5 February 2022 | New Scientist | 25MedicineA MACHINE working mostly on its
own has successfully performed
keyhole surgery on the bowels of
pigs for the first time, a significant
step towards human trials.
Small parts of operations on
people are often automated, but
they tend to focus on rigid parts of
the body that don’t change shape,
such as bone. Most robot surgery
is controlled entirely by surgeons.
Justin Opferman at Johns Hopkins
University in Maryland and his team
programmed a similar robot to join
the two ends of intestine after a
section is removed, with limited
human intervention.
The robot performed the surgeryon four pigs, carrying out a total
of 86 stitches. Two-thirds of the
time, the robot placed the stitch
autonomously, while the rest of the
time it had to be guided into place
manually to try the stitch again.
When the tissues were examined
one week after surgery, the results
were comparable with those
achieved by human surgeons
(Science Robotics, doi.org/hd4s).
The operation is particularly
onerous because any leak can
cause catastrophic complications.
Opferman says the trial is the first
step towards autonomous surgery
in humans, although this is probably
decades away. Matthew SparkesRobot gets to grips with
delicate intestinal surgery
JIAWEI^ GELife survives in heat
deep below seabedMicrobes have been found
alive 1.2 kilometres below
the sea floor where the mud
is at 120°C. At such high
temperatures, heat causes
a lot of damage, so the cells
may need fast metabolisms
to repair themselves.
No known microbe can
survive above 122°C
(Nature Communications,
doi.org/hd3g).Bitcoin safe from
quantum hackersQuantum computers
would have to become
much larger in order to
break the algorithm that
secures bitcoin. A quantum
computer with 13 million
qubits is needed to break
the algorithm in 24 hours.
Today’s computers have
about 125 qubits at most
(AVS Quantum Science,
doi.org/hd3b).Bat evolution linked
to ear bone changeA single bone in the inner
ear is the only significant
difference between the two
major groups of bats, called
Yinpterochiroptera and
Yangochiroptera. Bats
in the latter group have a
certain ear bone peppered
with large holes, allowing
for more neurons to run
from the ear to the brain
(Nature, doi.org/gn9srd).7 M
AR
U/G
ET
TY
IM
AG
ES
Really brief
Animal behaviourSOME birds rely on Earth’s
magnetic field to navigate and it
seems that one species can use
it to judge when it has got home.
One issue for birds using
the field is that its direction and
strength change over time – a
problem if you must return to a
specific site. Now, Joe Wynn at the
University of Oxford and his team
have found that the Eurasian reed
warbler (Acrocephalus scirpaceus)
appears to use the inclination of
the field above the planet’s surface,
or how much it slopes from the
horizontal, as a sort of stop sign.
Inclination, compared with other
magnetic features, drifts the least.
Wynn and his team used nearly
80 years of location data for the
birds’ breeding sites in Europe
after returning from winter in
Africa. The information showed
that birds didn’t always return to
the exact site, but often a different
site a few tens of kilometres away.
By comparing the fluctuations
in breeding sites over time with
different models of where the
birds might be expected to return
if they relied on various properties
of Earth’s shifting magnetic field,
it became clear changes in the
field inclination were the most
likely guide for the birds (Science,
doi.org/hd48). Alex WilkinsHome is where the
magnetic field tiltsNew Scientist Daily
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AstronomyA STRANGE object in space is
pulsing in a way never seen before.
It may be an odd neutron star – the
remnant of a stellar explosion.
Natasha Hurley-Walker at
Curtin University in Perth,
Australia, and her colleagues
found the object using the
Murchison Widefield Array
(MWA), a radio telescope in
Australia. After spotting a barrage
of radio waves that seemed to
appear and then disappear, theydug into archival data taken by
the MWA in early 2018 and found
71 more pulses. With each pulse,
the object – named GLEAM-X
J162759.5-523504.3 and located
about 4000 light years away –
released huge amounts of energy.
It pulsed with a regular
rhythm, brightening for 30 to
60 seconds once every 18.18
minutes. Nothing with a rhythm
similar to this has been found
before – most flashing radio
objects in the sky pulse far faster,
brightening and disappearing
again in a matter of seconds.
The pulsing indicates that theobject is probably spinning, and
other measurements of its light
hint that it must have a powerful
magnetic field. This led the
researchers to suspect that it may
be a magnetar, a type of neutron
star with a particularly strong
magnetic field, but it isn’t clear
how a magnetar could rotate
so slowly and shine so brightly
(Nature, doi.org/hdv8).
“I was concerned that it was
aliens, but... it [emits radiation]
across a very wide range of
frequencies, and that means it
must be a natural process,” said
Hurley-Walker. Leah CraneMysterious signal
beaming from afar