Herbal Viagra actually contains the real thing

IF IT looks too good to be true, it probably is. Several "herbal remedies" for erectile dysfunction sold online actually contain the active ingredient from Viagra.

Michael Lamb at Arcadia University in Glenside, Pennsylvania, and colleagues purchased 10 popular "natural" uplifting remedies on the internet and tested them for the presence of sildenafil, the active ingredient in Viagra. They found the compound, or a similar synthetic drug, in seven of the 10 products – cause for concern because it can be dangerous for people with some medical conditions.

Lamb's work was presented last week at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences meeting in Washington DC.

This article appeared in print under the headline "Herbal Viagra gets a synthetic boost"

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

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There is need to look at factors holding corporate women back: minister

SINGAPORE: Law and Foreign Minister K Shanmugam said there is a need to look at the factors that are holding women back from doing well in the corporate sector to see what can be done.

Mr Shanmugam was speaking to Channel NewsAsia on Saturday after a closed-door women's dialogue in his constituency Nee Soon GRC, in the lead-up to International Women's Day on 8 March.

He said while the labour force participation rate for women in Singapore is good, the board representation of women is "very low", at seven per cent. In addition, he noted the representation of women in executive committees in Singapore companies is 15 per cent.

He said women have done well in the professional sectors such as law and medicine, but their performance in the corporate sector has been held back by the "usual factors", such as having to juggle family and work as well as gender bias.

He said these issues which hold women back from reaching the very top are particularly relevant.

A resident suggested lowering the foreign domestic levy for more households - other than those with dependents - as a way to encourage more women to return to the workforce.

Mr Shanmugam said: "We want to reduce the growth of foreign workers, which would include house help, maids. If we liberalise this sector, the numbers will go up, and the overall number of foreigners here, which includes nurses, construction workers, maids - we have about 200,000 maids in Singapore - that number will go up as well.

"I think it's a conversation we have to have with Singaporeans to say in which areas it can go up, by how much and yet take into account the overall public sentiment that you want foreign worker participation to go down."

In its recent Budget announcement, the government reduced the levy to S$120, from S$170, for families with dependents such as children and elderly parents.

- CNA/xq

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6 things I want to do with NFC (Smartphones Unlocked)

S Beam on the Samsung Galaxy S3 makes terrific use of NFC.

(Credit:
Josh Miller/CNET)

Tapping your phone on a console to pay for fries and a Coke is cool. Yet until the stars align, it's not how you'll be using NFC, the near field communications standard that gets devices talking to one another quickly and in a very short range.

Instead of using NFC to replace your credit card, it will increasingly become your passcode, your key. Best of all, it can be used to program one tag with a certain set of instructions that can launch specific actions when read by another NFC-enabled device.

In other words, just one tap of an NFC smartphone on the right tag can launch an app, a map, and share photos and documents.

NFC has been sitting around in phones for years, waiting for people to figure out how to use its charms. This past
CES and MWC, device-makers have begun showing more smartphones, laptops, cameras, and appliances built with an embedded NFC chip.

The problem is, some of these NFC-enabled devices just don't work. There are software and hardware hurdles to overcome, but for the first time since NFC landed on an unsuspecting phone, there's the real possibility for NFC pairing to meld into a way of life.

Here are the ways I'd want use the protocol. Some already exist in nascent or concept-only forms. Others are logical next steps that will take root if and when NFC use becomes much more widespread. And finally, there's the category that's probably flawed, but that's why they call it wish list.

1. Transfer photos, video, and music from any device

I take a lot of photos and screenshots on the different phones that I review. What I would love to do is initiate photo, video, and music transfers with a single tap on the laptop body or through a USB dongle.

While we're at it, let's throw NFC cameras into the mix. I love the idea of an Internet-connected camera, but I don't always want to upload a picture or e-mail it right away, especially if I'm using the photo as part of a larger project.

One tap is all it would take to kick off camera and laptop sharing.

Yes, Bluetooth 4.0 supports contact pairing, so that could be another option. Yet NFC is often used to very quickly initiate more complicated protocols to make Bluetooth sharing possible.

That's how
Android Beam and Samsung's tweaked version, S Beam, are able to share multimedia from phone to phone.

NFC laptops already exist in the HP Envy 14 Spectre and Sony Vaio Tap. The problem is that they don't work very well. CNET editor Dan Ackerman was able to share a URL on the Spectre, but Rich Brown couldn't get beyond the pairing.

On the camera side of things, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS30 and DMC-TS5 will ship later in March with NFC enabled, though CNET hasn't had an opportunity yet to try it out (oh, but we will.)

In addition to quickly transferring photos, NFC with cameras can help you share media directly with someone else's device (like another camera, or maybe TV.) Pair it with a phone and you can also use it as a remote control for the camera shutter button, which is great for self-portraits and group shots.

NFC is also starting to creep up in other appliances, too, like washing machines and other home appliances.

2. Control your
car

There are already some cool, extremely useful proofs of concept out there, including a QNX-running, NFC-enabled Porsche Carrera at CES.

Drop the NFC smartphone on the central console or in a cup holder and a car can not only start charging your phone, it can also rapidly save your contacts to the address book and automatically set up a Bluetooth profile for pairing and playing your music through its speakers.

I'd love to push out map coordinates to your GPS system with the help of NFC.

The guys in CNET's Car Tech division thought up a few other great uses when awarding NFC for most promising future technology.

Keyless car entry through a smart fob is terrifically convenient, but having a redundancy through your phone is a good backup if you need to get into your own car. Tapping the handle could launch a verification screen where you enter a code and start about the business of getting back into the driver's seat.

Similarly, if you live in a city like San Francisco where car-sharing is popular, you (or a car-sharing fleet) can use NFC to hasten unlocking the door for strangers.

3. Replace your ATM card, sometimes

Instead of inserting your bank card into the ATM, what if the tap of your phone (which you probably have in your phone anyway) launches your profile on the ATM screen. You'll still have to verify with your pin in order to see the menu, but the initial NFC handshake would pull up your saved details from the corresponding app on your phone.

I'm not suggesting that ATMs nix card slots altogether, but there's nothing wrong with having two ways to get started with your deposits and withdrawals.

4. Help you shop

There's already some talk of tapping a phone to an NFC tag at malls and supermarkets. I'm also envisioning that tapping strategically-located tags will surface a map of the mall, or list of stores.

In a supermarket, sporting goods store, or DIY home improvement store, NFC could pop up a mobile site that helps you locate items by aisle, track down a salesperson, and surface coupons or deals.

NFC is ideal for this ephemeral type of transaction. Why take the time to download an app with similar features for a store you visit once or twice a year?

MasterCard wants commuters to scan for fare packages with their phones, then bump an NFC sensor before boarding to dock the amount of the ride.

(Credit:
Eric Franklin/CNET)

5. Check you in

Your phone knows your name, your phone number (obviously), and probably where you live. That data is all stored within the address book.

It'd be wonderful to use those details to check yourself into appointments at hospitals, sporting events, concerts, the DMV, and airport kiosks.

Again, I'm not suggesting we dissolve the old-fashioned way, but a quick tap could get the ball rolling with our credentials while we take the next step to verification.

6. Stay on the side of convenience

One of the biggest items on my wish list is for consumer electronics-makers who implement NFC to remember the customer and make their requirements as few as possible.

NFC itself is a standard, yes, but will you only be able to take advantage of the tapping shortcut on your Samsung TV if you have a Samsung phone, or on an LG washing machine in your LG phone?

Will you have to download a specific app and open it every time you want to use NFC with something (thereby making it more of a hassle than a shortcut,) or will smart software authors also launch the app you need and get you started in the right place?

What about NFC tags?

NFC tags or stickers that you can buy already exist and they're great for triggering some kind of response on your phone, like turning on WiFi and Bluetooth when you tag on in your home, or turning on the alarm and shutting off sound when you go to bed.

How to program your own NFC chips

However, I'm not talking about ugly stickers that get bent or lost, or that bear a company logo, like Samsung's TecTiles. What we're talking about here are smoothly integrated and embedded NFC transceivers that become a part of the way we shop, work, drive, and live.

With all the devices that are starting to receive NFC, and all the companies interested in turning a profit from this growing technology, I'm confident we'll see more and more practical and clever implementations soon. There will be kinks to work out, as there is with any new ecosystem, but we're on our way.

What do you want to do with NFC? Share with me in the comments below.

Smartphones Unlocked is a monthly column that dives deep into the inner workings of your trusty smartphone.

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Black Hole Spins at Nearly the Speed of Light

A superfast black hole nearly 60 million light-years away appears to be pushing the ultimate speed limit of the universe, a new study says.

For the first time, astronomers have managed to measure the rate of spin of a supermassive black hole—and it's been clocked at 84 percent of the speed of light, or the maximum allowed by the law of physics.

"The most exciting part of this finding is the ability to test the theory of general relativity in such an extreme regime, where the gravitational field is huge, and the properties of space-time around it are completely different from the standard Newtonian case," said lead author Guido Risaliti, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and INAF-Arcetri Observatory in Italy. (Related: "Speedy Star Found Near Black Hole May Test Einstein Theory.")

Notorious for ripping apart and swallowing stars, supermassive black holes live at the center of most galaxies, including our own Milky Way. (See black hole pictures.)

They can pack the gravitational punch of many million or even billions of suns—distorting space-time in the region around them, not even letting light to escape their clutches.

Galactic Monster

The predatory monster that lurks at the core of the relatively nearby spiral galaxy NGC 1365 is estimated to weigh in at about two million times the mass of the sun, and stretches some 2 million miles (3.2 million kilometers) across-more than eight times the distance between Earth and the moon, Risaliti said. (Also see "Black Hole Blast Biggest Ever Recorded.")

Risaliti and colleagues' unprecedented discovery was made possible thanks to the combined observations from NASA's high-energy x-ray detectors on its Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) probe and the European Space Agency's low-energy, x-ray-detecting XMM-Newton space observatory.

Astronomers detected x-ray particle remnants of stars circling in a pancake-shaped accretion disk surrounding the black hole, and used this data to help determine its rate of spin.

By getting a fix on this spin speed, astronomers now hope to better understand what happens inside giant black holes as they gravitationally warp space-time around themselves.

Even more intriguing to the research team is that this discovery will shed clues to black hole's past, and the evolution of its surrounding galaxy.

Tracking the Universe's Evolution

Supermassive black holes have a large impact in the evolution of their host galaxy, where a self-regulating process occurs between the two structures.

"When more stars are formed, they throw gas into the black hole, increasing its mass, but the radiation produced by this accretion warms up the gas in the galaxy, preventing more star formation," said Risaliti.

"So the two events—black hole accretion and formation of new stars—interact with each other."

Knowing how fast black holes spin may also help shed light how the entire universe evolved. (Learn more about the origin of the universe.)

"With a knowledge of the average spin of galaxies at different ages of the universe," Risaliti said, "we could track their evolution much more precisely than we can do today."

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Sequester: What Will Happen, What Won't Happen

When it comes to critical elements of the sequester timeline, not much is known -- because federal agencies have been tight lipped.

Asked when specific effects will be felt, officials at three federal departments declined to discuss the timing of sequester cuts and their consequences. Some departments were waiting for President Obama's Friday night sequester order and subsequent guidance they expected to receive from the Office of Management and Budget before talking about what would and wouldn't happen and when.

Read more: 57 Terrible Consequences of the Sequester

"There's no calendar of dates for specific actions or cuts on specific dates," Department of Health and Human Services public affairs officer Bill Hall told ABC News. "Again, these cuts need to be applied equally across all agency programs, activities and projects. There will be wide variation on when impacts will occur depending on a given program."

Some cuts won't be felt for a while because they have to do with government layoffs, which require 30 days notice, in most cases.

For instance, the Federal Aviation Administration won't begin layoffs until at least April 7, one FAA official estimated.

But some cuts don't involve furloughs, and could conceivably be felt immediately.

The Department of Homeland Security declined to comment on the timeline of layoffs to cybersecurity contractors and first responders funded through states, as well as limited Coast Guard operations and cuts to FEMA disaster relief.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development said it could not comment on cuts to housing vouchers, rent assistance for AIDS patients, maintenance for housing projects.

Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg/Getty Imag

Sequestration Deadline: Obama Meets With Leaders Watch Video

Sequester Countdown: The Reality of Budget Cuts Watch Video

The Department of Health and Human Services declined to discuss the specific timing of cuts to Head Start services, low-income mental-health services, AIDS/HIV testing, and inpatient substance-abuse treatment.

Read More: Automatic Cuts Could Hurt on Local Level

So even as the sequester hits, we still don't know when some of its worst effects will be felt.

Here's what we do know:

What Will Happen Saturday

      Air Force Training. At a briefing Friday, Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter warned that "effective immediately, Air Force flying hours will be cut back."

More from Carter, via ABC News' Luis Martinez: "What does that mean for national security? What it means is that as the year goes on, apart from Afghanistan, apart from nuclear deterrence through two missions we are strictly protecting, the readiness of the other units to respond to other contingencies will gradually decline. That's not safe. And that we're trying to minimize that in every way we possibly can."

      Closed Doors at the Capitol. ABC News' Sunlen Miller reports that Capitol Police issued a memo announcing it would have to close some entrances to the Capitol, writing: "At this time it is anticipated that the U.S. Capitol Police will be required to close some entrance doors and exterior checkpoints, and either suspend or modify the hours of operation for some of the U.S. Capitol Complex posts located inside and outside of the CVC and Office Buildings."

      Capitol Janitor Furloughs. After President Obama warned that janitors at the Capitol will be furloughed, ABC News' Sunlen Miller reported that was not entirely true: The Senate sergeant at arms, Terrance Gainer, told ABC News that no full-time salaried Capitol Police officers would face furloughs or layoffs at this time. They will, however, see a "substantial reduction in overtime," Gainer told ABC News.

      Delayed Deployment for USS Truman Aircraft Carrier. This has already happened, the Associated Press reported Friday morning: "One of the Navy's premiere warships, the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman, sits pier-side in Norfolk, Va., its tour of duty delayed. The carrier and its 5,000-person crew were to leave for the Persian Gulf on Feb. 8, along with the guided-missile cruiser USS Gettysburg."

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Space gold rush should not be a free-for-all

We need a consensus on regulations surrounding space mining if it’s to enrich us all

EVER since we took our first steps out of Africa, human exploration has been driven by the desire to secure resources. Now our attention is turning to space.

The motivation for deep-space travel is shifting from discovery to economics. The past year has seen a flurry of proposals aimed at bringing celestial riches down to Earth. No doubt this will make a few billionaires even wealthier, but we all stand to gain: the mineral bounty and spin-off technologies could enrich us all.

But before the miners start firing up their rockets, we should pause for thought. At first glance, space mining seems to sidestep most environmental concerns: there is (probably!) no life on asteroids, and thus no habitats to trash. But its consequences – both here on Earth and in space – merit careful consideration.

Part of this is about principles. Some will argue that space's "magnificent desolation" is not ours to despoil, just as they argue that our own planet's poles should remain pristine. Others will suggest that glutting ourselves on space's riches is not an acceptable alternative to developing more sustainable ways of earthly life.

History suggests that those will be hard lines to hold, and it may be difficult to persuade the public that such barren environments are worth preserving. After all, they exist in vast abundance, and even fewer people will experience them than have walked through Antarctica's icy landscapes.

There's also the emerging off-world economy to consider. The resources that are valuable in orbit and beyond may be very different to those we prize on Earth (see "Space miners hope to build first off-Earth economy"). Questions of their stewardship have barely been broached – and the relevant legal and regulatory framework is fragmentary, to put it mildly.

Space miners, like their earthly counterparts, are often reluctant to engage with such questions. One speaker at last week's space-mining forum in Sydney, Australia, concluded with a plea that regulation should be avoided. But miners have much to gain from a broad agreement on the for-profit exploitation of space. Without consensus, claims will be disputed, investments risky, and the gains made insecure. It is in all of our long-term interests to seek one out.

This article appeared in print under the headline "Taming the final frontier"

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

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British PM under pressure after election rout

EASTLEIGH, United Kingdom: British Prime Minister David Cameron was under pressure on Friday after his Conservatives were beaten into third place in a key election by his scandal-hit coalition partners and a eurosceptic party.

Cameron admitted it was a "disappointing" night for his party after the Liberal Democrats held the parliamentary seat of Eastleigh in southern England in a contest billed as the most important British by-election in a generation.

The Conservatives had hoped at least to come in second but they were condemned to third place by the anti-European Union and anti-immigration UK Independence Party, which registered its best ever performance.

The vote was sparked by the resignation of disgraced former energy minister Chris Huhne, a Liberal Democrat who has pleaded guilty to trying to avoid a speeding fine.

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, whose own position as Lib Dem leader had been on the line after a collapse in the party's poll ratings, said the "stunning victory" showed they "can be a party of government and still win".

UKIP leader Nigel Farage insisted the party's best ever result in a British election was not a "protest vote".

Cameron said he was "confident" the Conservatives could win back support at the next general election, which is due in 2015.

"It is a disappointing result for the Conservative party but it's clear that in mid-term by-elections people want to register a protest," the prime minister told the BBC.

The returning officer announced shortly after 0200 GMT on Friday that Lib Dem candidate Mike Thornton had secured 13,342 votes, 1,771 more than UKIP representative Diane James.

Tory nominee Maria Hutchings limped in third with 10,559 votes in a seat that the Conservatives held as recently as 1994, while the main opposition Labour party's candidate John O'Farrell was fourth with 4,088.

The Lib Dems overcame not only the Huhne scandal, but also an ongoing row surrounding the party's handling of claims that its former chief executive Chris Rennard molested female party members.

A jubilant Clegg told supporters in Eastleigh that they had won the election in "exceptionally difficult circumstances" and that "our opponents have thrown everything at us".

"Two and a half years ago when we entered into coalition with the Conservatives our critics said we were going to lose our soul. Last night, we proved those critics are emphatically wrong," Clegg told supporters.

The coalition has brought in a series of unpopular austerity measures to tackle Britain's record deficit, but it is the centrist Lib Dems who have taken a far bigger hit in opinion polls than the centre-right Conservatives.

UKIP's James said her second-place finish was a "humongous shock" that showed the party was now a major force in British politics.

Farage -- a member of the European parliament who had reportedly considered standing in Eastleigh himself before backing out -- said he was confident UKIP would win seats in the 2015 general election.

"If the Conservatives hadn't split our vote we would have won," he told the BBC.

He said Cameron had alienated voters by "talking about gay marriage, wind turbines, unlimited immigration from India (and) he wants Turkey to join the European Union."

Senior Conservative David Davis had earlier warned that third place for the party would be a "crisis" that would place serious doubt over Cameron's leadership.

But Cameron rejected the claims and dismissed talk that the party would now lurch to the right.

The result came despite Cameron's pledge in January to renegotiate Britain's relationship with the European Union and then put British membership of the bloc to a referendum by the end of 2017.

The vow was supposed to head off both the threat from UKIP and the increasingly noisy eurosceptic wing of his own Conservative party, but appeared not to have resonated with voters.

- AFP/al

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Scarred Duckbill Dinosaur Escaped T. Rex Attack

A scar on the face of a duckbill dinosaur received after a close encounter with a Tyrannosaurus rex is the first clear case of a healed dinosaur wound, scientists say.

The finding, detailed in the current issue of the journal Cretaceous Research, also reveals that the healing properties of dinosaur skin were likely very similar to that of modern reptiles.

The lucky dinosaur was an adult Edmontosaurus annectens, a species of duckbill dinosaur that lived in what is today the Hell Creek region of South Dakota about 65 to 67 million years ago. (Explore a prehistoric time line.)

A teardrop-shaped patch of fossilized skin about 5 by 5 inches (12 by 14 centimeters) that was discovered with the creature's bones and is thought to have come from above its right eye, includes an oval-shaped section that is incongruous with the surrounding skin. (Related: "'Dinosaur Mummy' Found; Have Intact Skin, Tissue.")

Bruce Rothschild, a professor of medicine at the University of Kansas and Northeast Ohio Medical University, said the first time he laid eyes on it, it was "quite clear" to him that he was looking at an old wound.

"That was unequivocal," said Rothschild, who is a co-author of the new study.

A Terrible Attacker

The skull of the scarred Edmontosaurus also showed signs of trauma, and from the size and shape of the marks on the bone, Rothschild and fellow co-author Robert DePalma, a paleontologist at the Palm Beach Museum of Natural History in Florida, speculate the creature was attacked by a T. rex.

It's likely, though still unproven, that both the skin wound and the skull injury were sustained during the same attack, the scientists say. The wound "was large enough to have been a claw or a tooth," Rothschild said.

Rothschild and DePalma also compared the dinosaur wound to healed wounds on modern reptiles, including iguanas, and found the scar patterns to be nearly identical.

It isn't surprising that the wounds would be similar, said paleontologist David Burnham of the University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute, since dinosaurs and lizards are distant cousins.

"That's kind of what we would expect," said Burnham, who was not involved in the study. "It's what makes evolution work—that we can depend on this."

Dog-Eat-Dog

Phil Bell, a paleontologist with the Pipestone Creek Dinosaur Initiative in Canada who also was not involved in the research, called the Edmontosaurus fossil "a really nicely preserved animal with a very obvious scar."

He's not convinced, however, that it was caused by a predator attack. The size of the scar is relatively small, Bell said, and would also be consistent with the skin being pierced in some other accident such as a fall.

"But certainly the marks that you see on the skull, those are [more consistent] with Tyrannosaur-bitten bones," he added.

Prior to the discovery, scientists knew of one other case of a dinosaur wound. But in that instance, it was an unhealed wound that scientists think was inflicted by scavengers after the creature was already dead.

It's very likely that this particular Edmontosaurus wasn't the only dinosaur to sport scars, whether from battle wounds or accidents, Bell added.

"I would imagine just about every dinosaur walking around had similar scars," he said. (Read about "Extreme Dinosaurs" in National Geographic magazine.)

"Tigers and lions have scarred noses, and great white sharks have got dings on their noses and nips taken out of their fins. It's a dog-eat-dog world out there, and [Edmontosaurus was] unfortunately in the line of fire from some pretty big and nasty predators ... This one was just lucky to get away."

Mysterious Escape

Just how Edmontosaurus survived a T. rex attack is still unclear. "Escape from a T. rex is something that we wouldn't think would happen," Burnham said.

Duckbill dinosaurs, also known as Hadrosaurs, were not without defenses. Edmontosaurus, for example, grew up to 30 feet (9 meters) in length, and could swipe its hefty tail or kick its legs to fell predators.

Furthermore, they were fast. "Hadrosaurs like Edmontosaurus had very powerful [running] muscles, which would have made them difficult to catch once they'd taken flight," Bell said.

Duckbills were also herd animals, so maybe this one escaped with help from neighbors. Or perhaps the T. rex that attacked it was young. "There's something surrounding this case that we don't know yet," Burnham said.

Figuring out the details of the story is part of what makes paleontology exciting, he added. "We construct past lives. We can go back into a day in the life of this animal and talk about an attack and [about] it getting away. That's pretty cool."

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Sequester Set to Trigger Billions in Cuts

Nobody likes the sequester.

Even the word is enough to send shivers of fiscal panic, or sheer political malaise, down the spines of seasoned politicians and news reporters. And today, the sequester will almost certainly happen, a year and a half after its inception as an intentionally unpalatable event amid the stalemate of the debt-limit crisis in 2011.

Automatic budget cuts will be triggered across federal agencies, as President Obama will be required to order sequestration into effect before midnight Friday night. The federal bureaucracy will implement its various plans to save the money it's required to save.

Now that the sequester will probably happen, here are some questions and answers about it:

1. HOW BIG IS IT?

The cuts were originally slated for $109 billion this year, but after the fiscal-cliff deal postponed the sequester for two months by finding alternate savings, the sequester will amount to $85 billion over the remainder of the year. Over the rest of the year, nondefense programs will be cut by nine percent, and defense programs will be cut by 13 percent.

If carried out over 10 years (as designed), the sequester will amount to $1.2 trillion in total.

2. WHAT WILL BE CUT, SPARED?

Most government programs will be cut, including both defense and nondefense spending, with the cuts distributed evenly (by dollar amount) over those two categories.

Some vital domestic entitlements, however, will be spared. Social Security checks won't shrink; nor will Veterans Administration programs. Medicare benefits won't get cut, but payments to providers will shrink by two percent. The Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), food stamps, Pell grants, and Medicaid will all be shielded from the sequester.

But lots of things will get cut. The Obama administration has warned that a host of calamities will befall vulnerable segments of the population.

3. WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE SO BAD?

Questions persist over whether or not it really does.

The sequester will mean such awful things because it forces agencies to cut things indiscriminately, instead of simply stripping money from their overall budgets.

But some Republicans, including Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, have suggested that federal agencies have plenty of flexibility to implement these cuts while avoiding the worst of the purported consequences. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal accused President Obama of trying to "distort" the severity of the sequester. The federal government will still spend more money than it did last year, GOP critics of sequester alarmism have pointed out.

The White House tells a different story.

According to the Office of Management and Budget, the sequestration law forces agency heads to cut the same percentage from each program. If that program is for TSA agents checking people in at airports, the sequester law doesn't care, and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano can't do anything about it.

Agency heads do have some authority to "reprogram" funds, rearranging their money to circumvent the bad effects. But an OMB official told ABC News that "these flexibilities are limited and do not provide significant relief due to the rigid nature of the way in which sequestration is required by law to be implemented."

4. WHEN WILL THE WORST OF IT START?

Not until April -- but some of the cuts could be felt before then.

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Bacteria defeat antibiotics they have never met before

BACTERIA that resist antibiotics are a growing problem worldwide, but one we thought we could limit or even reverse by better control of the drugs. This may be a forlorn hope: some bacteria that have never seen an antibiotic can evolve resistance, and even thrive on it.

Bacteria usually become resistant if they are exposed to drug levels too low to kill them off, but high enough to favour the survival of resistant mutants. Such resistance is growing and could make TB and other diseases untreatable again.

The prevailing notion was that bacteria acquire and maintain resistance genes at a cost. So by carefully controlling antibiotics, resistance should not emerge by itself – and should die out as soon as the antibiotic is withdrawn and resistance is no longer an advantage.

Maybe not. Olivier Tenaillon at Denis Diderot University, Paris, and colleagues were studying bacterial evolution by exposing Escherichia coli to high temperatures and little food. Unexpectedly, some bacteria spontaneously became resistant to the antibiotic rifampicin, even though they had never encountered it. The mutation that helped them deal with environmental stress just happened to confer resistance to the drug, used to treat TB and meningitis (BMC Evolutionary Biology, doi.org/kks).

"Our work suggests that selective pressure other than antibiotics may drive resistance," says Tenaillon.

Moreover, bacteria with the mutation grew 20 per cent faster than otherwise-identical bacteria – a first for a resistance mutation.

It only had this beneficial effect in the heat-adapted strain, says Arjan de Visser of Wageningen University in the Netherlands, who was not involved in the study. But, he adds, "these results are a cautionary tale for the use of antibiotics – resistance may come without costs [to bacteria]".

This article appeared in print under the headline "Bacteria defeat antibiotics they have never met"

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

All comments should respect the New Scientist House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please use the "Report" link in that comment to report it to us.

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