Philippa Kaur

Amazon Prime’s Truth Seekers from Sean of the Dead duo Simon Pegg and Nick Frost is a mash up of British comedy and ghost hunting. Let’s hope the series becomes today’s Ghostbusters, says Emily Wilson

Humans 4 November 2020
By Emily Wilson
Elton (Samson Kayo, left) and Gus (Nick Frost) hunt ghosts
Colin Hutton/Stolen Pictures/Amazon Studios

Truth Seekers
Jim Field Smith
Amazon Prime Video
COMEDY duo Simon Pegg and Nick Frost have specialised at writing and starring in movies (Shaun of the Dead, The World’s End) that stir together warm, beautifully drawn British comedy and classic horror themes. Their latest outing, a TV series called Truth Seekers, arises from that same delightful tradition.
The truth seekers of the title are a gang who rove around England investigating the paranormal. Given that, I queried with my editors at New Scientist why I … More

By Ian Morse
Some residents of San Francisco are in water poverty
Wenjie Dong/Getty Images

Widening wealth gaps in some of the richest cities in the US have produced a rise in the number of households without running water.
Public information suggests that about half a million households in the US – about 1.1 million people – live without piped water, which places them in “plumbing poverty”. Surveys also show that 73 per cent of these households are found in metropolitan areas.
To investigate further, Katie Meehan at King’s College London – previously at the University of Oregon – and her colleagues analysed US census data, and information relating to the country’s 50 largest metropolitan areas collected during the government’s American Community Survey between 2013 and 2017.

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This showed that San Francisco in California, Portland in Oregon and Austin in Texas are among the cities with the highest rates of plumbing poverty. New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco – among the wealthiest US cities – recorded the most overall residents without complete plumbing.
Meehan and her colleagues say there is a strong connection between this plumbing poverty and growing income inequality in cities.

They found that for every 10 per cent increase in income inequality in the 50 largest metropolitan areas, measured using a standard statistical metric called the Gini coefficient, households were 1.5 times more likely to lack “complete plumbing” – defined as a house supplied by both hot and cold piped water with a bath or shower used only by the occupants.
“In areas that are characterised by income inequality, we see some of the highest rates of plumbing poverty,” says Meehan.
What’s more, people without access to piped water were significantly more likely to be living in rented accommodation and to be using more than of a third of their income to pay rent.

Urban households headed by black people were almost 35 per cent more likely to lack piped water compared with households headed by non-Hispanic white people.
Although surveys suggest that there are almost half a million US households without water access, Meehan says this is likely to be an undercount, because census surveys routinely have trouble recording renters, the homeless, and black people.
“I think that conditions of water access will actually deteriorate, and the places where I think it will get worse are not the places we may first think of, like the San Franciscos, the Portlands or the Los Angeleses,” she says.
Focusing on individual cities and households will help reveal what exactly is causing water insecurity, says Meehan. “That’s the next step in research.”
Journal reference: PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2007361117
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Carlo Rovelli’s bestsellers saw him dubbed the poet of physics and showed a mind seeking knowledge for its own sake. His new book, There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness, reminds us why we need more minds like his

Space 28 October 2020
By Richard Webb

Victor Habbick Visions/Science Photo Library

I APPROACHED Carlo Rovelli’s latest book with trepidation, bordering on dread. The Italian quantum gravity researcher’s previous bestsellers – Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, Reality Is Not What It Seems, The Order of Time – have seen him playing on home territory, where his lucid, lyrical touch won him a reputation as “the poet of physics”.
But his new book’s title, There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness, suggested it might have gone … More

Thanks to virtual reality, we can run experiments that test what people will do in situations where lives are on the line. We often find people act against what they claim to regard as morally acceptable, says Sylvia Terbeck

Humans | Comment 28 October 2020
By Sylvia Terbeck

Michelle D’urbano

YOU probably aren’t as moral as you think. Philosophers have often asked people how they would act in a given situation when lives are on the line, but it is hard to test what they would do in practice. Now, thanks to virtual reality, we are starting to find out – and what people say doesn’t match up with what they do.
There are many thought experiments and dilemmas for breaking down ethical decisions, and perhaps none is more famous than the trolley problem. The scenario begins with a runaway trolley that is on course to … More

Why did a dying 19th-century robber want his skin to become a book cover? This Halloween, Anatomica and Dark Archives reveal our changing relationship with the body

Humans 28 October 2020
By Chris Stokel-Walker

THE human body can fascinate and enthral – but it can also appal. Two new books highlight our complex relationship with the body and, interestingly for the queasy 21st century, don’t blink at the facts.
Joanna Ebenstein co-founded the now closed Morbid Anatomy Museum in New York. She spent years studying how … More

The new Star Wars game puts you inside the cockpits of the iconic X-wing and TIE fighter spacecraft. It’s fun, but Star Wars: Squadrons is a good game rather than a great one, says Jacob Aron

Humans 28 October 2020
By Jacob Aron
In Star Wars: Squadrons, you move from escorting shuttles to bombing runs
EA Games

Star Wars: Squadrons
Motive Studios
PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
WHILE the early 2000s were a dark time for Star Wars superfans, wounded by the disaster that was the prequel trilogy, they were actually a high point for me thanks to video games.
I was never that into Star Wars when I was younger, having missed the theatrical release of the original films by a good decade or so. Yet it is hard to resist the lure of the Force, and somehow I absorbed Obi-Wan … More

By Layal Liverpool
Failed behavioural interventions often have common features
cienpies

A study of interventions aimed at changing people’s behaviour suggests that those that fail have common features.
Identifying these features could help predict potential ways in which future interventions might fail and provide an opportunity to prevent this, says Magda Osman at Queen Mary University of London.
Osman and her colleagues analysed 65 articles published between 2008 and 2019 that identified failed behavioural interventions, including nudges – subtle suggestions aimed at influencing people’s behaviour.

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They found that behavioural interventions that relied on social comparisons and social norming, for instance encouraging people to adopt a behaviour by indicating that it is a common or normal behaviour in society, accounted for the majority – 40 per cent – of the failed interventions studied.
Other strategies that appeared among the failed interventions included those that delivered messages via letters or texts (24 per cent) or through labelling on products (12 per cent), and those that relied on defaults, such as opt-in or opt-out strategies (15 per cent).
The researchers also categorised various ways in which interventions failed, such as by producing no effect at all or by backfiring and producing an unwanted side effect. Considering both the type of behavioural intervention as well as potential ways interventions may fail in advance could help with the design of more successful interventions, says Osman.
Osman and her team are developing models that could help predict how a given behavioural intervention might perform, based on their analysis of failed interventions. “You can simulate different outcomes before you start running a behavioural intervention that might fail”, which could save time and money, she says.
Journal reference: Trends in Cognitive Sciences, DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2020.09.009
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