What the scientists are saying…

What your phone says about you The outside of your phone can reveal almost as much about you as the data stored inside it. Using swabs taken from handsets, researchers from the University of California have been able to construct surprisingly accurate profiles of their owners: among other things, they can determine their gender, what foods they eat, what hygiene products they use and which medications they take. People leave chemical and molecular traces whenever they touch an object; and on objects they touch frequently – phones, keys, wallets – these build up over time. Using mass spectronomy, the researchers analysed the phones of 39 volunteers, and constructed a personalised lifestyle “readout” for each of them. Some of the products detected – including sunscreen and mosquito repellent – had been lingering on the phones for months. The team, who published their findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, believe their work could be used by police when constructing profiles of crime suspects, among other applications.

Statins: is a high dose best? In the UK, patients prescribed statins tend to be put on a low or moderate dose – at least to begin with. But according to a new study, this approach could be leading to thousands of preventable deaths. Researchers at Stanford University analysed the medical records of more than half a million patients, all of whom were at elevated risk of suffering from heart disease or strokes. They found that those receiving high-intensity statin therapy – roughly a third of the total – were 20% less likely to die within a year than those on moderate doses, and 29% less likely to die than those on low doses. Around seven million people in the UK take statins, but GPS tend to be wary of prescribing high doses because of the possible side effects, which include headaches, muscle pain and an increased risk of diabetes.

Flu risk may depend on birth year If you don’t get flu this winter, it could be down to the year of your birth. That is the hypothesis put forward by researchers who have been exploring why some recent strains of avian flu have seemed to be most devastating for children and young adults, while others have mainly affected older people. The international team believe this disparity is explained by the patients’ exposure to flu as children: the more similar a new flu strain is to the first one an individual encountered, they suggest, the better his or her immune system will be at fending it off. “In the past, we always assumed that when pandemic flu viruses emerge from animals, the human population is an immunological blank slate,” said study author Katelyn Gostic of UCLA. In fact, people might be immune to a new strain if they were exposed to a similar one in childhood. Knowing this could make it possible to predict which age groups will be most vulnerable to future pandemics, enabling vaccinations to be better targeted.

Paralysed monkeys walk again Two partially paralysed macaque monkeys have recovered the ability to walk after having tiny wireless devices implanted in their brains and spinal cords. Paralysis can occur when the neurons in the spinal cord responsible for passing messages from the brain to the muscles are damaged. The new technology works by allowing the brain signals responsible for movement to bypass these neurons. Instead, they are detected by an implant in the brain, and transmitted to a small computer that can be carried in a backpack; this “decodes” the signals, to find out what movement was intended, and then sends instructions, via an implant at the base of the spine, to working nerves. Although similar systems have been designed before, this is the first which doesn’t require the patient to be wired up to a computer, and which connects brain and muscle instantaneously. Designed by a team at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, it could be ready for human trials within five years.

Medical file Dementia has overtaken heart disease as the biggest cause of death in England and Wales. In 2015, dementia was responsible for 61,686 (or 11.65%) of the 529,655 deaths in England and Wales, while heart disease accounted for 60,818 (11.5%). Cancer remains the biggest killer overall, but it is not regarded as a single disease.