- Email: [email protected]
Why 0.5 °C matters
For new stories every day, visit newscientist.com/news
CALL it a gold rush. Entrepreneur Craig Venter is teaming up with drug firm AstraZeneca to analyse the genomes of 2 million people, in an attempt to identify new targets for drugs to treat cancer, lung and heart disease.
simon Clay/ Getty
Gene hunt is go
60 Seconds
Lions by the planeload Thirty-three circus lions in Peru and Colombia could be airlifted to a sanctuary in South Africa this week. Peru and Colombia now ban the use of wild animals in circuses, but the lions’ move depends on the campaign group Animal Defenders International being able to raise the money via on an online appeal.
“What’s been done before are small population studies. Our new project is on an industrial scale”
Europe stands sentinel
esa/Nasa/iriss/DTU Space
The project will use sequencing equipment developed by Venter’s company Human Longevity. Previous searches for gene variants linked with common EU mulls maggots diseases have been disappointing, SUSTAINABLE farming’s best often finding few genes that have friend could be… maggots. Fed on any major impact. We have only manure, they could replace much managed to find one gene that is of the feed given to pigs, chickens linked to obesity, for example. and fish. But there is a fly in the But a spokeswoman for ointment: the practice would be AstraZeneca says that because illegal in the European Union. sequencing is now cheaper and Current farming methods faster, it will be possible to extract look unsustainable if we are to fine detail hitherto hidden in our feed the rising global population. DNA. “What’s been done before Some 14 per cent of the world’s sea has been small population fish catch is already fed to farm studies,” she says. “Our new animals. In South America, the project is on an industrial scale.” AstraZeneca will supply genetic “Providing we can show it’s material from 500,000 people safe, insects fed on waste in its own disease database, and have real potential as food Human Longevity already has for farmed animals” a large database of genome sequences and health records. growing demand for soya-based The rest will be collected and feed is driving deforestation and sequenced over the next decade. undermining the production of food crops. “Providing we can demonstrate it’s safe, I think insects fed on waste have real potential,” says Elaine Fitches of Fera Science in Sand Hutton, UK. She has coordinated a three-year study of the issue called Proteinsect, the results of which were presented in Brussels this week. Fitches’ team compared farm animals fed housefly larvae meal with others given conventional feeds in a series of trials lasting several weeks. They found they –A natural light show– could substitute larvae for
–Greener grub needed–
between 20 and 50 per cent of conventional feed in the diets of Atlantic salmon, piglets and chicken, with little difference in growth rates and body weight. The study’s report calls for a review of the EU ban on feeding insects to animals bred for human consumption. But Fitches says more research on safety is needed before the ban can be lifted.
Why 0.5 °C matters SOME 175 governments signed the Paris climate agreement last Friday to try to limit warming to below 2 °C – and if possible 1.5 °C. But no one knows what difference that half degree would make. Now a study estimates that it could have huge consequences for coral reefs, crop yields and fresh water availability. By analysing climate models used in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report, a group of researchers found “hotspots” that would be disproportionately affected by the half-degree rise (Earth System Dynamics, doi.org/bfnt). For the Mediterranean this means an 8 per cent difference in water availability. For the tropics, it means a drop in crop yields of 40 per cent as opposed to 25 per cent, and heatwaves lasting up to three months rather than two.
The European Space Agency has launched a second radar satellite into the EU’s Sentinel constellation. Sentinel-1B and the existing 1A craft will map Earth every six days, collecting data on problems such as large-scale subsidence and icebergs in shipping lanes.
Just say maybe? It’s a world of two halves. At a UN meeting on drug policy last week, Canada’s health minister reiterated her party’s pledge to decriminalise cannabis. Soon after, a presidential candidate in the Philippines vowed on TV to kill his children if they took drugs. For now, the UN’s official stance remains that all drug use that is not for medical or scientific purposes be outlawed.
Pass the olive oil A Mediterranean diet really is good for you. When people with heart disease eat a diet high in fruit, vegetables and fish, they are less likely to have a heart attack or stroke, a study of 15,000 people worldwide found. Eating more of these foods influenced their health more than reducing unhealthy items such as sugary drinks (European Heart Journal, doi.org/bfns).
Eagle eyes on Beagle Enhance! At last, we can spy on the Beagle 2 Mars lander in greater detail. Lost in 2003, it was spotted on the planet’s surface last year by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Advanced image processing at University College London has now made out its Y-shaped profile.
30 April 2016 | NewScientist | 7
CALL it a gold rush. Entrepreneur Craig Venter is teaming up with drug firm AstraZeneca to analyse the genomes of 2 million people, in an attempt to identify new targets for drugs to treat cancer, lung and heart disease.
simon Clay/ Getty
Gene hunt is go
60 Seconds
Lions by the planeload Thirty-three circus lions in Peru and Colombia could be airlifted to a sanctuary in South Africa this week. Peru and Colombia now ban the use of wild animals in circuses, but the lions’ move depends on the campaign group Animal Defenders International being able to raise the money via on an online appeal.
“What’s been done before are small population studies. Our new project is on an industrial scale”
Europe stands sentinel
esa/Nasa/iriss/DTU Space
The project will use sequencing equipment developed by Venter’s company Human Longevity. Previous searches for gene variants linked with common EU mulls maggots diseases have been disappointing, SUSTAINABLE farming’s best often finding few genes that have friend could be… maggots. Fed on any major impact. We have only manure, they could replace much managed to find one gene that is of the feed given to pigs, chickens linked to obesity, for example. and fish. But there is a fly in the But a spokeswoman for ointment: the practice would be AstraZeneca says that because illegal in the European Union. sequencing is now cheaper and Current farming methods faster, it will be possible to extract look unsustainable if we are to fine detail hitherto hidden in our feed the rising global population. DNA. “What’s been done before Some 14 per cent of the world’s sea has been small population fish catch is already fed to farm studies,” she says. “Our new animals. In South America, the project is on an industrial scale.” AstraZeneca will supply genetic “Providing we can show it’s material from 500,000 people safe, insects fed on waste in its own disease database, and have real potential as food Human Longevity already has for farmed animals” a large database of genome sequences and health records. growing demand for soya-based The rest will be collected and feed is driving deforestation and sequenced over the next decade. undermining the production of food crops. “Providing we can demonstrate it’s safe, I think insects fed on waste have real potential,” says Elaine Fitches of Fera Science in Sand Hutton, UK. She has coordinated a three-year study of the issue called Proteinsect, the results of which were presented in Brussels this week. Fitches’ team compared farm animals fed housefly larvae meal with others given conventional feeds in a series of trials lasting several weeks. They found they –A natural light show– could substitute larvae for
–Greener grub needed–
between 20 and 50 per cent of conventional feed in the diets of Atlantic salmon, piglets and chicken, with little difference in growth rates and body weight. The study’s report calls for a review of the EU ban on feeding insects to animals bred for human consumption. But Fitches says more research on safety is needed before the ban can be lifted.
Why 0.5 °C matters SOME 175 governments signed the Paris climate agreement last Friday to try to limit warming to below 2 °C – and if possible 1.5 °C. But no one knows what difference that half degree would make. Now a study estimates that it could have huge consequences for coral reefs, crop yields and fresh water availability. By analysing climate models used in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report, a group of researchers found “hotspots” that would be disproportionately affected by the half-degree rise (Earth System Dynamics, doi.org/bfnt). For the Mediterranean this means an 8 per cent difference in water availability. For the tropics, it means a drop in crop yields of 40 per cent as opposed to 25 per cent, and heatwaves lasting up to three months rather than two.
The European Space Agency has launched a second radar satellite into the EU’s Sentinel constellation. Sentinel-1B and the existing 1A craft will map Earth every six days, collecting data on problems such as large-scale subsidence and icebergs in shipping lanes.
Just say maybe? It’s a world of two halves. At a UN meeting on drug policy last week, Canada’s health minister reiterated her party’s pledge to decriminalise cannabis. Soon after, a presidential candidate in the Philippines vowed on TV to kill his children if they took drugs. For now, the UN’s official stance remains that all drug use that is not for medical or scientific purposes be outlawed.
Pass the olive oil A Mediterranean diet really is good for you. When people with heart disease eat a diet high in fruit, vegetables and fish, they are less likely to have a heart attack or stroke, a study of 15,000 people worldwide found. Eating more of these foods influenced their health more than reducing unhealthy items such as sugary drinks (European Heart Journal, doi.org/bfns).
Eagle eyes on Beagle Enhance! At last, we can spy on the Beagle 2 Mars lander in greater detail. Lost in 2003, it was spotted on the planet’s surface last year by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Advanced image processing at University College London has now made out its Y-shaped profile.
30 April 2016 | NewScientist | 7