Can it be ethical to implant false memories?

"I WILL break up my father's empire." The film Inception tells the story of an attempt to influence a businessman's behaviour by using futuristic gadgetry to get inside his mind.That makes for an exciting movie, but there's a simpler way. Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus can condition people just by planting false information on a personality profile. For example, "reminding" someone of that time they drank far too much vodka as a teen may make them...

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Double blasts may have birthed exotic quark stars

FORGET supernovae. Something more exotic and elusive may have been spotted – quark-novae.When a very massive star runs out of fuel, it can explode in a supernova. The blast sometimes leaves a dense stellar remnant made mostly of neutrons.But neutrons are made of even smaller particles called quarks. In theory, the core of a neutron star can get dense enough to undergo an additional explosive transition to create a star made mostly of quarks. Such...

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Swift treatment halves early death risk in HIV babies

TIME is of the essence. Giving HIV-positive infants prompt treatment halves their risk of dying early in childhood. The finding builds on results earlier this year showing that a baby and 14 adults were effectively "cured" by early treatment.In 2005, Mark Cotton of Stellenbosch University in Cape Town, South Africa, began a study of 377 South African infants aged 6 to 12 months. One-third received no antiretroviral drugs until their immune system...

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Whales tan too, basking in the big blue

Whales tan too. Just like us, they do it to protect themselves from powerful ultraviolet radiation.A study of skin samples taken from blue, fin and sperm whales in Mexico's Gulf of California found that the blue whales show the most obvious tanning effects. Samples were collected between January and June from 2007 to 2009.Blue whales migrate annually between the Arctic and the Gulf of California. The team, led by Mark Birch-Machin of Newcastle University,...

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Today on New Scientist

Spouse's voice easy to home in on... and easy to ignore The brain has an uncanny ability to focus on one voice in a sea of chatter. Research on married couples shows that it may be down to familiarity of voiceWalking shark moves with ping-pong paddle fins A new species of epaulette shark, discovered in Indonesia, moves across the ocean floor like a salamander – is this how the first land animals walked?Steep rise in drug harm – opioids the most deadly...

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Spouse's voice easy to home in on… and easy to ignore

Familiarity may breed contempt, and it also makes it easier to ignore our nearest and dearest.The human brain has an uncanny ability to focus on one voice in a sea of chatter, for example, at a party, but exactly how it does so is still up for debate."In the past, people have looked at the acoustic characteristics that enable the brain to do this," says Ingrid Johnsrude at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. "Things like differences...

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Spouse's voice easy to hone in on... and easy to ignore

Familiarity may breed contempt, and it also makes it easier to ignore our nearest and dearest.The human brain has an uncanny ability to focus on one voice in a sea of chatter, for example, at a party, but exactly how it does so is still up for debate."In the past, people have looked at the acoustic characteristics that enable the brain to do this," says Ingrid Johnsrude at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. "Things like differences...

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Walking shark moves with ping-pong paddle fins

Video: Walking shark discovered in Indonesia A new species of walking shark has been spotted hobbling along the ocean floor off the coast of Halmahera island in Indonesia. Named Hemiscyllium halmahera after the island, the epaulette shark takes steps with its paddle-like fins, resulting in a peculiar, wriggling gait.The clumsy footwork, similar to that of salamanders, could be a clue as to how the first land animals got about when they crawled out...

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Steep rise in drug harm – opioids the most deadly

Regular cannabis users shaved 7000 years of healthy life off their cumulative lifespan in 2010. This may sound like a lot but it's just a drop in the ocean compared with the 9.2 million years opioid users lost, given that – at 16 million – 10 times fewer people use opioids than cannabis worldwide.This is just one finding from the biggest epidemiological study of mental and substance-use disorders ever conducted, updating and significantly extending...

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Butterfly-wing electronics converts light to heat

The future of nanoscale electronics might be found on the back of a butterfly. A team led by Eijiro Miyako from the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology used the patterns on the surface of Morpho sulkowskyi butterfly wings as a template to build carbon nanotube networks that can convert light to heat and replicate DNA sequences.But their creation isn't just inspired by nature. It is a real hybrid of butterfly wings fused...

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Out of the shadows: Picking up hints of dark matter

PICK a word to describe dark matter. Mysterious? Elusive? Invisible? One you're not likely to use is "found". But after 80 years of hunting for it, that may be about to change. Several experiments deep underground have recently seen signs of something that might – just might – be dark matter. In space, too, detectors are tracking radiation that could signal the very same dark particles colliding and annihilating in our galaxy. Is it just coincidence,...

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I could have sworn… Why you can't trust your memory

Editorial: "Can it be ethical to implant false memories?"From repressed memories to faulty eye-witness testimony, psychologist Elizabeth Loftus has made her name working on false memory. She tells Alison George how recollections can be conjured up, and how this process could even be used in therapy You study the fallibility of memories. Are we all prone to making things up?We all have memories that are malleable and susceptible to being contaminated...

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Planet Earth was blue long before we knew

EARTH may have become the blue planet just 200 million years after it formed, making it a welcoming home for life hundreds of millions of years earlier than we thought.Earth's first 600 million years are called the Hadean – for good reason. "It is traditionally seen as a period of Earth history when our hot, young planet was hellish and uninhabitable," says Judith Coggon at the University of Bonn, Germany.But hell may actually have been relatively...

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Feedback: Ghost in the latrine

Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more IS THE "Internet of Things" – the computerisation of our homes heralded by futurists – really such a good idea? What happens when essential household appliances are online and vulnerable to hackers? Imagine the consequences if someone could hack into your toilet.This is not merely a theoretical vulnerability. The Japanese company Lixil...

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Poverty can sap people's ability to think clearly

It's the cruel cycle of poverty. The many challenges that come with being poor can sap people's ability to think clearly, according to a new study. The findings suggest that governments should think twice before tying up social-assistance programmes in confusing red tape.Sociologists have long known that poor people are less likely to take medications, keep appointments, or be attentive parents. "Poor people make poorer decisions. They do. The question...

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Firms unite to bring internet to billions of new users

"I BELIEVE connectivity is a human right, and that if we work together we can make it reality." These were the lofty ideals Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg revealed on 20 August, when he declared his intention to bring internet access to "the next 5 billion people" – that is, the fraction of humanity that currently lacks it.With tech giants like Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung and Qualcomm as partners, Zuckerberg's newly formed Internet.org consortium...

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Bio-inspired speaker uses clear gel to play music

Video: Transparent speaker uses gel to produce sound An almost-invisible film of jelly can now be hooked up to a laptop to blast out your favourite tunes. The stretchy speaker, which can produce sounds that span the entire audible range, is the first to use ions in place of electronics. The technology could one day be used to build both noise-cancelling windows and music-playing smartphone screens.The team that created the device, led by Zhigang...

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Reroute town's traffic to get emergency vehicles through

Ambulances could get to the scene of traffic accidents twice as fast if cities decide to adopt emerging intelligent transportation systems (ITS) technology. So say researchers in Spain who have used algorithms that mimic evolution to reduce response times for emergency vehicles. The faster response could save lives, the team says, with very little impact on overall traffic speeds.ITS involves using both vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastucture...

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Astrophile: Milky Way's black hole is a picky eater

Astrophile is our weekly column on curious cosmic objects, from the solar system to the far reaches of the multiverse Object: the Milky Way's black holeFood source: big, gassy starsOur galaxy's central black hole is a fussbudget, refusing to eat most of what it pulls to its lips because the food is too hot. Spitting out its meals may not only stunt its growth – the finicky black hole may also be preventing new stars from being born nearby.Most large...

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