Table of contents for July 2017 in BBC Science Focus Magazine

In China’s Henan Province, performers throw searing hot molten iron on to the cold brick surface of the city wall causing it to explode into cascades of flares and sparks. Dubbed Da Shuhua, meaning ‘beating down the tree flowers’, the ceremony is a part of the Lantern Festival celebrations which take place on the 15th day of the Chinese New Year. The practice can be traced back 500 years and arose when poor blacksmiths, who were unable to afford fireworks to let off during celebrations, began to improvise their own displays using molten iron. The practice proved popular and soon became an annual fixture. Each year, villagers donate scrap metal to the blacksmiths who heat it to more than 1,500°C in a vast, burning furnace placed in the heart of…

Talk about a womb with a view… researchers at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in the US have created a plastic bag-like artificial womb and successfully used it to incubate premature baby lambs for up to 28 days. That’s a huge improvement on the maximum 60 hours achieved in previous attempts to develop artificial wombs. Extreme prematurity (where a baby is born less than 26 weeks into a pregnancy) accounts for one-third of infant deaths in humans. Currently, premature babies are placed in incubators, and put on ventilators to help them breathe. But this can lead to lung problems later in life, and the development of other organs is often impaired. In contrast, the ‘biobag’ system developed in Philadelphia is designed to more closely mimic conditions inside the mother’s womb.…

What’s that? A tequila-based cocktail? Yummy! Don’t be ridiculous. The vaquita is a species of porpoise that’s found in the clear blue waters of the Gulf of California. So what’s so special about it? At 1.5m in length, vaquitas are the smallest species of cetacean in the world. They are often referred to as the ‘panda of the sea’ thanks to their distinctive black and white markings. Cute. Anything else? I’m afraid so. With an estimated 30 individuals remaining, the vaquita is thought to be the world’s most endangered marine mammal. Some experts believe that, without drastic action, they could be extinct by 2018. That’s terrible. How come there are so few left? Vaquita are often caught in gill nets: fishing nets that are hung vertically so that fish get…

INSTA360 NANO £209, insta360.com Encased in brushed metal, the Insta360 Nano is designed as an add-on for the iPhone – it’s compatible with models 6 and upwards – though it also works as a standalone camera, albeit one with no live preview screen. It’s got twin, opposite-facing 210° lenses, shooting 30fps at 3K resolution. The accompanying app is simple to use and makes sharing pictures and videos to YouTube and social media a breeze. Don’t chuck away the box – it doubles up as a Google Cardboard-style headset, which is a nice touch. 9/10 SPECS: 3,040 x 1,520 resolution, f/2.0 lens, TF card storage, 800mAh battery, 33mm thick, 70g. KODAK PIXPRO SP360 4K DUAL PRO PACK £699, kodak.com This precursor to the upcoming Orbit 360 4K…

The DxtER from Final Frontier Medical Devices has won the Tricorder XPrize, a $7m grant to develop an all-purpose medical diagnostic device along the lines of the ‘tricorder’ used in Star Trek . The Tricorder XPrize competition was launched in January 2012, as a joint venture between the XPrize Foundation (whose directors include Google founder Larry Page and Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington) and US telecoms giant Qualcomm. And now Final Frontier’s device has been chosen as a winner, even though the DxtER isn’t actually particularly tricorder-like at all. Rather than being one single multipurpose device, DxtER consists of several discreet components, including heart rate and respiration monitors, a compact spirometer, and a dual-purpose thermometer and stethoscope called the DxtER Orb. Plus, the DxtER system has…

EARLY RISERS Researchers studying pink salmon in Alaska have found that, as waters have warmed over recent decades, fish with the gene for earlier migration from the ocean have become more numerous, because they reach streams to spawn before the waters become too warm. The changes seem to take place over just one or two generations, meaning that – so far – these salmon have been able to keep one step ahead of climate change. MINI MOUTHS In 1935, Australian scientists came up with an exciting new method to control problematic crop pests. They decided to introduce cane toads from the Americas. The cane toads soon roamed away from their original introduction site, and now inhabit much of eastern Australia. The toads are loaded with deadly poison, making them lethal…

As we are primarily active during daylight hours, our bodies have evolved a schedule for different metabolic processes to make sure we use energy in the most efficient way. Muscle performance and reaction times are optimised during the day, while tissue repair and memory formation are handled during our downtime. The circadian rhythms are the 24-hour cycles of each part of our body. They are controlled by the fluctuating levels of different signal molecules in our cells – known collectively as biological clocks. All the clocks are synchronised by a master clock in our brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus, which is a group of around 20,000 brain cells in the hypothalamus.…

This golden eagle was snapped from the inside of its prey in Norway’s frozen mountains. The prey in question was a red fox – a common food source for golden eagles in this region. “I got the dead fox from a scientist friend,” says photographer Audun Rikardsen, who works as a biologist at the University of Tromsø. “I had to freeze it so that I could take it on the plane with me to the mountains. They wouldn’t allow it in hand luggage.” When Audun arrived, he cut a hole in the melting animal and placed his camera inside, its lens pointing out. It was then just a matter of waiting, with Audun triggering the camera via a remote control from his hide, 20m away. “I finally struck gold at…

Now here’s a bloody good piece of research! A team at Boston Children’s Hospital have generated blood-forming stem cells in the lab for the first time, a breakthrough that could enable the development of more effective treatments for genetic blood diseases To create the cells, the team used a combination of chemical processes and genetic engineering to coax human pluripotent stem cells – cells capable of forming any adult cell – to differentiate into hemogenic endothelium, an embryonic form of tissue that gives rise to blood stem cells. They then implanted the resulting tissue into mice. Weeks later, a small number of the animals began producing several types of human blood cells. Some mice were even able to mount a human immune response after vaccination. “We’re tantalisingly close to generating…

We’re all told to exercise more, but for those with physical disabilities that isn’t always possible. For such people, the benefits of aerobic exercise have always been out of reach. But now a team at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego, California has developed a pill that engenders such effects chemically, with mice given the drug able to burn fat more effectively while exhibiting increased stamina. When people exercise regularly, their bodies become more adept at using fat rather than glucose as an energy source. It’s been known for some time that this ability is linked to the expression of a gene called PPARD – mice that were genetically engineered to have this gene permanently activated proved more resistant to weight gain than normal mice, and had…

“THE NODOSAUR SKELETON MEASURES 5.5M IN LENGTH AND WEIGHS OVER 1,000KG” It may resemble the sort of creepy statue that would look at home in a supervillain’s hidden lair, but this intimidating beastie is in fact the 112-million-year-old fossil of a nodosaur. Nodosaurs were herbivores whose bodies were encased in tank-like armour and spikes to protect them from predators. This particular example is 5.5m in length and weighs over 1,000kg. The fossil is currently on display at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Alberta, Canada, but was originally discovered in the nearby Suncor Millennium Mine in 2011, by a Suncor employee who was excavating in the mine. The fossil was then moved to the museum, where its bones were painstakingly cleaned and pieced together – a process that took…

Seen here is the Renault R.S. 2027 Vision. This futuristic Formula 1 car concept was unveiled at the recent Auto Shanghai trade fair to showcase the technologies the French motoring giant thinks will become dominant in the sport over the next decade or so. These include hybrid electric/liquid fuel engines, four-wheel drive, a transparent, 3D-printed cockpit, wheels with a built-in LED display, and greatly reduced weight – the R.S 2027 Vision tips the scales at 600kg, over 100kg lighter than current F1 models.…

MESSAGE OF THE MONTH Urine trouble I was most disappointed to read, in your otherwise excellent magazine, that you chose to report the fake news masquerading as a ‘statistic’ regarding urine released in a swimming pool (May, p82). Surely that statistic is unverifiable and would actually require most of us (we!) swimmers to be incontinent? I suspect the ‘news’ was released to the media by a pathological non-swimmer who has had to endure taking his kids to early morning swimming lessons! Conversely, and perhaps more worthy of your attention, all swimming pools are checked daily, by water sample, for faecal contamination (not for urine) and therefore it should be possible to work out exactly how much poo is floating about in the average swimming pool in a day. An ideal…

Most kindly described as ‘saggy sausages with legs and teeth’, naked mole rats are one of the strangest looking animals on Earth. But their appearance belies a remarkable set of traits. Over the past few decades, scientists have discovered that this hairless rodent is immune to cancer, resistant to pain, capable of surviving without oxygen, and able to live for a remarkably long time. Whereas most similarly sized rodents last only a few years (rats reach four years maximum), naked mole rats can survive into their thirties, five times longer than expected for their body size. The current record is held by ‘Old Man’, who was 32 when he finally passed away in 2010. Old Man wasn’t even unusual, as most naked mole rats easily make it into their late…

High up in the Andean Mountains in Bolivia is a vast expanse of white desert, the world’s largest salt flat: Salar de Uyuni. Stretching 160km from west to east, its cracked surface heals during the rainy season to form a giant natural mirror. Until recently, this extraordinary environment had kept all but migrating flamingos, salt rakers and the most intrepid of tourists at bay. Just below the surface, however, is something that the mining industry is itching to get its hands on: 10 million tonnes of lithium. This soft, silvery metal is the stuff of the rechargeable batteries that power our smartphones and laptops. In the so-called ‘lithium triangle’ covering the borders between Bolivia, Chile and Argentina, lithium is extracted from brine beneath the crusts of salt plains. These three…

1 GET SET FOR THE GREAT AMERICAN ECLIPSE TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE 21 AUGUST 2017 It’s the most spectacular of all celestial events, and on 21 August 2017 our friends across the pond will be treated to an eclipse of the Sun. A partial eclipse will be visible across North America, while a total solar eclipse (where the Moon completely blocks out the Sun) will be visible in the path of totality, a relatively narrow ribbon around 130km (70 miles) wide, as shown on this map. The last time most Americans experienced a total solar eclipse was 1979, so this will be a big event. Thanks to NASA, we Brits will be able to share in some of the magic via a four-hour-long live stream at eclipse2017.nasa.gov 2 MEET…

How did they do that? A team at the University of Maryland plunged two groups of social crayfish into a tank spiked with booze. Previously, one group had been housed together in a tank for 10 days, the other group had been kept in solitary conditions. The team observed the animals over three hours to determine how ‘drunk’ they were. What did they find? When crayfish are tipsy, they stand more upright and begin thrashing their tails around before finally flopping over onto their backs – a sight eerily similar to the scenes in UK town centres on a Friday night. The team found that it took larger quantities of alcohol to trigger drunken behaviour in the loner crayfish. Why did they do that? Though they are keen to stress…

Where do the cells come from? The ability to transform skin cells into ‘induced pluripotent stem cells’ has been a revolutionary step and holds great promise for understanding psychiatric disorders. These stem cells can become anything. You can now take a simple skin biopsy and grow cells in a non-invasive way to become cell types of interest. But there are limitations to what you can do with neurones derived through conventional methods, which involves growing a single layer of cells at the bottom of a Petri dish. One is that the cells don’t interact in the same way as they would in the brain. So we’ve been building three-dimensional spheroid cultures. People have been calling these cultures ‘mini-brains’, which isn’t accurate. It resembles parts, but not the entire human brain.…

Thousands of years ago, thousands of light-years from Earth in the Perseus Arm of the Milky Way, a supergiant star exploded in spectacular fashion. The explosion was so violent that when the light from it reached Earth in 1054, it outshone all the stars and planets in the sky. In the 19th Century, following the invention of the telescope, the remnants of the event were identified by Anglo-Irish astronomer William Parsons. It became known as the Crab Nebula thanks to the unusual shape of the sketch Parsons made of it. Now, using data from five different telescopes, astronomers have produced an image that shows the nebula in spectacular, unprecedented detail. The image is a composite of data that spans almost the entire electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves detected by the…

Infertile women wanting to have children have been offered fresh hope, after scientists at Chicago’s Northwestern University have successfully 3D-printed fully functioning mouse ovaries. In a world first, the team implanted the artificial ovaries into mice, which were then able to produce eggs, mate and give birth to healthy pups. They were even able to nurse their young naturally after they were born. The technique has so far only been tested in animals, but the ultimate goal of the research is to produce artificial organs to implant into human patients who have damaged ovaries as a result of cancer or other illnesses. “This research shows these bioprosthetic ovaries have longterm, durable function,” said researcher Teresa K Woodruff. “Using bioengineering, instead of transplanting from a cadaver, to create organ structures that…

Here’s something to wax lyrical about: a team at King’s College London has 3D scanned the funeral effigies of British naval hero Lord Horatio Nelson and 18th-Century prime minister William Pitt the Elder, using a cutting-edge CT scanner at St Thomas’ Hospital. The waxwork heads were being investigated as part of a collaboration with Westminster Abbey. The team hopes to discover more about the structure and composition of the heads, which are currently undergoing conservation before going back on display. “Our high-tech scanner is used on a daily basis to diagnose and monitor patients, so it was a very different experience to use it to examine wax effigies which are hundreds of years old,” said Ronak Rajani, consultant cardiologist at St Thomas’. “We hope that the findings from the scans…

1 TALKING SPEAKERS For proof that Alexa/Siri-style digital assistants are becoming WDKSWKVQWU››UGG›8K\KQoU›NCVGUV› soundbars, which have Google Assistant built-in but barely bother OGPVKQPKPI›KV››$WKNV›KP›%JTQOGECUV› is what they shout about instead. Vizio SmartCast $250-$500 (£193-£386 approx), vizio.com 2 SELFIE SERVANT This tiny quadcopter sports a 5MP camera, weighs just 61g and comes with a charging station that doubles as a smartphone case. It only flies for three minutes, but as it’s designed purely for taking selfies, that shouldn’t be too much of a problem. AirSelfie ›358 (£300 approx), airselfiecamera.com 3 DON’T LOOK MAC IN ANGER This £30 stand turns your iPhone 6/6s/7 into a replica of the original 1984 Apple Macintosh while charging it overnight. For added retro fun, just add the original MacOS, which…

In its ongoing quest to build better spacecraft, NASA has looked to the distant past for inspiration and invented a form of 21st-Century ‘chain mail’. The new material was invented at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) by a team led by Raul Polit Casillas. Its outward-facing side resembles the surface of a mirror ball and reflects light and heat, whereas the inward-facing looks more like actual chain mail and absorbs heat. It’s hoped the material could have applications as protective (and insulating) cladding for spacecraft, in astronauts’ suits, or even for creating temporary landing strips. What’s more, it’s 3D-printed, which means it could be produced on-demand in any putative future base stations on Mars or the Moon.…

This robot is the Planar Elliptical Runner (PER). It’s the brainchild of Jerry Pratt and his team at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC). What’s unusual about the robot is that it doesn’t require advanced AI systems to stay upright. 5KOKNCT›NQQMKPI›TQDQVU›HTQO›VJG›NKMGU›QH›$QUVQP› Dynamics or Agile Technologies rely on gyroscopes, sensors and advanced algorithms to keep them on their feet, but the PER makes use of a simple, stable design with a single motor that drives its legs in an elliptical motion. The robot, whose gait resembles that of an ostrich, can reach a speed of 19km/h (12mph). However, it has been suggested that were the robot scaled up to human size, this could increase to 48km/h (30mph). While PER is essentially just a proof of concept, it’s hoped…

Cosmology in five steps 1 Many cosmologists think that the Big Bang was preceded by a period of rapid expansion, called inflation. This inflation was caused by the energy stored within an all-pervasive field, called the inflaton field. 2 As the energy drained away from the inflaton field, the inflation ended and gave way to the Big Bang. At this time, almost 14 billion years ago, the Universe contained a hot, dense gas of elementary particles. 3 Quantum effects during inflation meant that these particles were not spread out with perfect uniformity. Instead, the gas was slightly denser in some regions than in others. 4 These density variations acted as the seeds out of which galaxies grew. Starting from these original seeds, cosmologists are able to compute today’s observed pattern…