New Scientist - USA (2020-04-25)

25 April 2020 | New Scientist | 19

Artificial intelligence

Microbiome Solar system

Megadrought due

to climate change

Climate change caused by

humans turned a moderate

drought in the US and

Mexico into one of the

driest periods in more

than a millennium. The

drop in rainfall in recent

decades due to climate

change may have made

the drought as much as

47 per cent more severe

(Science, doi.org/dr9b).

Star’s orbit creates

spirograph in space

Astronomers have used

27 years of observations

of a star’s movements

to work out the strange

pattern it traces. Star

S2 creates a spirograph

shape as its orbit rotates

around the black hole in

the centre of our galaxy.

This happens because

the hole warps space-time

(Astronomy & Astrophysics,

doi.org/dr89).

Lemurs have fruity-

smelling wrists

Male ring-tailed lemurs

produce a sweet, fruity

aroma from glands on

their wrists, which seems

to attract females during

breeding season. The

chemicals responsible for

the smell may be the first

sex pheromones identified

in primates (Current

Biology, doi.org/dr7c).

AI turns a convertible

into a hatchback

ARTIFICIALLY intelligent

algorithms that create images

can be difficult to predict and

control. But now researchers at

Adobe have devised AI-controlled

software that lets you transform

the objects in images, and adjust

the lighting and perspective,

with a few simple controls.

Given a photo of a car, you

can use several control sliders

in the program to adjust its shape

and style, background, lighting

WHETHER or not a baby is breastfed

seems to affect the make-up of

the viral community in its gut.

The collection of bacteria in

our guts, known as the microbiome,

can help keep us healthy, and

its disruption has been linked

to conditions including obesity,

diabetes, depression and

Parkinson’s disease. But little is

known about the viruses there.

“In a healthy adult, if we take

some poop and purify the virus-like

particles, we find something like

a billion particles per gram,” says

Frederic Bushman at the University

of Pennsylvania. He and his

colleagues collected faecal samples

within a few days of the birth of

20 babies, and again when the

infants were 1 and 4 months old.

At birth, only three of the babies

seemed to have any virus in their

meconium – their earliest stool.

But within a month, the babies had

adult-levels of virus. This suggests

babies are born virus-free, and

collect their first viruses either during

birth or shortly after, says Bushman.

Most of these viruses seem to

be of the type that infect bacteria,

but some infect human cells.

Viruses of this type were less

common in babies that had been

breastfed, the team found (Nature,

doi.org/dr7t). Jessica Hamzelou

conditions and colour. Dragging

a slider can instantly change a

convertible into a hatchback, say.

The program also works

for photos and artwork of

human faces, allowing you

to convincingly alter features

including age, wrinkles, hair

colour, hairline, head angle and

facial expression (arxiv.org/

abs/2004.02546).

Erik Härkönen at Adobe

Research in Finland and his

colleagues built the program

using existing algorithms called

generative adversarial networks

(GANs). GANs are comprised of

Space rock may have

broken its neck

WE NOW have not one but two

explanations for how the Kuiper

belt object Arrokoth was able to

keep its curious two-lobed shape

despite being hit by a large rock.

A large portion of Arrokoth’s

smaller 15-kilometre-wide lobe

is taken up by the Maryland

crater, which measures about

7 kilometres across. The object

that made it must have been

several hundred metres wide,

and hit it at a relative speed of

about 6400 kilometres per hour.

The force of such an impact

should have broken the two

lobes apart. Instead, they

remain joined by a “neck”.

Masatoshi Hirabayashi at

Auburn University, Alabama,

and his colleagues propose

two scenarios: that the impact

broke the original neck of the

object and Arrokoth reformed

in a different orientation, or

the neck survived the impact,

suggesting that objects shaped

like this are stronger than we

thought (The Astrophysical Journal

Letters, doi.org/dr7w).

Both scenarios are plausible,

but Hirabayashi says that bright

material seen around the neck

may be from landslides caused by

vibrations when the neck broke.

Jonathan O’Callaghan

two competing AIs. One generates

an image and the other has to

distinguish whether it is real

or fake. After several rounds,

the generator becomes so skilled

that the other AI can no longer

tell the difference.

One of the AIs the researchers

used was BigGAN, a DeepMind

algorithm that has been trained

on thousands of images

associated with particular objects

or animals, such as tools or birds.

The researchers say the work

shows how to create images with

existing AIs, without needing to

train new algorithms. Donna Lu

Breastfed babies have

different viruses in their guts

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Really brief

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