Climate change: Trump keeps world waiting on Paris deal

Donald Trump has said he will decide whether to pull out of a key climate change deal in the next week, having apparently shrugged off pressure from US allies in recent days.

The US president tweeted he would make his "final decision" on the Paris accord after his return to Washington.

Mr Trump left the G7 summit in Sicily on Saturday without reaffirming his commitment to the accord, unlike the other six world leaders in attendance.

He previously threatened to pull out.

Mr Trump, who has called climate change "a hoax" on occasion, has reportedly indicated this is still his position to key members of his inner circle.

The uncertainty over his position on the Paris agreement puts him at odds with other members of the G7.

What is the Paris accord?

The Paris deal is the world's first comprehensive climate agreement, set out in 2015, with the aim of keeping the global average rise in temperatures below 2C.

In order to do that, countries pledged to reduce their carbon emissions.

But it came into force only after being ratified by 55 countries, which between them produce 55% of global carbon emissions.

Barack Obama signed the US up in September 2016, and members of the G7 are keen for the US to continue to back it, not least because the country is the second largest emitter of greenhouse gasses after China.

Mr Trump told voters on the campaign trail he wanted to scrap agreements "contrary to the national interest", while repeatedly promising to strengthen the coal industry.

Coal power is a major contributor to carbon emissions. However, Mr Trump wants to boost coal production to create more jobs.

He has also expressed doubt about the causes of climate change, saying it is a "hoax" made up by China.

The Axios news site suggests Mr Trump is leaning that way currently, citing three sources who say his mind is made up, and that the wheels are quietly being put in motion behind the scenes.

This is despite US defence secretary James Mattis saying in an interview to air on Sunday that the president is now "wide open" on the issue.

Withdrawal would risk making Mr Trump unpopular not only with his allies abroad, but also with activists at home.

It was noted his attitude to climate change was one of the major hurdles during the summit in Sicily - the first time he has met his fellow G7 leaders as a group.

His stance left him isolated, with Mr Trump's reluctance to reaffirm his commitment clearly annoying German chancellor Angela Merkel, who told reporters: "The entire discussion about climate was very difficult, if not to say very dissatisfying."

There are fears the US pulling out may lead to other, smaller countries following suit.

Even if they do not, as the US has such a large carbon footprint, it will mean the impact of the agreement will likely be lessened significantly.

Whatever the US chooses, the EU, India and China say they will stick to their pledges made in Paris.

And what's more, some of Mr Trump's own country is likely to ignore his scepticism.

New York and California have already pledged to combat climate change without the Trump administration's support.

Terrorists' moral judgment probed in psychology test

A project aiming to "scientifically understand the mindset of terrorists" has published insights that the scientists say could have implications for terror prevention.

Researchers worked with a group of 66 incarcerated ex-combatants from a paramilitary terrorist group in Colombia, a country with one of the greatest insurgency rates in the world.

This unique experiment revealed what the team described as an "abnormal pattern of moral judgment" in terrorists.

The scientists say a psychological "score" based on this could be an accurate way to discriminate between the mindset of a terrorist and that of a non-criminal.

The researchers, based in Argentina, the US, Colombia and Chile, published their findings in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.

Agustín Ibanez and Adolfo García, from Favaloro University in Buenos Aires, who were part of the international research team, told BBC News they had spent four years working with Colombian law enforcers to secure permission to work with this large group of dangerous, incarcerated terrorists.

The study participants were former members of right-wing paramilitary groups, all of whom had been convicted of murder.

Many had been involved in massacres with hundreds of victims.

They took part in a series of psychological tests, including an assessment of moral cognition.

This involved presenting the subjects with a series of scenarios in which characters either deliberately or accidentally caused harm to others.

Each subject was then asked to rate the scenario on a scale from totally forbidden (1) to totally permissible (7).

Dr Ibanez said: "The typical response is that attempted harm should be more objected to than accidental harm. [But] the pattern in terrorists was the opposite."

The pattern this research revealed was that "extreme terrorists judge other people's actions by focusing on the outcomes of an action rather than its underlying intentions.

"This is the first study to demonstrate this psychological trait, [and it suggests that] a terrorist's moral code actually approves of any action if it contributes to achieving a given aim."

Brutal cognition

The researchers hope the conclusions could help build a psychological profile for use in forensics and law enforcement.

But they say further research will need specifically to examine how predictive this measure of moral cognition is when it comes to "identifying dangerous insurgent individuals".

They also pointed out that there were likely to be differences in the "origins and psychological traits of different forms of terrorism".

"For example, in the population we studied, religion does not seem to be a relevant factor. [In fact], most ex-combatants in Colombia joined paramilitary groups for economic reasons - because they were paid a salary.

"But I would envisage forensic psychologists ultimately using a moral score like this to help assess how much of a threat a particular individual poses - in addition to other measures of aggression and emotions, as well as other cognitive and social tasks," Dr Ibanez told BBC News.

Prof Seena Fazel, from the University of Oxford, a psychiatrist focusing on the relationship between mental illness and violent crime, told BBC News that the study was "a step forward".

He said there was value in the study's comparison of terrorists and non-criminals - the team carried out the same battery of tests on 66 healthy individuals from the same geographical region who had no terrorist background.

"I'd be interested in identifiable and modifiable factors that can either stop people repeating [a violent act] or stop them committing it in the first place. That would be where research could be very useful.

"These type of assessments rely on detailed interviews, so we're not at a point where we could scale up and implement this."

Juno peers below Jupiter's clouds

Scientists working on the American space agency's new Juno mission say its initial observations at Jupiter have taken their breath away.

In particular, they have been amazed by the storms seen at the planet's poles.

"Think of a bunch of hurricanes, every one the size of the Earth, all packed so close together that each hurricane touches the other," said Mike Janssen.

"Even in rooms of hardened researchers, these images of swirling clouds have drawn gasps," the Nasa man added.

The Juno probe arrived at the fifth planet from the Sun on 4 July last year. Since then, it has been making a close pass over the gas giant every 53 days.

The first data to come out of these observations are now being reported in two papers (here and here) in the journal Science, and in more than 40 others in a special collection for Geophysical Research Letters.

The mission team says that in nearly all instances, previously cherished theories about how Jupiter works are being challenged.

"We're getting the first really close up and personal look at Jupiter and we're seeing that a lot of our ideas were incorrect and maybe naive," said Juno principal investigator Scott Bolton from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas.

Those big cyclones that cover the highest latitudes of the planet are only now being seen in detail because previous missions to the planet never really got to look from above and below like Juno - certainly not at such a high resolution. Features down to 50km across can be discerned.

The structures are very different from those seen at Saturn's poles, for example, and the team will have to explain why. It is also not clear at this stage how long-lived they are. Will they dissipate much faster than the storms at lower latitudes, which in some cases - as with the famous Great Red Spot on Jupiter - have persisted for centuries?

Another surprise comes from Juno's Microwave Radiometer (MWR), which senses behaviour below the visible cloud surface. Its data indicates the presence of a broad band of ammonia around the equator that goes from the top of the atmosphere to as deep as it is possible to detect, at least 350km down. It could be part of a major circulation system.

But the MWR records the ammonia at higher latitudes to be much more variable.

"What this is telling us is that Jupiter is not very well mixed on the inside," said Dr Bolton. "The idea that once you drop below the sunlight everything would be uniform and boring was completely wrong. It's actually very different dependent on where you look."

Mission team-members picked out a number of highlights in the new results.

One concerned the magnetic field of Jupiter. It was known to be strong but it has now been determined to be even stronger than expected - a doubling of the assumed strength where the probe makes its closest approach to the planet (the field is about 10 times the strength of Earth's magnetic field).

But the signal is quite lumpy, which tells the scientists that the dynamo system - the electrically conducting region generating the field - is probably not that deep into the planet.

"When we see small spatial-scale variation, it indicates to us that we may be very close to the source and so that might mean the dynamo is above the metallic hydrogen (layers) and it may operate in the molecular hydrogen envelope above. That's very significant," said Jack Connerney, Juno's deputy principal investigator and the lead for the mission's magnetic field investigation.

It is the magnetic field investigation that is also at the heart of trying to understand Jupiter's very bright auroras - its northern and south lights. And again, what Juno is finding is not what everyone was expecting.

The auroras should result from electrons running down field lines and then striking the atmosphere. But the current carried by the electrons should have its own magnetic signature, and Juno has not at this stage been able to detect it.

"It's got us all scratching our heads, I have to say," said UK scientist Dr Jonathan Nichols from the University of Leicester.

"We see the auroras, we have a good idea we think of how they're generated but when it comes down it we're not seeing the signature of supposedly millions of amps of current."

One very smart picture taken by Juno and released on Thursday showed the ring of dust that surrounds Jupiter. It is not well known that Jupiter has a ring, but it does. What was clever was getting the familiar stars of the Orion constellation to be in on the shot as well.

"This is the first image of Jupiter's ring that has ever been collected from the inside of it looking out," said mission scientist Heidi Becker from Nasa.

"Juno is 3,000 miles from the planet when we took this picture. So, what you're looking at is a ring of dust that's 40,000 miles away and stars that are hundreds of light-years away, all in the same picture."

It is early days in the mission still (it is likely to run for several years yet), but the first gravity sensing data is pointing to some weirdness in respect of Jupiter's centre. Theories had suggested it either had a relatively small rocky core or no core at all (one suggestion was that the planet's gases went all the way down to the centre in an ever more compressed state).

Scientists are now considering something in between - a diffuse core. "It really looks fuzzy," said Dr Bolton. "There may be a core there but it's very big and it may be partially dissolved, and we're studying that."

Dr Bolton flagged up Juno's next pass, on 11 July. This will be dedicated to investigating the Great Red Spot.

Jupiter is 11 times wider than Earth and 300 times more massive

It takes 12 Earth years to orbit the Sun; a 'day' is 10 hours long

In composition it resembles a star; it's mostly hydrogen and helium

Under pressure, the hydrogen assumes a state similar to a metal

This 'metallic hydrogen' could be the source of the magnetic field

Most of the visible cloud tops contain ammonia and hydrogen sulphide

Jupiter's low-latitude 'bands' play host to very strong east-west winds

The Great Red Spot is a giant storm vortex twice as wide as Earth

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus: Ethiopian wins top WHO job

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus from Ethiopia will be the next director general of the World Health Organization (WHO).

He will be the first African to head up the UN agency, after winning the most votes from 186 member states.

He replaces Margaret Chan, who will step down from her 10-year post at the end of June.

During her tenure, the WHO's response to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa was criticised for being too slow.

The agency was accused of missing key warning signs about the severity of the outbreak that began in December 2013 and ultimately killed more than 11,000 people.

Addressing the World Health Assembly shortly before the vote, Dr Tedros promised to respond to future emergencies "rapidly and effectively".

He also promised to stand up for the rights of the poor.

"All roads should lead to universal health coverage. I will not rest until we have met this."

Family life: Married, with five children and lives in Ethiopia

Previous jobs: Ethiopian minister of health and foreign affairs, chairman of the board of the Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria

Qualifications: Internationally recognised malaria researcher, with a PhD in community health

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His election was not without controversy.

He has recently been accused of covering up three cholera epidemics in Ethiopia, but his supports say this is untrue.

Ethiopian opposition groups are also critical of Dr Tedros. They accuse the government of human rights abuses and believe that Dr Tedros' candidacy is an attempt to raise the country's diplomatic profile.

Dr Tedros said his vision as the new director general was of "a world in which everyone can lead health and productive lives, regardless of who they are or where they live".

He told delegates at the World General Assembly: "I promise I will get up every day, determined to make a difference... I am ready to serve."

His top five priorities in his new job are:

• Advancing universal health coverage
• Ensuring WHO responds rapidly and effectively to disease outbreaks and emergencies
• Putting the wellbeing of women, children and adolescents at the centre of global health and development
• Helping nations address the effects of climate change on health
• Making the agency transparent and accountable

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Analysis By Tulip Mazumdar, global health correspondent

Some people see Dr Tedros as a controversial pick, but others point to his impressive CV and insist he is the best person to lead the world's "guardian of global health".

As well as serving as Ethiopia's foreign affairs and health ministers, he's also chaired the Global Fund, which mobilizes and invests about $4bn a year to fight Aids, tuberculosis and malaria.

During the election campaign, Dr Tedros told me about the deep injustice he felt as a child when his five-year-old brother died of what he now believes was measles. He said the disparity of care between the developed and developing world continues to be utterly unacceptable.

Dr Tedros says universal healthcare - where everyone has access to affordable care when and where they need it - will be central to his presidency.

This is indeed the holy grail of global health, and Dr Tedros is now the man in charge of pressing governments to make it happen.

Lean-burn physiology gives Sherpas peak-performance

Nepalese Sherpas have a physiology that uses oxygen more efficiently than those used to the atmosphere at sea level.

This is the finding of a new study that investigated high-altitude adaptation in mountain populations.

The research involved taking muscle samples from mountaineers at 5,300m altitude and even putting them on an exercise bike at Mt Everest Base Camp.

The Sherpas owe this ability to an advantageous genetic mutation that gives them a unique metabolism.

It has long been a puzzle that Sherpas can cope with the low-oxygen atmosphere present high in the Himalayas far better than those visiting the region.

Mountaineers trekking to the area can adapt to the low oxygen by increasing the number of red cells in their blood, increasing its oxygen-carrying capacity.

In contrast, Sherpas actually have thinner blood, with less haemoglobin and a reduced capacity for oxygen (although this does have the advantage that the blood flows more easily and puts less strain on the heart).

"This shows that it's not how much oxygen you've got, it's what you do with it that counts," concludes Cambridge University’s Prof Andrew Murray, the senior author on the new study.

"Sherpas are extraordinary performers, especially on the high Himalayan peaks. So, there's something really unusual about their physiology," he told the BBC World Service's Science In Action programme.

Unravelling what is different involved a substantial scientific expedition to Everest Base Camp where the high-altitude response of 10 mostly European researchers and 15 elite Sherpas could be compared.

For participants like James Horscroft, whose PhD was based on the data he got from this Xtreme Everest 2 venture, this meant not just a chance to explore one of the planet’s most remote regions, but also a lot of pressure.

“It was very stressful, because we only had this one chance to get our data, high in the Himalaya."

For James, like all the others, those data included samples of muscle punctured from the thigh. While some samples were frozen to be taken back to university labs, others were experimented on in a makeshift lab at the base camp.

“We had to start at seven in the morning, because it took four hours to do all the tests on one sample," James said. "At that time, the temperature could be 10 degrees below freezing, so we'd be all wrapped up and wearing gloves. By late morning it would rise to plus-25, and we'd be taking all our kit off!"

What the biochemical tests on the fresh muscle showed was that the Sherpas' tissue was able to make much better use of oxygen by limiting the amount of body fat burned and maximising the glucose consumption.

"Fat is a great fuel, but the problem is that it's more oxygen hungry than glucose," Prof Murray explained.

In other words, by preferentially burning body sugar rather than body fat, the Sherpas can get more calories per unit of oxygen breathed.

The result impresses Federico Formenti of King’s College, London, whose own trekking study a decade ago, monitoring oxygen consumption through breath sensors, suggested Sherpas can produce 30% more power than lowlanders.

"This paper provides a cellular mechanism for what we found at the whole body level; that Sherpas use less oxygen to do the same job," he says.

James Horscroft agrees the difference in performance is impressive. "It was pretty clear straight away that our tissue experiments were showing different metabolisms for the two groups. In fact, the difference was so astounding we were worried if the tests were working."

But back in Cambridge the results were borne out. And a genetic variation altering the way fats are burned was established, too. While all of the Sherpas carried the glucose-favouring variant of the metabolic gene, almost none of the lowland volunteers did.

Sherpas are a specific population amongst the Nepalese ("the Ferraris of the Himalayans", Formenti calls them) who migrated to the country 500 years ago from Tibet, which has been occupied by humans for at least 6,000 years. That is plenty of time for a beneficial gene to become embedded, Prof Murray argues.

"It's not down to one gene, of course. We see better blood flow through the capillaries; and they appear to have a richer capillary network as well so that the oxygen can be delivered better to the tissues. But this gene would also have given them some advantage."

Other recent studies have shown that some genes that help Tibetans survive at high altitude come from the recently discovered extinct human species known as the Denisovans, although there is no evidence yet that the metabolic gene is among them.

The Sherpa study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

You can hear an interview with Prof Murray on this week's Science In Action programme, to be broadcast first on Thursday.

Brexit barriers 'would harm science', say universities

Barriers to research collaboration in Europe as a result of Brexit would harm scientific progress, says a group of leading UK universities.

Science and research should be a priority in the talks between the UK and the EU, says the Russell Group of research intensive universities.

Any barriers "would be bad for the UK and bad for Europe", said the group's acting director, Tim Bradshaw.

His comments come as the EU prepares to authorise the start of the talks.

The EU's chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, is due later on Monday to seek a formal mandate from the European Council in Brussels to begin negotiations.

Mr Barnier expects the talks to begin immediately after June's general election.

The Russell Group says there will be "no winners" if Brexit results in barriers between researchers and has pledged to work with "all sides to secure a positive outcome".

Dr Bradshaw said there had been "huge breakthroughs in medicine, engineering, and any number of fields" as a result of joint working, which he promised would continue after Brexit.

"We want to maintain the closest possible relationships with colleagues across the EU, and research must be a priority during talks," he added.

He called for the rights of EU students and staff at UK universities to be guaranteed after Brexit.

"We value our EU colleagues very highly and need urgent assurances, that after Brexit, they will retain the same rights to stay and work in the UK that they have now.

"Nearly half of all UK academic articles result from international collaboration and EU member states are some of our biggest partners.

"These relationships improve the quality of UK research and underpin the strength of our science base."

UK universities are among the biggest beneficiaries of the EU's huge Horizon 2020research fund.

Non-EU countries can also draw on the fund if they contribute to it - but a major condition of countries being able to participate is allowing freedom of movement for researchers, a potential stumbling block in the talks.

Manifesto pledges

The Conservative party manifesto, promises to "collaborate in science and innovation" with EU member states.

The manifesto also pledges to secure the entitlements of EU nationals in Britain and British nationals in the EU.

"There may be specific European programmes in which we might want to participate and if so, it will be reasonable that we make a contribution," the document adds.

Labour's manifesto promises that the party in government would "ensure that the UK maintains our leading research role by seeking to stay part of Horizon 2020 and its successor programmes and by welcoming research staff to the UK".

The party also says it will seek to maintain membership, or equivalent, with European organisations that offer benefits to the UK such as Euratom and the European Medicines Agency.

The Liberal Democrat manifesto warns that "the Leave vote has already started to affect existing and proposed research programmes".

"We will campaign against any reduction in investment in UK universities and for their right to apply for EU funds on equal terms."

Manifestos have not yet been published for the SNP, UKIP or the Green Party.

'Fat but fit is a big fat myth'

The idea that people can be fat but medically fit is a myth, say experts speaking in Portugal.

Their early work, as yet unpublished, involved looking at the GP records of 3.5 million people in the UK.

They say people who were obese but who had no initial signs of heart disease, diabetes or high cholesterol were not protected from ill health in later life, contradicting previous research.

A summary of their study was discussed at the European Congress on Obesity.

The term "fat but fit" refers to the alluring theory that if people are obese but all their other metabolic factors such as blood pressure and blood sugar are within recommended limits then the extra weight will not be harmful.

In this study, researchers at the University of Birmingham analysed data of millions of British patients between 1995 and 2015 to see if this claim held true.

They tracked people who were obese at the start of the study (defined as people with a body mass index of 30 or more) who had no evidence of heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol or diabetes at this point.

They found these people who were obese but "metabolically healthy" were at higher risk of developing heart disease, strokes and heart failure than people of normal weight.

Dr Mike Knapton, from the British Heart Foundation, said: "It's not often that research on this scale and magnitude is able to clarify an age-old myth.

"These findings should be taken extremely seriously and I'd urge healthcare professionals to take heed."

He added: "Previously we used to think that being overweight led to an increase in heart attacks and stroke because it raised your blood pressure or cholesterol.

"What was new from this study for me is that it showed that people who were overweight or obese were at increased risk of heart disease even though they may have been healthy in every other respect.

"Just being overweight puts you at increased risk of heart attack and stroke."

But the study has not appeared in a scientific journal and, as such, it will not have gone through a number of checks by other academics to judge whether it is scientifically sound.

It is difficult for example to know how well other influential factors - such as diet, lifestyle or smoking - were taken into account.

This makes it hard for scientists to see how clear-cut the conclusions are or gauge how big any increased risks of ill-health might be.

According to the British Heart Foundation, the normal heart health advice applies - not smoking, eating a balanced diet, exercising regularly and limiting alcohol intake - can all help keep people healthy.

Dr Knapton added: "This is not about laying the blame at individuals though.

"This is a wake-up call for planners, local councillors, food manufacturers and the government to make sure we can make healthy choices more easily."

Dr Rishi Caleyachetty from the University of Birmingham, added: "The priority of health professionals should be to promote and facilitate weight loss among obese persons, regardless of the presence or absence of metabolic abnormalities."

He added: "At the population level, so-called metabolically healthy obesity is not a harmless condition."

Other studies suggest it might just be possible to be fat and have the right genes, for example, to remain fit.

For example research published in 2012 appears to suggests it is possible for people to buck the trend and be fat and healthy if they have no metabolic diseases.

Published in the European Heart Journal, researchers suggest people who are obese yet physically healthy are at no greater risk of heart disease or cancer than people of normal weight.

But other experts point out that the way scientists measure fatness and fitness makes this a tricky area to study and could make some of the more tantalising results invalid.

Tom Sanders, emeritus professor of nutrition and dietetics, King's College London, says a major weakness of the Birmingham study is that it uses definite cut-offs to decide when someone has high blood pressure or high cholesterol for example.

Instead, he argues that it is too simple and not accurate to use such definite values to decide whether someone is healthy.

And other studies have suggested that it is not always the amount of fat that matters but where the excess fat is carried on the body that can affect fitness and health.

For example, weight around the middle may be more damaging than weight distributed evenly around the body.

Overall, experts say it is important to not just focus on what you see in the mirror or on the scales - exercise and healthy eating can help boost wellness, no matter how much a person weighs.

Cities need 'hedges as well as trees' for environment

Hedges are often better than trees at soaking up air pollution among tall buildings, research has suggested.

A paper in the journal Atmospheric Environment says tall trees are good at absorbing pollution in more open areas.

But hedges can trap toxins at exhaust pipe level, so reduce people's direct exposure to harmful pollutants.

Lead author Prof Prashant Kumar said councils should try to plant low hedges between pedestrians and the street if pavements are wide enough.

He and his partners in the EU and US are still researching the best pollution-busting plants, and the optimum height for the hedge.

But any gardener in a major city who has trimmed a privet hedge, for instance, will attest that it is full of dust and pollutants that the tight-knit foliage has filtered from the air.

The authors of the report are not anti-trees - far from it.

They say trees help clean the air, and many more should be planted as people worldwide flood into cities.

But they say the role of the hedge has been neglected, especially in city "canyons" where tall trees can in some circumstances trap pollution at street level.

There is, they insist, no hard and fast rule about the best planting for any given area - it will depend upon local conditions.

Dr Kumar, of Surrey University, told BBC News: "The big thing about hedges is that they are right down at tailpipe level.

"The emissions from vehicles starts to dilute very quickly as you move away from the road - so any hedge that acts as a barrier slowing down the airflow and catching pollutants on the leaves is going to offer people in homes better protection."

The paper comes as cash-strapped councils round the UK are starting to charge households for collecting green waste.

If this policy prompts people to remove their hedges to avoid the charges, it seems that the neighbourhood may suffer.