5 January 2013 | NewScientist | 5

vitamin A deficiency. Last year’s study concluded that just 100 to 150 grams of the rice supplies 60 per cent of the recommended daily intake of the vitamin.

Now, three Chinese researchers have been sacked following an investigation led by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Beijing, which says they failed to tell parents of children taking part in a trial that the rice was genetically modified.

Adrian Dubock of the Golden Rice Project, who was not involved in the study, says the language in the consent form matched that in an earlier US trial of the rice.

Smashing futureAT THE foot of the misty mountains a mighty ring was forged – again! For one month, the Large Hadron Collider will smash two types of particles in a single magnetic ring.

So far, the LHC at CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland, has been colliding beams of identical types of particles, which are spun around the ring by a strong magnetic field. But in January it will smash protons into lead ions, in the hope of learning more about quark-gluon plasma. This is a hot soup of particles thought to make up the early universe.

Protons and lead ions have different masses and charges, so other colliders have used two magnetic rings to guide the beams. In the LHC, the beams will run in the same ring at slightly different speeds. “Nobody has ever run a collider quite like this before,” says CERN’s John Jowett.

A successful test run last year has already thrown up surprises, including hints of a new form of matter known as colour-glass condensate. More data could help confirm the find, says Paolo Giubellino of CERN. The full-scale proton-lead ion runs will end in mid-February, when the collider shuts down for upgrades expected to last until late 2014.

Supergrow salmonIT GROWS superfast, it’s genetically engineered – and it has been passed safe to eat. Salmon is now poised to become the first genetically modified animal approved for the dinner table.

Since 1995, a company called AquaBounty, based in Maynard, Massachusetts, has been seeking US government approval for its AquAdvantage fish. These Pacific salmon have a growth hormone gene from Chinook salmon and so grow twice as fast as ordinary fish.

Now the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued

preliminary documents declaring it safe to eat and environmentally harmless. Their publication came just hours after claims that the reports were ready in April 2012 but had been blocked until after the presidential election.

Shelly Burgess of the FDA told New Scientist that the agency is being cautious as the salmon is the first transgenic animal to get this far in the approval process.

“ The Pacific salmon have a gene from Chinook salmon and so grow twice as fast as ordinary fish”

THE massacre at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, has put gun control squarely on the agenda in the US. This month, President Barack Obama will send Congress measures likely to include a ban on assault weapons like the rifle used at Newtown, controls on the sale of high-capacity ammunition clips, and the closing of loopholes that allow private sales of guns without background checks.

Will they make a difference? The experience in California, which prohibited such private sales in 1991, suggests it is effective. A study of guns recovered by police conducted for the National Institute of Justice indicates that they move into criminal hands more slowly in California than

in other states. “Our ‘time-to-crime’ is longer,” says Garen Wintemute of the University of California, Davis.

Australia’s experience is also encouraging. After 13 mass shootings in 18 years, semi-automatic rifles and pump-action shotguns were banned in 1996. There has not been a shooting involving five or more deaths since (Injury Prevention, doi.org/ff7gm4).

The best evidence for reducing the US gun violence toll – 11,078 homicides in 2010 alone – comes from schemes through which police and community leaders meet criminal groups. In Boston, where this “focused deterrence” was pioneered in the 1990s, it is credited with a 63 per cent reduction in youth homicides.

How to reduce US gun deaths

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Sci-fi star is homelyA star often featured in science fiction thanks to its closeness and similarity to our own sun may indeed have a solar system suited for life. Hugh Jones at the University of Hertfordshire, UK, and colleagues found five likely planets orbiting Tau Ceti, two of which lie in its habitable zone. Confirmation would make them the closest life-friendly exoplanets.

Harvests on the waneThe green revolution appears to be faltering, with yields of maize, rice, wheat and soybeans stagnating or falling on up to a third of the world’s farmland. According to a study of harvests from 1961 to 2008, yields continue to rise in richer countries but are declining in many parts of Asia and Africa (Nature Communications, doi.org/j4f).

Orient expressChina has opened the world’s longest high-speed rail line, stretching roughly 2000 kilometres from Beijing to Guangzhou. Its bullet trains, launched on 26 December, can travel the route in 8 hours (ordinary trains take 21 hours) and will free up other lines for freight in an attempt to cut air pollution from cargo trucks.

Boring letdownEfforts to drill into a subglacial lake have been put on ice. A team from the British Antarctic Survey wanted to take samples from Lake Ellsworth, but had to call off the attempt on 25 December after using up fuel in vain to link two boreholes designed to control water pressure. The failure ends the mission for this season.

Obesity falloutIt’s not an obvious effect of nuclear meltdown, but Fukushima has the highest obesity rates in Japan among children of certain ages. An education official told the Asahi Shimbun newspaper that kids were not being allowed out and so were not getting enough exercise.

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