19 October 2019 | New Scientist | 21▲ Space meat
You’ll have no beef with
this burger. Bovine cells
have been grown on
the International Space
Station for the first time.▲ Digital privacy
Celebrity Coleen Rooney,
the wife of footballer
Wayne, found out who
leaked her Instagram
posts to the press using
a cunning process of
elimination. She’s now
dubbed Wagatha Christie.▲ Batteries
The 2019 Nobel prize in
chemistry went to three
people who helped create
the lithium-ion battery.▼ Megalodon
A study found that the
largest shark of all time
was probably no more
than 15 metres long,
5 metres shorter than had
been thought. Megalodon?
More like kilolodon.▼ Libra
Facebook’s cryptocurrency
project Libra is struggling
to get off the ground after
partners such as Visa and
Mastercard pulled out.at what worked for men who have
stopped abusing their partners
altogether. “For many years, their
voices have been ignored, but
instead of seeing them as the
enemy, we can learn from their
journeys of recovery,” he says.
Many previously violent men
have told him that the key to
changing their behaviour wasn’t
formal counselling, but talking to
men who had stopped abusing
their partners. One said that this is
because counsellors “wouldn’t
have understood” and that he
needed to “speak to people who
had walked that path and who
had come out the other side all
the better for it”. As a result,
improving access to these positive
role models may help to reduce
domestic violence, says Roguski.
No single strategy will halt
domestic violence, but a growing
body of research is pointing us
in the right direction. The UK’s
Domestic Abuse Bill appears
to be taking this evidence into
consideration – its current
recommendations include
a public awareness campaign
designed to challenge violence-
supportive beliefs, compulsory
classes on respectful relationships
in schools, and greater funding for
perpetrator support programmes.
Women’s Aid is waiting for a
firm commitment that the bill
will improve access to women’s
refuges and other support services
before fully supporting it, but
welcomes the other proposed
actions. We don’t know if it will
reduce the number of women
dying at the hands of partners,
but it is a “once-in-a-generation
opportunity” to try, says Hadley. ❚12 voluntary programmes for men
in the UK who had been violent
and found evidence that they did
help to protect the men’s partners.
Each scheme lasted for a year or
more and challenged participants
to think about the effects of their
violence, while also teaching them
techniques to manage their
aggression. Afterwards, their
female partners reported large
falls in violence. The number who
reported being recently kicked,
punched, beaten or burned
dropped from 54 per cent to
2 per cent. The number who saidthey felt very safe increased from
8 per cent to 51 per cent.
The programmes didn’t fix
everything. Many of the women
said their male partners still tried
to control them psychologically
after they stopped physically
hurting them, for example, by
reading their messages or trying
to restrict where they went.
Michael Roguski at New Zealand
firm Kaitiaki Research and
Evaluation believes we may
achieve better results by looking“ Support for violent men is
controversial. Many people
believe that ‘leopards can’t
change their spots’ ”Working
hypothesis
Sorting the week’s
supernovae from
the absolute zerosMore Insight online
Your guide to a rapidly changing world
newscientist.com/insightconversation groups and door-to-
door discussions, were organised
over five years to get people
thinking and talking about
domestic violence. By the end,
men in these communities viewed
violence against women as less
acceptable and were more likely
to support their female partners’
autonomy than men in those
where no action was taken. Women
in the SASA! communities were
52 per cent less likely to be abused
by their partners.
Together, these studies show
it is possible to improve attitudes
towards women. We don’t yet
know if such shifts will translate
into less violence against them.
Spangaro is optimistic, because
large, multi-country studies show
that sexist attitudes strongly
predict rates of domestic violence.
Nicole Westmarland at Durham
University, UK, agrees we need to
prevent men becoming violent.
But she says we also need
strategies to help violent men
change their behaviour.
Support programmes for such
men are controversial – many
of those affected by domestic
violence reckon that “leopards
can’t change their spots”, says
Westmarland.
However, she recently studied200150100500Number of deaths20142015201620172018 20142015201620172018The number of deaths due to domestic violence rose slightly in both
the UK and Australia in 2018 compared with the previous year
UK AustraliaSOURCE: BBC RESEARCH. AUSTRALIAN BUREAU OF STATISTICSWIT OLSZEWSKI/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; GETTY IMAGESAffected by domestic violence?
Call the US National Domestic
Violence Hotline on 1-800-799-
7233 or search online for local
alternatives