New Scientist Australian Edition 22-Oct-22

Virtual event Memory, the brain and who we are How do our brains store past experiences to make us who we are? Why can memories feel so real? Are there such things as “true” and “false” memories? Psychiatrist Veronica O’Keane offers a new way of thinking about our personal experiences. Watch online at 6pm GMT/1pm EST on 10 November. Also available on demand. newscientist.com/events Academy The science of your wellbeing Health and happiness can be difficult to achieve. In this course, you will learn from leading experts in psychology, fitness and nutrition about changing bad habits for good ones, and how the food we eat and exercise we take affect both our physical and mental health. You will also hear about the importance of living in the moment to overcome negative thoughts. Join now for £99. academy.newscientist.com Podcast Weekly Podcast…

WHERE is the hottest known spot in the solar system? The surprising answer is that it is in the village of Culham in Oxfordshire, UK, beside the river Thames. This is the home of the Joint European Torus (JET), a record-breaking fusion facility. When powered up, plasma rushes around the reactor’s core at 150 million oC, hotter than the centre of the sun. JET is a poster child for the backers of fusion power, the technology that has, for decades, been touted as a solution to our energy and climate woes. The process yields vast amounts of energy, but no carbon dioxide and little other waste. If we could tame it, we would have a virtually unlimited supply of clean energy. “If” is key here. After decades of research, no electricity has…

THE UK is bracing itself for what is expected to be the worst outbreak of avian flu in its history this winter, with officials warning of a rapid rise in infections over the past month. Infections are six weeks ahead of where they were this time last year, according to the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA). There are 47 ongoing outbreaks in the UK, 30 of which have been confirmed this month. In a bid to contain the influenza virus, which spreads through infected droppings, the APHA this week imposed a “prevention zone” across England, Scotland and Wales. The Northern Irish government has also introduced the same policy. That means UK farmers and amateur bird owners will have to ramp up biosecurity measures, for example by changing their clothes and shoes before…

ANCIENT DNA from a group of Neanderthals who lived together has given us an unprecedented glimpse of the social structure of these extinct human relatives. Among other things, it suggests that the women moved between groups while the men stayed put. Researchers have previously tried to work out what the social organisation of Neanderthal groups was like from evidence such as the layout of caves and footprints, says Benjamin Peter at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, but the DNA provides direct evidence. “It’s the first time we’ve been able to do something like this using genetics,” he says. To work out social links, Peter and his colleagues managed to extract DNA from 15 out of 17 pieces of Neanderthal bone or teeth recovered from the Chagyrskaya cave…

EUROPEAN occupation and trade in the colonial era irreversibly transformed the global distribution of plants, leaving a legacy that can still be seen today. The expansion of European empires from the 15th century onwards is known to have spread plant species around the world – for example, the common dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) was spread widely across the British Empire. To quantify the impact that colonisation had on the distribution of plants, Bernd Lenzner at the University of Vienna in Austria and his colleagues studied records of non-native species in 1183 regions of the former British, Dutch, Portuguese and Spanish empires in a global database. The time that regions colonised by the same empire spent as colonies was as strong a predictor that they would share the same non-native species as modern social and…

LIVERS transplanted from older donors can last a century in total and sometimes outlive ones from younger people. Transplanting livers from older donors after they die is generally avoided because livers tend to accumulate more scarring over time, caused by factors such as drinking alcohol, obesity and viral infections. Now, researchers have provided evidence that transplants from older donors can work very well. Christine Hwang and Yash Kadakia at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and their colleagues analysed data on 253,406 liver transplants from deceased donors that occurred in the US between 1990 and 2022. The team found that 25 livers had lasted for at least 100 years across both the donors’ and recipients’ lifetimes, with 14 still remaining in their recipients. The oldest liver was aged 108. “We do not…