New Scientist Australian Edition 19-Mar-22

Virtual event Why do we love? Anthropologist Anna Machin explains the why, how, who and what of human love. Using the latest evidence from neuroscience, genetics and more, she explains how love evolved as a form of biological bribery and how we now know that it is a crucial determining factor in how long and healthy our lives are. Join us for this virtual talk on 5 May at 6pm BST. newscientist.com/events Discovery tour Dark and frozen matter Prepare to have your mind blown with a special tour of Europe’s famous particle physics centre CERN. The centre is nestled near beautiful Geneva and after visiting this Swiss city, you will head to Mont Blanc to investigate receding glaciers. This six-day holiday will be guided by physicist Darren Price and journalist Laura Spinney. Find out more and…

THE ever-growing threats of cyberwarfare and online disinformation are now in the spotlight amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. With the NATO military alliance reluctant to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine, or engage in any other actions that could ignite a much wider conflict, the internet has inevitably become a key battleground. But that isn’t to say there haven’t been surprises. On page 8, one expert expresses shock at the volume of online fake news about the war. Clearly, the invasion isn’t the first war associated with this issue – researchers and think tanks have also monitored online propaganda in other recent conflicts, including in Syria and Libya – but it is characterised by a much larger wave of false information. Another surprise has been the apparent lack of an all-out cyberwar…

THREE weeks into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, concerns are growing about the safety of several nuclear sites across the country. But the risk of a serious incident is thought to be low despite Russian troops having disrupted normal safety procedures. Simon Middleburgh at Bangor University in the UK says the circumstances are serious and Russia’s actions in regard to nuclear sites in Ukraine have been “completely reckless”, but that a significant radiation release is unlikely. Ukraine is home to Chernobyl, the site of the infamous 1986 nuclear disaster, as well as four operational nuclear plants and a small reactor used for research. The situation at Chernobyl has been tense since the first day of the invasion when Russian troops seized the site. Scientific monitors detected a local increase in radiation levels, which was…

THE fog of war makes it difficult enough to know what is going on in Ukraine, but deliberate disinformation being shared by the Russian government and pro-Russia social media users is tinting our view of events. “Tidal waves of disinformation accompany crisis,” says Joan Donovan at Harvard University. For example, the Russian Embassy in the UK claimed in social media posts on 10 March, without providing credible evidence, that a pregnant woman injured in the bombing of a maternity hospital in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol was an actor. Twitter and Facebook removed the posts for being disinformative. TikTok has also struggled with disinformation, from a falsified video of a paratrooper parachuting into Ukraine in the early days of the invasion to Russian influencers all giving the same pro-Russia speech in videos. Spot…

AS RUSSIAN forces built up near the Ukraine border at the start of this year, tensions grew over whether an invasion would occur. At the same time, there were numerous digital incursions over the border, as cyberattacks affected key Ukrainian infrastructure. In the middle of January, the so-called WhisperGate attack took down around 70 Ukrainian government websites, and on 15 February a cyberattack briefly disrupted two Ukrainian state-owned banks. The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre said days later that it already had evidence that meant it was “almost certain” the Main Intelligence Directorate, the Russian military’s foreign intelligence agency, was involved. Malware attacks targeting Ukrainian institutions and infrastructure were also launched on 23 February, the day before the Russian invasion. These carried on through the first two days of hostilities, according to…

THE war in Ukraine has already caused food prices to shoot up as global markets anticipate a loss of wheat and maize exports from one of the world’s largest producers of these crops. But Europe and the US could more than compensate for the loss of Ukraine’s exports by diverting crops destined to be made into biofuels into food production instead. This would bring food prices down and help prevent a major global food shock. On 9 March, Ukraine banned most food exports to try to ensure that its people don’t go hungry as Russian forces invade. Food prices were already at the highest levels for 40 years, says Matin Qaim at the University of Bonn in Germany. This is for many reasons, including poor harvests because of extreme weather driven by…