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Wake up, Philae
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Mega minds clash
adult cell could be coaxed into becoming a stem cell just by dipping it in a bath of acid for 30 minutes – a potentially huge scientific discovery. Obokata’s team called the technique stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency, or STAP. In a report released on 26 December, the Riken committee concluded that socalled STAP cells originated from contamination by embryonic stem cells, “a fact that refutes all of the main conclusions of the two papers”. The committee says that the contamination is unlikely to have occurred accidentally.
60 Seconds
disciplines of chess, including gold in the “Basque system” event, in which competitors play on two boards simultaneously for only 20 minutes. England rose from tenth place in 2013 to seventh, while the
BEING good at mind games can be something to brag about. Russia has come up trumps in the 2014 World Mind Games, which saw 150 memory athletes competing in 14 variations of five “Hou Yifan won medals in three chess disciplines, intellectual games, including including one played on chess, go and bridge. two boards in 20 minutes” The championships ended in Beijing on 17 December, with Russia topping the medal table US fell from sixth to thirteenth. with six golds, five silver and one All athletes had to prove they bronze. The Chinese team came in were not using cognitivea close second. China’s Hou Yifan enhancing drugs, and spot checks topped the female leader board, were conducted throughout winning medals in three the event.
Bearable lightness? Wake up, Philae # Rosettawatch IF THE Philae lander wakes up and continues studying comet 67P/ Churyumov-Gerasimenko, it will be a happy new year for the European Space Agency. As New Scientist went to press, researchers were awaiting the latest pictures of the lander snapped by the orbiting Rosetta spacecraft. These should reveal the probe’s exact location, which has been a mystery since its rough landing in November. It came to rest in the shadow of a cliff, keeping its solar panels out of full sunlight and leaving ESA uncertain as to whether the probe would be able to continue its mission once its initial power supplies ran out. The team are planning a review
to figure out what went wrong on landing. But the latest analysis of data gathered by Philae during its brief waking time on the comet suggests it is receiving just enough sunlight to survive the cold and is very likely to switch on again by the spring. If Philae does wake up, its awkward landing could actually be a boon for science. Analysis of the images already received has revealed a number of accessible icy surfaces – more than the probe would have been able to see from a flat landing spot. Nearly all of its instruments should get a second chance. “It’s a better spot than we could have wished, in terms of science,” says Rosetta scientist Matt Taylor.
Addicted to swiping? Your brain knows it. People who use their smartphone a lot show greater brain activity in their cortex when their thumbs and fingers are touched (Current Biology, DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2014.11.026). Researchers say such technology may be shaping the way our brain processes touch.
Oz gets science Australia has a minister for science again. When Tony Abbott became prime minister in 2013, he abolished the title, leaving the post unfilled for the first time since 1931. In his first cabinet reshuffle, Abbott has given the portfolio to Ian Macfarlane, who is now minister for science and industry.
Mitochondrial move IVF techniques that let women with faulty mitochondria have a healthy baby by using a mitochondrial donor have moved a step closer with the announcement of the regulations to be voted on by UK MPs. These include the stipulation that children conceived this way will not be able to learn the identity of the donor.
Blind as a sloth Turn down the lights. It seems sloths, and other xenarthrans like armadillos, lack colour-detecting cells in their eyes, making them completely blind in bright light. The condition arose early in this group’s evolution, maybe because early xenarthrans lived underground (Proceedings of the Royal Society B, DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2014.2192).
Ebola booster
ESA/Rosetta/Philae/CIVA
SPACE isn’t the best place to have a malfunction. The European Space Agency’s Gaia telescope has loose fibres that are letting too much light into its giant camera. This will double the errors on most of its measurements of stars. Gaia was launched in December 2013 to map the Milky Way in unprecedented detail using a 1.5 gigapixel camera to take pictures of a billion stars. But in July last year, ESA revealed that too much light was entering the telescope. This will delay the release of scientific data, so ESA set about diagnosing the problem. Now ground tests have determined that the most likely cause of the surfeit of light is loose fibres around the edge of Gaia’s 10-metre-wide sunshield, which is designed to protect the spacecraft’s delicate instruments from the sun’s heat. The stray light shouldn’t affect measurements of the galaxy’s brightest stars, says Anthony Brown at the Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands, but it will double the expected errors on most of the stars in the Milky Way, which are much fainter. In particular, this will make it harder to measure their velocity through space. “It’s a shame, but not a showstopper,” says Brown.
Touchy feely brain
An Ebola vaccine has shown potential. Of 30 Ugandan adults who received the vaccine – a segment of DNA that makes a protein unique to Ebola – 17 produced antibodies to the protein. A more potent version of the vaccine is now being developed (The Lancet, DOI: 10.1016/S01406736(14)62445-4).
3 January 2015 | NewScientist | 7
Mega minds clash
adult cell could be coaxed into becoming a stem cell just by dipping it in a bath of acid for 30 minutes – a potentially huge scientific discovery. Obokata’s team called the technique stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency, or STAP. In a report released on 26 December, the Riken committee concluded that socalled STAP cells originated from contamination by embryonic stem cells, “a fact that refutes all of the main conclusions of the two papers”. The committee says that the contamination is unlikely to have occurred accidentally.
60 Seconds
disciplines of chess, including gold in the “Basque system” event, in which competitors play on two boards simultaneously for only 20 minutes. England rose from tenth place in 2013 to seventh, while the
BEING good at mind games can be something to brag about. Russia has come up trumps in the 2014 World Mind Games, which saw 150 memory athletes competing in 14 variations of five “Hou Yifan won medals in three chess disciplines, intellectual games, including including one played on chess, go and bridge. two boards in 20 minutes” The championships ended in Beijing on 17 December, with Russia topping the medal table US fell from sixth to thirteenth. with six golds, five silver and one All athletes had to prove they bronze. The Chinese team came in were not using cognitivea close second. China’s Hou Yifan enhancing drugs, and spot checks topped the female leader board, were conducted throughout winning medals in three the event.
Bearable lightness? Wake up, Philae # Rosettawatch IF THE Philae lander wakes up and continues studying comet 67P/ Churyumov-Gerasimenko, it will be a happy new year for the European Space Agency. As New Scientist went to press, researchers were awaiting the latest pictures of the lander snapped by the orbiting Rosetta spacecraft. These should reveal the probe’s exact location, which has been a mystery since its rough landing in November. It came to rest in the shadow of a cliff, keeping its solar panels out of full sunlight and leaving ESA uncertain as to whether the probe would be able to continue its mission once its initial power supplies ran out. The team are planning a review
to figure out what went wrong on landing. But the latest analysis of data gathered by Philae during its brief waking time on the comet suggests it is receiving just enough sunlight to survive the cold and is very likely to switch on again by the spring. If Philae does wake up, its awkward landing could actually be a boon for science. Analysis of the images already received has revealed a number of accessible icy surfaces – more than the probe would have been able to see from a flat landing spot. Nearly all of its instruments should get a second chance. “It’s a better spot than we could have wished, in terms of science,” says Rosetta scientist Matt Taylor.
Addicted to swiping? Your brain knows it. People who use their smartphone a lot show greater brain activity in their cortex when their thumbs and fingers are touched (Current Biology, DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2014.11.026). Researchers say such technology may be shaping the way our brain processes touch.
Oz gets science Australia has a minister for science again. When Tony Abbott became prime minister in 2013, he abolished the title, leaving the post unfilled for the first time since 1931. In his first cabinet reshuffle, Abbott has given the portfolio to Ian Macfarlane, who is now minister for science and industry.
Mitochondrial move IVF techniques that let women with faulty mitochondria have a healthy baby by using a mitochondrial donor have moved a step closer with the announcement of the regulations to be voted on by UK MPs. These include the stipulation that children conceived this way will not be able to learn the identity of the donor.
Blind as a sloth Turn down the lights. It seems sloths, and other xenarthrans like armadillos, lack colour-detecting cells in their eyes, making them completely blind in bright light. The condition arose early in this group’s evolution, maybe because early xenarthrans lived underground (Proceedings of the Royal Society B, DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2014.2192).
Ebola booster
ESA/Rosetta/Philae/CIVA
SPACE isn’t the best place to have a malfunction. The European Space Agency’s Gaia telescope has loose fibres that are letting too much light into its giant camera. This will double the errors on most of its measurements of stars. Gaia was launched in December 2013 to map the Milky Way in unprecedented detail using a 1.5 gigapixel camera to take pictures of a billion stars. But in July last year, ESA revealed that too much light was entering the telescope. This will delay the release of scientific data, so ESA set about diagnosing the problem. Now ground tests have determined that the most likely cause of the surfeit of light is loose fibres around the edge of Gaia’s 10-metre-wide sunshield, which is designed to protect the spacecraft’s delicate instruments from the sun’s heat. The stray light shouldn’t affect measurements of the galaxy’s brightest stars, says Anthony Brown at the Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands, but it will double the expected errors on most of the stars in the Milky Way, which are much fainter. In particular, this will make it harder to measure their velocity through space. “It’s a shame, but not a showstopper,” says Brown.
Touchy feely brain
An Ebola vaccine has shown potential. Of 30 Ugandan adults who received the vaccine – a segment of DNA that makes a protein unique to Ebola – 17 produced antibodies to the protein. A more potent version of the vaccine is now being developed (The Lancet, DOI: 10.1016/S01406736(14)62445-4).
3 January 2015 | NewScientist | 7