Gastrophysics: A network theory recipe book

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Stone-age cinema: Cave art conceals first animations

Sandrine Ceurstemont, editor, New Scientist TV

Think the first movies were screened in a cinema? According to an analysis of cave art, our prehistoric ancestors may have invented the concept while drawing on their walls.

In this video, researcher and film-maker Marc Azema from the University of Toulouse Le Mirail in France reveals how several frames of an animation are superimposed in many animal sketches. A horse painting from the Lascaux caves in France, for example, is made up of many versions of the animal representing different positions of movement. In this video, Azema extracts the individual images and displays them in succession, demonstrating how they play back like a cartoon.

In other examples, motion is represented by juxtaposing drawings of a body in motion. Azema creates another sequence by picking out motion frames to produce an animation of a running animal.

Apart from layered paintings, ancient humans may have used light tricks to evoke motion on cave walls. Engraved discs of bone have also been found which produce galloping animations when spun on a string, reminiscent of flipbooks. For more on prehistoric cinema, read our feature article, "Prehistoric cinema: A silver screen on the cave wall".

If you enjoyed this post, watch the first science films or the animal stars of the first colour movies.

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2012 review: The year in health science

Read more: "2013 Smart Guide: 10 ideas that will shape the year"

The first half of 2012 will be remembered for the saga over whether or not to publish controversial research involving versions of the H5N1 bird flu virus engineered to spread more easily in mammals. In the end openness won out, and both contentious studies did finally see the light of day.

This was also the year that saw the battle to eradicate polio reach its crucial endgame – just as another problem, in the form of totally drug resistant tuberculosis, reared its head.

Away from infectious disease, 2012 brought us a theory on the link between Tutankhamun, epilepsy and the first monotheistic religion, and an insight into the perils of premature ageing in Italy's ominously named Triangle of Death. Here are 10 more of the year's memorable stories.

Babies are born dirty, with a gutful of bacteria
Far from being sterile, babies come complete with an army of bacteria. The finding could have implications for gut disorders and our health in general

Forensic failure: 'Miscarriages of justice will occur'
Our survey of UK forensic scientists reveals that many are concerned that closure of the Forensic Science Service will lead to miscarriages of justice

Scandal of an underfunded and undertreated cancer
Lung cancer in those who have never smoked is on the rise – but they face the same stigma as their smoking counterparts

Ovarian stem cells discovered in humans
Stem cells capable of forming new eggs could promise limitless eggs for IVF treatments, and the rejuvenation of older eggs

Paralysis breakthrough: spinal cord damage repaired
An implant helping paralysed people stand unaided suggests the spinal cord is able to recover function years after severe damage

A real fMRI high: My ecstasy brain scan
Graham Lawton reports the highs, lows and psychedelic purple doors involved in taking MDMA while having his brain scanned

You may carry cells from siblings, aunts and uncles
Male cells found in the umbilical cord blood of baby girls with older brothers suggests fetal cells cross between mother and baby more than once thought

Can we deter athletes who self-harm to win?
The Paralympics may encourage a debate on a dangerous practice – and potential ways to prevent it

First non-hormonal male 'pill' prevents pregnancy
A non-hormonal drug that temporarily reverses male fertility appears to have few side effects in mice

Mining MRSA genetic code halts superbug outbreak
Whole genome sequencing of an MRSA outbreak has identified the person who unwittingly spread the bacteria around a hospital, stopping further infection

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2012 review: The year in the physical sciences

Read more: "2013 Smart Guide: 10 ideas that will shape the year"

You may have thought that 2011 was the year of amazing physics, but 2012 soundly beats it. Whereas last year threw up intriguing questions, 2012 was a year of answers, some enabled by marvels of engineering. A boson resembling the Higgs popped up at the largest particle accelerator ever built, confirming hints first glimpsed at the end of 2011. Statistics were crucial to that discovery and proved vital even in the US presidential elections. But 2012 brought lessons as well as triumphs: what looked in 2011 like neutrinos breaking the cosmic speed limit was revealed to be an engineering flaw. Now, relive the roller coaster.

Beyond Higgs: Deviant decays hint at exotic physics
The world's most wanted particle has shown up at last, and surprises in its behaviour could help transcend the limits of the standard model of particle physics

Neutrino speed errors dash exotic physics dreams
Extra dimensions, time travel and tachyons all seemed a little more likely in the wake of claims that subatomic particles called neutrinos had moved faster than light – but the universe just returned to its slightly more mundane self

If you want to be president, hire geeks not pundits
As the US re-elected President Barack Obama, mathematics fans crowned their own king: statistician Nate Silver. Elections of the future could be won by the party with the best stats

Why physicists can't avoid a creation event
The big bang may not have been the beginning of everything – but new calculations suggest we still need a cosmic starter gun

Fiendish 'ABC proof' heralds new mathematical universe
Solving this 25-year-old puzzle meant tearing up and rebuilding the basic elements of number theory – and the result could prise open other enigmas

Death-defying time crystal could outlast the universe
Don't take the heat death of the universe lying down – a time crystal, symmetrical in time rather than space, would have the power to survive even the end of the universe

Truth of the matter: The Majorana particle mystery
Can a single entity be matter and antimatter at the same time? The idea was first aired 80 years ago, but now matter-antimatter hybrids seem to have been sighted trapped in the innards of a solid superconductor

Quantum measurements leave Schrödinger's cat alive
Physicists have probed a delicate quantum state without destroying it – the equivalent of taking a peek at the metaphorical cat without killing it

US judge rules that you can't copyright pi
The mathematical constant pi continues to infinity, but an extraordinary lawsuit that centred on this most beloved string of digits has come to an end – on Pi Day

Move over graphene, silicene is the new star material
After only a few years basking in the limelight, wonder material graphene now has a silicon-based competitor that could be more compatible with electronic devices

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Today on New Scientist: 28 December 2012

Best videos of 2012: Rare view of Challenger tragedy

Watch a rare amateur video of the Challenger explosion, our most-viewed video of the year

Strong jet stream super-charged US Christmas storms

Record snowfall and dozens of tornadoes snarled holiday travel as a powerful winter storm plowed across much of the US, while rainstorms battered the UK

2012 review: The year in life science

The year's biggest stories in life science, including James Cameron's descent into the Mariana trench and efforts to break into Antarctica's buried lakes

Superstorm lessons for adapting to climate change

As the post-Sandy rebuild gets under way, coastal cities around the world will be watching

Best videos of 2012: First MRI movie of childbirth

Watch a unique view of a baby's birth, at number 2 in our countdown of the year's top science videos

Fleadom or death: Reviving the glorious flea circus

The parasite-based sideshows were almost done for by the domestic vacuum cleaner - but they are bouncing back, finds Graham Lawton

Approval for gene-modified salmon spawns controversy

Apparently months late, US regulators have declared genetically engineered fish safe to farm and eat, but final approval could be some way off

Best videos of 2012: New aircraft flies inside out

Watch a novel flying machine use a unique mechanism to propel itself, at number 3 in our countdown of the top videos of the year

2012 review: The year in technology

The year's biggest stories in technology, including Kinect devices that may spot signs of autism and controlling a robot by the power of thought

Superdoodles: The science of scribbling

Far from being a distraction, doodling has an important purpose - and you can harness it

2013 Smart Guide: Wave goodbye to the mouse

The Leap, a 3D motion control device set to launch next year, will let you control your computer with touch-free hand and finger movements

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2012 review: The year in technology

Read more: "2013 Smart Guide: 10 ideas that will shape the year"

Controlling robots with thought alone could open up a new world for people with locked-in syndrome, while both health and education are heading in exciting new directions thanks to artificial intelligence and the web. And AI that can design video games from scratch might mean we will soon have to rethink what creativity really means. But it hasn't all been good news. Intriguing insights into the way the web works in both Iran and China – as well as demonstrations of how easy it is to disconnect a nation – show that unfettered, unobserved access to the internet should never be taken for granted.

Civilian drones to fill the skies after law shake-up
Law changes mean unmanned aerial vehicles aren't just for the military any more – civilian uses are taking off, too

AI designs its own video game
Video games designed almost entirely by a computer program herald a new wave of AI creativity

Face-reading software to judge the mood of the masses
Systems that can identify emotions in images of faces might soon collate millions of people's reactions to events and could even replace opinion polls

Robot avatar body controlled by thought alone
For the first time, a person lying in an fMRI machine has controlled a robot just by thinking about moving

Watson turns medic: Supercomputer to diagnose disease
More than a year after it won the quiz show Jeopardy!, IBM's supercomputer is learning how to help doctors diagnose patients

Future education: the explosion of online schooling in the US
Traditional schools are being replaced with internet-centric teaching methods that could change education forever

Robots move into the mining business
The dirty, back-breaking work of extracting minerals from the Earth is being taken over by machines

Kinect cameras watch for autism
An automated system that keeps watch over children could spot the telltale signs of autism and lead to earlier diagnoses

First evidence for Iran's parallel halal internet
The country's plan for a nationwide intranet separated from the World Wide Web looks to be approaching fruition – what are the implications?

Florida pet spa mystery link to China's great firewall
China's censors have innovative ways of stopping its citizens accessing banned websites, including poisoning internet servers

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Photo puzzle: Can you make the connection?

Correctly match up 16 pairs of science-inspired images and enter a draw to win a state-of-the-art Olympus E-PL5 digital camera

MANY of the most fascinating sights in the universe are not evident to the naked eye. Happily, cutting-edge imaging - whether done with a microscope, telescope, MRI scanner or just a camera lens - means these sights are now ours for the seeing.

Can you link up 16 intriguing images with their more commonplace counterparts shown here?

Correctly match all 16 pairs and submit your answers by 4 January 2013 for a chance to win an Olympus E-PL5 digital camera worth £600.

A couple of hints: three of the images you'll be matching are not close-ups, and the links are not necessarily straightforward, so be sure to engage your imagination.

Read the full terms and conditions and submit your answers at newscientist.com/photopuzzle

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2013 Smart Guide: Hot computing for a cool billion

Read more: "2013 Smart Guide: 10 ideas that will shape the year"

It has been called science's X Factor: six mega-projects vying for two prizes, each worth a cool €1 billion.

In 2010, the European Commission put out a call for visionary computing initiatives comparable to the moon landing or the mapping of the human genome. Such ultra-ambitious projects would change the way we think about the world and ideally solve some of its problems, too.

Of 21 ideas submitted, six were shortlisted for further development. These include the Human Brain Project - an attempt to simulate the brain using a supercomputer - and a scheme to create a new generation of electronic devices based not on silicon but graphene.

The winners will be announced at the end of January. The prize money, from European countries and private firms as well as the European Union, will be spread over 10 years.

Our money is on FuturICT, a real-life SimCity on a global scale. It will give individuals, companies and governments real-time information about the planet, and run simulations to find the best strategies for dealing with issues such as climate change.

FuturICT was conceived after the 2008 financial crash drove home our lack of understanding about today's hyperconnected world. The civilisation simulator will be an open platform, accepting data on anything from social media and the stock exchange to climate models and political preferences. Stay tuned for the start of something big.

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New Scientist 2012 holiday quiz

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THIS was the year we held our breath in almost unbearable anticipation while we waited to see whether physicists at the Large Hadron Collider would finally get a clear view of the Higgs boson, so tantalisingly hinted at last December. Going a bit blue, we held on through March when one of the LHC's detectors seemed to lose sight of the thing, before exhaling in a puff of almost-resolution in July, when researchers announced that the data added up to a fairly confident pretty-much-actual-discovery of the particle.

Early indications were that it might be a weird and wonderful variety of the Higgs, prompting a collective gasp of excitement. That was followed by a synchronised sigh of mild disappointment when later data implied that it was probably the most boring possible version after all, and not a strange entity pointing the way to new dimensions and the true nature of dark matter. Prepare yourself for another puff or two as the big story moves on next year.

This respirational rollercoaster might be running a bit too slowly to supply enough oxygen to the brain of a New Scientist reader, so we have taken care to provide more frequent oohs and aahs using less momentous revelations. See how many of the following unfundamental discoveries you can distinguish from the truth-free mimics that crowd parasitically around them.

1. Which of these anatomical incongruities of the animal kingdom did we describe on 14 July?

• a) A fish, found in a canal in Vietnam, that wears its genitals under its mouth
• b) A frog, found in a puddle in Peru, that has no spleen
• c) A lizard, found in a cave in Indonesia, that has four left feet
• d) A cat, found in a tree in northern England, that has eight extra teeth

2. "A sprout by any other name would taste as foul." So wrote William Shakespeare in his diary on 25 December 1598, setting off the centuries of slightly unjust ridicule experienced by this routinely over-cooked vegetable. But which forbiddingly named veg did we report on 7 July as having more health-giving power than the sprout, its active ingredient being trialled as a treatment for prostate cancer?

• a) Poison celery
• b) Murder beans
• c) Inconvenience potatoes
• d) Death carrots

3. Scientists often like to say they are opening a new window on things. Usually that is a metaphor, but on 10 November we reported on a more literal innovation in the fenestral realm. It was:

• a) A perspex peephole set in the nest of the fearsome Japanese giant hornet, to reveal its domestic habits
• b) A glass porthole implanted in the abdomen of a mouse, to reveal the process of tumour metastasis
• c) A crystal portal in the inner vessel of an experimental thorium reactor, to reveal its nuclear fires to the naked eye
• d) A small window high on the wall of a basement office in the Princeton physics department, to reveal a small patch of sky to postgraduate students who have not been outside for seven years

4. On 10 March we described a new material for violin strings, said to produce a brilliant and complex sound richer than that of catgut. What makes up these super strings?

• a) Mousegut
• b) Spider silk
• c) Braided carbon nanotubes
• d) An alloy of yttrium and ytterbium

5. While the peril of climate change looms inexorably larger, in this festive-for-some season we might take a minute to look on the bright side. On 17 March we reported on one benefit of global warming, which might make life better for some people for a while. It was:

• a) Receding Arctic sea ice will make it easier to lay undersea cables to boost internet speeds
• b) Increasing temperatures mean that Greenlanders can soon start making their own wine
• c) Rising sea levels could allow a string of new beach resorts to open in the impoverished country of Chad
• d) More acidic seawater will add a pleasant tang to the salt water taffy sweets made in Atlantic City

6. In Alaska's Glacier Bay national park, the brown bear in the photo (above, right) is doing something never before witnessed among bearkind, as we revealed on 10 March. Is it:

• a) Making a phonecall?
• b) Gnawing at a piece of whalebone to dislodge a rotten tooth?
• c) Scratching itself with a barnacle-covered stone tool?
• d) Cracking oysters on its jaw?

7. Men have much in common with fruit flies, as we revealed on 24 March. When the sexual advances of a male fruit fly are rejected, he may respond by:

• a) Whining
• b) Hitting the booze
• c) Jumping off a tall building
• d) Hovering around the choosy female long after all hope is lost

8. While great Higgsian things were happening at the LHC, scientists puzzled over a newly urgent question: what should we call the boson? Peter Higgs wasn't the only physicist to predict its existence, and some have suggested that the particle's name should also include those other theorists or perhaps reflect some other aspect of the particle. Which of the following is a real suggestion that we reported on 24 March?

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Prehistoric cinema: A silver screen on the cave wall

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Today on New Scientist: 21 December 2012

Cadaver stem cells offer new hope of life after death

Stem cells can be extracted from bone marrow five days after death to be used in life-saving treatments

Apple's patents under fire at US patent office

The tech firm is skating on thin ice with some of the patents that won it a $1 billion settlement against Samsung

Himalayan dam-building threatens endemic species

The world's highest mountains look set to become home to a huge number of dams - good news for clean energy but bad news for biodiversity

Astrophile: Black hole exposed as a dwarf in disguise

A white dwarf star caught mimicking a black hole's X-ray flashes may be the first in a new class of binary star systems

Blind juggling robot keeps a ball in the air for hours

The robot, which has no visual sensors, can juggle a ball flawlessly by analysing its trajectory

Studio sessions show how Bengalese finch stays in tune

This songbird doesn't need technological aids to stay in tune - and it's smart enough to not worry when it hears notes that are too far off to be true

Giant tooth hints at truly monumental dinosaur

A lone tooth found in Argentina may have belonged to a dinosaur even larger than those we know of, but what to call it?

Avian flu virus learns to fly without wings

A strain of bird flu that hit the Netherlands in 2003 travelled by air, a hitherto suspected by unproven route of transmission

Feedback: Are wind turbines really fans?

A tale of "disease-spreading" wind farms, the trouble with quantifying "don't know", the death of parody in the UK, and more

The link between devaluing animals and discrimination

Our feelings about other animals have important consequences for how we treat humans, say prejudice researchers Gordon Hodson and Kimberly Costello

Best videos of 2012: First motion MRI of unborn twins

Watch twins fight for space in the womb, as we reach number 6 in our countdown of the top videos of the year

2012 Flash Fiction winner: Sleep by Richard Clarke

Congratulations to Richard Clarke, who won the 2012 New Scientist Flash Fiction competition with a clever work of satire

Urban Byzantine monks gave in to temptation

They were supposed to live on an ascetic diet of mainly bread and water, but the monks in 6th-century Jerusalem were tucking into animal products

The pregnant promise of fetal medicine

As prenatal diagnosis and treatment advance, we are entering difficult ethical territory

2013 Smart Guide: Searching for human origins in Asia

Africa is where humanity began, where we took our first steps, but those interested in the latest cool stuff on our origins should now look to Asia instead

The end of the world is an opportunity, not a threat

Don't waste time bemoaning the demise of the old order; get on with building the new one

Victorian counting device gets speedy quantum makeover

A photon-based version of a 19th-century mechanical device could bring quantum computers a step closer

Did learning to fly give bats super-immunity?

When bats first took to the air, something changed in their DNA which may have triggered their incredible immunity to viruses

Van-sized space rock is a cosmic oddball

Fragments from a meteor that exploded over California in April are unusually low in amino acids, putting a twist on one theory of how life on Earth began

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Today on New Scientist: 21 December 2012

Cadaver stem cells offer new hope of life after death

Stem cells can be extracted from bone marrow five days after death to be used in life-saving treatments

Apple's patents under fire at US patent office

The tech firm is skating on thin ice with some of the patents that won it a $1 billion settlement against Samsung

Himalayan dam-building threatens endemic species

The world's highest mountains look set to become home to a huge number of dams - good news for clean energy but bad news for biodiversity

Astrophile: Black hole exposed as a dwarf in disguise

A white dwarf star caught mimicking a black hole's X-ray flashes may be the first in a new class of binary star systems

Blind juggling robot keeps a ball in the air for hours

The robot, which has no visual sensors, can juggle a ball flawlessly by analysing its trajectory

Studio sessions show how Bengalese finch stays in tune

This songbird doesn't need technological aids to stay in tune - and it's smart enough to not worry when it hears notes that are too far off to be true

Giant tooth hints at truly monumental dinosaur

A lone tooth found in Argentina may have belonged to a dinosaur even larger than those we know of, but what to call it?

Avian flu virus learns to fly without wings

A strain of bird flu that hit the Netherlands in 2003 travelled by air, a hitherto suspected by unproven route of transmission

Feedback: Are wind turbines really fans?

A tale of "disease-spreading" wind farms, the trouble with quantifying "don't know", the death of parody in the UK, and more

The link between devaluing animals and discrimination

Our feelings about other animals have important consequences for how we treat humans, say prejudice researchers Gordon Hodson and Kimberly Costello

Best videos of 2012: First motion MRI of unborn twins

Watch twins fight for space in the womb, as we reach number 6 in our countdown of the top videos of the year

2012 Flash Fiction winner: Sleep by Richard Clarke

Congratulations to Richard Clarke, who won the 2012 New Scientist Flash Fiction competition with a clever work of satire

Urban Byzantine monks gave in to temptation

They were supposed to live on an ascetic diet of mainly bread and water, but the monks in 6th-century Jerusalem were tucking into animal products

The pregnant promise of fetal medicine

As prenatal diagnosis and treatment advance, we are entering difficult ethical territory

2013 Smart Guide: Searching for human origins in Asia

Africa is where humanity began, where we took our first steps, but those interested in the latest cool stuff on our origins should now look to Asia instead

The end of the world is an opportunity, not a threat

Don't waste time bemoaning the demise of the old order; get on with building the new one

Victorian counting device gets speedy quantum makeover

A photon-based version of a 19th-century mechanical device could bring quantum computers a step closer

Did learning to fly give bats super-immunity?

When bats first took to the air, something changed in their DNA which may have triggered their incredible immunity to viruses

Van-sized space rock is a cosmic oddball

Fragments from a meteor that exploded over California in April are unusually low in amino acids, putting a twist on one theory of how life on Earth began

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Urban Byzantine monks gave in to temptation

WHO ate all the pies? In 6th-century Jerusalem, the Byzantine monks were greedy gobblers - despite strict rules that they should eat mainly bread and water.

Most early Byzantine monasteries were located in remote deserts, but St Stephen's monastery thrived in Jerusalem. Wondering how urban living affected the monks, Lesley Gregoricka at the University of South Alabama in Mobile took bone samples from 55 skeletons buried under the monastery.

The ratios of various isotopes of carbon and nitrogen in the bones confirmed that the monks ate a lot of common cereals like wheat, as well as fruit and vegetables. But many bones were rich in the heavy isotope nitrogen-15, suggesting the monks ate lots of animal protein. That could mean meat, or dairy products such as cheese (Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, doi.org/jzt).

"The rules on issues such as poverty, chastity and obedience were certainly known and could not be easily ignored," says Peter Hatlie of the University of Dallas's Rome Program in Frattocchie, Italy. "Only fallen, weak, mad and demonic monks ate meat."

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

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2013 Smart Guide: New maps to rein in cosmic inflation

Read more: "2013 Smart Guide: 10 ideas that will shape the year"

We're about to get a better grasp of one of the biggest ideas in the universe: inflation. The first maps of the cosmos from the European Space Agency's Planck satellite are due out in early 2013. They should help us to hone descriptions of how, after the big bang, the universe grew from smaller than a proton into a vast expanse in less than a trillionth of a trillionth of a second.

The early universe was a featureless soup of hot plasma that somehow grew into the dense galaxy clusters and cosmic voids we know today. On a large scale, regions far apart from each other should look very different, according to the laws of thermodynamics. But studies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) - the first light to be released, some 300,000 years after the big bang - show that the universe still looks virtually the same in all directions.

To explain this unlikely sameness, physicists invoked inflation: since all points in the universe were once next-door neighbours, the idea is that they blew apart so quickly that they couldn't forget about each other. Data from NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), launched in 2001, bolstered a key prediction of inflation, that the universe's structure was seeded by quantum fluctuations in space-time.

Stephen Hawking recently told New Scientist that WMAP's evidence for inflation was the most exciting development in physics during his career. But a best-fit model for what drove the exponential expansion, when it began and how long it lasted, hasn't been agreed. The WMAP data also revealed some surprises, such as inexplicable patterns in the CMB. So cosmologists have been anxiously awaiting Planck's higher-resolution maps to set the record straight. The Planck team will release its first cosmological results from 15 months' worth of data in March.

In addition, the Planck results will help refine figures for how much dark energy, dark matter and normal matter make up the universe. Planck might also record the first direct signs of ripples in space-time called gravitational waves. Not bad for a probe that's already half dead - one of Planck's two detectors stopped working in January. The entire craft will be shuttered in August.

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

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2013 Smart Guide: Revolutionary human stem cell trial

Read more: "2013 Smart Guide: 10 ideas that will shape the year"

If all goes to plan, 2013 should see the first human trial of "rewound" cells. These are produced by turning adult cells back to a stem cell state and then coaxing them into becoming another type of cell. It will mark a milestone in our ability to generate new tissue - and maybe whole organs - from people's own cells.

In 2006, Shinya Yamanaka reverted skin cells to an embryonic state. He called these cells induced pluripotent stem cells. iPSCs can grow into any tissue in the body by exposure to natural growth factors.

The long-term goal of the pioneering trial of iPSC-derived cells is to provide blood platelets to people undergoing cancer therapy, who need platelet transfusions to repair damaged tissues and prevent uncontrolled bleeding. Initially, however, platelets grown from iPSC will be given to healthy volunteers. Researchers in charge of the proposed trial, planned by Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) of Marlborough, Massachusetts, want to ensure that the cells are well tolerated before moving on to people with cancer and other blood-related conditions.

Some studies of iPSCs have suggested that they may have a higher risk of becoming cancerous. "Since platelets don't have nuclei they can't form tumours, which makes them ideal for the first iPSC clinical trial," says Robert Lanza, chief medical officer at ACT.

Volunteers will be given platelets made from pre-existing stocks of iPSCs, but if the trial goes well, Lanza says they will create platelets from cancer patients' own cells.

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

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Is the obesity epidemic caused by too much sugar?

Luc Tappy, contributor

(Image: Martin Parr/Magnum)

In Fat Chance, endocrinologist Robert Lustig argues that insidious changes to our eating habits have caused disruptions to our endocrine systems

THE number of obese people in the world has doubled in the last three decades. During the same period, the way we eat has changed insidiously: the proportion of meals eaten outside the home has grown, people have come to rely more and more on ready-to-eat processed foods, and sugar consumption has soared to the highest levels in human history. Unsurprisingly, none of this is for the better of our health, says endocrinologist Robert Lustig.

Obese people struggling to lose weight, and health professionals involved in helping them to do so, will agree that obesity is not down to mere gluttony or sloth. Subtle, yet unrecognised neuroendocrine defects likely also play a role.

In Fat Chance, Lustig argues that the rise of obesity is the result of high concentrations of insulin in the blood, together with resistance to leptin - a hormone secreted by the body's fat cells that normally signals the brain to shut down food intake.

According to his hypothesis, the problem begins when dietary sugar stimulates insulin secretion, promoting storage of food energy in fat cells. Because this energy is not available to other cells, the signal to eat doesn't get switched off. In such conditions, leptin should tell the brain to reduce food intake. But the brains of obese people who have developed insulin resistance also become resistant to the effects of leptin. Lustig says that is because high insulin levels block leptin's signals to the brain, but unfortunately he doesn't show by what mechanism this might be happening, or clarify whether leptin resistance is a direct consequence of eating sugar. Still, if these factors are at work, it would help to explain uninhibited overeating.

After laying out his theory, Lustig goes on to scrutinise the composition of the average modern diet. He concludes that four specific nutrients are instrumental in the development of obesity. Top of the list are "sugars", and more specifically fructose. This monosaccharide is consumed when foods contain added sugar (be it cane or beet sugar, or high-fructose corn syrup). Fructose, which Lustig describes as a toxin, can be converted into fat by the liver, and hence can be directly involved in the development of complications of obesity such as heart disease and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. The other three nutrients on his hazards list are alcohol, branched-chain amino acids and trans fats.

Once he has made a case for the causes of obesity, Lustig outlines the dietary changes and public policies required to reduce them. These are very familiar: a drastic reduction in sugar consumption, increasing intake of foods that contain high amounts of dietary fibre - whole fruits rather than juices, for example - and an increase in physical activity.

There are many books on the ills of obesity. So what does this one add? Fat Chance is certainly not intended as a practical guide for people attempting to lose weight, and with often superficial presentations of the science, it is not for health professionals either. Instead, this book offers the general reader a critical appraisal of our present diet and eating habits. Most important, Lustig's recommendations to reduce sugar intake, eat more fibre-rich foods, and lobby the food industry and government to take practical steps to improve the quality of our diet, are certainly valid and more than appropriate.

Fat Chance is a position statement. Lustig argues that sugar and processed foods are driving the obesity epidemic, and he calls for policy interventions to reduce their consumption by any possible means. He is venturing into controversial territory and many of his hypotheses remain unproven, and at times draw on a rather thin scientific background. Yet they are nonetheless highly plausible - and worrying.

Luc Tappy is a professor of physiology at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland

Fat Chance: Beating the odds against sugar, processed food, obesity, and disease by Robert H. Lustig
Fourth Estate/Hudson Street Press
£13.99/$25.95

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How human biology can prevent drug deaths

Thousands of people die from adverse effects of medicines that have been tested on animals. There is a better way, say geneticist Kathy Archibald and pharmacologist Robert Coleman

ADVERSE drug reactions are a major cause of death, killing 197,000 people annually in the European Union and upwards of 100,000 in the US. Little coverage is given to such grim statistics by governments or pharmaceutical companies, so patients and their doctors are not primed to be as vigilant as they should be, and adverse drug reactions (ADRs) remain seriously under-recognised and under-reported.

The €5.88-million EU-ADR project, which published its final report in October, showed that it is possible to spot these reactions earlier by applying data-mining techniques to electronic health records. These techniques could, for example, have detected the cardiovascular risk signals of arthritis drug Vioxx three years before the drug was withdrawn in 2004 - saving many tens of thousands of lives. But invaluable as such systems are, it would be even better to detect risk signals before a drug reaches humans, thus saving even more lives.

Currently, 92 per cent of new drugs fail clinical trials, even though they have successfully passed animal tests. This is mostly because of toxicity, which can be serious and even fatal for the people taking part in the trials. For example, in 2006, six people enrolled in a UK trial of the drug TGN1412 were hospitalised after developing multiple organ failure. Many clinical trials are now conducted in India, where, according to India's Tribune newspaper, at least 1725 people died in drug trials between 2007 and 2011. Clearly, there is an urgent need for better methods to predict the safety of medicines for patients as well as volunteers in clinical trials.

At the patient safety charity, Safer Medicines, we believe this goal is most likely to be achieved through a greatly increased focus on human, rather than animal, biology in preclinical drugs tests. New tests based on human biology can predict many adverse reactions that animal tests fail to do, and could, for example, have detected the risk signals produced by Vioxx, which in animal studies appeared to be safe, and even beneficial to the heart.

These techniques include: human tissue created by reprogramming cells from people with the relevant disease (dubbed "patient in a dish"); "body on a chip" devices, where human tissue samples on a silicon chip are linked by a circulating blood substitute; many computer modelling approaches, such as virtual organs, virtual patients and virtual clinical trials; and microdosing studies, where tiny doses of drugs given to volunteers allow scientists to study their metabolism in humans, safely and with unsurpassed accuracy. Then there are the more humble but no less valuable studies in ethically donated "waste" tissue.

These innovations promise precious insights into the functioning of the integrated human system. Many are already commercially available, but they are not being embraced with the enthusiasm they merit.

Pharmaceutical companies would make much greater use of them if governments encouraged it, but inflexible requirements for animal tests is a major deterrent. Ever since the thalidomide birth-defects tragedy, animal testing has been enshrined in law worldwide, despite the irony that more animal testing would not have prevented the release of thalidomide, because the drug harms very few species.

So how well have animal tests protected us? Many studies have calculated the ability of animal tests to predict adverse reactions to be at or below 50 per cent. In 2008, a study in Theriogenology (vol 69, p 2) concluded: "On average, the extrapolated results from studies using tens of millions of animals fail to accurately predict human responses." And a recent study in Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology (vol 64, p 345) shows that animal tests missed 81 per cent of the serious side effects of 43 drugs that went on to harm patients.

It is hard to understand why governments defend a system with such a poor record, or why they are dismissive of new technologies that promise increased patient safety while decreasing the time and cost of drug development, not to mention the savings to healthcare systems from fewer adverse drug reactions. Proposals to compare human-based tests with animal-based approaches have been strongly supported by members of the UK parliament. The Early Day Motions they signed were among the most-signed of all parliamentary motions between 2005 and 2006, 2008 and 2009, and 2010 and 2012.

Safer Medicines has put these concerns to the UK Department of Health and the prime minister - to be told that "human biology-based tests are not better able to predict adverse drug reactions in humans than animal tests".

It is a tragedy that so many suffer or die through the use of inadequately tested drugs when tests based on human biology are readily available. Yet governments continue to mandate animal tests, despite the lack of a formal demonstration of fitness for purpose, and a growing global realisation among scientists that animal toxicity tests are inadequate and must be replaced.

In its 2007 report, Toxicity Testing in the 21st Century: A Vision and a Strategy, the US National Research Council called for the replacement of animal tests: "The vision for toxicity testing in the 21st century articulated here represents a paradigm shift from the use of experimental animals... toward the use of more efficient in vitro tests and computational techniques." To its credit, the US government is at least working on initiatives to hasten this. The UK government, however, still denies there is a problem. How many must die before it listens?

Kathy Archibald is director of the Safer Medicines Trust. She is a geneticist who worked in the pharmaceutical industry.

Robert Coleman is a pharmacologist with pharmaceutical industry experience. He is now a drug discovery consultant and adviser to the trust

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Zebrafish made to grow pre-hands instead of fins

PERHAPS the little fish embryo shown here is dancing a jig because it has just discovered that it has legs instead of fins. Fossils show that limbs evolved from fins, but a new study shows how it may have happened, live in the lab.

Fernando Casares of the Spanish National Research Council and his colleagues injected zebrafish with the hoxd13 gene from a mouse. The protein that the gene codes for controls the development of autopods, a precursor to hands, feet and paws.

Zebrafish naturally carry hoxd13 but produce less of the protein than tetrapods - all four-limbed vertebrates and birds - do. Casares and his colleagues hoped that by injecting extra copies of the gene into the zebrafish embryos, some of their cells would make more of the protein.

One full day later, all of those fish whose cells had taken up the gene began to develop autopods instead of fins. They carried on growing for four days but then died (Cell, DOI: 10.1016/j.devcel.2012.10.015).

"Of course, we haven't been able to grow hands," says Casares. He speculates that hundreds of millions of years ago, the ancestors of tetrapods began expressing more hoxd13 for some reason and that this could have allowed them to evolve autopods.

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

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Zebrafish made to grow pre-hands instead of fins

PERHAPS the little fish embryo shown here is dancing a jig because it has just discovered that it has legs instead of fins. Fossils show that limbs evolved from fins, but a new study shows how it may have happened, live in the lab.

Fernando Casares of the Spanish National Research Council and his colleagues injected zebrafish with the hoxd13 gene from a mouse. The protein that the gene codes for controls the development of autopods, a precursor to hands, feet and paws.

Zebrafish naturally carry hoxd13 but produce less of the protein than tetrapods - all four-limbed vertebrates and birds - do. Casares and his colleagues hoped that by injecting extra copies of the gene into the zebrafish embryos, some of their cells would make more of the protein.

One full day later, all of those fish whose cells had taken up the gene began to develop autopods instead of fins. They carried on growing for four days but then died (Cell, DOI: 10.1016/j.devcel.2012.10.015).

"Of course, we haven't been able to grow hands," says Casares. He speculates that hundreds of millions of years ago, the ancestors of tetrapods began expressing more hoxd13 for some reason and that this could have allowed them to evolve autopods.

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

All comments should respect the New Scientist House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please use the "Report" link in that comment to report it to us.

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Touchpad steering wheel keeps eyes on the road

DRIVING would be less of a cognitive burden if you could keep your eyes on the road, instead of looking down to check your speed, fuel gauge or satnav. That's the thinking behind a new touch-sensitive steering wheel, which allows drivers to call up information on a head-up display on the windscreen, just off the driver's line of sight.

"We're looking at very simple touch interactions that don't require a visual focus," says Victoria Fang, who built the steering wheel together with Lucas Ainsworth at Intel labs in Hillsboro, Oregon.

The touchpad steering wheel is designed to do away with the plethora of switches and buttons that currently sprout from car steering columns, controlling everything from the radio to the GPS navigation system.

The researchers used a 3D printer to create a secure housing for a sheet of touch-sensitive material that they then embedded in one of the broad spokes of a steering wheel.

Tests involving volunteers on a driving simulator indicated that users are most comfortable operating the touchpad using the thumb of their right hand. Quick taps on the pad accept actions recommended by the display, such as "dim headlights" or "view accident location on satnav", while a swipe towards the left dismisses a suggestion. Swiping up or down scrolls through a menu of actions. The researchers are also experimenting with subtle audio prompts when new items pop up on the display.

"We are continually engaged with car equipment-makers to collaboratively explore these concepts," says Fang, although she declined to discuss the specifics of which manufacturer might be the first to bring the device to market.

"The computer scientist in me says that's got to be the coolest car ever," says Peter Bentley, a software engineer at University College London. "But the petrolhead in me says driving should be about integrating the driver with the car and making the car feel like an extension of your body, not turning it into an iPad on wheels."

Still, Bentley says he can see the benefits of the touchpad "for simple activities such as choosing music or changing volume while driving, and perhaps setting the cruise control".

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

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