Intermediate
Galina Zaglumyonova was woken in her flat in central Chelyabinsk by an enormous explosion that blew in the balcony windows and shattered pots containing her houseplants. When she jumped out of bed, she could see a huge vapour trail hanging in the morning sky and hear car alarms from the street below.
I didnt understand what was going on, said Zaglumyonova. There was a big explosion and then a series of little explosions. My first thought was that it was a plane crash.
What she had actually witnessed was a ten-tonne meteorite that fell to Earth in a series of fireballs just after sunrise.
Officials said almost 1,200 people had been injured, with more than 40 taken to hospital  most as a result of flying glass shattered by the sonic boom created by the meteorites fall. There were no reported deaths.
The meteorite entered the atmosphere travelling at a speed of at least 33,000mph and broke up into pieces between 18 and 32 miles above the ground, according to a statement from the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The event caused panic in Chelyabinsk, a city of more than one million people to the south of Russias Ural mountains. A video showed the pieces of meteorite glowing more brightly as they approached the moment of impact. The vapour trail was visible for hundreds of miles around, including in neighbouring Kazakhstan.
Tatyana Bets was at work in the reception area of a hospital clinic in the centre of the city when the meteorite hit. First we noticed the wind, and then the room was filled with a very bright light and we could see a cloud of smoke in the sky, she said. Then, after a few minutes, the explosions came.
At least three craters were discovered, according to the Ministry of the Interior. One crater was more than six metres wide and another piece of the meteorite broke through the thick ice of a nearby lake.
In Chelyabinsk itself, schools and universities were closed and many other staff told to go home early. About 200 children were among the injured.
A steady stream of lightly injured people, most suffering cuts from flying glass, came into the clinic where Bets works. She said a nearby building for college students was particularly badly affected and many of the students were brought in. There were a lot of girls in shock. Some were very pale and many of them fainted, she said.
Early estimates suggested more than 100,000 square metres of glass had been broken and 3,000 buildings hit. The total cost of the damage in the city was being valued at more than one billion roubles (20m).
The meteorite over Chelyabinsk arrived less than a day before asteroid 2012 DA14 was expected to pass Earth very closely (about 17,510 miles). But experts said the two events were not connected.
There were lots of rumours and conspiracy theories, however, in the first few hours after the incident. Reports on Russian state television and in local media suggested that the meteorite was blown apart by local air defence units at an altitude of more than 15 miles.
The ultra-nationalist leader of Russias Liberal Democrat party, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, said it was not a meteorite but military action by the United States. Its not a meteorite falling  its a test of new American weapons, Zhirinovsky said.
Some were quick to take advantage. Enterprising people were offering pieces of meteorite for sale through internet sites within a few hours of the impact.
President Vladimir Putin and the Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev, were informed about the incident, and Putin called a meeting with the head of the Emergency Situations Ministry. Its proof that not only are economies vulnerable but the whole planet, Medvedev said at an economic forum in Siberia.


Swedish prisons have long had a reputation around the world for being progressive. But are the country’s prisons a soft option?
The head of Sweden’s prison and probation service, Nils Oberg, announced in November 2013 that four Swedish prisons are to be closed due to an “out of the ordinary” decline in prisoner numbers.
Although there has been no fall in crime rates, between 2011 and 2012 there was a 6% drop in Sweden’s prisoner population, now a little over 4,500. A similar decrease is expected in 2013 and 2014. Oberg admitted to being puzzled by the unexpected dip, but expressed optimism that the reason was to do with how his prisons are run. “We certainly hope that the efforts we invest in rehabilitation and preventing relapse of crime has had an impact,” he said.
“The modern prison service in Sweden is very different from when I joined as a young prison officer in 1978,” says Kenneth Gustafsson, governor of Kumla Prison, Sweden’s most secure jail, situated 130 miles west of Stockholm. However, he doesn’t think the system has gone soft. “When I joined, the focus was very much on humanity in prisons. Prisoners were treated well – maybe too well, some might say. But, after a number of high-profile escapes in 2004, we had to rebalance and place more emphasis on security.”
Despite the hardening of attitudes toward prison security following the escape scandals, the Swedes still managed to maintain a broadly humane approach to sentencing, even of the most serious offenders: jail terms rarely exceed ten years; those who receive life imprisonment can still apply to the courts after a decade to have the sentence commuted to a fixed term, usually in the region of 18 to 25 years. Sweden was the first country in Europe to introduce the electronic tagging of convicted criminals and continues to strive to minimize short-term prison sentences wherever possible by using community-based measures, which have been proven to be more effective at reducing reoffending.
The overall reoffending rate in Sweden stands at between 30 and 40% over three years – to compare that with another European country, the number is around half that of the UK. One likely reason for the relatively low reoffending rate and the low rate of incarceration in Sweden (below 70 per 100,000 head of population) is that the age of criminal responsibility is set at 15. In the UK, for example, children aged ten to 17 and young people under the age of 21 record the highest reoffending rates: almost three quarters and two thirds, respectively. A good proportion of these offenders go on to populate adult jails. In Sweden, no young person under the age of 21 can be sentenced to life – this is not the case in many other countries – and every effort is made to ensure that as few juvenile offenders as possible end up in prison.
One strong reason for the drop in prison numbers might be the amount of post-prison support available in Sweden. A confident probation service – a government agency – is tasked not only with supervising those on probation but is also guaranteed to provide treatment programmes for offenders with drug, alcohol or violence issues. The service is assisted by around 4,500 lay supervisors – members of the public who volunteer to befriend and support offenders under supervision.
Gustafsson talks about broader goals and objectives for the Swedish justice department: “In 2013 and 2014, the priority of our work will be with young offenders and men with convictions of violent behaviour. For many years, we have been running programmes to help those addicted to drugs. Now, we are also developing programmes to address behaviours such as aggression and violence. These are the important things for our society when these people are released.” I spoke to a former prisoner who now runs a social enterprise called X-Cons Sweden. Peter Soderlund served almost three years of a four-year sentence for drug and weapons offences before he was released in 1998. He was helped by a newly formed organization run by former prisoners called Kris (Criminals’ Return Into Society).
“The big difference between Kris and us is that we are happy to allow people who are still taking addiction medications to join us,” he says. Both organizations work with the same goal: helping prisoners successfully reintegrate into society after they have been released. And what is life like for the prisoner in Sweden? “When I was inside, I was lucky. In Osteraker Prison, where I served my sentence, the governor was enlightened. We were treated well. But I knew that not all Swedish prisons were like that. I met so many people in there who needed help – after I received help from Kris, I knew I wanted to help others. With X-Cons, we meet them at the gate and support them into accommodation and offer a network of support.”
“In Sweden, we believe very much in the concept of rehabilitation, without being naive of course,” says Gustafsson. “There are some people who will not or cannot change. But, in my experience, the majority of prisoners want to change, and we must do what we can to help to facilitate that. It is not always possible to achieve this in one prison sentence.
“Also, it is not just prison that can rehabilitate – it is often a combined process, involving probation and greater society. We can give education and training, but, when they leave prison, these people need housing and jobs.”


Intermediate
According to a new scientific study, temperature rises caused by uncontrolled global warming could be at the high end of current estimates. The scientist who led the research said that, unless emissions of greenhouse gases are reduced, the planet will heat up by a minimum of 4C by 2100. This is twice the level the worlds governments consider to be dangerous.
The research indicates that fewer clouds form as the planet warms, which means less sunlight is reflected back into space. This forces temperatures up even higher. The way clouds affect global warming has been the biggest mystery in the study of future climate change.
Professor Steven Sherwood, at the University of New South Wales in Australia, who led the new work, said that the study broke new ground in two ways. First, it identified what controls the cloud changes and, second, it rejected the lowest estimates of future global warming and favoured the higher and more damaging estimates.
4C would be catastrophic rather than simply dangerous, Sherwood said. For example, it would make life difficult, if not impossible, in much of the tropics and would guarantee the eventual melting of the Greenland ice sheet and some of the Antarctic ice sheet, with sea levels rising by many metres as a result.
The research reduces the uncertainty about how much warming is caused by rises in carbon emissions, according to scientists commenting on the study, published in the journal Nature. Experts at Japans National Institute for Environmental Studies said the explanation of how fewer clouds form as the world warms was convincing and agreed that this indicated future climate change would be greater than expected.
Scientists measure the sensitivity of the Earths climate to greenhouse gases by estimating the temperature rise that would be caused by a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere compared with pre-industrial levels  which is likely to happen within 50 years. For two decades, those estimates have run from 1.5C to 5C:  wide range. The new research narrowed that range down to between 3C and 5C, by closely examining the biggest cause of uncertainty: clouds.
Computer climate models are the only tool researchers have to predict future temperatures and it was important to make sure that the way clouds are formed was represented accurately in those models. When water evaporates from the oceans, the vapour can rise over nine miles to form rain clouds that reflect sunlight; or, it may rise just a few miles and drift back down without forming clouds. In reality, both processes happen and climate models that included the second possibility predicted significantly higher future temperatures than models that only included the nine-mile-high clouds.
Climate sceptics like to criticize climate models for getting things wrong and we are the first to admit they are not perfect, said Sherwood. But what we are finding is that the mistakes are being made by the models that predict less warming, not those that predict more. He added: Sceptics may also point to the hiatus of temperatures since the end of the 20th century, but there is increasing evidence that this hiatus is not seen in other measures of the climate system and is almost certainly temporary.
Global average air temperatures have increased quite slowly since a high point in 1998, which was caused by the ocean phenomenon El Nin_o. But, observations show that heat is continuing to be trapped in increasing amounts by greenhouse gases, with over 90% disappearing into the oceans. Furthermore, a study in November 2013 suggested the pause may be mainly an illusion  a result of the lack of temperature readings from polar regions, where warming is greatest.
Sherwood accepts his teams work on the role of clouds cannot definitely rule out that future temperature rises will be at the lower end of projections. But, for that to be the case, there would need to be some major missing ingredient for which there is currently no evidence. He added that a 4C rise in global average temperatures would have a serious impact on the world and the economies of many countries if emissions were not reduced.


Intermediate
We often see our colleagues and friends smoking an e-cigarette. But has vaping started to become less popular? Statistics suggest that vaping among smokers and recent ex-smokers, who are the vast majority of vapers, may already be declining. The  gures will be studied closely by the major e-cigarette companies, which have put millions of pounds into a technology that they thought was growing in popularity.
Figures released in 2014 by the health charity Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) reveal that usage among adults in Britain of electronic cigarettes  which do not contain tobacco and produce vapour, not smoke  has tripled from 700,000 users in 2012 to 2.1 million in 2014.
However,  gures collated by the Smoking Toolkit Study, a research organization that provides quarterly updates on smoking trends, show vapings appeal may be declining. Vaping rates among smokers and ex-smokers rose steadily until the end of 2013, when 22% of smokers and ex-smokers were vaping. But this proportion stopped rising in 2014 before dropping to 19% during the  nal quarter of the year. The drop is described as statistically signi cant by Professor Robert West, who collates the  gures for the Toolkit.
Smokers are the key group for e-cigarette companies because seven out of ten vapers are smokers. Only around 1% of people who have never smoked have tried an electronic cigarette. Numbers who use e-cigarettes while continuing to smoke are going down, West said. Weve only been studying vaping for just over a year, so its a short time period, but we are not seeing growth in the number of long-term ex-smokers or never smokers using e-cigarettes. Vaping rates might change but, at this stage, it looks like theyre staying the same.
The fact that vaping has stopped growing in popularity in the UK seems to be at odds with what is happening in the US, where the technology has been promoted aggressively and where reports suggest it is growing in popularity. However, West questioned the interpretation of US data, which made little distinction between people who had once tried an e-cigarette and those who regularly vaped.
Experts believe it is unlikely that vaping will become fashionable among young non-smokers. Only 1.8% of children are regular users, the ASH study found. Instead, e-cigarettes seem to be most popular among adults who want to quit. While the  gures published this month by Smoking In England show that the use of electronic cigarettes by smokers has stopped rising, their data also shows the huge increase in use since May 2011, said James Dunworth, of ecigarettedirect.co.uk. Our customers are still very happy with the product, and technology and innovation in hardware is improving user experience and helping them to switch from traditional cigarettes.
E-cigarettes behave like a sort of nicotine patch, West agreed. They are more popular than nicotine patches and may or may not be more effective. One-third of quit attempts use e-cigarettes, which makes them by far the most popular method of stopping.
Hazel Cheeseman, director of policy at ASH, said it was too soon to say whether vaping had peaked. Although there are indications that the market hasnt grown in the UK for about a year, there doesnt seem to be a decline in the number of people using electronic cigarettes to help them quit smoking.
The European Commission (EC) is looking at increasing taxes on e-cigarettes, which could have an impact on their popularity. A new EC tobacco directive comes into force in 2016 that will limit the amount of nicotine in e-cigarettes to below their current levels. This may mean vapers will have to increase their usage to get the same effect, again something that may make e-cigarettes more expensive.
West suggested that policymakers should see e-cigarettes as an aid to stopping smoking and not have the same regulations for them as for smoking. There is a tendency among some local authorities and organizations to treat e-cigarettes as cigarettes and ban them in public places and outdoors, he said. It just sounds like youre having a go at vapers and that undermines the public health messages were trying to get out. We have to be careful not to stigmatize e-cigarettes.


The regulation eight hours in the office is over. The most important work of the day is done; whatever is left can wait until the morning. This is the point many workers would think about heading for the door.
Yet, for millions of Japanese employees, the thought of clearing away their desks and being at home in time for dinner is enough to invite accusations of disloyalty.
But, after decades of giving companies carte blanche to milk every last drop of productivity from their workforce, a challenge to Japan’s ingrained culture of overwork has come from the government, which is considering making it a legal requirement for workers to take at least five days’ paid holiday a year.
Japanese employees are currently entitled to an average 18.5 days’ paid holiday a year – only two fewer than the global average – with a minimum of ten days, as well as 15 one-day national holidays. In reality, few come even close to taking their full quota, typically using only nine of their 18.5-day average entitlement, according to the labour ministry. While many British workers regard a two-week summer holiday as an inalienable right, workers in Japan have come to see a four-night vacation in Hawaii as the height of self-indulgence.
The move, to be debated in the current parliamentary session, comes after companies started encouraging employees to nap on the job to improve their performance.
By the end of the decade, the government hopes that, if passed, the law will push Japanese employees towards following the example set by British workers, who use an average of 20 days’ paid annual leave, and those in France, who take an average of 25.
Japan’s unforgiving work culture may have helped turn it into an economic superpower, its corporate foot soldiers revered in the rest of the world for their commitment to the company, but this has often been to the exclusion of everything else.
Japan’s low birth rate and predictions of rapid population decline are partly blamed on the lack of time couples have to start families. More employees are falling ill from stress, or worse, succumbing to karoshi, death through overwork.
Despite studies suggesting that longer hours in the office or workshop or on the factory floor do not necessarily make people more productive, today’s workers are still nursing a collective hangover from the bubble years of the 1980s.
About 22% of Japanese work more than 49 hours a week, compared with 16% of US workers and 11% in France and Germany, according to data compiled by the Japanese government. At 35%, South Korea’s workaholics are even worse off.
In spending 14 hours a day at work and giving up many of her paid holidays, Erika Sekiguchi is not even an extreme example. The 36-year-old trading company employee used eight of her 20 days of paid vacation in 2014, six of which counted as sick leave. “Nobody else uses their vacation days,” Sekiguchi said.
She faces the dilemma shared by her peers in companies across Japan: never to take time off to recharge or to risk inviting criticism for appearing to leave more committed colleagues in the lurch.
Yuu Wakebe, a health ministry official overseeing policy on working hours, who admits putting in 100 hours of overtime a month, blames the irresistible pressure to match one’s colleagues, hour for hour. “It is a worker’s right to take paid vacations,” Wakebe said. “But working in Japan involves quite a lot of volunteer spirit.”
That fear of being ostracized at work is being blamed for a rise in stress-related illness, premature death and suicide. According to official data, about 200 people die every year from heart attacks, strokes and other karoshi events brought on by punishing work schedules.
The prime minister, Shinzo Abe, is not known for taking long vacations. Yet even he has spoken out against the unreasonable demands companies place on their employees as they struggle to stay afloat in a more complex globalized market. Japan’s working culture, Abe said recently, “falsely beatifies long hours”.


David Mitchell, a regular contender for the Man Booker literary prize, is used to his novels being picked over by the critics. So, it’s something of a relief, says the British author, that his latest work – completed at 1am one Tuesday morning before a car arrived to take him to the airport to catch a flight to Norway – won’t be seen by anyone until 2114.
Mitchell is the second contributor to the Scottish artist Katie Paterson’s Future Library project, for which 1,000 trees were planted in 2014 in Oslo’s Nordmarka forest. Starting with Margaret Atwood, who handed over the manuscript of a text called Scribbler Moon in 2015, each year for the next 100 years, an author will deliver a piece of writing that will only be read in 2114, when the trees are chopped down to make paper on which the 100 texts will be printed.
Each author – their names revealed year by year and chosen by a panel of experts and Paterson, while she is alive – will make the trek to the spot in the forest high above Oslo, where they will surrender their manuscripts in a short ceremony.
“It’s a little glimmer of hope in a season of highly depressing news cycles, which affirms we are in with a chance of civilization in a hundred years,” said Mitchell. “Everything is telling us that we’re doomed but the Future Library is a candidate on the ballot paper for possible futures. It brings hope that we are more resilient than we think: that we will be here, that there will be trees, that there will be books and readers, and civilization.”
Mitchell said he found writing the book “quite liberating because I won’t be around to take the consequences of this being good or bad ... But, I’m sandwiched between Margaret Atwood and no doubt some other brilliant writer. So, it better be good. What a historic fool of epochal proportions I’d look if they opened it in 2114 and it wasn’t any good.”
Usually, says Mitchell, who was shortlisted for the Man Booker for his novels number9dream and Cloud Atlas, he “polishes and polishes” his writing. “Actually, I over-polish. But, this was very different – I wrote up to the wire. So, the first two-thirds were polished and the final third I didn’t have time. And, it was a liberation.”
Future Library creator, Paterson, whose past works have involved her mapping dead stars and compiling a slide archive of the history of darkness through the ages, asked the writers to tackle “the theme of imagination and time, which they can take in so many directions”. Mitchell revealed only the name of the manuscript, From Me Flows What You Call Time, during a ceremony in the Norwegian woods next to where Paterson’s 1,000 trees are planted. The title is taken from a piece of music by Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu but, other than admitting that “it’s somewhat more substantial a thing than I was expecting”, the author would say nothing.
Handing over his text in the forest, sheltered from the intermittent rain by an umbrella and amid the foot-high shoots of 1,000 pine trees, Mitchell read his damp audience of children and adults a short story and William Wordsworth’s A slumber did my spirit seal. Its ending, “Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course / With rocks, and stones, and trees”, felt appropriate in this small section of forest, carpeted with blueberry bushes, which will be carefully tended to for the next 98 years before it is turned into Future Library’s manuscripts.
“How vain to suppose the scribblings of little old me will be of enduring interest to future generations. Yet, how low-key and understated, to slave over a manuscript that nobody will ever pat you on the back for and say: ‘Nice one’ or ‘God, I loved the bit where she did that and he did this... ’” Mitchell wrote in a piece for the Future Library.
His manuscript, now delivered, will be sealed and placed alongside Atwood’s in a wood-lined room in Oslo’s new public library, which will open in 2019. Watched over by a trust of experts until it is finally printed, it is now, says the novelist, “as gone from me as a coin dropped in a river”.


Sweden is the best country for older people; Afghanistan is the worst – but rich countries are not always better for people over 60 years old, says the first global study on ageing. Sweden’s top ranking – followed by Norway, Germany, the Netherlands and Canada – is not a surprise, but the Global AgeWatch study gives some surprising results.
The US, the world’s richest country, is only in eighth place, and the UK is in 13th place. Sri Lanka is 36th, far above Pakistan at 89th, although the countries have similar economies. Bolivia and Mauritius are in higher positions than the size of their economies suggests. Brazil and China are quite high, but India and Russia are much lower.
“This study shows that history is important,” said Mark Gorman, director of HelpAge International. “The top countries are what you would expect, but Scandinavian countries were not rich when they introduced pensions for everyone. Older people in Sri Lanka today have good basic education and health care – those countries decided to help older people. No country has enough money but, when they decide how to spend their money, they should not forget older people.”
The study includes 91 countries and 89% of the world’s older people. The study comes at a time of big population changes: by 2050, there will probably be two billion people aged 60 and over, which will be more than a fifth of the world’s population.
Population ageing – when older people are a larger and larger percentage of the population – is happening fastest in developing countries. More than two-thirds of older people live in poor countries; by 2050, this proportion will probably be about four-fifths. The fastest ageing countries – Jordan, Laos, Mongolia, Nicaragua and Vietnam – are in the lower half of the ranking, which suggests that politicians there need to look at the problem of ageing so that they can give enough support to their populations. There are also differences between men and women in ageing populations – women generally live longer than men. In 2012, for every 84 men aged 60 and over, there were 100 women.
However, population ageing does not always mean more health care spending, according to the report, which shows the importance of long-term investments in education and health care for older people. Bolivia, ranked 46, is one of the poorest countries but it has introduced good policies for older people – a national plan on ageing, free health care and a pension for everyone.
Chile and Costa Rica introduced good basic health care many years ago and this has helped the ageing populations of those countries. A good education system is very useful later in life – basic literacy is very important for older people when they have to read and complete pensions documents. In the Philippines, the educational reforms introduced after independence in 1946 have helped older people – elementary and high school education became compulsory. The same is true for Armenia, which, like other countries of the ex-Soviet Union, had a strong education system. South Korea is a surprisingly low 67 in the ageing study, partly because it introduced a pension only recently.
It is clear that countries all over the world should do more to help their ageing populations.


Intermediate
Race engineer A race engineer liaises between the driver and the mechanics.
Typical salary: New graduates start at 25,000 to 30,000 and quickly progress to junior engineer roles, earning more than 40,000 with just a few years experience. Senior race engineers earn 50,000 to 90,000.
What the job involves: A race engineer is the interpreter between the race-car mechanics and the driver, says race engineer Jamie Muir. The engineer takes feedback from the driver, analyses the data and makes decisions about the set-up needed for maximum performance, then passes this on to the mechanics.
Quali cations: A university degree, typically in automotive/mechanical engineering or motorsport technology. Hands-on experience is essential.
To succeed as a race engineer, you need ... to be able to deal with pressure.
Worst thing about the job: The long hours. Race engineers work 24/7, says Chris Aylett, CEO of the Motorsport Industry Association.
Ethical hacker Typical salary: A newly quali ed hacker can expect a minimum salary of 35,000 to 50,000. This rises to 60,000 to 90,000 at team-leader level.
What the job involves: A company will pay an ethical hacker to hack into its computer system to see how well it might resist a real attack.
Quali cations: You dont necessarily need a degree in computer science. The industry accepts individuals with a very wide range of academic quali cations and skills.
To succeed as an ethical hacker, you need ... a passion for technology and detail. You should also enjoy solving dif cult problems.
Worst thing about the job: When you are called in to test the security of a new customers network and you discover that they have already been hacked.
Bomb-disposal diver Typical salary: In the private sector, you can earn up to 100,000 working just two months out of every three.
What the job involves: Descending to the sea bed and searching for unexploded bombs, shells, grenades and landmines, then either safely recovering and collecting the weapons or securely disposing of them.
Quali cations: To dive offshore, you must have diving quali cations. To be able to dispose of the bombs safely, youll also need an explosive- disposal quali cation and years of experience.
To succeed as a bomb-disposal diver, you need ... to stay calm in stressful situations. You work alone under water, with zero visibility and, if you dont like living in small con ned spaces with lots of other people, forget it.
Worst thing about the job: Expect to be away from home at least six months of the year.
Social engineer Typical salary: Graduates start on 25,000 but salaries increase rapidly with quali cations and experience, rising to between 50,000 and 80,000, on average.
The job: Companies pay a social engineer to try to trick employees into giving them con dential information that allows the engineer to access sensitive company data or the companys computer network.
Quali cations: Typically, social engineers have a degree in IT, although an understanding of psychology is useful.
To succeed as a social engineer, you need ... the con dence to lie convincingly and the ability to  t in almost anywhere without looking too out of place. You also need a strong sense of personal ethics and an understanding of the law.
Worst thing about the job: Other people may misunderstand your job: social engineers are not spies but most people think they are.
Power-line helicopter pilot Typical salary: 65,000
The job: To  y close to high-voltage power lines in a helicopter so that the lines can be inspected with a camera and any potential faults and issues can be identi ed by the power company.
Quali cations: A private-helicopter-pilot licence, a commercial pilots licence and around 2,000 hours of experience  ying at low levels.
To succeed as a power line helicopter pilot, you need ... a steady hand and a cool head. Typically, pilots must  y beside the power line, sometimes as little as 20 feet away and just 30 feet off the ground.
Worst thing about the job: There are no negatives, says helicopter pilot Robin Tutcher.
Private butler Typical salary: 60,000 to 90,000
The job: A private butler can be called on by his or her employer to do anything from wardrobe management to chauffeuring and pet care. Typical duties include managing other staff, serving at every meal, running errands, looking after guests, booking restaurants, house security, housekeeping, cooking and anything else the household needs.
Quali cations: You dont need any speci c quali cations but you can do a special course.
To succeed as a butler, you need ... to enjoy looking after other people.
Worst thing about the job: Long hours and an unpredictable work schedule mean its dif cult to have a family life. Butlers also suffer from isolation, cultural differences with their employer and having to work for people who arent always nice.


An octopus has made a brazen escape from the National Aquarium in New Zealand by breaking out of its tank, slithering down a 50-metre drainpipe and disappearing into the sea.
In scenes reminiscent of Finding Nemo, Inky – a common New Zealand octopus – made his dash for freedom after the lid of his tank was accidentally left slightly ajar. Staff believe that in the middle of the night, while the aquarium was deserted, Inky clambered to the top of his glass enclosure, down the side of the tank and travelled across the floor of the aquarium.
Rob Yarrell, national manager of the National Aquarium of New Zealand in Napier, said: “Octopuses are famous escape artists. I don’t think he was unhappy with us, or lonely, as octopuses are solitary creatures. But, he is such a curious boy. He would want to know what’s happening on the outside. That’s just his personality.”
One theory is that Inky slid across the aquarium floor – a journey of three or four metres – and then, sensing freedom was at hand, into a drainpipe that led directly to the sea. The drainpipe was 50 metres long and opened onto the waters of Hawke’s Bay, on the east coast of New Zealand’s North Island.
Another possible escape route could have involved Inky squeezing into an open pipe at the top of his tank, which led under the floor to the drain. “When we came in the next morning and his tank was empty, I was really surprised,” said Yarrell, who has not launched a search for Inky. “The staff and I have been pretty sad. But then, this is Inky and he’s always been a bit of a surprise octopus.”
Reiss Jenkinson, exhibits keeper at the National Aquarium, said he was absolutely certain Inky had not been taken. “I understand the nature of octopus behaviour very well,” he said. “I have seen octopuses on boats slip through bilge pumps. And, the security here is too tight for anyone to take Inky and why would they?”
Because octopuses have no bones, they are able to fit into extremely small spaces and have been filmed squeezing through gaps the size of coins. They are also understood to be extremely intelligent and capable of using tools. At the Island Bay Marine Education Centre in Wellington, an octopus was found to be in the habit of visiting another tank overnight to steal crabs, then returning to its own. Another at the centre, Ozymandias, was thought to have broken a world record for opening a jar before it was released into the ocean.
Inky was brought to the National Aquarium a number of years ago by a local fisherman who found him caught in a crayfish pot. He was scarred and “rough looking”, with shortened limbs, said Yarrell. “He had been living on the reef and fighting with fish so he wasn’t in the best shape.” According to Yarrell, Inky – who is about the size of a rugby ball – was an “unusually intelligent” octopus. “He was very friendly, very inquisitive and a popular attraction here. We have another octopus, Blotchy, but he is smaller than Inky and Inky had the personality.”
The aquarium has no plans to step up security as a result of the escape as Inky was a “one- off” but the staff are “increasingly aware of what octopuses can actually do”. Although the aquarium is not actively searching for a replacement for Inky, if a fisherman brought in another octopus, it might be willing to take it on. “You never know,” said Yarrell. “There’s always a chance Inky could come home to us.”


There are bird droppings in one of Britain’s most expensive houses. Pigeon skeletons lie among broken mirrors and water is coming through the walls. This is The Tower, a £30m palace in “Billionaires’ Row” in north London.
It is one of ten mansions in the middle of The Bishops Avenue that have been empty for many years. The Saudi Arabian royal family bought it. Their Grecian columns are cracking into pieces and mosaic-tiled swimming pools are filled with broken stones. Nature has taken control and owls have moved in.
You see the same thing again and again on the avenue. Lloyds Bank says The Bishops Avenue is the second most expensive street in Britain. House prices in London are rising at 11.2% a year. More and more people find it difficult to buy a house, but 16 mansions on the most expensive part of The Bishops Avenue are empty. Their gates are locked and there are guard dogs in their overgrown gardens.
Across the street stands another empty mansion worth £18m. It has broken windows and its walls are painted with anti-climb paint. Metal bars block the windows of another mansion, which has sold for £20m.
For people who find it very difficult to keep a roof above their heads in one of the world’s most expensive cities, seeing the empty houses can be painful. One security guard who works on the avenue said it was annoying to see so many mansions – enough for many people to live in – falling apart.
Rich royals from Nigeria and Saudi Arabia came to this road near Hampstead Heath first. Iranians came here after the fall of the shah. Now, Chinese house hunters are following Russians and Kazakhs who have spent millions to get an address that estate agents tell them is as world famous as the Champs Elysées and Rodeo Drive. Recently, two mansions have been on sale for £65m and £38m.
But in the grounds of the empty mansions, stone fountains crumble. Inside one mansion, the ceiling has collapsed and water drips through a huge crystal chandelier onto a thick carpet, which is rotting. Moss grows through bricks and mirrored tiles are lying on a bathroom floor. The swimming pool is filled with dirty water and has flowers growing through its tiles. The wood in the sauna is coming off the walls.
But it is the ruin of The Towers, a grand mansion, that is most dramatic. There are pigeons in its huge, high-ceiling halls and its walls are bright green with algae.
Today, very few people live on The Bishops Avenue all the time. A security guard outside one mansion said that the owners were not there. Another guard outside Royal Mansion would not say if anyone was home and a member of staff at another mansion warned the Guardian about the guard dogs.
Magdy Adib Ishak-Hannah, who has £45m, said he is one of the few residents who lives there all the time.
“I have never seen what my neighbours look like. Next door, a Saudi princess spent £35m on a new house and I’ve never seen her. There are about three houses that are lived in 24/7 and half of the houses are lived in three to six months a year. The other half, who knows if they come or not?” he said.
The reason for the multimillion-pound ruins is that some of the world’s richest people see British houses as an investment.
Anil Varma, who develops homes and then sells them, wants to build £5m apartments, instead of £50m mansions, to try to bring people back.
He has decided to rebuild one of the most expensive sites on the avenue as a collection of 20 apartments with a concierge, maid service, 25-metre pool, spa and cinema.


Why do it? Talking to the men earmarked to be the elite referees of the future, the question elicits a knowing smile. This season, criticism of referees has increased to the point where some former referees have felt compelled to complain about standards. That is quite striking because, the more you talk to referees, the more obvious it is that supporting each other through thick and thin is fundamental.
So why do it? Why spend countless hours driving up and down the country to dole out rules, some of which are inevitably going to upset people, trying to climb the ladder until you get the chance to make decisions on television in front of millions who scrutinize you and your ability with the aid of umpteen different angles and slow-motion replays?
A glimpse of an answer appears on the face of Lee Swabey moments after he blows the final whistle of a 2 –1 win for Grimsby over Woking, a match at level 5 of the English league system. He gets what all referees hope for every time they referee a match. “Twenty-two handshakes,” he explains afterwards, proudly. Symbolically, a full set of handshakes, plus a “well done” from both managers, represents maximum satisfaction. “The buzz,” as he calls it, of a game that passes smoothly, is something he loves. “I wouldn’t spend so much time away from my family if this didn’t mean the world to me.”
As one of the group that is highly regarded by the Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL) for his potential, Swabey knew he was being watched at that match. PGMOL’s chief, Mike Riley, was in attendance, along with Steve Dunn, who is the coach for this level, armed with notes and stopwatch to catalogue every significant move the officials make.
A few weeks earlier, Riley, Dunn and another former referee, Peter Jones, made their way to another level-5 match to monitor another referee tipped to progress – John Brooks. “I hope to have the opportunity to get promoted to the Premier League and officiate some of the top games in this country,” Brooks says.
The most the PGMOL delegation got to observe, however, was the way Brooks handled the somewhat tricky situation of calling off the match because of a frozen pitch. It is all part of the experience Brooks needs to acquire before he is trusted with more high-profile games, the different problems that need dealing with – often, clubs are very reluctant to have a late postponement, particularly when they have to pay all the staff who have turned up but will not receive any gate money.
Brooks phoned his coach for advice and made the difficult but correct decision. A little later, the football club secretary arrived with envelopes to pay the officials for their time – the match fee at level 5 is £95 so it is safe to assume these men do not do it for the cash.
Brooks, like Swabey, has clear ambitions to progress. He is under no illusions that developing a thick skin and perfecting strategies to deal with disappointments is a big part of that. How does he feel watching football on TV when a referee gets vilified? “Erm … not great,” he admits. “I’ve been in that situation once where I have made an incorrect decision and it was a deciding goal that was just offside. Your heart sinks. You can’t stop thinking about it.
“I do sometimes wish people understood the time and effort we put in. It is very easy to criticize a decision but we do everything to try to get these decisions right. In certain situations, you are going to be unpopular but, if you are uncomfortable with that, you are probably in the wrong job.”
The former referees agree that the backup, education and tools that today’s referees have is a world away from what they experienced in their own days. Riley, as a young referee, went out and bought himself books on psychology and nutrition as there was no information on offer to him at all.
Contrast this with Brooks, who has a coach at the end of the phone. They consult weekly, discuss how his games have gone, study footage of key decisions and work out how to improve. He also has the support of a sports psychologist, Liam Slack, for regular guidance and an exercise regime to help him handle the 11km he runs during a game.
Brooks says psychology is vital in his development. “One of the things we have talked about is forgetting decisions and moving on,” he explains. “There may be a big decision to make in the first 30 seconds of the game. Once you have made that, you need to stay focused for the next 89 minutes and not be wondering whether that was correct or worrying about that decision. Liam has taught us some techniques for releasing that decision. Working with the sports psychologist is really important for mental toughness.”
Jones believes the whole approach can only help. “I refereed in professional football but, looking back, I was an amateur,” he says. “I was going to work – I worked for British Telecom – and I might referee at Newcastle on a Wednesday evening and, 9am the next morning, I was in Leicester trying to speak to customers. I perhaps hadn’t slept. Training was ad hoc. We were amateurs in a professional environment compared to now.”
When the subject of technology comes up, the three former refs are unanimous in their support of it. “We are all in favour of anything that makes the referee’s job better and makes them more effective on the field of play,” says Riley. Minimizing mistakes is the aim. After all, a bad decision can stick with you for a while. “The rest of your life,” notes Jones with a chuckle.


Intermediate
Unless we win, it doesnt mean a damn thing, said billionaire Donald Trump, the man who wants to be the Republican presidential nominee, at a campaign rally in South Carolina. He said this despite  nishing his fourth month in a row at the top of the opinion polls. I want to pick my date for the election. I want it next Tuesday, he con ded to the crowd of 11,000 people. He has a lot of grassroots support, which he needs to continue until March 2016 for him to win the nomination to be the presidential candidate in Novembers general election.
Trump is not the only one beginning to think it possible that his surprising campaign can go the distance, particularly because recent controversy only seems to have con rmed his lead over his rivals. Usually, any one of these outbursts would have destroyed a politician by now.
First, he outraged prisoners of war by doubting the heroism of Vietnam veteran John McCain because he allowed himself to be captured. Then, there was the  rst television debate, where he insulted Fox News moderator, Megyn Kelly, because she asked him dif cult questions.
It seems that making prisoners of war, Fox News and women angry was not enough. Trump has also insulted Mexican immigrants to the US, claimed that a Black Lives Matter protester who was violently thrown out of a rally deserved to be roughed up, appeared to laugh at a New York Times journalist for his disability and falsely accused Muslim Americans of supporting the 9/11 attackers.
Trump has complained that many of these incidents were exaggerated by the political media, 70% of whom, he says, are scum. But, he has refused to retract any of the comments.
Some rivals still hope that, eventually, even Trumps supporters will get tired of his attacks on minorities. One poll shows his support among Republicans has reduced by 12 points  although, at 31%, he is still in the lead.
He is an egomaniac; hes a narcissist. Hes not a conservative, hes not a liberal  he believes in himself, former presidential rival, Bobby Jindal, told the Guardian, before he left the race.
But, there is more to Trump than attention- grabbing outrage. As he is happy to tell supporters, the three things that he is most against  immigration reform, free-trade deals and Barack Obamas national security policy  have become perhaps the most important issues of the election.
His policies for deporting every undocumented immigrant in the US and demanding that Mexico pays for a border wall  A real wall. A very tall wall, taller than that ceiling.  might sound unrealistic but they have destroyed the campaign hopes of Jeb Bush, who favours immigration reform.
So what can stop Trump? One reason for hope among opponents is the strong evidence that polls this far away from election day can be incorrect, simply because most people have not made up their minds how to vote yet. Among Americans who say they are Republicans, current polls suggest he has 25-30% of the vote.
In the political battle for hearts and minds, converting Trumps passionate supporters will be hard. It is hard to imagine anyone being a better Trump than Trump.
This scenario can be best understood by looking at responses to the question: Which candidates would you de nitely not support for the Republican nomination for president? While 20-30% of voters say they would support Trump, another 20-30% say they de nitely would not.
Steve Deace, an Iowa conservative, said that Trumps behaviour is both a good and a bad thing. On the one hand, it produces loyal fans that are attracted to his personality. On the other hand, it limits his ability to grow beyond that.
Top Republican pollster, Frank Luntz, believes Trump speaks for voters who, for the  rst time, feel as if they have a mouthpiece and like the fact that they feel like they are heard. He says, Trump says what theyre thinking and, the more outrageous he is, the more they agree with him. Hes saying what no politician would say and thats another reason they like him.
That is certainly the feeling among ordinary supporters who have attended his increasingly packed campaign events recently.
 I like the way he speaks, says Sandra Murray of Dubuque, Iowa. This country is a big mess and, honestly, he could be the man to help us.
 Other supporters offer a simpler explanation. Hes not afraid of anybody or anything. Thats pretty cool.


There are eyes on you, behind the bright lights and mirrored panels. Pick up a boot and a camera will make sure you don’t slip it into your bag. Enter a department store and you will be watched. But new technology is leading retailers to grow a different set of eyes – less focused on shoplifting and more interested in your age, sex, size, head, shoulders, knees and toes.
A few months ago, IT firm Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) produced a report that claimed around 30% of retailers use facial recognition technology to track customers in-store. Facial recognition is a technology that can identify people by analysing and comparing facial features from a database, using devices such as Intel RealSense cameras, which are able to analyse everything from particular expressions to the clothing brands someone is wearing.
Joe Jensen, of Intel’s Retail Solutions Division, says that the aim of bringing RealSense technology into shops is not to create databases of specific people’s lives but rather to build generalized models of people’s lifestyles and shopping habits. “It’s not so much that you need to know a particular customer. It’s that you need to know that this shopper has these characteristics and, in the past, that when those characteristics are present, this is what a person tends to do.”
If you combine recognition technology with databases of previous customer patterns, you can start to predict a lot about what a person may or may not do in a shop. If, say, there’s a size-10 woman wearing a gold necklace walking quickly towards the sock aisle, you can use that data to predict she wants to, well, buy socks. That could allow a retailer to automatically put targeted ads on screens aimed specifically at that person. If she looks like the type of person who wants to buy socks, they will show her adverts for socks.
If it sounds familiar, it’s because the online world has been using techniques like these for years.
If you search for something on Amazon, you’ll be hounded by targeted banners for similar products on other sites. Express a vague interest in canoeing and you’ll get ads for canoes wherever you go. Yet bringing these systems into the physical world isn’t a simple case of copy and paste. It turns out that people do not react to cameras in the same way as they do to browser cookies.
Hoxton Analytics, a London-based team of data scientists, has developed a technology that makes use of machine learning and artificial intelligence to categorize people based on the shoes they are wearing. By analysing the style and size of people’s footwear as they walk past the sensor, the system can identify a customer’s gender with between 75 and 80% accuracy.
Owen McCormack, Hoxton Analytics CEO, says that the focus of the system came about in part as a reaction to facial recognition. “My idea was, why don’t we simply consider the clothes someone’s wearing to understand demographics?” he said. “If I just showed you a shot of someone’s body you could probably tell me what gender they are. However, it turns out pointing a camera at someone’s chest or hips feels just as creepy as facial recognition. The idea was – what about people’s shoes?”
The word “creepy” comes up a lot during discussions of in-store tracking. For retailers and data scientists, the aim is to find a way of obtaining information without coming across as intrusive.
For Hoxton Analytics and the retailers using the technology, the answer is to look downwards. This tactic of avoiding the face and staring at shoes says a lot about how we, as physical beings, react to being watched. It suggests there are boundaries that do not exist on the internet. Set sights on our torsos and we feel invaded. But is making calculated judgments about a person based on their footwear actually any less invasive?
For McCormack, the argument hinges on the fact that personally identifiable information isn’t being collected. “Right now, shops are doing lots of incredibly invasive things but we just don’t know about it. The angle Hoxton Analytics is taking on that whole thing is, well, if you know someone’s a male or a female, then your advertising will be much more efficient. If you know that everyone in your shop right now is a male, you’ll be advertising PlayStations not hairdryers.”
Keep it hidden and invisible monitoring lets shops optimize their output while keeping the customer unaware. Put adaptable monitors and targeted advertising into the mix, however, and it becomes harder to hide the fact that a machine is watching you. The argument from the retailers is that they do this to provide a personal shopping experience but it remains a grey area. It still feels creepy.
From the perspective of retailers, it’s understandable that physical shops want some of the information online outlets collect. We allow this to happen online so why not offline? The thresholds of a shopping centre are different from those between websites and, when you can wander freely from one place to another without a pop-up asking you to accept cookies, the rules of consent change.
Then again, for a generation growing up with online first, physical shop second, the modes of online play may not be quite so invasive. In the CSC report, a survey indicated that while 72% of respondents aged 55 and over said they were very uncomfortable with these types of technologies being used in physical shops, only 51% of 16-24 year olds said the same.
Does this relative openness stem from a greater familiarity with digital technology or a blind belief in the goodwill of omnipresent organizations offering free services? Is the creepiness of a technology an unvarying, instinctive certainty or does it ebb and flow with degrees of social acceptance? Whatever the case, there are a growing number of eyes between the shelves and they care a lot about what you’re wearing.


I got a degree in Spanish and this helped me get my ﬁrst job as a journalist, with an international press agency in Mexico City. But, the degree didn’t stop me from making mistakes.
I arrived in the Mexican capital after a bus journey all the way from New York. In my new job, I spent my days on the streets in political rallies and my nights alone in the ofﬁce, where I coordinated the news from areas of ﬁghting in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala and the rest of Central America. But, I also had to report on disasters: ﬁres, ﬂoods and explosions at ﬁ rework factories.
While I was working as a reporter, I found out that I was bad at understanding numbers in Spanish. Once, when I wanted to phone the police, I got a Mexican grandmother out of bed at 2am because I had misunderstood a phone number. Even worse, there were too many victims in my stories – 83 dead in a ﬁ re at 6pm become 38 dead by 7pm; 12 people injured in a coach crash soon became two and so it went on. Finally, I got a call from the main ofﬁce in Washington. “I don’t know what training you have had,” an editor shouted, “but has no one ever told you a death toll can’t go down?!”
Why are numbers in another language such a problem? Perhaps it is because of different numbering systems. In German, for example, 2.30pm is halb drei (half of three) and 21 is einundzwanzig (one and twenty). Different number systems can clearly cause confusion.
Some experts believe there is a link between dyscalculia – the difﬁculty in understanding arithmetic – and problems learning foreign languages, particularly if you learn languages by rote. But, some students who ﬁnd it hard to learn languages with a grammar textbook may learn more easily in a foreign country, where learning is more natural. In my case, I have always found languages quite easy, apart from the numbers.
But, perhaps it’s also because we often hear numbers in a non-native language out of context. You may stop listening to the foreign language and suddenly be unable to understand. I talked to multilingual friends and they said that they are fluent in French or Italian when ordering from a restaurant menu, for example, but freeze if they have to say numbers, especially over the phone. Numbers seem to be difﬁcult, but no one could say why.
In my case, my problems with numbers in a foreign language followed me from Mexico to other countries and from Spanish to German and Portuguese. But, in that ﬁrst journalism job, getting the numbers wrong didn’t always mean failure.
One night, a Mexican colleague told me that a gunman was holding the American consul hostage in his ofﬁce in the port city of Veracruz. There was no senior English-speaking reporter in the ofﬁce, so they asked me to try to call the consulate. I got the phone number wrong and I was put through to another phone somewhere else in the building. I knew straight away who the person was: I talked for 15 minutes to the gunman. He didn’t put away his gun as a result of his conversation with me – but my reputation as a reporter rose instantly.


Crunchy, full of protein and to be found under a rock near you. Insects have long been overlooked as food in all but a handful of places around the world – but now they are crawling closer and closer to our plates. Spring 2013 will see a drive towards removing the yuck factor and putting insects not just on experimental gastronomic menus but also on supermarket shelves.
In April, there will be a festival in London, Pestival 2013 – a Wellcome Trust-backed insect appreciation event where the consumption of creepy-crawlies comes high on the agenda. It will feature a two-day “pop-up ” restaurant by the Nordic Food Lab, the Scandinavian team behind the Danish restaurant Noma, which brought ants to the table for a sellout ten-day run at Claridge’s hotel in Mayfair in 2012.
Noma has been named the world’s best restaurant by Restaurant magazine for three years running. Its chef, René Redzepi, says that ants taste like lemon, and a purée of fermented grasshoppers and moth larvae tastes like a strong fish sauce. Bee larvae make a sweet mayonnaise used in place of eggs and scientists are constantly coming up with new ways to use little creatures.
In March, a BBC documentary will feature food writer Stefan Gates searching out and eating deep-fried locusts and barbecued tarantulas. But, behind all the gimmicks and jokes about flies in the soup there is a deeply serious message. Many experts believe there is a clear environmental benefit to humans eating creepy-crawlies.
The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has been funding projects since 2011 aimed at promoting the eating and farming of insects in south-east Asia and Africa, where an estimated two billion people already eat insects and caterpillar larvae as a regular part of their diet. In 2012, the FAO published a list of 1,909 edible species of insect and, with sponsorship from the Dutch government plans a major international conference on “this valuable food source” in 2013.
Insects are plentiful – globally, for every human there are 40 tonnes of insects – so there is not too much chance of them being endangered, and they are unlikely to have been dosed with chemicals. “I know it’s taboo to eat bugs in the western world, but why not?”, Redzepi has said. “You go to south-east Asia and this is a common thing. You read about it from all over the world, that people are eating bugs. If you like mushrooms, you’ve eaten so many worms you cannot imagine. But also we eat honey, and honey is the vomit of a bee. Think of that next time you pour it into your tea.”
He said that the basic premise behind Nordic Food Lab was: “Nothing is not edible.” Insects are critical to life on Earth and, with more than a million species, are the most diverse group of creatures on the planet, yet they are misunderstood, hated and often put to death by humans just because they are there.
Over the next 30 years, the planet’s human population will increase to nine billion. Already one billion people do not get enough food. The increase will mean more pressure on agricultural land, water, forests, fisheries and biodiversity resources, as well as nutrients and energy supplies.
The cost of meat is rising, not just in terms of hard cash but also in terms of the amount of rainforest that is destroyed for grazing or to grow feedstuff for cattle. There is also the issue of methane excreted by cows. The livestock farming contribution, in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, is enormous – 35% of the planet’s methane, 65% of its nitrous oxide and 9% of the carbon dioxide.
Edible insects emit fewer gases, contain high-quality protein, vitamins and amino acids, and have a high food-conversion rate, needing a quarter of the food intake of sheep, and half of pigs and chickens, to produce the same amount of protein. They emit fewer greenhouse gases and less ammonia than cows and can be grown on organic waste. China is already successfully setting up huge maggot farms. Zimbabwe has a thriving mapone caterpillar industry and Laos was given nearly $500,000 by the FAO to develop an insect-harvesting project. It’s already big business in the UK, though not always official: a man was recently detained by Gatwick customs as he stepped off a flight from Burkina Faso with 94 kilos of mapone, worth nearly £40,000, in his luggage.
A study by FoodServiceWarehouse.com suggested that swapping pork and beef for crickets and locusts could help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 95%. But perhaps the fairest thing about eating worms and insects comes when we are dead – then they get a chance to nibble their own back.


Intermediate

Do you want your child to be good at sport, play for the school team and, maybe one day, even compete in international competitions? Well, try to make sure that your future Olympian or World Cup winner is born in November or October. A study by one of the UKs leading experts on childrens physical activity has found that school pupils born in those months are  tter than everyone else in their class.
November- and October-born children were  tter, stronger and more powerful than those born in the other ten months of the year, especially those whose birthdays were in April or June. Dr Gavin Sandercock of Essex University and colleagues found that autumn-born children had a clear physical advantage over their classmates.
The research involved 8,550 boys and girls aged between ten and 16 from 26 state schools in Essex. All were tested between 2007 and 2010 on three different measures of  tness: stamina, handgrip strength and lower-body power. The results revealed that a childs month of birth could make signi cant differences to their levels of cardiovascular  tness, muscle strength and ability to accelerate, all of which predict how good someone is at sport.
November-born children were the  ttest overall as they had the most stamina and power and were the second strongest. Those born in October were almost as  t, scoring highest for strength and coming third for power, with December children close behind.
The gap in physical ability between children in the same class but born in different months was sometimes very wide. For example, we found that a boy born in November can run at least 10% faster, jump 12% higher and is 15% more powerful than a child of the same age born in April. This is, potentially, a huge physical advantage, said Sandercock. Such gaps could decide who became a top-level athlete because, as the paper says, selection into elite sports may often depend on very small margins or differences in an individuals physical performance.
The study, which has been published in the International Journal of Sports Medicine, found that, when scores for the three kinds of  tness were combined, those born in April were the least  t, then those in June. That could see those children excluded from school teams and becoming sporting underachievers, Sandercock said.
The  ndings seem to show that children born in the early months of the school year enjoy a double autumn advantage  they are already known to have an academic advantage and, now, they also appear to be better equipped for sport, too. The results show that something other than the relative-age effect  the greater maturity of those born early in the school year  is the cause, especially as the  ttest children were not the tallest or heaviest, he added.
The authors believe that autumn-born childrens greater exposure over the summer months, towards the end of pregnancy, to vitamin D is the most likely explanation. Seasonal differences in vitamin D concentrations in the womb seem most plausible, they say. John Steele, chief executive of the Youth Sport Trust, said the quality of a young persons introduction to sport at school can be a major factor in their sporting development. Children that get a high-quality  rst experience are those that will have greater agility, balance and coordination, and are more likely to develop an enjoyment of physical activity and excel in sport as they grow up, he said.
UK Sport could not say if a disproportionate majority of the 1,300 athletes across 47 sports it funds were born in November and October. Natalie Dunman, its head of performance, said that while the differences highlighted in the new  ndings were borne out by teenagers competing in junior-level competitions, they had disappeared by the time sportspeople were taking part in adult competitions. She said: With elite, senior athletes, there are many factors that make a champion and our work hasnt uncovered anything to suggest that month of birth is one of the key ingredients.


Intermediate
Some cities have pigeons. Lima has black vultures. They fly in groups overhead and sit on the citys buildings. In many ways, with their wrinkly heads and beady eyes, they remind Lima residents of the side of their city they would rather ignore: the poverty and filth.
But these birds taste for dead and decaying things has become a virtue. Environmental authorities are kitting the birds out with GoPro video cameras and GPS trackers  the birds have a new mission in the fight against fly-tipping and illegal dumping.
Samuel is one of the projects ten disease-free black vultures that are looking for rubbish. Fitted with his tracker, he is set free above the city, where he identifies secret or hidden dumps and records the GPS coordinates on a live map.
His trainer at Limas Huachipa Zoo, Alfredo Correa, is full of admiration. They can eat dead animals because their bodies protect them from viruses and bacteria, he says. Theyve got some of the strongest gut flora in the natural world.
USAID and the Peruvian Environment Ministry are working together on this project to tackle Limas rubbish problem. A tongue-in-cheek video adds a melodramatic voiceover, in which the noble vultures are fighting disease, while humans ignore the danger.
The project makes a serious point. With just four landfills in a city of nearly ten million inhabitants, there are many illegal dumps. A fifth of the rubbish goes into these dumps, according to the Environment Ministry. The waste contaminates Limas main water source, the Rimac river, as well as the Chillon and Lurin rivers, which flow into the Bay of Lima.
The environmental supervision agency, OEFA, says that three poorer neighbourhoods have only 12% of Limas population but have by far the most fly-tipped rubbish: Villa Maria del Triunfo (39.4%), Villa El Salvador (25.3%) and El Agustino (18.3%).
Part of the problem is unpaid taxes. Many residents just dont pay. That means some of the 43 district municipalities dont have enough money for basic services such as rubbish collection.
It also means nobody is necessarily going to clean up where the vultures identify illegal trash. We share the vultures GPS coordinates with the municipalities, says Javier Hernandez, the project director. Its their job to collect the rubbish and to try and change the habits of their residents.
The project aims to encourage residents to be vultures on the ground: to report fly-tipping, cut back on their own waste and recycle. Some residents are responding, posting photos of illegal dumps on the Twitter feed and Facebook page.


The researchers were surprised by what people would do to avoid the task. What was the task? To sit in a chair and do nothing but think.
Some people found it so unbearable that they gave themselves mild electric shocks to stop the boredom.
Two-thirds of men pressed a button that gave them a painful shock during a 15-minute period of solitude. A quarter of women also pressed the shock button.
The report from psychologists at Virginia and Harvard Universities looks at the question of why most of us find it so hard to do nothing.
In more than 11 separate studies, the researchers showed that all kinds of people hated being left alone to think – it doesn’t matter what their age, education or income is, or how often they use smartphones or social media.
Researcher Timothy Wilson said that the results were probably not because of the speed of modern life or because of mobile phones and social media. Instead, he said those things might be popular because we feel we need to do something and hate doing nothing.
During the first experiments, students were taken into a room and told to think. They were alone, without their phones, books or anything to write with. The only rules were that they had to stay sitting and not fall asleep. They were told that they would have six to 15 minutes alone.
The students were questioned at the end of the experiment. Most of them did not enjoy the experience. They found it difficult to concentrate  and their minds wandered.
The researchers did the experiment again with people at home. They got similar results. Surprisingly, people found it even more difficult and they cheated by getting up from their chair or checking their phones.
The researchers did the study again with more than 100 people, aged 18 to 77, from a church and a farmers’ market. They also disliked just sitting and thinking.
But, there was an even more surprising result. To check if people might prefer something bad to nothing at all, the students had the possibility of giving themselves a mild electric shock.
Before the experiment, all the students said they would pay to avoid mild electric shocks.
But 12 of 18 men gave themselves electric shocks and six of 24 women gave themselves electric shocks.
The scientists were surprised. They said that being alone with their thoughts was so hard for many participants that they gave themselves an electric shock, something the participants had said they would pay not to get.
Jessica Andrews-Hanna at the University of Colorado said many students would probably give themselves an electric shock to make a boring lecture more exciting. But, she says we need to know more about Wilson’s study.
“Imagine – a person is told to sit in a chair with wires attached to their skin and a button that will give them a harmless but uncomfortable shock, and they are told to just sit there with their thoughts,” she said.
“As they sit there, their mind starts to wander and naturally they think about that shock – was it really that bad?”


Coal is likely to rival oil as the world’s biggest source of energy in the next five years, with potentially disastrous consequences for the climate, according to the world’s leading authority on energy economics.
One of the biggest factors behind the rise in coal use has been the massive increase in the use of shale gas in the US.
New research from the International Energy Agency (IEA) shows that coal consumption is increasing all over the world – even in countries and regions with carbon-cutting targets – except in the US, where shale gas has displaced coal. The decline of coal consumption in the US has helped to cut prices for coal globally. This has made it more attractive, even in Europe where coal use was supposed to be discouraged by the Emissions Trading Scheme.
Maria van der Hoeven, Executive Director of the IEA, said: “Coal’s share of the global energy mix continues to grow each year and, if no changes are made to current policies, coal will catch oil within a decade.”
Coal is abundant and found in most regions of the world, unlike conventional oil and gas, and can be cheaply extracted. As a result, coal was used to meet nearly half of the rise in demand for energy globally in the past decade. According to the IEA, demand from China and India will drive world coal use in the coming five years, with India likely to overtake the US as the world’s second biggest consumer. China is the biggest coal importer, and Indonesia the biggest exporter, having temporarily overtaken Australia.
According to the IEA’s Medium-Term Coal Market Report the world will burn 1.2bn more tonnes of coal per year by 2017 compared with today – the equivalent of the current coal consumption of Russia and the US combined. Global coal consumption is forecast to reach 4.3bn tonnes of oil equivalent by 2017, while oil consumption is forecast to reach 4.4bn tonnes by the same date.
With the highest carbon emissions of any major fossil fuel, coal is a huge contributor to climate change, particularly when burned in old-fashioned, inefficient power stations. When these are not equipped with special “scrubbing” equipment to remove chemicals, coal can also produce sulphur emissions – the leading cause of acid rain – and other pollutants such as mercury and soot particles.
Van der Hoeven said that, without a high carbon price to discourage the growth in coal use and encourage cleaner technologies such as renewable power generation, only competition from lower-priced gas could realistically cut demand for coal. This has happened in the US, owing to the extraordinary increase in the production of shale gas in that market in the past five years.
She said: “The US experience suggests that a more efficient gas market, marked by flexible pricing and fuelled by indigenous unconventional resources that are produced sustainably, can reduce coal use, carbon dioxide emissions and consumers’ electricity bills. Europe, China and other regions should take note.”
That would mean producing much more shale gas, as conventional gas resources are running down in their easily accessible locations.
In Europe, the Emissions Trading Scheme was supposed to discourage high-carbon power generation by imposing a price on carbon dioxide emissions. This was done through issuing generators and energy-intensive companies with a set quota of emissions permits, requiring them to buy extra permits if they needed to emit more than their allowance. But an over-allocation, coupled with the effects of the financial crisis and recession, has led to a large surplus of permits on the market, which has in turn led to a plunge in permit prices. At current levels – a few euros per tonne of carbon – there is little incentive to seek out lower carbon fuels, and coal is enjoying a renaissance in Europe.
That means one of the world’s only regulatory market mechanisms aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions is failing in its key goals. The world faces the likelihood of an increased risk of climate change as a result of this runaway consumption of the highest carbon fossil fuel.


Lots of us know we are sleep-deprived but imagine if we could fix it with a fairly simple solution: getting up later. In a speech at the British Science Festival, Dr Paul Kelley, clinical research associate at the Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute at Oxford University, called for schools to stagger their starting times to work with the natural biological rhythms of their students. It would improve cognitive performance, exam results and students’ health (sleep deprivation has been linked with diabetes, depression, obesity and an impaired immune system).
It follows a paper, published in 2014, in which he noted that, when children are around ten, their biological wake-up time is about 6.30am; at 16, this rises to 8am; and, at 18, someone you may think of as a lazy teenager actually has a natural waking hour of 9am. The conventional school starting time works for 10-year-olds but not 16- to 18-year-olds. For the older teenagers, it might be more sensible to start the school day at 11am or even later. “A 7am alarm call for older adolescents,” Kelley and his colleagues pointed out in the paper, “is the equivalent of a 4.30am start for a teacher in their 50s.”
He says it’s not as simple as persuading teenagers to go to bed earlier. “The body’s natural rhythm is controlled by a particular kind of light,” says Kelley. “The eye doesn’t just contain rods and cones; it contains cells that then report to the suprachiasmatic nuclei in the hypothalamus.” This part of the brain controls our circadian rhythms over a 24-hour cycle. “It’s the light that controls it. It’s like saying: 'Why can’t you control your heartbeat?'”
But it isn’t just students who would benefit from a later start. Kelley says the working day should be more forgiving of our natural rhythms. Describing the average sleep loss per night for different age groups, he says: “Between 14 and 24, it’s more than two hours. For people aged between 24 and about 30 or 35, it’s about an hour and a half. That can continue up until you’re about 55 when it’s in balance again. The 10-year-old and 55-year-old wake and sleep naturally at the same time.”
This might be why, he adds, the traditional nine to five is so ingrained; it is maintained by bosses, many of them in their mid-50s and upwards because “it is best for them”. So, should workplaces have staggered starting times, too? Should those in their 50s and above come in at 8am, while those in their 30s start at 10am and the teenage intern or apprentice be encouraged to turn up at 11am? Kelley says that synchronized hours could have “many positive consequences. The positive side of this is people’s performance, mood and health will improve. It’s very uplifting in a way because it’s a solution that will make people less ill, and happier and better at what they do.”
There would probably be fewer accidents as drivers would be more alert, he says. It could spell the end of rush hour as people stagger their work and school-run times. A later start to the day for many, says Kelley, “is something that would benefit everyone, particularly families. Parents go and try to wake up teenagers who are waking up three hours too early. It creates tensions for everybody.”
So, what time does Kelley start work? “I am 67 so that means I’m back to being ten years old and I get up just after six. I wake naturally.” And, yes, he says he finds the start of his working day much easier now than he did when he was younger.


Intermediate
Noise from ships may disturb animals such as killer whales and dolphins much more than people previously thought. New research shows that underwater noise could disturb the animals communication and ability to  nd prey. The low rumble of passing ships has, for a long time, been connected to the disturbance of large whales. But, US researchers have also found noise at medium and higher frequencies, including at 20,000Hz where killer whales, also known as orcas, hear best.
These noises could be disturbing the ability of killer whales to communicate and use echo to  nd their prey. Dolphins and porpoises, which also hear at higher frequencies, may have the same problems. The  ndings suggest that the noise could affect the endangered population of killer whales that are found near the shipping lanes up the west coast of the USA.
The main concern of this is that even a slight increase in sound may make echolocation more dif cult for whales, said Scott Veirs, who led the research. Echolocation is the process of using sound to bounce off objects such as prey and identify where they are. Thats worrying because their prey, chinook salmon, is already quite scarce. Hearing a salmons click is probably one of the most challenging things a killer whale does. Hearing that subtle click is harder if theres a lot of noise around you.
The researchers used underwater microphones to measure the noise created by about 1,600 ships as they passed through Haro Strait, in Washington State, USA. The two-year study recorded the sound made by 12 different types of vessel, including cruise ships, container ships and military vehicles, that passed through the strait about 20 times a day.
Some ships are quieter than others but the average intensity of noise next to all the ships was 173 underwater decibels, equivalent to 111 decibels through the air  about the sound of a loud rock concert. Whales are not usually right next to ships and so would hear noise of about 60 to 90 decibels  around the level of a lawnmower or a vacuum cleaner.
Veirs said scientists already knew about the impact of underwater noise on large whales. But, the new research shows the threat to smaller whales, dolphins and porpoises. Ships have been thought of as low-frequency sources of noise, like the rumbling of lorries or trains, he said. Most noise is at that low frequency but the background noise of the ocean is raised even in the high frequencies. This could be causing a signi cant problem that we need to look into more
There are several further consequences of a noisy underwater environment. Whales may have to group together more closely in order to hear each other. And, if they fail to  nd prey as effectively, they will need to use up their stores of extra blubber. This is a problem because this blubber often contains manmade pollutants that are toxic to whales if they are released fully into their systems.
Veirs said more work needs to be done to identify how badly the noise is affecting whales and also to quieten the ships that pass near them. It should be easy to reduce noise pollution, he said. Military ships are quite a bit quieter and there could be simple ways of transferring that technology to commercial ships. Another way to reduce noise is to slow down. Decreasing speed by six knots could decrease noise by half.
While some whale species, such as blue whales, the largest mammal on Earth, are safer now because whaling has declined, others are still under threat from a range of factors. The US federal government has recently protected nearly 40,000 square miles of the Atlantic to try to avoid losing a species of whale with just 500 individuals left.
In Europe, killer whales are carrying dangerously high levels of banned chemicals in their blubber. Scientists are still trying to  nd out whether pollutants caused the deaths of  ve whales that were found on beaches on the east coast of Britain in January 2016. Meanwhile, around the coast of Australia, whales face an increased threat from ship strikes and oil and gas drilling, as well as Japans recent decision to start whaling again in Antarctic waters.


Intermediate
In Iceland, you can be called Aagot, Arney or sfrur; Baldey, Bebba or Br. Dgg, Dimmbl, Etna and Eybjrt are fine and so are Frigg, Glds, Hrn and Ingunn. Jrlaug is OK, as are Obba, Sigurflj, rana and Vagna. But you cannot, as a girl in Iceland, be called Harriet.
The whole situation, said Tristan Cardew, is really rather silly. With his Icelandic wife, Kristin, Cardew is appealing against a decision by the National Registry in the capital Reykjavik not to renew their ten-year-old daughter Harriets passport because it does not recognize her first name.
Since the registry does not recognize the name of Harriets 12-year-old brother Duncan either, the two children have, until now, travelled on passports identifying them as Stlka and Drengur Cardew: Girl and Boy Cardew. But, this time, the authorities have decided to apply the letter of the law, Cardew, a British-born cook who moved to Iceland in 2000, said. And that says no official document will be issued to people who do not bear an approved Icelandic name.
The situation meant the family, from Kpavogur, risked missing their holiday in France until they applied to the British embassy for an emergency UK passport, which should now allow them to leave.
Names are important in Iceland, a country of only 320,000 people, whose phone book lists subscribers by their first name for the very sensible reason that most Icelandic surnames simply record the fact that you are your fathers (or mothers) son or daughter. Jn Einarssons children, for example, might be lafur Jnsson and Sigrur Jnsdttir.
The law says that the names of children born in Iceland must  unless both parents are foreign  be submitted to the National Registry within six months of birth. If they are not on a recognized list of 1,853 female and 1,712 male names, the parents must seek the approval of a body called the Icelandic Naming Committee.
For the 5,000 or so children born in Iceland each year, the committee reportedly receives about 100 applications and rejects about half under a 1996 law aimed mainly at preserving the Icelandic language. Among its requirements are that given names must be capable of having Icelandic grammatical endings, may not conflict with the linguistic structure of Iceland and should be written in accordance with the ordinary rules of Icelandic spelling.
What this means in practice is that names containing letters that do not officially exist in Icelands 32-letter alphabet, such as c, are out. Similarly, names unable to accommodate the endings required by the different cases used in Icelandic are also routinely turned down. That was the problem with Harriet, said Cardew.
The countrys naming laws have been criticized in recent years: in 2013, Blr  Light Breeze  Bjarkardttir Rnarsdottir won the right to be officially known by her given name, as opposed to Girl, when a court ruled that denying her was a violation of the Icelandic constitution. The former mayor of Reykjavik, Jn Gnarr, has also called Icelands naming law unfair, stupid and against creativity.
The Cardews could get round Harriets problem by giving her an Icelandic middle name. But its a bit late for that and way too silly, said Cardew. Are they saying they dont want us here?


Standing at the edge of space above the deserts of New Mexico, Felix Baumgartner paused slightly. It was a small step away from the capsule, but a 24-mile drop back down to Earth. “Our guardian angel will take care of you,” said mission control, and the man known as Fearless Felix jumped.
Ten heart-stopping minutes later the Austrian landed back on Earth, after reaching speeds of up to 725mph, and breaking three world records, including becoming the world’s first supersonic skydiver by breaking the sound barrier at Mach 1.24. “We love you Felix,” cheered the control room as his mother, Ava Baumgartner, wept. Baumgartner, who claimed the records for the highest altitude manned balloon flight and the highest altitude skydive, raised his arms in a victory salute to thank his team.
He was wearing a specially designed survival suit that kept his body intact against the hugely varying pressures that marked his drop back to Earth. Without it, his blood would have boiled and his lungs might have exploded. Baumgartner later told a press conference: “When I was standing there on top of the world, you become so humble, you don’t think about breaking records.” He admitted all he could think about was getting back alive, but added: “Sometimes you have to go up really high to see how small you are.”
After two aborted attempts the week before, the mission was given the go-ahead on Sunday morning with the cooperation of the weather. Baumgartner was carried up into crystal clear skies by a gigantic balloon, which measured 30 million square cubic feet and whose skin was one-tenth the thickness of a sandwich bag. At the bottom of the balloon was a capsule, in which Baumgartner sat in his suit.
As he reached the desired height, Baumgartner went through a checklist of 40 items with his mentor Joe Kittinger, the previous holder of the highest altitude manned balloon flight.
There was some concern that a heater for his visor was not working, causing his visor to fog. “This is very serious, Joe,” he told Kitttinger. “Sometimes it’s getting foggy when I exhale. ... I do not feel heat.” But they decided to go ahead, watched by a record 8 million people as the jump was streamed live on YouTube.
The two-and-a-half-hour journey upwards, during which the curvature of the Earth became visible and the skies gradually turned black, was matched with a rather more rapid descent.
Three cameras attached to Baumgartner’s suit recorded his free-fall of just over four minutes – which failed to break the existing free-fall record for duration – and then the parachute opening.
The success of the mission, and of the suit, raises the prospect that astronauts might be able to survive a high altitude disaster of the type that struck the space shuttle Columbia in 2003 by actually bailing out of their craft. Baumgartner’s top medical man in the stunt was Dr Jonathan Clark, whose wife Laurel Clark died in the Columbia accident. Clark is now dedicated to improving astronauts’ chances of survival in a high-altitude disaster.
Baumgartner has made a name for himself with acts of daring. The former paratrooper has parachuted off buildings and mountains and once into a 600 foot deep cave. He had already done two practice free-falls in preparation for this attempt – one from 71,000 feet in March and a second from 97,000 feet in July 2012. But no feat can possibly have matched his jump above the town of Roswell, a suitably chosen place famed for its connections to UFO sightings.
He was chasing five different records: the first human to ever break the sound barrier in free- fall; the highest free-fall altitude jump; the highest manned balloon flight; the longest free-fall; and his jump platform is believed to be the largest manned balloon in history. The stunt, which was seven years in the planning and sponsored by Red Bull drinks, beat two of Kittinger’s records: the retired US air force colonel previously held the high altitude and speed records for parachuting. Kittinger jumped from a balloon 19 miles above the planet in 1960. Suitably, the only voice in Baumgartner’s radio earpiece guiding his ascent was that of Kittinger, now 84.
Asked after the jump what he wanted to do next, Baumgartner said: “I want to inspire a generation. I’d like to be sitting in the same spot in the next four years as Joe Kittinger. There is a young guy asking me for advice because he wants to break my record.” He said the most exciting moment for him had been when he was standing outside the capsule “on top of the world”. To laughter, he added: “The most beautiful moment was when I was standing on the landing area and Mike Todd [the life support engineer who dressed Baumgartner in his suit] showed up and he had a smile on his face like a little kid.”
Baumgartner said that he had come to feel like Todd’s son, adding: “He was so happy that I was alive.” Earlier, Todd had told the press conference: “The world needs a hero right now, and they got one in Felix Baumgartner.” To further laughter at the press conference, Kittinger said: “I would like to give a special one-fingered salute to all the folk who said that he [Baumgartner] was going to come apart when he went supersonic.”
This will be the last jump, Baumgartner said. He has promised to settle down and enjoy his post-jump years with his girlfriend, Nicole Oetl, flying helicopters on rescue missions in the US and Austria.


Intermediate
Scientists have connected the brains of two animals and allowed them to share sensory information. It is a major step towards what the researchers call the worlds first organic computer.
The US team fitted two rats with devices called brain-to-brain interfaces that let the animals collaborate on simple tasks to earn rewards, such as a drink of water. In one important demonstration of the technology, the scientists used the internet to connect the brains of two rats separated by thousands of miles  one in North Carolina, USA, and the other in Natal, Brazil.
The researchers were led by Miguel Nicolelis, a pioneer of devices that allow paralyzed people to control computers and robotic arms with their thoughts. They say their latest work could make it possible for multiple brains to be connected to share information. These experiments showed that we have established a sophisticated, direct communication connection between brains, Nicolelis said. Basically, we are creating what I call an organic computer.
The scientists first demonstrated that rats can share, and act on, each others sensory information by electrically connecting their brains via tiny grids of electrodes that reach the part of the brain that processes movement.
The rats were taught to press a lever when a light went on above it. When they did the task correctly, they got a drink of water. To test the animals ability to share brain information, they put the rats in two separate compartments. Only one compartment had a light above the lever. When the rat pressed the lever, an electronic version of its brain activity was sent directly to the other rats brain. In tests, the second rat responded correctly to the imported brain signals and pressed the lever 70% of the time.
Incredibly, the communication between the rats was two-way. If the receiving rat failed at the task, the first rat did not get the reward of a drink, and appeared to change its behaviour to make the task easier for its partner. In further experiments, the rats collaborated on a task that required them to tell the difference between narrow and wide openings using their whiskers.
In the final test, the scientists connected rats on different continents and used the internet to send their brain activity back and forth. Even though the animals were on different continents, they could still communicate, said Miguel Pais-Vieira, the first author of the study. This tells us that we could create a workable network of animal brains distributed in many different locations.
Nicolelis said the team is now working on ways to connect several animals brains at once to solve more complex tasks. We cannot even predict what might happen when animals begin interacting as part of a brain-net, he said. In theory, you could imagine that a combination of brains could find solutions that individual brains cannot achieve by themselves.
Anders Sandberg, who studies the ethics of neurotechnologies at Oxford University, said the work was very important in helping to understand how brains encode information. But the potential future uses of the technology are much wider, said Sandberg. The main reason we are running the planet is that we are amazingly good at communicating and coordinating. Without that, although we are very smart animals, we would not dominate the planet.
I dont think theres any risk of supersmart rats from this, he added. Theres a big difference between sharing sensory information and being able to plan. Im not worried about an invasion by smart rats.
Very little is known about how people encode thoughts and how they might be sent to another persons brain  so that will not happen any time soon. And much of what is in our minds is a draft, as Sandberg calls it, of what we might do. Often, we dont want to reveal those drafts, because that would be embarrassing and confusing. And we change a lot of those drafts before we act. Most of the time I think wed be very thankful not to be in someone elses head.