Table of contents for July 2022 in BBC Science Focus Magazine

False memories ignite people’s imaginations, particularly when they crop up in high-profile court cases. Such as in 2021, when socialite Ghislaine Maxwell was accused – and convicted – of child sex trafficking. During the trial, the defence called the most eminent researcher in the field of false memory, Prof Elizabeth Loftus of the University of California Irvine, to the stand. There, she said something that memory researchers say on a regular basis: “[Memory] doesn’t work like a recording device… We are actually constructing our memories while we retrieve memories.” But a statement that in a university lecture hall would simply be taken as a scientific fact, is often decried as unethical during a trial. Why is it that, in the courtroom, experts like Loftus often come under attack, accused of…

Though still in the midst of the current COVID-19 pandemic, we are now seeing warning signs of another disease popping up in countries around the world – monkeypox. This is not a new virus (it was first discovered in 1958), nor is it new to the UK (there have been regular small outbreaks over the years). However, we are now seeing a wider spread of the virus, with 100 cases and nearly 300 suspected cases reported in more than 16 countries, including 57 cases in the UK, as of 24 May. Are we staring down the barrel of another pandemic? Recent years have seen 13 isolated outbreaks of monkeypox that have been mostly contained to a single country and can be traced back to travel from Central and West Africa,…

…Hi-Fi audio without the faff Got a spare £6,000 kicking about? Well, that will just be enough for you to invest in legendary audio brand Kef’s latest speakers. Other than being staggeringly expensive, the LS60 is one of the smartest hi-fi speaker systems available. It uses apparent source technology, which provides the full audio spectrum of lows, mids and highs from a single point rather than multiple ones. This achieves a better immersion for both music and movies and with the LS60, it can be achieved wirelessly, without all the usual gubbins of an amplifier and cables. LS60 Wireless £6,000, us.kef.com/ls60-wireless.html …the perfect drone for travelling Every year, DJI’s Mini series gets smaller while managing to cram more high-end specs into a lightweight (249g) drone that you can chuck in…

The world’s cities are changing. Paris’s Champs-Élysées, one of the most gridlocked roads in the world, is going to become a giant garden. Barcelona has closed off its oldest quarters to cars. And now Milan is on the path to becoming the world’s first 15-minute city (read on to find out what that means). It seems the pandemic, for some, became a moment to reimagine how we see the future of our oldest cities. Why? Well, there was a small exodus out of our urban spaces during the pandemic. It was the slightest of pauses in the net migration from rural to urban areas that has taken place for decades. Those who could afford to leave, left. For those who remained, the lockdowns and restricted movement shone a harsh light…

The stronger the magnetic field of a tokamak, the more control it can exert over the plasma, and so the smaller the reactor can be. Tokamak Energy, in common with other labs around the world, has developed strong devices called high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets. These produce magnetic fields almost a million times stronger than the Earth’s natural field. Tokamak Energy recently achieved a plasma temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius in a small reactor built entirely with private funds. In total, the reactor is about four metres high and three metres across, but its volume is 30 times smaller than any other that has achieved that temperature. Now, the researchers plan to build a new reactor using the HTS magnets they have developed. It should be a game changer. “You…

DO WE GET MORE BITTER AND CYNICAL AS WE GET OLDER? You’re alluding to an unkind stereotype of older people, but does it have any truth to it? In personality terms, the evidence shows that, on average, the older we get, the more closed-minded we tend to become. We are less willing to see alternative perspectives or explore new experiences. Importantly, however, another way that our personalities tend to mature in old age is that our neuroticism decreases and our agreeability increases. That is, older people tend to be calmer, warmer, friendlier and more trusting than they were when they were younger – which is hardly consistent with the stereotype of an ageing curmudgeon. In fact, a Swiss study of people over 80 years old noted their remarkable composure and…

According to comic book legend, the hammer of Thor, Mjölnir, can only be lifted by those who are deemed worthy enough to wield it. Now, with Thor: Love And Thunder due for release, this has inevitably led to questions. What makes someone ‘worthy’? How does the hammer stop the likes of the Hulk from lifting it? And if even the Hulk cannot lift it, how much must it weigh? It’s a debate so enduring that it made its way into 2015’s Avengers: Age Of Ultron, where all of the Avengers took turns trying (and failing) to lift the hammer off a table. “The handle’s imprinted, right?” suggests an annoyed Tony Stark. “Like a security code?” James Kakalios, a physics professor at the University of Minnesota, and author of The Physics…

Seven Days on Mars Brian Cox gets unprecedented access to the control room of the Mars Perseverance Rover and the Ingenuity helicopter as they explore the Martian surface looking for signs of life. iPlayer How COVID changed science The pandemic put a fire under researchers and fast-forwarded traditional scientific processes. Prof Devi Sridhar takes a look at how the last two years have changed medicine for better or worse. BBC Radio 4 8 July, 11am Also available on BBC Sounds CrowdScience: What is healthy hair? We love our hair, hence the internet is awash with tips and advice for looking after your locks. But what does it really mean to have healthy hair? The CrowdScience team brushes up to find the most environmentally friendly way to keep your barnet in…

…A MESSY MIX OF HEALTH TECH AND FASHION What do you do when you want to track your fitness, health and sleep, while also letting everyone know you have lots of money? A pricey smartwatch is the first idea that comes to mind, but if you’re looking for less value for money, Gucci’s new collaboration could be the way to go. Partnering up with the wearable ring company Oura, Gucci is offering a jet-black version of the ring, complete with yellow gold finish, and accompanied by a Guccidesigned charging station. Despite offering the same abilities and features as the original, this will see you paying an additional £590. Gucci x Oura Ring £820, Gucci.com …WHERE NFTS AND CELEBRITY CHEFS MEET Celebrities and NFTs go together like oil and water, never…

Flick through any collection of popular science magazines from the last 50 years and the chances are that you will encounter a feature about nuclear fusion. Nuclear fusion is the process of joining lightweight atoms together to release energy; it is the reason the Sun and the rest of the stars shine, and recreating that process on Earth promises an abundant form of low-carbon energy. As you look through the archival material, keep an eye open for when the pundits think fusion might arrive. It’s an old joke that whatever the decade of the publication, fusion has always been “about 20 years away”. Yet despite five decades of effort, no fusion plant can yet produce more energy than it takes to start the reaction. But don’t let that bare fact…

PAMELA FLOWER, VIA EMAIL GIVEN THE IMMENSE TIME PERIOD THAT DINOSAURS EXISTED FOR, WHY DID NONE OF THEM DEVELOP SENTIENCE? One thing that sets humans apart from other animals – as far as we know – is that we are sentient. Not only do we have large brains and keen intelligence, but we are self-aware. We are conscious: we sense the world around us in an advanced way, and know that we exist, and that others exist. Our species has been around for just a few hundred thousand years, a newcomer on the geological scene. So why didn’t dinosaurs develop sentience during their evolutionary run that exceeded 150 million years? First off, we assume they didn’t, because they didn’t leave records of things like writing, language and other sentient thought…

TINNITUS WHAT IS TINNITUS? Tinnitus is often thought of as the ‘ringing in the ears’ that we might have temporarily after going to a loud concert. However, as many as 1 in 25 people have tinnitus that affects them long-term, impacting their daily lives and often coming hand-in-hand with mental health conditions, such as depression. But it’s not always heard as a ringing, and those who have it may describe it as buzzing, humming or whooshing. For some people, the sound pulses in time with their heart beat – this is known as ‘pulsatile tinnitus’. In general, tinnitus is a sound that comes from within; it doesn’t originate from an external source like the radio or washing machine. Most often, it’s a signal that the affected person perceives as a…

I was interested to read your article about damaged areas of the brain possibly explaining confusion in dementia patients (April, p21). I was diagnosed autistic when I was 38 and I noticed a lot of similarities with my own experience in relation to coping with small changes. I, along with many other autistic people, often find small changes disorientating or distressing. I would be fascinated to know whether the same areas in the multiple demand network of the brain are noticeably different in autistic people. I also struggle with multitasking and am curious whether that is related to the same area of the brain. Lucy McAlister, via email This exact study was not conducted with autistic people, but other researchers have identified differences in frontal areas of the brain in…

WHY RATS? They can contribute something that the other technologies can’t, at least for the areas we work in. Their sense of smell and their trainability is on a par with dogs. But it’s the rats’ small size that really makes a difference. At APOPO [an acronym from the Dutch for Anti-Personnel Landmine Detection Product Development], we work with the African giant pouched rat (Cricetomys ansorgei). We taught them to detect landmines because they’re too small and too light to trigger the devices. We’re teaching them to detect the scent of illegally smuggled wildlife in shipping ports because they can reach the containers stacked up high on top one another. For my research in training rats for search and rescue, the main reason is that they can get into the…

Whether it’s more troubling to imagine that the Universe goes on forever in every direction, or that it has an edge, beyond which there is nothing, is hard to say. Astrophysics doesn’t provide any guidance as to which flavour of existential crisis we should be having – while we can’t say with any level of confidence whether the Universe goes on forever or not, we can say that our observable universe has an edge, in the sense that there’s a distance beyond which, whatever may or may not exist, we absolutely cannot see it. The existence of this cosmic horizon is part of the answer to an ancient conundrum about the darkness of the night sky, reportedly first posed by Johannes Kepler in 1610 but later attributed to fellow astronomer…

15 years The length of time the Atari 2600 console remained in production due to its popularity 32.9 million The number of Nintendo N64 consoles sold over its lifetime (the Game Boy sold 118.7 million) PREVIEW This electric-hybrid boat changes marine tourism as we know it Daniel Bennett hops aboard the maiden voyage of a first-of-its-kind ship that’s hoping to lead the conversation on sustainable tourism At the top of the world a quiet revolution is taking place. In Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago a little over 1,000km away from the North Pole, a marine engineering company, a boat builder and a tour operator are piloting a scheme that they hope will convince the world – or at least a few more customers – that commercial boats, don’t need to be…

HAIRY HUNTER ORNATE WANDERING SPIDER, BRAZIL It seems that spiders don’t like odd numbers. Two body segments, eight legs, one to four pairs of spinnerets and always an even number of eyes. Most spiders, like this ornate wandering spider, have eight simple eyes, but some have six or two. The way a spider catches its food has a strong influence on the ways these eyes are arranged. Web-building spiders, for example, tend to have smaller eyes that are evenly spaced apart, but the more centrally placed eyes of visual predators, like our friend here, are often enlarged. All the better to glimpse a tasty morsel with! There are principal eyes (the bottom pair here) and secondary eyes (the rest), which differ in structure and function. Principal eyes have sharp vision,…

There are a number of approaches to nuclear fusion. Beyond the swirling plasmas of the tokamaks, another approach is called ‘inertial fusion’. In this method, a fuel pellet is compressed to temperatures and densities that allow fusion to take place. At the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in the US, the compression is achieved by a bank of 192 extraordinarily powerful lasers. At First Light Fusion, a private company that is part of the Culham fusion cluster, it is achieved by shooting a target containing the fuel with a projectile fired from a hyper-velocity gun. The projectile is accelerated to 6.5 kilometres per second, but when it hits the target, the top secret design focuses and amplifies the impact to make the fuel implode at over 70 kilometres per second. This…

THE TEAPOT AND TEASPOON WHEN: JULY AND AUGUST At this time of year, low above the southern horizon, lurk two tea-related asterisms. An asterism is a pattern of stars which hasn’t been officially recognised. In essence, anyone can create an asterism, but only the really relatable ones gain traction and stick. The tea-related asterisms both belong to Sagittarius the Archer. Sagittarius is so far south that from the UK it never fully rises. The bit that does rise contains a set of stars that resemble a teapot. It may take you a few minutes to sort out the view, but once you do, the pattern is quite striking. The two stars that form the apex and western base of the lid, along with the star marking the base of the…

ACROSS 1 Husband and son sit around university (6) 4 Quickly avoids lowest scores (5) 8 Consider a topiarist to have a muse (5) 9 Soldiers, old, left in shade (7) 10 Put off animal around junction (5) 12 Huge growth in socialist club (7) 13 Overall owner finding ancestor firm (6,7) 15 Country road, meandering around knight and artist (7) 17 Chicken, say, in a film (5) 19 Incorrectly rated the French lever (7) 20 Opening move not initially in range (5) 22 Artisan’s mother and child (5) 23 Upper classes sample information first (6) DOWN 1 Wimbledon favourite has time to get horse (5) 2 Removal includes eggs (3) 3 Betting gold travelled in pouch (7) 4 Challenged father, about to go in (5) 5 Commonplace to shout…