Plastic rubbish takes egg's place in albatross nest

(Image: Greg Schubert/USFWS)

Our rubbish has reached the farthest corners of the Earth. This Laysan albatross is practising its nesting skills in one of the world's most remote places – the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge in Hawaii. But instead of practising with an abandoned egg as it normally would, it is sitting on a plastic ball used for baseball batting practice.

The ball did not come from a local baseball field. It washed ashore from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an accumulation of floating rubbish that circles the central north Pacific ocean. Every year, more than 50 tons of rubbish wash up on the islands of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument (PMNM), which includes Midway Atoll.

Play-acting with a plastic ball seems to be harmless for this bird, and Laysan albatrosses have been known to use all sorts of egg-shaped objects to hone their parenting skills. But other plastic rubbish can be deadly for birds. Laysan albatrosses feed on the surface, where they scoop up plastic objects such as lighters and bottle caps in addition to food such as fish and squid. Midway staff estimate that the albatrosses feed some 5 tons of plastic each year to their chicks, with fatal results: as seen in a series of shocking images by photographer Chris Jordan.

This albatross has been chosen as the poster bird for the PMNM's campaign to reduce marine debris.

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American chestnut set for genetically modified revival

The near-extinct American chestnut looks set to make a comeback. Genetically modified trees, which are resistant to a deadly fungus that has decimated the species, have produced the first resistant chestnuts. From these seeds, countless resistant trees could be grown in the wild.

An estimated 4 billion American chestnut trees (Castanea dentata ) once covered the US, accounting for a quarter of all US hardwood trees. But in around 1900, a lethal fungus called Cryphonectria parasitica was accidentally imported in chestnut trees from Asia, and by the 1950s it had almost completely wiped out the American chestnut.

Over the past 20 years, the American Chestnut Research and Restoration Project has been trying to turn the situation around. Led by William Powell and Charles Maynard of the State University of New York in Syracuse, the team has used genetic engineering to create a strain of fungus-resistant chestnuts called Darling4.

The modified trees contain a gene from wheat called OxO, which makes an enzyme called oxalate oxidase that destroys the toxic oxalic acid made by the fungus, preventing cankers from forming on the tree. By-products from the enzyme's action help the tree's own natural defences to fight off the fungus.

Keep off my tree

Powell and Maynard's group have now shown that the Darling4 trees and their first-generation offspring are more resistant than unaltered American chestnuts, but less so than the naturally resistant Chinese chestnuts.

The team tested leaves and stems that were deliberately infected with the fungus. Powell says it would be better to test entire trees, but that will have to wait until the trees grow larger, which may take another two years.

The best news is that the resistance seems to be heritable through the chestnut seeds. This will make restoration simpler and faster, because growing trees from seedlings is faster than the current practice – growing trees from tissue-cultured plantlets derived from embryos found in the few surviving trees.

Newer strains are proving more resistant, outstripping the Chinese chestnuts. In a 2013 study, the Darling11, Darling311 and Darling215 strains outperformed Chinese chestnuts in the leaf and stem tests. In one experiment, leaves from conventional American chestnut trees sustained damage on average over 119 square millimetres, and Chinese chestnut leaves over 38, but the best new strains limited the damage to just 5 square millimetres (Transgenic Research, doi.org/szc).

Pollen from the Darling11 and Darling311 strains was used to create these crosses (Image: Charles Maynard/American Chestnut Research and Restoration Project)

The ultimate goal is to release the modified chestnuts into the wild. The team planted the first Darling4 chestnut in 2006, and there are now over 1000 modified trees at various sites in New York state, says Maynard.

"We hope to obtain regulatory approval for trees to be grown outside permitted plots within three to five years, at which point our transgenic trees could potentially be planted anywhere in the US," says Maynard. "Once approved, they'll be distributed to the public in a not-for-profit programme to restore the American chestnut tree."

Breed them strong

There is also progress in a parallel programme that was begun in the 1970s. The American Chestnut Foundation in Asheville, North Carolina, is developing resistant American chestnuts by crossing them with Chinese chestnuts. This is a painstaking job: the crosses with most resistance must be picked out from each generation, and the Chinese component gradually bred out.

The latest generation is 94 per cent American chestnut, and some strains have resistance approaching that of the Chinese trees. "We can't exceed it like Bill's doing, we can only match it," says Sara Fern Fitzsimmons of Pennsylvania State University in University Park. But she says the conventionally bred chestnuts may be more popular in areas where genetically modified crops are not normally grown.

Genetic modification has one key advantage, says Maynard. The wheat OxO gene alone confers strong resistance, whereas resistance in Chinese chestnuts relies on at least three genes, so it is harder to transfer. For extra security, his team is now creating strains with both the OxO gene and the Chinese chestnut genes.

Journal reference: Plant Science, DOI: 10.1016/j.plantsci.2014.04.004

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Pirates incoming! Ship radar keeps watch and hits back

BEFORE dawn on 5 May, two pirates armed with knives boarded a ship in the Sierra Leone port of Freetown. They took the duty cadet hostage, stole some mooring ropes then slipped back into the darkness. No one saw them coming, but a new kind of intelligent radar might have done.

The system, called WatchStander, uses radar mounted on either side of a ship to scan the surrounding water for small objects that look like they are moving to intercept. It can automatically sound an alarm and dispense countermeasures to deter the approaching vessels.

The system is meant to tackle one of the biggest issues with preventing piracy at sea: spotting them coming. "The problem is that pirates use skiffs – small, fast fishing boats with a very low profile on the surface of the ocean," says Giacomo Persi Paoli, a piracy analyst with the RAND Corporation in Cambridge, UK.

Large ships' radar systems are designed to pick up large objects that are collision risks and to filter out waves. This means they often miss skiffs. By contrast, WatchStander's radar uses shorter radio wavelengths, allowing it to see smaller objects.

If WatchStander detects a skiff that's heading to intercept the ship, it will automatically target the boat it deems most threatening with a countermeasure. The current system shines a powerful strobe light designed to confuse incoming pirates.

In a test earlier this year, WatchStander was deployed on a ship carrying liquid natural gas through the Strait of Hormuz, south of Iran. The system detected a swarm of Iranian fishing boats crossing the ship's path long before anyone on board saw them. "These were 12 Iranian skiffs that came bowling past us. You couldn't see them at first. We were getting ready to run a test on the system when all of a sudden the alarm went off," says WatchStander founder David Rigsby. "The ship's crew said they are smugglers, you see them all the time out in the Strait."

Paoli likes the idea of the anti-pirate system, but worries that allowing it to automatically activate countermeasures might unfairly target innocent fishing skiffs or other boats. "The wakes of these big commercial ships attract fish to the surface," he says. "The fishermen wait for ships to pass and then go full speed behind along the wake and catch the fish."

This article appeared in print under the headline "Pirates incoming! Smart radar stands watch"

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Ultimate solar system could contain 60 Earths

Why settle for one habitable planet, when you can have 60? An astrophysicist has designed the ultimate star system by cramming in as many Earth-like worlds as possible without breaking the laws of physics. Such a monster cosmic neighbourhood is unlikely to exist in reality, but it could inspire future exoplanet studies.

Sean Raymond of Bordeaux Observatory in France started his game of fantasy star system with a couple of ground rules. First, the arrangement of planets must be scientifically plausible. Second, they must be gravitationally stable over billions of years: there is no point in putting planets into orbit only to watch them spiral into the sun.

"The arguments were based on the recent scientific literature as well as some simple calculations I did," says Raymond. In some cases it was impossible to choose between two scenarios because of a lack of data, so he just picked the one he liked best.

A red dwarf star could support 24 habitable, Earth-sized planets (Image: planetplanet.net)

To start with he chose a red dwarf star as the system's host because they have a lower mass than stars like our sun and so live longer, giving a stable habitable zone – the region around a star in which liquid water can exist.

Next, he used a couple of tricks to boost the planetary potential of his system. An Earth-sized planet can also have an almost Earth-sized moon, with the two worlds orbiting around a central point. What's more, two pairs of planets can orbit a star at the same distance, provided that they are separated by 60 degrees, thanks to a couple of gravitationally stable points. In our solar system these points are normally inhabited by asteroids, rather than planets, but nothing rules out a multiple planet scenario. Objects in this configuration are known as Trojans – Jupiter has thousands, and even Earth has one.

There is room for six of these orbital configurations in the habitable zone of a red dwarf, giving a total of 24 habitable planets in one system. But it turns out there is also another way to build a packed system: Jupiters.

A star system with four gas giants could support 36 habitable worlds (Image: planetplanet.net)

Gas giants such as Jupiter are not habitable to life as we know it, but they can be orbited by Earth-like moons. In our solar system, Europa and Enceladus, which orbit Jupiter and Saturn, respectively, are prime candidates for extraterrestrial life. Raymond calculates that a red dwarf could hold four Jupiter-like planets, each with five Earth-like moons. What's more, the Trojan trick can allow another two Earth-like planets on either side of the orbiting Jupiters, upping the total number of habitable worlds around the red dwarf to 36.

Finally, Raymond turned his star system into a binary one, with two red dwarfs separated by roughly the distance from our sun to the edge of the solar system. Theory allows one star to carry the Earth-only configuration, and the other to carry the Earth-plus-Jupiters configuration. This creates the ultimate star system, with 60 habitable planets to choose from.

"It is thought provoking," says Mikko Tuomi of the University of Hertfordshire in Hatfield, UK, who helped to discover the star system with the largest number of known planets, but the odds of something like it actually forming in the real universe are slim to none. "This would be due to the lack of matter at or near the habitable zone in the accretion disk from which planets form," says Tuomi. Sufficiently advanced aliens could build a system like this, he says, but it is not clear why they would bother.

"I admit that it would be extremely fortuitous for nature to produce a system that was so spectacular," says Raymond. "Still, each piece of the system is plausible and even expected from simulations of planetary formation."

Coming up with the system has also thrown up new scientific questions, he says. "I ended up doing a lot of research into the different pieces of the puzzle, and coming at it from this point of view gave me some new ideas I'm planning to test in the future."

The ultimate solar system: a binary star system supporting 60 habitable planets (Image: planetplanet.net)

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Scotland: Wind will power the Scots' green ambitions

On 18 September, the people of Scotland will vote on whether their country should become independent of the UK. This article is part of our Four futures for an independent Scotland special report, looking at the choices a newly independent Scotland could make.

Scotland is arguably one of the greenest countries in Europe. It produces 40 per cent of Scottish electricity demand from renewable sources, and models suggest this could rise to 67 per cent by 2018. That's closing in on the government's goal of producing enough green power to supply the equivalent of all of Scottish demand by 2020.

Some fear that independence means this goal will be too expensive for Scotland because offshore wind is expensive. "It's silly to say it's going to be expensive," says David Toke of the University of Aberdeen, "when in fact it can be done pretty cheaply onshore." (see diagram, above right)

Toke and his colleagues published estimates last year suggesting that independence would ruin Scotland's chances of hitting its green goal. But later that year the team made a U-turn: they now say that it will be cheaper for Scotland to pursue its 2020 target as an independent nation.

What changed? Newly announced nuclear power stations will need funding in the UK and new financial policies heavily favour nuclear over wind power.

So it now makes more sense for a green Scottish consumer to vote for independence, says Toke. Electricity bills will still go up – by about 7 per cent, he claims – and this will pay for onshore wind power. In the UK, bills would rise by 8 to 10 per cent to pay for new nuclear, Toke says.

An independent Scotland will need a close electrical alliance with England and Wales. A power-sharing market that allows all those involved to navigate the peaks and troughs of supply and demand is a tricky business. This balancing act is particularly tough when fickle renewables are involved, but there is a precedent in Scandinavia. Nord Pool is a power-sharing market on a grid that runs largely on renewables.

Denmark, for instance, has a huge amount of wind power. When it produces more than it can use, it simply sends it out to its Nord Pool partners and makes money on the transaction. But wind does not offer constant energy so the Danes need back up. In part that comes from Norway, which can sell its abundant hydropower to the Danes in their times of need. Accordingly, Scotland's incumbent Scottish National Party (SNP) has proposed an "energy partnership" with the UK.

Independence will allow the party to take control of national regulation, and implement measures like better loans for companies wishing to build new renewable power stations or premium rates for renewable energy companies.

A further measure that Toke and his colleagues advocate is to allow small companies and even individuals to profit from feed-in tariffs. Existing feed-in tariffs from the UK government mean only very large power companies can sell renewable power to the grid. The result would be a more distributed power grid, which has the benefit of being less vulnerable to extreme weather events that can knock out centralised grids if they hit key power stations.

With all these measures on the table, Toke estimates that Scotland can meet its 100 per cent target by 2023 for less money than it would if it remained part of the UK.

Don't be fooled by all this green ambition – Scotland won't be kicking the oil habit. Its target is to produce the equivalent of 100 per cent of Scottish demand with renewables, but the country will remain a big energy exporter. The excess will come largely from its traditional fossil fuel and nuclear power resources.

But the SNP says emphasis will be placed on developing carbon dioxide capture and storage for its fossil fuel power stations. It's not easy being green, but independence might make it a little easier.

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

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Scotland: Wind will power the Scots' green ambitions

On 18 September, the people of Scotland will vote on whether their country should become independent of the UK. This article is part of our "Four futures for an independent Scotland" special report, looking at the choices a newly independent Scotland could make

SCOTLAND is arguably one of the greenest countries in Europe. It produces 40 per cent of Scottish electricity demand from renewable sources, and models suggest this could rise to 67 per cent by 2018 (see diagram). That's closing in on the government's goal of producing enough green power to supply the equivalent of all of Scottish demand by 2020.

Some fear that independence means this goal will be too expensive for Scotland because offshore wind is expensive. "It's silly to say it's going to be expensive," says David Toke of the University of Aberdeen, "when in fact it can be done pretty cheaply onshore."

Toke and his colleagues published estimates last year suggesting that independence would ruin Scotland's chances of hitting its green goal. But later that year the team made a U-turn: they now say that it will be cheaper for Scotland to pursue its 2020 target as an independent nation.

What changed? Newly announced nuclear power stations will need funding in the UK and new financial policies heavily favour nuclear over wind power. So it now makes more sense for a green Scottish consumer to vote for independence, says Toke. Electricity bills will still go up – by about 7 per cent, he claims – and this will pay for onshore wind power. In the UK, bills would rise by 8 to 10 per cent to pay for new nuclear, Toke says.

An independent Scotland will need a close electrical alliance with England and Wales. A power-sharing market that allows all those involved to navigate the peaks and troughs of supply and demand is a tricky business. This balancing act is particularly tough when fickle renewables are involved, but there is a precedent in Scandinavia. Nord Pool is a power-sharing market on a grid that runs largely on renewables. Accordingly, the incumbent Scottish National Party (SNP) has proposed an "energy partnership" with the UK.

Don't be fooled by all this green ambition – Scotland won't be kicking the oil habit. Its target is to produce the equivalent of 100 per cent of Scottish demand with renewables, but the country will remain a big energy exporter. The excess will come largely from its traditional fossil fuel and nuclear power resources.

But the SNP says emphasis will be placed on developing carbon dioxide capture and storage for its fossil fuel power stations. It's not easy being green, but independence might make it a little easier.

Read more: "Four futures for an independent Scotland"

This article appeared in print under the headline "Wind will power Scotland's green ambitions"

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Feedback: Primary school puzzler

Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more

THE Welsh government recently circulated a parents' and carers' guide to literacy and numeracy tests in the country's schools. Feedback now seeks help with our homework, which is to interpret a graph from the guide.

It plots "progress score" against school year. The caption explains, perhaps: "progress scores shown are for a child taking the Year 3 test in 2013 and the Year 4 test in 2014. The solid line on the progress score charts represents the mid-point in the progress scores achieved in each year group. Half of the children taking the tests would be expected to achieve a score that lies between the two dotted lines." These, on the graph, were labelled "Progress score 2013" and "Progress score 2014".

The caption goes on: "A quarter of the pupils in each year ...

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SpaceX unveils sleek, reusable Dragon crew capsule

(Image: SpaceX)

First cargo, now crew – the uber-modern "space taxi" known as the Dragon V2 is ready for passengers. At an unveiling ceremony yesterday, complete with smoke effects and coloured lights, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk gave the world its first glimpse of the upgraded Dragon spacecraft.

NASA is already using an unpiloted version of Dragon to send cargo to the International Space Station and return valuable gear and scientific experiments. But Musk has always wanted Dragon to become a reusable ride for astronauts.

The new vehicle has simple silvery walls, seats for up to seven passengers and a set of flatscreen control panels. The spacecraft can dock itself to the ISS without help from the space station's robotic arm. But the most radical aspect of the redesign is the landing gear, which will allow astronauts to set the spacecraft down on solid ground.

Space chopper

The current version of Dragon deploys a parachute as it descends and splashes down in the ocean. Dragon V2 instead comes with a set of incredibly powerful SuperDraco engines, each capable of producing more than 70,000 newtons of thrust. The engines will allow astronauts to better manoeuvre in space as well as control their trajectory for re-entry.

"You'll be able to land anywhere on Earth with the accuracy of a helicopter," Musk said during the event at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California. The engines are encased in protective shells, and they are set up in pairs so that if one fails, the other can give a boost of power to compensate.

The Dragon V2 also has sturdier heat shields, which brings SpaceX a step closer to realising its goal of developing spacecraft that are fully and rapidly reusable. SpaceX has successfully tested a set of landing legs on a rocket used to send the uncrewed Dragon to the ISS, and Musk hopes to soon make it possible for rockets and crew capsules to simply be reloaded with propellant and flown again, much like commercial airplanes.

"As long as we continue to throw away rockets and spacecraft, we will never have true access to space," says Musk.

Rodent crew

Like passengers in today's commercial aeroplanes, riders of the Dragon V2 won't get much leg room in the capsule's tight quarters. But the craft does include touchscreen interfaces to control the spacecraft, as well as manual buttons for critical functions that would be needed in case of emergency.

Passengers on the Dragon V2 won't get much leg room (Image: SpaceX)

NASA astronauts are not set to ride in the Dragon V2 until 2017. However, a colony of mice and rats will make the journey on the next SpaceX cargo launch, becoming the private company's first mammalian passengers.

The rodents are set to spend six months on the ISS and will be the subjects of various experiments on the long-term effects of microgravity on mammal physiology. The results will hopefully prove handy for Musk, who hopes to eventually shuttle humans on the long trip to Mars.

When the Dragon V2 does launch with its first commercial crew, the face of space travel is going to change. "It will no longer be heroic to go to space – it will become a commodity – and it's about time," says John Logsdon, a space policy expert at George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs in Washington DC. "What will count is what people do once they get there."

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Curved screens make our brains light up with pleasure

Why are ever more curved-screen gadgets being launched? It seems bendiness has deep aesthetic appeal and will spur new materials and manufacturing methods

THE future looks curvy. A spate of gadgets sporting concave displays has already been launched, and the big manufacturers will soon be hurling yet more TVs and smartphones with curved screens on to the shelves. Rumours continue to swirl that even Apple's forthcoming iPhone 6 will bend to the craze later this year.

There's more to the trend than just a novel shape, though. It may be tapping into a deep-seated desire to get away from the hard corners and rectangles that have defined our appliances for decades. The craze for curves is also fueling a search for materials and manufacturing techniques that will help companies exploit it to the full.

"The first adjective used by people to describe curves is 'soft'," says Oshin Vartanian, a neuroscientist at the University of Toronto, Canada. "The story about curvature is a real story about emotion in the brain."

Vartanian and colleagues espouse the fledgling field of neuroaesthetics – understanding the neurological basis for our appreciation of beauty. Last year, he used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to test people's reactions to pictures of household interiors, asking them to rate rooms as "beautiful" or "not beautiful". A large majority favoured rooms with curved features and furnishings over ones packed with straight lines. The scans revealed that curved contours tended to stimulate the pleasure centres of the brain, whereas angles activated circuits in areas that detect threats (PNAS, doi.org/swv).

The findings reinforce a similar study conducted in 2010 at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland, where visitors were shown objects with straight or curved outlines. Here, too, fMRI showed they had a preference for curves.

But electronics has been trapped within a straight paradigm for decades, mostly because of limitations in our manufacturing know-how. That's changing. Samsung's Galaxy Round smartphone, released in South Korea last October, uses a bendable version of Corning's Gorilla Glass called Willow. Corning has since announced an upgraded version, its 3D Gorilla Glass, which it says can bend up to 75 degrees without breaking. And in an industry where even a small advantage in a product's looks can translate into billions in extra revenue, some manufacturers are turning to sheets of artificially grown sapphire for their next-generation screens.

Companies selling curved screens say they offer tangible benefits. The concave shape reflects less light at the viewer, allowing screens to be dimmer and thus extending battery life. Adding a curve to a widescreen TV enhances a screen's central sweet spot, giving the viewer the illusion of being immersed in the action.

Not everyone finds curviness a big deal. "It's distinct and different and unique. It does create a 'wow' factor," says Paul Gray of industry analysts NPD DisplaySearch. "But the reasons for curvature beyond the styling seem to be extremely tenuous."

Some industry-watchers believe the fascination will prove to be a fad, but curved screens remain a fast-growing market. Gray's firm projects that global curved TV shipments will grow from 800,000 units this year to more than six million by 2017 – proof that we like what we see.

This article appeared in print under the headline "Bending the rules"

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Eye candy: Video game visuals that hijack your brain

07:03 30 May 2014

Want to get rich out of making video games? Don't worry about winning awards for your graphic artistry – hire some psychologists instead. They can tell you how the simplest of games can hijack our brain's evolved instincts to keep players hooked. Sally Adee and Douglas Heaven

Read more: "Obsession engineers: Mind control the Candy Crush way"

Image 1 of 7

Pattern recognition

Humans like matching up patterns. We're born that way: even infants can work out that round pegs don't go into square holes. Casual puzzle games like Tetris (shown here), Candy Crush Saga , Bejeweled and Puyo Puyo tap into this affinity, which may explain why their main objectives are similar: the player must match up the random shapes that appear on screen with other shapes to clear the board and score points.

(Image: EA)

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