature Microbiology, doi.org/ bm39). “We wanted to know how much of a given population will have been infected when herd immunity kicks in,” says Perkins. Their figure of 93.4 million is a 6 | NewScientist | 30 July 2016
NASA, ESA, and J. Lotz (STScI)
“If Zika virus hangs on after this epidemic, it could explode again after 10 years”
THERE’S a buzz in the air. Amazon is about to start UK trials to make its home delivery drones safer. As part of its Prime Air initiative, the technology giant has been developing drones that can deliver its parcels to private addresses over short distances. It wants to get parcels to a customer’s door within 30 minutes. This week Amazon announced that it will work with the government and the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to develop better safety regulations
Latest Hubble snap IT’S galaxies galore in this latest deep-field picture from the Hubble Space Telescope, a series of observations that concentrate on a tiny patch of sky to reveal the majesty of the distant universe. Hubble took this image by gazing far out into the cosmos at the galaxy cluster Abell S1063 – the bright smudge visible at the centre – which contains hundreds of galaxies. –Looking back in time– The cluster is 4 billion light
For new stories every day, visit newscientist.com/news
Robot shooter
years away from Earth. And if that wasn’t far enough, its massive gravity helps Hubble to see even further into the universe by warping and magnifying the light from galaxies behind it. This warping is evident in the strange lines that seem to arc around the cluster. These are the distorted images of ordinary galaxies, bent by gravitational lensing. The images form partial Einstein rings, an effect named after the famous physicist who predicted them. The most distant galaxy in this image appears as it did just 1 billion years after the big bang.
WATCH out Mars, Curiosity is firing at will. NASA’s rover, which has been exploring the Red Planet since 2012, can now decide for itself which rocks to zap with its ChemCam laser. ChemCam is an instrument designed to study the chemical make-up of rocks and soil on Mars by shooting them with a laser and studying the gas released on impact. Researchers on Earth had been telling Curiosity where to fire, but the rover has now been upgraded to select its own targets. Its new autonomous software
HIV surge in teens
60 Seconds
analyses images from its navigation camera to spot potential targets. If the software picks out a particularly interesting rock, Curiosity can drive over and zap it without having to wait for the images to be transmitted back to Earth. Curiosity’s new freedom will come in handy when Mars is out of communication with Earth, or when Mars orbiters are otherwise occupied and unable to relay messages to the rover. Fortunately, there aren’t any humans on the planet, so we don’t have to worry about unleashing a trigger-happy robot.
Mars mission on the ocean floor
NASA/Karl Shrives
HIV is on the rise in the young. AQUANAUTS away. On 21 July, six astronauts splashed down into the Last week, attendees at the AIDS Aquarius Reef Base, a research 2016 annual meeting in Durban, station 19 metres below the waves South Africa, heard how many off the coast of Florida. The team’s young carriers caught the virus 16-day mission, called NASA Extreme from their mothers while still in Environment Mission Operations the womb. These teens are now (NEEMO), will test gadgets and skills coming of age. for a future trip to Mars. The most reliable data on this It’s the 21st mission of its kind trend comes from South Africa. since NEEMO began in 2001. This Findings presented at the time, communications between conference reveal that the the crew and ground control imitate number of people in the the 15-minute delay between Mars country aged between 10 and and Earth. The close quarters of 19 who have HIV has increased the Aquarius station mimic the 16-fold – to 237,987 – since the conditions of a spacecraft. mid-2000s. The pattern is likely The aquanauts reached the base to be similar in many other using scuba gear and negotiated countries, particularly those airlocks to get inside. Now inside, in sub-Saharan Africa that also have high rates of HIV. Mhairi Maskew of the University of Witwatersrand in Cape Town says that the number of South Africans between the ages of 15 and 19 with HIV will peak by around 2019. Worryingly, anti-HIV regimes don’t seem to be as effective in this age group. “The reason for this is presumably multifaceted,” says Maskew. It could be that the virus becomes resistant to the drugs after the children have taken them for a decade, but adolescents may also be less likely –The new aquanauts-– to take all their pills regularly.
they are trialling an experimental hands-free headset called mobiPV that streams video back to shore – similar kit might be useful on Mars. On the crew’s first full day, they tried out a miniature DNA sequencing device, which NASA hopes to use on the International Space Station. Other medical experiments involve technology that could regenerate chromosome telomeres – which shorten with age – and remote medicine techniques to use when astronauts are far from home. The aquanauts will also swim out of the base to simulate spacewalks and pilot underwater vehicles. Their first challenge will be to build a coral nursery to practice low-gravity construction.
Get moving Being at your desk shouldn’t mean working yourself to death. Doing at least 1 hour of cycling, brisk walking or other physical activity a day may counteract the increased risk of mortality associated with sitting for 8 hours a day, a study of over a million people finds (The Lancet, 10.1016/S0140-6736(16)30370-1).
Rat-killing race The Pied Piper is coming to New Zealand. Prime Minister John Key this week vowed to rid the country of rats, stoats and possums by 2050, pledging NZ$28 million over the next four years to get the effort started. The aim is to save the 25 million native birds, including kiwis, killed each year by introduced vermin.
No deal on ozone fix Emissions of hydrofluorocarbons – substitutes for ozone-eating CFCs, but greenhouse gases in their own right – will keep rising for at least the next five years. UN talks in Vienna, Austria, last week discussed a ceiling on their use, but failed to agree a date for it to be imposed.
Solar odyssey complete It finally did it. By landing in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, Solar Impulse became the first plane to fly around the world on solar power alone. The 42,000-kilometre trip was divided into 17 legs and took more than a year, using 17,000 solar cells to power motors for day flying and charge batteries for use at night.
Teen brain upgrade MRI scans have revealed the final “edit” of the brain before adulthood for the first time. Scans of 300 young people show how the brain’s cortex layer thins down – probably as a result of pruning out unwanted connections between neurons. At the same time, important neurons gain a sheath that helps them transmit signals more quickly (PNAS, doi.org/bm38).
30 July 2016 | NewScientist | 7