What the scientists are saying… Positive impact of autism therapy
Bitcoin’s waste problem
We know that bitcoin mining consumes phenomenal amounts of energy: according to some estimates, it will be responsible for 0.9% of all carbon emissions within ten years. Now a study has warned that it also generates huge quantities of electronic waste. Miners use their computers to audit bitcoin transactions and receive bitcoin in reward. Running the computers is very energy intensive; but it burns through hardware too: in particular, miners are constantly replacing specialised computer chips in order to invest in faster, more powerful ones. With no other uses for the old chips, they are simply discarded. The new analysis, by a team at MIT and the Dutch central bank, estimates that in total, the world’s miners create 30,700 metric tonnes of e-waste per year. “This number is comparable to the amount of small IT and telecommunication equipment waste produced by a country like the Netherlands,” said the authors. The waste averages out at 272g per bitcoin transaction – making each one equivalent to throwing away two iPhones.
Flowers get a buzz out of bees
Flowers can sense when bees are in the vicinity, and release their perfume in order to lure them in, a study has suggested. Bees are well known to carry a minute electric charge, which is thought to help the pollen stick to them when they fly away. But according to the new research, it may also alert flowers to the presence of the pollinators, prompting some of them to release their sweet scent. The trait may have evolved in plants in order to maximise the effectiveness of the chemicals they release, says lead researcher Dr Clara Montgomery. “Flowers have a limited supply of these scents, so it makes sense they only release them when their pollinators are around.” In their study, her team found that a charge of 600 picoCoulombs – equivalent to five bee visits – was enough to induce a species of violet petunia, Petunia integrifolia, to release significantly more scent. In this way, it could hope to attract more visits from bees further away.
The safe side of “range anxiety”
One of the downsides of driving an electric car is “range anxiety” – the worry that the car will run out of power before it reaches its destination. But this could have an upside, reports The Sunday Times. Electric cars are half as likely to be involved in accidents as petrol or diesel ones – and researchers believe this may be because in order to reduce the risk of getting stranded, their drivers are more cautious on the road. To conserve power, and squeeze out the maximum possible mileage, they go more slowly, and keep a constant speed. “If you look at the reduction in accidents from internal combustion engine, through hybrid to electric, almost the cleaner the car, the lower the incident rate,” said Chris Chandler, the principal consultant at Lex Autolease, which provided the data. “There’s a high probability that it’s driver behaviour that is reducing those rates.”
Infants displaying signs of autism are far less likely to later be diagnosed as autistic if they receive a new therapy, a study has found. The 104 children who took part in the research were aged nine months to 14 months, and had come to the attention of healthcare services in Australia because they were showing signs of possible autism, such as avoiding eye contact and not responding to their names. Half were given routine care, and the rest were given ten sessions of the therapy over five months. This involved researchers analysing videotaped interactions of the infants with their parents, then using the footage to help the parents understand how their children had been trying to communicate, and how they might better engage with them. By the time they reached the age of three, only 6.7% of the children who had had the therapy had been diagnosed with autism, compared to one in five of those in the control group. The researcher stressed that it was not clear if the effect would be permanent – and that the early intervention was not a “cure” for autism: many of the children still had behavioural problems aged three, and might still need specialist care. However, they said it might improve their chances of developing communication and social skills before starting school.