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A Gene for Speed
Volume 37 | Number 4
MAY 2016 | $9.95

Diet used by bodybuilders alters

glucose metabolism to alleviate

Schizophrenia
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How to Test Eyewitness Reliability

How Obesity Suppresses Satiety Signals
Interview with Brian Schmidt Human Gene Editing Fails Why Are Bigger Offspring Better?

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Make Sense of Science

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CONTENTS

FEATURES
14

A Diet that Calms the Schizophrenic Mind

The ketogenic diet favoured by bodybuilders also normalises
schizophrenialike behaviours.

18

How Reliable Is an Eyewitness?

Eyewitness identification of criminals is notoriously unreliable, but a
new study based on police records has identified factors that can
determine which witnesses are accurate and which are guessing.

21

The Stomach as a Target for Obesity

18

Obesity permanently changes the way our body processes

gastrointestinal signals about satiety. While appetite suppressants
have had limited success, the identification of an appetiteregulating
nerve channel offers a new approach to keeping weight off.

24

A Gene for Speed

A gene that may have enabled ancient humans to spread to colder
climates may also be the difference between power athletes and the
rest of us, and play a role in muscle diseases.

27

About Schmidt
Nobel Prize winner Brian Schmidt discusses global warming, exploding
stars, politics and Star Wars with JAY FURBY.

31

24

Why Are Bigger Offspring Better?

Bigger offspring have greater energy needs, so why do they survive
and reproduce more successfully than their smaller siblings?

34

Generation Multi
As technology continues to become more richly embedded in our daily
lives, so too comes the increased demand and temptation to
multitask. But can we improve our ability to do two things at once?

36

Plant Viruses Threaten Crops as Climate Warms

Climate change will exacerbate the spread of a virus that reduces the
yield of infected wheat by 70%.

27

conSCIENCE
38

MegaBanks Unleash an Infrastructure Tsunami

The rise of investment bank lending for infrastructure projects in
developing countries is driving a feeding frenzy of developments
with lower environmental controls.

39

Stem Cell Industry Must Tread a Fine Line

The emerging stem cell industry needs to be able to fasttrack
therapies into clinical trials without clearing the way for clinics to offer
unproven therapies to vulnerable patients.

31
MAY 2016 |

|3

CONTENTS

NEWS
6

Browse
A roundup of science news from our shores.

COLUMNS
5

40

Up Front

Can a sugar tax save us if obesity has already permanently suppressed

the satiety signals that tell us to stop eating?

Expert Opinion
A second case of gene editing of human embryos has unsuccessfully
attempted to introduce resistance to HIV infection.

41

Neuropsy
Donald Trumps appeal to voters may be explained by a preference for
authoritarian antiestablishment leaders.

42

The Fit
Is there something uniquely unhealthy about sugar above and beyond
the excess calories?

43

The Fossil File

Australian museums dont display any dinosaurs mounted from real
bones into a lifelike position.

11
44

Directions
Australias total net CO2 emissions are much lower than are implied by
published numbers.

45

Out of this World

Astronomers have found that Saturns moons may be younger than
the dinosaurs, and may have seen a baby Earth forming.

46

The Bitter Pill

Chiropractors claim that functional neurology can treat conditions
ranging from epilepsy and Alzheimers disease to autism and stroke, but
the technology they use isnt up to the task.

41

47

The Naked Skeptic

Even people who are rational about most matters can hold opinions
that arent supported by science or even common sense.

48

EcoLogic
Inconsistent classification of species introduces systematic bias to
ecological studies.

49

Lowe Tech
Installations of solar and wind energy will need to maintain their pace to
ensure that electric vehicles arent powered by fossil fuels.

50

Quandary
Cases of sexual attraction are bound to grow as genetic orphans
seek out their missing parents.

45
4|

MAY 2016

51

Australasian Sky
Your map of the night sky this month.

UP FRONT

Obesity Is Winning the Hunger Games

Can a sugar tax save us if obesity has already permanently
suppressed the satiety signals that tell us to stop eating?
When I was at school I was incredulous at a health promotion campaign that urged
people to ind 30 minutes per day to exercise. I was a skinny, hyperactive kid who barely
had time to eat. I knew that adults had to work longer than schoolkids, but how could
they not ind the time or desire to chase a ball for half an hour each day?
Fast forward to the present and we see many people using wearable devices to count
how many steps they take each day, as well as monitor other health parameters such as
heart rate and quality of sleep. Were better educated about the food we should eat, and
have a wider range of healthier options available. And theres no end of itness equipment
and diet programs to order from the many lifestyle channels available 24/7.
Yet obesity rates have continued to rise, with the Victorian Health Department estimating that about 80% of Australians will be overweight or obese within 9 years. This
is alarming not only because being overweight or obese is associated with cardiovascular
disease and diabetes, but also because obesity alters our metabolism permanently.
In this edition of Australasian Science, Dr Amanda Page of The University of Adelaides
Centre for Nutrition and Gastrointestinal Disease explains that the responses of vagal
afferent nerves in the gastrointestinal tract are signiicantly dampened in obese individuals (see p.21), particularly where a high-fat diet has induced obesity. In these cases the
vagal nerves become less sensitive to stretching of the stomach, so the brain doesnt
receive the signal that its time to put down the cutlery and step away from the table.
Page warns that dieting wont correct this loss of our gastronomic self-control: the dampened response to satiety continues even after an individual has lost weight and is no
longer obese. This would explain why dieters lose weight only to put it back on again.
More encouragingly, Pages group has identiied a target for a pharmacological agent.
While these nerve channels are activated in pain-sensing nerves and are responsible for
the heat we experience when we eat hot chillies, they also play a role in satiety signalling.
Satiety is just one aspect of the battle of the bulge. As former hunter-gatherers we
have a primal urge to consume energy-rich sources of energy, so we shouldnt be surprised
that Tim Tams are so addictive. Indeed, Australian scientists have now discovered that
drugs used to treat nicotine addiction can also stop sugar cravings (see Browse, p.7).
Sugar has become the current dietary villain, and the UK is introducing a sugar tax
to reduce consumption. Should Australia introduce one too? While Australian researchers
have found that a 20% rise in the cost of sugary drinks would save 1600 lives and prevent
thousands of heart attacks and strokes each year (http://tinyurl.com/hy4xr48), Prof Tim
Olds has reviewed the literature and found that sugar consumption has been falling for
15 years and the evidence against it is unconvincing (see The Fit, p.42).
We need to take matters into our own hands. If we cant overcome the addictive
nature of sugar or restore our lost perception of when our bellies are full, we could do worse
than return to the advice given to Norm, the cartoon couch potato from my childhood:
ind 30 minutes to exercise, or follow the Fitbit fad and take 10,000 steps each day.
Guy Nolch is Editor/Publisher of Australasian Science.

Cover Story
The ketogenic diet is high in fiet and low in carbs, and must be
supervised by a doctor. It is favoured by bodybuilders but new
research has found that it also normalises schizophrenia-like
behaviours. Image credit: enterlinedesign/adobe

@austscience

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EDITOR/PUBLISHER: Guy Nolch
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Peter Bowditch, Michael Cook,
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MAY 2016 |

|5

BROWSE

For the first time, a supernova shockwave has been observed in the visible spectrum as it reaches the surface of a star called KSN
2011d. It took 14 days for the explosive death of this star to reach maximum brightness, but the initial shock breakout lasted only
20 minutes. Credit: NASA Ames/W. Stenzel

Astronomers Glimpse Supernova Shockwave

Astronomers have captured the earliest minutes of two exploding
stars, and for the irst time seen a shockwave generated by a stars
collapsing core. Its like the shockwave from a nuclear bomb,
only much bigger and no one gets hurt, said Dr Brad Tucker of
The Australian National University.
Stars explode when their fuel runs down and the core collapses.
The resulting supernova explosion is brighter than the rest of its
galaxy, and shines for some weeks.
Supernovae are so bright that they can be seen in distant
galaxies, but very little is known about the early stages of these
explosions.
As the core of a supernova collapses to form a neutron star,
energy bounces back from the core in the form of a shockwave that
travels at 3040,000 km/s and causes the nuclear fusion that
creates heavy elements such as gold, silver and uranium.

The new study, published in the Astrophysical Journal

(http://tinyurl.com/zfplud3), reports the explosions of two red
supergiants. The astronomers only saw a shockwave in the smaller
star, which has a radius 270 times that of the Sun. The shockwave was observed as a peak in the light emitted from the explosion in the irst few days.
While a shockwave could not be detected in the second star, a
large supergiant with a radius 460 times larger than the Sun, Tucker
said that it must have existed. The star was so large that the shockwave did not travel all the way to the surface, he explained.
The observation will help astronomers ine-tune their understanding of how the size and composition of a star affects the
early moments of its death. Supernovae made the heavy elements
we need to survive, such as iron, zinc and iodine, so we are really
learning about how we are created, Tucker said.

An Hour a Day Keeps Myopia at Bay

Increasing exposure to outdoor light can
stave off an epidemic of short-sightedness
among children, according to research
published in Investigative Ophthalmology &
Visual Science (http://tinyurl.com/hqynqu2).
A/Prof Scott Read of Queensland
University of Technologys School of
Optometry and Vision Science said that
children need to spend more than an hour
and preferably at least 2 hours per day
outside to help prevent the development and
6|

MAY 2016

progression of myopia. Read explained that it

wasnt near work on screens that caused
myopia, but a lack of adequate outdoor
light.While screens are leading children to
spend more time indoors than in previous
years, the research shows they are not the
direct cause of the increased incidence of
myopia.
The QUT study measured childrens eye
growth, with study participants wearing
wristwatch light sensors to record light

exposure and physical activity for a fortnight

during warmer and then colder months to give
an overall measurement of their typical light
exposure.
Children exposed to the least outdoor
light had faster eye growth and hence faster
myopia progression, Read said.
In February the Brien Holden Vision
Institute predicted that half the worlds
population will be short-sighted by 2050,
with 10% of the worlds population at risk of
blindness.

Compiled by Guy Nolch

A Pill to Treat Sugar Addiction

Drugs used to treat nicotine addiction could be used to treat sugar
addiction in animals, according to research from Queensland
University of Technology.
The latest World Health Organisation igures tell us 1.9 billion
people worldwide are overweight, with 600 million considered
obese, said Prof Selena Bartlett of QUTs Institute of Health and
Biomedical Innovation, who is corresponding author of the study
published in PLOS ONE (http://tinyurl.com/jmolxof).
Excess sugar consumption has been proven to contribute
directly to weight gain, Bartlett said. It has also been shown to
repeatedly elevate dopamine levels, which control the brains reward
and pleasure centres in a way that is similar to many drugs of abuse,
including tobacco, cocaine and morphine.
After long-term consumption, this leads to the opposite: a
reduction in dopamine levels. This leads to higher consumption
of sugar to get the same level of reward.
We have also found that as well as an increased risk of weight
gain, animals that maintain high sugar consumption and binge eating
into adulthood may also face neurological and psychiatric consequences affecting mood and motivation. Our study found that Food
and Drug Administration-approved drugs like varenicline (a prescription medication trading as Champix, which treats nicotine addiction) can work the same way when it comes to sugar cravings.

ksena32/adobe

PhD researcher Masroor Shariff said the study also put artiicial
sweeteners under the spotlight. Interestingly, our study also found
that artiicial sweeteners such as saccharin could produce effects
similar to those we obtained with table sugar, highlighting the importance of re-evaluating our relationship with sweetened food per se.
Bartlett said that varenicline acted as a neuronal nicotinic
receptor modulator (nAChR), and similar results were observed
with similar drugs such as mecamylamine and cytisine. Like other
drugs of abuse, withdrawal from chronic sucrose exposure can
result in an imbalance in dopamine levels and be as diicult as
going cold turkey from them, she said.
Further studies are required, but our results do suggest that
current FDA-approved nAChR drugs may represent a novel new
treatment strategy to tackle the obesity epidemic.

Evolution Goes Back to the Drawing Board

What if snakes or whales could regrow legs, or chickens develop
teeth, or humans re-evolve tails like our primate ancestors?
Reversible evolution is possible under certain conditions even after
many millions of years according to a study published in Evolution (http://tinyurl.com/zkdj5hy).
An international team of scientists found that some of the
largest kangaroos ever to evolve resurrected crests on their teeth that
were present in their distant ancestors more than 20 million years
earlier. They speculate that changes in climate, habitat and diet
provided the selection pressures that resurrected these dental
features. As forests retreated towards the coastline over millions of
years, kangaroos were forced to eat more grass, and their teeth
needed to cut rather than grind their food.
Biologists have often discounted the potential for evolution to
shift into reverse, dismissing such occurrences as cases of convergent evolution. However, co-author A/Prof Gavin Prideaux of

Flinders University argues that reanimating genetically mothballed features may be allowed by evolution when it aligns with
pressures that determine an animals ecology.
PhD candidate Aidan Couzens found that small changes to a
rule that determines how teeth form in the embryo have allowed
some kangaroos to partly turn back the clock on evolution. Using
these rules, we can start to predict the pathways evolution can take.
We found that, contrary to Dollos law in biology, features
lost in evolution can re-evolve when evolution tinkers with the
way features are assembled in the embryo, Couzens says.
Prideaux says that kangaroos and wallabies have been studied
as barometers of historical climatic change in Australia. They
have been around for at least 30 million years, he says. We are
discovering more about how early forms were adapted to the abundant soft-leaved forest plants, and how later macropods adapted
to more arid conditions.

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MAY 2016 |

|7

Human Sacrifices Maintained

Social Power Structures

Laser Light Cools

Quantum Liquid
Australian researchers have used laser light to cool
a special form of quantum liquid called a
superfluid. Lasers are widely used to cool gases
and solid objects, but they have never before been
appliedto cool a quantum liquid.
Superfluids are quantum liquids with a strange
property: once started, the flow of a superfluid
never stops. Thisunique property is a key feature
of many applications proposed for superfluids.
The applications of this research range from
improved sensors for navigational systems to the
development of quantum devices and fundamental
exploration of the quantum physics of turbulence,
or the turbulent motion of quantum fluids when
cooled to temperatures close to absolute zero, said
Dr Glen Harris of the ARC Centre of Excellence for
Engineered Quantum Systems.
In the experiments, which were published in
Nature Physics (http://tinyurl.com/z2j23mr), a
superfluid helium film was formed on a silicon chip.
A bright laser beam was then used to draw energy
out of waves on the surface of the superfluid,
cooling them.
In addition to laser cooling, the research
teamshowed that extremely precise measurements
of superfluid waves could be obtained by
combining a superfluid with microphotonic lasers.
The projects Chief Investigator, Prof Warwick
Bowen, said that this research provides a pathway
to replace inertial sensors used in navigation
systems. Previousexperiments have shown that
ultra-precise inertial sensing is possible using
superfluid helium, he said. However, these
experiments relied upon bulky architectures
somewhat akin to a plumbing system for water.
The ability to cool, measure and control
superfluid waves on a silicon chip brings a new
level of scalability and integrability to such
sensors.

A new study has reported that ritual human sacriice played a central role
in helping those at the top of the social hierarchy to maintain power over
those at the bottom. Religion has traditionally been seen as a key driver
of morality and cooperation, but our study inds religious rituals also had
a more sinister role in the evolution of modern societies, says lead author
Joseph Watts, a PhD candidate at the University of Aucklands School
of Psychology.
mf57h9), used
The study, published in Nature (http://tinyurl.com/zmf57h9)
d
g to analyse
computational methods derived from evolutionary biology
historical data from 93 Austronesian cultures, 40 of which practised some
g t
form of ritualistic human killing. Early Austronesian people are though
half the globe.
to have originated in Taiwan and eventually settled almost h
They spread west to Madagascar, east to Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and
south to the Paciic Islands and New Zealand.
Methods of ritual human sacriice in these cultures incluuded burning,
drowning, strangulation, bludgeoning, burial, being cut to pieces, crushed
beneath a newly-built canoe or being rolled off the roof off a house and
a es, wh
w ile
decapitated. Victims were typically of low social status, such aas slav
instigators were usually of high social status, such as priests and chiefs.
main groups of
The study divided the 93 different cultures into three m
high, moderate or low social stratiication. Cultures with thee highest level
of stratiication were most likely to practice human sacriice (67%, or 18
out of 27). Of cultures with moderate stratiication, 37% used human
l
sacriice (17 out of 46) while the most egalitarian societies were least likely
to practise human sacriice (25%, or ive out of 20).
By using human sacriice to punish taboo violations, demoralise the
underclass and instil fear of social elites, power elites were able to maintain
and build social control, Watts says.
Prof Russell Gray, a co-author of the study, notes that human sacriice provided a particularly effective means of social control because it
provided a supernatural justiication for punishment. Rulers, such as priests
and chiefs, were often believed to be descended from gods, and ritual
human sacriice was the ultimate demonstration of their power.
The teams use of computational evolutionary methods enabled the
team to reconstruct the sequence of changes in human sacriice and social
status over the course of Paciic history. This allowed them to test whether
sacriice preceded or followed changes in social status.
What we found was that sacriice was the driving force, making societies more likely to adopt high social status and less likely to revert to egalitarian social structure, said co-author A/Prof Quentin Atkinson.

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Credit: Huaca Pucllana Research, Conservation and Valourisation Project

Human remains discovered in the burial site at the Huaca Pucllana great adobe pyramid in Lima, Peru.

DNA Confirms European Wipe-out of Early Americans

The irst large-scale study of ancient DNA from early American
people has conirmed the devastating impact of European colonisation on the Indigenous American populations of the time.
Published in Science Advances (http://tinyurl.com/za9vzu9),
the study reveals a striking absence of pre-Columbian genetic lineages in modern Indigenous Americans, and thus points to the
extinction of these lineages with the arrival of the Spaniards.
The research team reconstructed maternal genetic lineages of
Indigenous American populations by sequencing mitochondrial
genomes extracted from bone and teeth samples taken from
92 pre-Columbian human mummies and skeletons aged between
500 and 8600 years old.
Surprisingly, none of the genetic lineages we found in almost
100 ancient humans were present, or showed evidence of descendants, in todays Indigenous populations, says joint lead author Dr
Bastien Llamas of the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA at The
University of Adelaide. This separation appears to have been
established as early as 9000 years ago and was completely unexpected, so we examined many demographic scenarios to try and
explain the pattern.
The only scenario that it our observations was that shortly
after the initial colonisation, populations were established that
subsequently stayed geographically isolated from one another, and

that a major portion of these populations later became extinct

following European contact. This closely matches the historical
reports of a major demographic collapse immediately after the
Spaniards arrived in the late 1400s.
The ancient genetic signals also provide a more precise timing
of the irst people entering the Americas via the Bering Land Bridge
that connected Asia and the north-western tip of North America
during the last Ice Age.
Our genetic reconstruction conirms that the irst Americans
entered around 16,000 years ago via the Paciic coast, skirting
around the massive ice sheets that blocked an inland corridor route
which only opened much later, says co-author Prof Alan Cooper.
They spread southward remarkably swiftly, reaching southern
Chile by 14,600 years ago.
Genetic diversity in these early people from Asia was limited
by the small founding populations which were isolated on the
Beringian land bridge for around 2400 to 9000 years, explains
joint lead author Dr Lars Fehren-Schmitz of the University of
California at Santa Cruz. It was at the peak of the last Ice Age, when
cold deserts and ice sheets blocked human movement, and limited
resources would have constrained population size. This long isolation of a small group of people brewed the unique genetic diversity observed in the early Americans.
MAY 2016 |

|9

Trap-jaw Spiders Strike like Lightning

Mecysmaucheniidae spiders, which live only
in New Zealand and southern South
America, are drab and tiny spiders that hunt
for prey on the ground. However, a study
published in Current Biology (http://
tinyurl.com/hyg9ulv)has found that these
spiders have a remarkable ability to strike
their prey with lightning speed.
Lead author Hannah Wood of the
Smithsonian Institutions National
Museum of Natural History says that the

Mecysmaucheniid family of spiders sit with

their jaw-like chelicerae open and ready to
snap when insect prey come close enough to
strike. The high-speed predatory attacks
of these spiders were previously unknown,
she says. Many of the species I have been
working with are also unknown to the scientiic community.
While this kind of predatory behaviour
had been seen before in some ants, Wood
says it was unknown in arachnids. Further-

more, Woods team estimated that this

high-speed, power-ampliied strike has
evolved at least four different times within
Mecysmaucheniids.
High-speed videos of 14 species revealed
a great range of cheliceral closing speeds.
The fastest species snaps its chelicerae more
than two orders of magnitude faster than
the slowest species.
In fact, the power output from four of
the spider species exceeded the known power
output of their muscles. Therefore, Wood
explains, the spiders movements cant be
directly powered by their tiny muscles, particularly given the short times and small
distances covered during a strike. This means
other structural mechanisms must allow the
spiders to store the energy required to
produce such powerful movements.
The researchers have already described
some anatomical differences in the powerampliied trap-jaw spiders, but Wood says
they arent quite sure how it works and are
now conducting further investigations to
ind out.
In addition to providing new insights
into spiders and their evolution, the new
indings may also have broader implications.
Studying these spiders could allow humans
to design robots that move in novel ways
that are based on how these spiders move,
Wood says.
Looking at the face of a trap-jaw spider.
The long chelicerae are in front and the
fangs are at the tip. Credit: Hannah Wood

Supernovae Showered Earth with Radioactive Debris

A series of massive supernova near our solar system showered the
Earth with radioactive debris, according to evidence derived from
radioactive iron-60 found in sediment and crust samples taken
from the Paciic, Atlantic and Indian oceans.
The iron-60 was concentrated in a period 1.73.2 million years
ago, which is relatively recent in astronomical terms, said research
leader Dr Anton Wallner of The Australian National University.
We were very surprised that there was debris clearly spread across
1.5 million years, Wallner said. It suggests there were a series of
supernovae, one after another. Its an interesting coincidence that
they correspond with when the Earth cooled and moved from the
Pliocene into the Pleistocene period.
The international research team also found evidence of iron-60
from an older supernova around 8 million years ago, coinciding
with global faunal changes in the late Miocene. The research has
been published in Nature (http://tinyurl.com/hwukuxs).
Supernovae eject heavy elements and radioactive isotopes into the
cosmos. One of these isotopes is iron-60, which decays with a half10 |

MAY 2016

life of 2.6 million years. Therefore any iron-60 dating from the Earths
formation more than 4.6 billion years ago has long since disappeared.
Wallner was intrigued by the irst hints of iron-60 in samples
from the Paciic Ocean loor a decade ago, so he assembled an
international team to search for interstellar dust from 120 oceanloor samples spanning the past 11 million years.
The irst step was to extract all the iron from the ocean cores and
then separate the tiny traces of interstellar iron-60 from the other
terrestrial isotopes using the Heavy-Ion Accelerator at the ANU.
The team found that it occurred all over the globe.
The age of the cores was determined from the decay of beryllium-10 and aluminium-26 radioactive isotopes. The dating showed
that the fallout had only occurred in two time periods, 1.73.2
million years ago and 8 million years ago.
A possible source of the supernovae is an ageing star cluster
that has since moved away from Earth. The cluster has no large
stars left, suggesting they have already exploded as supernovae and
thrown out waves of debris.

Burial Ground Discovery

Deepens Laos Jar Mystery

OReilly explained that it was diicult to determine the status

of the buried individuals due to a lack of material objects buried
with them. Genetic analysis might shed some light on whom these
people were related to.
The Laos government is pushing for the Plain of Jars to be listed
as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Archaeologists from The Australian National University have

unearthed a 2500-year-old burial ground at one of Asias most
mysterious sites the Plain of Jars in Laos.
The project in central Laos is the irst major
archaeological dig since the 1930s at any of the
Excavations at the Plain of Jars (inset) unearthed
90 sites that make up the Plain of Jars. The sites
for the first time at one of these sites a primary
feature ancient carved stone jars up to 3 metres
burial, where a body was placed in a grave.
tall, but their purpose remains a mystery.
This will be the irst major effort since the
1930s to attempt to understand the purpose of
the jars and who created them, said project
leader Dr Dougald OReilly. One theory is that
they were used to decompose the bodies. Later,
after the lesh was removed, the remains may
have been buried around the jars.
What is now clear is that these are mortuaries and were used for the disposal of the dead.
The jars can number between one and 400 at
each site, ranging in size from 1 metre to 2 metres
tall.
OReilly said the dig had revealed three
distinct types of burial. There are pits full of
bones with a large limestone block placed over
them, and other burials where bones have been
placed in ceramic vessels, he said. Our excavations have also revealed, for the irst time at one
of these sites, a primary burial where a body was
placed in a grave.

Nanochip Captures the Power of Twisted Light

An Australian research team has designed a nanophotonic chip that
can achieve unparalleled levels of control over the angular
momentum of light. The work, published in Science (http://
tinyurl.com/hqzoqb3), opens new opportunities to use angular
momentum for the generation, transmission, processing and
recording of information, and could also be used to help scientists
better understand the evolution and nature of black holes.
While travelling approximately in a straight line, a beam of light
also spins and twists around its optical axis. The angular momentum
of light measures the amount of this dynamic rotation, and could be
harnessed to improve the capacity of optical fibres by creating
parallel light channels an approach known as multiplexing.
However, the creation of angular momentum multiplexing on a
chip has remained a major challenge as there is no material in
nature capable of sensing twisted light.
By designing a series of elaborate nano-apertures and
nanogrooves on the photonic chip, our team has enabled the on-chip
manipulation of twisted light for the first time, said Prof Min Gu of
RMIT University. The design removes the need for any other bulky
interference-based optics to detect the angular momentum signals.
Our discovery could open up truly compact on-chip angular
momentum applications such as ultra-high definition displays, ultra-

high capacity optical communications and ultra-secure optical

encryption. It could also be extended to characterise the angular
momentum properties of gravitational waves to help us gain more
information on how black holes interact with each other in the
universe.
The team devised nanogrooves to couple angular momentumcarrying beams into different plasmonic angular momentum fields,
with the nano-apertures subsequently sorting and transmitting the
different plasmonic angular momentum signals. Our specially
designed nanophotonic chip can precisely guide angular momentum
data signals so they are transmitted from different mode-sorting
nano-ring slits without losing any information, said Haoran Ren, a
PhD candidate at Swinburne University of Technology.
Gu added that the research offers a precise method of studying
black holes as it enabled full control over twisted light, including
both spin angular momentum and orbital angular (Oangular)
momentum. Due to the fact that rotating black holes can impart
Oangular momentum associated with gravitational waves, an
unambiguous measuring of the Oangular momentum through the sky
could lead to a more profound understanding of the evolution and
nature of black holes in the universe, he said.
MAY 2016 |

| 11

Where Have the Largest

Whale Sharks Gone?
Marine biologists have raised concerns about the whereabouts
of the worlds biggest whale sharks after inding that the largest
sharks observed in recent years were smaller than those recorded
more than a decade ago.
Dr Ana Sequeira of The University of Western Australias
Oceans Institute, who led the study, said it was important to
know the size of whale sharks because it provided information
about their population status. However, its diicult to obtain
accurate size estimates as this needs to be done while they are
freely swimming.

A common technique is to compare the sharks with

an object of known size while swimming alongside
them. However, these estimates are often inaccurate,
Sequeira said. We found the margin for error increased
as the actual size of the target increased, which meant
that big sharks of around 1011 metres were mistakenly thought to be up to about 3 metres smaller.
The new study, published in Royal Society Open
Science (http://tinyurl.com/jle7hpm), compared visual
estimates of whale shark sizes with those obtained using
an underwater stereo-video system. This found that the
largest sharks observed at Ningaloo Reef in recent years
were smaller than those recorded at the same location
more than a decade ago. The majority of whale sharks
seen at Ningaloo were juveniles with mean lengths of
around 6 metres which, given the fact that the ish reach
maturity when they are about 9 metres long, prompts
the question: where are the adults?
Study co-author Dr Mark Meekan of the Australian Institute
of Marine Science said that, apart from groups of large females
reported at two locations in the eastern Paciic Ocean, there was
a lack of adult whale shark sightings around the world. Co-occurrence of adult males and females ensures the survival of a species,
so not knowing the whereabouts of adult whale sharks and how
many still exist presents a challenge for understanding their conservation status, he said.
Meekan said that more research is needed to help locate large
whale sharks and to clarify the number of mature animals still in
existence. Understanding the whereabouts of the biggest whale
sharks will also help us understand how human activity such as
industrial developments, isheries and boat strike might impact
the animals, he said.

Gravitational Waves Can Be

Found Closer to Home
While gravitational waves were detected a billion light years away
earlier this year, they may soon be identiied throughout the
observable universe.
Prof David Blair of the Australian International Gravitational
Research Centre at The University of Western Australia said that
cat-lap pendulums less than 1 mm in size could be retroitted
to existing gravitational wave detectors, enabling physicists to
record hundreds of gravity wave events every day.
Currently the detectors can only detect huge tsunami-like
waves, but with the new technology we would be able to extend
that range about seven times, Blair said. One of our PhD students,
Jiayi Qin, has tested the concept as part of her thesis with very
good results, and we will now look to test the technology further.
Blair is part of an international team that has spent the past
7 years putting together detector equipment that uses powerful
lasers to measure vibrations of mirrors suspended 4 km apart at
the ends of huge vacuum pipes.
The gravitational waves announced earlier this year were produced
during the inal fraction of a second of the merger of two black holes
to produce a single, more massive spinning black hole. This collision
12 |

MAY 2016

Jiayi Qin and Prof David Blair test the new technology.

of two black holes had been predicted but never observed.

However, the detectors have industrial applications too. Gravitational wave technology is already being applied to mineral exploration, time standards, quantum computing, precision sensors,
ultra-sensitive radars and pollution monitors, Blair explained.

New Gecko Species

A new species of fat-tailed gecko has been discovered by
scientists in outback Queensland.
Diplodactylus ameyi is a specialised termite predator
found in outback Queensland and northern NSW. Itis
up to 8.5 cm in length and has a distinctive, broadly
rounded snout.
The gecko is tan to medium-dark brown with pale
spots, and is well camoulaged in the dry arid environments it inhabits. Like many other terrestrial geckos, it shelters during the day in disused spider burrows.
Queensland Museum herpetologist Patrick Couper
and his colleague, Paul Oliver from the Australian National
University, named the species in honour of fellow herpetologist Dr Andrew Amey, who manages Queensland
Museums reptile and amphibian collections.
The gecko is formally described in Zootaxa
(http://tinyurl.com/h5tmf5x).

Models Predict Location

of New Megafauna Fossils
An international team of scientists has used the estimated ages and
spatial distribution of Australian megafauna fossils to develop mathematical models that predict the most likely locations of undiscovered fossil
deposits. Published in PLOS ONE (http://tinyurl.com/jkxh3jf), the
models were developed for Australia but can be adapted for fossilhunters in other continents.
A chain of ideal conditions must occur for fossils to form, which
means they are extremely rare, so inding as many as possible can tell us
more of what the past was like, and why certain species went extinct,
says Prof Corey Bradshaw of The University of Adelaide.
Typically, however, we use haphazard ways to ind fossils. Mostly
people just go to excavation sites and surrounding areas where fossils have
been found before. We hope our models will make it easier for palaeontologists and archaeologists to identify new fossil sites that could yield
vast treasures of prehistoric information.
The team modelled the past distribution of species, the geological suitability of fossil preservation and the likelihood of fossil discovery in the
ield. They applied this information to a range of Australian megafauna
that became extinct over the last 50,000 years, such as the giant terror
bird Genyornis, the rhino-sized wombat Diprotodon and the marsupial lion Thylacoleo.
To produce the species distribution models of these long-extinct
animals, the researchers used hindcasted global circulation models to
predict temperature and rainfall during the deep past, and matched this
with the estimated ages of the fossils.
What we did was build a probability map for each of these layers
the species distribution, the right sort of geological conditions for fossil
formation (for example, sedimentary rocks, or caves and lakes), and the
ease of discovery (for example, open areas rather than dense forest),
Bradshaw says. We combined each of these for an overall suitability for
fossil discovery map.
The model identiied areas south of Lake Eyre and west of Lake
Torrens in South Australia, a large area around Shark Bay in Western
Australia and other areas in the south-west of Australia as places with
a high potential to yield new megafauna fossils.

One Jab for Flu Vaccine

Researchers are a step closer to creating a universal oneshot influenza vaccine following the discovery that T cells
can recognise and attack emerging mutant strains of the
virus.
An international research collaboration led by A/Prof
Katherine Kedzierska from the Peter Doherty Institute for
Infection and Immunity and Dr Stephanie Gras from
Monash University used cutting-edge technology to capture
the response of individual T cells to the various strains.
The study, published in Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences (http://tinyurl.com/h77ejfe),
determined how the T cells reacted to new mutant strains of
influenza as well as viruses to which they had previously
been exposed.
The team used the Australian Synchrotron to scrutinise
the structure of the cells and identify how they recognise
the mutant strains. They found that their flexibility and
ability to adapt enabled the T cells to bully the new strains
into submission.
Kedzierska said that finding this piece of the puzzle was
a major step forward on the path to creating a one-shot T
cell-mediated influenza vaccine that provided life-long
immunity against the virus. Previous research has shown us
that T cells provide universal protective immunity to
influenza, but we didnt know why or how until now This
study enabled us to dissect the immune response to
understand how this immunity occurs.
However, further research is necessary before a
universal vaccine can be created. Our past research has
shown that only a seventh of the worlds population have the
tissue make-up that provides universal immunity to
influenza the difference between a runny nose and being
bed-ridden, Kedzierska said. Now we know what to look for,
our challenge is to find these receptors in those with a
different tissue composition and elicit a similar response.
MAY 2016 |

| 13

A Diet that Calms the

Schizophrenic Mind
ZOLTN SARNYAI
The ketogenic diet favoured by bodybuilders also normalises schizophrenia-like behaviours.
chizophrenia has long been treated, with limited
success, with drugs that block the brain neurotransmitter dopamine. Pharmaceutical companies
have spent billions of dollars developing yet another
drug with a slightly different mechanism of action to
also block dopamine transmission.
Is it possible that a dietary intervention can help people
suffering from this devastating mental illness, or is this idea no
better than the fad diets promoted in the pages of celebrity
gossip magazines?
Our research found that the ketogenic diet, which is very
high in fat and extremely low in carbohydrates, effectively
normalised a wide range of schizophrenia-like behaviours in a
well-established mouse model of the disorder.
What does this diet do that makes the symptoms disappear?
Is this approach safely translatable to humans?
I think it is translatable, and there is some fascinating new
science behind it as well.

Beyond Dopamine
I was in the middle of my psychiatry rotation in the last year of
medical school when my brother told me of the strange, highly
disturbing behaviour of his classmate. He locks himself in his
room, closes the curtains and the shutters on the window. He
does not talk to his mother and has not been taking much food

Ketogenic Diet Warning!

The typical ketogenic diet (also called the long-chain
triglyceride diet) is a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet that has
been in use since 1921.
The diet provides 34 grams of fat for every 1 gram of
carbohydrate and protein. It is provided by a medical
practitioner working together with a registered dietitian, and
should NOT be done without medical supervision.
The diet itself is challenging, especially at the beginning. It
requires strict compliance, precise food measurements, a
hospital stay for observation and plenty of patience.

14 |

MAY 2016

for a week in the fear of being poisoned. When he does talk he

is talking nonsense about some voices he is hearing.
The very next morning, an 18-year-old man was taken to
our psychiatry ward. He was very agitated and needed to be
physically restrained by police. He attacked his mother because
he thought she wanted to kill him.
He was my brothers classmate. He was diagnosed with an
acute psychotic episode, promptly received an antipsychotic
injection and admitted to the ward.
I soon moved on to another rotation and a year later accidentally bumped into the psychiatrist who had admitted the
young man. I asked him about his young patient.
He died, unfortunately... committed suicide, the psychiatrist answered.
But he was looked after properly, received his antipsychotic
medication and should have not ended up like this, I protested
in my youthful enthusiasm.
Perhaps now, one-quarter of a century later, we are in a much
better position to help people who are suffering from this devastating mental illness.
For many years, schizophrenia research and drug development was driven by the idea that there seems to be an increased
activity of dopamine in the brain. A lot of evidence pointed in
that direction. For example, drugs used in the treatment of
schizophrenia all blocked the receptor protein for dopamine,
and drugs that stimulated brain dopamine tend to induce
psychosis.
Animal models with hyperactive dopamine neurotransmission churned out drugs that all resembled the original
antipsychotics used in the validation of these animal models
in the irst place. A bit of a Catch 22, isnt it?
Then, in the dawn of the genomic age at the turn of the
millennium, human genetics research started to uncover a
number of other possible disease mechanisms. Researchers
started to discover schizophrenia susceptibility genes that play
a role in brain development and in the formation of the synapse
that connects one nerve cell to the next. They also identiied that

Terence Mendoza/adobe

environmental events associated with schizophrenia, such as

maternal virus infection and malnutrition as well as exposure
to stress and early adversity, inluence the expression of these
genes, resulting in abnormal brain development and pathological behaviour in experimental animals.
Schizophrenia has therefore been reconceptualised as a
disease of abnormal neural development caused by the interaction of many genes and adverse early events.

Insulin Resistance
About 10 years ago researchers at The University of Cambridge
discovered abnormal expression of genes responsible for the
proper breakdown and utilisation of glucose in the prefrontal
cortex of patients with schizophrenia. This brain region is
involved in higher cognitive functions that are abnormal in
schizophrenia, such as attention, planning and executive control

of other brain areas. Other groups conirmed that these enzyme

proteins are abnormally low in this brain region. They also
identiied changes in the structure and function of the mitochondria, the power stations that fuel all of the processes
required for proper communication between nerve cells. These
discoveries have given rise to the hypothesis that abnormal
glucose and energy metabolism may contribute to the development of schizophrenia.
This wasnt surprising. Maudsley, the famous 19th century
British psychiatrist, had already observed that patients suffering
from insanity, as well as their irst-degree relatives, showed a
disproportionately higher rate of diabetes mellitus. This was
the irst hint that glucose and energy metabolism might be
abnormal in schizophrenia.
Before the discovery of modern antipsychotic agents, psychiatrists at the beginning of the 20th century employed insulin
MAY 2016 |

| 15

Flour and high-starch content

products:

coma therapy to drive down circulating

glucose in the hope that this would improve
the symptoms of patients with a variety of
mental illnesses. They found that patients
with schizophrenia required much more
insulin to achieve the same effect. This
supports the notion that some sort of
insulin resistance is involved in schizophrenia.
One hundred years later, researchers
using modern analytical tools and diagnostic criteria have reported that unmedicated patients experiencing their irst
episode of schizophrenia showed resistance
to the effects of insulin. This also suggests
that there might be a problem with glucose
metabolism in and beyond the brain.
This all makes a lot of sense. The brain
is an extremely energy-hungry organ that
uses a disproportionately high amount of
glucose compared with other parts of the
body, such as the heart and the muscles.
Glucose in the brain is converted into
chemical energy in the form of adenosinetriphosphate (ATP) molecules in order to:
maintain communication between nerve
cells;
synthesise the main excitatory neurotransmitter, glutamate;
synthesise the main inhibitory neurotransmitter, gamma-amino-butyric acid
(GABA); and
synthesise molecules that deal with toxic
free radicals produced by normal
neuronal activity.
If the utilisation and processing of
glucose is abnormal, neurons cannot function properly, will not communicate eiciently and their connections may get
damaged due to high levels of toxic free
radicals. If these changes occur in brain
areas that underlie key cognitive functions
such as the prefrontal cortex, the symptoms of schizophrenia may emerge. These
include hallucinations, delusions, impaired
attentional and other cognitive functions.

bread and related products

pasta

potato, fries, chips

rice

Here Comes the Diet

If schizophrenia is driven, at least partly,
by abnormal glucose metabolism, we

A Ketogenic Diet
DO
Dairy:
butter
mayonnaise
heavy whipping cream
cheese
eggs

Oils:

olive oil
canola oil

Meat:
bacon
chicken
ground beef
tuna
frankfurts
sausages, salami

Fruit & Veg:

green vegetables
lettuce
spring onions
mushrooms
celeriac
strawberries
blueberries
avocado
macadamia nuts
almonds

Artificial sweeteners

DONT
Sugar and high-sugar content
products:
malt sugar

corn syrup

chocolate, lollies, etc.

ice cream, etc.

tropical fruits

grape and grape juice

fruit extracts and juices

carrot

16 |

MAY 2016

The ketogenic diet is preferred by

bodybuilders who need a high energy
intake that doesnt promote the
conversion of fat from excess
carbohydrates. Credit: tankist276/adobe

hypothesised that we might be able to

normalise the disease process if we provide
energy sources in a way that circumvents
glucose metabolism. If this energy supply is
adequate, nerve cells would be able to
communicate properly through the synapse
and remove harmful free radicals more eiciently.
One such roundabout way of feeding
nerve cells with molecules that can be used
for the production of energy and the key
neurotransmitters glutamate and GABA
is the use of fatty acids instead of glucose.
In the absence of glucose and other carbo-

istered a drug that has been known to induce psychosis in

humans and schizophrenia-like behaviours in mice.
Mice on the normal diet promptly exhibited a variety of
schizophrenia-like behaviours, such as hyperactivity, excessive
stereotyped behaviours, abnormal social interactions as well as
impaired working memory. The latter indicates that prefrontal
cortical functions are compromised.
Mice on the ketogenic diet, however, showed none of these
symptoms. They were lean, weighed less than mice on a normal
diet and had lower circulating blood glucose levels.
These results suggested that the ketogenic diet might be a
useful approach to manage schizophrenia, not only because it
normalised schizophrenia-like behaviours but also because of
its beneicial metabolic effects.
Antipsychotic drugs used in the treatment of schizophrenia
produce weight gain, elevated blood glucose, insulin resistance
and ultimately metabolic syndrome. These can contribute to the
patients early death due to cardiovascular disorders.
The ketogenic diet seems to counteract these deleterious
metabolic effects.

hydrates, fatty acids are broken down to beta-hydroxybutyrate

(BHB) and acetone in the liver.
BHB travels easily to the brain, where its taken up by nerve
cells. Here BHB is further broken down to molecules that can
enter into the energy production pathways downstream of the
point where energy metabolism breaks down in schizophrenia.
This metabolic pathway is a normal physiological process
that takes places during starvation, when the body accesses its
fat deposits to produce energy. In fact, it is likely that this could
have been a dominant metabolic process during most of human
evolution, when food was always scarce and carbohydrates
played a very small role as energy substrates.
My student, Ann Katrin Kraeuter, tested our hypothesis by
putting mice on a ketogenic diet for 3 weeks. She then admin-

Are These Findings Translatable to People?

We know that the ketogenic diet can be safely given to humans.
In fact, it has been used for the management of drug-resistant
epilepsy in children for a long time. The ketogenic diet has also
been used as a weight loss diet, and seems to be preferred by
bodybuilders who need a high energy intake that doesnt
promote the conversion of fat from excess carbohydrates.
Long-term feeding trials of the ketogenic diet in mice showed
no deleterious consequences when used for up to a year, which
is about half of the life span of a mouse. This is encouraging, but
we need to demonstrate the eicacy of the ketogenic diet in
other animal models of schizophrenia before we can move to
clinical trials.
One might argue that the ketogenic diet is not easy to follow
and can be especially challenging for patients who are suffering
from schizophrenia. This prompts us to seek alternative ways to
deliver the diet, perhaps in the form of a supplement that mimics
its effects. This requires a better understanding of what is
happening in the body and brain of someone on a ketogenic diet.
Using dietary means to manage schizophrenia is not unheard
of. Recent pioneering work at The University of Melbourne has
shown that omega-3 fatty acids in ish oils decrease the development of psychosis in individuals who have a high genetic
risk of developing schizophrenia.
Perhaps we are entering into the era of nutritional psychiatry.
Zoltn Sarnyai is Associate Professor and Head of the Laboratory of Psychiatric
Neuroscience at the Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine, James Cook
University.

MAY 2016 |

| 17

How Reliable Is
an Eyewitness?
JOHN DUNN
Eyewitness identification of criminals is notoriously
unreliable, but a new study based on police records
has identified factors that can determine which
witnesses are accurate and which are guessing.
yewitness misidentiication is the single greatest
cause of wrongful convictions in the United States,
having played a role in more than 70% of original
convictions later overturned by new DNA evidence
(www.innocenceproject.org).
This is consistent with a great deal of psychological research
using simulated crimes and lineups. This research shows that
our memories can be surprisingly fallible we forget important details of events, even whole events themselves, and we
remember things that have never happened. Whats worse, we
can make these mistakes even when we seem very conident
that our memories are correct.
Findings like these have cast doubt on the reliability of
eyewitnesses. Even when witnesses appear to remember something, or someone, strongly and with high conidence, they can
still be wrong.
Our research challenges this widespread view. Rather than
relying on laboratory studies, we were interested in the reliability
of eyewitnesses in actual police lineups and tested two important conclusions drawn from laboratory research: that conidence is not a good guide to accuracy, and that sequential lineups
are better than simultaneous lineups.
In a simultaneous lineup, the eyewitness is given all the
photos, usually laid out in a grid, and asked to identify the
person they remember committing the crime. In a sequential
lineup, each photo is presented one-by-one and the eyewitness
is asked to identify whether or not each photo is the culprit.
There is laboratory evidence that accuracy can be greater in
a sequential lineup than in a simultaneous lineup. This is
surprising, because more information is available to the witness
in a simultaneous lineup. While this could aid their decisionmaking, it may instead make the decision more confusing.
The data for our study was collected by a member of our
team, William Wells, in collaboration with the Robbery Divi18 |

MAY 2016

aurem

ar/ad

obe

sion of the Houston Police Department, where 45 police oicers had presented photo lineups to more than 700 eyewitnesses
over a 12-month period. Each lineup included a photo of a
suspect that had been identiied by the police as possibly responsible for the crime, as well as photos of ive innocent illers.
Half the lineups were presented simultaneously and the other
half were presented sequentially.
The lineups were conducted fairly the administering oicer
was unaware which photo was of the suspect. Eyewitnesses who
identiied a photo as the culprit were asked to rate their conidence on a three-point scale: low, medium or high conidence.
Our irst question was whether conidence was a reliable
indicator of accuracy. Unlike laboratory studies, we didnt
know if the suspect in the photo lineup was innocent or guilty
so we werent able to measure accuracy directly. We therefore
approached this problem in two different ways.
First, because the suspect could be the culprit but none of the
innocent illers could be, high accuracy would be relected in a
high level of suspect identiication coupled with a low level of

iller identiication. This is exactly what we found.

At the lowest level of conidence, most identiications were of
illers as we would expect if witnesses were simply guessing.
However, identiications at the medium level of conidence were
evenly divided between suspect and illers. At the highest level of
conidence more than 80% of identiications were of suspects.
This shows that while eyewitnesses do make mistakes, and
falsely identify innocent people, they usually have little conidence in such decisions. On the other hand, when their conidence is high they make many fewer mistakes.
We also found that the number of identiications of suspects
with corroborating evidence increased systematically from low
to high conidence, reaching more than 90% in the latter category. This result further supports the idea that when eyewitnesses
have high conidence they have a high probability of identifying the culprit.
Although our indings provide strong indirect evidence that
eyewitness accuracy is related to conidence, we were unable
to measure accuracy directly because we didnt know the propor-

tion of lineups in which the suspect was guilty of the crime.

However, the mathematics of choosing from a lineup can
provide useful insights.
If the suspect is not the culprit and the witness identiies a
photo, there is a one-in-six chance that the identiied individual
will be the suspect. On the other hand, if the suspect is the
culprit and the witness identiies a photo, the probability that
they choose the suspect is a measure of their accuracy. If accuracy is zero (the witness is guessing) then this probability will
be one-in-six. On the other hand, if accuracy is 100% then they
will always identify the suspect.
However, to measure this probability we have to know the
number of lineups conducted at the Robbery Division of the
Houston Police Department in which the police suspect was
indeed the culprit. To solve this problem we turned to a mathematical model of memory used by other members of our team
(John Wixted, Laura Mickes, John Dunn and Steven Clark) to
understand the relationship between conidence and accuracy.
According to the model, the different levels of low, medium
and high conidence simply relect whether memory strength
exceeds a low, medium or high criterion. This is analogous to
the bar of a high jump: strong, medium and weak jumpers can
all get over a low bar, but only strong and medium jumpers can
get over a medium bar, and only strong jumpers can get over the
high bar. Similarly, weak memories that are likely to be inaccurate
may be still be strong enough to exceed a low criterion, but
only strong memories that are likely to be accurate can exceed
the high criterion.
As well as helping us to understand our results, a remarkable feature of the model is that we could use it to estimate the
proportion of lineups in which the suspect was also the culprit.
However, before we applied it to our data, we irst tested the
model against a large-scale simulation conducted by a different
group of researchers in Australia.
Because it was a simulation, the researchers arranged the
test so that the suspect was the culprit in half of the lineups. We
used the results from this study to construct eyewitness identiication rates for lineups in which the culprit was present or
absent. When we applied the model to these different combinations it determined the proportion of culprit-present lineups
with a very high level of accuracy.
Armed with this knowledge, we then applied the model to
our real-world data and estimated the proportion of culpritpresent lineups. Unlike almost all laboratory-based studies,
where usually 50% of lineups are culprit-present, our results
suggested that only 35% of lineups at the Robbery Division of
the Houston Police Department contained the culprit. In many
ways this is not surprising, as it is likely that the police would
want to know if a person responsible for one crime was also
responsible for similar crimes.
MAY 2016 |

| 19

conducted in the real-world rather for simulated crimes in laboratory settings. Second, in contrast to the conclusions reached
from many laboratory-based simulations, we found that eyewitness identiications are highly accurate when they have high
conidence in their identiication.
Furthermore, and again in contrast to the conclusions reached
from many laboratory-based simulations, we found that a simultaneous lineup led to higher levels of memory strength than a
sequential lineup.
How do our results square with the
Innocence Project, which found that
a high number of false convictions
were based on unreliable eyewitness
identiications? The answer to this
question lies in where and when conidence is measured.
Our results support the view that
conidence expressed at the time of
identiication from a fair lineup is a
reliable index of accuracy. However,
conidence can increase over time as
more information is learned by the
witness, reducing its usefulness as an
index of accuracy.
This effect has been known for a
long time. In a well-known psychological study conducted in the 1950s,
people were asked to judge whether
two straight lines were continuous or slightly disjointed. Most
people were not initially conident in their original decision, but
when surrounded by other people who all appeared very conident in one decision or the other (because they were coached
by the experimenter to say this), most people increased their
stated conidence in that decision even when the evidence of
their own eyes stayed exactly the same.
The story for lineups is much the same only initial conidence counts.
Rich LeggiStockphoto

More importantly, we replicated our earlier analyses

suggesting that accuracy increased with conidence. In particular, we found that identiication of the culprit when present
in the lineup was close to 100% at the highest level of witness
conidence. In other words, when viewing lineups at the Robbery
Division of the Houston Police Department, if an eyewitness
identiied the suspect with high conidence, that person was
almost always the culprit.

This result does not completely depend on our 35% base

rate estimate. We also estimated accuracy based on different
estimates of the proportion of culprit-present lineups (2575%).
Identiication accuracy was unaffected and remained close to
100% when witnesses were highly conident.
Finally, we used the mathematical model to compare memory
strength between simultaneous and sequential lineups. Unlike
many laboratory studies, we found that memory strength was
always greater for simultaneous lineups than for sequential lineups.
The results of our study are important for two reasons. First,
we were able to investigate eyewitness reliability for crimes

John Dunn is Professor of Psychology at The University of Adelaide, and Chair of the
Australian Psychology Accreditation Council.

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MAY 2016

MartesiaBezuidenhout/adobe

The Stomach as a
Target for Obesity
AMANDA PAGE
Obesity permanently changes the way our body processes gastrointestinal signals about
satiety. While appetite suppressants have had limited success, the identification of an
appetite-regulating nerve channel offers a new approach to keeping weight off.
ustralia is now ranked as one of the fattest
nations in the world, with 14 million Australians
currently overweight or obese. By 2025 it is
predicted that about 80% of Australians will
be overweight or obese (tinyurl.com/z8apzug).
Due to the increasing prevalence of diseases associated with
obesity, it is now the biggest threat to public health in Australia.
It has overtaken smoking as the leading cause of illness and
premature death. To put this into perspective, the World
Health Organisation estimates that overweight and obesity are
responsible for about 45% of diabetes, 23% of heart disease
and 741% of certain types of cancer globally.
One of the major problems is that obesity is very resistant to
behavioural interventions such as diet and exercise. Of the individuals who manage to lose weight, only about 5% maintain
that weight loss and this only with a high degree of self-monitoring.
People who become obese no longer regulate their appetite
or metabolism in the same way as an individual who has never
been obese. While drug therapies have targeted the central

nervous system to control appetite, they have had limited effect

or unacceptable side-effects.
Currently the most effective treatment for obesity is bariatric
surgery. However, surgery is not a practical solution for the
increasing number of obese people due to the high costs and associated mortality rates. Bariatric surgery is reserved for severely
obese individuals with a body mass index (BMI) greater than
40, or individuals with a BMI greater than 35 but with obesityrelated comorbidities where drug therapies or lifestyle changes,
such as diet and exercise, have been unsuccessful.
If we can develop safe and relatively inexpensive medications that mimic the effect of bariatric surgery then perhaps
we can prevent the onset of severe obesity and the co-morbidities associated with it. With this in mind there is renewed
interest in the role of the gastrointestinal tract in appetite regulation, energy intake and blood glucose control.
The stomach and small intestine play complementary but
distinct roles in appetite regulation. In the stomach wall there
are vagal afferent nerves that detect stretching as food enters and
gradually ills the stomach. The activated nerves signal to the
MAY 2016 |

| 21

brain where stretching is occurring, leading to changes in

gastrointestinal motility, movement of food through the
gastrointestinal tract and also feelings of fullness and satiety.
In the wall of the small intestine there are specialised
enteroendocrine cells that detect speciic nutrients. In response
they release peptides or hormones that affect appetite and play
a role in the control of blood glucose. Released hormones can
either enter the circulation or act directly on vagal afferent
nerves in the small intestine.
Enteroendocrine cells are also present in the stomach, but the
hormones released modulate the response to mechanical stretch
rather than having a direct effect on the nerves. For example,
ghrelin is an appetite-stimulating hormone produced by the
stomach. Ghrelin reduces the response of stretch-sensitive nerves
in the stomach, and thus reduces the satiety signals generated in
the stomach.
Vagal afferent nerves represent a highly plastic connection
between the gastrointestinal tract and the central nervous
system, responding to both nutrients and appetite-regulating
hormones. This plasticity is essential to ensure appropriate
functionality in the everyday control of food intake.
However, this system is extremely susceptible to disruption
by a high-fat diet and obesity. Our laboratory studies of obesity
in mice have shown that the responses of these nerves to
stretching of the stomach is signiicantly dampened in obesity
induced by a high-fat diet. As a result, the stomach needs to be
much more full to give the same feelings of satiety.
This is a common feature along the gastrointestinal tract.
The response of small intestinal nerves to certain gastroin-

testinal hormones is also reduced in high fat diet-induced

obesity.
Reducing or delaying the satiety signal generated in the
gastrointestinal tract will delay the cessation of eating, thus
perpetuating the obese state. If we can understand the mechanisms behind these changes then perhaps we can target a
therapy to prevent the onset of obesity and the complications
associated with this disease.
The transient receptor potential vanilloid channel (TRPV1)
is best known as a mediator of noxious or painful stimuli. Activation of TRPV1 in pain-sensing nerves leads to painful burning
sensations. For example, activation of TRPV1 channels by
capsaicin, a component of hot chilli peppers, is responsible for
the hot burning sensation experienced when eating hot chillies.
However, TRPV1 also has physiological roles that arent
associated with pain, including a possible role in the regulation
of metabolism. Its been suggested that targeted activation of
TRPV1 channels might provide a pharmacological therapy for
the treatment of obesity.
TRPV1 channels are expressed in the vagal afferent nerves
innervating the gastrointestinal tract. In mice that have been
genetically modiied so they have no TRPV1 channels, the
response of nerves to stretching of the stomach is signiicantly
reduced, indicating that TRPV1 channels play a role in satiety
signalling from the gut.
There is also an increase in daily food intake in these mice.
While this may be due to reduced satiety signalling from the
stomach, at present there is no direct evidence for this.
If these mice are then fed a high-fat diet there is no further

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MAY 2016

reduction in the response to stretch. This

suggests that the dampened satiety signalling
in cases of obesity induced by a high-fat diet is
due to disrupted TRPV1-mediated responses
within nerves innervating the stomach.
If we can restore or improve the function of TRPV1 channels in these nerves
then perhaps we can enhance the feelings
of fullness and terminate food intake sooner.
This is particularly relevant because an individuals metabolic response after weight loss
does not return to its pre-obesity state.
If mice are placed back on a normal diet for
an equivalent amount of time that they were
on the high-fat diet then the response to stretch
is not returned to normal; the dampened
response of nerves innervating the stomach to
stretch remains. Therefore its possible that the
disruption in function of TRPV1 channels is
maintained even after weight loss.
This may be one of the reasons it is so diicult to maintain weight loss. If we can restore
or improve the function of TRPV1 channels
it will have implications not only on weight loss
but also weight maintenance.
In addition to the dampened response
to mechanical stretch there are also
changes in the effect of gastric hormones
on nerves innervating the stomach. As
mentioned before, the gastric hormone ghrelin
reduces the response of gastric nerves to stretch. This
reduction is enhanced in high-fat diet-induced obesity,
further reducing the satiety signal from the stomach.
Perhaps more signiicant is the change in effect of the satiety
hormone leptin, which is secreted by fat cells. Leptin circulates
to the brain, where it controls the long-term regulation of food
intake.
Leptin is also found in the stomach, where it modulates the
activity of nerves in response to mechanical stimulation. Interestingly, the effect of leptin on gastric nerves switches from
appetite suppression in lean conditions to appetite stimulation
in high-fat diet-induced obesity.
The mechanism behind this switch in effect is unknown
and currently under investigation. An understanding of this
switch could have huge implications for the pharmacological
treatment of obesity.
In summary, vagal nerves relay information about food intake
from the gastrointestinal tract to the central nervous system,
where it is processed and initiates feedback on the control of food
intake. It is a highly plastic system that adapts to changes in

Nerves that respond to stretching of the stomach, and therefore

trigger feelings of satiety, are significantly dampened in cases of
obesity induced by a high-fat diet. Credit: freshidea/adobe

energy levels and appropriately signals the requirements for

food intake.
However, this system is susceptible to disruption by conditions such as high-fat diet-induced obesity. Understanding the
mechanisms behind these disruptions in function will reveal
ways to overcome the changes observed in high-fat diet-induced
obesity and establish new peripheral targets for the pharmacotherapy of obesity.
Amanda Page is a Senior Research Fellow at The University of Adelaides Centre for
Nutrition and Gastrointestinal Disease.

MAY 2016 |

| 23

Olympic gold medallist Usain Bolt is regarded

as the fastest man alive. He is the first man to
hold both the 100 and 200 metre world
records, as well as the 4 x 100 metre relay.

Wikimedia Commons

A Gene for Speed

PETER HOUWELING & KATHRYN NORTH
A gene that may have enabled ancient humans to spread to colder climates may also be the
difference between power athletes and the rest of us, and play a role in muscle diseases.
he health of our skeletal muscle is crucial for
everyday activities. It provides structural support
and stability to bones and joints and is also a key
powerhouse for energy production and use.
Our research team at the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute focuses on how our genes effect the ability of our skeletal
muscle to perform across the spectrum of health, including
both inherited and acquired muscle diseases. By examining
both athletes and people affected by muscle diseases we are able
to look at the contrasting role our genes play under these
extremely different settings.
In 1999 we discovered a variant of the ACTN3 gene, which
encodes the protein -actinin-3. This structural protein is found
in the fast-twitch skeletal muscle ibres that produce the rapid,
powerful movements that set elite sprinters and weightlifters
apart from the rest of us.
The ACTN3 gene variant R577X is common, and results in
complete deiciency of -actinin-3 in almost 20% of the general

24 |

MAY 2016

population (or 1.5 billion people worldwide). In contrast, we

found that -actinin-3 deiciency is extremely rare in sprint
athletes, suggesting that this protein plays a crucial role in the
function of fast-twitch muscle ibres.
The association between ACTN3 and athletic performance
has since been replicated in athletes from around the world.
The effect in sprint athletes is particularly strong: of the 74
Olympic-level sprint athletes that have so far been tested for
ACTN3, not a single one is deicient for -actinin-3.
Hence -actinin-3 is commonly referred to as the gene for
speed and is now one of the best characterised and most
frequently studied genes related to sport and exercise performance.
In our laboratory we have generated an ACTN3 gene
knockout mouse to determine how -actinin-3 inluences
muscle performance and metabolism. We are also interested
in its role in health and disease, including its interaction with
the inherited muscle disorder Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

Fast or Slow? Long or Strong?

Our skeletal muscle consists of two -actinin proteins, -actinin2 and -actinin-3. While it was originally thought that these
proteins provide structural support to our muscles during
contraction, we now know that they interact with many different
proteins that have structural, metabolic and signalling roles.
Functional differences in these pathways have been identiied
in -actinin-3-deicient muscle, and these differences combine
to alter muscle function.
-Actinin-3 is predominately expressed in the fast-twitch
ibres of our skeletal muscle. These ibres are responsible for
rapid and forceful contractions but they fatigue quickly and
are prone to injury. This is the opposite of our slow-twitch
muscle ibres, which generate less force but are resistant to
fatigue.
The R577X variant plays an important role in our muscles
ability to generate strength. Through changes in muscle structure, metabolism and cellular signals, people who are -actinin3-deicient have a shift in their fast-twitch muscle ibres towards
the properties of a slower muscle ibre. Therefore -actinin-3deicient muscles generate less power during contractions but
recover more quickly from fatigue.
Deiciency of -actinin-3 does not cause muscle disease, but
is a natural variant that inluences muscle function and performance.
Athletes Are a Breed Apart
In 2003 we examined 439 elite Australian athletes and 436
unrelated controls to demonstrate that the loss of -actinin-3
is detrimental to sprint performance in elite athletes. In this
study the number of -actinin-3-deicient sprint/power individuals was signiicantly lower in both male and female sprinters,
with no Olympic sprint athlete being -actinin-3-deicient.
This landmark study has now been repeated in at least 15
independent studies of athletes from around the world. To
date, no elite sprint athlete has been found who is -actinin-3deicient. On the other-hand, -actinin-3 deiciency was found
to be higher in female Australian endurance athletes.
In addition, the R577X variant also inluences normal muscle
function in non-athletes. Both men and women deicient in
-actinin-3 show reduced muscle strength and take longer to
complete timed sprints. These indings are consistent with the
athlete data, and suggest that -actinin-3 deiciency has a detrimental effect on sprint/power performance and potentially
beneits endurance sports.
In order to study the loss -actinin-3 in more detail we developed an ACTN3 knockout mouse that doesnt expresses actinin-3 in its skeletal muscle. While the knockout mice look
the same as their wild-type littermates, we observed clear differences in muscle function and metabolism.

Staining reveals the different muscle fibres in the quadriceps

muscle of a mouse: blue (type I), red (type II) and black (type
IIx/a) fibers. The muscle fibre boarders are green. -Actinin3 is specifically expressed in the type II (red) muscle fibres.

ACT 3 kknockout
k mice generate lless fforce bbut run ffurther
h
on a motorised treadmill, mirroring the performance of actinin-3-deicient human muscles. Knockout mice also show
a shift in the metabolic characteristic of their muscles.
Given the speciic expression of -actinin-3 in fast ibres,
the functional effects on sprint and endurance performance
and the interaction between the -actinins and many metabolic proteins, we investigated whether the loss of -actinin-3
produced changes in skeletal muscle metabolism. We examined the two principal metabolic pathways in skeletal muscle:
anaerobic metabolism (predominantly fast-twitch muscles)
and the slower, more eicient aerobic metabolism predominantly found in slow-twitch muscles.
The data indicated a shift in the muscle metabolism of
ACTN3 knockout fast ibres away from their traditional reliance
on anaerobic metabolism to the aerobic metabolism of slowtwitch muscles.
We have also begun to identify the molecular switches that
cause these changes in muscle strength and metabolism. In
2013 we demonstrated that calcineurin activity a key signalling
protein that inluences the fast-to-slow skeletal muscle ibre
type change is higher in the absence of -actinin-3. We believe
this drives many of the features associated with the loss of MAY 2016 |

| 25

Resistance to cold

Resistance to famine

A world map that shows the

proportion of 577X (red) and
577R (blue) alleles in the local
populations. The 577X allele has
increased as modern humans
migrated out of Africa (red
arrows) into the colder Eurasian
climate. The mechanism for this
change is yet to be determined
but may be due to resistance to
cold, famine or increased
endurance performance.

Endurance capacity?

actinin-3, including reduced muscle strength and increased

endurance performance.
Its important to note that no single gene can be used to
determine our athletic ability. Like many physical features,
athletic performance is a complex characteristic that involves
both our genes and the environment. There are likely to be
many genes that contribute to athletic performance, but actinin-3 was the irst for which a clear association has been
demonstrated in many athlete and non-athlete groups.

An Adaptation to Cold?
By studying -actinin-3-deicient humans and the ACTN3
knockout mouse, signiicant progress has been made in understanding how ACTN3 expression alters muscle function. This
has led to an appreciation of the diverse roles that -actinin-3
plays in our skeletal muscle. But how did this variation become
so common in modern humans?
The ACTN3 gene is estimated to be over one million years
old. However, the genetic signatures surrounding the ACTN3
R577X variant suggests recent positive selection for the loss of
-actinin-3 as modern humans migrated out of Africa into
colder climates around 1530,000 years ago. This means that
the number of people who possess the R577X allele is at its
highest in places with reduced mean annual temperature and
food availability. This suggests that the R577X allele may have
conferred resistance to cold exposure or famine.
R577X is one of only two known examples in the human
genome where a gene variant results in a clear selection advantage. (The other is a variant in the CASP12 gene, which inluences our ability to resist serious infection).
As such, there is great interest in understanding how actinin-3 deiciency provides an advantage and why the absence
of this protein alters human muscle function today. We have
already shown that the loss of -actinin-3 appears to be detrimental to sprint/power performance but may beneit muscle
26 |

MAY 2016

endurance. The current theory for this increase in -actinin-3

deiciency is that a shift towards slower muscle ibres that use
energy more eiciently provides a survival advantage during
exposure to cold and famine.

Muscle Diseases
It is now well established that ACTN3 inluences performance
in elite athletes, but the ultimate goal of our laboratory is to
ind cures for children suffering from severe muscle diseases.
Recently we have started to explore how ACTN3 inluences
the severity and progression of diseases associated with muscle
weakness.
To understand the effect of -actinin-3 in muscle development and disease we examined our ACTN3 knockout mouse
in response to muscle disease. Using a method that is similar to
prolonged bed rest in humans, which results in muscle wasting
over time, we examined how wild-type and ACTN3 knockout
mice responded to immobilisation. Interestingly, we were able
to show that -actinin-3 deiciency protects against muscle
breakdown in response to immobilisation. ACTN3 knockout
mice resisted muscle wasting compared with wild-type controls.
Currently we are building on the knowledge we have gained
by studying elite athletes and the ACTN3 knockout mouse to
determine the role of -actinin-3 in inherited muscle disorders
such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy, as well as muscle-wasting
conditions seen during ageing some types of cancer. We propose
that the changes in muscle strength and metabolism induced
by ACTN3 will inluence the way individuals respond to and
develop different disease conditions.
Australia has a fantastic track record in the science of sport
performance, and it would be great if we can build on that
knowledge to help ind new treatments for inherited muscle
diseases and wasting conditions.
Peter Houweling is Senior Research Officer at the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute,
where Kathryn North is Group Leader and Director.

About
Schmidt
Credit: ANU

Nobel Prize winner Brian Schmidt discusses global warming, exploding stars, politics and Star
Wars with JAY FURBY.

he irst thing I did when I won the Nobel Prize

was to sit my wife down. I told her I was sorry. I
knew everything was about to change.
Its not every day you meet a Nobel Prize winner, and while
Brian P. Schmidt appears, at irst glance, no different than the
average guy youd bump into at a bus stop, the reality couldnt
be further from the truth.
Schmidt is 48. Born in Montana, he married an Australian
and emigrated here in 1994. Described by some as a militant
agnostic, his tagline of I dont know and neither do you often
raises a smile. He believes in global warming, and has even
placed a $10,000 bet on temperatures rising with the chairman
of the Prime Ministers Business Council.
We meet in the ruins of Mount Stromlo observatory, which
was burnt to the ground by bushire in 2003. As his voice echoes
off the walls, I quickly determine that behind his disarming
charm and piercing blue eyes, a brain pulsates as powerful as
the supernovae hes studied.
You see, Im just an ordinary guy, he continues with a
wry smile, casually leaning up against the stone ledge in front
of me. Even my old teachers reaction to my win was like,
You? Its a bit surprising, really. I just worked hard and was
enthusiastic.

I nodded but I didnt buy it for a second, for Schmidt seemed

to glow, like the anointed ones do, and I was well aware that,
as one of only 15 Australian Nobel Laureates, he could leave me
in his intellectual wake at any moment of his choosing. In truth,
I barely understood the title of his 2011 Nobel Prize-winning
citation: for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the
universe through observations of distant supernovae.
Thankfully I wasnt there to ask about things I would never
understand. I was there to pose layman questions, seeking
simple answers to complicated matters. I began naively: Knowing
what you do about space, when you get to the edge of space...
There is no edge of space, he interjects. It either keeps
going and going, or wraps onto itself like the Earth. If you think
of space, the edge of space is time and the universe is expanding.
Its 13.8 billion years after the Big Bang, and each second we are
moving to a new edge.
I see, I answer but Im lying, drowning in a sea of conceptual ininities so I move on to the next pub question. Do you
think life exists elsewhere in space?
I have every reason to believe that were going to be able to
look at planets in the next 1020 years and start asking: Is
there life out there? But I will say we havent gotten anything
that we dont understand at this point.
MAY 2016 |

| 27

Id like there to be something but what we do with that

information when we ind it is a completely different question.
Because you have to ask yourself: Would you like to be us?
And the answer would be: I wouldnt trust us.
I mean, ask the Aboriginals in Australia. It wasnt a good
thing for them. With every single meeting in the history of
humanity on this planet theres been a winner and a loser, and
Im not particularly wanting to take a 50/50 chance with something out there.
Why do you think that humans are always looking, then?
Its much easier to explore and ind uncharted territories that
havent been raped and pillaged by our previous activities. Its
probably genetic, a survival thing. Its not just us. Animals do
it as well. Think of us as a herd going through life eating kangaroos. There are lots of them, so youre able to have many children and you end up in a large group of people. Eventually all
the kangaroos are gone.

There are a lot of people who

believe I should not have won the
Nobel Prize, and that what Ive
done is rubbish.
So, you have a choice. You can develop a big way of becoming
sustainable or just move onto the next place. Humans have
always found it easier to move on.
The challenge we have is that Earth is less than 13,000 km
across. It seems really big but we have more than seven billion
people. Its soon to be eight, nine. The space between each
person will become pretty small. Theres no real place to belong.
So we have to ind another planet, and Mars isnt really
hospitable. Or we learn to live in our current patch of the
universe.
I dont think we have a choice. We have to live on Earth,
and for the next 100 years thats the big challenge for humanity:
iguring out how to live, all of us, on Earth in a sustainable
way.
As he answered, I wondered why the leaders of the world
dont follow the knowledge that is so simply explained by our
inest minds. So I ask him exactly that. This time he takes a
breath before he speaks.
Thats an interesting question, he muses. They do listen
to me. The question is why they dont act. Some of my colleagues
truly do not believe in the effects of global warming. Its very
complicated. You can suggest things to people that are not true.
Thats why you dont want to rely on just one brain.
The problem, of course, is that science is never black and
white. There are a lot of people who believe I should not have
won the Nobel Prize, and that what Ive done is rubbish.
28 |

MAY 2016

So how do you deal with the fact that scientists are human,
and that there are going to be distorted views? In the end I
believe you have to take a consensus approach. Other people
disagree. Well, Im prepared to say: Give me an alternative.
Because when youre trying to set policy you need to say: Heres
the facts and heres the uncertainty. The consensus tries to
give you the facts. Occasionally its wrong, but its very rare.
If youd actually put a gun to the head of a consensus in
1995 about the universe accelerating, they wouldve actually
said: We dont know. Now, if you point a gun at the consensus
about global warming or climate change, the answer is: Were
99% sure about whats happening, and its related to CO2
coming into the atmosphere. Were even more certain that
whats going to happen in the future will be even worse than
whats happening at present.
You see, theres a really interesting selection effect. Lots of
people predict things in the future, and the ones who we revere
are the ones who got the answer right, probably out of dumb
luck. The future is really hard.
Schmidt has recently been appointed Vice Chancellor of
the Australian National University. Would you consider a
career in politics? I asked. He took his time to answer.
No, he inally replied. There have been a few Nobel Prizewinning politicians who havent been very good. Ive seen politicians and political processes up close. Id like to interact with
them but Im someone who wouldnt survive a week. I absolutely
speak my mind. Im very pragmatic. Ultimately I have fundamental boundaries of what I believe is right and wrong, and
Im unprepared to make the sacriices to my own values as
required by politics.
He pauses.
Im not saying that politicians should be like me. Theyve
always been a certain group of people, and we force it on them
to make compromises that are necessary to move forward
between intransient positions.
My way of working works with people who are rational
and not intransient. So I stick to what I do, and when I meet
someone who doesnt work within my framework I end up just
going around ignoring them.
The best thing for people like me is to try to make sure that
the best possible set of outcomes happens amongst the political
class. Ive gone into various political oices and said, Your
policy on this front is lawed for the following reason, and they
say: I can trust you to keep a secret. Youre right: it is lawed,
but weve made an announcement and were sticking with it
until the next election. And you know, theyre the people who
win.
So, I know where Im meant to be in life. Im in very good
relations with politicians, and even the ones I disagree with I
always respect. Sometimes its hard to but I do.

I like to have constructive conversations to ensure

they have at least heard a counterpoint view from
someone who is not screaming at them and making
them emotional. I say, No, this is the consequence of
your view. You need to understand that concept. And
you know, sometimes I try to make them acknowledge
it. Sometimes they reply, Yes, I understand that consequence, or I dont care; it would be against my values.
The only ones I disrespect are the ones who are
evil. I mean, there are a few of those, but generally evil
people dont seem to get elected. So the ones whom
some people think are evil are often those who simply
have a very different political point of view.
We take a darker turn, not because the professor
wants to but I steer it that way. I need answers to the
questions I promised my friends in the pub I would
ask.
What is the greatest threat to the Earth from space?
When he hears the question, Schmidt becomes
chirpy, effervescent and even bouncy. A really, really
big asteroid would create mayhem but the big risk,
which is inevitable, is that every year the nuclear reactor
in the Sun gets a tiny, tiny bit stronger. This is not what
causes climate change but its going to cause climatic
change in the future. So, 500 million years from now
the Sun is going to be a lot, lot hotter and Earth will not
be habitable.Its actually a progression. Then there are
events when the Sun will get so big itll burn up the
Earth and were gone. Thats several billion years away.
Its pretty much inevitable, unless we create technology that puts a big shield around the Earth progressively blocking out more and more sunlight over time.
Thatll give us another billion years, probably. But at
some point it probably wont be enough.
How do you sleep at night? I ask.
I dont know, he answers softly. You just come to
terms with it. Thats why I go and look at the sky and
think about it.
Is there anything that could threaten us sooner?
Schmidts lips curl inwards. A giant comet could
be on its way right now and we would be looking at it
and be like, Oh crap! Its very close to the Earth. The
problem with comets is they shoot stuff out thats
why theyre comets. Their tails are almost like a little
rocket, so youre never quite sure where theyre going
to go. If one came in very fast, from way out there, itd
be almost impossible to get a rocket to it and do
anything meaningful. You might get enough nuclear
power onto it [but] you probably wouldnt have enough
time, and if that thing hit directly it would be another
Credit: ANU

MAY 2016 |

| 29

My high school teacher was like,

You were good, but you were no
better than anyone else! And the
answer is, he was right. I wasnt.
dinosaur event. It wouldnt wipe out the planet, but it would
probably wipe out humanity.
Would you tell people its coming?
Absolutely, Schmidt replies. Theyd igure it out soon
enough. Do you think Im going to keep it a secret? My guess
is with modern technology youd probably have at least a years
notice.
Thats nice to know.
I should say, Schmidt adds, that the chance of this
happening is extraordinarily unlikely. When I say extraordinarily, I mean the chance is about the same as being hit by lightning in a clear sky. But if it were to happen, the worst possible
case would be a direct hit, coming in as a normal comet, getting
caught by Jupiter and then going into an orbit with a much
higher chance of crossing the Earth. Then we might have 20,
30, 100 or 1000 years notice. If we have 100 years notice we
could probably solve those problems. Most threats we could
mediate, but not all.
Whats the nightmare scenario?
Almost all of them are to do with humans. But as far as
astrophysics goes, you have a very unlikely situation of a gamma
ray pointing at us that would ionise our atmosphere, probably
30 |

MAY 2016

killing off half the planet. Boom! Youll

have no notice when that happens but
the odds are about one in a billion. Its
very unlikely.
I ix his gaze and plump for an out
of the box question. What do you
think about the idea that we may have
more in common with aliens then is
commonly believed?
Theres no evidence. The reason I
say you shouldnt believe in us being
evolved from aliens is down to DNA.
Look at ours and compare it to apes.
Theres so much in common. Its a tiny
change between an ape and us. So
consequently theres not much else to
believe. The changes just happened over
time.
Who do you see yourself as having
most in common with: Darth Vader,
Credit: Juliet Taylor
Luke Skywalker or Captain Kirk?
Its funny; the most lippant question garners the most
serious expression before Schmidt replies.
Im deinitely not Darth Vader. Darth Vader went through
a bad patch, and I wouldnt want to have that on my conscience.
I was always a Mr Spock-type of guy but Ill pick Luke
Skywalker. Well, hes not really like me but he always tried
hard. He failed a couple of times but hes an ordinary guy and
thats why I like Luke. Hes kind of an ordinary guy doing
extraordinary things.
Thats the same as most Nobel Prize winners ordinary
people doing extraordinary things. My high school teacher was
like, You were good, but you were no better than anyone else!
And the answer is, he was right. I wasnt. What did I do? I
continued to work, I learnt and I was in the right place in space
and time to be part of something great.
Almost everything humankind has achieved isnt a result of
super people like Einstein. He probably was really super, but
there are very, very few people like him.
You can work alone but Ive always said its better to work
in teams and have 100 people there. When something bad
happens you have 99 people to pick you up. If its all me versus
you, you have 99 people to crush you when youre down because
they hate your guts. Humans work amazingly well together,
and thats how I think Luke Skywalker led, by being a normal
person.
I sit back and look up at the sky. I for one would follow this man
against the Dark Side or even, if he decides, to the polling booth.
He certainly isnt a normal person. Hes a damn ine one.
Jay Furby is a freelance writer.

Bigger animals such as elephants use

more energy, but they are also much
more efficient users of energy. This
allometric scaling of metabolism with
mass may also occur with offspring size.

Eric Issele/adobe

Why are bigger

offspring better?
AMANDA PETTERSEN
Bigger offspring have greater energy needs, so why do they survive and reproduce more
successfully than their smaller siblings?
eve all heard of the phrase: A big baby is
a healthy baby, but this isnt just an old
wives tale. Larger offspring do perform
better than smaller offspring, and this
pattern has been observed by ecologists
for decades. Across the many organisms that have been studied,
including reptiles, birds, ish, insects and even in plants, we see
that larger offspring are often itter than smaller offspring.
Larger offspring generally survive better, grow bigger, reproduce
more and are less vulnerable to starvation and predation.

The effects of offspring size can pose consequences for later

life. Not only do bigger offspring grow into itter juveniles and
adults; offspring size differences can affect later generations.
We wanted to know why this was the case. When it comes
to offspring size, why is bigger, better?
Many studies have attempted to explain why this pattern
occurs, and have tested some interesting theories. Some propose
that larger offspring have more energy, which is a reasonable
assumption. However, we must also consider that the energy
required to maintain a larger size are also higher. Larger offspring
MAY 2016 |

| 31

These Bugula colonies look like seaweed, but they are actually
animals comprised of thousands of subunits that release
swimming larvae into the ocean.

32 |

MAY 2016

may also be able to feed more successfully and therefore gain

more energy than smaller offspring, or they might reach a size
that gives them access to a refuge from predation.
Despite these intriguing insights into the advantages of larger
offspring size, they often depend on the species being studied.
We still dont know why these patterns are so widespread.
What could serve as a more general explanation as to why
bigger offspring do better? We decided to view offspring size
from a perspective that is relevant to all living organisms: metabolic scaling.
Metabolic scaling is central to metabolic theory, and is a key
element of physiological research. Metabolic scaling describes
the relationship between body size and energy use: for every
increase in body size there is a less than proportional increase in
energy use. If we plot the relationship between mass and metabolic rate on a loglog scale, then for every one unit increase in
mass the increase in metabolic rate is a less than one unit. So, as
body size increases, relative energy use decreases (see box, p.33).
This theory is pretty much universal per unit of mass,
larger individuals burn less energy than smaller individuals. So
if this relationship exists for elephants and mice, then what
about their offspring? We tested whether bigger offspring
consume relatively less energy than smaller offspring in two
species of marine bryozoan, Bugula neritina and Watersipora
subtorquata.
While they may look like seaweed or some strange coral,
bryozoans (commonly known as moss animals) are one of
the most abundant phyla of marine invertebrates to inhabit
our oceans. You can ind bryozoan colonies occupying space
on piers and pylons. Each colony is considered an individual
comprised of subunits.
The colonies reproduce both asexually (by budding identical subunits) and sexually (by producing sperm and eggs).
Adult-stage colonies can brood thousands of fertilised eggs at
a time. These develop and are released as tiny swimming larvae
into the water, where they search for suitable settlement sites.
During this time, the larvae of both species do not feed; they
only develop feeding structures once they have settled and
undergone a dramatic transformation of their body structure.
This metamorphosis can take 35 days, during which individuals are dependent on energy stored during gestation, much
like the energy provided by a human mother to her baby via
the placenta.
This is a critical period in the life cycle of bryozoans, and
high mortality rates occur. Maternal provisions give the offspring
a better chance of survival. Previous research in our laboratory
has shown that by making bigger larvae a mother can improve
the odds of survival for her offspring. We found that bigger
babies are able to survive this dependent phase much longer
than smaller larvae.

Metabolic Scaling: Why Size Matters

To test metabolic scaling on bryozoans,

we spawned colonies of Bugula and
Metabolic theory research studies the flux of energy in ecology. A central tenet of
Watersipora in the lab and measured the
metabolic theory is that as body size increases, metabolic rate also increases but to
a lower extent. Metabolic rate does not increase proportionally with mass; rather,
size of individual larvae. Within a single
the relationship is often allometric: for every unit gain in mass, there is a smaller
colony a mother can produce a range of
increase in metabolic rate.
larval sizes, with some larger larvae up to
For example, an elephant has a mass approximately 10,000 greater than a single
mouse. The elephant clearly uses far more energy and has a higher metabolic rate
three times the size of their smaller
overall. However, if we then measure the total energy metabolism of 10,000 mice,
siblings.
the combined energy metabolism of the mice would be far greater than that of a
We placed individual larvae into tiny
single elephant of equivalent mass.
metabolic chambers measuring just 0.2 mL
This is called
allometric scaling,
in volume, and measured the rate of
where for every
oxygen consumption as a proxy for metaincrease in mass
bolic rate. The slope of the relationship
there is a smaller
between offspring size and metabolic rate
incremental increase
in metabolic rate. If
was then tested.
we plot this
We found an allometric relationship
relationship on a
between offspring size and metabolic
loglog scale we see
a linear relationship
rate the slope of the relationship was
between mass and
less than one. Per unit of body mass, larger
metabolic rate, but
offspring used much less energy as they
the rate of increase
developed through the critical dependent
in metabolic rate is
almost always less
phase (from swimming larvae through to
than one. This
feeding settler) than smaller offspring.
relationship is found both among and within species, and has been tested by
This inding was found for both species
physiologists for over 100 years.
of bryozoan.
The reasons behind this allometric scaling between metabolic rate and body size
have been hotly debated, and include explanations involving physics and
Thus we showed that, proportional to
biochemistry such as the relationship between metabolic rate and body surface
their size, larger offspring reached indearea, heat exchange and the distribution of resources.
pendence with a higher amount of the
initial energy supplied to them by their
mother. As a result, these larger offspring developed into juveniles with more energy reserves, and therefore had a head start
in life over smaller offspring. They could use this extra energy
to feed and grow more, and ultimately survive to reproduce.
Using metabolic theory, we were able to provide a general
explanation for a common pattern observed in ecological studies.
Our research highlights the importance of measuring metabolism, not only in adult stages but in the offspring, to explain
why experiences early in the life cycle can pose important consequences for itness later on in life.
Offspring size matters, and energy use during this critical
life stage can determine how each individual fares throughout
its development.
These indings offer exciting new avenues of research into
the energetics of offspring, from both a physiological, evolutionary and ecological perspective. It will be interesting to see
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whether allometric scaling occurs in the offspring of other
species and whether it does indeed offer a universal explanation for why a big baby is a healthy baby.

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Amanda Pettersen is a postgraduate student supervised by Professors Dustin Marshall and

Craig White in the School of Biological Sciences at Monash University.

MAY 2016 |

| 33

Kaspars Grinvalds/adobe

Generation Multi
KELLY GARNER & PAUL DUX
As technology continues to become more richly embedded in our daily lives, so too comes the
increased demand and temptation to multitask. But can we improve our ability to do two
things at once?
ow many times have you attempted to multitask today? Did you check your emails while
ordering your morning coffee? Or update
your social media status while listening to
the news?
We have long known that engaging in two tasks simultaneously, even if they are simple, negatively impacts the performance of the component tasks. For example, conversing on a cell
phone while driving can impair performance as profoundly as
driving under the inluence of alcohol.
Frequent engagement in multitasking renders us vulnerable
to distraction, and can disrupt learning in the classroom. In
addition, our ability to multitask deteriorates as we age, and is
strongly impacted by neuropsychiatric injury or disease.
Thus, whether for safety, learning or health, understanding
the beneits and shortcomings of multitasking is of signiicance
yet remains poorly understood.
In order to multitask successfully, we depend on the coordinated function of the frontal, parietal and subcortical regions
in the brain. Our frontal and parietal regions are incredibly

34 |

MAY 2016

lexible information processors whose function is to coordinate and prioritise all of the little tasks we perform in order to
meet our many daily goals. Disruption of these brain regions
causes problems in the mental functions that we need to successfully navigate daily life, such as keeping a shopping list in mind,
maintaining concentration on the road, or deciding not to
drink that second glass of wine because the two from the night
before didnt help the next morning.
In contrast, our subcortical brain regions are crucial for us
to form skilled or habitual behaviours. Lesions in these areas will
affect how well we acquire or execute skilled behaviours.
But there is a cost to this lexibility: capacity. Since frontal
and parietal brain regions are involved in the execution of all
these useful mental functions, they are also in high demand.
This means that while your frontal and parietal neurons are
busy focusing on the email you just received on your phone,
they are unavailable to decode the words that were just addressed
to you in your ongoing conversation. This can lead you to fail
to perceive what was said, or delay your response until after
youve inished processing the email.

Interestingly, our capacity limitations in these brain regions

are not necessarily ixed. We have known for a long time that
practicing constituent tasks can improve our ability to complete
them in a multitasking context. If this was not the case we would
never achieve walking and talking at the same time. Practice can
even help us to multitask some sophisticated mental behaviours,
such as making two decisions concurrently.
This poses some interesting questions regarding the potential of the human brain. Are we able to expand our capacity so that
we can become super-eicient parallel processors? Or are we
forever hard-wired as slow and steady serial processors? Where
exactly lie the boundaries of our information-processing abilities, and what gains can be made from practicing multitasking?
To answer these questions, we need to understand the neural
changes that underpin multitasking improvements. This will
help us to understand not only the potential, but also the potential limitations, of practising multitasking.
Recent work in our laboratory has provided some new clues.
We already know that we all vary largely in our ability to multitask weve all sat next to someone who seems to have a days work
done by 10 am. And we all vary in how much practice can improve
our multitasking performance. Therefore, we reasoned that
understanding how an individuals brain function predicts their
ability to improve at multitasking may be the key to understanding how the brain solves the multitasking problem.
This is a different approach to most brain imaging studies,
which typically seek to understand the function of an average
brain. However, the challenge of our individualistic approach is
that we need to examine the brains of a far larger number of
people than if we were looking at how an average brain works. This
is because the effects that drive individual differences can be
more subtle, making them more diicult to detect with smaller
sample sizes.
To make inferences about the average brain, we typically
examine the brain function of around 1525 people. In order
to understand how individual differences in brain function related
to multitasking improvements, we calculated that we needed to
examine the brains and behaviour of 100 people.
So we asked 100 people to complete a simple multitask in an
MRI scanner. Half of these individuals practised the multitask
over a few days, while the other half practised a simple task unrelated to multitasking. We were then able to compare the two
groups to see which brain changes speciically predicted multitasking improvements, and not general factors such as motivation. What we found provided an answer for how neurons that
get recruited to do many things may learn to do more than one
thing at a time.
Improvements in multitasking were predicted by the degree
to which frontal, parietal and subcortical brain regions showed
dissociable patterns of activity in response to each of the compo-

Given the revenue associated

worldwide with the brain training
industry, this truly is a multi-billion
dollar question.
nent tasks. With practice, the neural activity that corresponded
to each task became more distinct. Therefore, in order to achieve
multitasking, the brain may employ a divide-and-conquer strategy
by reducing overlap in which neurons are recruited to deal with
the two tasks.
So what does this tell us about whether gains from practising
multitasking are task-speciic or generalise to new tasks? More
speciically, if you practice multitasking are you suddenly going
to become a productive multitasker in your daily life? Given the
revenue associated worldwide with the brain training industry this
truly is a multi-billion dollar question.
The evidence for whether multitasking practice will make
you a supertasker, or will just make you really good at the task
you practiced on, is currently mixed. For healthy young individuals it appears that practising very simple actions, such as
posting on social media, does not lead to generalised beneits.
Although people improve at multitasking those speciic tasks,
they are no better off when they switch to new tasks that are
similar. This is most likely because they have not had the opportunity to generate a specialised neural response to the new task.
However, other evidence suggests that among older people,
where the multitasking load is continuous and dynamic, more
complex training may improve ones ability to sustain concentration and maintain and manipulate information in the memory.
The current evidence thus suggests two different methods to
improve multitasking proiciency. On one hand, simple practice of speciic behaviours can lead to beneits for a speciic multitasking scenario by making behaviour habitual. Such practice
makes sense in a variety of situations. For example, we want to
habitually press our foot down on the brake when we see a stop
sign regardless of what else we are doing at the time.
However, the trade-off for gaining habitual behaviours is a
decrease in lexibility. Training your brain to respond a given
way to the stop sign decreases the probability that you will act in
different ways the next time you see that sign.
On the other hand, engaging in practice tasks that are challenging, dynamic and adaptive may aid in the development of
more lexible multitasking abilities.
Either way, neither of these methods are likely to lead to beneits that will span the myriad of scenarios we might encounter,
such as unexpected incidents on the road. Practised or not, talking
on your mobile phone while driving remains a bad idea.
Kelly Garner is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in The University of Birminghams School of
Psychology. Paul Dux is an Associate Professor and ARC Future Fellow at The University of
Queenslands School of Psychology.

MAY 2016 |

| 35

Plant Viruses Threaten

Crops as Climate Warms
PIOTR TREBICKI
Climate change will exacerbate the spread of a virus that reduces the yield of infected wheat
by 70%.
arley yellow dwarf virus is an important pathogen
that reduces the yield and grain quality of important food crops such as wheat, barley, oats and
corn. We have found that the virus thrives when
wheat is grown in the laboratory at higher carbon
dioxide (CO2) levels, resulting in greater plant damage. Our
indings suggest that as CO2 concentrations rise to levels
predicted by climate change modellers, food crop plants such
as wheat can be badly affected.
Barley yellow dwarf virus is spread by aphids, which acquire
it from the sap of an infected plant. As the aphids feed on other
plants, they transmit the virus through their saliva. At least 25
species of aphids can successfully transmit this virus between

Wheat grain that is infected with barley yellow dwarf virus (left)
compared with uninfected wheat grain (right).

36 |

MAY 2016

plants, but the major vector is the bird cherry-oat aphid

(Rhopalosiphum padi), which is found across Australia and
other parts of the world.
A high concentration of the virus in plants causes earlier
and more pronounced symptoms in susceptible varieties. As
insects are attracted to infected plants by sensing changes in
plant colour and odour, this can increase the probability that
the virus will spread.
Wheat plants are most vulnerable to viral infection at the early
growth stage. Infection of wheat with barley yellow dwarf virus
when the plants are a couple weeks old can result in yield losses
of up to 70%. In Australia, this virus affects yields across all
cereal-growing regions of south-west and south-east Australia,
as well as south-east Queensland. Factors such as weather conditions and virus concentrations in weeds and aphids will alter its
impact, but even sporadic outbreaks of barley yellow dwarf
virus can increase the incidence of the virus and therefore reduce
crop yields.
Although plant viral diseases are a serious threat to food
production, only a few studies have investigated how plants
and viruses interact under conditions of elevated CO2 concentrations or increased temperatures. Instead, most plant studies
have focused on disease-free plants under elevated CO2 scenarios,
often without considering temperature increases.
These studies show both positive and negative effects. Positive effects have included increased yield and improved rates of
photosynthesis, greater light use eiciency and higher water-use
eiciency due to the partial closure of stomata. However,

Left: an aphid is tethered by a gold wire to a penetration

electrode to measure feeding behaviour and virus transmission.

increased CO2 concentrations can also cause serious changes to

plant biochemistry, including an increase in carbon:nitrogen
ratios due to a reduction in nitrogen in the foliage and an
increase in carbon produced by higher photosynthetic rates.
Reduced nitrogen levels in plants and grains are a serious
concern, as nitrogen is a crucial building block of amino acids.
Hence lower nitrogen levels will reduce the protein concentration in the grain, decreasing the nutritional value, baking
quality and other important characteristics of lour.
Under future climate conditions in the semi-arid wheatgrowing regions of southern Australia, the net simulated effect
of increasing atmospheric CO2 and hotter and drier spring
conditions are expected to reduce the average yield by 313%.
While many studies have explained the effects of climate
change on plant physiology, we still dont fully understand how
future climate will impact plant pathogens. For example, there
are knowledge gaps concerning the biology of barley yellow
dwarf virus and its aphid vectors, and its essential to ill in
these gaps if we are to mitigate the negative effects of this disease
in wheat crops under future climate conditions.
We have been attempting to redress this by investigating
the effects of increased CO2 on plants infected with barley
yellow dwarf virus. We grew virus-infected plants in a controlled
laboratory setting under current and elevated CO2 levels, and
used molecular techniques to determine the amount of virus
within the plant tissue.
We found that plants grown under elevated CO2 levels had
signiicantly higher viral loads. The reason behind this 35%
increase in virus concentration is not well understood, but
cannot be explained by the plants stimulated growth rate. Our
unique study has been published in Global Change Biology
(http://tinyurl.com/hv5hk9q).
As aphids are responsible for spreading the virus to and
within a food crop, its also important to understand how
elevated CO2 levels will affect the insect. Therefore we are
conducting further research on the interactions between the
insect, wheat and virus under future climate conditions to
understand possible mechanisms across different wheat cultivars that can inhibit or eliminate the spread of the disease.
Aphids use their stylet to pierce plant tissue and feed on the
plants sap. Since this process is fully contained within the plant,
we are implementing different methods to understand how
aphids feed and how eicient the virus transmission can be in
plants grown under future climate conditions.
Since the global human population will continue to rise,
there will be even greater pressure on our agriculture and available land to grow crops. Its extremely important to under-

How Will Rising CO2 Levels

Affect Agriculture?
Because carbon dioxide has the ability to trap
heat and is also important for plant growth, any
changes in the concentration of carbon dioxide
and temperature will have a huge effect on food
production.
Australias ancient soils and limited rainfall
and water supply mean that the margin is
already very narrow for the continents
agriculture. Uncertainties associated with future
climate and predictions of increased average
temperature and severe weather events need to
be better understood, especially in already
challenging food production regions.
Carbon dioxide is fundamental to plant
growth and development. Over the past 150
years its concentration in the atmosphere has
risen by 30% from 290 parts per million in 1860
to 405 ppm in 2016.
Models indicate that CO2 concentrations will
rise even faster over the next 35 years, reaching
550 ppm. This surge in the atmospheric CO2
concentration is the key factor that is increasing
the temperature of our planet at an accelerated
rate, altering many biological functions in both
plants and animals.
As this unfolds, the human population
continues to grow, and is estimated to exceed
nine billion by 2050. Global crop demand is
forecast to more than double 2005 levels by
2050.
Because of these factors, understanding how
elevated carbon dioxide and other aspects of
climate change affect agriculture is crucial if we
are to sustain or improve our current food
production capability.

stand how future climate and an increase in CO2 concentration

in the atmosphere will affect our food production and agricultural pests and diseases. We need to know how future climate
conditions will affect plant growth and yield, and how we can
prevent crop loss if the severity of pests and diseases increases.
Understanding how this climate will affect interactions
between pests and diseases will provides scientists with a great
opportunity to also ind solutions to sustain or even improve
current food production levels.
Piotr Trebicki is a Research Scientist for the Victorian Department of Economic
Development, Jobs, Transport and Resources in Horsham, Victoria.

MAY 2016 |

| 37

conSCIENCE

William Laurance

Mega-Banks Unleash an Infrastructure Tsunami

The rise of investment bank lending for infrastructure projects in developing countries is
driving a feeding frenzy of developments with lower environmental controls.
If we dont do it, a Chinese corporation will and theyll make
a horrible mess of things.
That is a direct quote from a biologist working for an environmental non-government organisation (NGO) in Cambodia.
The German Development Bank had come to the NGO with a
proposal to fund a paved road that would slice through the heart
of the one of the most important protected areas in the country.
They wanted the NGO to help them design the road in a way that
would limit its environmental impacts.
Virtually nobody in the NGO wanted to see the road go ahead.
Far too often, such roads open a Pandoras Box of environmental
problems, such as promoting illegal deforestation, habitat fragmentation, poaching, ires and mining. There are few ways that
one can design their way around such basic problems.
But the alternative nightmare scenario for the NGO was that
if they didnt help the German bank do it, someone far less environmentally concerned would be more than happy to do so.
This, increasingly, seems to be the logic behind a lot of big
infrastructure and development projects. And its a scary proposition because we are living in the most explosive era of infrastructure expansion in human history.
For example, during their 2014 summit in Australia, the G20
nations argued for US$6070 trillion in new infrastructure
investments by 2030. This would more than double the total
value of infrastructure globally.The next few decades are expected
to see some 25 million kilometres of new paved roads, thousands
of additional hydroelectric dams, and hundreds of thousands of
new mining, oil and gas projects.
The environmental impacts of this infrastructure tsunami
could easily dwarf climate change and many other human pressures, as thousands of projects penetrate into the worlds last
surviving wild areas.Roughly nine-tenths of the new projects
are occurring in developing nations, often in the tropics or
subtropics, which harbour the planets biologically richest and environmentally most critical ecosystems.
Some of the biggest fans of major infrastructure projects are
the international development banks, such as the World Bank,
International Monetary Fund and the Asian, African and InterAmerican Development Banks. These big lenders are far from
perfect, but after years of criticism most of them have gradually
implemented measures designed to limit the environmental and
social impacts of their projects.Even these safeguards are often
inadequate, but at least they are a big improvement over past
practices.
But the playing ield for the big lenders is changing. The past
few years have seen the rise of other major investment banks,
38 |

MAY 2016

such as the recently founded Asian Infrastructure Investment

Bank (AIIB) in China, as well as the Brazilian Development
Bank (BNDES).
For many years, the BNDES has been heavily criticised for
funding scores of environmentally and socially harmful projects
such as massive dams in the Amazon.Fears were raised that
Chinas AIIB would behave similarly, especially when it
announced that it would be using streamlined procedures to
evaluate its projects.
When China opened up the AIIB to other countries, 30
nations initially joined as founding members.Among these were
many western economies, including the UK, Germany, France,
Italy, Norway, Australia and New Zealand. At the time, many
hoped that its broadened membership would encourage the AIIB
to moderate its hard-charging stance and instead foster environmental and social safeguards more akin to those of the existing
major lenders.
But the exact opposite appears to be happening.Rather than
the AIIB raising its game, the World Bank recently announced
that it will effectively be weakening its environmental and social
safeguards. It is doing so, it says, in order to remain competitive with other international lenders, most notably the AIIB.
What will this mean?The global economy has slowed for the
moment, but the infrastructure tsunami is still happening. If the
world economy rebounds to a degree, a feeding frenzy of projects
could easily return.
This could be bad news for the global environment and socially
disempowered peoples. For instance, a 2009 analysis found that
many developing nations had become pollution havens for
projects funded by the Chinese government or its major corporations, which were attracted to nations with weak environmental controls.Notably, other advanced (OECD) economies
showed no such tendency.
With the AIIB essentially forcing the World Bank to lower
its standards, will other major lenders follow suit?Will there
simply be a race to the bottom among big lenders in order to
remain competitive?
Are the western nations that have joined the AIIB going to
stand idly by and watch this happen?Or might they have enough
determination and inluence to make a difference?With China,
India and Russia holding the biggest shares of the banks capitalisation, itll be an uphill battle.
Time will soon tell.Right now, for the environment and
human rights, the signs are all pointing in the wrong direction.
William Laurance is a Distinguished Research Professor and Australian Laureate at James Cook
University, and director of JCUs Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science.

conSCIENCE

Richard Harvey, Martin Pera & Megan Munsie

Stem Cell Industry Must Tread a Fine Line

The emerging stem cell industry needs to be able to fast-track therapies into clinical trials
without clearing the way for clinics to offer unproven therapies to vulnerable patients.
Internationally, stem cell science has developed incredible
momentum with the promise of a revolution in medical therapies. This has been spurred on in 2007 with the discovery by
Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka (who won the Nobel Prize
in 2012) that the blood or skin cells of any person can be
converted easily to a powerful form of stem cells called induced
pluripotent stem cells (iPS). In the laboratory, iPS cells can be
expanded and differentiated into any cell type in the body,
offering possibilities for using them to treat a range of diseases.
We can now correct genetic defects in patient-derived iPS cells,
which will lead to personalised therapies.
Australia has a strong legacy of excellence in stem cell research,
including fundamental discoveries that have led to the routine
use of bone marrow transplantation for blood disorders and
cancers, and developments that made in vitro fertilisation safe
for hundreds of thousands of couples worldwide each year. We
were among the irst to derive human embryonic stem cells,
and our discoveries on neural, skin, breast, blood and kidney stem
cells have kept us at the forefront of the ield.
Its against this background that the Australian Academy of
Scienc last year convened a think tank for over 60 of Australias
brightest early and mid-career researchers to imagine the future
of stem cell science and therapies over the next decades, and to
take stock of our capability in this emerging sector. The Think
Tanks report, released in March (http://tinyurl.com/hx397ts),
identiied a number of vulnerabilities for the sector as Australia
strives to keep up with international competition and to secure
health and economic beneits from the stem cell revolution.
Science funding in Australia has been very lat and there is
a current capacity crisis. Although stem cell science has been well
supported, Australia is now well behind the rest of the world
in moving basic science discoveries into clinical trials. There is
a worry that we will slip further behind if funding for stem cell
research and translation is not restructured.
New therapies take time to emerge, leading to tension
between public expectations for access to new experimental
therapies and the ability of medical science to deliver on their
safety and eicacy. The normal route is through clinical trials
with randomised patients receiving a control treatment. These
are time-consuming and expensive, and come with crippling
administrative burdens.
However, some clinics are offering unproven therapies to
vulnerable patients for proit, with no obligation to meet normal
standards for the manufacture and delivery of therapeutics or
to report indings that contribute to scientiic knowledge. Their
business models offer a single therapy for a range of disease

states, from autism to cancer, and use the internet, social media
and unveriiable patient anecdotes to recruit new patients. This
pseudoscience is a growing problem in Australia under permissive legislation that thankfully is under review.
Japan has taken the bold step of streamlining the clinical
trials registration process by relaxing requirements for high
level evidence of safety and allowing the market to determine
clinical eicacy. This model is driven by economic imperatives
and is a worrisome departure from the evidence-based medicine
to which we must aspire.

It would be unthinkable if Australia

missed out on the benefits of the
stem cell revolution and allowed
stem cell tourism to flourish.
It would be unthinkable if Australia missed out on the beneits of the stem cell revolution and allowed stem cell tourism to
lourish. We must maintain our excellent international proile
in fundamental stem cell science and critical human capacity.
Immediate action is needed to inject optimism into the
Australian science culture to stop our best minds from going
overseas or leaving science altogether.
Universities, medical research institutes and hospitals must
champion lagship centres of excellence that amalgamate interdisciplinary discovery science with translational research and
clinical trials capacity, and have the capacity to train a new
generation of researchers who work seamlessly across these
spaces. We must develop new funding models that engage
industry as well as government funding bodies.
New ways to fund clinical trials are also needed so that
patients have improved access in Australia and dont seek out
bogus clinics. Government must also legislate to establish acceptable boundaries of ethical practice for the provision and commercialisation of stem cell therapies, and must arm its regulators with
the teeth to effectively oversee this.
The report of the Theo Murphy Think Tank is timely.
There is a lot of work ahead to maintain our legacy in stem cell
science and convince government and the public that the
promise of stem cell science is a value proposition.
We look forward to what the emerging National Innovation and Science Agenda will deliver in the way of much-needed
relief and a long-term vision for this sector.
Richard Harvey, Martin Pera and Megan Munsie are Chief Investigator, Program Leader and
Associate Investigator, respectively, for Stem Cells Australia.

MAY 2016 |

| 39

EXPERT OPINION

Australian Science Media Centre

Second Genetically Modified Human Embryos Created

A second case of gene editing of human embryos has attempted to introduce resistance to
HIV infection, but only four of the 26 embryos were modified successfully.
The original paper in the Journal of Assisted Reproduction and Genetics can be downladed from http://tinyurl.com/jzh3xbp

These Chinese researchers are trying to perfect the art of modifying genetic expression in human embryos. It follows on from a
similar publication last year, also from China, which demonstrated... that genetic changes can be made but cannot be controlled.
The implication is that if the embryo was implanted and a baby
eventually born, the genetic makeup would be uncertain.
This is very different from pre-implantation genetic testing
carried out in Australia and other countries, which allows selection of a normal embryo during in vitro fertilisation for couples
who both carry genes for a disorder, such as cystic ibrosis. There
is no genetic manipulation with this method.
For ethical reasons, the embryos used were abnormal, and
not likely ever to develop into a foetus if implanted in the uterus.
That in itself raises the question of whether the outcome of the
experiments has clinical relevance, as others have previously shown
that abnormal gametes are most unlikely to develop into a normal
embryo.
Professor Bernie Tuch is Director of the NSW Stem Cell Network and an Honorary Professor
at the University of Sydney.

This paper is clearly looking toward human reproductive uses of

this technology, about which there has been insuicient national
and international discussion and debate, both within the scientiic community and between the scientiic community and the
general public, and about which there is no consensus.
Even if it is ultimately determined in some jurisdictions that
this technology is appropriate for use in human reproduction, it
is unclear whether enhancement applications, such as introducing
HIV resistance, will be among the approved uses. HIV can currently
be both prevented and effectively treated, raising the question of
whether it is an appropriate target for human germline genome
editing, in particular in advance of applications to mitigate or
avoid serious early-onset disease.
This paper, as with the 2015 paper, demonstrates the diiculties of applying CRISPR/Cas9 to human embryos, though
imperfectly given the triploid status of the embryos used... Work
on normal human embryos, focused on questions of basic human
biology, is more likely to produce useful data.
Dr Debra Mathews is Assistant Director of Science Programs at the Johns Hopkins Berman
Institute of Bioethics, USA.

The paper is very similar to the previous work published in

Protein & Cell, in that embryos not suitable for reproductive
purposes were used for the experiments. The embryos used in
this report inherited an entire extra haploid genome from the
father, whereas normal embryos will only inherit one haploid
genome from the mother and one haploid genome from the father.
40 |

MAY 2016

The consequences of this additional genetic material on the accuracy and eiciency of human embryo genome editing is unclear,
and this paper provides no insight into this important question...
Viable embryos donated to research are the only option for
addressing the eicacy and improving the accuracy of gene editing
in human embryos.
The newly published work was performed with institutional
ethics approval, and further conirms that the ield does not have
the correct technical know-how to begin proof-of-principle experiments to correct genes in pre-implantation embryos for therapeutic
beneit. Critically, no gene-edited embryos were used to make a
baby. Making a baby from gene-edited embryos by transferring the
edited embryos to a womans uterus is a very bright ethical line that
should not be crossed until the technology is proven safe and
following an open discussion as to the beneit to society.
Dr Amander Clark is Professor of Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology at the University
of California, Los Angeles, USA.

This paper is the second publication to describe attempts at

modifying the human germline... The new study attempts to edit
a gene involved in HIV. Some people have naturally occurring
mutations in the CCR5 gene which render those individuals
resistant to HIV infection. Thus, using gene editing to create
individuals with the CCR5 mutation would provide natural
protection against HIV.
The new study follows essentially the same path as the irst
study; using the CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing system in tripronuclear embryos that are discarded by fertility clinics. Patients
attending such clinics gave permission to donate these embryos
for research.
The results are both comforting and disturbing. The good
news is that the technique worked for this group in the same way
that it did for the irst group. This indicates the reproducibility
of the science... [and] should inspire conidence in the public.
However, this group of researchers also reproduced another inding
described by the irst group, namely that this type of gene editing
also causes off-target effects.
Notwithstanding the use of tripronuclear embryos that clearly
arent the same as normal embryos that can develop properly, the
salutary lesson is that there is still much to be learned about gene
editing in human embryos before it is ready for prime time. Studies
in mice and non-human primates will undoubtedly be informative but ultimately it will be studies like the ones just published using
donated human embryos that will give us the most understanding.
Dr Peter Donovan is Professor of Biological Chemistry and of Developmental and Cell Biology
at the University of California, Irvine, USA.

NEUROPSY
Gage Skidmore

Tim Hannan

Deconstructing the Donald

Donald Trumps appeal to voters may be
explained by a preference for authoritarian
anti-establishment leaders.
To many observers, the success of Donald Trump in the Republican primaries has been bewildering, if not frankly terrifying.
While his candidacy has featured viliication of ethnic minorities and immigrants, sexist remarks and aggressive language, it
has seemed that these displays have not deterred his supporters.
Attempts by media commentators to explain his popularity
have largely focused on the appeal of his policies to speciic
sectors of the American population. Some psychologists are
now speculating that a better explanation lies in examining the
impact of his caustic language.
In his 2013 book Angry White Men, the American sociologist Michael Kimmel described the rage of men who perceive
themselves to have been dispossessed of their natural right to
power and privilege. He argued that this sense of loss has engendered the cultural construction of aggrieved entitlement,
with these men attributing their personal disadvantage to those
they viewed as different ethnic minorities, immigrants, nonChristians, and those whose preferences are other than heterosexual. According to this theory, Trumps popularity results
from his ability to speak to these angry white men, and to be seen
as their champion in the ight against others.
Yet Trumps nationalistic appeal to white men seems insuicient to account for the breadth of his following. According to
exit polls, his supporters are not predominantly men, with some
surveys suggesting more than half are women. Nor are his
followers all white or of lower socioeconomic levels: surveys
have demonstrated that his supporters represent the full demographics of conservative voters. And, of course, Trump is far
from the only candidate to exploit nationalistic, arch-conservative sentiments.
Perhaps the dominant feature of Trumps candidacy is his
marked refusal to comply with the usual expectations of conduct
for presidential candidates, as exempliied by his willingness to
use aggressive and defamatory terms to attack various targets.
He has attributed crime to immigrants and speciic minorities,

saying the overwhelming amount of violent crime in our major

cities is committed by blacks and Hispanics and When Mexico
sends its people theyre bringing drugs, theyre bringing crime,
theyre rapists. Linking Islam to terrorism, he has promised
a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United
States, and that If Obama has brought some to this country,
they are leaving, theyre going, theyre gone.
He has asserted the beneits of aggression, saying of a protester
at a rally: Id like to punch him in the face, and declaring I
could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldnt lose any voters. His comments on women,
especially those in the media, have ranged from the merely
demeaning to the blatantly misogynistic.
Given the character and frequency of such remarks, psychologists have speculated that Trumps unexpected appeal may be
engendered by the very outrageousness of his language and
behaviour. Two psychological dispositions have been proposed
to drive the response of his supporters: anti-establishment preferences and authoritarianism.
In the irst case, uncharacteristically extreme behaviour reinforces the message that a candidate is an outsider and not
part of the establishment, which is perceived by some to be
working against their interests. Thus, Trumps campaign slogan
Make America Great Again is a promise to reverse those
economic, social or other changes that some perceive to be the
cause of their personal dissatisfaction.
Secondly, aggressive behaviour and language appeals to
authoritarian predispositions among voters. A candidate who
presents as dominant, successful and unyielding is perceived as
a strong leader able to wage a battle for them against their identiied opposition.
The American psychologist Jay Frankel describes this as a
case of identifying with the aggressor: when people feel insecure, whether due to fears of terrorism, economic threats or
social changes, they seek strength. Candidates can exploit this
disposition by exaggerating the threat, and presenting themselves as the champion of traditional American values.
Trumps success in the majority of the Republican primaries
demonstrates that vulgar and aggressive language and behaviour may be seen as a strength by voters, especially those feeling
aggrieved at a perceived loss of entitlement or privilege.
Whether this discovery inluences campaigning in future
Australian and New Zealand elections will be of interest. While
the odd conservative shock jock who has called Middle Eastern
males vermin and asserted that women are destroying the
joint may retain a healthy radio audience, we have not seen
mainstream political candidates display such a marked refusal
to follow accepted rules of conduct. At least, not yet.
A/Prof Tim Hannan is Head of the School of Psychology at Charles Sturt University, and the
Past President of the Australian Psychological Society.

MAY 2016 |

| 41

THE FIT

Tim Olds

Pure, White, But Maybe Not So Deadly

Is there something uniquely unhealthy about sugar above and beyond the excess calories?
There are some personal matters one is reticent about putting
into print in a national magazine, but here is one: I take three
sugars in my tea. I will also confess that breakfast cereal for me is
pretty much just a vehicle for cream and sugar. So Ive been a little
alarmed by the recent controversies around sugar and sugar taxes.
Sugars are carbohydrates with a caloric density of about 16 kJ
per gram. Table sugar (sucrose) is a combination of glucose and
fructose. These sugars have slightly different molecular structures,
and are broken down by different pathways in the body. High-fructose corn syrup, which is derived from corn and is widely used in
the US, particularly in soft drinks, is also a mix of glucose and
fructose but has a slightly different molecular structure to sucrose.
About 20% of calories in the US adult diet come from simple
sugars, of which two-thirds is in the form of added sugars (table
sugar and sugars added during manufacturing) and the rest from
naturally occurring simple sugars (such as in honey and fruit). In
the US, about one-third of all added sugars come from sugarsweetened drinks. The World Health Organization suggests that
no more than 10% of total energy intake, and preferably no more
than 5%, should come from simple sugars.
Its notoriously diicult to put together reliable data on trends
in diet, but economic and dietary survey data indicate that
consumption of added sugars has been falling for the past 15 years
in the US and UK, and perhaps Australia.
There are two broad mechanisms proposed as to why sugar
might be harmful for health. The most obvious one is that sugar
provides excess calories, which in turn leads to obesity and obesityrelated diseases. The second is that there is something uniquely bad
about sugar above and beyond the excess calories. The consequences of high-sugar diets, it is argued, are worse than the consequences of equally calorie-excessive high-fat diets.
One version of this latter approach argues that the culprit is fructose. The fructose hypothesis is based largely on epidemiological
evidence increases in the use of high-fructose corn syrup mirrored
increases in obesity and studies in rodents and humans using pure
fructose.
But the fructose hypothesis has been strongly criticised by the
dietary establishment. The UKs Scientiic Advisory Committee
on Nutrition in 2015 concluded that there is insuicient evidence
to demonstrate that fructose intake ... leads to adverse health
outcomes independent of any effects related to its presence as a
component of total and free sugars. The American Medical Association and the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics agree.
The epidemiological evidence linking fructose intake to obesity
is particularly weak: spurious ecological correlations of this sort
are very common. For example, over the period 200009, cheese
consumption in the US was very highly correlated with deaths
42 |

MAY 2016

caused by entanglement in bedsheets. Of more relevance is a

decline in fructose consumption since 1999 while obesity rates have
continued to increase.
The clinical trial data have also been criticised for using excessive amounts of fructose sometimes ive times greater than the
average US consumption and three times greater than the amount
of sugar consumed by the top 5% of US consumers. Feeding
people only fructose or only glucose also doesnt mimic the way
we actually eat we almost always consume a mix of fructose and
glucose. Its a bit like feeding someone nothing but bananas for a
week, and concluding that bananas are bad for us.
Finally, trials in which normal sugar intake was replaced with
fructose without changing the total number of calories reported
no effect on weight gain, blood pressure, internal fat or blood
sugar or insulin levels. Therefore it seems that eating fructose in
typical amounts does not lead to adverse health consequences or
increase the risk of heart disease, diabetes or obesity over and
above the effects of increased caloric intake.
Yet it has been suggested that its easier to over-consume sugar,
particularly in liquid form, than other types of food. Sugar may
also bypass some of the complex mechanisms that tell us weve
had enough.
But theres not a great deal of evidence to support this hypothesis. Sugars trigger satiety in much the same way as other nutrients.
While fructose only results in small increases in insulin (a satiety
signal), other mechanisms kick in so satiety is much the same as
for glucose. Soft drinks suppress appetite to the same extent as
the same number of calories consumed as milk or fruit juice.
Its possible, however, that calories consumed in liquid form
suppress appetite less than the same amount of calories consumed
in solid form. In particular, thirst may trump hunger, and we may
drink calorie-rich beverages to conquer thirst, the excess calories
being collateral damage.
All this doesnt mean that its OK to eat as much sugar as you
like, or that reducing sugar intake, even through sugar taxes, is
not a good strategy for reducing energy intake and obesity-related
diseases. (I personally think its worth a go, but dont expect miracles.) It probably does mean, however, that theres nothing particularly deadly about sugar (or fructose, or soft drinks) per se, and
that associations between sugar intake and poor health are probably just a matter of excess calories.
So now I can have a cup of tea, which as I mentioned I take with
just one sugar.
Tim Olds leads the Health and Use of Time Group at the Sansom Institute for Health
Research, University of South Australia. He has received funding from Coca-Cola
Corporation for conference travel and accommodation, the National Health and Medical
Research Council, the Australian Research Council, Beyond Blue, SA Health, the Department
of Health and Ageing, the Australian Food and Grocery Council, the Financial Markets for
Children Fund, and Channel 7.

THE FOSSIL FILE

John Long

When Will Australia Get Its First Real Mounted Dinosaur?

Australian museums dont display any dinosaurs mounted from real bones into a life-like position.
While Australias state museums have a great reputation for the hip. Much new material of this giant and its cousin Diamanthe quality of their displays, theres still one big thing missing tinasaurus is currently being prepared. Perhaps soon one will
from all our galleries of past life: a dinosaur skeleton. Not a be a suitable candidate for the full mounted treatment.
In Australia we spend a fraction of what any mid-sized
replica, but a real one. Not one museum in Australia has ever
mounted a real dinosaur skeleton for public display. Instead museum in the USA would spend on such a gallery. An average
we mount replicas that have been restored and modiied to large new exhibition gallery in an Australian state museum
might costs A$25 million, not US$1220 million like the
show what the creature might have looked like.
Real dinosaur skeletons are a true thing of awe and amaze- LACMs three new galleries in its recent redevelopment. The
ment to behold. The Tyrannosaurus at the American Museum LACM did all this while working from an annual operating
of Natural History in New York inspired the young Steven Jay budget far less than the two biggest Australian state museums,
albeit with some good old US philanthropy thrown in.
Gould to want to become a palaeontologist.
In 2011 I worked as part of team that created a
new dinosaur gallery for the Los Angeles County
Museum (LACM) in California. We mounted
some 25 dinosaur skeletons into life-like poses, 23
of them largely composed of real skeletons. The
gallery cost around US$14 million, and much of
that went on preparation of the fossils and creating
armatures to mount the bones so they could be
easily removed for study or conservation and to
withstand the earthquakes that LA is famous for.
In Australia we have one articulated real dinosaur
skeleton on display, Kunbarrasaurus (based on a
specimen erroneously called Minmi) at the Queensland Museum in Brisbane. This small animal measuring ~3 metres is displayed as it was found after
preparation.
But we lack any dinosaur mounted from real
bones into a life-like position, as is routinely found
in nearly every North American natural history
museum. Some would argue we lack the specimens
or resources to do that kind of thing here, but its
not true. We lack the kind of commitment and
resource allocation to do it from our state governAllosaurus and Stegosaurus in life-like poses at the Los Angeles County
ment leaders.
Museums dinosaur gallery. Both are real skeleton mounts, which is something
Several Australian museums have mounted we lack in Australian museums.
I hope one day we will get to see a real dinosaur mounted in
replica skeletons of Muttaburrasaurus, an 8-metre plant-eating
ornithopod from Queensland. While the bones have been an Australian museum. Which will be the irst?
Whichever it is, it will certainly reap the big beneits of
prepped up and cast, many like the skull are restored to estimate
their life-like shape. To mount an authentic posture for such increased attendance and shop sales, as the LACM did. Just
a specimen would need further reinforcement of the original 2 years after opening the new fossil mammal and dinosaur
bones, plus a carefully designed armature to support the bones. galleries, it doubled its attendances, raised ticket prices, shop sales
Other possible candidates for a real mounted dinosaur would were up by 80% more, and it greatly improved its bottom line.
currently have to be made from less than 50% of the skeleton Staing increased and salaries increased. Some say it was a
augmented with replica bones to complete the mount. The dinosaur-led economic recovery.
large sauropod Wintonotitan is known from near-complete John Long is Strategic Professor in Palaeontology at Flinders University, and current
front limbs, shoulder girdle, back and tail vertebrae and part of President of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.
MAY 2016 |

| 43

DIRECTIONS

Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering

Rethinking Australias Carbon Abatement Contracts

Australias total net CO2 emissions are much lower than are implied by published numbers.
Australia is often described as one of the worlds leading emitters of carbon dioxide (CO2) a consequence of our small
population, advanced economy and relatively large land area.
Crucially, Australias poor ranking is a consequence of sources
and sinks from the land use and forestry sectors being included
or excluded from the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory.
A carbon sink is anything that absorbs more carbon than it
releases, while a carbon source is anything that releases more
carbon than it absorbs. Forests, soils, oceans and the atmosphere all store carbon, which moves between them in a continuous cycle.
However, huge areas of native vegetation have not been
taken into account when compiling Australias carbon budgets.
The nation has essentially reported CO2 emissions that have
been measured and directly identiied with human activities
rather than those that mirror Australias true input to CO2
content in the global atmosphere.
A less selective and more meaningful analysis of CO2 luxes
would report net emissions when all known sinks (sequestered
amounts) of CO2 are subtracted from all known sources.
Satellite-based spectral sensors now enable net CO2 emissions to be measured with accuracy and precision. The fact that
we are an island continent adds to the integrity of the values
reported (compared with countries in Europe, for example,
where a nations air mass can cross borders at daily or even
shorter time intervals).

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44 |

MAY 2016

Two such satellites monitor CO2 in the atmosphere today:

Japans GOSAT and NASAs OCO-2, which both record CO2
from the top of the Earths atmosphere to its surface. The satellites sensors integrate the net atmospheric contributions from
all CO2 sources and sinks, with no distinction made as to
whether the recorded gas is anthropogenic or naturally occurring. Clearly the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere,
rather than its origin, is of most interest when monitoring it.
Prior to these space-based observations, carbon luxes derived
from ground-based measurements were problematic. This
notably applied to observations made for the land use and
forestry sectors. To determine carbon luxes in vegetation from
ield data it is necessary to obtain sequential recordings of carbon
stocks in the above-ground and below-ground components of
the vegetation, as well as in the soil supporting it.
Sampling problems are immense, particularly in native plant
communities. At any time weather patterns, vegetation age and
disturbances such as clearing, harvesting, ire and grazing can
impact the lux being estimated.
Only space-based measurements can provide the robustness,
spatial coverage and sampling density and frequency, as well as
the accuracy and precision necessary, to determine the Australiawide lux of CO2.
Results from GOSAT and OCO-2 missions have been slow
to be published, but two recent data sets suggest that Australia
would be wise to embrace the technology and its outputs, especially given the signiicant budget allocations set aside by the
Australian government to buy carbon abatement contracts.
Why has the government committed up to $2.5 billion to
purchase these contracts? The irst two offer rounds appear to
be mostly based on modelling of native vegetation systems, with
questionable accuracy and precision surrounding the inputs.
Published GOSAT measurements, along with OCO-2 sensor
data, suggest that Australias total net CO2 emissions are much
lower than has been implied by the National Greenhouse Gas
Inventory. Averaged across years we are very likely to act as a net
sink. These conclusions are supported by convincing evidence
of increases in woody plant cover in Australias intact woodlands and shrublands.
Why pay $2 billion or more for carbon abatement contracts
with greatly limited land coverage when a spatially comprehensive, accurate and precise accounting of net CO2 luxes for
all of the Australian continent can be derived from satellite
sensors at minimal cost to Australias budget?
Dr Bill Burrows FTSE is a retired Senior Principal Scientist in the Queensland Department of
Primary Industries, where he studied the ecology and management of Queenslands grazed
woodland communities.

OUT OF THIS WORLD

David Reneke

A Baby Earth in the Making

Recently released images from the Atacama Large Millimetre/
submillimetre Array (ALMA) have revealed never-before-seen
details of what astronomers believe may be a baby Earth or an
even more massive super-Earth forming.
The images show a planet-forming disc around TW Hydrae,
a Sun-like star close to Earth. The planet is about 10 million years
old, making it a veritable newborn, loating in a ring of planetforming material. Combined with its close proximity to Earth,
TW Hydrae has become a popular study subject for researchers.
The developing planet is about 175 light years away and has a
face-on orientation that provides a rare, undistorted view of the
complete disc. Most proiles give a more oblique and indistinct
outline.
Previous studies with optical and radio telescopes conirm
that this star hosts a prominent disc with features that strongly
suggest planets are beginning to coalesce, said lead researcher Sean
Andrews. The new ALMA images show the disc in unprecedented detail, revealing a series of concentric dusty bright rings
and dark gaps, intriguing features that suggest a planet with an
Earth-like orbit is forming there.
Pronounced gaps near the star are 3 billion and 6 billion km from
the central stars, which are similar distances from the Sun to
Uranus and Pluto. These are also likely the result of particles that
came together and formed planets before sweeping their orbits

Credit: S. Andrews (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA)

This ALMA image shows the planet-forming disc TW Hydrae. The

image inset zooms in on the gap to the nearest to the star, which
is the same distance as the Earth is from the Sun.

clear of dust and gas before corralling the remaining material into
bands.
Scientists believe that studying young star systems like TW
Hydrae can help them learn about our own solar systems past. It
provides a snapshot of when things got started around here about
5 billion years ago. TW Hydrae is quite special. It is the nearest
known proto-planetary disc to Earth and it may closely resemble
the solar system when it was only 10 million years old, co-author
David Wilner said.
By studying TW Hydrae, astronomers hope to get a better
understanding of Earths evolution and prospects for similar
systems throughout the galaxy. Astronomers are now trying to
ind out how common these features are in discs around other
young stars and how they may change in the future.

David Reneke is an astronomy lecturer and teacher, a feature writer for major Australian newspapers and magazines, and a science correspondent for ABC and commercial radio.
Subscribe to Davids free Astro-Space newsletter at www.davidreneke.com

Saturns Moons May Be Younger than the Dinosaurs

New research suggests that the birth of Saturns icy moons, as well as its
famous rings, may have taken place a mere 100 million years ago, more
recent than the reign of many dinosaurs.
Moons are always changing their orbits. Thats inevitable, says
Matija Cuk, principal investigator at the SETI Institute. But that fact
allows us to use computer simulations to tease out the history of Saturns
inner moons. We find that they were most likely born during the most
recent 2% of the planets history.
While Saturns rings have been known since the 1600s, theres still
debate about their age. The straightforward assumption is that they are
primordial, as old as the planet itself, which is more than four billion
years.However, in 2012 French astronomers found that tidal effects are
causing them to spiral to larger orbital radii comparatively quickly. The
implication, given their present positions, is that these moons, and
presumably the rings, are a recent phenomena.
Cuks team used computer modelling to infer the past dynamic
behaviour of Saturns icy inner moons. While our own moon has its orbit
around Earth to itself, Saturns many satellites have to share space with
each other. All of their orbits slowly grow due to tidal effects, but at
different rates.
This close orbital resonancemeans that even small moons with
weak gravity can strongly affect each others orbits, making them more
elongated and tilting them out of their original orbital plane. By

comparing present orbital tilts and those predicted by computer

simulations, the researchers could determine by how much the orbits of
Saturns moons grew.
The relatively small orbital tilts found indicate that they havent
crossed many orbital resonances, so they must have formed not far from
where they are now. But how long ago was their birth?
NASAs Cassini mission helped to answer this question when it saw ice
geysers on Saturns moon Enceladus. Assuming that the energy powering
these geysers comes directly from tidal interactions, then the tides
within Saturn are quite strong. Analysis suggests these would move the
satellite by the small amount indicated by the simulations in only about
100 million years.
This would date the formation of the major moons of Saturn, with the
exception of more distant Titan and Iapetus, to the relatively recent
Cretaceous Period:the era of the dinosaurs.
So the question arises, what caused the recent birth of the inner
moons? asks Cuk. Our best guess is that Saturn had a similar collection
of moons before, but their orbits were disturbed by a special kind of
orbital resonance involving Saturns motion around the Sun. Eventually,
the orbits of neighbouring moons crossed, and these objects collided.
From this rubble, the present set of moons and rings formed.
If this result is correct, Saturns bright rings may be younger than the
heyday of the dinosaurs, and we are fortunate to witness them today.
MAY 2016 |

| 45

THE BITTER PILL

Friends of Science in Medicine

An EEG Only Scratches the Surface of the Brain

Chiropractors claim that functional neurology can treat conditions ranging from epilepsy and
Alzheimers disease to autism and stroke, but the technology they use isnt up to the task.
The Australian chiropractic community is being scrutinised
more than ever before. Its private and public health funding
has been questioned as this billion-dollar industry struggles to
prove its effectiveness. Universities teaching chiropractic have
also come under ire from lobbying groups that insist that pseudoscientiic health courses should be dropped.
In an effort to stem the bleeding, chiropractors in Australia
are increasingly diversifying their services. Such attempts usually
centre on techniques that appear complex on face value.
One example of this is functional neurology, practitioners of
which claim they can treat a plethora of conditions by using
electroencephalography (EEG) to locate and treat weak areas
of the brain. These weak areas are then magically improved
with a combination of chiropractic adjustments, brain training,
massage and even diet.

So here we have a treatment based

on the premise that the whole brain
is scanned to identify weak areas
but it uses a tool that cant
accurately measure the whole brain.
The claims that practitioners make about health conditions
they can supposedly treat are strange and dangerous. Such claims
include Alzheimers, Parkinsons, heart arrhythmias, epilepsy,
multiple sclerosis, peripheral neuropathies and strokes. These
are all serious health conditions that usually require a team of
trained medical personnel to diagnose and treat. If the treatment of any of them was left solely to an individual who practices functional neurology, the consequences would be dire for
the patient.
A typical client would not understand the mechanisms of
brain scanning technology and thus be able to evaluate the legitimacy of the claims. A lay person wouldnt immediately link
these kinds of techniques to chiropractic, and this serves to
establish some kind of legitimacy in the clients mind, but there
is no credible scientiic research whatsoever to back up any
claims made by the proponents of functional neurology. The ield
itself is a simple rebranding something called chiropractic
neurology, and uses endless word salads in an effort to suggest
scientiic credibility. Practitioners of this brand of pseudoscience often rely on testimonials and junk science to sell their
product and themselves.
46 |

MAY 2016

What should stand as warnings to anyone thinking of trying

functional neurology are the disclaimers at the bottom of the
web pages of clinics offering functional neurology. For example,
the disclaimer published by the Australasian Academy of Functional Neurology (http://www.aafn.org.au) states that the practitioners.... are not medically trained, the information is not
meant to convey a medically trained opinion, or speciically a
medical neurologist [sic] expert opinion, and that Patients
who attend for functional neurology services should seek a
second opinion from a registered specialist neurologist or medical
practitioner.
While chiropractors may believe that these disclaimers establish them as valid members of the allied health community,
claims that these techniques are effective make a mockery of
the substantial training and expertise required to identify and
diagnose these complex disorders.
EEGs do allow electrical activity of the brain along the scalp
to be recorded, but the extraordinary hubris of those who practice functional neurology is revealed by the very tool that is the
lagship of their whole operation.
EEGs are wonderful and legitimate tools, but they have one
very important drawback. They measure brain activity below the
upper layers of the brain very poorly. So here we have a treatment based on the premise that the whole brain is scanned to
identify weak areas but it uses a tool that cant accurately measure
the whole brain.
In addition, the resolution of the EEG is poor and the
proclaimed correspondence between brain regions and functional abilities is far from established in the scientiic literature.
This is why EEGs are only typically used to identify seizure
activity and not measure brain morphology or functional abilities. This requires much higher resolution such as functional
magnetic resonance imaging.
While EEGs are often used in psychological research to look
at differences in brain activity between brain hemispheres, no
psychologist with even a rudimentary understanding of the
brain would claim that these trace readings correspond to
complex behavioural disorders such as ADHD and autism spectrum disorder. Unfortunately for these chiropractors, neurologists, neuropsychologists and medical professionals do
understand this technology, and can easily refute these claims.
Marko Petrovic is an exercise physiologist who is currently studying Mechanical Engineering
at Curtin University.

THE NAKED SKEPTIC

Peter Bowditch

Smart People, Strange Ideas

Even people who are rational about most matters can hold opinions that arent supported by
science or even common sense.
When Michael Shermer revised his book Why People Believe
Weird Things for its second edition, he added a chapter titled
Why Smart People Believe Weird Things. His point was
that even people who are quite competent and rational in their
thinking about most matters can hold opinions or beliefs that
are not supported by science, logic or even common sense.
The usual example of this is religious scientists who manage
to comfortably believe in miracles and supernatural beings.
Im with Stephen Jay Gould on this religion and science are
different, and faith is about belief without evidence. My concern
here is people who are selective about the science they accept.
Many of my skeptical friends can be quite scathing in their
criticism of television programs like CSI for the way they misrepresent the reality or the practice of science. Simultaneously,
these people are great fans of science iction shows in which the
laws of the universe can be comfortable ignored and the ability
of scientists comes very close to miraculous. This isnt normally
a problem, but occasionally they seem to confuse iction and
reality.
The speciic example Ive seen recently is that the colonisation of Mars became a real possibility when Elon Musks
SpaceX organisation managed to recover a booster rocket. I
thoroughly enjoyed Ray Bradburys The Martian Chronicles and
I think Life on Mars was David Bowies best song, but the sort
of problems that could theoretically be solved by humans
moving to Mars can be solved much more feasibly, practically
and affordably right here on Earth.
Mention of Elon Musk reminds me of another strange
aspect of the world of skepticism hero worship or the cult
of personality. There are some people for whom criticism can
attract a hostile reaction. I was severely reprimanded once by
a group for commenting on the overuse of logical fallacies in
Richard Dawkins book The God Delusion, and you have to
be very careful if you want to suggest there is an air of fantasy
about Ray Kurzweils predictions about the imminent hybridisation of humans and computers or the notion that Tesla cars
and batteries are about to solve the worlds transportation and
energy problems.
The person Ive seen most recently enthusing about Mars
colonisation is a very strong proponent of the use of renewable energy resources in the battle against climate change.
This brings me to another anomaly smart people who are
climate change deniers. Im always amazed when people will
accept, for example, that the science of vaccination is settled
despite there being doubters but who are suspicious of claims
that climate is changing and that humans might have some-

thing to do with this. In an extreme case, one state branch of

Australian Skeptics devoted almost all its website to denialist
claims.
Its not just scientists or real skeptics who exhibit this inconsistency. I participate in some face-to-face philosophy forums
where people address and consider quite diicult problems in
logic, ontology and epistemology.
After a recent talk someone mentioned climate change. I
commented about the systematic changes in plant lowering
and animal reproduction occurring as rainfall and temperature
patterns changed over the past few decades. He said: Weather,
which should have been a red lag. I mentioned that one of the
major power stations in the Snowy Mountains Scheme has
been mothballed because the change in snow distribution has
meant that there isnt enough water to keep it running. He
said, Weather even louder.
Within minutes I was surrounded by four people talking
over each other with denialist clichs, each repeating what the
others had said in case I hadnt heard it the irst time. Here are
some of the things said, which are sadly very familiar to anyone
who has followed this non-debate for any length of time.
There has been no warming of the planet for the past
17 years.
Atmospheric scientists who spoke the truth about the hoax
would lose funding.
If a volcano went off it wouldnt matter what we did.
Weather!!!
Its not possible for humans to affect weather or climate.
Reports of global warming are based on faulty measurements.
The majority of scientists agree that climate change is not
happening.
30,000 scientists signed a petition.
The climate has always changed, just as it is doing now.
Maverick scientists are persecuted and their freedom of
speech compromised.
Its based on modelling, and the models arent 100% accurate.
It was all there the cherry picking of data, the paranoia
about suppression, the inconsistencies, the fallacies, the hopelessness of any action, the rejection or misrepresentation of
facts...
At least they didnt call themselves skeptics, although I
wouldnt be surprised if they reached a consensus of victory
over this warmist when I inally gave up and walked away.
Peter Bowditch is a former President of Australian Skeptics Inc. (www.skeptics.com.au).

MAY 2016 |

| 47

ECOLOGIC

Whats in a Name?
Inconsistent classification of species introduces
systematic bias to ecological studies.
Woodland birds are bird species that depend on native woodlands. Unfortunately, woodlands have been widely cleared for
agriculture and urban development, leading to a widespread belief
that woodland birds must be declining.
Many have studied the decline of woodland birds, most
commonly the effect of changing tree cover and fragmentation.
The results of these studies vary. Some ind evidence of decline;
others dispute that a decline is taking place.

Is the black-faced woodswallow a woodland bird? Its name

suggests it is, yet it is classified as a woodland bird in only
37.5% of lists. Credit: Eric Vanderuys

Similarly, the nature of the relationship between woodland

birds and tree cover and fragmentation varies substantially too.
These differences might be due to regional or scale differences
between studies, but could there also be underlying disagreement
about what actually constitutes a woodland bird?
In ecology, there have been sporadic efforts to promote consistency in terminology but little progress. Inconsistent terminology
can lead to a range of problems, including diiculties in inding
relevant studies, redundant investigations and an inability to
synthesise across studies. It can also create problems when communicating indings to other scientists, policy-makers and the public.
How important is consistent terminology when it comes to
determining the conservation status and trends of a group of birds
loosely referred to as woodland birds? To answer this question,
I led an investigation that systematically reviewed the literature and
compiled a set of 38 lists of woodland birds. This allowed us to work
out how consistently each species was classiied as a woodland
bird.
We found that eight species were always classiied as woodland birds and 13 species were always classiied as non-woodland
birds. The remaining 144 species were sometimes classiied as
woodland birds and sometimes as non-woodland birds. This
surprised us, as we had expected that only a few, less-understood
species would be classiied inconsistently.
48 |

MAY 2016

Hannah Fraser

We surveyed the authors of the papers we had reviewed and

found that the main reasons researchers classify different species
as woodland birds were:
different aims of research: researchers tailor their list of
woodland birds to include species they expect to respond
most strongly to the phenomenon they are interested in;
disagreement about what a woodland is; and
disagreement about how to determine which birds depend
on woodlands.
What impact does this have? Colleagues have previously
used a subset of species that they considered to be woodland birds
to model the effect of habitat aggregation (the inverse of habitat
fragmentation) on the occurrence of woodland birds. We reran their model, irst using the entire complement of species and
then using different subsets to emulate the effect of being
increasingly selective about which species are considered woodland birds.
We found that as we become more selective about which
species are included, the estimated effect of tree cover aggregation increases. Our analysis revealed a systematic bias in results
whereby studies that are less selective about which species are
woodland birds are likely to obtain different results (probably
with lower effect sizes) than those that are very selective about
their classiication. In other words, how you deine woodland
bird species has an important bearing on the results you obtain.
What does this mean? When comparing results from studies
using different classiications its impossible to know whether
differences are attributable to data collection, the survey area
or analyses, or whether they are due to differences in classiication. This essentially renders all studies with non-identical lists
incomparable.
This is particularly problematic when trying to understand
woodland bird ecology or predict how they will react to management. Only a small subset of research uses identical lists of woodland birds, so researchers must choose between including all
available information (which risks confounding results due to
differences in classiication) or only including studies that use the
same list of woodland birds (which risks the exclusion of valuable insights from other studies).
So what should we do? Our analysis leads us to suggest that
woodland bird researchers should unite behind a single deinition and list of woodland birds. We also believe that this is an
approach that would be beneicial to ecology as a whole.
Its unlikely that woodland bird research is the only realm of
ecology where terms are being used inconsistently and clouding
results. If our indings hold true for other terms, we believe that
its extremely important to develop a consistent deinitions of
these terms.
Hannah Fraser is a member of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions
(CEED). She was based at the University of Melbourne for this research.

LOWE TECH

Ian Lowe

The Electric Vehicle Challenge

Installations of solar and wind energy will need to maintain their pace to ensure that the coming
demand for electric vehicles wont be powered by fossil fuels.
There is good news and bad news about the Australian electricity system. The bad news is that total electricity demand,
which had been stable for a few years, has increased signiicantly in the past year. The environmental impact of this growth
has been compounded by a larger share of the power coming
from coal-ired generators. Down to 72% in 201314 when
we had a price on carbon dioxide emitted, coal accounted for
76% of the generation last year.
The other worrying factor is that the growth in electricity
use is almost entirely due to the coal seam gas industry in
Queensland, a combination of the power being used to develop
the gas ields and the need to liquefy the gas for export. Its

CC BY-SA 2.0

been projected that the coal seam gas industry will add about
8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year to Australias emissions when it becomes fully operational.
The good news is that the harnessing of solar energy continues
to expand. Curtin Universitys sustainability professor Peter
Newman recently commented on the number of solar panels
now being used in the south-west of Western Australia, covering
the greater Perth region. About 20% of homes there now have
solar cells on the roof, generating about 500 MW of peak power.
This makes the combined power production the largest power
station in WA, Newman said. The output of solar panels is
equivalent to about 15% of the greatest peak demand last year.
The expansion of air conditioning in buildings means that electricity demand now peaks on summer afternoons, roughly coinciding with the time when solar cells are most productive.
Newman expects that as many as half of the households in the
region will have solar energy installed by 2020.
What we are seeing locally is a relection of the global revolution. Last year the number of new installations of wind (63 GW)

and solar (47 GW) worldwide was comparable with Australias

total installed capacity of wind and solar (about 50 GW). The
growth rates are startling. The new solar generation added 37%
to the 2014 capacity, while wind power grew by 17%. Together
with hydroelectricity, bioenergy, geothermal and marine power
systems, more than 150 GW of renewable generating capacity
was commissioned last year.
That sort of revolution is needed in Australia if the promise
of electric vehicles is to be realised. With more than 75% of
our electricity still coming from coal, electric cars would actually increase greenhouse gas emissions.
The controversy over CSIROs proposed cuts to
public-good science continues to rumble around.
A Senate hearing provoked one senior manager,
Alex Wonhas, to deny the impression that CSIRO
will abandon public-good research. That view was
fuelled by 700 pages of internal documents that
were brought into the open by the Senate inquiry.
The e-mail exchanges between CSIRO managers
contained statements about not doing science
for science sake (sic) and public good is not
enough, needs to be linked to jobs and growth.
One message speciically advocated a clean cut
to get rid of public good / government-funded
climate research on the grounds that anything
less radical would keep some scientists who would
no longer be aligned with the new CSIRO strategy.
As I write, there is still no clear picture of the speciic job
losses. The Senate inquiry was told that the director of the division concerned had proposed cutting 35 scientiic posts in the
climate area, but was told by the chief executive Larry Marshall
that 100 should go. A meeting between Marshall and scientists in the Land and Water division ended with staff walking
out.
Senators questioned Marshall for 2 hours at an early April
Senate hearing, but Senator Janet Rice described the CEO as
completely evasive. It came out that senior managers had
decided at a November 2015 meeting to use private e-mail
addresses to avoid undue stress to other staff.
While Marshalls stated goal is to position CSIRO as an
innovation catalyst, Wonhas assured the Senators that the
organisation remains committed to public-good research. I
hope it is: studies suggest that every dollar spent returns about
$10 to the community.
Ian Lowe is Emeritus Professor of science, technology and society at Griffith University.

MAY 2016 |

| 49

QUANDARY

Adventures on the Dark Side

Cases of sexual attraction are bound to grow
as genetic orphans seek out their missing
parents.
The British press is a fathomless mine of lurid but thoughtprovoking explorations of the dark side of the human condition.
Recently it featured a passionate romance between a 51-yearold British woman and her 32-year-old American son.
Kim West was studying in California when she had a child
out of wedlock. She gave him up for adoption and returned to
England. Nearly 30 years later they were reunited and immediately felt an overwhelming sexual attraction. Ben ended up
abandoning his missus and moving in with his mum. They are
considering having children.
Most people ind this real-life scenario confronting, but it
raises interesting questions about bioethical reasoning.
Post-adoption romance is a poorly-understood but welldocumented phenomenon. In the 1980s an American adoption
counsellor, Barbara Gonyo, coined the term genetic sexual
attraction for these powerful feelings. Two British psychologists interviewed several people in the grip of genetic sexual
attraction who all described a romantic falling in love, intense
and explosive, sudden and almost irresistible.
The psychologists estimated that such feelings are present
about 50% of the time when siblings and parents are reunited.
Their article was published 20 years ago in the British Journal
of Medical Psychology (later renamed Psychology and
Psychotherapy), so its possible that the number of cases has
increased.
A columnist for The Telegraph (London) also pointed out
that the use of anonymous sperm donation could cause a huge
increase in the prevalence of genetic sexual attraction. Children can contact their biological parents as soon as they turn
18, so genetic sexual attraction numbers are bound to grow as
genetic orphans seek out their missing parents.

Make sense of science

Subscribe at austscience.com

Michael Cook

If we have to deal with more genetic sexual attraction in

society, is there anything in the bioethical toolkit to prevent
legalising and normalising incest? Possibly not.
The most widely-accepted theory of bioethics is principalism.
Although we live in an intellectually Balkanised society, it says,
everyone accepts the need for autonomy (informed consent),
beneicence (no harm) and justice (balancing individual and
social rights). These help us reach a consensus on hot-button
issues like IVF, stem cell research or privacy.
Principalism has been a great help in navigating through the
thickets of ethical controversy provoked by new technologies.
However, it sometimes clashes violently with moral intuitions,
our inarticulate gut feel. Genetic sexual attraction is one of
these.
When assessed by each of these principles, genetic sexual
attraction would probably get a tick. Autonomy? Kim and Ben
are consenting adults who understand the issues. Justice? They
have a right to express themselves sexually. Beneicence? They
are not harming each other.
But wouldnt their offspring be at greater risk of birth defects?
Perhaps, but this is disputed. In an article in Criminal Law
and Philosophy, an academic at Rutgers School of Law, Vera
Bergelson, has argued that science does not bear this out:
... it is far from clear that inbreeding presents a threat to society.The
number of serious genetic disorders associated with inbreeding is quite
limited. Moreover, some scientists believe that, in the long run,
populations may suffer from the prevention of consanguineous
marriages ...
In any case, an elevated incidence of genetic defects is clearly
a risk that our society is willing to take. Otherwise we would have
banned IVF. Nor do we ban marriage between people who are
carriers of serious genetic diseases.
Bergelson concludes that the true reason behind the long
history of the incest laws is the feeling of repulsion and disgust
this tabooed practice tends to evoke in the majority of population. However, in the absence of wrongdoing, neither a historic
taboo nor the sense of repulsion and disgust legitimizes criminalization of an act.
That is one conclusion. The other is that principalisms
toolbox is not big enough to deal with genetic sexual attraction.
Perhaps we need to analyse our gut feel more deeply. When
we do, we might see that principalisms attitude to sexuality
and well-being is quite inadequate. Perhaps participants in
genetic sexual attraction are being harmed at a deeper level
than mere sexual satisfaction, to say nothing of their children.
There might be wisdom in the Yuck Factor after all.
Michael Cook is editor of BioEdge, an online bioethics newsletter.

50 |

MAY 2016

AUSTRALASIAN SKY

Dr Andrew Smith, Sydney Observatory

May 2016

Castor
Pollux

P
Jupiter First Quarter
on 15th Moon on 14th
SEXTANS

CANIS MINOR
HYDRA

Sirius

HYDRA
FALSE CROSS
Full Moon
on 22nd

Mars
on 22nd

OPHIUCHUS

SOUTHERN
CROSS

Mimosa

P
Saturn
on 22nd

M4

J
l Box
B
Jewel

Antares

Canopus

POINTERS
Coalsack
Proxima Centauri
M6

M7

ERIDANUS

CHART KEY
Bright star
Faint star
Milky Way
Ecliptic
Celestial Equator
P Planet
LMC or Large Magellanic Cloud
SMC or Small Magellanic Cloud

MOON PHASE
New Moon
First quarter
Full Moon
Last quarter

07th
14th
22nd
29th

THE CHART

HIGHLIGHTS IN MAY 2016

The star chart shows the stars and constellations visible in

the night sky for Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Hobart and
Adelaide for March 2015 at about 9 pm (summer time) and
at about 8 pm (local standard time) for Perth and Brisbane.
For Darwin and similar locations the chart will still apply, but
some stars will be lost off the southern edge while extra stars
will be visible to the north. Stars down to a brightness or
magnitude limit of 4.5 are shown on the star chart. To use
this star chart, rotate the chart so that the direction you are
facing (north, south, east or west) is shown at the bottom.
The centre of the chart represents the point directly above
your head, called the zenith point, and the outer circular
edge represents the horizon.

The Southern Cross is well placed for

observation as it is now high in the south -east.
The brightest star of the Cross, Acrux, is the
closest to the horizon, while the next brightest,
Beta Crucis or Mimosa, is to the east. Jupiter is
located in the northern sky in the constellation
of Leo and is directly next to the crescent moon
on the 15th. Mars and Saturn appears low in the
east in Scorpius, while the full Moon between
the two planets on the 22nd. The Eta Aquariids
meteor shower will occur this month. Look for it
in the eastern sky in the early morning of the 6th.

Sydney Observatory is part of the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences. The Sydney Observatory night sky map was created by Dr M. Anderson using the TheSky
software. This months edition was prepared by Dr Dimitri Douchin. 2016 Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, Sydney.

MAY 2016 |

| 51

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