New Scientist - UK (2022-06-11)

11 June 2022 | New Scientist | 23

Child development

TRAFFIC noise outside schools may

impair gains in a child’s attention

span and short-term memory.

Maria Foraster at the Barcelona

Institute for Global Health and her

team recruited 2680 children aged

7 to 10 from 38 Barcelona schools.

The researchers stood in a

certain point of each school and

measured the noise coming in

from the outside. This exercise

was repeated six months later to

calculate an average baseline level

of noise pollution at each site.

Using online cognitive tests, the

team tested the children’s short-

term memory and attentiveness

every three months for a year.

The children in schools

with higher average indoor

noise levels – defined as above

30 decibels, or about the volume of

whispering – saw a slower uptick

in attentiveness, measured by

comparing their performance

on tests at the start of the year

with those at the year end.

Further analysis revealed

that a greater level of fluctuation

in indoor noise levels was more

strongly associated with a slower

development in both working

memory and attentiveness,

compared with more consistent

noise levels (PLoS Medicine,

doi.org/hxnw). Carissa Wong

School road noise slows gains

in attentiveness and memory

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Patch of seagrass is

largest known clone

A patch of underwater

vegetation stretching along

180 kilometres of coast in

Australia’s Shark Bay is the

largest known clone in

the world. Genetic tests

confirmed this seagrass

(Posidonia australis) is

genetically identical

at sites across the bay

(Proceedings of the Royal

Society B, doi.org/hw6c).

US has world’s first

exascale computer

The first computer able

to perform a billion billion

operations per second – an

exascale machine – has

been built by Oak Ridge

National Laboratory in

Tennessee. The machine,

called Frontier, could help

tackle complex scientific

problems such as climate

modelling and the search

for new drugs.

Air pollution cuts

may boost crops

Reducing nitrogen dioxide

air pollution could improve

crop yields in Europe, India

and China, according to a

new analysis, with the

potential benefits highest

in China. If pollution there

is cut to 5 per cent of

present levels, winter crop

yields could rise by 28 per

cent (Science Advances,

doi.org/gp8prm).

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Really brief

Technology

A FLYING robot inspired by a male

peregrine falcon can scare away

birds in fields within 5 minutes of

flying over and keep them away

for up to 4 hours, on average.

Birds can eat crops on farmland

or damage aircraft at airports if

they collide with them by accident.

Rolf Storms at the University of

Groningen in the Netherlands and

his team have created an artificial

predator – Robotfalcon – to scare

away birds without harming them.

The robot resembles a

peregrine falcon in size, shape and

colouration. It has a wingspan of

70 centimetres, weighs 245 grams

and flies at 15 metres per second.

To test how well it works, the

team flew either the robot or a

standard drone in a straight line,

at a constant altitude, above flocks

of birds that had landed in fields

in the north of the Netherlands.

Robotfalcon was tested on

54 separate flocks, and cleared all

the targeted birds in each flock

within 5 minutes. The standard

drone – tested on 56 separate

flocks – only managed to deter

80 per cent of the targeted birds

within the same time. Birds were

more likely to land in the fields

again with the drone rather than

with Robotfalcon (bioRxiv,

doi.org/hw67). Carissa Wong

Robo falcon makes

a great bird scarer

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Health

BEING taller may increase your

risk of developing nerve, skin and

some heart diseases, according to

the largest study linking height

and disease to date.

Your height as an adult is

determined by thousands of gene

variants in combination with

environmental factors. Previous

work has tried to separate out

these effects by using genes alone

to estimate a person’s “genetically

predicted height”, and linked this

to around 50 diseases, but the

links between height and many

other diseases were unexplored.

Now, Sridharan Raghavan at

the University of Colorado and

his team have analysed data from

323,793 former members of the

US armed forces who enrolled in

a research project exploring links

between genes, environmental

factors and disease.

The team looked at 3290 gene

variants known to influence

height and their association

with more than 1000 clinical

traits. This confirmed that a higher

genetically predicted height

increases your risk of atrial

fibrillation – heart palpitations –

and circulatory problems. They

also found that having genes

linked to being taller was

associated with a higher risk of

developing nerve damage and

infections of the skin and bones.

The team then confirmed that

these conditions had the same

associations with the participants’

actual height, suggesting that

measuring height could be a quick

and easy way to determine disease

risk. The taller you are, the higher

the risk (PLoS Genetics, doi.org/

gp8vbr). Carissa Wong

Some disease risks

rise with your height