Humans

Researchers are developing medicines that replicate the health benefits of exercise. In the process, they’re gaining insights into how to treat currently untreatable diseases

Humans

21 April 2021

By Jo Marchant

Martin Leon Barreto
RONALD EVANS never intended to kick off a performance-enhancing drug craze, but that is what happened. Despite a ban on its use in sports, the substance he has long been studying has now been detected in doping tests of cyclists and boxers, while runners and bodybuilders share stories online about how it makes them leaner and stronger nonetheless.
The story begins in 2002, when Evans, a biologist at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, performed some experiments involving mice and exercise wheels. He fed a drug known as GW1516 to unfit mice, expecting to see modest effects on their fat metabolism. But tests showed that mice which had been given the drug could run twice as far on their wheels as ones that hadn’t. “It was an amazing moment,” says Evans. Couch-potato mice had been transformed into endurance runners. Ever since, he has been chasing a dream with ramifications not just for elite athletes, but all of us.
We know that exercise truly is the best medicine. Get your body moving, even a modest amount, and the rewards range from stronger bones to a sharper mind. But what if you could use a pill to mimic those benefits without having to do any training at all? That question – and Evans’s promising work – have sparked a drug-discovery movement. As the first fruits of this work edge closer to the clinic, there is an increasingly heated debate about how these kinds of therapies should be used. All agree, however, that a healthcare revolution is on the way.
Many of us turn to exercise as a means of … More

Hulu
Watch
The Handmaid’s Tale is back for a fourth season in April on US streaming service Hulu and the UK’s Channel 4 later this year. This season of the hit sci-fi drama has June (pictured) on the run as the resistance grows in Gilead.

Read
The Myth of Artificial Intelligence sees the US tech entrepreneur and pioneering researcher Erik Larson explain why he thinks computers can’t think the way we do, and why this actually makes them so much more exciting and useful for our future.

Read
Maths on the Back of an Envelope, packed with anecdotes and quizzes, is author and New Scientist puzzle-setter Rob Eastaway’s reminder that we will all understand numbers best when we decide to ditch our calculators. More

Sci-fi film Chaos Walking, featuring Tom Holland and Daisy Ridley, is a disconcerting little masterpiece of sensitive acting and well-judged world-building, says Simon Ings

Humans

21 April 2021

By Simon Ings

Viola (Daisy Ridley) and Todd (Tom Holland) flee a dangerous settlementMurray Close/Lionsgate
Chaos Walking
Directed by Doug Liman

Advertisement

Amazon Prime Video
IN Chaos Walking, Todd Hewitt (Tom Holland) is learning to be a man – and in Prentisstown, ostensibly the only settlement to survive humanity’s arrival on the planet New World, this means keeping your thoughts to yourself.
Something about the planet makes men’s consciousness audible and visible to others. As such, they must constantly hide their thoughts by focusing on something else, rehearsing daily chores or even just reciting their own names again and again. Women were unaffected, apparently, but rarely glimpsed aliens called the Spackle killed them all years ago, condemning the settlement to eventual extinction.
If this account of things seems a little off, imagine it delivered by an especially troubled-looking Mads Mikkelsen, who plays Prentisstown’s mysterious, eponymous mayor. Watching his settlement’s secrets come to light, one by one, is one of this film’s chief pleasures.
Newly arrived, Viola (Daisy Ridley) is scouting ahead of a second wave of settlers when her landing craft all but burns up, leaving her at the mercy of the men of Prentisstown. You might think they would be glad of her arrival – but you would be wrong.
Chaos Walking debuts under something of a cloud. To begin with, no one could settle on a script they liked. Charlie Kaufman (of Being John Malkovich fame) got the first bite of the writerly cherry, before the project was passed from pillar to post and ended up being crafted by Christopher Ford (writer of Spider-Man: Homecoming) and Patrick Ness, author of the young adult sci-fi trilogy on which this film is based.
“Chaos Walking should have ended up a mess. But while it isn’t a blockbuster, it is a real accomplishment”
By all measures, then, Chaos Walking should have ended up a mess. But while it isn’t a blockbuster, it is, nonetheless, a real accomplishment: a disconcerting little masterpiece of sensitive acting and well-judged world-building.
In this film, men quite literally cannot shut up, and in her very first conversation with Mayor Prentiss, it dawns on Viola that this gives her huge advantages. She is the only person here who can lie and keep secrets, crucial points made almost entirely in dialogue-free reaction shots.
Todd is a naif who must save Viola and get her to a nearby settlement that he never even realised existed. He is the model of what a man must be in New World: polite, honest and circumspect. His bid to “be a man” in such circumstances is anything but straightforward, but Holland keeps our sympathy and attention.
Indeed, the great strength of Chaos Walking is that it interrogates gender roles by creating genuine difficulties for its characters. Even Prentisstown’s misogynist preacher Aaron (surely David Oyelowo’s least rewarding role yet) turns out to make a certain amount of dreadful sense.
No gender truly benefits from the strange, telepathic gifts granted to the settlers of New World. Only good will and superhuman patience prevent human society going up like a powder keg. This has happened once in Prentisstown, and – given the stalled settlement of the planet – it has almost certainly occurred elsewhere.
Chaos Walking isn’t, in any easy sense, a feminist fable. The film is about people’s struggles in unreasonable circumstances – and for all the angst bound up in its premise, it becomes, by the end, a charming and uplifting film about love and reconciliation.

Simon recommends…
Book
Dying Inside
Robert Silverberg
Before he drank the sword-and-sorcery Kool-Aid, boy could Silverberg write! For years, New Yorker David Selig has been using his telepathic abilities for his own convenience. Now his gift is fading, and with it his grip on reality.
The Demolished Man
Alfred Bester
The book that won the first ever Hugo award for best novel. Ben Reich plans to kill a rival under the noses of a telepathic police force. If he is caught, he will be taken apart, thought by thought.

More on these topics: More

There is a mysterious black market for succulents poached from the California coast. A fascinating documentary follows the people trying to put an end to it

Humans

21 April 2021

By Katie Smith-Wong

Fully grown succulents are being poached from CaliforniaSibling Rivalry Creative
Plant Heist
Chelsi de Cuba and Gabriel de Cuba

Advertisement

Premiere at SXSW Film Festival, online 16-20 March
IN 2017, a post office in the small Californian community of Mendocino was experiencing delays because a man was mailing multiple boxes to Asia. Dirt was falling out of the mysterious packages, so local game warden Pat Freeling was alerted to investigate. When Freeling X-rayed the boxes, he found them full of succulents: plants with thick leaves for holding a lot of water so they can survive in arid regions.
This incident is used in documentary Plant Heist, directed by siblings Chelsi and Gabriel de Cuba, to demonstrate the tip of a growing black market in these plants.
The short film doesn’t explore the origins of the plant poaching, but social media may have something to do with it. Succulents such as Dudleya farinosa often appear on Pinterest and Instagram, generating interest among those looking for small, “cute” and ready grown plants.
Some 70 per cent of succulents are cultivated in California, but it is the popularity of the plants in Japan, China and South Korea that has driven the formal market and fuelled poaching over the past two decades.
One notable case took place in 2018, when three South Koreans were prosecuted for stealing about 5700 succulent plants worth a total of $600,000 from California with the intention of exporting them to Asia. In the film, Freeling recounts the events leading to the bust, which subsequently uncovered a profitable black market for D. farinosa.
When some natively grown succulents can sell for around $50 each, it is no wonder poachers wander round California taking them from public areas and private properties, or riskily pull full-grown plants from cliffs.
“The popularity of succulents in Japan, China and South Korea has also fuelled poaching”
With the prices of succulents increasing by 62 per cent between 2012 and 2017 in the US, the cost factor becomes Plant Heist‘s main focus.
Although the film includes interviews with Freeling and other law enforcement officers, local residents and environmentalists, it doesn’t fully explore the depth of consumer interest in the plants. There is a notable lack of interviews from those who collect, sell or even grow succulents, so we don’t see what is driving the demand at first hand or the effect that poaching is having on the commercial market.
Without this perspective, the narrative becomes unbalanced and fails to set the fullest context for poaching activities – beyond personal financial gain, that is.
Plant Heist also offers little insight into the environmental impact of removing succulents from their native habitat. Two researchers who feature in the film and could have added that depth are Stephen McCabe at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Brett Hall, director of the California Native Plant Program.
They talk briefly about how succulents are a source of food and water for local wildlife, as well as how rare plants are fast becoming targets for poachers. Yet their picture of the ecological impact of poaching fails to shift the direction of the documentary.
The majority of the film looks beautiful, thanks mainly to visuals from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) and picture agency Shutterstock, but having the beauty come from elsewhere makes the aesthetic feel slightly artificial.
The severity of succulent poaching is underlined by the participation in the film of the CDFW and deputy district attorney for Monterey county, Emily Hickok, who reiterate that plant poaching not only poses a serious threat to Californian wildlife, but is also a criminal offence.
Overall, Plant Heist offers a brief yet captivating look into succulent poaching, while reiterating that something is being done to prevent this surprising yet growing crime.
Katie Smith-Wong is a film critic based in London

More on these topics: More

Researchers have developed drugs that bestow many of the health benefits of working out. In the process, they might have figured out how to treat currently untreatable diseases like Alzheimer’s

Humans

21 April 2021

By Jo Marchant

Martin Leon Barreto
RONALD EVANS never intended to kick off a performance-enhancing drug craze, but that is what happened. Despite a ban on its use in sports, the substance he has long been studying has now been detected in doping tests of cyclists and boxers, while runners and bodybuilders share stories online about how it makes them leaner and stronger nonetheless.
The story begins in 2002, when Evans, a biologist at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, performed some experiments involving mice and exercise wheels. He fed a drug known as GW1516 to unfit mice, expecting to see modest effects on their fat metabolism. But tests showed that mice which had been given the drug could run twice as far on their wheels as ones that hadn’t. “It was an amazing moment,” says Evans. Couch-potato mice had been transformed into endurance runners. Ever since, he has been chasing a dream with ramifications not just for elite athletes, but all of us.
We know that exercise truly is the best medicine. Get your body moving, even a modest amount, and the rewards range from stronger bones to a sharper mind. But what if you could use a pill to mimic those benefits without having to do any training at all? That question – and Evans’s promising work – have sparked a drug-discovery movement. As the first fruits of this work edge closer to the clinic, there is an increasingly heated debate about how these kinds of therapies should be used. All agree, however, that a healthcare revolution is on the way.
Many of us turn to exercise as a means of … More

By Alexander McNamara
and Matt Hambly

Holograph note-book containing notes of experiments, etc. on radioactive substances, with rough pen-drawings of apparatus.Public Domain Mark/Wellcome Collection
Marie Curie was a physicist and chemist who became the first woman to win a Nobel prize. Along with her husband Pierre, she discovered two elements: polonium and radium. She also carried out pioneering research into radioactivity. At the time no one knew about the effects of radioactivity on the body, so they handled the elements they used in their research without any of the precautions or protective clothing we would use today. Curie even kept vials of what she was working on in her pockets or her desk drawers. More than 100 years after their discoveries, the couple’s notebooks are still so radioactive they have to be kept in lead-lined boxes and handled only while wearing protective clothing.
The largest dinosaur could have weighed 120 tonnes
Public life size model of Patagotitan dinosaur

Advertisement

Josh Forwood/Alamy
Fossil remains of truly huge dinosaurs have been limited but after an astounding discovery in 2013, six specimens of a truly enormous beast, Patagotitan, started to emerge from the ground.
Since Patagotitan was discovered, it has often been described as the largest animal ever to walk the earth. Estimating the weight of these dinosaurs is not straightforward but recent analyses are in broad agreement. Patagotitan comes in at a whopping 55 tonnes, which is ten times the mass of an elephant, the largest living land animal.
However, a reappraisal of a dinosaur found in 1878 suggests it might have been twice as heavy as Patagotitan. The estimate is contentious, but if correct it would make Amphicoelias fragillimus, between 80 and 120 tonnes
On average, every square metre of land is home to 130 spiders
Jumping spider (Hypaeusbenignus) seen in rainforest of Costa Rica.Avalon.red/Alamy
Recent studies of web building and other spider behaviours have revealed that these arachnids possess unexpected intelligence. Their cognitive abilities include foresight and planning, complex learning, memory and the capacity to be surprised. Today, more than 48,000 spider species have been identified. They are hugely adaptable, living everywhere from the most northerly islands of the Arctic to deserts, caves, seashores and bogs. The Himalayan jumping spider even flourishes at altitudes above 6 kilometres, making it one of the world’s highest residents. On average, every square metre of land on Earth is home to 130 spiders.
There is a scientific paper written on belly-button fluff
Male belly buttonDmitry Epov / Alamy
Starting in 2005, Georg Steinhauser – then a chemist at the Vienna University of Technology – collected pieces of belly-button fluff from his navel and recorded their colour and weight. Over the next three years he collected 503 pieces of lint, weighing almost a gram in total.
Eventually, he sent some of his lint off for chemical analysis, and published his findings in a scientific journal. And all in the interests of answering the question: why do some people find so much fuzz in their belly buttons? The answer, it appears, depends on your clothing and how hairy your navel is.
Psilocybin is being investigated as a possible treatment for mental illness
Magic mushroomScience Photo Library / Alamy
Psilocybin, the psychedelic drug produced by hundreds of species of magic mushrooms is being investigated as a possible treatment for mental illness, including anxiety related to advanced cancer and depression. In the body, psilocybin is converted into a slightly different molecule, psilocin, which acts on serotonin receptors in the brain. Small studies suggest that a single dose of psilocybin can lead to long-term reductions in depression symptoms, perhaps by interrupting patterns of negative thoughts and allowing the brain to remodel itself.
In 2013, Earth was hit by a meteorite weighing over half a tonne
Meteors flying over the clouds 3d illustrationAlexyz3d/Getty Images
On 15 February 2013, high above Chelyabinsk, just to the east of the Ural Mountains in southern Russia, a meteorite exploded in the sky. Although most of it burned up in the atmosphere, several pieces made landfall, one of which smashed through the ice of the frozen Lake Chebarkul, leaving a hole seven metres wide. Recovered by a diver in October 2013, this meteorite weighed in at 570 kilograms. Astronomers concluded that the explosion was an asteroid 17 to 20 metres across with a mass of 10,000 tonnes. The initial blast, at an altitude of about 30 kilometres, carried an energy equivalent to 500 kilotonnes of TNT – about 30 Hiroshima bombs.

More on these topics: More

By Alexander McNamara
and Matt Hambly

Male belly buttonDmitry Epov / Alamy
Starting in 2005, Georg Steinhauser – then a chemist at the Vienna University of Technology – collected pieces of belly-button fluff from his navel and recorded their colour and weight. Over the next three years he collected 503 pieces of lint, weighing almost a gram in total.
Eventually, he sent some of his lint off for chemical analysis, and published his findings in a scientific journal. And all in the interests of answering the question: why do some people find so much fuzz in their belly buttons? The answer, it appears, depends on your clothing and how hairy your navel is.

Advertisement

Psilocybin is being investigated as a possible treatment for mental illness
Magic mushroomScience Photo Library / Alamy
Psilocybin, the psychedelic drug produced by hundreds of species of magic mushrooms is being investigated as a possible treatment for mental illness, including anxiety related to advanced cancer and depression. In the body, psilocybin is converted into a slightly different molecule, psilocin, which acts on serotonin receptors in the brain. Small studies suggest that a single dose of psilocybin can lead to long-term reductions in depression symptoms, perhaps by interrupting patterns of negative thoughts and allowing the brain to remodel itself.
In 2013, Earth was hit by a meteorite weighing over half a tonne
Meteors flying over the clouds 3d illustrationAlexyz3d/Getty Images
On 15 February 2013, high above Chelyabinsk, just to the east of the Ural Mountains in southern Russia, a meteorite exploded in the sky. Although most of it burned up in the atmosphere, several pieces made landfall, one of which smashed through the ice of the frozen Lake Chebarkul, leaving a hole seven metres wide. Recovered by a diver in October 2013, this meteorite weighed in at 570 kilograms. Astronomers concluded that the explosion was an asteroid 17 to 20 metres across with a mass of 10,000 tonnes. The initial blast, at an altitude of about 30 kilometres, carried an energy equivalent to 500 kilotonnes of TNT – about 30 Hiroshima bombs.
Killer whales are actually part of the dolphin family
Tom Brakefield/Alamy
Orcas (orcinus orca) are aquatic mammals that can grow up to 8 metres in length, with a dorsal fin that stands up to 1.8 metres tall. But despite being commonly known as killer whales, these intelligent apex predators are actually the largest member of the dolphin family. 
Highly intelligent, orcas can live in a variety of marine environments all over the world, adapting their diet and hunting habits to better suit their surroundings. It’s not just their appetite that changes, either, they communicate in distinct ‘dialects’, and animals from different populations don’t often interbreed. This makes them the only known non-human species whose culture shapes evolution.
Animals suffer from motion sickness, too
A Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever enjoying a road trip.Jaromír Chalabala/Alamy
Motion sickness, the feeling of nausea associated with certain movements, affects about one third of people. Although we don’t know the exact cause behind it, we do know that it has something to do with the vestibular system – the delicate structure deep inside the ear responsible for balance. This means that any creature with such a system is susceptible to motion sickness, and that includes cats and dogs.
Saturated fat may not be as bad as we thought
edwardolive/Getty Images/
Mainly found in animal products such as meat, milk and eggs, saturated fat is one of two broad groups of fats in our food, the other being “unsaturated”. Although it is just as calorific as unsaturated fat, saturated fat is thought to be worse for our health because studies have linked higher consumption with a greater risk of heart disease.
However, some recent research has questioned whether saturated fat is as harmful as claimed. It appears people who follow low-carbohydrate, high-fat diets for weight loss and therefore tend to eat more saturated fat, do not see their cholesterol levels soaring and nor do they have more heart attacks.
Still, health advice from the NHS suggests we should eat less red meat, drink skimmed milk and use vegetable margarines instead of butter.

More on these topics: More

By Layal Liverpool

Woodland in the UK has been influenced by human activity for millenniaSteve Speller/Alamy
As early as 12,000 years ago, nearly three-quarters of land on Earth was inhabited and shaped by human societies, suggesting global biodiversity loss in recent years may have been driven primarily by an intensification of land use rather than by the destruction of previously untouched nature.
“It’s not the process of using land itself [that causes biodiversity loss], it’s the way that land is used,” says Erle Ellis at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. “You can have traditional land use and still have biodiversity.”

Advertisement

Ellis and his colleagues analysed the most recent reconstruction of global land use by humans over the past 12,000 years and compared this with contemporary global patterns of biodiversity and conservation. They found that most – 72.5 per cent – of Earth’s land has been shaped by human societies since as far back as 10,000 BC, including more than 95 per cent of temperate and 90 per cent of tropical woodlands.
“Our work confirms that untouched nature was almost as rare 12,000 years ago as it is today,” says Ellis. He and his team found that lands now considered natural, intact or wild generally exhibit long histories of use, as do protected areas and lands inhabited only by relatively small numbers of Indigenous peoples.

The extent of historical human land use may previously have been underestimated because prior analyses didn’t fully account for the influence that hunter-gatherer populations had on landscapes, says Ellis. “Even hunter-gatherer populations that are moving around are still interacting with the land, but maybe in what we would see as a more sustainable way,” he says.
The researchers also found that in regions now characterised as natural, current global patterns of vertebrate species richness and overall biodiversity are more strongly linked to past patterns of land use than they are with present ones. Ellis says this indicates the current biodiversity crisis can’t be explained by the loss of uninhabited wild lands alone. Instead, this points to a more significant role for recent appropriation, colonisation and intensification of land use, he says.
“The concept of wilderness as a place without people is a myth,” says Yadvinder Malhi at the University of Oxford. “Where we do find large biomes without people living in them and using them – as in North American national parks, Amazonian forests or African game parks – it is because of a history of people being removed from these lands through disease or by force.”
“[This study] shows that high biodiversity is compatible with, and in some cases a result of, people living in these landscapes,” says Malhi. “Working with local and traditional communities, and learning from them, is essential if we are to try to protect biodiversity.”
“With ambitious calls to expand global terrestrial protected areas to cover 30 per cent or even half of the Earth, this [study] brings into focus that protection necessarily cannot mean the exclusion of people and anthropogenic land uses,” says Jason Riggio at the University of California, Davis. The “30 by 30” pledge, being championed by a coalition of more than 50 countries, aims to expand protected areas to cover at least 30 per cent of land and sea by 2030.
Joice Ferreira at Embrapa Amazônia Oriental in Brazil says that there are important roles for both protected areas and sustainable land use in preserving biodiversity. “The combination of deforestation, degradation […] and climate change make protected areas paramount,” she says, adding: “if Indigenous custodianship was important in the past, it is much more so nowadays, in the face of new and more intense threats.”
Journal reference: PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2023483118

More on these topics: More