Play linked to sluggish growth in infant monkeys – but should humans worry?

Calm down, kids. You don't want to end up short like uncle Harry now do you? Pixabay

For more than a century, researchers have tried to pin down exactly why so many animal species play in their infancy. Now a new study in wild macaque monkeys has found that infants who play more actually boost key motor skills. However, these skills are acquired at a cost. The researchers also discovered that active infants grow more slowly.

So what are the evolutionary reasons behind this trade-off? And should human parents who want tall children sit them in front of the TV rather than letting them play in the garden?

A brief history of play

Play is extremely common in the animal kingdom, with ants, crabs, turtles, fish, cephalopods, birds and most mammals engaging in some kind of play. But we humans are one of a handful of long-lived, large brained animals that plays throughout our lives. So what do we gain from play? And what do we lose?

The fact that so many animal species play during early life stages of their lives suggests that the advantages of play are concentrated on developing the brain, muscle systems and social skills that need to be learned and practised by infants.

Assamese macaque infants playing in a tree at the Phu Khieo Wildlife Sanctuary in northeastern Thailand. Andreas Berghänel

We have long known that animal play is more frequent when times are good – when there is plenty of food to eat and animals are not stressed. For example, we know that dairy calves stop playing during weaning while monkeys cease playing when food is very limited.

Some 25 years ago, a study of antelopes found  that “a pronghorn fawn that eschewed play and shifted the energy savings into growth could expect to weigh 7% more than a playing fawn by post-natal week 12”, suggesting that play consumed a great deal of energy. But over the years, researchers have come to view the energetic costs of play as minimal and easily sustained under normal conditions.

Play in kittens, for example, contributed only 9% at most to the daily energy costs, which is equivalent to ~225 kcals or one chocolate bar for humans.

Instead, the scientific focus shifted to the risks of play in relation to the rewards. Seals that play in the surf are easy prey for sharks and killer whales, while infant chimpanzees have a higher risk of contracting infectious diseases such as Ebola from their play partners. If play is so risky, and potentially also energetically costly in a few cases, why do so many animals play?

The right amount of play

The new study has placed the question of energy costs back on the agenda, while also being the first to establish the causal importance of play for skill development. However, the effect on growth was substantial, with 30% slower growth directly associated with greater competence in a variety of key motor skills.

The authors used photographs to measure the young macaques as they grew from birth to six years and observed how each infant gained motor profiency over time. They could then relate time spent playing directly to growth and how competent each young monkey became.

The study also found that infant and juvenile males played more than young females did and grew more slowly especially while practising skills associated with learning to fight; in this way males increased their potential to defeat rivals later in life.

Surprisingly, the researchers found that play persisted even during seasons when less food was available to the developing macaques, suggesting that skill development takes priority over growth.

Hard training in young athletes has also been known to stunt growth. Steven Rasmussen/wikimedia, CC BY-SA

This trade-off can be likened to that seen in young human athletes, who train for high-level performance at the expense of their growth. For example, young girls who train as gymnasts or ballet dancers can lose their menstrual cycles and therefore their reproductive potential.

So play is indeed an activity with costs – growth costs, survival costs and time costs. But during play, young monkeys, seal pups and antelope fawns practice motor skills that are necessary both when they are infants and as adults for escaping from predators, for fighting, handling food items, or moving about their complex environment.

Among humans, there are suggestions that surgeons who play computer games are better at keyhole surgery, while the brain cells of play-deprived animals are less well connected. That suggests that the brains of playful individuals develop new connections, and players gain familiarity with the unpredictable. The more playful individuals among black bears and elephants have higher survival rates.

Play has lifetime consequences. Too little play, and individuals are limited their vital experiences of the world and others. Too much play, and growth and survival are at risk.

But where does all this leave us humans? Should parents worry that their sons in particular will be short if they play a lot (macaques are after all our evolutionary cousins)? Not at all. Humans have specifically evolved marked energy-sparing mechanisms, probably to sustain our extra-large brains.

Babies are made up of much fat (as are mums) and, unlike monkeys, finding the equivalent of a “mars bar” to meet the costs of play is easy. Human infants are fed constantly during infancy and at weaning move on to energy-dense foods. We are also buffered by the care and attention of fathers and other family members, which should allow human infants to both play and grow.

Explainer: what are the issues around the use of human foetal tissue?

Ryddragyn

Based on the furore currently engulfing the US, you might imagine that the use of foetal tissue is illegal. But in fact the collection and use of cells obtained from a human foetus following miscarriage or abortion has a long history in medical science.

However, the US has a very long and established tradition of collecting and using human foetal tissue for scientific purposes. The Carnegie Collection, founded in 1914, contains thousands of human foetuses and gives its name to the Carnegie stages that chart foetal development.

It is legal in the US to use foetal tissue for research, something overseen by the National Institute of Health. There have been intermittent but sometimes violent protests against the practice due to its association with abortion, itself a controversial issue in the US. Now secret footage of a doctor from Planned Parenthood (a nationwide family planning clinic) apparently discussing the sale of foetal tissue has raised the issue, and tempers, once more.

When only human genetic material will do

Foetal tissue is important for many promising fields of medical research. It’s now well-known that genetics holds the key to understanding normal and abnormal human biology, from congenital diseases, to cancer and almost all major human diseases and impairments. Developmental genetics research, which studies how genes control the earliest stages of human growth, is an important area.

Some developmental genetics research can be conducted using non-human animals such as mice, but the most accurate and usable data comes from using human tissue. In order to progress, such genetic research needs human foetal tissue obtained from miscarriages or abortions. Sometimes these are referred to as post-implantation tissue to distinguish it from surplus embryos from IVF fertility treatments.

Powering cures for disease

Foetal tissue is also key as a source of stem cells, and for such things as the experimental use of foetal brain cells for treatments of conditions such as Parkinson’s disease and dementia. Human foetal tissue has played an important role in the development of contraception and artificial reproductive therapies, and foetal kidney cells were used to develop the polio vaccine that won the 1954 Nobel Prize in Medicine.

Developmental genetics seeks to identify the genes that are active at particular stages of human development. This not only improves the general knowledge of the role of genes, but also our understanding of the cause of major birth defects, of conditions that occur in later life, and those that can only be studied using human tissue.

Come on, let’s split. ekem/RWJMS IVF Program

Legal evolution

Of course using foetal tissue is a sensitive issue, and has always been strictly controlled and regulated in the UK. This began with the Peel Code of Practice in 1972, which was superseded by the Polkinghorne Guidelines in 1989.

One of the ethical concerns was that the use of foetal tissue for treating serious diseases would lead to an increased demand for tissue and potentially influence a woman’s decision to terminate a pregnancy. So the guidelines included a key principle that consent to donate foetal tissue for research must be obtained after the woman has decided to terminate her pregnancy and that she cannot specify the use to which the tissue is put.

Scandals such as at Alder Hey, where in 2001 medical researchers were found to have illegally harvested organs and tissue from dead children, caused a public outcry. Following a review, the government passed the Human Tissue Act 2004, which created the Human Tissue Authority as an oversight body and made illegal collection and use of human tissue an offence.

The act does not regard foetal tissue as distinct from the other tissue from a woman donor, so the use of foetal tissue for research must comply with the same law and guidance that applies to all human tissue. A similar approach is taken in other nations including the US, despite the views of certain protest groups. Anti-abortion campaigners see foetal tissue research as unethical, even though foetal tissue obtained from miscarriages, rather than abortions, can assist research into miscarriage and congenital abnormality.

An ongoing ethical debate

Part of the controversy in the US is due to the issue of selling foetal tissue for profit. Buying and selling of human tissue is often seen as ethically challenging, even by those who are generally in favour of its use in medical research. The concern here is that buying and selling human tissue commodifies human beings and diminishes human value and dignity.

In the UK, as in many countries, donating tissue – whether for research or as blood, bone marrow or organ donors – is regarded as a moral act, an act of altruism and good citizenship. Many wish to see that remain free of monetary gain. But human tissue is already involved in many commercial transactions of one kind or another, such as sale of blood and tissue products to healthcare services. Perhaps most controversial is the interest shown in foetal tissue by the cosmetics industry.

There ought to be a wider and more informed debate about the use of all human tissue in research, because a lack of transparency will only stand in the way of proper ethical reflection on the practices that underpin such important aims as medical research.

'Teenage' Jupiter may hold the secret of how planets form

Artist's conception of the young exoplanet 51 Eridani b. In infrared light, the hot layers deep in its atmosphere are seen glowing through clouds. Danielle Futselaar & Franck Marchis, SETI Institute

In the past 20 years, thousands of planets have been discovered orbiting other stars. Far from resembling families of planets like Earth and its companions, most of these discoveries have made our solar system look like the odd one out.

But now astronomers have announced a new exoplanet that looks surprisingly familiar. The exoplanet, 51 Eridani b, looks a lot like Jupiter – or at least the way we think Jupiter looked when it was much younger. Studying this juvenile version of our familiar neighbour will help us to unlock Jupiter’s past and find out more about the circumstances of its birth.

Bright young thing

The newly discovered exoplanet is a gas giant in orbit around a star 96 light years away. The star and its planetary system are estimated to be just 20m years old, less than a hundredth of the age of our solar system. This means that while Jupiter is a fully-grown planet, 51 Eridani b is still a teenager.

The youthfulness of 51 Eridani b was the key to its discovery. The planet has barely had time to cool down from its formation, which means that it is still bright enough to be directly imaged. Using the Gemini Planet Imager, a new instrument on the 8-meter Gemini South Telescope in Chile, an international team of astronomers was able to carefully block out the light from the parent star and spot the planet. The results have been published in the current issue of the journal Science.

Discovery image of the planet 51 Eridani b, taken in the near-infrared with the Gemini Planet Imager on December 18 2014. The bright central star has been mostly removed to enable the detection of the exoplanet. J. Rameau (UdeM) and C. Marois (NRC Herzberg)

The authors of the study estimate that 51 Eridani b is 2.5 times further from its star than Jupiter is from the Sun, meaning that if it was located in our solar system, it would sit between Saturn and Uranus. The planet is roughly the same size as Jupiter but being much denser has at least twice the mass.

Show us what you’re made of

By studying how the amount of light emitted by the planet varies with colour (or wavelength), scientists are starting to learn about the planet’s composition. “We already know that the atmosphere is rich in methane,” said Mark Marley, a co-author on the paper and an astronomer at NASA Ames Research Centre. “This planet has an atmospheric composition that is the most similar to our own Jupiter of any directly imaged planet.”

The biggest difference between the two planets is the temperature: 51 Eridani b is a sweltering 450°C, while Jupiter is much more frosty, at -150°C. But as time passes and 51 Eridani b gradually cools down, it will start to look more and more like our gas giant neighbour.

The exoplanet provides a glimpse back in time to how Jupiter might have looked when it was just a few million years old. Studying planets like this could be the key to unlocking the secrets of our own solar system.

“In the solar system we have been trying to understand the formation and evolution of giant planets just by studying them as they are today,” said Marley. “By studying young Jupiters, we are catching them closer to their birth and thus we hope to be able to see more clues about the details of their formation.”

How do planets form?

We know that planets are formed in the circular cloud of dust and gas that surrounds a newborn star, but the precise way in which this happens isn’t well understood. There are two main theories for the formation of gas giant planets: core-accretion, where material gradually clumps together into bigger and bigger pieces, and disc-instability, where there is rapid fragmentation into planet-size chunks as the circular cloud cools.

Artist’s impression of a planet forming within a gap in the dusty disc surrounding a young star. NASA/JPL-Caltech

Astronomers think that Jupiter formed through core-accretion, but until now, it had seemed like the odd one out. All of the young Jupiter-like exoplanets that had previously been discovered were too hot and bright for the core-accretion model to fit, suggesting that they formed via disc instability instead – 51 Eridani b is the first one that seems like it could have formed in the same way as Jupiter.

The first of many?

This is just the start, according to Marley. “Once we have more data we can begin to piece together the formation scenario for this planet and hopefully more planets that are yet to be discovered. Once we have a systematic view of many young giant planets we hope to understand planet formation much better than we do now.”

This is just the beginning for the GPI instrument, too, which is expected to make many more discoveries during its operational life. The young planets we hope it will find may hold the key to the history of our solar system. It may be only a teenager, but 51 Eridani b certainly has a lot to tell us.

The truth about politics and cartography: mapping claims to the Arctic seabed

New Arctic map, with August 2015 Russian claims shown in pale yellow.

While maps can certainly enlighten and educate, they can just as easily be used to support certain political narratives. With this in mind, Durham University’s Centre for Borders Research (IBRU) has updated its map showing territorial claims to the Arctic seabed following a revised bid submitted by Russia to the United Nations on August 4. The decision to release the map was not made lightly.

The map of “Maritime jurisdiction and boundaries in the Arctic region” by IBRU depicts the claims to Arctic seabed resources that have been made, or could potentially be made, by Canada, Denmark, Russia, Norway, and the USA. In addition, IBRU has also created a simplified map showing the old and new Russian claims from 2001 and 2015 – and the differences between them.

The myth of a “Cold War”

We created our first Arctic map in 2008 to dispel reports that the region was about to erupt in a “new Cold War”. As the map’s notes explain, nothing could be further from truth. Since 2001, Arctic states have been engaging in scientific research – often in cooperation with each other – to gather the data that would enable them to make submissions to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS).

IBRU map comparing the 2001 and 2015 Russian claim areas. Areas in green are in the 2015 claim only. Areas in red are in the 2001 claim only. Areas in pale yellow are in both claims. Author provided

The CLCS is empowered by the UN to assess whether areas of the seabed meet a complicated series of bathymetric and geological criteria which can permit coastal states to claim exclusive rights to the non-living resources of the seabed, beyond 200 nautical miles from coastal baselines.

The original Arctic map denoted the maximum claims that could be made given the scientific data that was then publicly available. The map’s accompanying notes clearly stated, however, that these were hypothetical maximums and that the actual extent of each state’s extended continental shelf would likely be reduced once more data were gathered.

States around the world have been making these submissions, with some 77 filed to date for seas ranging from Oceania to the Caribbean. The CLCS has reached decisions on about a quarter of them. In the Arctic, Norway’s submission has been approved, Denmark’s is under review, Canada’s is being prepared, and Russia has just deposited a revised submission after its original 2001 submission was returned with a request for more detailed scientific evidence. The United States is the sole Arctic state frozen out of the process because it has failed to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

The new Russian claim adds two new areas and subtracts one from the original 2001 claim. In total, it adds about 103,000 square kilometres to what had been a claim of 1,325,000 square kilometres. The new Russian claim crosses into the Canadian and Danish sides of the North Pole for the first time. While this may have symbolic impact (especially for Canadians and Danes), it has no legal significance.

In short, little is actually happening on the international seabed – in the Arctic or elsewhere – other than states using science to claim the limited economic rights that are reserved for them by international law.

These filings should therefore be celebrated as reaffirmations of the will toward peace and stability, rather than feared as unilateral acts of aggression. All too often, however, states’ CLCS filings have been interpreted as territorial “land grabs” (or, more correctly, “sea grabs”). The most recent Russian claim has been met with a predictable round of defensive sabre rattling.

The IBRU map may inadvertently aid this impression. Solid lines and bright colours imply that vast areas of ocean are being claimed by individual states as sovereign territory, while overlapping areas appear as spaces where conflict already exists. News stories that reprint the map rarely include the notes that explain what its colours and shadings actually mean. The medium of the map – which appears to communicate a world of states “owning” territory and keeping others out – has in some senses overtaken the message of states working together.

The Russians are coming … or are they?

In the context of Russia’s expansion into non-Arctic territories (notably in Crimea), the revised Russian claim has struck the media as another tale of Russian expansion. Provocative headlines noted that, with the filing, “Russia claims North Pole for itself” in a “Move to seize oil and gas rights”.

Having drawn the revised map, IBRU had a difficult decision: Do we issue a new map and potentially add fuel to this misleading narrative or do we wait for the story to die down so that lawyers, diplomats and scientists can work quietly with the data?

We soon reached a conclusion that, even when they misinform, maps provide an opportunity for education. Therefore, IBRU chose to release not just the revised version of the general map, but also the second map showing the difference between the two Russian claims.

Recent cartographic theorists have stressed that maps are not the static representations that they purport to be. Rather, they are living documents that are remade with each reading.

In one reading, the IBRU Arctic map may “prove” that there is a “scramble for the Arctic”. But the map may also be read as testament to the world’s commitment to the rule of law and the orderly settlement of disputes. The stories within – and about – the IBRU Arctic map illustrate not just how we think about the Arctic and its resources, but also how we think about the map as a tool of science, politics, and law.

Breaking America's hold on the internet won't be easy

from www.shutterstock.com

The internet today is far bigger and more inextricably linked to our daily lives than its creators in the 1970s and 1980s could have imagined. So perhaps it is not surprising that some of the structures put in place decades ago may have failed to keep pace with its rapid evolution.

Chief of these is perhaps the nonprofit organisation ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. ICANN is responsible for the key roles of assigning the unique internet protocol (IP) addresses that locate individual websites on the net, and managing the domain name system (DNS), which translates the human-readable web addresses we type (such as http://ift.tt/19ufyUF) into IP addresses (such as 192.68.0.1). Its policy decisions have an important impact on the internet’s evolution, for example the recent expansion of top level domain names.

However, since ICANN was established in 1998 its contractual links with the US Department of Commerce have led to criticism of a perceived US and Anglo-centric bias. Controversies such as the original rejection of the .xxx domain name for pornography led to criticism that the US had too much sway over ICANN’s decisions, and calls for ICANN to disassociate itself from the US, or be replaced with a truly independent, global agency, increased.

ICANN’T remain so US-centric

The ICANN-US government relationship has been steadily renegotiated, first in a 2009 Affirmation of Commitments that released ICANN from direct government control but allowed continued influence over certain activities such as the key function of issuing IP addresses.

ICANN president Fadi Chehadé giving a speech in Toronto ICANN, CC BY

This accelerated after Edward Snowden revealed the extent of global US surveillance, which led to a group of core internet organisations releasing the Montevideo Statement on the Future of Internet Cooperation in 2013, calling for the speedy de-Americanisation of ICANN’s functions and the creation of a more global, equitable basis for internet governance. That ICANN’s own president and chief executive Fadi Chehadé was among the signatories is thought to have spurred the US government on to pass the bipartisan Domain Openness Through Continued Oversight Matters (DOTCOM) Act in June 2015.

Congress now has a short window in which to approve the transition plans and temporarily extend the current agreement, if needed, past the expiry date of September 30.

Breaking up is hard to do

What next? ICANN is to transfer its functions to a multistakeholder organisation – a power-sharing agreement between governments, civil society, the private sector and other interested parties. This is a worthy approach but a firm guiding hand is needed to ensure the whole enterprise does not become a talking shop unable to make any decisions.

An ICANN Transition Coordination Group has been set up to manage the transition, and a 199-page final transition proposal is open for public comment until September 8.

However, the true complexity of this process has become apparent. Due to the overwhelming number of interested parties wanting a role in proceedings, it is unlikely any agreement will be reached by the deadline.

Alphabetsoup: who runs the internet? Lynnalipinski/ICANN, CC BY

Uncharted waters

Under the proposals, ICANN’s IP address-assigning functions would be contracted out to a separate entity, overseen by staff drawn from domain name registries, with powers to make changes. There will also be a IANA review process that, as a last resort, could recommend that the contract be terminated. Anyone with a reasonable claim to be involved can be, and this way oversight is shared by a range of groups in a process that should provide balance.

Crucially, there is no direct role for any government or intergovernmental body, with the only route of influence through the Governmental Advisory Committee, which has around 140 governments as members and 30 intergovernmental organisations as observers and advises the ICANN Board on wider policy issues. Like ICANN, this committee has also drawn criticism for being a mouthpiece of western governments. However, any pressure applied by governments will come up against the slow-moving behemoth that is ICANN’s internal procedures, which require consensus from many advisory and technical committees.

Another body expected to assert its influence is the International Telecommunication Union, the UN’s information technology and telecoms agency. While it is a specialist organisation composed of many commercial and non-governmental expert groups, like the UN it is a member state organisation. In the past the union has been put forward as a body that could fulfil ICANN’s governance functions, moving away from perceived western-centrism. But as a body comprised of national government members, greater involvement could lead to a more “top-down” form of internet control subject to the whims of international relations between members and their national and commercial interests.

ICANN has many flaws, but its lengthy, measured deliberations have guided the internet in its evolution to its current state as an open, interoperable, worldwide network. The alternatives could be so much more damaging to the essential need for the internet to remain open and transparently governed. The proposals put forward would maintain elements of this; whether ICANN’s restructure will be resistant to political pressure remains to be seen.

How to protect planes and passengers from explosions on the surface of the sun

The magnificent solar flare that emerged from the sun in August 2012. Luckily, it didn't head towards earth. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, CC BY

Air travel today is extraordinarily safe. Despite the high profile downings of MH370 and MH17, aviation magazine Flightglobal found 2014 to be the safest ever year of air travel. But natural events, such as the Icelandic volcanic eruption and ash cloud in 2011, can sometimes pose unexpected but critical questions for air safety.

Solar storms now feature alongside volcanic eruptions on the UK national risk register and are at least as difficult to predict. The most dramatic storm on record, the Carrington event of 1859, caused ground level magnetic measurements to go off-scale. It occurred before air travel existed, but still damaged electrical and telegraph equipment on the ground. What risk would such an event pose for aircraft and their passengers?

Solar fireworks

Explosions on the sun’s surface, called solar flares, are common. On average, one such event per year will emit a burst of very energetic protons. These are the same positively charged particles as those used in the Large Hadron Collider’s experiments. Such high-energy proton surges can last for several hours and there is no way of predicting them. Neither is there any warning as the particles travel close to the speed of light.

Richard Carrington’s drawing of the sunspots that preceded the 1859 solar storm, now called the Carrington event. Richard Carrington

When the protons hit molecules in the upper atmosphere they create secondary radiation. Of particular concern are the neutrons that are produced, which penetrate to the altitude passenger aircraft cruise at, and even down to, ground level.

There is always a moderate background radiation at aircraft altitudes of 30,000-40,000 feet due to constant low-level bombardment by cosmic rays. The quiet-time radiation at cruising altitudes is about 300 times that at ground level link, but extreme space weather such as the Carrington event could increase aircraft radiation levels by a factor of more than 1,000.

Passenger radiation dosage

The most obvious adverse impact is the radiation dose delivered to passengers and crew. Radiation dosage is given in sieverts, a measure of the biological impact of absorbed radiation. In a Carrington Event, passengers could receive a one-off dose of 20-50 millisieverts (mSv). This is a significant additional dose for crew members who are typically limited to 4-6 mSv per year link.

For passengers, such a dose would be many hundreds of times more than they would normally get on a single flight from London to Los Angeles. However, a 20 mSv dose implies only a 0.1% increase in lifetime cancer risk for each person exposed, compared to a lifetime cancer risk of about 30%, and hence the radiation impact is probably quite small.

Solar storms and aircraft control systems

The complexity of a modern cockpit: system failure could be dangerous. Jérôme, CC BY-SA

Radiation from a solar storm may be unlikely to cause passengers direct harm, but what about the effect on the plane itself? Modern aircraft are heavily reliant on computerised systems (avionics), but research has shown that the microelectronic chips used in these systems are increasingly vulnerable to being upset or damaged by radiation encountered high in the atmosphere.

Microelectronic chips can be corrupted or even destroyed by radiation. Such problems, known as “single event effects” (SEEs), are well known in space engineering but much less so in the aircraft industry. SEEs are suspected by the Australian Transportation Safety Bureau to have been involved in an aviation incident more than northwest Australia in which over a hundred passengers were injured.

Aircraft computers have inbuilt safeguards, such as error checking and backup systems, which are effective in normal radiation conditions. However, in an extreme event the rate of chip failures will increase by a factor 1,000 or more and aircraft systems could start behaving in unexpected ways.

At the same time, there will be upsets to high-frequency radio communications systems due to disturbances to the ionosphere caused by the event. Poor communications and misbehaving systems will add to the pressure on the pilot and increase the likelihood of mistakes and accidents.

Lessons from space engineering

Just as we need to know how aircraft engines react to volcanic dust, we need new research to understand how modern avionics react to neutrons, and to better define extreme space weather environments.

As with other weather-related risks to aircraft, such as lightning, we need a combination of engineering and operational measures. Already avionics standards are being improved and major new radiation test facilities are being built – in future aircraft will be built more like satellites.

No engineering system is built for all eventualities. For the most severe radiation environments, avoidance is the way to go, by delaying take-offs until the storm subsides. Flight altitudes can also be reduced where air traffic allows to minimise the radiation encountered.

These actions require reliable information on current atmospheric radiation to be made available to pilots, which is sorely lacking at present. Better aerospace meteorology can help improve air safety in the face of the unfamiliar, but real, threats posed by space weather.

Don't expect straight answers on data sharing from the firms that profit from it

Everyone wants to get their hands on it. cloud by Rawpixel/shutterstock.com

Data is a new currency of sorts: we all generate a lot of it, and many companies already use it to serve their ends or ours. But, for many very good reasons, it’s not easy to persuade people that they should give their data away. There are more than enough surveillance scandals or data breaches to make an open approach seem like a bad idea.

A study commissioned by the Digital Catapult, a working group bringing together academics and industry – and conducted by credit checking firm Experian – concludes that consumers want new services that will allow them to collect and manage personal data, and that paying people to share their personal data creates new business opportunities.

The report suggests that people are eager to use their own personal data as a means to earn money: a majority of respondents (62%) said that they would be willing to receive £30 per month to share their data. But respondents could only choose between £2 and £30 per month – there was no option to opt-out and share nothing at all. Of course, if you’re facing a choice where you can earn something or nothing for your data that will be hoovered up anyway whether you like it or not, it’s hardly surprising that people choose the maximum available. It feels as if the rest who answered otherwise just didn’t understand the question.

So, it doesn’t mean personal data is worth £30 per month, and nor does it stand up the report’s claims of “£15 billion of untapped wealth for UK consumers”. This value is arbitrary, plucked out of the air and relative only to the limited choices people were offered. No doubt they’d not turn down £100 or £1,000 either.

The value of data, and to whom

The research I’ve carried out suggests that it’s hard to put a monetary value on personal data sharing – in some circumstances it is possible to estimate how much people are willing to pay to keep the data secure. The difficulty with assessing how much data is worth is because one person’s data tends only to gain value when it is aggregated with other people’s data. This makes it hard, if not impossible, to decide what a single person’s data is really worth – even if some attempts have been made to find a market price.

We carry more information with us than we realise. ter-burg, CC BY

In fact many people don’t really understand what their personal data is, how it is stored and used – and this is something the report backs up. Considering these difficulties, then, is it ethical to use cash incentives to persuade people to hand over their personal data? Do those doing so understand the potential implications, and should those waving the cash be required to explain?

Some stand to profit more than others

Let’s not ignore the fact that the study was carried out by Experian. Like other credit checking firms, Experian’s business is based on gathering considerable amounts of personal information from various sources and then selling it on to others, including the same organisations from which they drew the data in the first place and those people who have become records in their systems. They have access to many data sources that describe our lives, such as banking records, our home address, bills with various utility companies and the like. However, there are many other digital pieces of information about us which yet are not shared with credit checking companies.

Perhaps it’s no surprise that this report justifies the introduction of services that will allow third parties to collect and manage more of personal data that we produce. For example, a firm such as Experian might launch a personal data management app that collates mobile phone use, GPS records, loyalty card data, health data from fitness apps and your NHS records, alongside charitable donations, social network data and productivity apps. Then it could offer the opportunity to share some or all of that data with them for a fee, paying you, for example, £30 a month, at which point almost everything about you, from work, physical health, habits and social groups, could be discovered and triangulated, and used by them for their financial benefit.

Risk vs benefits

While the report suggests such services might benefit the public good, the question is of who holds the reins: government, business, or the third sector? Having your data will directly benefit those in control of it, and those they sell or share it with – but would it benefit you?

Time will show whether this degree of data integration is beneficial at all. But given that people understand so little about how their personal data is created, gathered and shared – and the implications of all this – it seems simplistic to offer cash incentives for people to share the information that describes their lives in detail. That’s without even considering the many risks posed by collating so much information on individuals and storing it together – as tales of massive data breaches, losses, and abuses continue to remind us.