Nanotech Tackles Food Poisoning Tasty Treats Diminish Patience Quieting Quantum Noise Early Psychosis Prediction

Volume 38 | Number 4
JULY/AUGUST 2017 | $9.95

Gene
Drives
A Fork in the
Road for the
GMO Debate

How Gene Drives Can

Genetically Modify
Populations

Could Gene Drives Stop

Malaria in its Tracks?

How Gene Drives Could

Benefit Biodiversity

Are Gene Drives the Future

of Pest Control?

Practical and Ethical

Concerns About Gene Drives

Why Education Doesnt Lead to GM Food Acceptance Should We Burst Our News Filter Bubble?
bajinda/Adobe

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 CONTENTS

FEATURES
14 Gene Drives: A Way to Genetically Engineer Populations
Charles Robin
Gene drives occur when a bias in the mechanism of inheritance spreads
particular genetic variants through a population. Developments in gene-
editing technology now make it possible to construct gene drives that
address problems in health, agriculture and conservation.

17 Driving Mosquitoes out of Town

Jack Scanlan
Existing techniques to control mosquito-borne diseases are coming up
short. Can gene drives offer hope to the millions affected?
14
20 Gene Drives for Conservation
Ella Kelly
Gene drives may provide a novel tool to counteract seemingly
unstoppable threats to global biodiversity.

23 The Future of Pest Control Lies Within (the Pest)

Alexandre Fournier-Level
Gene drives could improve global food security by turning pest biology
against itself.

25 Gene Drives: A Fork in the Road for the GMO Debate

Charles Robin
What are the moral and ethical concerns about gene drives, and how 28
should the technology be regulated?

28 Its Not Just About The Science

Rachel A. Ankeny & Heather J. Bray
Female scientists and health professionals have revealed that
opposition to genetically modified food is less about the science and
more about perceived conflicts with personal values.

30 Tasty Treats Diminish Our Capacity for Patience

Bowen Fung
A new study finds that our recent experience with rewards such as food
can change our capacity for patience.

33 Ruling the Roost

Tamsyn Crowley & Ben Wade 30
More than four million Australians suffer from food poisoning each
year, many due to bacterial contamination of poultry products. Now
nanotechnology is being tested as an alternative to antibiotic use in
chickens prior to processing.

36 How Early Can We Predict and Prevent Psychosis?

Scott R. Clark, K. Oliver Schubert & Bernhard T. Baune
The addition of a simple blood test could improve predictions of a first
psychotic episode.

38 A Quantum of Silence
Luke Helt & Michael Steel
Current silicon photon sources produce noise photons that interfere
with potential applications such as quantum computing, but new
research has discovered a method to quieten this quantum chaos. 38
JULY/AUGUST 2017 | |3
CONTENTS

conSCIENCE
40 Bursting the News Filter Bubble
Online technologies can create echo chambers that reinforce our
world views, but does this necessarily mean we need to open
ourselves up to alternative facts?

NEWS & COLUMNS

5 Up Front
7 Gene drives take genetic modification to the population level, with
applications in health, conservation and agriculture, but there are
also practical and ethical concerns.

6 Browse
A round-up of science news from our shores.

41 Neuropsy
A new study proposes a biological cause for misophonia
the pathological hatred of sounds.

42 Directions
The Finkel Review provides a roadmap to investment in clean
energy technologies.
40 43 Expert Opinion
The Finkel Reviews blueprint for the national electricity market
risks falling short of Australias task and opportunities in reducing
carbon emissions.

44 The Bitter Pill

An extensive review of integrative medicine by the Australian
Ministry of Health found that many of its practices arent
supported by evidence. Now its going by a new name.

45 The Naked Skeptic

The loss of specialist reporters in the clickbait era of journalism
matters more for science than other rounds.

46 EcoLogic
41 What is the state of our understanding of the connection between
climate change and ecosystem-service assessment?

47 Lowe Tech
CSIRO predicted the increasing severity of cyclones 30 years ago.

48 Out of this World

Solar storm blackouts could cost $40 billion daily, and volunteers
spot an exploded star that pre-dates the dinosaurs.

49 Quandary
The dismal death of Brooke Verity illustrates the need for
longitudinal studies of the long-term outcomes of surrogacy.

50 Australasian Sky
47 Your maps of the night sky for May and June.

4| | JULY/AUGUST 2017
UP FRONT

A New Twist in the DNA Revolution

Gene drives take genetic modication to the population level,
with applications in health, conservation and agriculture, but
there are also practical and ethical concerns.
www.austscience.com
EDITOR/PUBLISHER: Guy Nolch
Since the dawn of agriculture, humans have been modifying the genomes of plants and
animals through selective breeding, yet the acceleration of this process through molec-
ular genetics has brought mistrust among the public. Even today, despite no evidence of COLUMNISTS: David Reneke, Ian Lowe,
Peter Bowditch, Michael Cook,
John Long, Tim Hannan
harm from the long-term consumption of genetically modied foods, there remains
widespread wariness of what some have labelled Frankenfoods despite the best efforts
of the scientic community to educate the public about the issue. PATRONS: Australasian Science is
supported by Nobel Laureate Professor
Peter Doherty and renowned science
Indeed, there is evidence that further education will not allay these fears, even among
broadcaster Robyn Williams,
those with scientic training. A study of womens attitudes to GM food by Rachel
Ankeny and Heather Bray (p.28) has found that women with health/nutrition representing excellence in science and its
backgrounds and those with molecular biology backgrounds... took different approaches communication.
to risk, respectively stressing a lack of evidence of safety and a lack of evidence of harm.
This difference reinforces the idea that knowledge alone does not shape views on GM EDITORIAL CONTACTS
Control Publications P/L, Box 2155,
Wattletree Rd PO, VIC 3145, Australia
food, but that evidential standards and other values are critical. These other values
include preferences for food that they described as natural (by which they meant Phone: (03) 9500 0015
unprocessed), locally produced, healthy and nutritious, and free from additives. Only E-mail: science@control.com.au
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plant scientists in the study didnt consider GM foods to be in conict with these values.
Facebook: facebook.com/austscience
Now a new wave of genetic modication is upon us: the ability to edit genes and then
drive these useful genetic variants through a species. In this issue of Australasian Science,
Dr Charles Robin of The University of Melbourne has curated a series of articles on ADVERTISING: Steve Austin
Email: advertise@control.com.au
For rates see austscience.com.au/ads
these gene drives, commencing with his own explanation of how these genetic constructs
are designed and implemented (p.14). Jack Scanlan (p.17) follows by describing how
gene drives could curb mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria, either by spreading infer- DISTRIBUTION:
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limit the spread of invasive species such as rodents or cane toads, or even spread resistance
to the facial tumour disease that has blighted Tasmanian devil populations. Then there
are the agricultural applications, with Alexandre Fournier-Level (p.23) describing how Australasian Science is published six times
per year. The opinions expressed in this
publication are those of the authors and
gene drives could improve global food security by providing a new form of biological
pest control that is free of the health concerns associated with pesticides. do not necessarily represent those of
But if the public remains unconvinced about the safety of GM food, will they neces- the publisher.
sarily accept genetically modied populations of pests and disease-causing parasites? And
CONTRIBUTIONS
The Editor welcomes original articles of
just like previous attempts at biological control of pests, such as the introduction of cane
toads, how can we be sure that there wont be unintended ecological consequences when interest to the general public written by
we eliminate a species we consider a pest? Furthermore, can we control the spread of qualied writers on elds within their
expertise. Writers guidelines are at
http://www.australasianscience.com.au/
gene drives beyond our borders? Charles Robin (p.25) concludes the series of articles in
this edition by considering these and other practical and ethical questions. writers-guidelines. Prospective authors
There are many issues to consider, and if theres a lesson from the GM food debate should submit a summary to the Editor
its that it wont be an easy thing to sell to the community. prior to submitting a manuscript.

2017 Control Publications Pty Ltd

Cover Story
Guy Nolch is the Editor and Publisher of Australasian Science.

(ABN 46 006 591 304). All rights reserved.

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JULY/AUGUST 2017 | |5
BROWSE Compiled by Guy Nolch

When Neanderthals Walked with Modern Humans

Archaeologists at The Australian National
University and The University of Sydney have
opened a window into one of the most exciting
periods in human history the transition between
Neanderthals and modern humans.
An archaeological dig in a cave near the Czech
border with Austria has provided a timeline of
evidence from 10 sedimentary layers spanning
28,000 to 50,000 years ago, when our modern
human ancestors rst arrived in Europe. The dig
has unearthed more than 20,000 animal bones
as well as stone tools, weapons and a bead engraved
from bone that is the oldest of its kind in Central
Europe.
ANU archaeologist Dr Duncan Wright said
the project was so important because it gives some
of the earliest evidence of modern human activity
in the region at a time when humans were moving
substantial distances and bringing with them
portable art objects. In the early layers, the items A well-preserved partial skull of a cave bear approximately 50,000 years old.
weve found are locally made akes, possibly used
by small communities living and hunting in the vicinity to kill ration of this landscape by Homo sapiens, which arrived in this
animals or prepare food, but around 40,000 years ago we start to area for the rst time. Weve found that somewhere between 40
see objects coming from long distances away, Wright said. 48,000 years ago people became highly mobile, Nejman said.
Dating from this same time we unearthed a bead made from Instead of moving short distances near the cave where they lived,
mammal bone. This is the oldest portable art object of its type they were walking for hundreds of kilometres quite often. We
found anywhere in Central Europe, and provides evidence of social know that because we found various artefacts where the raw mate-
signalling, quite possibly used as a necklace to mark the identity of rial comes from 100200 km away.
the wearer. The artefacts were also made of different materials from
So, between these two periods, weve either seen a change in different regions some from the north-west, some from the
behaviour and human movement or possibly even a change in north, some from the east.
species. However, in layer 10, which represents an earlier time period
Archaeologist Dr Ladislav Nejman of The University of Sydney between 4845,000 years ago, all the recovered stone artefacts
said one of the biggest questions is the beginnings of human explo- were made using local raw material, which indicates that the high
residential mobility came later.
Nejman said the study also revealed valuable new infor-
mation about the climate of the region. We havent had
such a long sequence of sedimentary layers before that
we could test, he said. The climate changed quite often
from warmer to colder, and vice versa, but at all times it
was much colder than the interglacial period that we have
lived in for the past 10,000 years.
Samples from the site have been sent for analysis using
a new technique that tests remnant DNA preserved in
the sediment, and hence can detect which species were
present even without the presence of their fossils.
Wright said the results will shed new light on a period
of transition between two species of humans, and also
give clearer evidence about the activities of our modern
human ancestors in a period and region where little is
known. We can tell by the artefacts that small groups
of people camped at this cave. This was during glacial
periods, suggesting they were well adapted to these harsh
conditions, Wright said. Its quite possible that the two
different species of humans met in this area.
Bear vertebrae: one of the many bones of the extinct cave bear found The study has been published in the Journal of Human
during the excavation. Evolution.

6| | JULY/AUGUST 2017
Night Phone Use
Harms Adolescent
Mental Heath
Late-night mobile phone use by adolescents is
directly linked to poor quality sleep, leading to
poorer mental health outcomes, reduced coping
and lowered self-esteem according to the rst
longitudinal study that has investigated how
night phone use and mental health were
connected.
We have demonstrated how poor sleep is
the key link connecting an increase in night-
time mobile use with subsequent increases in
psychosocial issues, said lead researcher Dr
Lynette Vernon of Murdoch University.
Heavy mobile phone use becomes a problem
when it overtakes essential aspects of adolescent
life. In this case, we see issues when it overtakes
time set aside for sleep. We found that late night
phone use directly contributed to poor sleep
mariesacha/Adobe
habits, which over time led to declines in overall
well-being and mental health.
The research was part of the Youth Activity Participation Study,
which surveyed 1100 students from 29 Australian schools annu-
ally from Year 8 until Year 11. Students were asked what time of
the night they received or sent text messages and phone calls, and
their perceptions of their sleep quality. The researchers also inves-
tigated adolescents symptoms of depressed mood, involvement
in delinquency or aggression, and their coping and self esteem over
time.
In Year 8, more than 85% of students owned a mobile phone
and around one-third of these students reported they never texted
or received phone calls after lights out. Three years later, however,
93% of the students owned mobiles and 78% of these Year 11
SUBS
students reported late night mobile use.
We found that those teenagers who start out as relatively
healthy in terms of their late-night mobile use early in high school
tend to show steeper escalations in their late-night mobile use over
@ aus C R
tscien IBE
the next several years, said study co-author Dr Kathryn Modecki
of Grith University. This means that even when teens appear
to have their technology and sleep under control early on, they
ce. com
still require monitoring and education as they mature.
Students with high initial levels of night-time mobile phone
use also tended to have higher initial levels of poor sleep behaviour,
Vernon said. As their levels of mobile phone use grew over time,
so did their poor sleep behaviour. Get full online access plus
What is especially compelling, Modecki added, is that these
increases in poor sleep, in turn, led to rises in depressed mood and additional content when
externalising behaviours, and declines in self-esteem and coping
1 year later.
you subscribe online at
e
Adob

Vernon said that although these results were concerning, the austscience.com
wski/

answer was not as simple as just banning adolescent phone use.

zpile

These results demonstrate the importance of adults meeting

jaros

teens where they are, enforcing electronic curfews, and teaching

good sleep habits during the high school years.
The study has been published in Child Development.

JULY/AUGUST 2017 | |7
 Fossils Help Determine Oceans Role in Last Ice Age
Scientists from The University of Tasmanias Institute for Marine and biological clues left by tiny fossils in mud from the sea floor to
Antarctic Studies and Simon Fraser University have used the fossil understand past temperatures. Past ocean temperatures can be
record to pull together the first global database of ocean estimated by counting the number of cold versus warm fossils of
temperatures over the past 125,000 years in order to explain why species with known distinct temperature preferences.
carbon dioxide levels were low at the time. The team trawled the scientific literature for studies of past sea
The study, published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, surface temperatures, with data from 136 locations around the globe
combined ocean temperature records with other studies to show how providing more than 40,000 estimates of temperature. Weve
carbon dioxide took different paths into the deep sea during different combined the individual efforts of hundreds of scientists, said A/Prof
phases of the ice age. Zanna Chase. What emerges is a remarkably clear picture of how the
This study shows for the first time how temperatures changed ocean changed during the last ice age.
across the whole ocean as the earth entered the last ice age, said The data revealed that atmospheric carbon dioxide dropped in
lead author A/Prof Karen Kohfeld. This new understanding of ocean several steps over 100,000 years as the Earth entered the last ice age
temperature changes hints at some important thresholds in the 20,000 years ago. The first drop in carbon dioxide, 115,000 years ago,
climate system. occurred because of early cooling of the poles and expansion of sea-
Its clear that some parts of the system, such as sea-ice around ice around Antarctica. The second carbon dioxide drop 70,000 years
Antarctica, responded rapidly when the ocean cooled. Other parts, like ago was accompanied by a reorganisation of the deep ocean and
deep ocean circulation, changed very slowly and needed a nudge of heightened ocean productivity. The lowest ice age carbon dioxide
extra cooling to push the system into a new state, a whole 30,000 years levels occurred 20,000 years ago when ocean temperatures,
after the sea-ice changed. productivity, deep circulation and sea-ice had changed the most.
With direct measurements only providing ocean temperatures for The teams next step is to combine the new temperature database
approximately the past 100 years, the researchers used chemical and with palaeoclimate models to test their theories.

Solar Paint Produces

Hydrogen Fuel
Researchers at RMIT have developed a solar paint that can absorb
water vapour and split it to generate hydrogen the cleanest source
of energy.
The paint contains a newly developed compound that acts like
the silica gel found in sachets that absorb moisture to keep food,
medicines and electronics fresh and dry.
But unlike silica gel, synthetic molybdenum-sulphide also acts
as a semiconductor and catalyses the splitting of water atoms into
hydrogen and oxygen.
We found that mixing the compound with titanium oxide
Or subscribe by mail particles leads to a sunlight-absorbing paint that produces hydrogen
fuel from solar energy and moist air, said lead researcher Dr Torben

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Daeneke. Titanium oxide is the white pigment that is already
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FAX TO: (03) 9500 0255 ONLINE: www.austscience.com 384
The seawater is evaporated by the hot sunlight, and the vapour
can then be absorbed to produce fuel.
This is an extraordinary concept making fuel from the sun
be
do
r/A and watervapour in the air.
ylo
Ta The research has been published inACS Nano, a journal of the
rt
ua
St
American Chemical Society.
Alternative RNA Switches Reptile Gender
Many reptiles dont have sex chromosomes like
humans and other mammals. Instead, their gender
is set by the temperature at which their eggs are
incubated. Researchers studying Australias bearded
dragon lizard have now discovered the master
switch by which this occurs: a temperature-sensi-
tive molecular signature in a family of genes that
control the expression of many other genes. The
ndings have been publishedin Science Advances.
The dragon lizard has sex chromosomes similar
to birds that determine sex at normal temperatures.
But at high temperatures, embryos with male sex
chromosomes reverse sex and hatch as females,
said lead author Dr Clare Holleley of CSIRO and
The University of Canberras Institute for Applied
Ecology.
Our work looked at all the messenger RNA
molecules that were made by dragons that were
functional females, even though genetically they
were male. We compared these molecules with
RNA made by normal males and normal females,
Holleley explained.
Co-lead author Ira Deveson, a PhD student An Australian bearded dragon. Credit: Vanessa Lam
from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, ture-determined sex depends on this alternative RNA in all
said this line of inquiry uncovered a unique difference. We found reptiles.
that sex-reversed females produce a unique message, with their We think our discovery will spark a whole new approach to
RNA retaining a chunk of sequence that is normally spliced out of understanding how to make males and females in all animals,
the message. This means that the gene wont make a normal protein. added La Trobe University Distinguished Professor and Univer-
Somehow that throws a spanner in the works when it comes to sity of Canberra Adjunct Professor Jenny Graves, who collabo-
making a male, he said. rated on the research. There are many different ways males and
Even more surprising was the nding that the same gene retains females are determined throughout nature. This breakthrough
this chunk in crocodiles and turtles. This suggests that tempera- moves us all a step closer to understanding the whole picture of sex.

Heat Waves Increase Risk for Unhatched Geckos

While ectothermic reptiles can raise their body temperature by
basking in the sun, their future may not be so sunny as
environmental temperatures continue rising. Heat waves have
become more common in recent decades and are predicted to
increase in frequency in the future, and Dr Jonathan Webb of the
University of Technology, Sydney says that adult reptiles will be
able to weather the warmer weather but is concerned for embryos
and young hatchlings. Developing lizard embryos cannot
thermoregulate and may experience thermally stressful
temperatures in natural nests during summer, Webb suggests.
Since flies that develop in high temperatures seem to cope
better in extreme conditions, Webb and his colleagues incubated
the eggs of tiny velvet geckos (Amalosia lesueurii) at high
(1437C) and moderate (1033C) temperatures to find out how
heat waves might affect the developing geckos. The research has
been published in the Journal of Experimental Biology.
While the eggs incubated at higher temperatures hatched
27 days earlier, their head start didnt give them an advantage
when the temperature fluctuated. When the researchers turned
the hatchlings on their backs after being warmed or cooled, those
that had been incubated in hot nests were less able to right
themselves at extreme temperatures than the geckos that had
been incubated at lower temperatures. The hot-incubated geckos
became incapacitated at temperatures below 6.2C and above
38.7C, while the animals that had been incubated at lower
temperatures were more robust, only failing to right themselves
below 5.7C and above 40.2C.
When the team measured the temperatures under the rocks
that the youngsters prefer to use for shelter, they could reach a
sizzling, and potentially fatal, 50C. However, crevices in which the
hatchlings shelter only reached 33C.
Webb points out that this will pose a problem for hatchlings
that emerge early. Shuttling between rocks and shady crevices
may expose them to predators, compromising their survival, he
says. Hence gecko embryos incubated during a heat wave are less
prepared for scorching temperatures and will be more vulnerable
to predation.

JULY/AUGUST 2017 | |9
 be
do
k i/A
ws
el mo
Fructose Hits Sweet Spot
Swapping table sugar for fruit-derived sugar may be a healthier
option when watching your waistline, according to new research
published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
The study examined the short-term and long-term effects of
swapping sucrose or glucose for fructose, the sugar found in many
fruits, vegetables and honey. Itfound that blood glucose and insulin
levels were lower after consuming food or drink that contained
fructose compared to those with sucrose or glucose.
Senior author Dr Kerry Mills of The University of Canberra said
that the reduction in blood glucose was far greater in people who
were overweight or had diabetes than in those with normal blood
glucose levels. The sharp rise in blood glucose after eating glucose
and sucrose is a risk factor for diabetes. Fructose, on the other
hand, has to be converted by the liver before it can affect glucose
Diabetes Drug Reduces Heart and Kidney Diseases
A drug that lowers blood sugar levels for people with type 2 diabetes
also signicantly reduces the risk of both cardiovascular and kidney
disease, according to a study published in the New England Journal
of Medicine.
Researchers at The George Institute for Global Health found
that the drug canagliozin reduced the overall risk of cardiovascular
disease by 14% and reduced the risk of hospitalisation due to heart
failure by 33%.It also had a signicant impact on the progression
of renal disease.
Most diabetes drugs work by managing insulin levels, but
canagliozin is a relatively new type of drug that works by blocking
the bodys reabsorption of sugar or glucose. This results in the
release of more glucose in urine and a drop in glucose levels.
Prof Bruce Neal said the ndings offered real hope to people
suffering from type 2 diabetes. Coronary heart disease is the biggest
killer by far for people with type 2 diabetes. Our ndings suggest
that not only does canagliozin signicantly reduce the risk of
heart disease, it also has many other benets too. We found it also
reduced blood pressure and led to weight loss.
Type 2 diabetes is growing rapidly all over the world, and we
10 | | JULY/AUGUST 2017
concentrations in the blood, Mills said.
Because this conversion takes time, its impossible for the body
to receive the near-instant sugar hit we get from sucrose or glucose.
This reduces blood glucose levels, which is particularly important
for people with diabetes, who must monitor and control these
levels.
Our study of long-term effects of swapping types of sugar also
found a reduction in blood glucose levels, although the difference
wasnt as dramatic over time.
Mills said the results show that healthier choices when it comes
to sugar intake can make a difference for people with diabetes, but
fructose should not be seen as some kind of health food.
High sugar intakes can lead to health problems, and everyone
should be trying to cut out sweet treats. But if sugar consumption
cant be avoided, it is probably better to choose products with fruc-
tose over other types of sugar, she said.
need drugs that not only deal with glucose levels but that also
protect the many millions of people from the very real risks of
stroke and heart attack.
Around 65% of all cardiovascular deaths occur in people with
diabetes or pre-diabetes, and diabetes is also the leading cause of end-
stage kidney disease. It also reinforces an association between blood
sugar-lowering drugs and a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease.
Co-author Prof Vlado Perkovi of The George Institute Australia
said: This really is a game-changer in the treatment of type 2
diabetes. It not only reduces the risk of heart disease, it also provides
real protection against kidney decline, which affects many people
with diabetes.
However, the study found that patients given the drug were
twice as likely to suffer from amputations. We dont know why
there was an increased risk of amputation, and further work is
needed in this area, Neal said. But for now we urge caution in
prescribing this drug to people at increased risk of suffering ampu-
tation.
A further study on the benets of canagliozin related to kidney
disease will be published later this year.
Earliest Evidence for Aboriginal Coastal Occupation
A team of international archaeologists has conrmed evidence Veth said the location provided the longest sequence of dietary
from a remote cave in Australias north-west that pushes back remains from any Australian site. The cave was used predomi-
human occupation of Australia to around 50,000 years ago. The nately as a hunting shelter between about 50,000 and 30,000 years
discovery provides one of the earliest age brackets for the settlement ago, before becoming a residential base for family groups after
of Australia, and also documents the longest record of dietary 10,000 years ago. It was abandoned by about 7000 years ago when
fauna, providing unprecedented insights into the lives of the earliest rising sea levels nally cut it off from the mainland, he said.
Australians.
Lead archaeologist Prof Peter
Veth of The University of
Western Australia said the nd-
ings, published in Quaternary
Science Reviews, provided unique
evidence for the early and
successful adaptation of Aborig-
inal people to both the coastal and
desert landscapes of Australia.
This site contains cultural
materials clearly associated with
dates in the order of 50,000 years,
Veth said. This pushes back the
age of occupation from the
previous and more conservative
limit of 47,000 years ago. Even
older dates are entirely plausible.
The team focused on Barrow
Island, a large limestone island
located 60 km off the Pilbara coast Prof Peter Veth at the excavation site on Barrow Island.
of Western Australia. The large
cave on Barrow Island provided rich records of ancient artefacts, Our current research at Barrow Island has provided the earliest
gathering and hunting of marine and arid animals, and environ- evidence of coastal living in Australia. Remarkably, the early
mental signatures which show the use of a now-drowned coastal colonists of the now-submerged North-West Shelf did not turn
desert landscape if you like an Atlantis of the South, Veth said. their back on the sea or remain coastally tethered, but rapidly
We know about old desert sites from the Northern Hemisphere, adapted to the new marsupial animals and arid zone plants of the
but few have these extraordinary dietary records. extensive maritime deserts of north-west Australia.

Flawed Forensics Hamper ID of Human Remains

Research from The Australian National University has cast doubt on
a method used in forensic science to determine whether skeletal
remains are of a person who has given birth.
The presence of parturition scars marks often found on female
pelvis bones have commonly been used as an indicator of child
birth in police investigations to narrow down the identity of human
remains.
Project leader Clare McFadden said that if skeletal remains were
incorrectly identified as being of someone who has given birth, it
could lead to complications or delays for important police work. In
forensics it could have serious consequences. It could send
investigators down completely the wrong path, McFadden said. It
could potentially slow things down by excluding individuals who
otherwise would be candidates for the investigation.
McFadden also said that use of the method in archaeology could
lead to historical inaccuracies.
Despite the practice being in common use, particularly in the US
since first being proposed in the 1910s, a number of studies into
parturition scars have resulted in conflicting findings. McFadden
reanalysed data from those studies and found that scarring was not
a reliable indicator of childbirth.
We found childbirth has a very weak association with these
markers, but they strongly correlate with sex, she said. A lot of the
older studies only looked at females, but theres men with these
scars, so there has to be something else going on.
McFadden said her research found that most females had this
type of scarring, compared with a small minority of males. We think
they might have something to do with going through puberty, a bit
like stretch marks on the pelvis, she said. Proportionally more
females than males go through significant growth of the pelvis
during puberty.
The research was published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences.

JULY/AUGUST 2017 | | 11
Researchers Estimate
Maximum Growth Rate
for Life on Earth
Research presented at the Astrobiology Science
Conference in Arizona has challenged assumptions
about how microbes behave at high temperatures.
Its common knowledge that microbes grow at a
faster rate at higher temperatures, such as the everyday
example of milk going off when its left out of the
fridge. However, Dr Ross Corkreys laboratory at The
University of Tasmania last year discovered that the
maximum rate of microbial growth plummets
dramatically once temperatures reached somewhere
above 40C. This distribution of growth rates was termed
the Biokinetic Spectrum for Temperature (BKST).
Building on this work, the team has now quantified
the data and provided an estimate on the maximum
growth rate for life on Earth. We now find that the
predicted maximum growth rate occurs at 45.8C, with
an estimated minimum generation time of 5.16 minutes.
This means that the shortest possible time in which a
cell can divide to make two daughter cells is a little more
than 5 minutes, Corkrey said. We are now considering
how this limit may influence ecological processes that
vary by temperature, including, perhaps, those of marine
plankton.
To arrive at the numbers, the team collated more than
10,000 measurements of growth rates representing
1627 microbe strains. We mathematically modelled
them to obtain the predicted maximum rate of growth
versus temperature for any life on Earth, Corkrey said.
The vast bulk of the BKST describes growth rates for
most of life, but there are still deviations at
temperatures below 0C and above 100C.This could
mean that the growth rate drops due to some unknown
property, perhaps such as changing bulk properties of
water, like diffusion of molecules at low temperatures,
and at high temperatures the deviation may be due to an
increasing degree of denaturation and degradation of
biomolecules, Corkrey said.
Alternatively, it could mean that there are organisms
that grow slowly at these temperatures that are
undiscovered.
It is notoriously difficult to grow organisms at low
temperatures, so it would not be surprising if we have
not found them. These would be organisms that still
grow slowly compared to more familiar forms of life, but
much faster than those we so far know about. Perhaps
they would be found in glacial ice. Similarly, it is possible
that there may be relatively fast-growing organisms
growing in hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the sea.
The team is now exploring how the growth limits of
life depend on other conditions such as acidity and salt
concentration.
The extinct megapode Progura (right) may have roosted in trees.
Credit: Elen Shute, Flinders University, from photos by Kim Benson, Tony Rodd and Aaron Camens
Kangaroo-Sized Flying Turkey
Once Roamed Australia
A giant ying turkey as tall as a kangaroo is among ve extinct large megapode
birds discovered by palaeontologists at Flinders University. All ve birds were
chunky relatives of todays malleefowl and brush-turkeys, but the giant
brush-turkeyProgura gallinacea, which was as tall as a grey kangaroo, soars
above the others.
After carefully comparing megapode fossils from Queensland, New
South Wales, South Australia and Western Australia, the researchers
concluded that the remains belong to ve different extinct species ranging
from 3 kg to 8 kg in weight up to four times the size of a modern malleefowl
(2 kg). The big birds lived during the Pleistocene alongside Australias giant
extinct marsupials, such as diprotodons, marsupial lions and short-faced
kangaroos.
Given several of the largest birds to have lived in Australia in recent
times have escaped detection in the fossil record until now, our research
shows how little we know of Australias immediate pre-human avifauna.
Probably many smaller extinct species also await discovery by palaeontol-
ogists, said A/Prof Trevor Worthy.
The extinct megapodes include the tall turkeys in the genusProgura,
which had long, slender legs, and the nuggety chickens with short legs
and broad bodies, for which the new genusLatagallina has been created.
It seems that none of these giant megapodes built mounds like their
living Australian cousins because they lacked the large feet and specialised
claws seen in mound-builders. Its more likely that they buried their eggs in
warm sand or soil, like some living megapodes in Indonesia and the Pacic.
Unlike many large, extinct birds, such as dodos, these megapodes were
not ightless. While big and bulky, their long, strong wing bones show they
could all y, and probably roosted in trees.
The latest ndings have been more than a century in the making. The
rst giant megapode species was described from Queensland in the 1880s,
and another slightly smaller species was described from South Australias
Naracoorte Caves in the 1970s.
Since then, the status of the two species has been questioned, and it had
been suggested that they were only one species that later dwarfed to become
the modern malleefowl. The new evidence shows that this no longer stacks
up.
We compared the fossils described in the 1880s and the 1970s with
specimens discovered more recently, and with the benet of new fossils,
differences between species became really clear, said PhD candidate Elen
Shute.
The two species that were originally described are so different that they
belong in separate genera. These and three more new species were all more
closely related to each other than they are to the living malleefowl.
Whats more, we have found bones of malleefowl in fossil deposits up
to a million years old, alongside bones of three extinct species of various
sizes, so theres really no evidence that dwarng took place.
Wine Labels Influence
Drinkers Palates
Wine descriptions can alter consumers emotions,
increase their enjoyment of wine and encourage
them to pay more for a bottle, according to a study
published inFood Research International.
The importance of wine labels and label infor-
mation has been widely studied, and its been clearly
shown that they represent useful information which
inuences consumer choice, says project leader
A/Prof Sue Bastian of The University of Adelaide.
Our study extends these ndings, showing that
wine descriptions also inuence our whole wine
consumption experience.
karelnoppe/Adobe

Cleverly written wine and producer descrip-

tions, when coupled with unbranded wine tasting,
can evoke more positive emotions, increasing our
positive perception of the wine, our estimation of
its quality and the amount we would be willing to
pay for it.
The researchers conducted a study with Australian white wines
and 126 regular white wine consumers. The consumers evaluated
the same set of three commercially available white wines
chardonnay, riesling and sauvignon blanc under three informa-
tion levels: a blind tasting with no information, the provision of
a basic sensory description, and the provision of an elaborate
emotional description.
The presentation of more elaborate wine descriptions, which
included information regarding the winerys history and positive
wine quality statements, signicantly increased the preference
rating that the consumers allocated to the wines.
Further to this, the results showed that if the expectations
elicited by the wine description closely matched the actual tasting
experience, consumers felt far more positive emotions than if it
didnt meet expectations.
These ndings have important implications for wine producers
and the hospitality industry in that descriptions require more than
just wine-tasting notes, says lead author Dr Lukas Danner.
Companies could even consider involving consumers in label
description optimisation.
The research was funded by Wine Australia.

Malaria Gene Targets Lit Up

Scientists have developed a new technique to investigate the
effects of gene deletion at later stages in the life cycle of the
parasite that causes malaria. New treatments are needed for
malaria because of increasing drug resistance in the single-
celledPlasmodium parasites that cause it.
The new study, published inPLOS Pathogens, focused on the
ferrochelatase (FC) gene inPlasmodiumberghei, which causes
malaria in rodents and is commonly used in mouse studies of
malaria. The FC gene allowsP. berghei to produce heme, which is
essential forP.berghei development in the mosquitoes that
transmit the parasite between rodent hosts, but is not essential
during a later stage in the rodent bloodstream. However, between
these two stages,P. berghei undergoes a developmental phase in
the rodent liver, and it has been unclear whether heme synthesis
is essential at this stage.
Upeksha Rathnapala and colleagues at The University of
Melbourne producedP. berghei parasites that are capable of
expressing the FC gene and developing properly in mosquitoes,
but produce a mix of FC-expressing and FC-deficient parasites
once they infect mouse liver cells. The scientists genetically
engineered the parasites so that FC-deficient individuals would
express fluorescent markers that allowed easy identification.
The researchers found that FC-deficient parasites were unable
to complete their liver development phase. This suggests that
disrupting the heme synthesis pathway could be an effective way
to targetPlasmodium parasites in the liver. Such an approach
would be prevent the development of malaria, since symptoms
arent apparent until the parasite leaves the liver and begins its
bloodstream phase.
The researchers say that this novel approach involving
fluorescent markers could be adapted for other genes, allowing
scientists to identify additional metabolic processes that are
essential forPlasmodium development in host animals.
The idea of tagging mutant genes with fluorescent proteins is
a simple one but it allowed us to follow mutant parasites
throughout the malaria life cycle and dissect their phenotypes in
the liver stage, something that hasnt been easy to do for
mutations that block mosquito development, the authors
explained. Our analysis of heme biosynthesis shows the power of
this simple method but its a technique that can be easily applied
to other genes and other malaria parasite species, greatly
expanding the scope for investigating this immunologically
important stage in the malaria parasites life cycle.

JULY/AUGUST 2017 | | 13
 Mopic
/Adob
e
Gene Drives:
A way to genetically
engineer populations
CHARLES ROBIN
Gene drives occur when a bias in the mechanism of inheritance spreads particular genetic
variants through a population. Developments in gene-editing technology now make it possible
to construct gene drives that address problems in health, agriculture and conservation.

he concept of gene drives has been around for through populations. They are a form of genetic engineering but,

T decades. They occur in natural systems, and

scientists have imagined how they might be put
to use. Recent advances in gene-editing tech-
nology means that synthetic gene drives can
now be created, and the scope of applications is broad.
Its time to consider the hazards as well as the opportunities
this technology brings, and weigh up the benets versus the
risks. There are also ethical concerns, and scientists must be
careful not to leave the community behind.
This issue of Australasian Science presents ve articles
covering these issues. We will start by explaining what a gene
drive is.
In essence, gene drives result from tinkering with the mech-
anisms of inheritance so that particular gene elements spread
rather than engineering a single individual, breed or plant
variety, they modify free-breeding populations.
There are many good reasons why we would want to engi-
neer populations. Jack Scanlan (p.17) outlines the recent
developments of gene drives aimed at altering mosquito popu-
lations so that they spread less disease. Alexandre Fournier-
Level (p.23) describes how gene drives may be used in an
agricultural setting to control weeds and insect pests. Pests
can also threaten biodiversity, and Ella Kelly (p.20) explores
the ways in which gene drives might be used for conservation
benets.
But just how do gene drives work? First, lets consider natural
gene drives before turning to the technological developments
that enable the construction of synthetic gene drives.

14 | | JULY/AUGUST 2017
Natural Gene Drives
Under the Mendelian view of inheritance,
the organisms of interest have two copies
of each gene, one derived from each parent.
The two versions are called alleles. These
organisms are sexually reproducing, and
when the males produce sperm (or pollen)
or the females produce eggs (or ovules),
Mendels law of segregation says that the
two alleles will separate into different cells.
Now focus on a female animal and call
the two versions of a gene that she carries
allele 1 and allele 2. The expectation is the synthetic gene drive construct. The conversion is represented by a red arrow and
that half her egg cells will carry allele 1 and
half will carry allele 2. When a fertilisa-
tion event occurs, the chance that allele 1
is sampled is 50% just like ipping a coin.
If she has many progeny, approximately
half will bear allele 1 and approximately
half allele 2.
There is some variation around our
expectation of a 50:50 inheritance, the
same as if you would not be surprised if
you ipped a coin 20 times and got nine
tails and 11 heads. However, if the coin
was not fair because one side had been
weighted, then one outcome would be
systematically favoured.
The same can happen in biology. Some-
times inheritance shows non-Mendelian
patterns, instead exhibiting segregation
distortion so that one allele is favoured
over others. Gene drives rely on such an
inheritance bias.
A classic example of segregation distor-
tion occurs in mice, where the t-haplo-
type allele is preferentially passed on. In
this particular example there is a twist to
the story because the t-haplotype allele is
maladaptive. Mice that carry two t-haplo-
type alleles have major developmental
defects or are sterile. Despite this, a gene
drive favours the t-haplotypes when it is
rst introduced into a population.
Thus these selsh genes cheat the the abundance of pest populations.
inheritance system in some way. In the
case of these mice, sperm carrying the t-
haplotype allele somehow kill the sperm
that do not have that haplotype. Other
natural systems tell us that there are various
Mendelian versus gene drive inheritance. (a) A diagram showing the inheritance of a
dominant trait (black body colour) in a mosquito pedigree. The two alleles are
represented below the mosquitos (each allele is a dot on two lines representing double-
stranded DNA). Half of the progeny are black and half white. (b) Inheritance in a synthetic
gene drive where the black alleles convert the white alleles to black early in development
so that all progeny have the black phenotype. The green outline symbolizes bearers of
involves the CRISPR/Cas9 complex cutting double-stranded DNA, which is then repaired
by the black allele. The synthetic gene drive element encodes blackness as well as
sgRNA and Cas9.
In essence, gene drives result from tinkering with
the mechanisms of inheritance so that particular
gene elements spread through populations. They
are a form of genetic engineering but, rather than
engineering a single individual, breed or plant
variety, they modify free-breeding populations.
ways to cheat the inheritance system, lation was well ahead of what was actu-
although many are not completely under- ally possible. However, two recent
stood. advances make synthetic gene drives a
Studies of natural systems acting in realistic prospect.
anomalous ways spark the imagination of The rst advance is a revolutionary
scientists and make them ask: What if?. gene-editing technology known as
They also help us to understand the CRISPR/Cas9, which enables targeted
bounds of what is possible. What if we alterations to the DNA of complex organ-
could deliberately bias inheritance isms. Essentially the CRISPR/Cas9 gene-
patterns? Could we use such manipula- editing technology allows the DNA of
tions to drive genes encoding specic func- an organism to be cut at a determined
tions through populations? Could they site while its still in the living cells of that
be used to deal with pests that spread organism. The cell will repair the cut
human disease or wreak havoc in agricul- DNA. If another piece of DNA similar
tural systems? This last question, at least, to that which has just been cut is
motivated the development of theoretical provided, then that piece of DNA can
models of gene drives that manipulate the be patched-in during the repair process.
genetic constitution of populations and The patched DNA can encode a single
nucleotide alteration or several genes.
The reason why the CRISPR/Cas9
Gene Editing: technology is so revolutionary is the ease
A Disruptive Technology with which the cutting sites can be spec-
Until recently the theory of the spread ied and the simplicity of the necessary
of gene drive elements through the popu- components. Only two components are
JULY/AUGUST 2017 | | 15

A crystal structure showing the Cas9 endonuclease protein (dark blue barrels and
interconnecting threads) wrapped around the small guide RNA (light blue) and target
DNA (white). The sgRNA and the target DNA form a twisted ladder, with the rungs
representing sequence-specific base-pairing. REC1, REC2, RuvC and PI are names given
to different domains of the Cas9 protein. Credit: Hiroshi Nishimasu, F. Ann Ran, Patrick D. Hsu, Silvana Konermann,
Soraya I. Shehata, Naoshi Dohmae, Ryuichiro Ishitani, Feng Zhang and Osamu Nureki
required to create the scissors that cut
DNA. The rst is the Cas9 endonuclease
protein, which is an enzyme that uses the
second component: a small guide RNA
(sgRNA) to determine where the cut
should occur. The specicity is deter-
mined by making use of the ability of the
RNA to bind to DNA with the comple-
mentary code.
To edit an animal genome, Cas9
protein and sgRNA can be injected into
eggs. As this does not have a 100% success
rate, many individuals that develop from
injected eggs, or more likely the progeny
of those individuals, are then screened to
see if the desired gene has been altered.
The second advance was the realisation
that it is possible to design gene-editing
constructs that give themselves biased
inheritance. Such constructs are also
16 | | JULY/AUGUST 2017
elegantly simple. They encode the instruc-
tions to cut DNA at a place in the genome
that will be repaired by themselves.
Specically, a construct would consist
of:
a sequence of the target gene to aid
the stitching in of the patched
sequence;
DNA encoding the Cas9 endonu-
clease;
DNA encoding sgRNA that comple-
ments the target gene; and
more of the target gene to be used as
template for repair.
The constructs are also designed so
that the Cas9 is active during the devel-
opment of eggs or sperm.
The rst people to design such a
construct were not motivated by the
prospect of population engineering.
Instead they were excited about the
prospect of converting heterozygote indi-
viduals (who have two different alleles)
into homozygotes (both alleles become
the same). If the maternally inherited
allele could convert the paternally inher-
ited allele then it would, for instance, be
much easier to determine gene function,
because both alleles would be equally
affected.
If this allelic conversion could happen
with 100% eciency then all progeny in
the next generation would receive the
engineered construct. This would happen
again in the next generation, and the next,
until the synthetic gene drive spreads
through the entire population.
There is one further component that
varies depending on the gene drive appli-
cation. The idea is that the synthetic gene
drive construct will also carry cargo: a
useful gene that the genetic engineer
wants to spread through a population of
the target organism. For example, a gene
that blocks Zika virus replication could
be spread through mosquito populations.
Its important to note that gene drives
only work in sexually reproducing organ-
isms, so they will not work on clonally
reproducing organisms (e.g. some aphids,
many plants). They also work on a time
span of generations. Unlike viruses that
spread horizontally between poten-
tially unrelated individuals in a popula-
tion, gene drives are only spread down
the generations, from parent to child. So
gene drives will not work quickly on
organisms that take years to be repro-
ductively mature like elephants, humans
or trees.
Of the many organisms and contexts
where gene drives could conceivably be
used, are there hazards that we should
consider? Is it ethical to tinker with
natural populations in this way?
The rest of this edition of Australasian
Science considers these and other questions.
Dr Charles Robin is a Senior Lecturer at The University of
Melbournes School of Biosciences, and Guest Editor of this
series of articles on gene drives.
 Driving
Mosquitoes
out of
Town
JACK SCANLAN

Existing techniques to control

mosquito-borne diseases are
coming up short. Can gene
drives offer hope to the
millions affected?

t might come as a surprise that one of the biggest threats

I to global health is a seemingly harmless, albeit annoying,

insect. The mosquito, the scourge of summer barbecues,
causes more human deaths than any other animal far
surpassing sharks, snakes and even human murderers by
passing diseases to its victims while feasting on their blood.
Malaria, caused by the microscopic parasite Plasmodium, is
a particularly nasty mosquito-transmitted disease responsible
for more than 700,000 deaths every year, as well as hundreds
of millions of non-lethal yet debilitating infections. African,
Asian and South American countries suffer most of the toll,
as Plasmodiums mosquito hosts, species in the genus Anopheles,
thrive in their tropical climates. Many other fatal diseases are
also spread from person to person by mosquitoes, including
dengue fever, yellow fever and an emerging threat to South
America, Zika.

JULY/AUGUST 2017 | | 17
nechaevkon/Adobe

National Library of Medicine - History of Medicine
The huge cost of these diseases, both in terms of human life and
economic damage in heavily affected regions, have warranted
equally huge campaigns to control them. However, treating disease
once in the human body is risky, as drugs need to be prescribed
before serious effects can occur. Prevention is harder: vaccines
dont exist for most of these diseases and, even when they do,
increasing the vaccination rate in affected regions past the point
where transmission of the disease drops off (known as herd immu-
nity) is a substantial and expensive challenge.
Targeting the mosquito vectors that spread the diseases is a
far more attractive choice. These vectors are typically essential
for the spread of disease through human populations;
Plasmodium completes part of its complex life cycle inside a
mosquito, and has no realistic way to pass from an infected
person to a healthy person without this vector. Since a person
infected with malaria poses no infection risk to others if there
are no Anopheles mosquitoes around, eliminating the vector
would effectively eliminate the disease.
For this reason, controlling mosquito populations has been
a major focus of public health campaigns targeting diseases like
malaria and dengue fever for many decades. Insecticides are
sprayed near villages and cities, even inside houses, while bed nets
are distributed to protect people while they sleep. The sterile
insect technique is also used, wherein male mosquitoes are
blasted with fertility-destroying radiation and released into the
wild to compete with healthy males for females, slowing the
growth of mosquito populations over time.
18 | | JULY/AUGUST 2017
These techniques can control diseases like malaria in areas
with small mosquito populations and low incidence of the
disease, such as Europe, as they fail to spread quickly or inten-
sively. But in tropical regions where mosquitoes thrive and the
disease has already spread to a substantial percentage of the
human population, temporary control measures cannot effec-
tively contain the problem.
Mosquito vectors are becoming increasingly resistant to
insecticides, many of which cause serious ecological problems
when sprayed indiscriminately they will kill any insect, not
just mosquitoes, and can be toxic to sh, birds and sometimes
even mammals. Bed nets are effective at night, but they do not
protect people during the day. And the sterile insect technique
can be time-consuming, expensive and ineffective in large regions
with huge mosquito populations. Small battles are being won
against these diseases, but the war is still raging.
Given all this, its no surprise that some experts are looking
to gene drives in mosquitoes as a way to get rid of these diseases
once and for all. Recent computer modelling suggests the use
of a gene drive could eliminate mosquito-borne diseases
completely, or even just reduce them enough to raise the effec-
tiveness of existing control strategies.
A similar strategy is already being trialled in many places
around the world using a naturally occurring bacterium called
Wolbachia, which lives inside the cells of around half of all
insect species. Wolbachia causes a variety of weird and wonderful
changes to mosquito reproduction, such as feminising males
and preventing uninfected males from successfully mating with
infected females. As infections are passed from mother to egg,
the bacterium usually spreads itself through populations rapidly.
Some strains of Wolbachia even prevent mosquitoes from
incubating certain diseases. The best known example is in Aedes
aegypti, the vector of dengue fever. Strains of Wolbachia taken
from fruit ies stop the dengue virus from replicating inside
the mosquitoes. Coupled with the bacteriums ability to spread
through populations, it seems like a fantastic way to remove
the vectoring capacity of Aedes mosquitoes without having to
suppress Aedes populations. Release programs for Wolbachia-
infected Aedes mosquitoes are being trialled or planned in India,
Indonesia, Vietnam and northern Australia.
Yet this may not be a silver bullet as subsequent research
has found that some of the most promising strains of Wolbachia
arent well-suited to the high temperatures in tropical regions,
and may lose their effectiveness in blocking the transmission of
dengue in the wild. Furthermore, disease-blocking Wolbachia
strains havent been found for many mosquito-borne diseases,
so its application may be limited in practice.
Synthetic gene drives are potentially a more universal solu-
tion. The high-quality DNA sequence data required to develop
gene drives are now available for nearly all of the most impor-

Mosquitoes are becoming increasingly resistant to insecticides. Computer models suggest that even if gene drives dont eliminate
mosquito-borne diseases completely, they may be able to reduce them enough to raise the effectiveness of existing control strategies.
tant mosquito vectors, and applications of the CRISPR/Cas9
tools that will form the gene drive itself are becoming increas-
ingly sophisticated.
There are two ways a gene drive could be used to target
mosquito-borne diseases: to eliminate populations of mosquitoes
completely in disease-ridden areas, or to genetically alter
mosquitoes so they cannot transmit the disease in the rst place.
The former could be done by spreading a gene that makes one
sex infertile, shrinking the population as the gene drive moves
through it, while the latter could borrow tricks from Wolbachia
and change how the mosquito interacts with the virus or para-
site it carries.
Eliminating a population is, from a technical perspective, a
lot easier than removing vectoring capacity. Many of the genes
involved in fertility are well-studied in insects; the genes that
control how the mosquitos immune system ghts the diseases
they carry are not. But such sterility gene drives could spread
from local populations to every population of a species, killing
it off completely. The implications of removing an entire
mosquito species from an ecosystem arent clear, and discus-
sions about the ethics of such an action are also ongoing in the
scientic community.
Removing vectoring capacity from mosquitoes would bypass
this problem, as the populations would stay intact. And the
lack of a negative impact on the mosquitoes would also mean
the gene drive would spread through populations faster. But
the interplay between parasites and their insect hosts is not
fully understood, so progress on developing such a blocking
drive would be a lot slower compared to a sterility drive. Its
still unclear which type of drive would be better in the long
term.
Despite these issues, many research teams around the world
are working to develop gene drives in mosquitoes. In 2015,
wisann
umkarn
g/Ado
be
The implications of removing an
entire mosquito species from an
ecosystem arent clear, and
discussions about the ethics of such
an action are also ongoing in the
scientic community.
scientists published the rst description of a female-sterility
gene drive in the malaria vector Anopheles gambiae, and last
year another gene drive in the same species was developed that
results in only male progeny. Neither has been, as yet, cleared
for use outside of a laboratory environment.
Unfortunately, a thorn may be waiting to plant itself in the
side of gene drive researchers: evolved resistance. High genetic
diversity in mosquito populations could hamper the spread
of gene drives, which rely on DNA regions with perfect or
near-perfect similarity between individuals. This is similar to
how insecticide resistance evolves over time, entire popula-
tions could shrug off the gene drive, rendering it useless.
Successful applications of gene drive technology may have to
nd ways to take this into account, lest the researchers be back
to the beginning.
There is still a long way to go until gene drives could be used
to stop diseases like malaria and dengue fever once and for all.
Even if a useful gene drive is developed, its possible that govern-
ment policy may block them from ever being used at all. The
severity of the diseases at hand, however, at least warrants a
discussion of all available options. The human toll is far too
great to ignore.
Jack Scanlan is a PhD candidate in insect genetics at The University of Melbourne.
JULY/AUGUST 2017 | | 19
 Gene drives could make cane toads non-toxic, enabling predators to consume the toads safely and reduce their numbers.

Gene Drives
for Conservation
ELLA KELLY
Gene drives may provide a novel tool to counteract seemingly unstoppable threats to global
biodiversity.

he global environment is not spread rapidly enough through popu- tions to threats or spread favourable genes

T changing so quickly that

many species have been
unable to cope. Australias
biodiversity is being
threatened by human-mediated impacts
to the landscape, and as a result we now
have almost 50 vertebrate species listed as
critically endangered by the IUCN Red
List. Although some species have begun
adapting, often these adaptations have
lations to prevent declines.
In the face of such rapid and irre-
versible changes to the environment,
conventional conservation methods are
not always effective. Instead, conserva-
tionists are now looking towards new
technology and innovative strategies to
rapidly through threatened populations.
Gene drives could potentially be used to
help restore native biodiversity, particu-
larly when alternative methods have been
ineffective or too costly.
Invasive species, for example, are
almost impossible to eradicate once they
help combat what appear to be unstop- take hold. Feral animals are incredibly
pable threats. For instance, gene drives damaging to Australias native fauna,
could be used to help accelerate adap- particularly as our ecosystem has been

20 | | JULY/AUGUST 2017
isolated for so long that its now ill- eliminating them with little negative the population non-toxic. Then, preda-
adapted to deal with novel threats. effect on the unique fauna of the island. tors would be able to consume the toads
Current methods for control generally Gene drives have also been suggested safely, and could help us in bringing down
involve individual removal through tech- to help control the poisonous cane toad, their numbers.
niques such as lethal baiting, or the intro- which is currently spreading across Invasive species are not the only threat-
duction of diseases such as myxomatosis northern Australia at an alarming rate, ening process impacting Australias biodi-
in rabbits. Even though these methods leading to local population crashes of versity, and gene drives may have other
can be effective on a small scale, invasive native predators that unwittingly attack potential uses for conservation. There
species continue to pose a signicant the poisonous toads. Unfortunately, are adaptations occurring in the natural
threat to native Australian fauna. current methods have not been able to environment in response to many threat-
Gene drives provide a novel avenue stop the invasion, or effectively remove ening processes, but often they do not
for conservationists, and could be used the toads once they are established. With spread quickly enough to allow for popu-
to either control invasive species or
promote adaptations that allow native
animals to coexist alongside invaders.
Due to the targeted nature of gene drives,
conservationists could specically target
feral animals and have little effect on the
native fauna (unlike other control
methods such as baiting, which run the
risk of poisoning native animals that
unknowingly consume baits).
The speed at which gene drives work
within a population would also be to
conservationists advantage, as invasive
species often spread so quickly that tradi-
tional management efforts cannot
prevent the damage they cause.
There have been suggestions to use
gene drives to reduce populations of inva-
sive rodents in Australia. By targeting the
masculinising Sry gene, scientists could
articially increase the number of male
offspring born in problem populations.
This would reduce the populations
breeding output, ultimately leading to Rabbits at the myxomatosis trial enclosure on Wardang Island in 1938.
National Archives of Australia: barcode 11145789, series accession number A1200/19
declines in rodent numbers and possibly
resulting in their extinction. current control methods mostly ineffec- lation survival. Take, for instance, the
Lord Howe Island was invaded by the tive, researchers have highlighted the Tasmanian devil, which is being seriously
black rat in 1918, and this invasive rodent potential for new molecular technolo- threatened by the spread of the deadly
has been implicated in the decline of gies to enable specic gene editing of the facial tumor. Although devil populations
several native bird species and the extinc- cane toad. By targeting the pathway to have reduced by over 80% in the wild
tion of ve species. Traditional methods toxicity in the cane toad, researchers could since the disease rst appeared less than
for removal, particularly baiting, have so limit the damage the toads have on native 20 years ago, recently we have had cause
far provided some reprieve for the native populations. This would require a rela- for hope. Researchers in Tasmania have
ecosystem, but have proved costly and tively simple synthetic gene drive, with discovered genomic regions associated
havent completely eradicated the rats no cargo attached. Using gene drives with immune-modulated resistance,
from the island. The use of gene drives to promote and help spread the gene which potentially is being selected for
in this instance would help to reduce the through the cane toad populations, we and enabling some devils to survive.
number of black rats, perhaps eventually could theoretically make all members of Although its still very early days, there

JULY/AUGUST 2017 | | 21

Genomic regions associated with immune-modulated resistance to devil facial tumour
disease could be spread through Tasmanian devil populations by a gene drive.
have been some suggestions that gene
drives could be used to promote the adap-
tation in devils and help them return to
healthy levels in the wild.
As with any complex and novel
conservation strategy, there are inherent
risks in using gene drives for conserva-
tion benets. Introducing new genes into
wild populations is risky as we cannot
predict every outcome. An introduction
of new genes that is poorly managed or ill-
conceived could have wide-reaching
effects on the environment, so any such
measure must be considered carefully
Introduced rats eat bird eggs, leading to the decline and extinction of bird species.
22 | | JULY/AUGUST 2017
An introduction of new
Rodrigo Hameda, University of Tasmania
genes that is poorly
managed or ill-
conceived could have
wide-reaching effects
on the environment...
isms and connections that may be
disrupted by a small change.
Take, for example, if we were able to
successfully remove feral foxes and cats
from the landscape. These invasive preda-
tors cause billions of deaths of native
animals each year, and have contributed
to the extinction of many native
Australian species. In Australia we have
beforehand. Conservationists must have worked hard at controlling the numbers
a thorough understanding of how genes of foxes and cats, and if we could remove
spread between populations prior to the them from the landscape there would be
release of any synthetic gene drive. many positive consequences for the envi-
Understanding the wider implications ronment. However, removing these
of using gene drives for conservation predators leads to an increase in Euro-
benets is particularly important because pean rabbit numbers, which also has
of the complexity of the ecosystems in damaging impacts on the native
which they are employed. Calculated ecosystem. Similarly, rendering the cane
changes to threatening process could lead toad non-toxic would lead to a recovery
to many unintended consequences, not of native predator populations, but this
necessary directly related to the original would have ow-on effects for the native
target species. Natural ecosystems exist species these predators prey upon.
in balance and involve countless organ- Removing any species from the food
chain, even an invasive animal, will have
trickle-down effects on the larger
ecosystem, many of which may be di-
cult to identify before its too late.
Therefore, before gene drives can be
considered as a potential conversation
method we must carefully consider the
broader consequences for any such actions.
Detailed case studies should be under-
Andrew Mercer (www.baldwhiteguy.co.nz)
taken prior to any manipulations of the
natural environment. If effective manage-
ment of this strategy can be achieved,
however, it may provide us with a valu-
able tool to use to protect our biodiver-
sity when all other methods have failed.
Ella Kelly is a PhD student in the School of BioSciences at
The University of Melbourne.
 The Future of
Pest Control
Lies Within
(the Pest)
be
do
/A
va
ro
se
lva
tte
Ku
ra
Ve

ALEXANDRE FOURNIER-LEVEL
Gene drives could improve global food security by turning pest biology against itself.

etween 1845 and 1847, the potato blight (Phytoph- tend to favour short-term chemical answers to long-term biolog-

B tora infestans) ravaged Ireland, where potato was

the staple crop, causing the death of more than a
million people and forcing the emigration of another
two million. The Great Famine added another hall-
mark to the long list of plagues humanity has faced, along with the
plagues of Egypt in the Bible or locust plagues during the Yuan and
Ming dynasties.
The Green Revolution over the rst half of the 20th century
owed itself to the widespread application of chemistry in agri-
culture. It can be seen as the milestone after which we ceased to
fear agricultural diseases as life-threatening plagues. But for how
long will this remain so?
Two recent and dramatic events that went relatively unno-
ticed are a reminder that food security is fragile and that we are
more vulnerable to disease and pest outbreaks than we probably
think. In 2007 Ug99, an extremely virulent strain of black stem
rust (Puccinia graminicola), started infesting East African wheat
elds and ultimately extended to the Middle East. In 2016, a
wheat blast caused by the fungi Magnaporthe oryzae originating
from South America spread to Bangladesh, somehow jumping
from rice to wheat.
The extreme vulnerability of modern agriculture stems from
several factors, including the narrow gene pool of the crop (which
was already the main vulnerability during the Great Famine),
biosecurity issues arising from the increase in global trade, the
current state of scientic knowledge and economic rationale that
ical problems.
Pesticides are increasingly blamed for polluting ecosystems,
but these chemicals are our rst line of defence. However, their
ecacy is threatened: the rst mass-produced herbicide 2,4-D,
released in the 1950s, remained effective for several decades before
resistance developed, and we are now experiencing a situation
where herbicide ecacy only lasts a decade or two. New pesti-
cides are being designed but we are running out of options. In
order to diversify our defence arsenal, biological controls have
been deployed with some success, such as ladybugs preying upon
aphids or wasps parasitising the eggs of pest moths.
However, current biological methods of pest control suffer
many intrinsic limitations. There needs to be a suitable predator,
parasite or pathogen of the pest that can be deployed within the
cropping environment. Furthermore, the consequence of the
biological control escaping the crop to become an invasive pest is
also a possibility. Think of the dreadful cane toad, which has been
useless at controlling grey-backed beetles but has invaded and
changed the food webs of most of tropical Australia.
While there might not always be a natural enemy of the pest
available to develop a biological control strategy, every organism
needs specic genes to develop, so why not exploit this vulnera-
bility and base the control on the pests own genome?
Using the pests very own biological vulnerability at the molec-
ular level is not a new concept, but it would be substantially enabled
by two key things. First, we need a system that brings genetic engi-

JULY/AUGUST 2017 | | 23

Pathogenic fungi such as rice blast (Magnaporthe grisea)
threaten food security in many parts of the world. Credit: Donald Groth
neering tools inside the pest cell. Second, we need a way for the
engineered gene to diffuse across the pest population.
This is now possible through the development of synthetic
gene drives using CRISPR/Cas9 molecular engineering tech-
nology. This technique represents an unprecedented possibility
of bringing a genetic conict to a noxious organism simply through
the introduction of a single non-native gene, the Cas9 endonu-
clease gene, into the genome of the target pest. This is in stark
contrast to other biological control approaches that introduce
new species into the ecosystem.
In theory there is no limitation to which gene or genes can be
the target of a gene drive. The targeted gene can be simply deleted
(the most simple and straightforward application), added or
edited. The gene drive will then convert the other gene copy or
allele present on the sister chromosome into the engineered form
of the gene, and multiply it through the population.
A gene drive can have different objectives, from simply
amending the genetic make-up of a population (e.g. by intro-
ducing susceptibility to a pesticide or a reproductive incompati-
bility) to the extinction of a target species (a crash drive). In
terms of ethics, designing a gene drive to restore susceptibility to
a pesticide for which the pest has developed resistance seems more
acceptable than seeking its extinction.
Nevertheless, the complexity of biological ecosystems and our
lack of understanding should make us very humble: numerous
things could go wrong when using a gene drive for pest control,
and we will rst need to close the knowledge gap before consid-
ering any eld release.
Agricultural systems have all the features that could lead to
the rapid diffusion of an escaping biological agent: massive areas
with high densities of a single species in favourable environmental
24 | | JULY/AUGUST 2017
conditions and connected to other agricultural zones around the
world. This provides the perfect trigger for a demographic explo-
sion by an organism capable of exploiting the agrosystem.
So will any genetically engineered species released in an open
eld necessarily escape human control? While the purpose of a gene
drive is to spread, escape could be limited if the means of control
has been carefully anticipated. Since the activity of a gene drive
strictly depends on the presence of the Cas9 endonuclease gene,
it is possible to introduce small guide RNA sequences (sgRNAs)
aimed at deleting the Cas9 gene itself. Once Cas9 is expelled from
the genome of the target species, there is no risk of the gene drive
multiplying out of control.
For this strategy to be effective, the initial gene drive must only
be effective for a certain period before the second, anti-Cas9
sgRNA disrupts the gene drives activity. This remains a chal-
lenge, but progress in our understanding of gene regulation, such
as epigenetic modication, may soon allow the delay of anti-Cas9
activity relative to the primary drive.
However carefully designed the gene drive is, it cannot be ruled
out that a molecular error will be introduced, and its consequences
are dicult to anticipate. We typically should remind ourselves
that the abundance of genetic diversity present in the living world
is entirely the result of errors and malfunction of the cellular
machinery, and this imperfection is the driver of evolution.
Nevertheless, gene drives have a critical advantage over biolog-
ical control using another species: since the arena lies within the
genome of the pest species, there is no risk of introducing a new
pest. An optimistic standpoint would just consider that, at worst,
the gene drive may not solve the initial problem. The possibility
of the gene drive escaping through hybridisation remains to be
considered, but fortunately most pests are not native and are rarely
at risk of hybridising with sister species.
As a result of our over-reliance on a few all-purpose pesticides,
pests have become resistant and the dose used has needed to be
increased to the point where most elds and ecosystems have
become highly polluted. This is not the fault of the chemical
industry, and even less the farmers; it is the fault of applying simple
solutions to complex problems.
Gene drive technology will create new opportunities and will
be informed by emerging models where biological interactions
are considered down to the molecular level. Each pest issue could
be tackled in the most specic possible way, without harm to
other species. We may no longer need to have xed varieties of crops
and breeds of livestock, but instead could use locally adapted,
better-suited plant and animal populations in which we occa-
sionally introduce a new benecial copy of a gene that will diffuse
through a gene drive. This is the way forward to reconcile produc-
tive agriculture and maintenance of biological diversity.
Dr Alexandre Fournier-Level is a Lecturer at The University of Melbournes School of
Biosciences.
Gene Drives:
A Fork in the Road
for the GMO Debate
CHARLES ROBIN
What are the moral and ethical concerns about gene drives,
and how should the technology be regulated?
t the end of last year, a United Nations biodi-
A versity meeting rejected calls for a moratorium
on gene drives. In the months before that
meeting, a letter signed by eminent and well-
respected biologists including Jane Goodall and
David Suzuki asserted that the use of gene drives in natural
populations is a moral and ethical threshold that must not be
crossed without great constraint.
This raises two very important issues. What are the moral
and ethical issues? And in what way should the technology be
regulated?
Synthetic gene drives can be thought of as a derivative of
conventional genetically modied organisms (GMOs), for
which many of the moral and ethical issues have already been
widely debated and the technology highly regulated in many
countries. So let us focus on the differences between gene drives
and GMOs, and ask where the moral and ethical threshold
actually lies.
Unlike the early releases of transgenic plants, gene drive
technology is not currently being championed by private compa-
nies with a prot motive. In fact, it is not immediately obvious
how gene drives can be monetised given that they are self-
spreading.
One possibility is that gene drives could be coupled to agri-
chemicals. For example, a gene drive could spread a gene that
makes a pest sensitive to a particular patented chemical that is
sold by that company. Another possibility is that companies
follow the lead of British biotechnology company Oxitec, which
has developed sterile insects using transgenic technologies and
manages release strategies for various tiers of government so
that disease vectors are controlled.
honglouwawa/Adobe
Generally, however, it seems unlikely that a gene drive
debate will follow the same course as the GMO debate, which
was entangled with the prot motives of companies like
Monsanto. Likewise with concerns about the intellectual prop-
erty rights covering synthetic gene drives, at the moment these
seem to be out of corporate control and held in the relatively
safe hands of academics in the United States.
... if New Zealanders developed a
gene drive to reduce pest
populations of the brushtail
possum, how would we make sure
that the gene drive would not
spread to Australia?
The most fundamental differences between gene drives and
standard GMOs is that gene drives affect free-living and free-
breeding natural populations and are designed to spread. This
is not the case with transgenic cotton or herbicide-resistant
canola, where there is an imperative not to spread the trans-
genes to GM-free cultivars in a neighbours paddock or to any
weeds with the potential to hybridise with the crop plant. In the
case of these GM crops there have been substantial efforts to
prevent such movement (such as making the GM crops sterile)
and to monitor related crops to detect any possible gene ow
that may have occur. However, organic farmers need not be
concerned about gene drives, in this respect, because its likely
that gene drives will target pests rather than the crops themselves.
So should the threshold be set so that no gene drives are allowed
because genetic engineering of a natural population is a step too
JULY/AUGUST 2017 | | 25

Drosophila suzukii is a pest of soft-skinned fruit in many parts of the world.
It is not in Australia yet, but if populations of it appeared to be establishing
then a gene drive could help eradicate it. For example, a gene that ensures
that no daughters are born could be driven through the population. While
this may increase the number of male flies in the short term, males do not
strike the fruit, and would increasingly be fathers of subsequent
generations, so ultimately females will disappear and the population would
crash. Credit: Kathy Garvey, UC Davis
The green peach aphid (Myzus
persicae) is a major pest of canola.
Australian populations mostly
reproduce asexually, so its not a
good target for a gene drive.
Credit: Scott Bauer, US Agricultural Research Service
far? Will, then, alternatives such as the broad application
of relatively indiscriminate insecticides remain our default
strategy?
Perhaps the threshold should discriminate between
particular types of drives. Maybe gene drives that simply
knock out gene function are tolerable whereas those
that deliver cargo genes are not. Or perhaps those aimed
at conferring a new attribute to the population are
acceptable, whereas those that aim to reduce the number
of individuals in a population size are not?
Some have talked about deliberately eliminating
pest species, like mosquitoes, using a variant of gene
drives sometimes referred to as crash drives. Is reducing
species biodiversity in such a way a step too far?
If we accept that some gene drives are acceptable,
then what are the hazards of tinkering with the genetic
constitution of natural populations? One major concern
is that gene drives could drastically affect ecosystems,
and because ecosystems are complex the consequences
may be hard to predict and the outcomes unexpected
and devastating.
Perhaps we should limit gene drives to organisms
that have recently invaded Australia. For instance, the
tomato and potato psyllid (Bactericera cockerelli) recently
entered Western Australia and has been the target of
interstate quarantine restrictions. Drosophila suzukii,
a small fruity, a major pest of soft-skinned fruits like
berries, has caused signicant damage in the United
States and Europe, where it has recently invaded. Incur-
sions of Drosophila suzukii into Australia are expected
soon. Both of these insect species reproduce sexually, so
they could be the targets of gene drive technology.
Surely elimination from Australia of pest incursions
using a crash drive will protect ecosystems rather than
damage them?
But that introduces a new issue. How do we stop
gene drives spreading to places where they are not
intended? Would a gene drive designed to protect
Australian agriculture spread overseas? Pest organisms
do not carry passports or recognise national bound-
aries, and a pest in one country may be a key part of a
fragile ecosystem in another.
As a completely hypothetical example, if New Zealan-
ders developed a gene drive to reduce pest populations
of the brushtail possum, how would we make sure that
the gene drive would not spread to Australia? It would
only take the movement of one fertile animal by some
irresponsible person.
Several engineering solutions to this problem have
been suggested. For example, more sophisticated gene

26 | | JULY/AUGUST 2017
 The tomato and potato psyllid Bactericera cockerelli
feeds on a potato and infects it with Candidatus
Liberibacter solanacearum, the bacteria that causes
zebra chip disease. This pest has already entered
Western Australia and could be a target of gene drives.
Credit: Whitney Cranshaw, Colorado State University, Bugwood.org

drives have been conceived that either reverse previous gene

drives or separate the gene drive components so that they only
combine in an active form in a period immediately after release.
There are also features that could be incorporated into the
design of experimental genes drives so that would they would
only work in certain contexts. For instance, nutritional supple-
ments available only in lab environments could act as an on
switch so that any individuals that escaped from the research
environment would not have any impact on natural populations.
Clearly the other solution is regulation. There are hierar-
chies to the public policy concerning gene drives. Gene drives
could have international ramications, with international
bodies such the United Nations already tracking and debating
developments in the technology. In Australia, gene drives
currently fall under the purview of the Gene Technology Act
2000, and various relevant authorities have an interest depending
on the context in which gene drives are applied.
Universities and other research institutions need to encom-
pass gene drives into their institutional research responsibilities,
and there is also a responsibility placed on individual scientists
The larva of a Helicoverpa moth. These moths are pests of many
to develop the technology appropriately. Some leading crops and are the reason why transgenic cotton is grown in
researchers in the eld are already advocating pre-registration Australia. As an endemic pest, a gene drive in Helicoverpa
armigera might pose more ecological risks than gene drives in an
of gene drive experiments so that experimental plans can be invading pest. Credit: Scot Nelson
easily accessed by whoever is interested and concerns raised
before the experiments have even been conducted. natural populations that are free-living and free-breeding
Important contributors to the public discussion on gene that have survived from the evolutionary past; and
drives are the various national academies of science. For instance, feral populations, such as feral cats and brumbies, that have
the Australian Academy of Science recently launched a discus- a genetic history of domestication yet are now wild and free-
sion paper entitled Synthetic Gene Drives in Australia: breeding.
Implications of Emerging Technologies (https://goo.gl/SRTKX7). If gene drive populations come to be, we would have free-
The development of gene drives represents a signicant living and free-breeding populations that have had their genetic
advance in the ability of humans to manipulate biology and composition deliberately manipulated by humans.
the environment. They dene a new type of population. Until Gene drives represent a fork in the road. We might call the
now we might classify organisms into: road the Anthropocene Highway. The fork has multiple prongs,
domesticated populations such as the crops, farm animals and or options, and we should start to consider which one we should
pets that have been crucial characteristics of our civilisa- be steering toward.
tions; Dr Charles Robin is a Senior Lecturer at the School of BioSciences at the University of
captive populations that we keep in zoos and parks; Melbourne.

JULY/AUGUST 2017 | | 27
 Its not just about
The Science
RACHEL A. ANKENY & HEATHER J. BRAY
Female scientists and health professionals have revealed that
opposition to genetically modied food is less about the science
and more about perceived conicts with personal values.
pposition to a technology is often thought to
O be caused by a lack of understanding of the
underlying science. In response, scientists and
science communicators often explain the
scientic details in the hope that these facts
will persuade people to change their behaviours or beliefs.
Despite attempts to move away from this decit model
of science communication, it continues to persist, in part because
we still dont really understand how people interact with science
in their everyday lives. Everyday decision-making that requires
consideration of scientic evidence, risks and benets is not
usually included when scientic engagement is measured or
studied (see Searles 2014 report on how Australians engage
with science at https://tinyurl.com/k77ef74). Another compli-
cating factor is that people have multiple roles that affect the
ways in which they make decisions: as citizen, consumer, scien-
tist and carer, to name a few.
Even the very idea that there is a single body of knowledge
known as science is problematic. Scientic disciplines have
different ways of looking at key concepts such as risk, some-
times bringing scientists into opposition with each other. For
example, people working to develop genetically modied (GM)
crops, such as molecular biologists, are more accepting of the
technology than those working in more holistic disciplines
(https://tinyurl.com/y7unqoqn). The Public Health Associ-
ation of Australias policy on GM foods (https://tinyurl.com/
y9tcbmhr) states that the organisation will continue to advo-
cate for state-based moratoria on the production of GM crops
because it is concerned about the risks to human health and a
lack of evidence of safety.
Our recent qualitative research on womens attitudes to
GM food attempts to unpack some of these issues
(https://tinyurl.com/y7zj9y9w). Previous research had shown
that women are generally more negative about GM foods, and
suggested that this was because they often have less education
in science, tend to be more involved with food provisioning, and
28 | | JULY/AUGUST 2017
have caring roles that tend
to make them more
concerned about food risks.
Our research partici-
pants included women
with a range of educational
backgrounds in science
from high school science to
PhD training and involved
women with various household
structures and carer roles
(including parents, grandparents
and those caring for older relatives).
We specically recruited plant scien-
tists involved in the development of
GM crops as well as women in health
science professions. We used semi-
scripted focus group discussions to
collect data, which we analysed themat-
ically.
All of the women in our study
preferred food that they described as
natural (by which they meant unpro-
cessed), locally produced, healthy and
nutritious, and free from additives. The
plant scientists did not view food made
using GM techniques to be in conict
with any of these categories, and were
not worried about eating GM food, but
nearly all of the other women in the study
even the highly science-educated women
who worked in the health sciences considered
GM food to be in conict with these core food
values.
The multiple roles that the women played inu-
enced their choices, with caring roles particularly impor-
Mopic/Ado
 tant. Price, familiarity of brands, allergies and
other special dietary needs were also cited as
important factors when choosing food.
Although all of the women with higher levels
of science education used evidence to support
their positions on
whether to consume
GM foods, they had very
different perceptions of risk.
These are likely to result from the
womens different disciplinary back-
grounds. The plant scientists said that
lack of evidence of harm meant that
GM food was safe for them to eat, but
the women in health sciences said that a
lack of evidence of safety made them
cautious. For women without high levels of
science education, GM foods presented
unknown risks, and as such were to be avoided.
Regardless of discipline, all of the women
with high levels of science education viewed GM
foods and crops in terms of broader issues in
agriculture and food production rather than
focusing on the science of how GM crops are
produced.
For the plant scientists, support of the tech-
nology was linked to its potential to do social
good or support environmental sustainability.
They suggested that education was part of the
solution to public perceptions of GM crops,
particularly because they viewed GM as an exten-
sion of the long history of human manipulation
of plants.
The health scientists emphasised the idea that
the risks were unknown, in part because our
understanding of molecular biology continues
to evolve (e.g. epigenetics). The fact that no inde-
pendent safety testing of GM foods is required
for approval in Australia was also problematic for
them. They also expressed other concerns about
GM, including the effects on farmers abilities to
save seeds for reuse, the involvement of large corpo-
rations, and environmental impacts from the use
of agricultural chemicals in farming systems.
These ndings highlight that both product (what
is in the food) and process (how it is made) are impor-
tant for the women in our study, although Australias
current labelling regime doesnt mark out the latter cate-
gory with regard to GM use. The women in plant sciences
were as concerned about making good food choices as the
obe
other women in our study, with some growing their own food,
and talked about their concerns about the environmental
impacts of their food purchases.
Our study reinforces other research that challenges the decit
model of science communication. It shows that high levels of
science education and knowledge do not necessarily generate
more acceptance of technologies, particularly genetic modi-
cation of foods and crops.
Although it may not be surprising that women working on
the development of GM crops were mostly in favour of GM
foods, our ndings reveal new information about how scientic
information is being used by women with different types of
science backgrounds to make everyday decisions. The contrast
between women with health/nutrition backgrounds and those
with molecular biology backgrounds in their use of evidence
is particularly notable: they took different approaches to risk,
respectively stressing a lack of evidence of safety and a lack of
evidence of harm. This difference reinforces the idea that knowl-
edge alone does not shape views on GM food, but that eviden-
tial standards and other values are critical.
As researchers keen to foster engagement around the role
of science and technology in food production, we feel that this
research provides several critical lessons for scientists and others
seeking to engage with the public.
First, everyday decisions that involve science do not occur
in a vacuum; further, the multiple roles that each of us plays also
inuence our choices.
Second, there is no singular body of knowledge called
science with which people engage. Helping people to navigate
different disciplinary approaches to risk is particularly dicult
yet important.
Third, one of the negative consequences of the decit model
has been to limit conversations about GM foods to how they
are made, what is in the nal product, and how risk is assessed
by regulators, rather than discussion of broader issues such as
how this technology ts within economic, social and political
domains. The tendency to adopt this type of simplistic framing
was particularly frustrating for the women in our study with
science backgrounds. They expressed their desires for much
more sophisticated conversations about GM food than those
currently taking place in the public domain, particularly in the
context of our evolving understandings of molecular biology.
Most importantly, our research points to food values that are
shared whether women eat or avoid GM foods. Shared values
are an important foundation for engagement, and we believe that
our work can contribute to the development of better engage-
ment strategies across different sciences and sectors of the
public.
Prof Rachel A. Ankeny and Dr Heather J. Bray are part of the Food Values Research Group
in the School of Humanities at The University of Adelaide (https://arts.adelaide.edu.au/
history/food-values/).
JULY/AUGUST 2017 | | 29
 Tasty Treats Diminish Our
Capacity for Patience
BOWEN FUNG
A new study nds that our recent experience with rewards such as food can change our
capacity for patience.
n everyday life, we often make
I commitments to long-term goals,
but in many cases we break these
commitments (sometimes rather
quickly). When we diet, make
nancial investments or try to quit
smoking, it can feel like there is a constant
temptation to give up and appease our
more immediate desires. This kind of
impulsivity the tendency to act impa-
tiently, without regard for the future
consequences is often considered to be
a negative trait, and society praises indi-
viduals who display persistence in the
face of temptation. After all, we all know
that patience is a virtue.
Impulsivity is also mostly considered
to be a stable personality trait that doesnt
30 | | JULY/AUGUST 2017
change signicantly over the course of
our lives. The classic example of this is
the Stanford marshmallow experiment,
where Walter Mischel tested whether
children were able to wait patiently for
many marshmallows or instead would be
tempted into taking a single marshmallow
immediately. Follow-up studies of these
children showed that those who were
more patient tended to have better
lifestyle outcomes in terms of educational
achievement and health. Does this mean
that your inability to quit smoking is set
in stone?
Despite the virtue of patience, in
many real-world situations it is unrea-
sonable to be innitely patient. Imagine
waiting at a bus stop and not knowing
/Adobe
tawanlubfah
when the bus will arrive. You are probably
happy to wait for a little while, but what
if there is a possibility that the bus has
broken down? Surely you wouldnt wait
forever? In this situation you might rely
on your previous experience with the
frequency of bus arrivals, and only give
up and take a taxi after the expected time
had passed.
This scenario is quite similar to the
marshmallow test, but it clearly reveals
two important things about impulsivity.
First, innite patience isnt always viable,
and acting impatiently can sometimes
save you time and money. Second, it
shows that, contrary to being set in stone,
our level of patience could be dependent
on our recent past experiences and expec-
tations. If Im used to a ecient public slightly sooner on average. In terms of chosen to keep waiting. In the case of the
transport system Im going to be less the bus stop scenario, this was equivalent rst manipulation (when we delivered
tolerant of delays, but if I move to a city to having an arrival timetable with a the rewards sooner), we not only changed
with poor public transport I might higher frequency, so these participants our participants expectation of when the
(unhappily) wait longer for a bus. should expect the large reward to arrive large reward would arrive but we also
My laboratory and I set out to test quicker. This also meant that these partic- increased the potential amount of money
exactly how people behaved in situations ipants could potentially earn more money they could be earning per unit time. This
like this, and what kinds of factors might in total. meant that their time was inherently
make them more or less likely to persist For the second manipulation, half the more valuable, and every second spent
in waiting. participants drank a sweet beverage (very waiting was more costly than the partic-
In our study, published in Proceedings of similar to a normal soft drink), while the ipants who had their large rewards
the Royal Society B (http://tinyurl.com/ other half just drank water. Although arrive later. It is likely that this sense
yd8soa84), we asked participants to avoid this was irrelevant to the computer task, of increased opportunity cost made
eating or drinking for 4 hours, and then it meant that half of our participants had participants give up sooner.
asked them to complete a computer task
Kitty/Adobe
that was similar to the bus stop scenario.
Instead of buses, participants waited for a
monetary reward (that they were actually
paid), but they could give up waiting at any
time. If they gave up, they received a much
smaller reward. Whenever they won money
(either the large or small amount), the task
was reset, and the time they would have to
wait for the large money reward to arrive
would be randomly shued. We gave
participants a xed amount of time to earn
money in this task, using whatever strategy
they wanted.
Imagine one extreme strategy that
people might have used: continuously
taking the immediate, smaller reward.
While this would ensure a constant cash
ow, it meant always missing out on a
larger amount of money (which was
substantially greater).
The study found that the consumption of calories reduced the patience of participants.
The opposite extreme strategy would
be to wait for the larger money reward
every single round. However, for some the experience of being physiologically But what about the participants given
rounds this could take averylong time, rewarded while the other half remained the soft drink? The drink was unrelated
during which participants wouldnt be hungry. to the task of earning money, yet despite
getting any money at all. Thus the key to We found that for both of these exper- this, drinking it still affected participants
earning the most money was to give up imental manipulations the participants willingness to wait for rewards.
when they thought they had been waiting gave up waiting earlier. But why should One suggestion is that our perception
too long, because the large reward might that be the case? of opportunity cost is sensitive to all types
come much quicker in the next round. One likely explanation relates to the of rewards, even those that are irrelevant
We experimentally manipulated two concept ofopportunity cost.This gener- to the task at hand. When our hungry
factors to see whether they would affect ally refers to the value of forgone oppor- participants drank the energy-providing
how long participants were likely to wait tunities in our task, this was the soft drink, a general psychological mech-
in this task. First, for some participants we potential money that participants might anism may have signalled that rewards
delivered the larger monetary reward have been able to earn if they hadnt were now readily available in the envi-

JULY/AUGUST 2017 | | 31
 ronment, and that waiting now carried
a higher opportunity cost (the cost of not
nding more to drink). If humans are
indeed sensitive to irrelevant rewards in
the environment, then this implies that
reward-rich environments like casinos
may make us more impulsive simply by
increasing our general sense of opportu-
nity cost.
javarman/Adobe
Reward-rich environments like casinos may make us more impulsive simply by increasing
our general sense of opportunity cost.
Many people would agree that, at least
in their experience, they getmoreimpa-
tient when theyre hungry, yet the results
of our study seem to imply the opposite:
that we arelessimpatient when hungry.
Naturally, the task used in our exper-
iment does not capture the complexities
of real-world environments like a super-
market. A straightforward explanation
is that supermarkets are full of cues and
images that represent food, and that these
overwhelmingly indicate that the envi-
ronment is full of rewards that could be
exploited.
A good test of this idea would be to
repeat our experiment, and instead of giving
participants the soft drink, we could simply
32 | | JULY/AUGUST 2017
expose them to the kinds of food cues and
brands that we regularly experience in
supermarkets. Another possible explana-
tion for this counterintuitive nding is that
when we are reasonably condent of
receiving food (e.g. if weve just ordered at
a restaurant), we would prefer to wait rather
than waste valuable energy trying to nd
food elsewhere.
There is also a plausible explanation
for these effects from a neurobiological
perspective. A recent theory from
computational neuroscientist Yael Niv
of Princeton University proposes that
opportunity costs are encoded in the
brain by the neurotransmitter dopamine
the reward neurotransmitter.
Dopamine increases when individuals
receive rewards like food or money. Thus,
when people have had more rewards,
their levels of dopamine increase, and
this is a signal that the opportunity cost
of time is higher.
Previous studies have shown that
when individuals are rewarded more
frequently, their dopamine levels rise
and they also act more quickly and vigor-
ously. This makes sense because wasted
time is more costly in these situations,
and acting faster offsets this cost. While
we didnt measure dopamine levels in
our participants, its possible that the
same neurobiological mechanism can
explain our results.
Interestingly, increases in dopamine
also affect our perception of time. When
dopamine levels increase, people over-
estimate time intervals (i.e. it feels like
time is dragging on). Thus, changes in
the perception of time may also partly
explain the results found in our experi-
ment: if time was overestimated, partic-
ipants would give up waiting sooner even
if they thought they were giving up at
the normal expected time.
Its important to note that some other
studies have reported that calorie
consumption can increaseself-control
and patience. This doesnt necessarily
conict with our results, as these studies
used different tasks to measure impul-
sivity. However, it does highlight that
impulsivity is a rather complicated
phenomenon, and the way our behaviour
is affected by calorie consumption may
not be so clear-cut.
Yet, at least in the case of the bus stop
scenario, the results of our study suggest
that calorie consumption can increase
impatience. This reinforces the idea that
our perception of opportunity cost can
inuence behaviour, even when these
costs are irrelevant to our current goals.
Our ndings also strike a blow to the
idea that impulsivity is a stable person-
ality trait, and instead suggest that impul-
sivity can differ depending on our
environmental context and our implicit
expectations.
Perhaps bear this in mind next time
you are waiting for a bus, and put the
snacks aside until later.
Bowen Fung is a PhD candidate at The University of
Melbourne. His research in the Decision Neuroscience
Laboratory investigates the psychophysiological basis of
time perception, and how changes in time perception can
affect decision-making.
Ruling the Roost
While there has been a huge effort to try and sanitise the processing of chicken
meat to eliminate bacterial contamination, they still persist in low numbers. roibu/Adobe

TAMSYN CROWLEY & BEN WADE

More than four million Australians suffer from food poisoning each year, many due to bacterial
contamination of poultry products. Now nanotechnology is being tested as an alternative to
antibiotic use in chickens prior to processing.

ts a story that will be familiar to many of us. Possibly Bacteria are responsible for the majority of food poisoning

I it started with a night out with friends: a few drinks,

good company and, seemingly, great food. But later on,
maybe that night or perhaps the following morning, it
starts. The cold sweat, stomach pain, the vomiting and
nausea. Youve got a bout of food poisoning.
Caused by eating food contaminated with bacteria, viruses
or even chemicals, more than four million Australians suffer
from food poisoning every year. While most people view food
poisoning as something that isnt too serious, maybe requiring
a day in bed, symptoms in severe cases can progress to high
fever and respiratory failure, particularly in more vulnerable
people such as infants and the elderly. The cost of food poisoning
to the Australian economy is estimated to be more than
$1 billion per year.
outbreaks in Australia. In the right conditions, some bacteria
can double their numbers every 20 minutes, so if a piece of
meat is left out on the bench on a warm day and it contains
100 food-poisoning bacteria, in just over 3 hours that same
meat could now contain more than 50,000 bacteria! Bacteria
thrive in warm conditions, particularly at human body temper-
ature (37C), so it only takes a small amount of bacteria to be
ingested in contaminated food for it to multiply and conse-
quently cause illness.
Two of the main culprits when it comes to bacterial food
poisoning are Campylobacter and Salmonella. A number of
different foods can carry these bacteria; in particular, uncooked
poultry is a major source of these bacteria. Ironically these
bacteria occur naturally in the gut of chickens and generally

JULY/AUGUST 2017 | | 33
 litigation. Indeed food poisoning victims in
the United States have now started pointing
the nger at the primary producers in addi-
tion to the eateries from which they fell ill.
In order to reduce the risk of bacterial
food-borne illness there is a necessity to
reduce the original bacterial levels in meat
chickens prior to processing. The lower the
numbers of these bacteria at the beginning of
the process line, the easier it will be to
minimise the bacterial levels at the end of
the process.
A great deal of work is now being done
in an attempt to reduce the continual bacte-
rial infection and re-infection that occurs
roibu/Adobe
during the movement and processing of
chicken meat. Efforts include increasing
Chickens need to be free of antibiotics before processing to ensure there is no trace
of them in the chicken meat. awareness, improving sanitation,disinfecting
and improving farm management practices.
do not affect the health of the animals. Its when they make While these efforts will go some way to limit the spread of food
their way into our gut that problems arise. However, during poisoning bacteria, they dont deal with reducing the original
the process of producing chicken meat its possible for it to bacterial load in the chicken itself.
become contaminated with Salmonella and Campylobacter While there is potential to reduce the Campylobacter and
bacteria. While there has been a huge effort to try and sanitise Salmonella load with specic antibiotics, chickens need to be
the processing of chicken meat to eliminate bacterial contam- free of antibiotics before processing to ensure there is no trace
ination, many scientic studies have shown that they still persist of such compounds in the chicken meat. In addition, the increase
in low numbers. in antibiotic-resistant bacteria is causing concerns globally, and
Given the relatively high incidence of food poisoning in this has resulted in the reduction or, in some cases, ban of anti-
Australia its curious to note that most bacterial contamina- biotic use in livestock industries. New interventions aimed at
tion of poultry can be eradicated by appropriate cooking and reducing the contamination of poultry meat are required to
handling. Health departments at both state and national levels signicantly reduce the incidence of illness in humans.
alongside poultry industry representatives have developed exten- One such new intervention could involve nanotechnology,
sive education programs and fact sheets to encourage proper which applies to things 100 nm or less in size. Specically
cooking of animal products, yet the problem still persists. For designed nanoparticles could be used to bind to food-poisoning
instance, in late 2015 a 5-star hotel in Melbourne was at the bacteria in such a way as to inhibit or even prevent the growth
centre of a food poisoning outbreak and in early 2016 a caf on of the bacteria. These nanoparticles would be in the form of
Victorias Great Ocean Road had a similar outbreak. single-stranded DNA or RNA molecules that are able to bind
Coupled with the obvious distress that this causes their to specic targets, including proteins and peptides, with high
patrons, restaurants and the like can face expensive and lengthy anity and specicity. Nanoparticles have already been used to

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34 | | JULY/AUGUST 2017
regulate cellular processes and to guide
drugs to their specic cellular targets.
Nanotechnology has already been used
to detect many different bacterial
pathogens, including Campylobacter and
Salmonella. While these studies demon-

De Wood, Pooley, USDA, ARS, EMU.

strated that its plausible to generate
nanoparticles with high binding anity
and specicity for Campylobacter and
Salmonella, they have only used this tech-
nology as a way of detecting the presence
of the bacterium.
This new application of nanotech-
nology has the potential not only bind to
Campylobacter but also to inhibit its
growth. Such technological advances will
provide a new intervention method to
reduce the load of Campylobacter prior to
processing chicken meat, and consequently
reduce the incidence of food poisoning.
Recently we were awarded a Rural
Industries Research and Development
Corporation grant of more than $1 million
to tackle this problem. In collaboration
with Dr Sarah Shigdar at Deakin Univer-
sity we will spend the next 3 years inves-
tigating new ways to suppress the growth
of Campylobacter in chickens prior to
processing. Using nanotechnology, the
aim of the project will be to generate a
cheap, specic and reliable way of reducing
or even stopping the Campylobacter load
in meat chickens prior to processing,
ensuring an overall reduction and hope-
fully elimination of Campylobacter, and
ultimately a decline in human illness Campylobacter contamination of poultry is a major source of food poisoning.
caused by Campylobacter infection.
Specically the project will target several strains of Campy- drawbacks in terms of the rise of antibiotic resistance as well as
lobacter, and will ultimately be delivered to chickens in their consumer perceptions.
drinking water. There is also the potential to be able to use the The generation of a novel antimicrobial, in the form of a
same technology to generate strain-specic tests to detect nanoparticle treatment, that could specically reduce the
Campylobacter in poultry. This approach also has the potential Campylobacter and/or Salmonella load of poultry prior to
to be used to reduce the levels of other food-poisoning bacteria processing would have the potential to reduce the number of
such as Salmonella. food poisoning cases in Australia. Apart from the clear economic
The nancial cost of food-borne illness is a burden on the benet of such a reduction in disease rates, it would benet the
Australian economy. The losses in productivity and the cost poultry industry by increasing the products safety in the eyes
in terms of medical intervention, not to mention the impact of the consumer and hopefully reduce the number of days we
upon individuals, is signicant. Campylobacter is a major contrib- all spend in bed feeling sick and sorry.
utor to such illness, and while Campylobacter loads in poultry A/Prof Tamsyn Crowley is Senior Lecturer in Pharmacology and Therapeutics within Deakin
can be controlled with the use of antibiotics, this strategy has Universitys Bioinformatics Core Research Group, where Ben Wade is a Research Fellow.

JULY/AUGUST 2017 | | 35
 How Early Can We Predict
and Prevent Psychosis?
SCOTT R. CLARK, K. OLIVER SCHUBERT & BERNHARD T. BAUNE
The addition of a simple blood test could improve predictions of a rst psychotic episode.
sychosis is a loss of contact with reality that mani-
P fests in abnormal perception, thinking and
behaviour. These abnormalities can include hallu-
cinations (e.g. hearing non-existent derogatory
voices), delusions (e.g. of government surveillance
and persecution), disorganised movement, poor motivation,
slowed thinking, and loss of expression of emotions.
In severe psychosis, a persons speech and therefore thinking
may become so disorganised that topics change from moment
to moment without relationship. Behaviour can also be disor-
ganised, from low levels of self-initiated activity to furious and
bizarre movement without a specic goal.
... there is growing evidence that
subtle changes in brain function can
be identied long before the onset
of psychotic symptoms...
Psychotic illness may be episodic or chronic, and can occur
in both severe mood disorders such as bipolar disorder or
primary psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia. Up to one-
quarter of patients receive little or no benet from regular
antipsychotic medication, but many patients are able to live
relatively symptom-free if treated appropriately.
The 12-month prevalence of psychotic illness managed
within Australian public mental health services has recently
been estimated at 4.5 per 1000 people. Up to half of these
patients have reported a suicide attempt in their lifetime; more
than 60% report only partial recovery or continuous chronic
illness; 32% have a severe dysfunction in the quality of self-
care; and 85% rely on a government pension as their main
source of income.
Psychotic illness is associated with high rates of comorbid
chronic medical conditions, particularly those associated with
metabolic syndrome, which occurs in more than 50% of
psychotic patients. Seventy-ve per cent of psychotic patients
36 | | JULY/AUGUST 2017
are overweight or obese, nearly half have raised cholesterol or
triglycerides, and one-third have raised fasting glucose. Life
expectancy in those with schizophrenia is decreased by up to 20
years, largely due to cardiovascular disease.
The symptoms of psychosis are highly distressing and impact
on a persons mental and physical health, day-to-day function
and normal developmental milestones, such as completing
school, getting a job and living independently. There is emerging
evidence that treatments such as psychotherapy and some
medications can prevent a rst psychotic episode in young
people who display risk factors. Thus there is a clear need for
early intervention in psychotic illness.
Current models of psychosis prediction rely on assessments
of subthreshold psychotic symptoms, day-to-day function and
genetic risk based on family history obtained during the patient
interview. These methods are conservative, and less than one-
third of patients identied as high risk actually develop psychosis
in long-term studies. Consequently, medical management
follows a wait-and-watch approach to avoid unnecessary medi-
cation side-effects and diagnostic labelling, thus preventing
effective early treatment.
However, there is growing evidence that subtle changes in
brain function can be identied long before the onset of
psychotic symptoms by measuring brain waves, imaging brain
structure and activity, and identifying the presence of specic
proteins and genes. Individually, though, none of these
biomarkers accurately predicts the risk of psychosis or the
response to treatment.
Our recent study, published in Translational Psychiatry,
reports a new model that combines clinical information from
the patient interview with blood levels of fatty acids. This model
accurately identied almost three-quarters of high-risk patients
who experienced a rst psychotic episode within a year of their
rst assessment.
Our preliminary study used data from 40 European patients
who were interviewed and then followed for signs of psychosis
for 1 year as part of a clinical trial. We analysed a large number
of factors that may have contributed to risk of psychosis. These
vchalup/Adobe
could be grouped into historical factors, symptoms and func-
tion at the start of the study, and biological markers including
brain wave patterns, protein markers of oxidation and fatty
acid levels. Evidence suggests that high levels of oxidation may
be responsible for damage to nerve cells, while fatty acids are
required for normal neuronal function, are at low levels in
active cases of psychotic illness, and are protective against
psychotic illness.
We found that the most accurate model included a history of
drug use, high levels of psychotic symptoms and poor function,
and low blood levels of total fatty acid and nervonic acid levels
at baseline. Interestingly, nervonic acid is a component of the
fatty myelin sheath that surrounds nerve cells and is required for
normal nerve function. Fatty acid supplementation (e.g. in sh
oil) is thought to be protective against psychotic symptoms.
Our model identied 73% of high-risk patients that went on
to suffer a psychotic episode. In comparison, standard assess-
ments only identied 28% of patients who later experienced
psychosis. Our results suggest that such a model could help to
identify those at highest risk of psychosis, allowing more assertive
early treatment.
One of the major goals of our research is to improve the
prediction of mental health outcomes by combining new
biomarkers with standard measures obtained during the patient
interview. This approach represents a signicant advance on
current medical practice, where assessment of psychosis is based
on patient interview alone, and brain scans and blood tests are
only used to exclude signicant physical illness that can cause
psychotic symptoms.
We have used simple Bayesian mathematical techniques to
calculate the probability of a rst psychotic episode in a step-
wise fashion as new information becomes available. Our step-
wise approach is similar to the decision-making process in
psychiatry, and therefore these models should be easier to imple-
ment into clinical practice.
While our results come from a small sample of patients, our
ndings suggest that standardised bedside assessment of history,
symptoms and function, combined with a simple blood test
for fatty acid levels, could greatly improve predictions of a rst
psychotic episode. This could allow earlier use of effective treat-
ments that may delay or even prevent the onset of psychosis
and signicantly reduce the individual and social burden of
psychotic illness.
Further testing of this model is required to conrm that our
results can be replicated in larger samples. Such studies could
take 510 years to produce denitive results.
Dr Scott R. Clark is a consultant psychiatrist in a community clinic, and a clinical academic
for The University of Adelaide, where he is co-convener of psychiatry courses in the Medicine
program. Dr K. Oliver Schubert is a consultant psychiatrist in an acute inpatient service, and
a clinical senior lecturer for The University of Adelaide. Prof Bernhardt T. Baune is Chair of
Psychiatry and leads the Adelaide Integrated Mental Health Biobank and Biomarker Centre
at The University of Adelaide.
JULY/AUGUST 2017 | | 37
 Anterovium/Adobe
A Quantum of Silence
LUKE HELT & MICHAEL STEEL
Single photons have weird yet useful behaviours, with applications ranging from secure
communications to quantum computing. While current silicon photon sources often produce
additional noise photons that interfere with these emerging technologies, new research
has discovered a method to quieten this quantum chaos.

ot all light is the same. For example, a light parties knowing. This all or nothing constraint enables

N bulb emits countless numbers of light parti-

cles, or photons, in all directions at any given
moment, making it useful for lighting a room.
In contrast, laser light emits controllable
numbers of photons in controllable directions, enabling it to
weld metal, read DVDs or perform eye surgery.
While not yet as common, the use of individual photons
separated in space and time could nd applications in secure
communications and incredibly quick database searches. This
is because single photons, being fundamental quantum parti-
cles, have features that set them apart from other kinds of light.
For one thing, a single photon is indivisible. If information
is encoded in individual photons and sent from one party to
another, an eavesdropper cannot simply intercept a small portion
of the light to learn what is being transmitted without the other
unbreakable internet security.
Furthermore, single photons can exist in a quantum super-
position. This allows a single photon to be two or more things
simultaneously until it is detected; it could be both red and
blue in colour, or even in different locations. Being in more
than one state at the same time can allow single photons to
examine multiple entries in a database simultaneously.
How Does One Create a Single Photon?
A standard method to create a single photon involves a class of
substances known as non-linear optical media. While most
materials simply reect and refract light, non-linear optical
materials can also directly change the colour of the light that
passes through them. Common non-linear optical media include
silicon, gallium arsenide and various types of glass.

38 | | JULY/AUGUST 2017
 In particular, these noise photons will
lead to situations in which someone may
think they are sending a photon along a
communications channel when in fact they
are not. They may also cause someone to
Figure 1. The possible frequencies or colours involved in various photon pair- accidentally send more than one photon
generation processes, with down arrows indicating input laser light and up arrows
when it was believed that only one was
indicating the photons generated.
being sent. Issues related to having fewer
Non-linear optical media are used in telecommunications to or greater numbers of photons than anticipated can also impact
connect different parts of a bre optic network that are trans- quantum superposition, and thus quantum-enhanced database
mitting different colours of laser light. For example, a device searches.
made of third-order non-linear optical media can apply green
laser light to red laser light to convert it to blue laser light. Our Solution
Take away the red laser light, though, and the colour conver- We have managed to suppress these unwanted noise pairs of
sion process becomes something weird and quantum: there photons by introducing a Bragg grating into a given heralded
becomes a very small chance that the green laser light will create single photon source. One way to think about a Bragg grating
a pair of photons, one red and one blue, in the same device (Fig. is as a series of alternating layers of material. As light is trans-
1a). Similarly, there is also a very small chance that incident mitted or reected at each layer, it will interfere constructively
red laser light and blue laser light could be combined in the or destructively depending on its colour. Given the correct
same device to create a pair of green photons (Fig. 1b). The thicknesses and refractive indices, these layers can create a highly
key thing is that the combined energy of two incident photons reective mirror for a specic colour of light. Bragg gratings
is equal to the combined energy of the two photons created. can also be designed to reect more than one colour of light.
Although the aim is to create single photons, non-linear But what if one tries to create a pair of photons in a Bragg
quantum processes are rare and random. Therefore, the gener- grating made of a third-order non-linear optical material, with
ation of a pair of photons is quite useful. With a pair of photons, the grating designed to reect one of the colours of photons
one can detect one of them to learn about the existence of its that make up the pair? In a paper recently published in Phys-
partner. ical Review Letters (https://goo.gl/o4uwnN), we have demon-
Since the photon detected announces the presence of the strated that the presence of the Bragg grating can leave nowhere
other, this kind of device is known as a heralded single photon for a particular colour of photon to be created. And, because
source. Heralded single photon sources have been fabricated photons are created in pairs in these devices, this can mean that
from many second-order non-linear optical materials, including the pair creation is forbidden.
lithium niobate and barium borate. With careful engineering we can therefore design a Bragg
However, we believe that large-scale quantum optical tech- grating that can suppress the creation of noise photon pairs
nologies will only be made possible with the scalability and without compromising the creation of desirable photon pairs.
integration capabilities provided by third-order non-linear This is possible because, unlike with a colour lter, the suppres-
media, such as silicon or silicon nitride. Therefore, our most sion of a photon of one colour can occur with a Bragg grating
recent work has addressed an issue that is particular to heralded designed to reect a different colour than that of a noise photon;
single photon sources made of third-order non-linear mate- namely, the colour of its photon-pair partner.
rials that attempt to produce photon pairs of the same colour. We view this result, along with the calculation tools we
developed, as a new tool for heralded single photon source engi-
Its Not Quite That Easy neering, allowing for undesirable processes to be suppressed.
The problem is that, again using the example of red and blue Along the way, our work revealed that if photons cannot be
lasers to create a pair of green photons (Fig. 1b), the red laser produced in pairs in a third-order non-linear material, then
will also create one green photon and one deep red photon, they will not be produced at all.
while the blue laser will create one green photon and one purple We expect these ideas will be implemented in quantum
photon (Fig. 1c). That is, there are pairs of noise photons that optics laboratories in the near future, helping to bring inte-
will make it dicult to know which green photons herald the grated chip-scale sources of single photons closer to the real
presence of each other and which will herald the presence of a world.
red or blue photon. Any such confusion will reduce the effec- Dr Luke Helt is a postdoctoral research fellow working with Prof Michael Steel at the
Macquarie University node of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Ultrahigh Bandwidth Devices
tiveness of the applications mentioned above. for Optical Systems.

JULY/AUGUST 2017 | | 39
 CONSCIENCE
Bursting the News
Filter Bubble
Online technologies can create echo
chambers that reinforce our world views,
but does this necessarily mean we need
to open ourselves up to alternative facts?
After the US presidential elections, Google searches for
Breitbart news peaked as people, many of whom werent Donald
Trump supporters, took to the right wing website to try and
understand the views they were espousing.
Since then there have been frequent calls for more of us to
step out of our social media echo chambers and to burst the
lter bubblecreated when social media feeds and search engine
personalisation emphasises content similar to content you have
viewed or liked before, creating echo chambers that reinforce
rather than challenge particular views. So, your Facebook feed
only exposes you to views you already agree with, and to infor-
mation that supports those views, leading to a general deteri-
oration in public and political debate as we seem unable or
unwilling to engage with different perspectives.
If we believe this argument, then Facebook presents an infor-
mation-access issue that insulates users from diverse perspectives
that would improve political discourse. But its hard to conduct
empirical research to see if this is actually the case because
companies control their data, users typically dont state their poli-
tics explicitly, and the impact of proprietary algorithms can
only be guessed at.
The research that has been conducted mostly in the US
paints a complex picture of the role of technology in reinforcing
cognitive bias. Whether youre liberal or conservative, youre
more likely to believe information that conrms your prior
beliefs (https://goo.gl/vlgGh2). Furthermore, political alia-
tions have a large say in which media sources and blogs are
preferred (https://goo.gl/sSJH8I; https://goo.gl/VmwPb9).
However, most people consume pretty centrist media, with
only a relatively small number particularly Republicans
consuming a highly polarised media diet (https://goo.gl/bJqIjv).
The idea that online and oine consumption of news media
radically differ may be overstated. In fact, users of social media
(https://goo.gl/w9OciL; https://goo.gl/cI6I8Q) and person-
alised news aggregation sites (https://goo.gl/phFRQP) are
more likely to be exposed to not insulated from diverse
perspectives. So, if were in a bubble, this seems to be down to
personal selection of sources (https://goo.gl/YnSk9n) rather
than algorithms that direct which content we view
(https://goo.gl/MVBezu) or discuss (https://goo.gl/ac6Zc0).
Insofar as there is evidence for lter bubbles, theyre a symptom,
not a cause, of echo chambers.
40 | | JULY/AUGUST 2017
niroworld/Adobe
Many of the calls for us to burst out of the lter bubble and
take a more even-handed approach to the sources we consume
pay little heed to the legitimacy of the arguments being espoused.
This is concerning given the long history of false equivalence
the suggestion that opposing arguments deserve equal airtime
even when they do not have equal evidence.
In the case of climate science, for example, research suggests
that one echo chamber is based around a small but powerful
group of denialists who repeat and amplify individual sources
of climate science denial, while in contrast those who trust the
science on climate change repeat information from multiple
sources (https://goo.gl/WngbpT; https://goo.gl/IRxJTu).
These sides do not have equivalence, and moralising over the
emergence of bubbles based on broad sources of high quality
evidence is misguided.
However, the tendency of news outlets to report opposing
sides with equivalence in an attempt to avoid bias makes it
harder for people to navigate this evidence
(https://goo.gl/ayMQcX). Your ability to reconcile these
competing claims is related to how you think about corrobo-
ration and expertise (https://goo.gl/n7iGGQ). Proposing that
we burst our lter bubble might, in fact, legitimise denialist
perspectives, resulting in their repetition and more widespread
acceptance.
A recent report indicated that Americans felt better informed
in 2016 than in 2011 (https://goo.gl/XaEfTD). It also indi-
cated that placing value on evidence trumps partisanship on
politically contentious issues such as climate change and support
for health care reform. Thats where our focus should be.
While focusing on lter bubbles can give false equivalence to
misinformation and strengthen prior biases, exposure to others
experiences can provide a grounding for an empathetic discussion
and understanding of evidence and how people treat it.
Dr Simon Knight is a Lecturer in the Connected Intelligence Centre at The University of
Technology, Sydney.
NEUROPSY
Tim Hannan
Wired for Sound?
A new study proposes a biological cause for
misophonia the pathological hatred of
sounds.
Many of us display a degree of discomfort when exposed to
certain sounds, such as ngernails being scraped down a black-
board, the grinding of teeth, or fellow diners chewing their kale
too loudly. For some people, however, these and certain other
sounds trigger an intense emotional reaction involving increased
physiological arousal, a feeling of disgust and the desire to ee.
While acknowledging that some people nd certain sounds
unpleasant, and that this may have an impact on ones emotional
state, health professionals have largely been skeptical as to
whether this constitutes a discrete condition, and unpersuaded
that a neurobiological basis could be identied. Now, a study
by researchers in the UK has found that those who are observed
to display this reaction have different patterns of brain activa-
tion when exposed to certain sounds. The researchers argue
that this is proof for a genuine medical disorder.
Termed misophonia, meaning hatred of sound, the condi-
tion is proposed to comprise an unusually adverse reaction to
certain auditory stimuli. The sounds that trigger the reaction
vary among individuals, but often relate to bodily functions
such as chewing, slurping, snorting or snuing. Other report-
edly problematic sounds are associated with perceived poten-
tial injury, such as knuckles cracking or ngernails on
blackboards. However, sufferers also report being distressed by
repetitive environmental sounds, such as those of leaf blowers,
chainsaws and ticking clocks, as well as some sounds that many
non-sufferers nd benign, such as dogs barking, plastic bags or
bottles being crushed, or balloons being stroked.
Misophonia is argued to be more than just a strong dislike
of such sounds: sufferers report experiencing signicant and
persisting physical and emotional symptoms, including increased
physiological arousal, headaches and other pains, and feelings
of nausea. Some have been documented to y into a rage at
exposure to triggering sounds; these responses have been inter-
preted as a ght-or-ight response, implying that misophonics
are experiencing a primal defensive reaction to a perceived
threat.
Yet critics of the concept have noted the lack of theoretical
explanation for the heightened sensitivity to sound and the
proposed automaticity of a strong emotional response. With
only a few studies in this eld, there remains no clear theory, no
evidence of pathology, no established diagnostic criteria, no
estimates of prevalence, and no reports of effective treatments.
In the study published in Current Biology, researchers from
Newcastle University in the UK described the reactions of
20 people with misophonia to a range of sounds, and compared
Scott Griessel/Adobe
their physiological responses and brain activity to those of
22 non-sufferers. Participants rst rated how distressing they
found a range of sounds, as either neutral (e.g. rain), unpleasant
(e.g. a baby crying) or a trigger for an intense reaction (e.g.
sounds of eating, breathing etc.). Heart rate and sweating were
measured upon presentation of each type of sound, and brain
scans were conducted to explore patterns of neural activity.
The researchers found that, when presented with merely
unpleasant sounds, those with misophonia displayed similar
physiological responses to those without the condition.
However, in response to the trigger sounds, the misophonics
displayed increased physiological signs of anxiety, and they also
exhibited markedly increased activity in the anterior insular
cortex, a region associated with the experience and regulation
of emotions.
The ndings may be interpreted as evidence for a causal role
for a neurobiological abnormality in the development of miso-
phonia: that due to some unspecied cause, a region of the
brain of a sufferer is not functioning in the same way as it does
in other people, and that this gives rise to a greater sensitivity
to sound and an intense, adverse experience.
However, it must be noted that the observation of an asso-
ciation between a pattern of brain activity and an emotional
response does not prove that the former causes the latter: it
may equally be speculated that misophonia is simply a learned,
exaggerated psychological reaction to unpleasant stimuli, and
that the neural patterns observed simply represent the strong
emotional reaction.
Despite the enthusiasm of the researchers, and the desire of
sufferers for recognition of their condition as a medical condi-
tion, further research is required to establish misophonia as a
valid diagnosis.
A/Prof Tim Hannan is Head of the School of Psychology at Charles Sturt University, and the
Past President of the Australian Psychological Society.
JULY/AUGUST 2017 | | 41
 DIRECTIONS
We Need to Solve the Energy Trilemma Now
The Finkel Review provides a roadmap to investment in clean energy technologies.
We have three goals for our energy supply, two of which are
uncontroversial: deliver electricity at the lowest cost to consumers
and businesses, and ensure that the supply is reliable and
adequate. The third consideration to reduce (indeed remove)
greenhouse emissions from our electricity generators turns
the rational discussion on energy into an emotional debate.
Clean energy (generally from sun or wind) is currently
more expensive than dirty energy from burning oil, coal or gas,
all of which release CO2 into the atmosphere.
There are people who dont accept the need for clean energy
generation because they believe, contrary to all the scientic
evidence, that anthropogenic climate change is a myth or exag-
geration. They are the clear minority.
If you accept the necessity to achieve all three goals, it leaves
society with two choices:
require all generating sources, including fossil fuels, to emit
zero (or almost zero) CO2. Renewables, biomass and nuclear
do this naturally, but the fossil fuel generators would need
to remove their emissions using technologies such as carbon
capture and sequestration (CCS).
put a price on carbon emissions and other pollutants (e.g.
sulphur, mercury) so that the true cost of the generation
cycle, including waste disposal, is taken into account.
If we adopted one of these two options, the market should
have the freedom to decide which generating technology to
implement based on its business case.
We would need to require suppliers of variable renewable
electricity to ensure reliable supply through the use of energy
storage. The massive investments going into batteries, super-
capacitors and other storage solutions (such as pumped hydro)
give us condence that we will be able to meet this storage need
at utility to household scales.
There is also a need for smart grid technologies, but there
are no major technological impediments to implementing them.
On the current technology trajectory, the cost of reliable
renewables will be cheaper than fossil fuel generation prob-
ably within a decade but, while the price of electricity will go
up in the short to medium term, we will end up with secure, clean
energy that is cheaper than dirty alternatives.
42 | | JULY/AUGUST 2017
Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering
juanjo/Adobe
The major issue is that there will be a probable 20-year period
during which we will need to replace our existing generating
capacity with these new solutions. The longer we delay the start
of this replacement cycle, the greater will be the unnecessary
pumping of CO2 into the atmosphere. The real question is
whether we wish to accelerate the replacement cycle of our
existing capacity.
The recent Independent Review of the Future Security of the
National Electricity Market, chaired by Chief Scientist Dr Alan
Finkel, has grasped this challenge by proposing a Clean Energy
Target (CET) to drive investment in clean energy generation
technologies. Australia has been sorely lacking stable, long-term
and bipartisan policy on energy for too long, and the Finkel
Review provides us with a roadmap to achieving this. It is impor-
tant that all Australian governments commit to implementing
its recommendations.
Either a CET or a price on carbon emissions will speed up
the deployment of clean energy in Australia, but the question
is greatly complicated by the vested interests who drive our
current high-emission generation capacity, both the miners
and the generators. The latter have made historical investments,
and simply mothballing their plants will leave large stranded
investments. The investors would much rather just let the
current capacity diffuse out through natural economic forces,
which will take a couple of decades or more.
We are at a crossroads with regard to our decisions on energy.
We can continue to burn fossil fuels for another couple of
decades and let the natural replacement cycle take its course. Or
we can eliminate todays practices as soon as possible a solu-
tion that will be supported by technology developments but
leave us with an investment hump in the short to medium
term.
People will argue that Australias decisions will not affect
the overall global impact on the greenhouse emissions by much,
but that evades the real problem as to whether Australia aspires
to be a global thought leader in the digitally disrupted 21st
century, or just lazy and selsh.
Professor Hugh Bradlow FTSE is President of the Australian Academy of Technology and
Engineering, and Dr Bruce Godfrey FTSE is an ATSE Director and Chair of ATSEs Energy
Forum.
EXPERT OPINION
Finkel Review Hedges Its Bets
Australias Chief Scientist, Dr Alan Finkel, has unveiled a blueprint for the national electricity
market that risks falling short of Australias task and opportunities in reducing carbon
emissions.
Finkel offers a chance to start breaking down the political
deadlock over energy and climate policy. The report rightly
points out the need for policy and markets to be adapted to
the realities of new technologies, and the need to integrate
emissions reductions policy with energy policy. Importantly,
Finkel emphasises the cost that continued policy uncertainty
would have, and shows scenarios where electricity prices are
lower under a stable low-emissions policy framework than
under continued uncertainty. Policy-makers should take heart
to embrace reform to markets and policy, and to do so with a
long-term trajectory in mind.
The clean energy target recommendation seems calibrated
to political realities, as an emissions trading scheme is politi-
cally out of the question for the current government and an
emissions intensity scheme was also rejected by government.
How effective a clean energy target would be depends on the
ambition that government lls it with, its design and imple-
mentation, and on whether industry will have condence to
invest on the basis of it. That, in turn, requires political stability
around energy policy.
However, the low-carbon ambition that Finkel suggests risks
falling short of Australias task and opportunities in reducing
carbon emissions. Finkel calls for a minimum 28% reduction
in carbon emissions from electricity by 2030, proportional to
the national Paris target. Twenty eight per cent would not be
enough because the electricity sector can and needs to deliver
much greater percentage reductions than the economy overall.
There are large opportunities to cut carbon before 2030 by
replacing ageing, inecient coal plants with renewables. The
opportunities for renewables are plentiful in Australia and costs
are coming down rapidly, including for storage to manage inter-
mittency.
The worry is that governments will take Finkels 28% reduc-
tion for the electricity sector as its target and thereby fail to
achieve the economy-wide reduction by 2030, because less will
be done in other parts of the economy. This would set Australia
on a long-term emissions trajectory that is higher than it needs
to be and out of line with the larger objectives.
A/Prof Frank Jotzo is Director of the Centre for Climate Economics and Policy at the
Australian National Universitys Crawford School of Public Policy.
The Finkel Review into securing the future of our electricity
system has chosen to hedge its bets on the design and imple-
mentation of a transition strategy to a low carbon economy.
A clean energy target is a simplied approach to an emissions
AusSMC
intensity scheme, and reiterates why removing a price on carbon
has failed to increase the security of our electricity grid.
While it seems that all technology options have re-emerged
from previous white papers, the Finkel review has raised the
white ag to gas, nuclear and carbon capture and storage options.
Since the commencement of LNG exports on the east coast,
gas prices domestically have had an enormous effect on elec-
tricity affordability. While the pursuit of unconventional gas
resources may improve supply concerns, the continuation of
high gas prices will be unabated. The reliance on gas as a tran-
sition technology towards a low carbon economy should only
be a short-term option (http://tinyurl.com/y9hjgwgz).
The use of nuclear power
generation in Australia, while
unpopular, is seen by many energy
economics experts as the panic
button option.
The inclusion of nuclear as a viable option for Australia has
been discussed at length and rejected by energy economics
experts continually. The use of nuclear power generation in
Australia, while unpopular, is seen by many energy economics
experts as the panic button option. Its cost of deployment,
operation and overall life-cycle have yet to present a viable
option for Australia. Furthermore, the lack of human capital
in Australia capable of operating utility-scale nuclear power
generation would require more than 10 years to establish.
Australia needs a range of technologies and policy options
to address energy security coupled with the challenges of climate
change. The timeline for improving supply certainty must be
dealt with now to avoid grid-wide blackouts. Additionally, in
order for Australia to transform to a lower carbon-intensive
economy, renewable energy needs to be front-and-centre of
any plan to design the future electricity grid.
The Finkel Review has failed to excise itself from the previ-
ously identied pitfalls of non-renewable energy technology
highlighted over the past 10 years. While Australia tolerates
another pseudo-white paper on energy, what in effect will
change? The answer is, most likely, nothing.
Dr Liam Wagner is a Lecturer in Economics specialising in energy economics and policy at
Griffith University.
JULY/AUGUST 2017 | | 43
 THE BITTER PILL
Functional Medicine: New Name, Old Ideas
An extensive review of integrative medicine by the Australian Ministry of Health found that
many of its practices arent supported by evidence. Now its going by a new name.
Integrative medicine is the practice of combining so-called
alternative and/or complementary health practices with functional medicine practitioner one must complete certi-
mainstream medicine. Now functional medicine, a pervasive
subset of integrative medicine, has begun spreading from the
USA to Australia. Like its parent, functional medicine claims
to be a holistic, patient-centred approach that, according to
its proponents, orthodox medicine does not offer.
In addition to the gambit of interventions common in inte-
grative medicine, functional medicine uses supplements to a
far greater extent, as in mega-vitamin dosing (known as ortho-
molecular medicine). It offers unsupported diagnoses such as
chronic Lyme disease, often alludes to discredited medical theo-
ries such as vitalism and various vaccine dangers through
ambiguous and polished rhetoric, and lists toxic emotions as a
root cause of disease a dangerous assumption that has led to
patient-blaming in past ideologies and practices.
The eld came into being with the creation of the Institute
for Functional Medicine (IFM) in 1991 by Dr Jeffrey Bland, a
chemist turned popular nutritionist. Bland is no stranger to
controversy. During the 1990s and early 2000s he was in control
of the food and supplement companies Healthcomm Inc. and
Nu-Day Enterprises. He was listed twice as a defendant in a
legal suit by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), one of the
two US government agencies responsible for the oversight of
medical products, the other being the Food and Drug Admin-
istration (FDA). The FTC investigates and prosecutes claims
of deceptive marketing.
The rst legal challenge came in 1991 and centred on Blands
Nu-Day Diet, which claimed without scientic evidence that
its products could alter the consumers metabolism to aid in
weight loss. The legal suit ended with a USD$30,000 ne and
a consent order that no more claims of such nature be made
about the companys products without suitable evidence.
The second legal challenge was brought in 1995, and was a
result of the company violating the original consent order
regarding marketing of diet products by failing to possess and
rely upon substantiation for their products weight loss claims,
reducing disease symptoms, elimination of toxins from the
body, and the reduction of cholesterol and blood pressure.
This challenge resulted in another consent order and a further
USD$45,000 in civil penalties.
Metagenics, a supplement company that merged with Blands
former company HealthComm Inc. in 2000, is listed as a current
sponsor of the Australasian Integrative Medical Society.
Being spared legal challenge at the time, both the IFM and
the greater functional medicine movement were permitted to
44 | | JULY/AUGUST 2017
Friends of Science in Medicine
grow to their current state. In order to become certied as a
cation offered solely by the IFM. The institute lists various
domestic and international health care professionals as possibly
eligible, including physicians, nurses, osteopaths, chiropractors,
acupuncturists and naturopaths. The process includes a fee-
based application, e-learning and testing at a centre, which is
often at an off-site commercial testing centre. Certication
offers no legal benet or any form of board certication. It
merely creates a soft separation between the IFM and the move-
ment as a whole.
Functional medicine has embedded itself so deeply in the
American CAM community that it has acquired its own insti-
tute at the Cleveland Clinic. The centre is run by Mark Hyman
MD, whose pop-diet books are advertised on its website, which
also sports a dietary supplement store for patients. In addition,
Hyman is also listed as the current chairman of the IFM and has
his own centre in the US state of Massachusetts, the Ultra-
Wellness Center. The cost of a new consultation at his centre
is USD$2000, and USD$2500 for a consult with Hyman
himself. In exchange, they claim to aid with detoxication and
healing, healthy ageing and many more.
Australia has not been spared. There are at least four prac-
titioners in the Melbourne area, according to the IFM website
alone, and many more advertising throughout Australia and
New Zealand, both IFM-aliated and otherwise. The spread
of this potentially harmful practice is likely to grow to levels
beyond simple control, if it has not already done so.
Jesse W. Luke is an author residing in the United States. His work in non-fiction and
journalism focuses mainly on the field of medicine, exploring new developments and
controversies through the lens of evidence-based medicine.
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THE NAKED SKEPTIC
Hold the Front Page!
The loss of specialist reporters in the clickbait
era of journalism matters more for science
than other rounds.
Once upon a time the mainstream media employed journal-
ists with expertise in their round. Newspapers would have one
or two editions per day, with strict deadlines dictated by when
the presses had to start rolling. Television had two main bulletins
per day and radio stations had hourly news broadcasts. The
electronic media would break into programs when signicant
news stories broke, such as political crises or natural disasters,
and newspapers would bring out the occasional special edition
in the same situations, although printing and distribution logis-
tics meant that it had to be a really big story.
Two things have changed since Ben Hecht and Charles
MacArthur Broadway comedy The Front Page. Nobody seems
to employ specialist (or even a sucient number of) journalists
anymore, and the news cycle has changed so that the deadline
is always right now because the website has to be updated as
soon as anything happens.
Apart from general news about world events, I have three
areas of interest that rarely if ever have earth-shattering breaking
news: information technology, motor sport, and health and
science. These areas arent, or shouldnt be, affected by the
incessant and constant need to attract eyeballs to web pages,
and should allow journalists to put some time and thought
into what they write.
A few years ago, people working in IT would eagerly await
the Tuesday editions of the big papers for the several pages of
well written information about the development of computers
and other technology and how these technologies were being
applied. Today the knowledgeable journalists have gone (to
retirement or low circulation specialist publications) and the
mainstream media seems to just feature media releases slightly
rewritten by people who think that computer technology started
with the iPhone.
General writing about cars and motoring is still done by
competent journalists, many of whom seem to be the sons of
journalists I knew back when I was heavily involved with the
sport (one current motoring journalist is the nephew of my
rst rally navigator), but the reporting on the sporting side is
generally abysmal. Except for the exploits of Australian Dan
Ricciardo in Formula One (where the content is largely FIA
media releases), prominent coverage requires a crash, pictures
and signicant injury to competitors or spectators.
I recently did media coverage for an international rally and
I saw only two stories about the event in mainstream media. (I
write for a regional paper; I dont get into big dailies.) Both
were written by someone describing himself as a sports jour-
Peter Bowditch
nalist, both mentioned only one driver in the eld, and one of
them was about how the journalist had spent one minute and
45 seconds as a passenger in a rally car (his total experience of
the sport) and the emphasis was on how terrifying and life-
threatening the experience had been. (The accompanying video
on the website indicated that the car was travelling at about
half the speed it would be in competition.)
In truth, neither of these really matter. Despite the occa-
sional obsessive brand loyalty, it doesnt matter whether you
carry an iPhone or a Samsung device or if the computer in front
of you is a Mac or runs Windows or Linux. Most cars in a price
or style category do the job as well as any other. Sport is always
irrelevant and has little effect on the course of human affairs,
despite what the fans think.
The difference with science or health
reporting is that there can be severe
ramications if this is done wrongly
or from a position of ignorance.
This is a science magazine, so youre asking When is he
going to start talking about science?. The difference with
science or health reporting is that there can be severe rami-
cations if this is done wrongly or from a position of ignorance.
Not only is there danger of people receiving wrong or easily
misinterpreted health news, but its easy to give the impression
that science consists of people doing random research and
throwing the results out without thinking.
Two recent examples of this had fear-inspiring headlines
with a bit of truth buried so far down that readers might have
given up before they got there. One started with: Taking
common anti-inammatories such as ibuprofen for only a week
can signicantly raise the risk of having a heart attack. It
nished many hundreds of words later with: The increased
heart attack risk may actually be caused by the complaint
prompting a person to take painkillers. The second article
reported a study apparently linking the consumption of aspar-
tame to dementia. The study actually mentioned that it could
be that diabetes increases the risk of dementia and the consump-
tion of articial sweeteners just happens to be one of the things
that people with diabetes do.
Unfortunately the only time that journalism itself seems to
get a mention in the mainstream media is when a major media
outlet sacks a large number of journalists, so I cant see things
improving much.
Luckily there are magazines like this one to get the real stories
out there. Now to get more people to read them.
Peter Bowditch is a former President of Australian Skeptics Inc. (www.skeptics.com.au).
JULY/AUGUST 2017 | | 45
 ECOLOGIC Rebecca Runting

Reviewing Climate Change Impacts on Ecosystem Services

What is the state of our understanding of the connection between climate change and
ecosystem-service assessment?
Most of us worry about climate change in one way or another, Mostly negative, some positive impacts: While climate change
but not many of us explicitly consider its impact on ecosystem usually has a negative impact on ecosystem services, the news
services. Maybe thats because ecosystem services themselves are isnt all bad as 59% of the analyses showed negative impacts, 24%
often taken for granted or undervalued. Climate change threatens mixed, 13% positive and 4% neutral. For instance, as temper-
the provision of many vital ecosystem services, so its important ature and the concentration of carbon dioxide increases, carbon
we start taking this into account. storage is increasing in some places, especially higher latitudes.
Integrating climate change into assessments of ecosystem Expert bias: We found that using (only) expert opinions to
services is vital if we are to avoid poor management decisions. For determine the impact of climate change can overestimate the
example, coastal land-use zoning that ignores the effects of sea-level negative impacts on ecosystem services. Almost all studies that
rise could lead to a long-term decline in ecosystem services (such used expert opinion to determine the impact of climate change
as ood protection provided by coastal wetlands). produced negative results (94% negative, 5% mixed, 2% neutral).
To add to the chal- In contrast, only 47% of studies using computational models,
lenge, climate change or experiments in the laboratory or eld, found negative results.
doesnt impact ecosystem The overestimation of negative results produced by expert
services in isolation it opinion could be explained by accessibility bias the knowl-
interacts with other local edge that the impacts of climate change are generally negative
or global stresses on the can disproportionately inuence the judgment of the experts
environment. Land-use (even in cases where the impacts may be positive). This suggests
change, population growth that we should make more use of techniques that minimise
and pollution, for example, bias and corroborate the information provided by experts.
all create their own stresses Interactions exacerbate negatives: Climate change interacts
and will interact with the with other stressors on the environment, such as land use
impacts of climate change. change. Where a stressor in addition to climate change was
For instance, a logged included, 62% of analyses were negative. Therefore, it is impor-
forest could become more tant that we do not consider climate change in isolation when
susceptible to erosion if making management decisions.
climate change leads to Uneven attention to uncertainty: Some degree of uncertainty
increases in the intensity was usually incorporated in the assessments (71%), but this
of rainfall. was usually surrounding the magnitude of climate change and
So, what is the state of other drivers, with very little attention given to the uncer-
our understanding of the tainties associated with how ecosystem services are modelled
Climate change can interact with connection between or the mechanisms by which the services were impacted by
local stressors. This land in East
Kalimantan was logged to make way climate change and climate change. Relatively few studies (29%) integrated any
for a pulp and paper plantation. It ecosystem-service assess- kind of decision-making (management actions, policies or
may become vulnerable to erosion if
climate change leads to increases in ment? We did a review of other interventions), and even fewer studies aimed to make
heavy rain. Credit: Rebecca Runting the scientic literature to decisions that were robust to uncertainty.
see if we could identify important gaps. There are many studies These results tell us that if management or policy decisions
of individual cases of climate-change impacts on ecosystem services, are to ensure the continued provision of ecosystem services, then
but our review provides the rst quantitative synthesis on this an integrated approach is needed. Such an approach must include
topic. Here is what we found: multiple threatening processes and account for multiple sources
A regional bias: First up, most of the papers that were iden- of uncertainty. This is denitely not an easy undertaking, but
tied in our review came from the USA or Europe, so there is ignoring these complications could misrepresent the true impacts
a clear need for more studies beyond these regions, particu- of climate change, and result in poor outcomes for climate adap-
larly in South America, Asia and Oceania. This is particularly tation decisions.
important as these regions generally have a lower capacity to Rebecca Runting is a member of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions
adapt to the impacts of climate change. (CEED) based at The University of Queensland.

46 | | JULY/AUGUST 2017
LOWE TECH Ian Lowe
Thirty Year Warning
CSIRO predicted the increasing severity of
cyclones 30 years ago.
The severe ooding in eastern Australia caused by Cyclone
Debbie and its aftermath, and the more recent storm damage
in New Zealand, are just the latest in a whole series of extreme
weather events. Being asked by a journalist if they were related
to climate change sent me back to scan the book produced after
the rst national conference on climate change, Greenhouse
87: Planning for Climate Change. Prof Graeme Pearman edited
the book, which included peer-reviewed presentations to the
conference.
At the time, the cyclones that hit northern Australia were
usually graded as category 2, with an occasional category 3 event
like Cyclone Tracey, which devastated Darwin. The late Prof
K.P. Stark of James Cook University said in his conference paper
that if the modelling then being done by the CSIRO Division of
Atmospheric Science was correct, increasing sea surface temper-
atures would inevitably result in more severe cyclones. Because
the central pressure of tropical storms is directly related to the
temperature of the ocean where those events develop, he argued
that we could see category 4 or possibly even category 5 cyclones
hit the Queensland coast by the 2030s. This would cause much
more direct property damage from the stronger winds as well as
more coastal ooding from the greater storm surges.
Starks analysis was attacked vigorously by the tourism
industry, which accused him of spreading alarm on the basis
of uncertain and speculative science. But Debbie was only the
latest in a whole series of category 4 or category 5 cyclones to
hit the Queensland coast in recent years. And the stronger
cyclonic events crossing the Western Australian coast have
produced a new phenomenon in South Australia, central
Australia and the western areas of NSW, Queensland and
Victoria: heavy summer rainfall. We are already seeing signi-
cant impacts of climate change, demonstrating that adaptation
strategies are not just urgently needed, but overdue.
The key conclusion of a symposium convened by the Energy
Change Institute of the Australian National University was
that Australia needs a bipartisan national energy policy that
aims to deliver low-carbon, reliable and cost-effective power. This
makes sense as a response to global climate change. The fact
that energy has become a political football precludes the long-
term planning that is needed when power supply systems have
lifetimes ranging from 3050 years. Who will invest if the rules
might change again next year?
The meeting was held to review the report of the South
Australian Royal Commission into the Nuclear Fuel Cycle.
Given that agenda, several of the participants it attracted still
Cyclone Debbie was
the deadliest cyclone
to hit Australia since
Cyclone Tracy in 1974.
think that nuclear power makes sense for Australia, even though
the Royal Commission didnt support that possibility in South
Australia.
If anything, the South Australian inquiry could be accused
of being generous to the case for nuclear power. It used what
was estimated in 2016 to be the likely cost of four new reactors
being built in the USA by Westinghouse. However, the 2007
UMPNER review warned that construction costs in Australia
would probably be higher than in countries with an established
nuclear power industry.
Since the Royal Commission reported, Westinghouse has
led for bankruptcy in New York, citing cost over-runs on the
power stations estimated at nearly A$15 billion. The nancial anal-
ysis by Bloomberg was that Westinghouse had gambled its future
on nuclear power, and lost. But supporters of nuclear energy still
see it as having a role in a low-carbon future, so they found
common cause with those who favour expanding renewables.
The symposium spent a lot of time considering the Royal
Commissions recommendation that South Australia should
move into storing radioactive waste from other countries. That
proposal now has an uncertain future after the citizens jury
convened by the State government did not support the idea.
There were many supporters of the possible project at the
symposium, as well as more cautious voices. Storing nuclear
waste would be illegal under South Australian legislation passed
in 2000. The symposium generally supported the Royal
Commissions view that the law should be repealed to allow
an orderly, detailed and thorough analysis and discussion of
the proposal. However, opponents believe analysis discredits
the proposal.
Ian Lowe is Emeritus Professor of science, technology and society at Griffith University.
JULY/AUGUST 2017 | | 47
 OUT OF THIS WORLD David Reneke

Solar Storm Blackouts Could

Cost $40 BIllion Daily
The American Geophysical Union has calculated that the daily US
economic cost from solar storm-induced electricity blackouts
could be in the tens of billions of dollars, with more than half the
loss from indirect costs outside the blackout zone.
Previous studies have focused on direct economic costs within
the blackout zone, failing to take into account indirect domestic
and international supply chain losses from extreme space weather.
Under this studys most extreme blackout scenario, affecting 66%
of the US population, the daily domestic economic loss could total
$41.5 billion plus an additional $7 billion loss through the inter-
national supply chain. If only extreme northern states are affected,
a scenario affecting 44% of the population could have a daily cost
of $37.7 billion in the US plus $4.8 billion globally.
Electrical engineering experts are divided on the possible severity
of blackouts caused by coronal mass ejections and magnetic solar
elds ejected during solar ares and other eruptions. Some believe
that outages would last only hours or a few days, while others fear
blackouts could last weeks or months if the transmission networks
were knocked out and need replacement.
David Reneke is an astronomy lecturer and teacher, a feature writer for major Australian newspapers and magazines, and a science correspondent for ABC and commercial radio.
Subscribe to Davids free Astro-Space newsletter at www.davidreneke.com
Illustration of events on the Sun changing the conditions in near-
Earth space. Credit: NASA
Extreme space weather events occur often, but only sometimes
affect Earth. The best known geomagnetic storm affected Quebec
in 1989, sparking the electrical collapse of the Hydro-Quebec
power grid and causing a widespread blackout for about 9 hours.
A 2013 report by insurer Lloyds, produced in collaboration
with Atmospheric and Environmental Research, said that while
the probability of an extreme solar storm is relatively low at any
given time, it is almost inevitable that one will occur eventually.
We felt it was important to look at how extreme space weather
may affect domestic US production in various economic sectors,
including manufacturing, government and nance, as well as the
potential economic loss in other nations owing to supply chain
linkages, says study co-author Edward Oughton.

Volunteers Spot Exploded Star Pre-Dating Dinosaurs

Online volunteers have helped astronomers at The Australian National University to find a star that exploded 970 million years ago,
predating the dinosaurs time on Earth. Dr Brad Tucker of the ANU Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics said his team was able to
confirm that a previously unknown object was a real exploding star in just a day, thanks to the efficiency and dedication of more than 700
volunteer supernovae hunters.
Seven potential supernovae have been reported via their server, and
the team are tracking 18 other possible exploding stars. Co-lead
researcher Dr Anais Mller said the Ia supernova discovered through the
ANU project had already been named SN2017dxh.
We are recognising volunteers by listing the first three people to find
a previously unknown supernova in the discovery when we report it to the
International Astronomical Union, Mller said. In the first 24 hours the
team had over 30,000 classification reports, and more than 1300 images
have been categorised since the launch of the project.
Astrophysicists use supernovae as light sources to better understand
dark energy, the cause of the universes acceleration. Scientists can
measure the distance of a supernova from Earth simply by calculating
how much the light from the exploding star fades.
The ANU project allows citizen scientists to use a web portal on
Zooniverse.org to search images taken by the SkyMapper 1.3-metre
telescope at the ANU Siding Spring Observatory for the SkyMapper
Transient Survey. Citizen volunteers scan the SkyMapper images online to
look for differences and mark up those differences for the researchers to
follow up.
SkyMapper is the only telescope that is undertaking a comprehensive
New research shows that some stars explode as Type Ia
search of the southern sky for supernovae and other interesting transient supernovae. Thousands of these time bombs could be
events at these distances. scattered throughout our galaxy. Credit: David A. Aguilar (CfA)

48 | | JULY/AUGUST 2017
QUANDARY
The Facts About Surrogacy
The dismal death of Brooke Verity illustrates
the need for longitudinal studies of the long-
term outcomes of surrogacy.
Whether you are pro-this or anti-that, a passionate believer in
human dignity or an ultra-rational utilitarian, your bioethics
always has to begin with the facts. While knowledge of conse-
quences is only part of ethical decision-making, it is an essen-
tial part.
Surrogacy is one issue in which the public gets only a very
partial vision of the consequences. Normally the media focuses
on the joy of the commissioning parents, while the surrogate
mother remains anonymous and her story untold. But her life
after surrogacy is part of the consequences as well.
Nowhere was this more marked than in India, where some
clinics had dormitories for surrogate mothers in varying stages
of pregnancy. The clinics assured Western journalists that they
were happy and detached. And since there was an almost impen-
etrable language barrier between the journalists and the women,
it was practically impossible to check these bland reassurances.
Now India has closed the door to international surrogacy, so the
stories have ceased.
But around the world surrogacy is increasing, not decreasing,
as older women and gay couples try to have children. Because
it is legal in the United States, many parents are drawn there.
However, the recent death of a surrogate mother in the state
of Kentucky unveiled hazards that exist even in the worlds
richest nation.
For a brief moment in 2002, 23-year-old Brooke Verity was
probably the worlds most famous surrogate mother. She had
just given birth to quadruplets for a gay couple.
The four children, who now live in California, turn 15 in July.
But Brooke wont be celebrating with them. She died suddenly
in November of chronic drug abuse at the ripe old age of 37. It
is a sad story and it helps to explain why Harvard women prefer
careers in investment banking to careers in surrogacy.
When Brooke was 4, her parents divorced. After a year with
her mother, she moved in with her father. She became preg-
nant at 17, had a son, married the father, had twins, and then
divorced.
A couple of years later her hairdresser, Thomas Dysarz, and
his partner, Michael Meehan, asked her if she would be inter-
ested in becoming a surrogate mother. She signed a contract
to bear a child for each of them. She surrendered her parental
rights as the biological mother and agreed to foetal reduction,
if necessary. All she received in return was a tummy tuck.
After IVF with Meehans sperm, Brooke became pregnant
with ve babies. She and Meehan agreed to reduce, or abort,
one of them. Dysarz disagreed but only four babies were born,
Michael Cook
prematurely, on 26 July 2002. And from there Brookes life
started to go downhill.
She suffered from post-natal depression. Perhaps the men did,
too. Dysarz broke up with Meehan, alleging abuse. Dysarz was
denied visitation rights and Meehan was awarded custody of the
quadruplets. To escape Dysarz, Meehan moved back to Cali-
fornia.
As for the childrens mother, she just wanted to be Aunt
Brooke to them and felt miserable that she had been shut out
of their lives. She began keeping a diary for them in which the
opening paragraph was: I love you all. Ill never regret what I
did. Every single day, Ill think about you.
Normally the media focuses on the
joy of the commissioning parents,
while the surrogate mother remains
anonymous and her story untold.
Brooke had another surrogate child for Dysarz afterwards.
Then he became ill and moved interstate, abandoning the child.
She was awarded full custody. In 2007 she married Scott
Cochran, a maths teacher at a community college, who spent
brief spells in jail for sexual misdemeanours in 2014 and 2016.
Unsurprisingly, their marriage was strained and Brooke was
still grieving over the quadruplets. Perhaps this explains why the
mother of eight became another victim of Americas opioid
epidemic.
Even after her death, the dominos are still falling. Dysarz
and Cochran are locked in a custody battle over the son Brooke
bore for him.
These are the kind of dismal consequences that are seldom
reported in the media. Even more disturbing, they are seldom
studied by academics. How many women suffer like Brooke
Verity after surrogacy? It is easy to say that she was an excep-
tional case, but the truth is that we dont know. How about
some serious longitudinal studies of the lives of surrogate
mothers?
Michael Cook is editor of BioEdge, an onine bioethics newsletter.
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JULY/AUGUST 2017 | | 49
 AUSTRALASIAN SKY

July 2017
URSA MAJOR
North

STAR BRIGHTNESS
Zero or brighter
st
1 magnitude
2nd NE Vega CANES VENATICI

3rd

NW
LYRA

4th BOOTES
CORONA BOREALIS
LEO MINOR

HERCULES CORONA BOOTES

BOREALIS

COMA BERENICES
Arcturus Arcturus

SAGITTA SERPENS LEO

First quarter Regulus

Moon on the 1st Regulus

VIRGO
Altair
OPHIUCHUS P Jupiter
Zubenelgenubi Spica
LIBRA Zubenelgenubi
CORVUS
SEXTANS
SERPENS CRATER
AQUILA SCUTUM
Saturn
East

P Antares Antares

West
Centre of the Galaxy
SCORPIUS HYDRA
SCORPIUS
LUPUS
SAGITTARIUS CENTAURUS
NORMA CENTAURUS
Omega Centauri
TEA POT NORMA
Alpha Centauri
CORONA AUSTRALIS ANTLIA
POINTERSHadar CRUX SOUTHERN CROSS
ARA CIRCINUS

Alpha Centauri

Mimosa

CRUX
CAPRICORNUS TRIANGULUM
TRIANGULUM AUSTRALE PYXIS
TELESCOPIUM AUSTRALE VELA
MUSCA
Proxima Centauri
MICROSCOPIUM APUS
PAVO APUS
CHAMAELEON
CARINA
INDUS
OCTANS South Celestial Pole
OCTANS
VOLANS PUPPIS

PISCIS AUSTRINUS
MENSA Adhara CANIS MAJOR

CHART KEY GRUS SMC LMC

SE

Bright star TUCANA HYDRUS

Canopus
SW MOON PHASE
DORADO
Faint star
Ecliptic Milky Way First quarter 01st
Celestial Equator RETICULUM PICTOR Full Moon 09th
COLUMBALast quarter 17th
P Planet Achernar

LMC or Large Magellanic Cloud PHOENIX New Moon 23rd

South First quarter 31st
SMC or Small Magellanic Cloud HOROLOGIUM

THE CHART HIGHLIGHTS IN JULY 2017

The star chart shows the stars and constellations The best time to look at the Moon with binoculars or
visible in the night sky for Sydney, Melbourne, telescopes is within a few days either side of first quarter
Canberra, Hobart, Adelaide and Perth for July 2017 at on the 1st, and again on the 31st. This month there are
about 7:30 pm (local standard time). For Darwin and two bright planets in the evening sky: Jupiter in the north
similar northerly locations the chart will still apply, but in the constellation Virgo and Saturn, in the northeast in
some stars will be lost off the southern edge while extra the constellation of Ophiuchus. During the months of
stars will be visible to the north. Stars down to a winter, the constellations of Scorpius (the Scorpion) and
brightness or magnitude limit of 4.5 are shown on the Crux (the Southern Cross) are high in the sky. The
star chart. To use this star chart, rotate the chart so that Southern Cross is easily located using the two nearby
the direction you are facing (north, south, east or west) pointer stars, which themselves are a part of Centaurus
is shown at the bottom. The centre of the chart (the Centaur). The brighter of the pointers, Alpha
represents the point directly above your head, called Centauri, is the closest star system to our own, and it
the zenith point, and the outer circular edge represents was recently discovered that there is an planet orbiting
the horizon. one of the stars in this system.
Sydney Observatory is part of the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences. The Sydney Observatory night sky map was created by Dr M. Anderson using the TheSky
software. This months edition was prepared by Brenan Dew. 2017 Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, Sydney.

50 | | JULY/AUGUST 2017
AUSTRALASIAN SKY

August 2017
North

STAR BRIGHTNESS
Zero or brighter Deneb
st
1 magnitude
CYGNUS
2nd NE CANES VENATICI

3rd Vega

NW
LYRA
4th
CORONA BOREALIS
HERCULES BOOTES

VULPECULA

Arcturus COMA BERENICES

SAGITTA

DELPHINUS SERPENS
Altair
Barnards star
EQUULEUS OPHIUCHUS
AQUILA First quarter
Moon on 29th Jupiter
SCUTUM VIRGO
SERPENS
Saturn LIBRA
Zubenelgenubi
P
Spica
P
Teapot Antares
East

SAGITTARIUS Centre of the Galaxy CORVUS

West
M6
M7
CAPRICORNUS SCORPIUS
NGC 6231 CRATER
LUPUS
AQUARIUS CORONA AUSTRALIS

MICROSCOPIUM NORMA Centaurus A

ARA Omega Centauri
TELESCOPIUM
CENTAURUS
CIRCINUS
PISCIS AUSTRINUS Alpha Centauri
Hadar POINTERS
INDUS Jewel Box Mimosa
PAVO TRIANGULUM AUSTRALE SOUTHERN CROSS HYDRA
Coalsac CRUX
APUS
GRUS
MUSCA
ANTLIA

OCTANS
South Celestial Pole
47 Tucanae CHAMAELEON VELA
TUCANA
SMC

CHART KEY SCULPTOR

PHOENIX
MENSA CARINA
VOLANS
PYXIS
HYDRUS
Bright star
SE

Faint star Achernar LMC

SW MOON PHASE
Ecliptic Milky Way Full Moon 08th
Celestial Equator DORADO Last quarter 15th
RETICULUM

P Planet New Moon 22nd

PUPPIS
LMC or Large Magellanic Cloud HOROLOGIUM Canopus First quarter 29th
SMC or Small Magellanic Cloud South

THE CHART HIGHLIGHTS IN AUGUST 2017

The star chart shows the stars and constellations visible in
the night sky for Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Hobart
and Adelaide for August 2017 at about 7:30 pm (local
standard time). For Darwin and similar northerly locations
the chart will still apply, but some stars will be lost off the
southern edge while extra stars will be visible to the north.
Stars down to a brightness or magnitude limit of 4.5 are
shown on the star chart. To use this star chart, rotate the
chart so that the direction you are facing (north, south, east
or west) is shown at the bottom. The centre of the chart
represents the point directly above your head, called the
zenith point, and the outer circular edge represents the
horizon.
On 8 August, there will be a partial lunar eclipse which
will be visible across Australia. The eclipse will begin
at 3:22AM AEST, when the Moon enters the Earths
shadow and then leave the Earths shadow at 5:19AM
AEST, thus ending the eclipse. The planet Venus is
visible in the early morning, low in the north-east, all
month long. The best time to look at the moon with a
small telescope or binoculars is a few days either side
of its first quarter phase, which falls on the 29th of
August. High in the sky are the constellations
Sagittarius (the Archer), Scorpius (the Scorpion) and
Crux (the Southern Cross). When viewing the night
sky from a dark location, it may be possible to see the
white glow of our own galaxy, the Milky Way.

Sydney Observatory is part of the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences. The Sydney Observatory night sky map was created by Dr M. Anderson using the TheSky
software. This months edition was prepared by Jane Kaczmarek. 2017 Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, Sydney.

JULY/AUGUST 2017 | | 51
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