Humans

Netflix’s Hope Frozen documentary follows a family in Thailand that cryogenically freezes their 2-year-old daughter’s brain after she dies, creating a controversy-fuelled media storm

Humans 23 September 2020
By Simon Ings
Einz’s mother remembering her 2-year-old daughter
Netfilx

Hope Frozen: A quest to live twice
Pailin Wedel
Netflix
THE world – including this magazine – hasn’t shied away from expressing opinions about the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, the US non-profit founded by Fred and Linda Chamberlain in 1972 to freeze corpses and body parts in the hope of one day resurrecting the dead.
Most observers are content with interrogating Alcor’s bizarre mission by asking if technologies for resurrection will ever be viable. This, of course, is a non-question: who knows what is around the corner? The successful freezing and thawing of a … More

By Donna Lu
A news stand in the New York subway in Manhattan
MB Photo/Alamy

News coverage in the US of scientific work is biased against researchers whose names aren’t of British origin.
Hao Peng at the University of Michigan and his colleagues analysed more than 230,000 news stories from 288 US outlets, which reported on around 100,000 different research papers across all scientific fields.
The team looked at whether the first authors of papers were mentioned in news coverage. Very often, these are junior researchers who have contributed most significantly to the work. Peng and his colleagues found that first authors who … More

By Michael Le Page
The human population of Santiago Island is evolving rapidly
Peter Adams/Getty Images

Yes, we are still evolving. And one of the strongest examples of recent evolution in people has been found on the Cape Verde islands in the Atlantic, where a gene variant conferring a form of malaria resistance has become more common.
Portuguese voyagers settled the uninhabited islands in 1462, bringing slaves from Africa with them. Most of the archipelago’s half a million inhabitants are descended from these peoples.
Most people of West African origin have a variant in a gene called DARC that protects against … More

By Douglas Heingartner
Emergency sirens and wolf howls are acoustically alike
Glenn Nagel / Alamy

There is an uncanny similarity between wolf howls and emergency sirens. The sound of a siren might be effective because we evolved to be alerted by howls, suggest researchers.
Hynek Burda at the Czech University of Life Sciences and his colleagues compared several dozen recordings of wolf howls with the sounds made by various emergency sirens, such as those on ambulances and in tornado-warning systems. Their analysis looked at the most important acoustic components of these sounds – for example their initial and closing frequencies or how … More

A harmful political conspiracy theory is now embracing science denial. Combating it is important, but it won’t be easy, writes Graham Lawton

Humans | Comment 16 September 2020
By Graham Lawton

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

AS THE weeks and months of covid-19 drag on, I have found myself dragged into an increasingly bewildering and frightening conspiracy theory. I am no conspiracy theorist myself, unless you count the belief that much of the world is currently run by buffoons. When I first heard of QAnon, I filed it alongside “flat Earth” as an infuriating but essentially harmless fringe belief. But the more I learn about it, the more worried I become that it could kill off any chance we have of emerging from the pandemic into a greener, more enlightened world. … More

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

Mick Sinclair/Alamy
Watch
How to Make the World Add Up has economist and broadcaster Tim Harford delve into the misuse of numbers in politics, journalism and PR in a live-streamed talk from the Royal Institution. Tune in at 7pm BST on 22 September.

Read
The Zoologist’s Guide to the Galaxy sees University of Cambridge scientist Arik Kershenbaum explore how we can learn more about the possibilities for life and culture in unexpected corners of the universe by observing animals closer to home.

Björn Forenius/Alamy

Learn
mckinsey-live Sustainable Fashion is one of a series of webinars organised by consulting … 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