A year after MH370 vanished we have only theories, but here's why the search must go on

Messages left without answers. مانفی, CC BY-SA

The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 a year ago has led to one of the largest search exercises in history. The 140-tonne aircraft and all its 239 passengers and crew remain missing, and the search continues across 17,000km² of ocean up to 5km deep. For comparison, we knew within 20km where the 50,000 tonne Titanic sank in 1912, in water 4km deep – and even then it took 73 years to find it.

A steel ship is much easier to find than an aluminium aircraft because it has a far larger effect on the earth’s magnetic field and so is easier to detect. More obviously, locating something as big as a cruise liner based on a fairly good knowledge of the location is much easier than finding a much smaller aircraft in a large area of the Indian Ocean.

Why don’t we know where MH370 went, wasn’t it being tracked? Near to major cities and population centres, state air traffic control uses primary radar – which locates objects using reflected radio waves. But radar’s range is only a few hundred miles, and while airliners carry their own radar this is calibrated for detecting storms and mountains, not other aircraft.

Radar only takes you so far

Beyond radar range we use secondary surveillance radar or SSR, this is built upon a World War II technology called “IFF” or “Identify Friend or Foe” and receives a coded signal from a ground station or another aircraft, then transmits back another coded signal which can include identity, position, altitude and speed. MH370 was equipped with ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance – Broadcast): a state-of-the-art secondary radar technology, detectable by ground stations and other aircraft.

Most accidents will cause power to the transponder to fail, but there are two more systems in the event of an emergency. Underwater, the Flight Data Recorder (the “black box”) emits an audible beacon for about 30 days. When on the surface Emergency Locator Transmitters transmit location for 1-2 days by radio. Throughout the flight, there’s also an automatic maintenance messaging system called ACARS which works through a satellite communications antenna.

In the case of MH370, while the transponder and ACARS had been shut down, the satellite antenna continued to respond to hourly handshake signals. This suggests that the disappearance of MH370 was caused by unlawful interference – but probably not by the captain. Why? If you asked a commercial pilot to commandeer an unfamiliar aircraft and fly it somewhere undetected, they would disable the ACARS, transponder, and radios – but without more detailed type knowledge probably wouldn’t disable the more obscure satellite communications antenna.

The search so far. Andrew Heneen, CC BY

As the person on board with the greatest systems knowledge was the captain, this makes him an unlikely candidate for a hijacker. Also, with more than 18,000 flying hours (the minimum to command an airliner is 1,500) and an examiner’s qualification on the Boeing 777 link, he was capable of flying anywhere Asia and landing safely without assistance.

This suggests that if anyone was flying the aircraft, it probably wasn’t him. That said, this is only my opinion: Captain Zaharie Shah was in the right place after all, and had allegedly made no social plans after March 8, 2014link. That could be taken as suspicious.

The fact we have any idea where the aircraft was headed at all is due to brilliant mathematics by engineers at Inmarsat. They analysed the satellite handshake signals – not normally used for navigational purposes – and came up with an approximate flightpath, ending about the same time the aircraft fuel would have been expected to give out. That narrowed the search area to “only” 17,000km². They didn’t find the needle, but they offered a clue as to in which haystack it could be found.

To track or not to track

There have been calls from many quarters for tracking systems to be fitted to commercial aircraft that cannot be turned off, or for detachable, floating location beacons as fitted onto some military aircraft. It’s important that these don’t endanger the aircraft – I’ve had to turn off a transponder in-flight following a systems failure, so this isn’t a hypothetical concern. But creating transponders unable to threaten the aircraft is a solvable problem.

This will be expensive, but airlines won’t complain so long as it is mandatory: regulations that affect all competitors equally will just add a little to the cost of all airline tickets. Unions worry that some options – for example transmitting flight data by satellite link – could grow into an “spy in the cockpit” for management to monitor them, but the same concern was resolved with Flight Data Recorders and Cockpit Voice Recorders by making use of the data without the crew’s permission illegal for any purpose other than safety.

Ultimately, we must keep looking. It’s not acceptable that an aircraft with 239 people on board can simply vanish. We must find out why – not to allocate blame, as that doesn’t really matter: indeed if it’s known that blame will be allocated people are less likely to co-operate with any inquiry. What matters is learning how to avoid similar accidents in the future.

For this reason, if no other, it remains vital that we find MH370, and when found, the evidence retrieved and analysed.

You probably haven't heard of these five amazing women scientists – so pay attention

Now for the science. isak55/Shutterstock

All week I’ve been intrigued and inspired by posters appearing in my department that depict truly great scientists, mathematicians and engineers. Few of them were known to me or my fellow students, yet their achievements include revolutionising algebra, developing the first treatment for leukaemia, and discovering fundamental processes in physics.

Their only common characteristic? They are women, and their appearance on the walls marks International Women’s Day. Try to recall a woman scientist and Marie Curie may be the first and perhaps only name that springs to mind. This is a shameful state of affairs, when for more than a century scientists who happen to be women have reached great scientific heights, despite the many barriers they faced on account of their gender.

So here are five women whose amazing discoveries and contribution to science should be as well-known and respected as those of Marie Curie.

Rosalind Franklin – crystallography

Rosalind Franklin. Jewish Chronicle Archive/Heritage-Images

Only now is Rosalind Franklin’s (1920-1958) reputation recognised: a chemist, she was responsible for much of the X-ray crystallography research that was critical to the discovery of the famous double helical DNA structure.

She worked in a climate that was far from inclusive to women; her fellow scientists' attitude towards her are typified by James Watson’s book The Double Helix in which he is condescending throughout and refers to her as “Rosy”, a nickname she was known to dislike. Tragically, Franklin died from ovarian cancer in 1958, aged just 37. Four years later Francis Crick, James Watson and Maurice Wilkins, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and famously omitted Franklin from their acceptance speech.

Lise Meitner – nuclear physics

Lise Meitner in 1906. Churchill College Cambridge

Lise Meitner (1878-1968) was an Austrian physicist and the second woman to obtain a doctorate in physics at the University of Vienna in 1906, and the first woman in Germany to assume position of a full Professor of Physics in 1926. The annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938 forced Meitner to flee Germany due to her Jewish descent.

Meitner and Otto Hahn discovered nuclear fission in 1939, yet the 1944 Chemistry Nobel Prize was awarded only to Hahn who downplayed Meitner’s involvement. This was later described in Physics Today as “a rare instance in which personal negative opinions apparently led to the exclusion of a deserving scientist”.

Mary Anning – paleontology

Mary Anning. Grey/Royal Geological Society

Mary Anning (1799-1847) was a self-educated palaeontologist from a poor background in Lyme Regis in the southwest of England. Her discoveries of the first complete Ichthyosaur in 1811 and a complete Plesiosaurus in 1823 established her as an expert in fossils and geology, which she played a key role in establishing as a new scientific discipline.

Her expertise was much sought-after by educated male contemporaries even though, as a woman, she was ineligible to join the Geological Society of London. However, by the time of her death from breast cancer aged 47, Anning had gained the respect of scientists and the general public for her work.

Gertrude Elion – pharmacology

Gertrude Elion. Wellcome Foundation Archives, CC BY

Gertrude Elion (1918-1999) graduated from Hunter College in New York in 1937 with a degree in chemistry. Unable to complete a postgraduate degree due to the Great Depression, undeterred she spent time working as a lab assistant (for US$20 a week) and as a teacher until she obtained an assistant position at the Burroughs-Wellcome company.

Here she developed Purinethol, the first treatment for leukaemia, anti-malarial drug Pyrimethamine, and acyclovir, a treatment for viral herpes still sold today as Zovirax. Later Elion oversaw the adaptation of Azidothymidine, the first treatment for AIDS. In recognition of her achievements she was presented with the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1988, despite having never completed her PhD.

Jocelyn Bell Burnell – astrophysicist

Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell. BBC

With a PhD in astrophysics from Cambridge University, Jocelyn Bell (1943-) built and worked on a radio telescope during her graduate studies. Here she discovered a repeating radio signal which, though it was initially dismissed by her colleagues, she traced to a rotating neutron star, later called a pulsar. For Jocelyn’s discovery of radio pulsars, described as “the greatest astronomical discovery of the 20th century”, her supervisor and his colleague were awarded the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Burnell was completely omitted as a co-recipient, to the outrage of many prominent astronomers at the time. However Burnell has gone on to receive many subsequent awards and honours, was President of the Royal Astronomical Society and the first women president of the Institute of Physics, and was appointed Dame Commander (DBE) of the Order of the British Empire in 2007.

Inspiration

My decision to study chemistry was inspired by my love for understanding the world around me and using science to help people. Learning about these incredibly tenacious women has kept me driven through tough weeks of thesis writing; the hardships they faced in their careers were immense in comparison to today.

Not only this, but it has reminded me of the amazing women colleagues around whom I am privileged to carry out my research. I spend time with scientists of many disciplines, all of whom inspire me daily. And while we women might happen to be fewer in number as scientists this has no bearing on our capacity to conduct intuitive, ground-breaking science now and for the future.

Dawn spacecraft on final approach to Ceres

The Dawn spacecraft, shown firing its ion propulsion engine in this artist’s illustration, is scheduled to begin orbiting th­­e dwarf planet Ceres on March 6.

JPL-Caltech/NASA

The finish line is in sight for the Dawn mission. After 7 1/2 years in space, including a 14-month stop at the asteroid Vesta, the spacecraft is about to pull up alongside the dwarf planet Ceres.

Around 7:20 a.m. Eastern time on March 6, Ceres’ gravity will take hold and start to pull the spacecraft in. The probe will not take any pictures because it’s approaching the dwarf planet from the night side. In six weeks, Dawn will enter a closer orbit and begin its 14-month mission to map Ceres, looking for clues about the birth of the solar system.

Insect aerobatics: how mantises control spin for targeted jumps

Not just on the dancefloor... the praying mantis can throw some crazy shapes in mid-air. Malcolm Burrows, Author provided

Praying mantises are notorious – both for their deadly striking behaviour that they use to capture prey and for the gruesome female habit of eating their partners after mating. But their speed, agility and accuracy at jumping has not been widely recognised – until now. New research in Current Biology shows that the mantis jump is something rather special.

Juvenile mantises have no wings, as these appear only in adults. In their natural habitat among the stems of plants or the branches of bushes and trees, juveniles have little option but to jump if they need to move to another branch. They reach their target with great accuracy and with great speed – less than a tenth of a second, or in the blink of an eye. How do they achieve this remarkable feat?

To answer this question we took high speed videos (1,000 frames per second, or 30 times faster than normal videos) of mantis jumps made from a horizontal platform toward a target of a vertical, black rod, so that we could slow down time and reveal what they were doing and how they were doing it.

Beady-eyed decisions for complex spins

We found that the mantises first scanned the target from their horizontal platform by making side to side movements of their head – seemingly eyeing up the vertical target to estimate distance. If the target was close they would reach out with their long front legs (which they use for capturing prey) and simply grasp it. If the target was deemed too far away it was simply ignored. At distances in between, they would jump toward the target and sail through the air to reach it with remarkable accuracy.

Before take-off the mantises curl their abdomen to adjust their centre of mass. This ensures that the propulsive forces generated by the middle and hind legs act just sufficiently away from the centre of mass to impart a spin on the body as it leaves the platform.

Once in the air the mantises precisely rotate three body parts – the front legs, the hind legs, and the abdomen – in different directions and in different combinations, all the time exchanging momentum between them and keeping the spin of the whole body at the correct rate to successfully reach and land on the target.

We can show that these mechanical mechanisms are responsible for the precision jump of the mantises in two ways. First, by building a model (that is, a mathematical model – not an artificial mantis) to simulate a natural jump, we asked what happens when there is no rotation of one body part – say the front legs. We found that the body then rotates about twice as fast and ends up misaligned to the target.

Second, by experimental manipulation we could interfere with the rotation of a body part during a natural jump. For example, we glued the abdomen so that it could not be curled as much, with the result that the mantises took off with less spin and once airborne headed straight for the target and crashed head first into it.

We conclude that praying mantises are using the complex interplay between the counter-rotation of three body parts to exchange momentum and thus to orient their body to land on a target. Amazingly, they are doing all this in the blink of a human eye.

Here’s looking at you. Author provided

The controlled trajectory of mantis jumps contrasts with many insects which spin in the air after they have jumped and as a consequence frequently crash land. The major concern of these other insects, however, is to move as quickly as possible away from a predator or other source of harm. For these insects the speed of escape is paramount and the importance of stability is downplayed. Indeed, this uncontrolled high-speed spinning may be an advantage in that it makes the trajectory of a jump difficult for a predator to predict, and thus improves the chances of survival.

Outside the insect lab, learning from the way mantises solve the problem of stability may aid the design of small jumping robots, where controlling spin continues to be a challenging problem.

To upgrade or not upgrade? That is the all-too-frequent question

'If I'm honest I just don't think this is Windows 10-compatible.' (with apols to Ritchie & Thompson) Peter Hamer, CC BY-SA

The question of whether or not to go for the upgrade or stick with the devil you know is an increasingly common contemporary dilemma; the lure of new features against the threat of potentially disabling a device that plays an important role in our lives.

For example, Apple iPhone users who were quick to upgrade their phones to iOS 8 got burned by bugs. In fact many cynics see “point-zero” software versions (eg, 8.0) as nothing short of testing releases, and wait for later minor updates (eg, 8.1) to iron out the problems.

But even this behaviour can’t explain how Microsoft’s venerable Windows XP operating system, introduced in 2001 and officially retired in 2014, has grown its market share against more recent versions.

Desktop operating system market share, Jan-Feb 2015. netmarketshare

The problem for software and hardware developers and technological giants such as Microsoft, Apple, and Google is that despite technology’s constant, rapid advancements many users are happy with what they’ve got. Unintentionally this makes these firms' task much harder.

Microsoft Windows is 32 years old – businesses have used Microsoft products and applications built to run on them for decades, and they expect backward compatibility. Developers want those using their products to stick with them as new versions come out, which means data created with older versions must be accessible by the latest version.

The update rat-race

While for home and business users the trade off is often between features or convenience and cost, for software companies the issue is the cost burden of supporting and updating not just the current but older versions too. This is why most will declare end-of-life on their products past a certain age. Commercial software developers want to sell you new versions, and developers of all kinds would prefer to be able to focus on improvements and new additions, not the needs of a shrinking group of users wedded to increasingly out-of-date software.

When Google announced it had stopped supporting Android versions prior to 4.3, it was making this point. There are already two more recent versions – 4.4 and 5.0 – and the costs of providing continued support and updates for old versions is a drain. On top of that, older versions may not support new technology or standards (for example for faster internet access technology, better sound or video). Backporting these features into older versions can be costly, time-consuming, and often impossible. Better to persuade handset manufacturers and consumers to upgrade.

Microsoft has this problem on an enormous scale, with its products running what is probably billions of computers and devices worldwide. There have been four subsequent versions (Windows Vista, 7, 8, 8.1) and Windows 10 will arrive soon, but 15 years old or not, Windows XP is still common despite its limitations, and appears in embedded systems such as cash machines and point-of-sale terminals.

For some organisations not upgrading may be a matter of cost, but for others it’s the risk of disruption to daily business operations – particularly if key applications built for one version of Windows won’t play nicely with another. Having the latest version may be “fun”, but when the business is on the line, it’s a case of if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.

Well now, that sure sounds expensive. dragonicefire, CC BY-SA

A work-around for the upgrade cycle

If you’re content with what you have then the eternal upgrade cycle can be avoided for many years. But if cost is the issue then there are alternatives – free and low-cost alternatives that provide functionality without the hassle.

The obvious examples are free or open source operating systems such as Linux. Since the arrival of Ubuntu (a version of Linux) in 2004 it has also become more user-friendly rather than merely a tool for experts and server administrators. It’s possible to run Linux on much cheaper, less well-equipped computers than required for Windows or Mac OS X and still enjoy the benefits of the current technological generation.

It’s also possible to run really old software using desktop virtualisation – software that allows you to run one operating system within another, as if it were just another application. Alternatively many emulators imitate older operating systems or computers – DOSBox emulates DOS, the text-based precursor to Windows, and others emulate old Macintosh computers, 8-bit home computers, and all manner of video game consoles or arcade cabinets.

The update cycle can be a constant churn – driven by the bottom line of the companies involved rather than the utility and value offered to the customer. But as sure as night follows day, better hardware and software will come along and we all jump on. The question is, how long will you wait?

What cures may lie within Kew Gardens? Give it the financial freedom to find them

Kew is home to plants from across the globe. Diliff, CC BY-SA

To the casual visitor, the World Heritage Site that is the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew might appear to be merely a green and pleasant land, a tranquil oasis amid the hustle and bustle of London – but it is under threat. A new report by a committee of MPs calls for greater financial freedom for this venerable institution.

Beneath the peaceful, verdant veneer of manicured gardens and innovative architecture that houses botanical curiosities and vegetable wonders from around the globe, a bitter battle is being fought. At stake is no less a prize than the survival of Kew as a world-class botanical research organisation.

Founded in the 18th century, when Britain’s imperial ambitions were being realised, Kew was envisioned as an exhibition of the botanical riches of the British empire so that they could be studied, understood, and exploited, for the benefit of the mother country. But Kew is much more than our nation’s greenhouse. For all its rich history, its present-day activities are very much about our future as a species on this planet.

Strong stuff. So, what does Kew do? What is it for? Is it just a “living museum”?

There are approximately 352,000 species of flowering plants in the world. We have little idea how useful the great majority might be, and many of them are endangered in the wild. Appropriately, a major part of Kew’s activities is recording plant diversity, understanding it as an invaluable natural resource from which we can all benefit, and helping to conserve it. But why?

Simply put, plants provide us with food (whether directly for vegetarians or indirectly via the plant-eating animals that we consume), fibres (for clothing), pharmaceuticals (to cure much of what ails us), and much more besides. Oh, and plants also provide that essential life-sustaining gas: oxygen.

Powerful in pink: the Madagascar Periwinkle has provided a treatment for leukaemia Devilal, CC BY-SA

It is an oft-repeated cliché that we don’t know where the next cure for cancer might come from. Well, we don’t, but it’s likely to be from plants, which have already provided us with effective treatments for leukaemia (from the Madagascar periwinkle), and for breast cancer (from the Pacific yew tree). And innovative solutions to the pressing problems of future climate change and food security are likely to be found amongst the botanical diversity of our planet.

Botany is serious business

So, plants (and fungi) are Kew’s business. And like all businesses it needs income to allow it to operate, and a plan of what it’s going to do with that money. Kew’s Science Strategy for 2015-2020 clearly shows it has vision and plans for the next several years at least.

In terms of funding, the recent parliamentary report was sparked by Kew’s announcement of a £5 million “hole” in its 2014/15 budget. Alongside its own income-generating activities, 45% of Kew’s total funding comes from public money distributed by the Department for Enivronment, Food & Rural Affairs. However, this amount is not guaranteed and has to be negotiated each year, and large portions of the money are tied to particular expenditure. This compares poorly to the Natural History Museum, 96% of whose government funding is unrestricted, meaning that the museum decides how best to deploy those sums.

If you have ever wondered whether a parliamentary committee has any independence from the influence of the ruling government, then you may be pleasantly surprised to learn that its main conclusion was that current government funding arrangements for Kew were a “recipe for failure”. In particular, there is an urgent need for Kew to be given more freedom in how it manages its budget, and to be given a better indication of funding in the longer term.

This is all well and good, but a new government might not implement the findings of the committee, and we might be facing another series of crisis talks concerning Kew’s funding in the very near future. But, let’s be optimistic, and hope that the next government – of whatever hue – is at least sufficiently green to put into effect the conclusions of this committee: to allow Kew to decide how best to spend its income and to secure its future funding.

In a world where our future as a species is more than ever tied up with our relationship to and exploitation of the planet’s botanical bounty, shouldn’t Kew be given the security of funding to maintain its world-class status, and the wherewithal to manage its own budget?

Time to disconnect: why the SIM card has had its day

Old school and old fashioned - time to drop the SIM. Yui Mok/PA

The small microchips known as “subscriber identity modules” or SIM cards that are required for mobile phones to log on to a phone network will soon be 25 years old. While mobile phones and network technology have progressed in leaps and bounds, SIM cards are still lodged in handsets.

And they’re vulnerable too – it was claimed recently that US and UK intelligence agencies stole potentially millions of SIM card security keys which would allow spies to track users and eavesdrop on calls.

Gemalto, the Dutch SIM card manufacturer that was reportedly the victim of an NSA and GCHQ attack, responded with assurances that little, if any, information was stolen. The firm stressed how important its products were to mobile phone security. But the reality is that SIM cards are now more of a drawback than a benefit.

A solution of their time

SIM cards were a useful feature when they came onto the market in 1991. At the time mobile phones were bulky devices, usually mounted in cars or carried on a shoulder strap. They were often rented along with a car. A SIM would help customers quickly and easily transfer their phone number and contacts from one phone to the next, without the need to type in long identifiers and access codes each time. Having to enter access codes into a phone that was essentially shared also meant users might forget to delete them before returning the device. Storing the login details in a removable personal plastic card elegantly solved this problem.

This is no pocket phone. projectmgmt

But the days of huge or rented car phones are gone, and today smartphones are lightweight, personal devices that we entrust with passwords to many sites and services – access to WiFi, email, social networks, app stores, and online shopping.

A QR code, an easier way of inputting usernames and passwords. brdall

The fact is that the SIM could have been replaced long ago with a simpler alternative: typing in a user identifier and password directly into the phone is an option – just as we do to access WiFi. QR codes – the square, 3D barcodes – are a more convenient alternative for smartphones with cameras, where an app could read the details encoded in the QR straight from the camera.

Modern cryptographic techniques mean that passwords no longer have to be very long. Password-authenticated key exchange (PAKE) techniques exist that use passwords as simple as a five-digit PIN to create highly secure encrypted connections that even the supercomputers of eavesdropping intelligence agencies cannot break. And thanks to email and the web, network operators today have much better mechanisms for keeping in touch with their users to inform them which devices are authorised. None of these options were available when the SIM was conceived in the late 1980s.

Smartphone app stores like those from Apple and Google already make good use of modern authentication techniques. They could, today, be used to easily transfer all the functionality of a SIM into the phone using an app. All that’s needed is a new standard interface for mobile operating systems such as Android or iOS that would allow apps (software) to take over the functions of the SIM (hardware). Technically, a mobile network login is no more challenging than similar applications such as payment wallets, online banking, digital rights managed content, and so on.

Vested interests

Manufacturers are understandably against anything that would eliminate their business – an estimated 5.2 billion SIM cards were sold in 2014. Many network operators are also wedded to the SIM because it allows them to lock customers to their network, preventing easy access to competitors.

The size of SIM cards has shrunk. Justin Ormont, CC BY-SA

Modern SIMs are tiny, difficult to access, and easy to lose once taken out of the phone. In fact many users may not even know how to find or remove theirs, because it was inserted for them when they bought the phone. This inconvenience allows providers to charge high roaming fees when customers use their phone abroad, when using a local operator would be cheaper.

If the SIM were replaced with a password or extra software, users would be able to keep several pay-as-you-go subscriptions from different providers in their phone simultaneously, so they can easily switch to the most attractive rate depending on where they were. Apps that functioned as brokers could even negotiate which network to select based on best price automatically.

Another obstacle, besides the SIM itself, that hinders customers from easily switching between network providers is the cumbersome procedure required to transfer a telephone number. Currently you need to call your outgoing provider to request a Porting Authorization Code (PAC) to pass to your new provider. This process was designed to ease switching contracts every few years, rather than to help a phone switch between networks automatically several times a day.

But modern internet-based telephony has demonstrated that moving a telephone number between networks can be accomplished in seconds – the same needs to be implemented in mobile phone networks.

‘I don’t know, it says ENTER SIM CARD.’ Aaron Amat/Shutterstock

Given that the SIM card and phone-number transfer are barriers preventing customers from fully gaining the benefits of market competition, regulators should watch out that vested interests are not able to undermine efforts to provide alternatives.

The European Commission has long tried to improve mobile phone competition, mostly through price-control measures of roaming charges. Ditching the SIM would remove a major obstacle to competition, something that would likely generate market solutions to the problem of excess roaming charges without the need for further regulation from above.