Weird Science
Digital detox holidays
Unplugged holidays could soon become a big part of the tourism industry, as workers increasingly opt to spend their annual leave with a “digital detox”. Researchers at Australia’s James Cook University studied how the portrayal of digital-free tourism — where internet and mobile signals are either absent or digital technology use is controlled — is changing. Professor Philip Pearce, said digital “black hole” resorts have become popular luxury vacation choices in the United Kingdom and North America, and “digital detoxing” holidays are new selling points for many isolated island destinations. “There is recognition in the industry of the ‘new escapism’, where people not only want to stay away from the physical home environment, but also to disconnect from the digital world of routine work and social life,” he said.
The researchers analysed media references over the past decade. “The first references we found on the topic of digital-detox holidays were a single article from 2009 and another the next year. Serious media coverage of digitalfree holidays started in 2011.” Pearce said the experience was first offered as an upmarket product targeting the high-end market. “By 2016 and in 2017 though, there was a change of emphasis, with digital-free holidays going from a niche product to one appealing to a broader consumer base.” It’s not yet clear if this kind of tourism will be widely profitable.
Why no two brains are the same
The fingerprint is unique in every individual: as no two fingerprints are the same, they have become the go-to method of identity verification for police, immigration authorities and smartphone producers alike. But what about the central switchboard inside our heads? Is it possible to find out who a brain belongs to from certain anatomical features? A team of Swiss scientists looked at the question to find how individual experiences and life circumstances influence the anatomy of our brains.
Professional musicians, golfers or chess players, for example, had particular characteristics in the regions of the brain which they use the most for their skilled activity. However, events of shorter duration can also leave behind traces in the brain. If, for example, the right arm is kept still for two weeks, the thickness of the brain’s cortex in the areas responsible for controlling the immobilised arm was reduced. “We suspected that those experiences having an effect on the brain interact with the genetic make-up so that over the course of years every person develops a completely individual brain anatomy,” explained Professor Lutz Jancke, a neuropsychologist at the University of Zurich. His team examined the brains of nearly 200 healthy older people using magnetic resonance imaging three times over a period of two years. For each, the researchers were able to identify an individual combination of specific brain anatomical characteristics, whereby the identification accuracy, even for the very general brain anatomical characteristics, was over 90 per cent. “We were able to confirm that the structure of people’s brains is very individual,“he said. “The combination of genetic and non-genetic influences affects not only the functioning of the brain, but also its anatomy.”
Could this fern help save the planet?
A tiny fern — with each leaf the size of a gnat — may provide global impact for sinking atmospheric carbon dioxide, fixing nitrogen in agriculture and shooing pesky insects from crops. Azolla filiculoides is a water fern often found fertilising rice paddies in Asia, but its ancestry goes much further back.
“Fifteen million years ago, Earth was a much warmer place,” explained Fay-Wei Li, a plant evolutionary biologist at Cornell University’s Boyce Thompson Institute. “Azolla, this fast-growing bloom that once covered the Arctic Circle, pulled in 10 trillion tonnes of carbon dioxide from our planet’s atmosphere, and scientists think it played a key role in transitioning Earth from a hot house to the cool place it is today.” As Li and a team of international collaborators downloaded the plant’s genetic make-up, or genome, they discovered a fern-specific gene shown to provide insect resistance. “In general, insects don’t like ferns, and scientists wondered why,” said Li, noting one of the fern’s genes likely transferred from a bacterium. “It’s a naturally modified gene, and now we’ve found it, it could have huge implications for agriculture.” Nitrogen fixation was the process by which plants use the chemical element as a fertiliser. While plants cannot fix nitrogen, Li said, the genome revealed a symbiotic relationship with cyano bacteria, a bluegreen phylum of bacteria that obtain their energy through photosynthesis and produce oxygen. Cavities in the Azolla leaf host cyanobacteria to fix nitrogen, while the plant provides sugary fuel for the cyanobacteria. “Science can gain vital intelligence for understanding plant genes,” he said. “We can now research its properties as a sustainable fertiliser and perhaps gather carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.”