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How to rouse a
minimally conscious brain
AWAKENING
Creatures that blur the line
between life and death
The epic quest to map
the world’s wind
WEEKLY
May 20-26, 2017
SURVIVORS
THAR IT BLOWS!
NUCLEAR WINTER
Atomic energy’s unexpected demise
How to take control of your wandering mind
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CONTENTS
News
MASSIMO BREGA, THE LIGHTHOUSE/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
Volume 234 No 3126
This issue online
newscientist.com/issue/3126
Leader
3
Last week’s cyberattacks were weak, but
caused a lot of damage – defence is needed
6
A week-long
awakening
Brain stimulation
rouses minimally
conscious brains
News
UPFRONT
Ransomware hits 200,000 machines.
New Ebola outbreak. DeepMind’s NHS
access was “legally inappropriate”
6 NEWS & TECHNOLOGY
The cities at risk from robot workers. Pacific
island buried in plastic. Plasma jet engines
take off. Long-distance whispering. Polar
bears forced to eat more eggs. Microbes
that can survive asteroid hits. We could pass
1.5°C global warming by 2026. Lionfish
heard roaring. Easy mind-controlled
exoskeletons. Spray-on touchpad brings
objects to life. Tracking rare bats in Cuba.
Cancer evolution traced in one man
17 IN BRIEF
Vultures use mud as make-up. Lava waves
on Io. Mussel glue aids wound healing
4
On the cover
26
Concentrate!
How to take control of
your wandering mind
6
Awakening
How to rouse a minimally
conscious brain
34
Survivors
Between life and death
31
Thar it blows!
Mapping the world’s wind
20
Nuclear winter
Demise of atomic energy
8
Plasma power
Jet engines in space
Analysis
20
Nuked dreams
The new generation of
nuclear power is on the ropes
22 COMMENT
Why is Hawking ramping up his doom alert?
Last chance for conservation’s poster child
23 INSIGHT
What the French election hack teaches us
Cover image
Simon Prades
Aperture
People
24
Solar time lapse burns through film
38
Death on
the volcano
A geologist recalls
the day he should
have died
DAVID STOCK
Features
26
Concentrate!
(see above left)
31
Thar it blows!
The epic quest to map the
world’s wind
34
Survivors
Creatures that blur the line
between life and death
38 PEOPLE
(see left)
Culture
40
Creation myths
The elusive world of
synthetic biology gets pinned down
41
Extra dimension
Augmented reality brings
back the ceremony of listening to albums
42
A wild ride
Kew Gardens celebrates Joseph
Hooker’s journey to put botany on the map
Coming next week…
Neither created nor destroyed?
Cosmic challenge to energy conservation
Regulars
52
55
56
57
LETTERS
Dementia and time travel
SIGNAL BOOST
Smell: the fifth sense
FEEDBACK
Sexy water
THE LAST WORD
Power ballads
Thou shalt not refreeze…
…and other questionable kitchen
commandments
20 May 2017 | NewScientist |
1
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© 2017 New Scientist Ltd, England.
New Scientist ISSN 0262 4079 is
published weekly except for the last
week in December by New Scientist
Ltd, England.
New Scientist (Online) ISSN 2059 5387
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We will be held to ransom
Last week’s cyberattacks were small beer. Defence is needed
LET’S be clear about the source of
the unprecedented cybercrime
wave that raced round the world
over the past week.
The US’s National Security
Agency, keen to pry open digital
spyholes, created a tool called
EternalBlue, which exploited a
vulnerability in old versions of
Microsoft Windows. That was
leaked by a hacker group in April,
and this month emerged as the
WannaCry “ransomware” –
a security lapse that Microsoft
president Brad Smith compared
to the US military having some
of its Tomahawk missiles stolen.
The ransomware spread like
wildfire, crippling systems in
150 countries including those of
the UK’s National Health Service,
at considerable human and
economic cost (see page 4).
What makes the attack all the
more worrying is that it showed
no signs of great ambition. The
amount of money demanded was
relatively small, and the malware
included a flaw that ultimately
allowed a lone security analyst to
defuse it. Despite lurid early
headlines, it looks less like a
coordinated blitz and more like a
small-time hack that snowballed.
How did it get so far? In the case
of the NHS, the answer is chronic
underfunding. The service runs
elderly versions of Windows not
only in some desktop systems,
which are relatively easy to patch,
but also embedded in unwieldy
equipment like MRI machines.
Fingers are being pointed in all
directions over the failure to
upgrade, but health secretary
Jeremy Hunt looks unlikely
to emerge with much credit,
having reportedly axed the NHS’s
Windows service contract in 2015
and gone AWOL during the crisis.
It is not as if we did not have
warning. Ransomware attacks
have been increasing – especially
on hospitals, which make
attractive targets given their
combination of sensitive data
and ageing tech. Had determined
cyberwarriors been at work we
could have been in far worse
trouble, with critical systems
brought to their knees for days or
weeks. We might yet, if the lessons
of this crisis are not learned.
One lesson: upgrades and
service contracts can be costly,
but not paying for them is a false
economy. We must hope our
technologically illiterate political
classes will now accept that.
Another: no one can be trusted
with security loopholes. The NSA
left the Microsoft vulnerability
open for their own use. By not
reporting it, they left millions of
people vulnerable to attack. To be
blunt: rather than protecting
national security, the NSA
endangered it.
■
A new era for New Scientist
WE ARE pleased to announce that
New Scientist
has been acquired
by a company set up specifically to
publish the magazine. This marks
a return to independent ownership
and operation for the first time in
several decades.
New Scientist Limited has
been established by the team that
previously acquired the
Times
Educational Supplement
from News
International and transformed it into
a global internet brand. The team, led
by Bernard Gray, will work with
New
Scientist’s
existing management to
develop the title’s global potential,
expanding its range of digital
products and live events while staying
true to the tradition of strong and
independent journalism that has
been central to our success.
20 May 2017 | NewScientist |
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