allen by around 1% per year over the last century as the oceans have become warmer, and if anything, their decline is getting faster. Our blue planet is becoming less green with every year.
Newspapers are full of examples of powerful people behaving badly, from the diplomats in the Wikileaks cables to the peers in the UK’s expenses scandal. Power, it is said, corrupts, and Joris Lammers has solid evidence for this. He showed that powerful people are more likely to behave immorally than those with less power, but paradoxically less likely to tolerate immorality in other people. They frowned more strongly upon speeding, tax-dodging or keeping stolen goods, but were more lenient about doing it themselves. Even thinking about the feeling of power can trigger these double standards.
Tamiflu is our main line of defence against the H1N1 flu virus but seasonal strains of H1N1 have been shrugging it off since 2007. Now we know why. H1N1 has developed a mutation called H274Y that prevents Tamiflu from sticking to its surface. On its own, the mutation also weakens the virus, and scientists wrongly believed that it wouldn’t cause a problem. Instead, it spread like wildfire because of H1N1 strains had already picked up other changes that compensated for H274Y. These innocuous “permissive mutations” sowed the seeds of resistance, eventually allowing the virus to pick up the H2747 mutation at no cost to itself. It reminds us that evolution works in unpredictable ways, and without any greater plan in mind.
Do national parks and reserves do more harm than good? Some argue that these protected areas save wildlife at the expense of poor people, who can’t use the land for farming or resources. But such objections are unfounded. By actually comparing similar communities on a small scale, Kwaw Andam found that protected areas in Costa Rica and Thailand have actually helped to alleviate poverty. The areas bring opportunities from business and investments, promote tourism, and improve local infrastructure.
In 1980, smallpox was declared extinct. Victory in hand, countries around the world discontinued their vaccination programmes. That was a mistake. The smallpox vaccine also reduced the risk of contracting a related illness called monkeypox and without the vaccine, monkeypox is on the rise in Africa. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the virus has become 20 times more common in the last 30 years. Resuming vaccination isn’t the answer for a politically unstable area; active surveillance is a better bet. Ironically, such a programme was set up in the 80s, and abandoned because the disease was deemed to be no threat to public health.
There are countless examples of people holding on to their beliefs in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. That’s not unexpected. This year, three experiments showed that when people’s confidence in their beliefs is shaken, they become stronger advocates for those beliefs. Contrary evidence creates a sense of intense discomfort as people try to cope with conflicting ideas. People go to great lengths to reduce this “cognitive dissonance”; some try to do it by mustering support for their ideas.
This year, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and !Gubi, a tribal Bushman elder, became the second and third African people to have their entire genomes sequenced. !Gubi’s genes are vastly different to that of three other Bushmen from neighbouring areas. Pick any two and peer into their genomes and you’d see more variety than you would between a European and an Asian. This diversity reveals just how important it is to include African people in genome sequencing projects. The continent is the birthplace of humanity and its people are the most genetically diverse on the planet. To understand human genetics without understanding Africa is like trying to learn a language by only looking at words starting with z.
The ability to reset adult cells into a stem-like state was one of the biggest advances of the last decade. The reprogrammed cells have the potential to produce any of the various cells in the human body, with obvious 