Early motor skills may affect language development

What does it look like I'm doing? I'm learning to talk! Ryan and Sarah Deeds/Flickr, CC BY-SA

Learning to sit up, crawl and walk are all major milestones in a child’s early development – and parents often record these actions in baby diaries, photographs and videos. Developing motor skills allows the child to become more independent. But our research, backing a number of other studies, has shown that it may also say something about the rate of a child’s cognitive development, such as talking.

It makes sense that the ability to move affects how children see, think about and talk about their physical and social environments. Indeed, over recent years, it has become increasingly clear that cognitive development is more closely related to the development of gross motor skills, such as crawling or walking, and fine motor skills, such as grasping and manipulating objects, than many have previously considered.

In fact, it has been suggested that rather than assessing motor and cognitive development separately, they should be viewed as two connected cogs within a large, complex system, each dependent on the other and working together to make small steps forward in development.

It is therefore vital that more research investigates the relationship between motor and cognitive development, rather than focusing on these as separate parts. This will not only be important for understanding typical development, but could also help to explain the difficulties that some children face when the connections in the system are disrupted.

Early links

Learning language is a very long process for infants. They have to go through a period of working out how to use their mouths to make sounds, such as blowing raspberries. Then there’s babbling. Then comes the first word. Finally, children are able to build sentences and, later, to hold conversations.

Research has shown that before each of these language milestones, there is usually a change in motor actions. An example is babbling, where an infant repeats the same sound over and over again (“bababa”). In the few weeks before babbling starts, infants show a lot of arm movements, such as banging, shaking or waving. What is interesting is that after they start babbling, infants stop doing these movements as much.

Look at those arms - he’ll babble any day now. Paul/Flickr, CC BY-SA

Why would these two activities be related? It might be that they are both letting infants see what happens when an action is repeated, so they get used to the sounds and feelings of their bodies. Infants are learning that something they do causes something else to happen. It is like learning that when you press a button, a light comes on.

There are lots of other examples of new motor and language skills appearing around the same time. The fact that the motor action and the language milestone are so close in time suggests that the two parts of the system are developing together.

Motor difficulties

Our own research has focused on what happens when infants have difficulties in developing motor skills in a typical way. One way that we have done this is by looking at the relationship between motor and cognitive skills in autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Language and communication problems are key to a diagnosis of ASD, but children with ASD also often show some difficulties in motor skills. We carried out a study with 53 infants who had an older sibling with ASD. This increases the risk that they will develop ASD themselves.

Working with the British Autism Study of Infant Siblings (BASIS) at Birkbeck, we found that these infants had generally poorer motor skills at the age of seven months compared to infants who had an older sibling without ASD. Importantly, we showed that motor skills at seven months predicted the rate of language development in the group of infants who went on to develop ASD themselves. This suggests that poor early motor skills could be one factor affecting the development of language difficulties, and that this might be particularly relevant for those at risk of developing ASD.

We are also investigating cognitive skills in children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD), which is diagnosed on the basis of motor difficulties which have an impact on daily living. We hope that these studies will help us to better understand the relationships between motor and cognitive development.

An important point to remember in this discussion is that children naturally develop at different rates. An infant may start crawling at any point between five and 13 months and still be within the age range expected for crawling. Some infants do not crawl on hands and knees at all, but shuffle, creep or just start walking so that they can move around the room.

This means that parents should not be worried that their child is not going to be “clever” or is not developing well if he or she is not crawling early. Crawling is one way of solving a problem, such as reaching a toy on the other side of the room, but it is not the only way. As a child’s body grows and muscles get stronger, better ways of solving these problems develop.

One future question to investigate will be whether there are critical time periods in the development of these skills which cause some children to develop atypically. It will also be important to work out the different paths that motor and language skills can follow. To answer these questions, future research will need to study children over time, and study the two sets of skills together.

Sleep study raises hope for clinical treatment of racism, sexism and other biases

Sleep before you speak. Angel Arcones/Flickr, CC BY-SA

Imagine being able to erase the innermost prejudices you are most ashamed of by simply turning on a sound machine before going to bed. It may sound fantastical, but a new study has shown that our biases can indeed be counteracted while we sleep.

Of course, most of us would contend that we are not racist or sexist. But many studies have shown that our actions suggest otherwise. For example, when evaluating applications for a science laboratory position, male applicants were viewed by university science faculty members as more hireable, competent and deserving of a high salary than identically qualified female applicants.

These biases are not surprising. We are often overwhelmed with information that can reinforce race and gender stereotypes.

Implicit association

In a new study, researchers built on our rapidly developing understanding of the way recent memories become ingrained in our mind during sleep. This “consolidation” process takes an unstable new memory and makes it stronger, and more resistant to forgetting, possibly changing its nature in the process.

The researchers were interested in whether implicit gender or racial biases – views that we are not necessarily aware of – could be manipulated. In order to assess people’s biases, they used an implicit association test (IAT). This requires people to make two category judgements by pressing one of two buttons. In a test of gender bias, for example, participants might categorise female faces by pressing one button and male faces with another. They would also have to classify words into “science” and “art” categories using the same keys.

People who implicitly associate women with art and men with science should respond relatively slowly when asked to use the same key for female faces and science words, compared with female faces and art words. There is debate about exactly what this test measures, but it has proved to be a revealing measure of attitudes in a wide array of research areas.

The researchers then tried to counter these biases by requiring the participants to make associations that reversed the stereotypes. For example, participants might be asked to identify only female faces that were paired with science words. These new associations were “tagged” in their memory by playing a particular sound when participants correctly identified the counterexamples. Another IAT showed weaker implicit biases after the interventions.

The experiment in pictures. P Huey/Science

But showing an immediate effect of an intervention is not very useful if the benefits are short-lived. Here’s where the study got really interesting. Participants were asked to have a nap in the lab, while electrodes recorded their brain activity. When deep sleep was observed, one of the sound cues from the association test was repeatedly played.

The idea here is that the sound can reactivate the memories of the recent events and facilitate their consolidation. In effect, the researchers have found a way of picking out particular memories and asking the brain to give them special treatment during consolidation. Similar replay effects in sleep have been found by this group and others using both sounds and odours, and curiously the cueing effect of the sound is more effective during sleep than when people are awake. In this case, the replay was again effective: bias as measured by the IAT after sleep for the cued intervention was less extreme than the bias for the uncued intervention.

How far from clinical practice?

There are of course many more questions one might ask about this type of research. No-one is suggesting that biases developed over many years are going to be eliminated using a short intervention and then giving the natural consolidation process a helping hand. For a start, it is unclear how long such replay effects might last. The research included a test of implicit bias one week after the intervention, but although there was some evidence that the sounds did have a benefit at that point, the evidence was relatively weak.

Another key question is whether training on positive associations and then testing using the IAT is a form of teaching to the test. It would be really useful to know if such bias effects could lead to altered explicit attitudes – those that we are conscious of – and real behaviour change. A recent large-scale study of racial bias interventions showed clear benefits on the IAT but no change in explicit attitudes. However that was when tested straight after the intervention.

The intriguing possibility that the current study raises is that consolidation may lead to more generalised benefits. During sleep, the storage of recent memories spreads to different parts of the brain, and this systems-level consolidation may change the nature of the memory. Sleep has been shown to promote a shift from implicit to explicit knowledge, and work in our lab has found that sleep may lead to the integration of new memories with existing knowledge. Possibly the shift in implicit attitudes is just the starting point for a chain of consolidation processes that can lead to improved explicit representations of gender and racial stereotypes, and even changes in actions or verbal behaviour.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the current study is that it enhances our understanding of the neural mechanisms involved in memory formation and consolidation. It also offers an intriguing new take on the way in which prejudices and stereotypes form, and how they might be malleable. The hope for the future is that our understanding of prejudice and bias may be further benefited by a more unified understanding of these two areas.

However, for this to one day work as a reliable treatment for racism, sexism, or other bad habits we need to know much more about the longevity and generality of changes in implicit attitudes.

Return of the 'snooper's charter' reflects a worldwide move towards greater surveillance

"I'm looking forward to the day all this needle-hunting is computerised, to be honest." Jean-François Millet

Returned to government with a majority and free of their coalition partners, the UK Conservative Party presses on with its signature policies, including curbs on immigration and banning legal highs – and a renewed effort to pass a “snooper’s charter” bill of increased surveillance powers.

As the Communications Data Bill, the proposed extension of the powers of UK security and intelligence services to track people’s use of the web and social media has already been repeatedly introduced to and rejected by parliament. Now under the title of the Investigatory Powers Bill, the snooper’s charter has returned again.

While there is little detail yet – perhaps because the government expects negotiation due to its small majority – it’s clear the bill goes beyond the Conservatives' manifesto pledge to “maintain the ability of the authorities to intercept the content of suspects’ communications”. It enshrines not only snooping powers but also allows bulk surveillance of content, not just metadata, with a warrant. It also promises, ominously, to “address ongoing capability gaps”.

It’s important to note that charters for snoopers do not enjoy a consensus among Tories. The party has always housed a libertarian wing which coexists uneasily with the more authoritarian element. However the party’s libertarians may concentrate their fire on the pledge to scrap the Human Rights Act and so the bill may find an easier ride as a quid pro quo. Having said that, Tory MP David Davis – who has fallen out with party chiefs in the past over privacy and surveillance issues – grumbled that the UK was moving in a different direction from its chief ally the US.

Davis’ intervention, and also the forthcoming report on bulk surveillance from the UK’s Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, both pose the question as to whether the UK is in or out of step with its international peers.

Global watchfulness on the rise

The Germans take privacy extremely seriously, and their Federal Intelligence Service the BND has reportedly limited the internet surveillance data it shares with the US National Security Agency. While this doesn’t affect telephone data, the BND has requested an official explanation for the need for internet data, which the Americans have refused to provide. This drastic step has been driven by public opinion, following revelations of BND spying on its own citizens while abroad.

Meanwhile in Brazil, where US spying on President Dilma Rousseff played very badly, a new internet freedom law has been presented as a digital Magna Carta. However, as various nations try to find a balance between security and liberty, Germany and Brazil are outliers; others still snoop to conquer.

The French, reeling from January’s Charlie Hebdo attacks, have passed a bill through their lower house which removes the need for a judge’s approval for intrusive surveillance. Although the bill predates the atrocity, it probably owes its overwhelming majority to it.

In Canada, the Telecommunications Transparency Project has just released a report claiming that its spooks’ telecoms surveillance is conducted without transparency or effective governance procedures, and that they have tried to insert back doors into encryption.

In Australia, legislation passed last year gave sweeping powers to monitor any device “connected” to a particular device with just a single warrant – of course, through the internet all devices are “connected”. The head of New Zealand’s Security Intelligence Service this month mused wistfully that she would rather like the same powers as her antipodean colleagues.

So the general direction of travel among technologically advanced democracies seems based on the believe that finding the needle in a haystack is made easier by maximising the amount of hay gathered. But just how useful this approach is remains unclear to say the least. “Fast bind, fast find,” Shylock says to Jessica – but he still lost Jessica that night. Are there any prospects of putting a brake on this rush to pry?

No sign of a backlash

Outside Germany, there is little sign of public outrage. Research by Sören Preibusch found that though Edward Snowden’s revelations prompted an increased use of privacy-enhancing technologies and searches for privacy-related topics, behaviour soon reverted to the norm.

Davis’ remark about the reactions in the US provides another clue, however. While Congress wrestles with the renewal of the 2001 Patriot Act, rushed into law following the attacks of September 11 2001, a US court agreed with the American Civil Liberties Union that the NSA’s bulk data collection is not legal. In Europe, meanwhile, the Court of Justice of the European Union has been increasingly aggressive in defending data protection regulations, culminating in the “right to be forgotten” judgement against Google in 2014. In its current mood, it may start examining the surveillance issue too.

Counter-intuitively, it may be that while public opinion is neutral and politics pushes ever further in the direction of surveillance and the greater security that it is assumed this brings, it is unelected judges interpreting analogue laws bent to use in a digitally networked world that are most likely to apply the brakes.

Opportunity knocks for the Tories to boost gender equality in science

Inspiring role models can help more girls consider a career in science. woodleywonderworks/Flickr, CC BY-SA

It’s no secret that there is a lack of women in science-related careers. And it’s bad for the economy. While the Conservatives launched some good initiatives to address this problem in the last coalition government, their polices were disjointed and did not result in any significant progress. The party should now grasp the opportunity to tackle the problem properly – linking policies on education, career progression and childcare.

The UK punches above its weight when it comes to science. Despite this, we are missing out on a huge amount of talent, as 50% of the population is heavily under-represented in the discipline. The statistics are horrific: only 13% of all science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) jobs in the UK are occupied by women despite equal gender representations at A level and undergraduate level for many STEM disciplines.

Across the whole of academia, women occupy only 17.5% of the top academic positions in the UK, which is below the average proportion for the EU. Several universities are falling well short of that already low benchmark. The situation is even worse in the UK’s natural sciences and engineering and technology, where only 7-9% of professors are women.

Recent research shows that a diverse scientific workforce is more creative and better performing than a homogeneous one. Such diverse organisations perform better financially, recruit from a wider talent pool, suffer lower staff turnover and increase creativity and problem solving capability.

Linking policies

There are three key areas that the next government will need to tackle to make progress on this.

Arguably the most important one is education. As highlighted by the former, Conservative science minister Greg Clark, bringing the next generation onboard is a key priority for UK science to prosper in the future. However, what was missed by the Conservatives is that we need to boost support for girls not only to consider an education in STEM subjects, but also to persist in the pursuit of a career.

One of the most important factors here is the low level of confidence among girls when it comes to science and maths, which has been recorded in a number of studies. Targeted action in schools is therefore needed to provide girls with inspirational role models and to boost their confidence, which is especially important in mixed gender schools.

Another crucial area is career progression. While some women may leave science for perfectly good reasons, there is no doubt that others leave because they don’t feel valued and think they’re not good enough. Research has shown that universities presented with two equally good CVs – one from a man and one from a woman – were more likely to want to hire the man. Most scientists are horrified to learn of their own personal bias; raising awareness of unconscious bias and providing training to employers and managers is a quick-fix way to help scientists get over such prejudice.

Marie Curie made it - against the oods. Tekniska museet/Flickr, CC BY-SA

The third area that the next government can have a big impact on is by providing better support for scientists who take career breaks to accommodate caring responsibilities such as parental leave. Scientific careers are in many ways more accommodating of personal commitments than other demanding jobs. The next government should embrace this, by supporting more affordable and on-site childcare for scientists. More funding opportunities should also be provided for parents returning to science after taking a few years out to raise a family.

But why stop there? The fact remains that women are still far more likely to take out parental leave than men, despite the fact that many men would appreciate spending more time with their children. To really boost gender equality across all careers, the government should put policies in place to encourage more men to share parental leave.

Obstacles to success

The next government will need to work with universities, funding agencies and research institutes to ensure women are better supported through their career path. But getting to grips with the problem will not be easy. While we know that role models, mentoring, and personal development programmes all have positive impacts on women’s careers in science – particularly on junior women – implementation will not be straightforward.

For example, the extra demand that mentoring puts on the diminishing number of women that are senior scientists earns them no recognition in the established programme for assessing university performance (Research Excellence Framework). In short – if academics invest in mentoring the next generation, their research “credentials” suffer. But the new government has the power to shift this imbalance.

A subtle, re-emphasis towards valuing mentorship and investment in the scientific workforce will help promote a more positive environment for all. One step in this direction is the implementation of the Athena SWAN awards – essentially badges of equality for university departments and research institutes. These awards encourage departments to set new standards for themselves to achieve in their promotion and support of equality and diversity. Mentoring is a key part of this. But we need an official way of recognising the contributions of those who invest in mentorship.

Perhaps the biggest challenge of all is overcoming the stereotypes and prejudices that are embedded in our culture and put women off science. The sooner we realise that women make equally good scientists as men and that men that men make equally good parents as women, the easier it will be to change things.

While such cultural change can take time, having the right policies in place can certainly speed things up. The next government has the power to prevent financial and intellectual loss from the UK’s scientific community, but to achieve this they will need to properly connect policies on science, education and wider societal and welfare issues.

The dating jungle: how men and women see each other when online dating

What we may imagine isn't necessarily the truth. Dating by Shutterstock

In the world of online dating, nothing is as it seems. But that doesn’t stop many of us from leaping to the wrong conclusions about people. A recent paper presented at the Annual Conference of the International Communication Association and reported on in the press suggested that when evaluating photographs from online dating profiles, men and women judge enhanced and un-enhanced photos somewhat differently.

Enhanced photos, those in which a person has used makeup, hair styling, filters, or post-editing, were rated by both men and women as more being attractive. But while women also rated men in these photos as more trustworthy than in ordinary photos, the opposite was true of women: men rated women in enhanced photos as less trustworthy.

Attractive man: happy, successful. Trust by Shutterstock

One theory posits that “what is beautiful is good”, which means people tend to attribute other positive traits to attractive people. For example, we tend to think that attractive people are also happier and more successful in their careers. This appears to be the case with the attractiveness and trustworthiness ratings made by women, but not by men.

In general, when evaluating potential romantic partners, men and women similarly respond that they want a kind, trustworthy, loyal, and honest partner. Men and women, however, diverge when it comes to some other traits such as resource acquisition (the ability to obtain and provide resources, typically financial) and physical attractiveness.

According to evolutionary theory, men who have cheap, disposable gametes can maximise their reproductive success by pursuing multiple partners. Women, on the other hand, have to invest much more time in the gestation and rearing of offspring. As a consequence of our biology, the theory goes, women seek loyal partners who can provide resources for them and the potential child. Men, however, value physical attractiveness in a female because good looks (for example, facial symmetry or youthfulness) are the manifestation of healthy genes and serve as signs of fertility.

This added emphasis on the value of physical attractiveness in the eyes of men may explain why they would put less trust in the women in the enhanced photos. Because attractiveness is important, but is masked in enhanced photographs, men ultimately have less desire to date those women. Ratings of attractiveness predicted desire to date, but perceived trustworthiness was also a significant predictor of desire to date.

Attractive woman: untrustworthy? Dating by Shutterstock

Evolutionary motivations are unconscious and operate without our explicit awareness. Despite social norms and the availability of contraceptives, evolutionary theorists believe that innate, instinctual drives to reproduce still govern our behaviour (though others believe this to be too simplistic).

The online dating game

Today, more couples are meeting online than ever before. Dating sites provide someone seeking a partner with a pool of available options. When completing a profile on an online dating site, people want to put their best face forward, but still accurately portray their true selves. It becomes a battle between one’s ideal self and one’s actual self. As a result, when clicking through online profiles, people also expect to be deceived to some degree.

Considering research related to evaluating potential partners, it seems we don’t always know what we want either. People often enter a dating site with some thoughts about the kind of significant other they are seeking, but research shows that people are not actually very accurate when it comes to attraction. After recording the traits of their ideal partners, speed-daters agreed to go on dates with people who are very much unlike the ideal partner they described. After recording the traits of their ideal partners, speed-daters involved in this study then agreed to go on dates with people who were very much unlike the ideal partner they described.

In another study , researchers asked people to describe an ideal partner and then paired the people with either an ideal (matching the description provided) or non-ideal person (who did not match the description provided by the participant). After viewing a written profile of a non-ideal match, few of their paired partners agreed that they would be interested in dating that person. However, after meeting their match, those paired with non-ideal partners were as interested in dating their partner as those paired with ideal partners. Overall, people did not know they could be attracted to these originally non-ideal people.

Online dating is successful for many individuals seeking love. While research has shown that people deceive others in their profiles, perceived deception can be negatively received. People can deceive others by misrepresenting their physical appearance or their personal narrative. There are those who struggle with the image of themselves they wish to portray, while others are trying to sort through the lies.

And then there are those who view others' profiles thinking they know what they want, but in reality are attracted to someone quite different. So instead of judging all those books by their covers, it would probably be best for online daters to schedule some dates to meet potential partners in person. It could turn out to be an unexpected surprise.

Most people want it, but the UK isn't ready to legalise assisted dying

Demonstration in favour of legalising assisted dying in London, November 2014. David Holt, CC BY-SA

The same week that the UK press reported the death of Jeffrey Spector, who travelled to Switzerland to die rather than face a life of pain and paralysis, the Scottish parliament has rejected the general principles of the Assisted Suicide (Scotland) Bill by 82 votes to 36.

The bill sought to decriminalise assistance in the suicides of registered medical patients in Scotland aged 16 years and above with a terminal or life-shortening illness or progressive condition who experienced an unacceptable quality of life without prospect of improvement. It set out a complex procedure that lawful assisted suicides should follow.

Patrick Harvie MSP, who took charge of the Assisted Suicide (Scotland) Bill following the death of Margo Macdonald MSP has pledged to continue the campaign:

Spector, a 54-year-old Lancastrian with an inoperable spinal tumour, had received assistance to end his own life at the Swiss Dignitas clinic.

Spector, who was accompanied in his final moments by his family, stated that the law prohibiting assisted suicide in England and Wales had pushed him to end his life earlier than he would otherwise have wished. In an interview with reporters, quoted in The Independent, he said:

I don’t want to take the chance of very high-risk surgery and find myself paralysed … If the law was changed then what difference if I had an operation? I could do it after. Rather than go late, I am jumping the gun.

Meanwhile, Lord Falconer has announced his intention to reintroduce an Assisting Dying Bill for England and Wales into the House of Lords in Westminster.

His Assisted Dying Bill which would have permitted adult residents whose terminal illness was likely to cause death within six months to request lethal medication from doctors if a specific procedure were followed, ran out of time in the most recent parliamentary session.

Public support

While recent independent polls (commissioned by organisations in favour of permitting assisted suicide) show very high levels of public support for legalising some form of assisted suicide in Scotland (69% in favour) and Britain as a whole (82% in favour), the prospects for a change in the law are grim, particularly in Scotland.

While support for assisted suicide has more than doubled in the Scottish parliament in the four years since Margo Macdonald’s End of Life Assistance (Scotland) Bill, there still needs to be a considerable shift in political will before a future bill can succeed.

The rejection of Patrick Harvie’s bill on principle shows that even a measure whose drafting and purpose is not criticised for “significant flaws” is unlikely to become law.

Things may look rosier in Westminster, since the recent Assisted Dying Bill passed the second reading stage at which the principle of a bill is debated and usually put to a vote. However, there was no vote on the principle of the bill at this stage, because supporters and opponents of the bill agreed that the issue deserved further debate and line-by-line scrutiny at the committee stage. So the fact that the Assisted Dying Bill made it to committee does not in this case show that peers are favourable to the legalisation of assisted suicide.

It is also very easy to kill legislation in committee. Parliament sets aside very little time for scrutiny of legislation that is not part of the government’s programme – such as Lord Falconer’s bill. If opponents table more amendments than there is time available to discuss them, a bill will fail. This is exactly what happened to the Assisted Dying Bill; few of the 175 tabled amendments were discussed over two days of debate. After the committee stage, there are two further stages (report and third reading), which also present opportunities to debate or amend a bill out of existence.

Even if an assisted suicide bill could be agreed in the House of Lords, it would then have to survive a near identical legislative process in the House of Commons. Let’s not forget that MPs, unlike peers, do not have the luxury of being unelected and may be nervous about supporting legal change on a controversial moral issue in the face of supremely well-organised opposition.

Moral case

Supporters of assisted suicide need to convince politicians and the public that legalisation will not endanger the lives of “vulnerable” people. The empirical evidence from jurisdictions where assisted dying is lawful can help show this. The challenge is to communicate key findings from this complex and incomplete data set in a political moment.

Tactically, it may be desirable to talk less about autonomy and more about equality. Individuals should be able to choose assisted suicide not because choice has supreme value, but because respecting others’ choices on how to live and die respects them as equals.

People who seek assisted suicide and the vulnerable who worry about the impact of assisted suicide want the same thing: for their life plans to be recognised as having equal moral worth.

Supporters of assisted suicide should take note that in the Tony Nicklinson case, the UK’s Supreme Court dropped a strong hint that restricting suicide assistance to the terminally ill may fail to show due respect for all individuals' right to private life as protected by article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Supporters may therefore need to reconsider who would be eligible for an assisted death in their proposals for law reform.

Typo that caused air traffic control failure shows we need a better approach to programming

The higher they are, the further they have to fall. Ramil Sagum, CC BY

The causes of the National Air Traffic Services (NATS) flight control centre system failure in December 2014 that affected 65,000 passengers directly and up to 230,000 indirectly have been revealed in a recently published report.

The final report from the UK Civil Aviation Authority’s Independent Inquiry Panel set up after the incident examines the cause of and response to the outage at the Swanwick control centre in Dorset, one of two sites controlling UK airspace (the other is at Prestwick in Scotland). Safety is key, said the report. I agree. And safety was not compromised in any way. Bravo!

“Independent” is a relative term, after all the panel includes Joseph Sultana, director of Eurocontrol’s Network Management, and NATS’s operations chief Martin Rolfe, as well as UK Civil Aviation Authority board member and director of safety and airspace regulation Mark Swan – all of whom have skin in the game. (Full disclosure: a panel member, Professor John McDermid, is a valued colleague of many years.)

For a thorough analysis, however, it’s essential to involve people who know the systems intimately. Anyone who has dealt with software knows that often the fastest way to find a fault in a computer program is to ask the programmer who wrote the code. And the NATS analysis and recovery involved the programmers too, Lockheed Martin engineers who built the system in the 1990s. This is one of two factors behind the “rapid fault detection and system restoration” during the incident on December 12.

The report investigates two phenomena: the system outage, its cause and how the system was restored. It also examines NATS' operational response to the outage. The report also looks at what this says about how well the findings and recommendations following the last major incident, a year earlier, had been implemented. I just look at the first here, but arguably the other two are more important in the end.

Cause and effect

In the NATS control system, real-time traffic data is fed into controller workstations by a system component called the System Flight Server (SFS). The SFS architecture is what is called “hot back-up”. There are two identical components (called “channels”) computing the same data at the same time. Only one is “live” in the running system. If this channel falls over, then the identical back-up becomes the live channel, so the first can be restored to operation while offline.

This works quite well to cope with hardware failures, but is no protection against faults in the system logic, as that logic is running identically on both channels. If a certain input causes the first channel to fall over, then it will cause the second to fall over in exactly the same way. This is what happened in December.

The report describes a “latent software fault” in the software, written in the 1990s. Workstations in active use by controllers and supervisors either for control or observation are called Atomic Functions (AF). Their number should be limited by the SFS software to a maximum of 193, but in fact the limit was set to 151, and the SFS fell over when it reached 153.

Deja vu

My first thought is that we’ve heard this before. As far back as 1997-98, evidence given to the House of Commons Select Committee on Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs reported that the NATS system, then under development, was having trouble scaling from 30 to 100 active workstations. But this recent event was much simpler than that – it’s the kind of fault you see often in first-year university programming classes and which students are trained to avoid through inspection and testing.

There are technical methods known as static analysis to avoid such faults – and static analysis of the 1990s was well able to detect them. But such thorough analysis may have been seen as an impossible task: it was reported in 1995 that the system exhibited 21,000 faults, of which 95% had been eliminated by 1997 (hurray!) – leaving 1,050 which hadn’t been (boo!). Not counting, of course, the fault which triggered the December outage. (I wonder how many more are lurking?)

How could an error not tolerated in undergraduate-level programming homework enter software developed by professionals over a decade at a cost approaching a billion pounds?

Changing methods

Practice has changed since the 1990s. Static analysis of code in critical systems is now regarded as necessary. So-called Correct by Construction (CbyC) techniques, in which how software works is defined in a specification and then developed through a process of refinement in such a way as demonstrably to avoid common sources of error, have proved their worth. NATS nowadays successfully uses key systems developed along CbyC principles, such as iFacts.

But change comes only gradually, and old habits are hard to leave behind. For example, Apple’s “goto fail” bug which surfaced in 2014 in many of its systems rendered void an internet security function essential for trust online – validating website authentication certificates. Yet it was caused by a simple syntax error – essentially a programming typo – that could and should have been caught by the most rudimentary static analysis.

Unlike the public enquiry and report undertaken by NATS, Apple has said little about either how the problem came about or the lessons learned – and the same goes for the developers of many other software packages that lie at the heart of the global computerised economy.