New Scientist - USA (2019-11-30)

26 | New Scientist | 30 November 2019

Editor’s pick

We can take lessons from

these rodent drivers

2 November, p 12

From Roger Morgan,

Presteigne, Powys, UK

Rats have been taught the complex

skill of driving a tiny car to collect

a food reward at their destination,

Alice Klein tells us. Monitoring the

rats’ levels of hormones associated

with stress showed that they

were relaxed: online you report

that they were less stressed than

rats that were driven around in

remote-controlled cars. It seems to

me that the rats may enjoy learning

and mastering new skills such as

driving – just as humans do.

This work was done to enable

research on how brain conditions

can affect cognitive function, for

extrapolation to humans. But this

brilliant piece of research may be

as important in giving us pause for

thought over autonomous vehicles.

Will human drivers become stressed

by going driverless?

The aether was a very

productive idea on light

2 November, p 32

From Dave Tarpley,

Concord, California, US

Brendan Foster describes renewed

interest in the luminiferous

aether. For all its shortcomings,

the aether was one of the most

productive scientific ideas of

all time. Many conceived of it

as being electromagnetic as well:

it allowed James Clerk Maxwell

to deduce that light was an

electromagnetic phenomenon.

The hope that the forces of

nature could be understood in

strictly mechanical terms died

before the aether did. Although

the electron was seen as a knot

or whirl in the aether, it was

recognised as having fundamental

electrodynamic properties. One

of the discoverers of the electron,

J. J. Thomson, made great use of

the idea of an aether.

In the information age, many

physicists treat the universe as a

computer or a hologram. Those

models will almost certainly lead to

insights and even breakthroughs.

But they will be no more literally

true than the idea of the aether as

a fundamental fluid filling space.

Hypnosis may be suffering

from mentalist reputation

9 November, p 34

From Stefan Badham,

Portsmouth, Hampshire, UK

Reading Helen Thomson’s

interesting and amusing article on

hypnosis, I wondered if hypnotists

aren’t taken seriously because,

historically, they claimed to be

using only their minds to do it.

As Thomson reports, anaesthetist

Aurore Marcou uses local

anaesthetics and mild sedation

in modern, medical-based

hypnosis, making the hypnotist

one part of the process rather

than the whole process itself.

Thanks for bolstering my

suspicion about measles

9 November, p 15

From David Muir, Edinburgh, UK

Debora MacKenzie reports that

measles massively damages the

immune system. In 1960, before

vaccination was available, I had

two weeks off school with measles.

On the first day back, I came

home covered in chickenpox.

For decades I have suspected that

there was some relationship.

Thanks to New Scientist, I now

know that this was probably the

case. Given the information in

the article, I count myself lucky

to have got off so lightly.

Neglected concerns about

the nutrient choline

26 October, p 20

From Marloes Schaap,

Utrecht, The Netherlands

With Clare Wilson’s article on

the neglected nutrient choline,

you present a diagram showing

beef liver as an important source

of it. As Wilson reports, some

research suggests that women

should have more choline when

they are pregnant.

But pregnant women are

advised to avoid liver of any kind,

since too much vitamin A from

animal sources poses a serious

risk for their unborn child.

The second-best source of

choline that you show, hard-boiled

eggs, is easily matched by soy

and wheat germ flour, which

you don’t show.

There is also a possibility that

the relationship between the

intake of meat, milk and eggs and

advanced prostate cancer may be

partly attributable to the choline

levels of these foods. In the public

interest, it is worth mentioning

that health concerns about dietary

choline are being investigated.

Will nobody think of the

poor Martian children?

26 October, p 30

From Anthony Richardson,

Ironbridge, Shropshire, UK

Reviewing the Moving to Mars

exhibition, Simon Ings offers

some welcome balance to dreams

of long-term space exploration.

I would add some ethical issues.

Adventurous adults may make

informed, rational decisions about

leaving Earth permanently. But if

this isn’t to be temporary, there

must be plans for them to have

descendants, who will have made

no such decision.

We have no long-term idea

of how deeply the characteristics

of Earth’s environment may be

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