Humans

Ratched review: Netflix show fails with stereotypes of mental health Netflix’s thriller about Nurse Ratched does well to remove much of the misogyny present in the book and film that created her, but it also peddles harmful stereotypes about mental health

Humans 16 September 2020
By Bethan Ackerley
Nurse Ratched (Sarah Paulson) setting out on a path to villainy
Courtesy of Netflix

Ratched
Evan Romansky
Netflix
“SHE likes a rigged game,” says Randle McMurphy, the belligerent anti-hero of the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. McMurphy is talking about his nemesis, Nurse Ratched, the sadistic overseer of a psychiatric hospital ward – and one of fiction’s most terrifying villains.
Netflix’s new TV series Ratched is a prequel to that iconic 1975 film, which was based on a 1960s novel by Ken Kesey. It promises to delve into the eponymous nurse’s psyche to explore the origins of … More

Your walk is as unique as your fingerprint and harder to hide than your face. Now governments and companies are waking up to the power of gait analysis

Technology 16 September 2020
By David Adam

Science History Images/Alamy

LIAM GALLAGHER, formerly of the band Oasis, tends to stroll with a roll to his shoulders. John Wayne’s slow swagger has been linked to everything from a misaligned leg to small feet. Some say Vladimir Putin’s distinctive shuffle is thanks to KGB weapons training that encouraged operatives to dampen the swing of one arm to keep it closer to their gun.
Considering that walking is such an everyday function of a bipedal species, it is incredible that we find so many different ways to do it. Perhaps that’s why our gaits – and what they say about us – are so fascinating. It takes dozens of muscles working together throughout the body to put one foot in front of the other. These subtle patterns of muscular flexes and strains are highly distinctive, so much so that scientists who study gait increasingly believe they are as unique to you as your fingerprint.
Gait analysis has been around for years, but now it is going mainstream. China is using it to track its citizens. Transport companies want to use it to identify ticket holders. Doctors say an analysis of your strides might provide an early hint of health problems. But is this technology on a solid footing? And is it offering a step in the right direction or is it merely another worrisome invasion of our biometric privacy?
We have watched other people walk for centuries. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle was one of the first to pay attention, but no one was more obsessed with the subject than the 19th-century French novelist Honoré de Balzac. He peppered his books … More

By Jason Arunn Murugesu
Your brain determines your perception of time
YANDONG LIU / Alamy

Time may sometimes seem slower than it is because part of our brain becomes fatigued.
“One might have experienced this manipulation after hearing music with fast tempo,” says Masamichi Hayashi at Osaka University in Japan. “The next song with a slightly slower tempo will feel even slower.”
Using a similar method of manipulation, Hayashi and his colleagues wanted to determine if there was a neural basis for our subjective sense of time. They focused their efforts on the brain’s supramarginal gyrus (SMG) after reading reports on how … More

We can’t extract DNA from some of the most perplexing ancient human fossils. But ancient proteins sometimes survive better, and they are finally starting to give up their secrets

Life 9 September 2020
By Colin Barras

Marina Loeb

IT WAS an astonishing discovery: a chamber deep underground, packed full of ancient human remains. The excavators who uncovered the fossils at South Africa’s Rising Star cave in 2013 described the experience as “breathtaking” and “emotional”. Then they took a proper look at the bones, and exhilaration gave way to bewilderment. This new species of ancient human, which the researchers called Homo naledi, had such an odd combination of primitive and modern features that it was impossible to know how it was related to other ancient humans and, ultimately, to us.
About 20 years ago, it looked like the human evolutionary tree was coming into focus. Then palaeontologists started finding ancient humans, like H. naledi, that are so strange, it is as if they had walked off the pages of a Tolkien fantasy. We can’t expect ancient DNA to help resolve their place in the human family tree because most of these misfit cousins were found in places too warm for genetic material to survive. The trail seemed to have gone cold.
In the past few years, however, we have learned to read the signals in other organic molecules that tend to survive longer than DNA and persist even in warm environments. Researchers have already analysed samples of proteins extracted from ancient bones and teeth to reveal relationships between ancient mammals. Now, some think they could reveal how archaic humans like H. naledi evolved and interacted. “I’m confident that it will be possible to put some of these very unusual hominins on the [family] tree,” says Matthew Collins at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.
Human hybrids … More

The X Prize Foundation CEO on her unique experience as the first self-funded woman to fly to the International Space Station, and how innovation could help us cope with the covid-19 pandemic

Space 9 September 2020
By Chelsea Whyte

Rocio Montoya

IN 2006, Anousheh Ansari made history in several ways. Joining an international crew of astronauts aboard a Soyuz spacecraft, she became the first Iranian and the first Muslim woman in space, as well as the first self-funded woman to fly to the International Space Station, where she spent nine days conducting science experiments. Prior to blasting off from our planet, Ansari and her family sponsored the first X Prize competition, which offered a $10 million reward to the first non-governmental organisation to launch a reusable crewed spacecraft into space twice in two weeks.
Ansari is now the CEO of the X Prize Foundation, which offers large sums of money as incentives to find solutions for huge global issues. There have been X Prizes offered for engineering efficient vehicles, cleaning up oil spills, landing a rover on the moon, improving adult literacy and designing sensors to monitor health. Now, the X Prize Foundation is turning towards the biggest threats we face today: the loss of biodiversity due to climate change and the creation of treatments and vaccines for covid-19. New Scientist spoke to Ansari about how her experiences in space helped give her the collaborative outlook we need to tackle these challenges together.
Chelsea Whyte: You are best known for being one of the first people to self-fund a trip to space. Were you always interested in space?
Anousheh Ansari: I was fascinated with space and stars. As a young child, when I looked at the night skies, I was just very curious to see what’s out there. I always believed there were aliens out there and … More

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Stephen Hawking: A memoir of friendship and physics describes how Leonard Mlodinow’s collaboration with Hawking on The Grand Design (a follow-up to A Brief History of Time) blossomed into a 15-year friendship with a giant of science.

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Science Disrupt is a podcast about change-makers in science, from entrepreneurs and iconoclasts to smart outsiders. Guests include materials scientist Ainissa … More

Covid-19 is affecting ethnic minorities more severely, but we will never understand why if we don’t collect the right data, says Alisha Dua

Humans | Comment 9 September 2020
By Alisha Dua

Michelle D’Urbano

THERE was the home health aide distraught at having potentially transmitted the coronavirus to her patients. The essential worker, just barely into his 40s, on a ventilator for six weeks. The beloved father’s family whose agony was revealed in every phone call recorded in his medical record.
These are the stories of some of the people with covid-19 whose medical records I reviewed as a research volunteer in New York City. Combined with thousands of other people’s anonymous data, such collections are critical for informing research, clinical care, government policies and funding allocations to tackle the pandemic. … More

Computer game 5D Chess With Multiverse Time Travel isn’t for the faint-hearted because it means keeping track of all the possible threats to every king that ever existed

Humans 9 September 2020
By Jacob Aron
Seeing all the possible moves isn’t the same as anticipating threats
Thunkspace LLC

5D Chess With Multiverse Time Travel
Thunkspace
PC
THERE is a phrase that has entered the political lexicon recently. When a politician does something that looks really incompetent, wannabe analysts will fall over backwards to explain why this is part of a dastardly plan that mere mortals can’t comprehend. “X is playing 5D chess!” they exclaim.
If so, that explains a lot about the state of the world because 5D chess is brain-meltingly hard. I have been playing 5D Chess With Multiverse Time Travel and … More