Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2024 i BBC Science Focus Magazine

EYE OPENER If you think something's a bit off with this spacesuit, you're right. With no arms, legs or visor, we don't fancy exploration geologist Angela Garcia's chances if she were to actually wear it in space. Luckily, the NASA contractor is only demonstrating how the prototype suit could be used during the Artemis missions, which are expected to return humans to the Moon. Garcia is simulating a sample collection moonwalk, so the suit's designers can see how well the shoulders and waist rings perform. “These unpressurised mock-up spacesuits provide an essential opportunity to help test and refine suit requirements or designs, to undertake astronaut training or to develop operational protocols for their use on the Moon – including emergency scenarios and responses,” says Dr Peter D Hodkinson, director of…

DISCOVERIES ANTHROPOLOGY From their remarkable astronomical calendars to their stunning stepped pyramids, the ancient Maya civilisation of Central America has captivated scholars for centuries. But alongside their brilliance, they're also associated with another, darker cultural phenomenon: human sacrifice. And according to a recent study, it was very dark indeed. New findings from an analysis of ancient DNA found in the ruins of the Maya city of Chichén Itzá on Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula have suggested that many of the sacrifices were children – including a high proportion of identical twins. Published in the journal Nature, the study examined human remains found in a chultun – an underground cistern – close to a large sinkhole known as the Sacred Cenote. Radiocarbon dating (where scientists use decaying radioactive carbon to estimate the age of…

PALAEONTOLOGY Family walks aren't usually known for their surprising plot twists, but for one North Dakota family that's exactly what they got when they stumbled across an extraordinary fossil nestled in the dirt: an adolescent Tyrannosaurus rex. The discovery is particularly important as it could offer more insight into the life of this famous dinosaur. Nicknamed the 'Teen Rex', the fossil was discovered by two young brothers then aged seven and 10, their dad and their cousin, aged nine at the time. The young fossil hunters discovered the remains in 2022 while in the badlands of North Dakota, roughly 10 miles from the town of Marmarth. While on the walk, one of the children and their father noticed a large leg bone sticking out of the ground. The father, Sam…

In its second batch of images since its 2023 launch, ESA space telescope Euclid offers new views of the Universe. In just 24 hours, Euclid produced a treasure trove of images – revealing over 11 million objects in visible light and 5 million more in infrared (like the image pictured here of stellar nursery Messier 78 in the constellation Orion). These early images targeted 17 astronomical objects, from nearby dust clouds to distant galaxies – but during the next six years, Euclid will map over a third of the whole sky. Even just the first few batches of images have provided astronomers with masses amounts of data to identify new findings about astronomical objects. In fact, these images (and those still to come) will allow scientists to hunt for rogue…

We've known for decades that smoking is incredibly harmful and that quitting, or never starting in the first place, is one of the best things you can do to protect your health. Governments around the world have taken steps to push smoking out of the circle of normal and socially acceptable behaviours and expose it for what it is: a deadly addiction. High tobacco taxes, graphic visual warnings on packages, bans on smoking in workplaces and the end of glamorous cigarette advertising campaigns have all played a part in bringing smoking rates down. According to the Office for National Statistics, 12.9 per cent of the UK's adult population currently smokes. This represents a significant reduction from approximately 30 per cent in the early 1990s. Tobacco control has been a public…

FEATURE | BACK PAIN Back pain is on the rise. Around the world, a staggering 619 million people – around one in 13 of us – suffer from back pain. By 2050, it's expected that number will rise to around 843 million. For some, it steals the sunshine from life. Sleep can become f ractured, mental health becomes eroded and once-normal activities, such as playing with the kids or going to work, can become utterly impossible. Things are now so bad, that back pain has become the leading cause of disability in the world and it's been called a 'global epidemic' by the independent journal The Lancet Rheumatology. In the UK, it costs the NHS around £5 billion every year, while in the US, the cost of medical treatment and…

Creatine is beloved by all types of athletes, from bodybuilders to Premier League footballers. Even Hollywood stars, the likes of Ryan Reynolds and Mark Wahlberg, are known to include it in their 'get-ripped-for-the-camera' regimes. Thanks to the muscle-boosting benefits it's said to provide, creatine is one of the most widely used supplements on the market. But why? What does creatine actually do? How does it work and what makes it one of the few supplements that genuinely seems to make a difference, when so many others offer you nothing You're not already getting from your diet? More interestingly, why is this supplement, which is so heavily linked to physical improvements, suddenly said to have benefits for your brain as well? “High doses of daily creatine supplementation may improve cognitive functions,…

HOW TO SEE THE CROWN SPARKLING WHEN: JULY A variable star is one that changes brightness over time. They fall into two categories: ones that exhibit periodic changes in brightness over predictable timescales; and ones that don't. The constellation of Corona Borealis, aka the Northern Crown, contains two impressive variables, one of which is irregular and one of which is sort of regular. The irregular one is R Coronae Borealis (R CrB), a star that dips in brightness from the threshold of naked-eye and binocular visibility, to so faint that a decent-sized telescope is needed to see it. A carbon star located inside the semi-circular crown pattern, R CrB sheds clouds of carbon into the space that cool to soot, blocking the star's light. When the clouds disperse, the star…

Some people seem to cope better with ageing than others – and a new study suggests this may come down to their diets. Published in the journal Nature Aging, the research suggests that people with slow cognitive ageing share the same combination of nutrients in their bodies. So what should you eat to keep your brain young? The specific nutrients associated with slower ageing are those typically found in the Mediterranean diet. This diet includes plenty of seasonal plant foods (including fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes), olive oil, small but daily portions of dairy, weekly consumption of fish or poultry, and infrequent consumption of red meat. “This is an important study further adding to the mounting evidence of the impact of nutrition on brain ageing,” David Vauzour, associate professor in…

DISCOVERIES ARCHAEOLOGY Egypt's iconic pyramids have been a source of mystery and wonder for thousands of years. Experts have scrambled to understand how an ancient society could be capable of building such colossal structures on the edge of the harsh Sahara Desert, far from the Nile River. Now, archaeologists have uncovered a crucial piece of the construction puzzle: a long-lost branch of the Nile, buried beneath desert sands for millennia. The hidden river may finally explain how the ancient Egyptians transported massive stones (some of which weigh upwards of 10 tonnes) to build these monuments. “The hidden branch of the Nile would have been a bustling highway around 500 metres wide and 25 metres deep” The discovery, detailed in a new study published in Nature Communications Earth & Environment, sheds light…

Women may actually perform better in certain cognitive tasks during menstruation, according to a bold new study from University College London (UCL) and the Institute of Sport, Exercise & Health (ISEH). Published in the peer-reviewed journal Neuropsychologia, this research is the first of its kind to explore sport-related cognition across different phases of the menstrual cycle. The study assessed 241 participants who undertook a series of cognitive tests designed to simulate mental processes common in team sports. Tests included recognising smiling faces among winking ones (which measured inhibition), attention, reaction time and spatial cognition. Participants also tracked their menstrual cycles using period-tracking apps to determine which phase they were in during the tests. Surprisingly, despite reporting feeling worse and anticipating poorer performance during menstruation, participants demonstrated quicker reaction times and…

The first time I met Michael Mosley was at a BBC summer party. The very first Horizon documentary I presented had just aired, which qualified me for an invite. I knew literally no one at the party, particularly as many of the attendees were household names, so I was just a little star-struck and intimidated, and ended up quietly people-watching at the bar while nursing a drink. It was at this point that Michael came up to me. “Hi, I'm Michael Mosley,” he said. He needn't have introduced himself – of course I knew who he was! We started talking and ended up hanging out for much of the evening. It was only a year later, when I got the Trust Me, I'm a Doctor gig, that I began working…

Where the pain of a headache is can be an indicator of what type of headache you have. Other factors help too, but the site (or sites) of the aching is useful information to take into account, as different headaches tend to have different patterns in terms of where the pain is felt, as well as other associated symptoms. Tension headaches are one of the most common types of headaches. These are usually felt as a dull, aching sensation that envelops your head like a tight band. Typically, tension headaches are experienced across your forehead and temples, or the back of your head and neck. These headaches are often associated with stress, poor posture, lack of sleep and eye strain. Excessive caffeine consumption and dehydration can also exacerbate tension headaches.…

ACROSS 1 Guide straight (6) 4 Behold soldier, caught thinking (5) 8 Path of gold section (5) 9 Time for some coffee (7) 10 Large turn by detectives - that's clear (5) 12 Benefactor played spoons at recital's start (7) 13 Elaborate writing in colourful aisle (6,7) 15 Hide tale about that woman (7) 17 Insignia at the top (5) 19 City that was elegant in the past (7) 20 Dreamer relied on being strange, without energy (5) 22 Initially told, then, to change a fraction (5) 23 Irritable, to be concise (6) DOWN 1 Doctor rings learner to show considerable desire (5) 2 Massage is the problem (3) 3 Dialect used in fortress (7) 4 Girl with nothing but a lariat (5) 5 Angry look around front of store was about fragile items (9) 6 Group finds bed next to lake (7) 7 I may be an…

The news has not been kind to nervous flyers lately. Reports of extreme turbulence and doors blowing out mid-air make for anxious reading, especially if you're one of the estimated five per cent of people who suffer from aerophobia. As the summer holidays arrive, those of us with a fear of flying are already psyching ourselves up. We understand that there were almost two million flights in or out of the UK in 2023 and that only a tiny number of those suffered serious mechanical failures or anything worse. But what's a phobia if not a first-class departure from logic? “The brain has a tendency to overestimate risk when we're feeling anxious about something,” says Prof Robert Bor, director of the Centre for Aviation Psychology. “It makes that risk more…

NATURE Researchers in Finland have discovered a rare new colour of cat known as 'salty liquorice.' Cats with the unusual coat, which have been given the name 'salmiak cats' after the salt used in the black-and-white Nordic confection salty liquorice, are black with flecks of white. Elsewhere on their bodies, salmiak cats wear a 'tuxedo' pattern: a solid white neck, chest, belly and paws. The unusual pattern of the new coat is caused by the colour of each hair changing from root to tip – starting out black near the cats' skin then fading to white. And, as scientists recently discovered, that's a huge deal genetically. That's because cats typically come in two colours: black and orange. If you think you've seen any others, that's probably because all feline coats…

DISCOVERIES HEALTH Scientists have found a simple new method to reduce the rate of people suffering from a peanut allergy by a staggering 71 per cent. How? By regularly feeding a child peanuts between the ages of four months old and five years old. What's more, the method works even if the child then continues to eat peanuts or avoids them entirely after the age of five. “Decades of advice to avoid peanuts has made parents fearful of introducing peanuts at an early age,” said lead investigator Prof Gideon Lack of King's College London. But now, he says, “the evidence is clear that early introduction of peanut in infancy induces long-term tolerance and protects children from allergy well into adolescence. This simple intervention will make a remarkable difference to future generations…

In the first months of 2024, there was a strange and devastating uptick in twister occurrences across the US. April witnessed more than 100 tornadoes in the US in just one week, and, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information, a total of 384 were reported throughout the whole month. That is more than double the year-on-year average and the second-highest on record. More than just numbers, the storms destroyed dozens of homes in Oklahoma, Nebraska and Iowa. An especially violent storm in the latter state left five people dead and thousands without power, after severe weather flattened buildings in the town of Sulphur. Tornadoes in Nebraska and Iowa are much further towards the north and east than is typically expected for April. Experts think the recent change in…

COMMENT In the vast symphony of human expression, few disciplines captivate the mind and stir the soul quite like music and physics. What's more, these seemingly disparate endeavours share a clandestine bond, a hidden harmony that resonates through the ages. Even the great Albert Einstein, whose ideas reshaped our understanding of the Universe, famously stated that had his path led him away from physics, he would have found solace in playing music. This sentiment has long underscored the notion that music and physics are not merely subjects of study but intertwined facets of human creativity. As a scientist and musician, I've been privileged to navigate between both disciplines, discovering the profound connections beneath the surface. My own journey into this entwined world began on the streets of the Bronx, a…

ANALYSIS REALITY CHECK One of West Antarctica's most infamous glaciers, nicknamed the 'Doomsday Glacier' due to its potential to trigger coastline-altering amounts of sea level rise, is changing rapidly in response to climate change. The Thwaites Glacier, to give its proper name, is the widest glacier in the world, measuring 120km (74 miles) across, and covers an area larger than the US state of Florida. It's a frozen river of ice that snakes down from the tip of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet until it meets the Amundsen Sea, where it spreads out into a floating platform of ice, known as an ice shelf. All is not well with Thwaites, however. It's losing ice. It's losing so much ice, in fact, that it accounts for around four per cent of global…

FEATURE | COSMIC STRINGS If the existence of cosmic strings is confirmed, it would be huge. They could help uncover the Holy Grail of physics: a theory of everything. And in the far future, they might even enable us to time travel. The theories that predict their existence suggest that cosmic strings are thinner than an atomic nucleus. Prof Ken Olum, of Tufts University, describes them as astronomically long tubes. “They would most likely exist in the form of either loops or long strings that go on and on forever,” he says. But while the strings are super thin, they can pack in a lot of mass. “A typical loop, which may be about 10–20 light-years long, can contain around the equivalent of the mass of tens of thousands of…

FEATURE SUPERVOLCANOES Something volcanic is stirring close to the Italian city of Naples and it has nothing to do with the looming presence of Mount Vesuvius. Another volcano lurks close by, one that's much harder to spot, but potentially far more dangerous than its neighbouring cousin. And it's getting restive. Rather than forming a peak, the Campi Flegrei volcano is marked by a 13km-wide (8 miles) giant crater, or caldera, formed following colossal eruptions during prehistoric times. It's the closest thing we have to a supervolcano in Europe and it sits directly beneath the port town of Pozzuoli, just to the west of Naples. Campi Flegrei's biggest eruption, which happened 36,000 years ago, wasn't quite large enough to qualify as 'super', but it was still Europe's greatest volcanic blast in at…

What lives around 1,000m (approx 3,200ft) underwater, is the size of a chickpea and looks like the plump pink rear end of a pig? This question had scientists puzzled for a long time. Teams from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) occasionally spotted these odd creatures while surveying the Monterey Canyon, off the coast of California, with remote-controlled submersibles. But they couldn't figure out what kind of animal it was. It wasn't until the submersible pilots managed to carefully collect a few specimens of these creatures that MBARI scientists had their first chance to study these strange animals up close. When they did, they realised that they're actually a kind of bristle worm, or polychaete, a huge group of marine worms that live throughout the ocean, but mostly on…

ROSE ANNE DECRISTOFORO, VIA EMAIL IN TERMS OF OUR CARBON FOOTPRINT, IS IT REALLY BETTER TO EAT FRESHLY SOURCED, LOCALLY GROWN FOOD? A food's carbon emissions are dictated by all the processes involved in its production, not just its distribution. The question is whether transport emissions make up a significant proportion of the total. Previously, scientists who looked into this question suggested that transport emissions often made up less than 10 per cent of the total emissions for food products. However, a study published in Nature Food in 2022, suggested that transport emissions actually account for around 19 per cent of food emissions, although this study incorporated transportation not just of the food itself, but also everything needed to produce it, including fertilizers, machinery and animal feed. Whatever the figure,…