me and my microbiome
TRANSCRIPT
21 June 2014 | NewScientist | 5
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GETTING dark? Switch on a light. It’s the most mundane of actions: so mundane, in fact, that we often forget just how formidable a task it is to keep the lights on. To achieve it, power stations, pylons and cables must work around the clock and in all weathers, and supply everything from smelters to hairdryers while they’re at it.
Not everyone takes access to electricity for granted. Less than a quarter of Ethiopia’s people are on the grid, according to the World Bank. The country wants to get 30 million more wired up – but to do so, it risks killing off the rich ecosystem of Lake Turkana, the so-called Jade Sea (see page 42).
Quite the dilemma. Such quandaries are not confined to the developing world. The West, too, has tricky choices to make
WE USED to think our relationship with bacteria was simple: there were good ones that kept our digestive tracts healthy and there were bad ones that made us sick.
In recent years, this distinction has blurred. We know that many
Keeping the lights off
“ Industry is already worried about power failures; domestic users may soon share their concerns”
Hackers vs spooks
Me and my microbiome
We must manage demand for electricity, as well as supply
when it comes to electricity supply. In the UK, successive governments’ shilly-shallying has led to older power stations being closed faster than newer ones are being built. Industry is already worried about the potential for power failures; domestic users may soon share their concern.
Suppliers are on the horns not of a dilemma, but a trilemma. Reliable power doesn’t come cheap; but rising bills are hugely unpopular. Cheap power isn’t green, but emissions must fall. And green power isn’t reliable – but the lights must stay on.
Is there any way out? The UK’s National Grid proposes to tackle demand, rather than supply, by rewarding industrial customers for relieving the load on the grid at peak times (see page 32).
It’s a neat idea. But we can go further. Rather than exhorting people to turn off the lights – as smart meters seek to do – smart switches should do it for them, while smart storage smooths supply and smart grids ensure it flows only as needed.
These elements are falling into place. But large-scale adoption requires political will that has been absent on the supply side. Economic incentives are a good way to encourage uptake; more, please. Better that we learn how to turn the lights off than relearn how to live without them. n
bacteria can play both roles, living happily in us or on us as part of a healthy microbiome, but capable of turning nasty under certain conditions.
Now there are claims that a truly villainous bacterium – Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which causes TB – is actually symbiotic and helped us evolve our large brains (see page 28).
This is just a theory, but it is clear there is still a lot to learn about the interactions between us and our microbes.
The effect of microbiomes on health is already one of the fastest moving areas of biomedicine. As resistance to antibiotics drives us to re-evaluate them, a similar look at diseases like TB could uncover life-saving knowledge. n
COMPUTER hackers usually get a bad press. But the mass surveillance now known to have been undertaken by the US National Security Agency and its allies may go some way towards changing that. The reason? To protect ourselves from snooping, we need to understand how it is done – and few people outside the intelligence services are better equipped to do so than hackers.
Last year, German news magazine Der Spiegel published details of a confidential catalogue of hardware and software that the NSA used to extract information from our computers.
We now report how computer-security researchers have started to reverse-engineer the spying gadgets listed in the catalogue to work out how they operate (see page 20).
Thanks to their skills, we now know how the NSA’s novel bugs capture and transmit the images being viewed on computer screens, send keystrokes as they are typed and ensure viruses that monitor PC use can never be removed.
What the hackers are doing is unlikely to win any high-profile accolades like Pulitzer prizes. Nonetheless, their efforts are just as important as whistle-blower Edward Snowden’s leaks in protecting us from overbearing intelligence agencies. n
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