Philippa Kaur

As the future generations commissioner for Wales, Sophie Howe’s job is to help guide the government’s decisions for the benefit of people yet to be born. She explains how she uses evidence to bring long-term thinking into politics

Humans

5 July 2022

By Graham Lawton
Nabil Nezzar
SOMETIMES it seems like the furthest a politician can think into the future is tomorrow’s front pages. Sophie Howe’s job is to break that vicious cycle of short-termism. As the future generations commissioner for Wales, she advocates for the interests of people who will come of age in the future or have yet to be born.
Created in 2016, her position was a world first. But now, as she nears the end of her term in office, the idea of having a political advocate for people of the future is catching on, with several other nations and even the UN planning to follow suit.
Howe’s role is limited to advising the Welsh government, but she has had a considerable impact. New Scientist caught up with her to find out how you go about advocating for unborn people and how evidence can help.
Graham Lawton: How did your unique job come about?
Sophie Howe: In 2010, the administration in Wales had a national conversation with our citizens to ask: what is the Wales you want to leave to your children and grandchildren? The result was a piece of legislation called the Well-being of Future Generations Act, which was passed in 2015. It sets out seven long-term well-being goals. We want a healthy Wales, a resilient Wales, a prosperous Wales, a more equal Wales, a Wales with vibrant culture and cohesive communities, and a globally responsible Wales. The act also established an independent commissioner to oversee implementation.
That’s you! What does your job involve?
I give advice and guidance on the sorts of policies that would take us closer towards meeting those … More

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

Humans

29 June 2022

Josie Ford
On the scent
It turns out that drinking coffee will unlock Feedback’s wallet faster than rumours of a hot new crypto offering. A study in the Journal of Marketing reports that consuming a caffeinated drink before shopping gets us to spend one-and-a-half times the amount we would have done had we chosen decaffeinated coffee or water instead. Lead author Dipayan Biswas at the University of South Florida blames the dopamine released as a result of the stimulant, which in turn boosts impulsivity, lowers self-control and (quite specifically) sends the sale of scented candles (see page 16) rocketing.
Internet bubbles
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What would the world be like if men suddenly disappeared? That is the premise of Sandra Newman’s new sci-fi novel that asks how easily we can change history, says Sally Adee

Humans

29 June 2022

By Sally Adee

A kind of biblical rapture has excised all men from the world in The MenMads Perch/Getty Images
The Men
Sandra Newman
Granta

WE ARE hallucinating all the time, according to neuroscience research. Our brains constantly tease comprehensible patterns out of a million sensory inputs – from buzzing bees to approaching animals. This isn’t reality, but a good prediction of what reality should be, informed by past experience. While it is an efficient way for the brain to generate the feeling of consciousness, it also means we are like passengers facing backwards on … More

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Dr. Who and the Daleks and Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. are 1960s classics directed by Gordon Flemyng and starring Peter Cushing. They have now been regenerated in 4K by StudioCanal. Watch in UK cinemas from 10 July.

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Where the Seals Sing is also where you will find Susan Richardson, following grey seals as their numbers dwindle all around the English coastline. She records their ways of life, means of survival and the myths that surround them. Available from 7 July.

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Good Natured, a festival of short films that offer … More

Finding the Higgs boson is the compelling story behind Elusive: How Peter Higgs solved the mystery of mass. But Frank Close’s book lives up to its title as both the man and his particle ultimately slip through the net

Humans

29 June 2022

By Simon Ings

IN HIS latest book Elusive, physicist Frank Close sets out to write about Peter Higgs, whose belief in the detectability of a very special particle that was to bear his name earned him a Nobel prize in 2013.
But Higgs’s life resists narrative. He has had a successful career. His colleagues enjoy his company. He didn’t over-publish or get into pointless spats. Now in his mid-nineties, Higgs … More

An effort to track global changes in human society over the past 10,000 years concludes that warfare drove an increase in social complexity – but others are unconvinced by the work

Humans

24 June 2022

By Colin Barras
Engraving of an Egyptian pharaoh driving a chariot in battleNorth Wind Picture Archives / Alamy
Human societies have become incredibly big and complex over the past few thousand years, and they have done so primarily because of agriculture and warfare. That is the claim made by a large international collaboration that has spent more than a decade gathering data on the subject. But not everyone is convinced by these conclusions – or even by the starting assumptions.
The way we live today is very different from the way humans have lived for most of our  history. For … More

We subconsciously sniff people when we first meet them and are more likely to become friends with those who have similar body odours to our own

Humans

24 June 2022

By Alice Klein
Do we become friends with people because of the way they smell?Jessica Prautzsch/plainpicture
People with similar body odours are more likely to “click” and become instant friends, according to several experiments.
When we first meet other people, we sometimes experience an “immediate strong click that makes us feel as if we have already been good friends for years”, says Inbal Ravreby at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.
She wondered if this may have something to do with body odour, because previous research has found that we subconsciously sniff each other on meeting – for example, by lifting our hand to our nose after shaking someone’s hand.Advertisement
Ravreby and her colleagues recruited 20 pairs of same-sex, non-romantic friends – half female and half male – who said they clicked straight away on first meeting.
An electronic nose – a device that senses the chemical components of odours – was used to sniff T-shirts that had been worn by each of the participants. The nose found that body odour was more similar between the friend pairs than between random pairs that were formed by shuffling the participants.
A group of 25 independent adults who sniffed the participants’ T-shirts also reported that the friend pairs smelled more alike than random pairs did.

Next, Ravreby and her colleagues recruited 17 people who had never met previously and used the electronic nose to analyse their body odours. Each individual then took turns playing a non-verbal game with other participants of the same sex.
The results were consistent with the earlier experiments: the pairs that smelled more like each other were more likely to report feeling as if they clicked during this game.
The findings makes sense because research shows that we tend to become friends with people who are like us, for example, in terms of age, ethnicity, education, religion, physical appearance, personality and values, says Ravreby.
Other mammals also use smell to help decide who is friend or foe, such as dogs that sniff each other’s rear ends when they meet in a park, she says.
In contrast, heterosexual people appear to be attracted to members of the opposite sex who smell different to them. One study, for example, has found that women were more attracted to odours of men who had different immune genes to them, possibly because their pairing would produce offspring with stronger immune systems.
Journal reference: Science Advances, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abn0154
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