Philippa Kaur

From hydras to humans, this short book by two marine biologists explores the peculiar process of regeneration, showing that it is a far bigger subject than it might at first seem

Humans

30 March 2022

By Simon Ings

Is the regeneration of a forest after fire fundamentally the same as an animal regrowing a body part?KarenHBlack/Getty Images
What Is Regeneration?
Jane Maienschein and Kate MacCord
University of Chicago Press (out 6 April)Advertisement

SOME animals are able to grow an entire new body from tiny parts. Crabs and lobsters can regenerate lost tentacles and claws. Hydras and some worms can regrow their heads. We humans can replace our skin, hair, fingernails and even our liver.
Regeneration is such a peculiar ability that, even in science, it is surprisingly under-researched. As a result, there is much we still don’t know. What Is Regeneration? is a collaborative effort between Jane Maienschein and Kate MacCord, both at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, to fill some of the gaps. Together, they explore why regeneration occurs when it does, why it doesn’t always happen and what the process can tell us about the grander mysteries of birth, death and development.
It turns out to be a seemingly simple phenomena that, on closer inspection, becomes far more complicated. For instance, are we thinking only about regeneration of structure, about regeneration of function or both? Is the regeneration of the gut flora in your intestines after a course of antibiotics or the regeneration of woodland after a forest fire at all similar to regrowing a body part?
To try to pin it down, the authors begin with a history of the study of the subject, starting with Aristotle and ending with Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz’s ongoing research on cellular signalling. Their account pivots on the work of Thomas Hunt Morgan (better known as a pioneer of chromosomal genetics) and, in particular, his 1901 book Regeneration. Morgan, more than anyone before or since, attempted to establish clear boundaries around the phenomenon, and the terminology he came up with remains useful.
He identified three kinds of regeneration. The first two are restorative regeneration, which occurs in response to injury, and physiological regeneration, which describes replacement, as when an elk moults its antlers and new ones grow in their place. The third, morphallaxis, refers to more extreme cases, such as when a hydra, cut into pieces, reorganises itself into a new hydra without going through the normal processes of cell division.
The key to this categorisation is that the mechanisms of regeneration aren’t, as the authors put it, “a special response to changing environmental conditions but, rather, an internal normal process of growth and development”.
So here is the problem: if the mechanisms of regeneration can’t be distinguished from those of growth and development, what is to stop everything ceaselessly regenerating? What dictates the process of regrowth and why does it happen only in some tissues, in some species and only some of the time?
Maienschein and MacCord argue that, to fully understand this, we need to see regeneration as a window into the world of biology in general, and the complex feedback loops that decide what grows, divides and dies, where and when.
Far from being an interesting curio, then, studying regeneration can tell us much about life in general, from a cellular level right up to the level of ecosystems, and inform everything from regenerative therapies using stem cells to ecosystem protection and recovery.
Seen through this lens, regeneration is a far bigger subject than it might at first seem, and Maienschein and MacCord take fewer than 200 pages to anatomise the complexities and ambiguities that their simple question throws up. It is to their credit that they mostly focus on the big picture and don’t make the biology any more complex than it needs to be.

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

Humans

30 March 2022

Josie Ford
On Earth …
As a fresh-faced 18-year-old, Michael Owen’s mazy run from the centre circle to score against Argentina in the 1998 World Cup round of 16 raised hopes of a new golden era of English football – “soccer”, we add, looking in no particular direction – just as surely as David Beckham’s subsequent sending-off and the inevitable loss on penalties dashed them. Back then, it was only 32 years of hurt; by now it is getting silly.
Altogether more forward-facing is Owen’s recent reinvention as a crypto guru. “Looks to me like blockchain is here to stay,” he announced last month on Twitter, hence he was working with a blockchain specialist on “a really exciting new football project”.
Rapid reaction on the social media site renowned for rapid unkind reaction was predictably unkind, largely along the lines that Owen possibly didn’t actually know what blockchain is. If so, he is welcome to join our club any time.Advertisement
This seems to follow a trend of ex-elite sportspeople advertising cryptocurrency projects, something we can associate with the ennui and need for new revenue streams associated with being an ex-elite sportsperson. We click further, on our eternal quest for both excitement and enlightenment. “The first Michael Owen official NFT collection comprises of 1233 NFT’s that are available across 5 increasingly exclusive tiers,” we read. We are somewhat the wiser: the blockchain is about football stickers. Welcome to the future.
… as it is in heaven
And much, much good may come of this sort of thing, going by a press release on behalf of a “visionary NFT production house” thrust our way by a colleague with eyes not so much rolling as whirling like pulsars.
collection – although the words quoted are from a press release so don’t appear there. Richard says he didn’t include it as it’s a money-making operation; up to you if you still want to put in, I think it’s fine without “On April 3, they’re launching 30 NFTs from their bestselling ‘Greatest Minds of Our Time’ – pop-art images of inspirational figures, such as Oprah, Elon Musk, and the Dalai Lama – into orbit on SpaceX,” the PR puff breathlessly informs us. “Once in space, passenger Israeli air force pilot Eytan Stibb [sic] will call them up on his tablet and bless them with starlight and cosmic rays. He’ll then ‘drop’ them from space directly into the blockchain collection.”
The selection of great minds of our time is interesting, but the ultimate aim – to auction the widgets off for the benefit of clean-water charities – is laudable. The whole process does strike us as a mite overcomplicated, though, given that starlight and cosmic rays are freely available on Earth. An interesting metaphysical question is, if digital art exists only when constituted as pixels, and is called into life only when in orbit, has it been launched into orbit?
No matter. We detect a whiff of good old performance art in all this, so we will politely just nod and smile.
Small island far away
Ceri Brown writes from Haverfordwest in Wales, querying a Sky News story about the position of Henderson Island, part of the Pitcairn group in the South Pacific that through historical accident finds itself a UK Overseas Territory. Populated largely by native crabs and non-native plastic waste, it is perhaps a measure of the seriousness with which the UK has taken its stewardship up till now that the Royal Navy recently found it situated about 1.5 kilometres to the south of where it thought it was.
“Henderson Island is uninhabited and is about the size of Oxford,” the article states, presumably following the principle of British units for British places. “Could you convert that to fractions of a Berkshire please?” asks Ceri, catching us slightly off guard. No, but in standard Imperial units, it is a smidgen under 2 milliWales. That is if anyone is actually sure how big Henderson Island is.
Atmospheric surge
This admirable effort to make global news local sends us rootling in our piles for a headline from the Essex Live website in the UK sent in by Anthony Jamieson in January. “Essex sees huge atmospheric pressure surge as Hunga Tonga volcanic eruption felt across East Anglia”, it screams, adding in smaller typeface that the pressure in Heybridge, Essex, jumped “from just over 1,023 millibars of pressure to 1,024”. No eardrums burst, we hope.
Out of time
Gerben Wierda writes from the Netherlands currying favour – quite our favourite curryable material – and challenging the orthodoxy that true New Scientist aficionados read the magazine back to front.
“I read NS from front to back,” he says, “but Feedback plays an important role in my NS backlog management. If I come across an issue and I am uncertain if it has been read, I check the first entry in Feedback.” We are thus not only the most memorable bit of the magazine, he says, but “like dessert: that most enjoyable end of a good experience.”
Your cheque is in the post. Of course, we recognise that the true measure of an aficionado of this magazine is a backlog of issues that you always convince yourself you are going to clear. Being stuck on the issue of 9 October 2021 has its advantages, says Gerben. “One can read news articles about the possible rise of the new delta variant of covid-19 and remain in a world that is still blissfully free of war crimes being performed in Ukraine.” We hear you.
Got a story for Feedback?
You can send stories to Feedback by email at feedback@newscientist.com. Please include your home address. This week’s and past Feedbacks can be seen on our website. More

By Elle Hunt

Through Luna the dairy cow, we see the reality of life lived on human termsMubi
Cow
Andrea Arnold
MUBI and Apple TV+Advertisement

MOST documentaries chronicle exceptional lives that anyone would be curious about, or highly ordinary ones that warrant a second look. Andrea Arnold’s new film does both, providing an immersive look into the world of a dairy cow.
Arnold is the celebrated director of projects as diverse as Red Road and Fish Tank, which explore working-class Britain; the Shia LaBeouf epic American Honey; a 2011 adaptation of Wuthering Heights; and episodes of Transparent and Big Little Lies. In Cow, her fifth feature and first documentary, Arnold turns her trademark unflinching gaze on a subject that is both familiar and entirely other: a cow named Luna on a cattle farm in the English countryside.
Six years in the making, the BAFTA-nominated Cow follows Luna in her day-to-day life, from grazing and mating to birthing and milking. It is about as immersive and visceral a depiction of a non-human being as one can imagine, with Arnold filming from Luna’s perspective as much as possible and using zero narration.
For many viewers, the first surprise may be the immediate, easy charisma of her subject: in an early scene, Luna holds the camera’s gaze, mooing insistently, in such a way that it leaves the audience in no doubt about her curiosity and appraising intelligence. Likewise, shots of her caring for her just-born calf and taking obvious pleasure from an open field suggest a multifaceted mind, which is portrayed clearly and without sentimentality.
For an essentially quiet film, sound is used to great effect in Cow. Mournful pop songs by Billie Eilish and others are piped into the milking shed, adding pathos to the scenes of Luna’s everyday life, while snatches of chatter from her largely faceless farmers lend them structure. The emotion we come to feel for Luna, our investment in her well-being, is organic and earned.
The only point where Arnold relaxes her commitment to realism is a late-night mating sequence, set to R&B pop music and with spliced-in fireworks, a moment that concludes with some post-coital cuddling. The surreal comedy of the scene excuses any charge of anthropomorphism, as does the sequence where Luna is being milked on Christmas morning by a farmer wearing a Santa hat, set to the sound of Fairytale of New York.
This is no hard-bitten slaughterhouse exposé: it is clear that Luna is well cared for, even loved. But the life of a dairy cow is, by definition, one that is punctured with sudden violence. Though Cow may not depict the industrial-scale horrors of animal production, Arnold doesn’t shy away from depicting the indignities and intrusions that feature in a dairy cow’s world. An early scene of calves being dehorned with a cauterising iron reportedly had critics at the Sundance film festival covering their eyes.
The end, when it comes, manages to be at once inevitable and shocking – the harshest possible awakening from the dreamlike state viewers have been lulled into. It encapsulates the film’s understated political point: that, from beginning to end, this is a life led entirely on humanity’s terms, for the production of milk and meat. Luna may not suffer more than is essential to the existence of a dairy cow, but is that a price we are willing to accept?
In honouring the sacrifice of one farm animal, Arnold quietly but insistently invokes the spectre of far more – many of which aren’t treated with the same dignity as Luna, even if we choose to remain ignorant of the details.
Empathetic and often unexpectedly moving, Cow may not instantly turn you vegan, as more aggressive accounts of animal production might – but you will never see its subject in the same way again. Equally, having gently led us to assume the bovine gaze, what may be most unsettling is how we see ourselves.

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The DNA of people who lived in Great Britain thousands of years ago has markers of natural selection at work – and the driving force seems to have been a shortage of vitamin D

Humans

29 March 2022

By Michael Marshall
An artist’s impression of a Bronze age settlementLennart Larsen/Nationalmuseet
Natural selection was at work on Bronze Age Britons, ancient DNA reveals. Within the past 4500 years, evolution has acted on genes involved in the production of vitamin D – which people living in Britain are sometimes short of due to a lack of sunlight for much of the year.
The genetic changes have had knock-on effects on other traits, from the ability of people todigest milk to their skin colour.
One of the ways evolutionary change can happen is through natural selection: … More

Stress-linked changes in the activity of genes may be why Black people in the US often have worse chronic pain than white people

Humans

28 March 2022

By Jason Arunn Murugesu
An enzyme adding methyl groups to DNA in a process called methylationLAGUNA DESIGN/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
Black people in the US have worse chronic pain than white people due in part to gene expression.
Chronic stress has previously been linked to racial discrimination, and can lead to changes in gene expression. Edwin Aroke at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and his colleagues collected blood samples from 98 people – half were Black and half were non-Hispanic white, and they had an average age of 45. Half the group had chronic lower back pain, … More

A mind-bending light and sound extravaganza is coming to a town near you, and it could help unravel the mysteries of the brain

Humans

23 March 2022

By Carissa Wong
Dreamachine’s light and sound show can produce intense hallucinations and a sense of calmBrenna Duncan
Dreamachine
Jennifer Crook
Unboxed FestivalAdvertisement
IN THE late 1950s, when altered states of consciousness were all the rage, the artist Brion Gysin invented a drug-free route to psychedelic euphoria. His Dreamachine – a spinning cylinder that shines flashing lights onto a viewer’s closed eyes – was intended as a shortcut to spiritual enlightenment for the masses.
Now, art producer Jennifer Crook has revisited Gysin’s invention as a sci-art multimedia experience. The aim is to produce a communal head trip that will not only expand visitors’ experience, but also probe the depths of human consciousness.
Crook got the idea for the project after having a transcendent experience while at a gig by electronic music artist Jon Hopkins. She went on to enlist Hopkins to provide the soundtrack to the updated Dreamachine, which will be touring the UK as part of the Unboxed Festival.
At the centre of the installation are vivid hallucinations created by the brain in response to specific sensory inputs. In the 1950s, the pioneering neuroscientist Grey Walter discovered that dreamlike hallucinations could be induced by lights flashing on closed eyelids at 8 to 12 hertz, the same frequency as the oscillations of “alpha” brainwaves when we are relaxed and wakeful with our eyes closed. Normally, when we open our eyes, these alpha waves are disrupted by visual inputs. Flashing lights at alpha wave frequencies on closed eyelids stimulates the optic nerve, but provides little visual information, and the brain responds by generating hallucinations.
Because of this, the Dreamachine can produce kaleidoscopic visions and a sense of calm. These hallucinations may also reveal a lot about the way the brain works. As part of the project, neuroscientists Anil Seth and David Schwartzman at the University of Sussex, UK, Dreamachine‘s light and sound show can produce intense hallucinations and a sense of calm are collecting the experiences of visitors, which they hope to use as a window into the workings of the brain. Seth is among the many scientists who believe that hallucinations are part of the way that our brains generate our conscious experience of the world.
One major question concerns perceptual diversity – how varied or similar our internal mental experiences may be. We know that we all see the world in different ways, but science can’t yet explain how and why. In an attempt to investigate this, an optional survey will ask participants to log their visual experiences using colour palettes, animations and shape selections.
Other questions will address the emotional aspects of the experience, which can be intense. Hopkins’s music alone, when played through 360-degree speakers around the audience, can give an eerie feeling of stepping out of time and into a state of being that usually comes with a meditative state.
As well as the physical exhibition, an online census will capture perceptual diversity from millions of people around the world, while a schools programme will be rolled out around the UK. Through activities and resources, children will be encouraged to ask questions about how they perceive the world and to explore how this differs from the experiences of others. The research team’s resident philosopher, Fiona Macpherson, says the goal is to show them how, in our differences, we are all connected.
This aim brings Dreamachine back to the ideals of its inventor, who hoped to give people the experience of being catapulted into a higher level of consciousness. Crook’s new vision is even more ambitious: to explore the depths of the human brain while realising the variation in our inner worlds and celebrating neurodiversity.
Dreamachine will tour London, Cardiff, Belfast and Edinburgh from May to September. Sign up for free tickets at dreammachine.world.

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Physicist and broadcaster Jim Al-Khalili discusses the power of wonder, the importance of overcoming our biases and the biggest mysteries in fundamental physics

Humans

23 March 2022

By Richard Webb
Nabil Nezzar
IT SEEMS nobody spends quite as much time discussing the joys of science as Jim Al-Khalili. Whether with guests on his BBC radio programme, The Life Scientific, in the documentaries he presents or with the students he teaches and mentors at the University of Surrey, UK, he is on an insatiable quest to find out “why”. He told us where this all started, why scientists need to question their own biases and about the importance of never growing up.
Richard Webb: To turn the tables a bit, what made you take up a life scientific?
Jim Al-Khalili: I guess my passion for science, well, physics, began in my early teens, when I was obsessed with football and discovering girls and thinking I’d one day play for my beloved Leeds United, who were a good team back then in the mid-1970s. But I suddenly fell in love with physics. It was like puzzle solving; it was common sense. With chemistry and biology, I had to remember stuff, and I’m terrible at remembering stuff. Physics also dealt with the big questions. Where does the universe come from? What does an atom look like? What’s inside a star? So from about the age of 13 or 14, I wanted to do physics. If I got to play for Leeds United, that would be nice, but I was going to be a physicist.
Your latest book is called The Joy of Science. Is that something you feel on a day-to-day basis?
It is, actually. Part of why I enjoy science communication is that I like doing the science. I like … More

A true-crime series on IMDb TV takes a slightly too po-faced look into a theft from an invertebrate zoo where things weren’t quite as they seemed

Humans

23 March 2022

By Elle Hunt
Bug Out reveals the world of insect collectors like Steve LamondCourtesy of IMDb TV
Bug Out
Ben Feldman
IMDb TVAdvertisement
ONE morning in August 2018, the chief executive of an insectarium and butterfly house in Pennsylvania arrived at work to find all his live exhibits had disappeared. “Shelves and shelves and shelves that should have been filled with creatures aplenty were empty,” says John Cambridge.
As tales of true crime go, the “Philadelphia bug heist” was immediately intriguing, not least because of the obvious question: what could anyone want with thousands of insects?
Now, the hunt for the perpetrators has been given the Tiger King treatment in a four-part documentary series for IMDb TV. As with the 2020 sensation featuring Joe Exotic, the most eyebrow-raising moments in Bug Out come care of its subjects that walk on two legs.
The Philadelphia Insectarium & Butterfly Pavilion grew out of a 1970s pest-control business called Bug Out that was run by an ex-cop who would display his “catch of the day”. Over the years, the displays got more elaborate and eccentric, and insect enthusiasts were drawn to them like moths to a porch light. It grew into the US’s first invertebrate zoo and, until the robbery, was a family-friendly attraction that chugged along seemingly without incident.
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The series follows a broadly chronological structure, starting with the theft before spiralling out into the strange (and surprisingly endearing) world of hobbyists, collectors and traders of creepy-crawlies. On one level, it is an eye-opening insight into an unfamiliar – and, to many, unappealing – pastime, where people are eager to share their enthusiasm for rare cockroaches ($500 a breeding pair) and African land snails the size of small dogs.
A diversion into the booming illegal international trade in rare bugs and other wildlife shows the darker side of human nature, and our obsession with collecting and commodifying every aspect of the natural world.
But just as you didn’t watch Tiger King to learn about big cat conservation, Bug Out‘s real intrigue comes from the people behind the insectarium. In many ways, it is a study of what was a dysfunctional workplace that put human nature, not insects, under the microscope. The most emotionally affecting moments come from employees who fervently wanted to indulge their passion through their work, only to have their dreams crushed by a toxic working environment.
“Just as you didn’t watch Tiger King to learn about big cats, the real intrigue comes from the people”
Until the robbery, these dramas played out on a small stage. Then, the heist was picked up by local media and then national media. Before long it was being discussed by late-night chat-show host Jimmy Kimmel. As a result, Cambridge became a mini-celebrity and the police operation hotted up, with an additional FBI investigation that scrutinised some of the then employees’ surprisingly shady backgrounds.
The crime was more serious than it might sound: Cambridge put the value of the 7000-odd insects taken at as much as $50,000. But the loss of his exhibits was just the tip of the iceberg, as the seemingly wholesome family attraction was revealed to be beset by power struggles and financial mismanagement.
The documentary-makers’ efforts to stoke the drama to true-crime levels are occasionally heavy-handed, suggesting an anxiety about letting the story speak for itself. A dramatically lit corkboard linking suspect mugshots with sticky notes labelled with things like “motive = bugs” is presumably intended to lend drama to the police investigation. The dry humour of the investigating officers, meanwhile, is wasted by the overall po-faced tone of the show.
When the big reveal comes, in the fourth and final episode, it doesn’t quite deliver on the whodunnit promised in the first – in fact, it reveals the narrative to have been somewhat contrived. One gets the sense that the film-makers, having set out to tell the true story behind the Philadelphia bug heist, discovered a vastly different tale to the one they had anticipated and were forced to make the best of it.
The result is a highly diverting although somewhat unsatisfying series: a can of worms that, despite Bug Out‘s best efforts, cannot be tidily contained.

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