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Syria named as huge producer of ‘chemical courage’ drug Captagon

SYRIA is becoming a major producer of a banned amphetamine that gives “chemical courage” to fighters in the country’s civil war and helps them fight for longer, according to the United Nations. The drug, fenethylline — which is more widely known as Captagon — is known for masking fear, pain and hunger, and slows solders’ fatigue during long and arduous battles. Terrorists who killed 130 people during the Paris attacks in November were believed to have taken Captagon or a similar drug. Now, the UN believes it is being increasingly trafficked from Syria to other areas of the Middle East. “We have observed increasing seizures of shipments of Captagon in the countries sharing a border with Syria,” said Masood Karimipour, the regional head of the UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime for the Middle East and North Africa. The amphetamine has been used to treat attention deficit disorder since the 1960s and was put on a list of controlled substances by the World Health Organisation in 1986. It has become a popular recreational drug in the Middle East, where it’s sold for up to $20 a pill. According to the UN, there is anecdotal evidence from former fighters in Syria that suggest the widespread use of the drug among all sides of the civil conflict. “They recount Captagon as making them feel powerful, fearless and invincible,” Mr Karimipour told The Times.(Captagon is sold for up to $20 a pill in Syria, which is emerging as a major exporter of the drug.) “It’s chemical courage.” A Syrian police officer in Homs, in western Syria, told Reuters he had seen the effects of Captagon on anti-government protesters. “We would beat them, and they wouldn’t feel the pain,” he said. “Many of them would laugh while we were dealing them heavy blows. “We would leave the prisoners for about 48 hours without questioning them while the effects of Captagon wore off, and then interrogation would become easier.” It induces “a kind of euphoria,” Lebanese psychiatrist Ramzi Haddad told The Guardian. “You’re talkative, you don’t sleep, you don’t eat, you’re energetic.” Analysts say the so-called Islamic State terror group is one of the groups believed to be making millions of dollars from trafficking Captagon to other parts of the Middle East. On the weekend Jordanian border police seized two million Captagon pills and killed 12 gunmen during a battle on the Syrian border. It was one of several huge seizures of the drug, worth millions of dollars, made by countries bordering Syria. Turkey reported seizing 11 million pills near the Syrian border in November, while Lebanon said it seized 15 million pills in April and five tonnes in December. The December seizure also uncovered a production facility in a remote area close to the Syrian border. Syria was home to a large pharmaceuticals industry before the war, Mr Karimipour said. “If you’re in organised crime, civil war is good for business,” he said. “The profit margins are enormous. “Each [Captagon] pill, made for pennies’ worth of chemicals, is sold on the street for [five dollars] to [20 dollars], depending on that what the market will bear.” Mr Karimipour said the biggest market was in the Gulf, especially Saudi Arabia, which said it had seized 55 million Captagon pills but admitted that this was only 10 per cent of the total. Imaduldin Hneithel, former head of the Revolutionary Council in Manbej, near Aleppo, told The Times that rebel forces “aren’t angels” but claimed that drug-taking was more widespread among IS fighters. “That helps them fight crazily, attack uncovered against strong positions,” said Ahmed Thaljeh, a fighter with the Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zenki brigade near Aleppo. “They don’t even care about their wounded.”

The Power of Curiosity

 What do you want most in life? For the vast majority of us, the answer is “to be happy.” In a 2007 survey of more than 10,000 people from 48 countries published in Perspectives on Psychological Sciences, happiness was viewed as more important than success, intelligence, knowledge, maturity, wisdom, relationships, wealth and meaning in life. Happiness is a good thing. Yet, both in my professional research and in my personal experience, I’ve observed that when we focus solely on what we think will make us happy, we can lose track of what actually does. In 2007 the Princeton economist Alan Krueger, Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman and their colleagues published a paper called “Are We Having More Fun Yet?” They posed this question: Have the social progress, economic prosperity and technological advancements of the past 50 years changed the quality of our lives? Have these new opportunities allowed us to spend more time doing what we care about most, thus increasing our satisfaction and meaning in life? For most of us, the answer is no. The majority of Americans spend less than 20 percent of each day doing what could be termed very engaging, enjoyable and meaningful activities (such as talking with close friends, bonding with loved ones, creating, playing, or pursuing a spiritual practice). Instead, most of our time and energy are spent either engaged in unsatisfying work activities and chores (commuting, standing in line at the post office, fixing broken appliances), or decompressing in ways that bring neither joy nor challenge (watching TV, snacking or just “doing nothing”). It doesn’t have to be this way, though — if we’re willing to shake up our pursuit of happiness by introducing some elements of surprise. One of the most reliable and overlooked keys to happiness is cultivating and exercising our innate sense of curiosity. That’s because curiosity — a state of active interest or genuinely wanting to know more about something — creates an openness to unfamiliar experiences, laying the groundwork for greater opportunities to experience discovery, joy and delight. Curiosity is something that can be nurtured and developed. With practice, we can harness the power of curiosity to transform everyday tasks into interesting and enjoyable experiences. We can also use curiosity to intentionally create wonder, intrigue and play out of almost any situation or interaction we encounter. It all starts with wanting to know more. 5 BENEFITS OF AN INQUIRING MIND Curiosity, at its core, is all about noticing and being drawn to things we find interesting. It’s about recognizing and seizing the pleasures that novel experiences offer us, and finding novelty and meaning even in experiences that are familiar. When we are curious, we see things differently; we use our powers of observation more fully. We sense what is happening in the present moment, taking note of what is, regardless of what it looked like before or what we might have expected it to be. We feel alive and engaged, more capable of embracing opportunities, making connections, and experiencing moments of insight and meaning — all of which provide the foundation for a rich, aware and satisfying life experience. Here are five of the important ways that curiosity enhances our well-being and the quality of our lives: 1. Health In a 1996 study published in Psychology and Aging, more than 1,000 older adults aged 60 to 86 were carefully observed over a five-year period, and researchers found that those who were rated as being more curious at the beginning of the study were more likely to be alive at its conclusion, even after taking into account age, whether they smoked, the presence of cancer or cardiovascular disease, and so on. It is possible that declining curiosity is an initial sign of neurological illness and declining health. Nonetheless, there are promising signs that enhancing curiosity reduces the risk for these diseases and may even reverse some of the natural degeneration that occurs in older adults. In his book, The Power of Premonitions (Dutton, 2009), Larry Dossey, MD, cites studies that have shown women “who regularly engage in mini-mysteries … taking on novel experiences that get them out of familiar routines (better) preserve their mental faculties later in life.” In short, a regular dose of the unexpected helps keep your brain healthy. A 2005 report in the journal Health Psychology described a two-year study involving more than 1,000 patients that found higher levels of curiosity were also associated with a decreased likelihood of developing hypertension and diabetes. While correlation does not imply causation, these relationships suggest that curiosity may have a variety of positive connections with health that deserve further study. 2. Intelligence Studies have shown that curiosity positively correlates with intelligence. In one study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2002, researchers correctly predicted that high novelty-seeking (or highly curious) toddlers would have higher IQs as older children than toddlers with lower levels of curiosity. Researchers measured the degree of novelty-seeking behavior in 1,795 3-year-olds and then measured their cognitive ability at age 11. As predicted, the 11-year-olds who had been highly curious 3-year-olds later scored 12 points higher on total IQ compared with low stimulation seekers. They also had superior scholastic and reading ability. Other studies have shown that high levels of curiosity in adults are connected to greater analytic ability, problem-solving skills and overall intelligence. All of which suggests that cultivating more curiosity in your daily life is likely to make you smarter. 3. Social Relationships It is far easier to form and maintain satisfying, significant relationships when you demonstrate an attitude of openness and genuine interest. One of the top reasons why couples seek counseling or therapy is because they’ve become bored with each other. This often sparks resentment, hostility, communication breakdowns and a lack of interest in spending time together (only adding to the initial problem). Curious people report more satisfying relationships and marriages. Happy couples describe their partners as interested and responsive. Curious people are inclined to act in ways that allow relationships to develop more easily. In one of my studies, participants spent five minutes getting acquainted with a stranger of the opposite sex, and each person made judgments about his or her partner’s personality. We also interviewed their closest friends and parents to gain added insight into the qualities that curious people bring to relationships. Each of these groups — acquaintances of a mere five minutes, close friends and parents — characterized curious people as highly enthusiastic and energetic, talkative, interesting in what they say and do, displaying a wide range of interests, confident, humorous, less likely to express insecurities, and lacking in timidity and anxiety compared with less curious people. Curious people ask questions and take an interest in learning about partners, and they intentionally try to keep interactions interesting anaging d playful. This approach supports the development of good relationships. 4. Happiness The Gallup organization recently reported the results of a survey conducted with more than 130,000 people from some 130 nations, a sample designed to represent 96 percent of the world’s population. The poll identified two factors that had the strongest influence on how much enjoyment a person experienced in a given day: “being able to count on someone for help” and “learned something yesterday.” What this poll confirms is that developing good relationships with other people (see above) and growing as a person are foundational components of a “happy” life. Both factors are supported by curiosity. In fact, in one of the largest undertakings in the field of psychology, two pioneers in the field of positive psychology, Martin Seligman, PhD, and Chris Peterson, PhD, devised a scientific classification of the basic human strengths. This system was the end result of reading the works of ancient philosophers, religious texts and contemporary literature, then identifying patterns, and finally subjecting these ideas to rigorous scientific tests. Their research eventually recognized 24 basic strengths. And, of those 24 strengths that human beings can possess, curiosity was one of the five most highly associated with overall life fulfillment and happiness. There are other important relationships between curiosity and happiness. In his book Stumbling on Happiness (Knopf, 2006), Harvard University psychology professor Daniel Gilbert, PhD, shows that, while we think we know what will make us happy in the future, we are actually less likely to find joy as a result of a planned pursuit than by simply stumbling upon it. It follows that by cultivating curiosity and remaining open to new experiences, we increase our likelihood of encountering those surprising and satisfying activities. 5. Meaning If we are going to find a meaningful purpose or calling in life, chances are good we will find it in something that unleashes our natural curiosity and fascination. Indeed, curiosity is the entry point to many of life’s greatest sources of meaning and satisfaction: our interests, hobbies and passions. While being passionate about something naturally renders you curious to know as much as you can about it, it also works the other way around: The more curiosity you can muster for something, the more likely you are to notice and learn about it, and thus the more interesting and meaningful it will become for you over time. This is true of people, books, sports, skills and conversations. Often, the more curiosity and energy we invest in exploring and understanding them, the more compelling they become. This has important implications for how much meaning and passion we experience in life: The greater the range and depth of our curiosity, the more opportunities we have to experience things that inspire and excite us, from minute details to momentous occasions. TUNE IN TO YOUR CURIOSITY One of the best ways to better appreciate the power of curiosity is to start exercising it more consciously in your daily experiences. By doing so, you can transform routine tasks, enlivening them with new energy. You will also likely begin to notice more situations that have the potential to engage you, giving your curiosity even more opportunities to flourish. Here are four strategies to consider: Build knowledge. Knowledge opens our eyes to interesting gaps about what we don’t know. When a marine biologist goes snorkeling and is able to name specific fishes by the size, color, texture, and shape of eyes and fins, he or she is going to be acutely aware of the unusual features that the rest of us will miss — a pattern of orange stripes that are vertical when they are usually horizontal. The child who can name 45 states is much more interested in discovering the five he or she doesn’t know than the child with only three states in the brain bank. The person learning to play the piano will hear more nuances in a piano concerto than the person who doesn’t know treble clef from bass clef. If you want to be curious, start accumulating knowledge. (For some suggestions on how to do that, see “Awaken Your Inner Sherlock,” below.) Thrive on uncertainty. We rarely look forward to anxiety and tension, but research shows that these mixed emotions are often what lead to the most intense and longest-lasting positive experiences. People who take part in new and uncertain activities are happier and find more meaning in their lives than people who rely on the familiar. Most of us mistakenly believe that certainty will make us happier than uncertainty. Imagine that you go to a football game knowing that your team will win. Most people would say that, yes, that would make them happy. Yet knowing the outcome in advance takes away the thrill of watching each play and the good tension that comes with not knowing what will happen next. We forget about the pleasures of surprise and uncertainty. Remind yourself of the pleasures of surprise by thinking back to the last five positive events in your life that began with an uncertain, unknown outcome. Think of sporting events, first dates, job interviews and so on. You will likely be surprised to find how big a role surprise plays in your joyful experiences. Reconnect with play. We can add play and playfulness to almost any task, and the attitude of play naturally builds interest and curiosity. This dynamic was captured wonderfully in a National Public Radio story about an assembly-line worker in a potato chip factory whose job was to make sure that the chips rolling down the conveyor belt were uniform and aesthetically pleasing before being bagged. This man found the job dreary. So he developed a game that made it more interesting: He searched for potato chips resembling famous people and kept a collection (imagine silhouettes of Elvis, Charles Manson, Marilyn Monroe and Jimi Hendrix). Because he was constantly scanning odd and bizarre shapes for celebrity resemblances, the day moved quickly. He also became incredibly efficient at catching misshapen chips. Find the unfamiliar in the familiar. One way to become more curious is to intentionally circumvent expectations, labels and assumptions about “seemingly” familiar activities and events. It’s easy to prejudge an activity because we think we have seen it before or avoid an activity entirely because we expect it to be boring or unpleasant. The goal of discovering the unfamiliar in the familiar is to suspend judgments and attend to how things are, not how you expect them to be. In a recent study, researchers asked people to do something they reported disliking and pay attention to three novel features when they did it. This small exercise altered the way they viewed and felt about the activity. For example, an 18-year-old male bodybuilder who scoffed at crocheting spent 90 minutes practicing the task. The three novel discoveries he reported were 1) how demanding the process of making small stitches could be (he hadn’t anticipated that this “easy” task would tire him); 2) that it could be meditative (“time flew by”); and 3) that the crochet stitches could be tight enough to create flip-flop sandals (which was the project he worked on). When the study subjects were contacted weeks later, those individuals who were asked to search for the novel and unfamiliar in their laboratory task were more likely to have done the task on their own without being asked or prompted (though it is unknown if the bodybuilder continued crocheting). A window of opportunity and willingness opened for these participants that had been previously closed off by their preconceived ideas. This same little experiment can be applied to any activity in your life. Consider the list of low-interest, but necessary, activities in your typical day. Choose one of these ho-hum activities and, as you do it, search for any three novel or unexpected things about it. With tasks that are new to you or that you haven’t even considered (like the bodybuilder who tried crocheting), ask yourself if you can find one thing that is surprising to you as a newcomer to this particular activity. Also keep in mind that, even though recurring situations may look identical on the surface, any event — especially one involving people — has some degree of novelty each time it occurs. Be on the lookout for even the tiniest thing that is different, special or notable, and chances are good that you’ll find something.

A Last-Minute Guide to ‘Picasso Sculpture’ at MoMA

 Unlike Picasso the painter, Picasso the sculptor was self-taught — there were no boundaries, and also not much technique at first. He worked fast in short productive spurts, always striding forward. In his “Glass of Absinthe” bronzes from 1914, Picasso lets slotted absinthe spoons play themselves. And like many of his sculptural works, seen from the right angle, a face comes into view. But in “Head of a Woman” (1929-30), the colanders and springs are hard to spot until you hunt for them. Then, in “Bull’s Head” (1942), it works both ways. We can see the bicycle handlebars and seat as what they are, and also as what they have become — the transformation from inanimate to animate. In “Woman Reading” (1951-53), legs and an arm were made of screws, conduit served as a braid and a piece of wood became the perfect stand-in for a pleated skirt. All of this was cast in bronze and then painted by Picasso. A toy car becomes a head in “Baboon and Young” (1951), with the simple addition of two small balls for the pupils of its feral eyes. Picasso’s sculptural works were very intuitive, making imaginative use of whatever he found around him. The 1907 work “Figure” is carved in boxwood.  Compare that relatively straightforward carving to the gnarly 1934 assemblage “The Reaper,” incorporating plaster and several pieces of wood, both natural and machined. A genius of tactility. In “Bull” (1958), different shapes cut from flat blockboard and nailed together take on a 3-D quality with the addition of branches and mop handles and a painting stretcher to mark the animal’s face.

4 Reasons Why Curiosity is Important and How to Develop It

 Curiosity is an important trait of a genius. I don’t think you can find an intellectual giant who is not a curious person. Thomas Edison, Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, they are all curious characters. Richard Feynman was especially known for his adventures which came from his curiosity. But why is curiosity so important? Here are four reasons: It makes your mind active instead of passive Curious people always ask questions and search for answers in their minds. Their minds are always active. Since the mind is like a muscle which becomes stronger through continual exercise, the mental exercise caused by curiosity makes your mind stronger and stronger. It makes your mind observant of new ideas When you are curious about something, your mind expects and anticipates new ideas related to it. When the ideas come they will soon be recognized. Without curiosity, the ideas may pass right in front of you and yet you miss them because your mind is not prepared to recognize them. Just think, how many great ideas may have lost due to lack of curiosity? It opens up new worlds and possibilities By being curious you will be able to see new worlds and possibilities which are normally not visible. They are hidden behind the surface of normal life, and it takes a curious mind to look beneath the surface and discover these new worlds and possibilities. It brings excitement into your life The life of curious people is far from boring. It’s neither dull nor routine. There are always new things that attract their attention, there are always new ‘toys’ to play with. Instead of being bored, curious people have an adventurous life. Now, knowing the importance of curiosity, here are some tips to develop it: 1. Keep an open mind This is essential if you are to have a curious mind. Be open to learn, unlearn, and relearn. Some things you know and believe might be wrong, and you should be prepared to accept this possibility and change your mind. 2. Don’t take things as granted If you just accept the world as it is without trying to dig deeper, you will certainly lose the ‘holy curiosity’. Never take things as granted. Try to dig deeper beneath the surface of what is around you. 3. Ask questions relentlessly A sure way to dig deeper beneath the surface is asking questions: What is that? Why is it made that way? When was it made? Who invented it? Where does it come from? How does it work? What, why, when, who, where, and how are the best friends of curious people. 4. Don’t label something as boring Whenever you label something as boring, you close one more door of possibilities. Curious people are unlikely to call something as boring. Instead, they always see it as a door to an exciting new world. Even if they don’t yet have time to explore it, they will leave the door open to be visited another time. 5. See learning as something fun If you see learning as a burden, there’s no way you will want to dig deeper into anything. That will just make the burden heavier. But if you think of learning as something fun, you will naturally want to dig deeper. So look at life through the glasses of fun and excitement and enjoy the learning process.. 6. Read diverse kinds of reading Don’t spend too much time on just one world; take a look at another worlds. It will introduce you to the possibilities and excitement of the other worlds which may spark your interest to explore them further. One easy way to do this is through reading diverse kinds of reading. Try to pick a book or magazine on a new subject and let it feed your mind with the excitement of a new world.

The children raised by wolves

 Oxana Malaya, Ukraine, 1991Beautiful and disturbing at the same time, the images in Julia Fullerton-Batten’s latest project have a dreamlike, fairy-tale quality. Yet the lives they portray are real. “There are two different scenarios – one where the child ended up in the forest, and another where the child was actually at home, so neglected and abused that they found more comfort from animals than humans,” the photographer tells BBC Culture. This image recreates the case of Ukrainian girl Oxana Malaya. According to Fullerton-Batten, “Oxana was found living with dogs in a kennel in 1991. She was eight years old and had lived with the dogs for six years. Her parents were alcoholics and one night, they had left her outside. Looking for warmth, the three-year-old crawled into the farm kennel and curled up with the mongrel dogs, an act that probably saved her life. She ran on all fours, panted with her tongue out, bared her teeth and barked. Because of her lack of human interaction, she only knew the words ‘yes’ and ‘no’.” Oxana now lives in a clinic in Odessa, working with the hospital’s farm animals. (Credit: Julia Fullerton-Batten) shamdeo, India, 1972“This is not like Tarzan,” says Fullerton-Batten. “The children had to fight the animals for their own food – they had to learn to survive. When I read their stories, I was shocked and horrified.” There are 15 cases in her Feral Children project, staged photographs telling the stories of people isolated from human contact, often from a very young age. This one shows Shamdeo, a boy who was found in a forest in India in 1972 – he was estimated to be four years old. “He was playing with wolf cubs. His skin was very dark, and he had sharpened teeth, long hooked fingernails, matted hair and calluses on his palms, elbows and knees. He was fond of chicken-hunting, would eat earth and had a craving for blood. He bonded with dogs.” He never spoke, but learnt some sign language, and died in 1985. (Credit: Julia Fullerton-Batten) Marina Chapman, Colombia, 1959The photographer was inspired to start her project after reading The Girl With No Name, a book about the Colombian woman Marina Chapman. “Marina was kidnapped in 1954 at five years of age from a remote South American village and left by her kidnappers in the jungle,” says Fullerton-Batten. “She lived with a family of capuchin monkeys for five years before she was discovered by hunters. She ate berries, roots and bananas dropped by the monkeys; slept in holes in trees and walked on all fours, like the monkeys. It was not as though the monkeys were giving her food – she had to learn to survive, she had the ability and common sense – she copied their behaviour and they became used to her, pulling lice out of her hair and treating her like a monkey.” Chapman now lives in Yorkshire, with a husband and two daughters. “Because it was such an unusual story, a lot of people didn’t believe her – they X-rayed her body and looked at her bones to see if she was really malnourished, and concluded that it could have happened.” Fullerton-Batten contacted her: “She was very happy for me to use her name and do this shoot.” (Credit: Julia Fullerton-Batten) John Ssebunya, Uganda, 1991The photographer was advised by Mary-Ann Ochota, a British anthropologist and presenter of the TV series Feral Children. “She had been to Ukraine, Uganda and Fiji and met three of the surviving children,” says Fullerton-Batten. “It was helpful in directing me in how they position their hands, how they walk, how they survived – I wanted to make this look as real and as believable as possible.” This image deals with the case of John Ssebunya. “John ran away from home in 1988 when he was three years old after seeing his father murder his mother,” says Fullerton-Batten. “He fled into the jungle where he lived with monkeys. He was captured in 1991, now about six years old, and placed in an orphanage… He had calluses on his knees from walking like a monkey.” John has learned to speak, and was a member of the Pearl of Africa children’s choir. While many of the stories of feral children are as much myth as reality, Ochota believes Ssebunya’s account. “This wasn’t part of the standard feral-child hoax yarn,” she wrote in The Independent in 2012. “We were investigating a real case.” (Credit: Julia Fullerton-Batten) Madina, Russia, 2013“These strange, feral children are often a source of shame and secrecy within a family or community,” writes Mary-Ann Ochota on her website. “These aren't Jungle Book stories, they're often harrowing cases of neglect and abuse. And it's all too likely because of a tragic combination of addiction, domestic violence and poverty. These are kids who fell through the cracks, who were forgotten, or ignored, or hidden.” According to Fullerton-Batten, “Madina lived with dogs from birth until she was three years old, sharing their food, playing with them, and sleeping with them when it was cold in winter. When social workers found her in 2013, she was naked, walking on all fours and growling like a dog. Madina’s father had left soon after her birth. Her mother, 23 years old, took to alcohol. She was frequently too drunk to look after for her child and… would sit at the table to eat while her daughter gnawed bones on the floor with the dogs.” Madina was taken into care and doctors found her to be mentally and physically healthy despite what she had been through. (Credit: Julia Fullerton-Batten)  Sujit Kumar, Fiji, 1978“Sujit was eight years old when he was found in the middle of a road clucking and flapping his arms and behaving like a chicken,” says Fullerton-Batten. “He pecked at his food, crouched on a chair as if roosting, and would make rapid clicking noises with his tongue. His parents locked him in a chicken coop. His mother committed suicide and his father was murdered. His grandfather took responsibility for him but still kept him confined in the chicken coop.” For the children, the transition after being found could be as difficult as the years spent in isolation. “When they were discovered, it was such a shock – they had learnt animal behaviour, their fingers were claw-like and they couldn’t even hold a spoon. Suddenly all these humans were trying to get them to sit properly and talk.” Kumar is now cared for by Elizabeth Clayton, who rescued him from an old people’s home and set up a charity housing children in need. (Credit: Julia Fullerton-Batten) Ivan Mishukov, Russia, 1998Despite the harrowing accounts in her series, Fullerton-Batten’s images tell a story of survival. “All human beings need human contact, but for these children their whole life becomes focused on a survival instinct,” she says, asking “if those living in the companionship of wild animals were perhaps better off than those whose young lives were spent with no companionship at all.” Ivan ran away from his family at the age of four, feeding scraps of food to a pack of wild dogs and eventually becoming a kind of pack leader. He lived on the streets for two years, before he was taken to a children’s home. In his book Savage Girls And Wild Boys: A History Of Feral Children, Michael Newton wrote that “The relationship worked perfectly, far better than anything Ivan had known among his fellow humans. He begged for food, and shared it with his pack. In return, he slept with them in the long winter nights of deep darkness, when the temperatures plummeted.” Fullerton-Batten believes the ‘feral child’ can reveal much that is hidden within seemingly civilised societies – a city can be as inhospitable as a forest. “Ivan ran away so it was a choice he made, not to be at home – but his home must have been so bad that he would rather be on the streets with a pack of dogs,” she says. “I was trying not to be exploitative. Three of the cases inspired charities – I wanted to raise awareness about what is still going on.” (Credit: Julia Fullerton-Batten) (BBC)

What will power tomorrow’s spacecraft?

 Power systems are a critical part of a spacecraft. They need to be able to operate in extreme environments and be utterly reliable. Yet, with the ever-increasing power demands of more complex spacecraft, what does the future hold for their power technologies? The latest mobile phones can barely last a day without the need to be plugged into a power socket. Yet the Voyager space probe, which was launched 38 years ago, is still sending us information from beyond the edges of our solar system. The Voyager probes are capable of efficiently processing 81,000 instructions every second, but the average smartphone is more than 7,000 times faster. Your mobile phone is, of course, designed for regular recharging, and is unlikely to ever be several million miles from the nearest socket. Recharging a spacecraft, when it is 100 million miles from the nearest charging point, is impractical. Instead, a spacecraft must be able to either store or generate sufficient power to keep going for decades in space. That, it turns out, can be quite a difficult thing to achieve. While some onboard systems only require power occasionally, others need to be continually operational. Transponders and receivers need to be active all the time, as well as life-support and lighting in the case of a manned space flight or space stations.  Dr Rao Surampudi is the power technology programme manager for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology. For over 30 years he has been developing power systems for various Nasa spacecraft. According to Surampudi, the power systems for spacecraft usually take up approximately 30% of a spacecraft’s mass and can be broken down into three distinct subsets: Power generation Energy storage Power management and distribution These systems are absolutely crucial to the operation of a spacecraft. They need to have low mass, long life and be ‘energy dense’, in that they must produce a lot of energy from a comparatively small volume. They must also have proven reliability, as sending someone into space in order to fix something is impractical, to say the least. Not only must the systems be able to provide sufficient energy to supply all of the onboard power needs, they must also be able to do so for the life of the mission – something which may be measured in decades or even centuries in the years to come. “The intended lifespan has to be long, for if something goes wrong, you cannot go there and fix it,” says Surampudi. “To go to Jupiter will take five to seven years, to go to Pluto will take more than 10 years, but to leave our solar system will take 20 to 30 years.” Due to the unique environment in which they operate, spacecraft power systems must also be able to operate in zero gravity and in a vacuum, as well as endure immense amounts of radiation (in which most electronics will not operate) and extreme temperatures. “If you were to land on Venus, the temperatures could be as high as 460°C (860°F),” says Surampudi, “but if you were to ‘land’ on Jupiter it could be as low as -150°C (-238°F).” Spacecraft that are heading towards the centre of our solar system will have abundant solar energy for their photovoltaic solar panels. A spacecraft’s solar panels may look like the conventional solar panels on our homes, but they are designed to work far more efficiently than the ones you might use to power your home. The soaring temperatures from close proximity to the Sun can also cause the solar panels to overheat. This is mitigated by turning the solar panels away from the Sun, limiting their exposure to the intense rays. As a spacecraft enters a planet’s orbit, the solar arrays become less effective; they become unable to generate as much energy, due to eclipses and passing through the planet’s shadow. What is needed is a reliable energy storage system. Atomic answer One such type of energy storage system is nickel-hydrogen batteries, which can be recharged more than 50,000 times and have a lifespan of more than 15 years. Unlike commercial batteries, which do not work in space, these batteries are sealed systems and can operate in a vacuum. As you head away from the sun, the solar radiation naturally decreases from 1,374 Watts/m² around Earth, to 50 Watts/m² near Jupiter, while Pluto manages a meager 1 Watt/m². So, when spacecraft fly beyond the orbit of Jupiter, scientists look to atomic systems to power spacecraft. The most common type are Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (or RTG for short), which have been used on Voyager, Cassini and the Curiosity Rover. These are solid-state devices, in that they have no moving parts. They generate heat from the radioactive decay of elements such as plutonium and have a typical lifespan of more than 30 years.  When using an RTG is not possible – for instance, if the weight of the shielding needed to protect a crew make it impractical – and distance from the Sun precludes the use of solar panels, then fuel cells are an option. Hydrogen-oxygen fuel cells have been used on the Apollo and Gemini space missions. While hydrogen-oxygen fuel cells cannot be recharged, they do have high specific energy and their only emission is water vapour, which astronauts can then drink. Ongoing research by Nasa and JPL will allow future power systems to generate and store more power, using less space, and for longer durations. However, new spacecraft are requiring larger reserves, as the onboard systems they carry are becoming ever-more sophisticated and energy-hungry. These high energy demands are especially the case with spacecraft that use electric propulsion systems, such as the ion drive which was first used on Deep Space 1 in 1998 and is now widely used on spacecraft. Electric propulsion systems commonly operate by electrically expelling propellant at high speeds, but others use electrodynamic tethers which interact with the magnetic fields of planets to move a spacecraft forward. Most power systems on Earth will not operate in space. As such, any new power system is rigorously tested before it can be installed onto a spacecraft. Nasa and JPL use their laboratories to simulate the harsh environments in which this new technology will operate, by bombarding new components and systems with radiation and subjecting them to extreme temperatures. Extra life Stirling Radioisotope Generators are currently being prepared for future missions. Based on the existing RTGs, these generators are far more efficient than their thermo-electric cousins and could be made far smaller, although they may become more complex in the process. New types of batteries are also being developed, for Nasa’s planned mission to Europa (one of Jupiter’s moons). These are designed to operate between -80°C (-112°F) and -100°C (-148°F). Advanced lithium-ion batteries are currently being developed that will have double the amount of energy storage. This increased energy density would, for example, allow astronauts to spend twice as long on the Moon before the battery expires. New solar cells are currently being developed to work in conditions where the light intensity and temperatures are low, meaning that solar powered spacecraft will be able to operate further away from the Sun. At some point in the future, Nasa will be seeking to install a permanent manned base on Mars, as well as possibly on other planets further in the future. These future power generation systems will need to be much bigger than current ones so they can generate enough energy for much longer missions. The Moon is rich in helium-3, a rare element on Earth and an ideal fuel source for nuclear fusion power. However, fusion is not currently stable or reliable enough to be considered viable to power a spacecraft. Also, a typical fusion reactor, such as the Tokamak, is usually housed in a building the size of an aircraft hangar, which is far too big to mount on a spacecraft. But what about nuclear reactors, especially for electrically powered spacecraft and the planned missions to land on the Moon or Mars? Rather than carrying a separate power generation system for a colony, the spacecraft’s nuclear power generator could become the settlement’s powerplant. Nuclear-electric propulsion spacecraft are being considered for longer missions in the future. “The Asteroid Redirect Mission requires large solar arrays to provide sufficient electric propulsion for the spacecraft to manoeuvre around an asteroid,” says Surampudi. “At the moment, we are thinking of going with solar-electric propulsion, but with nuclear-electric propulsion it will be cheaper.” However, we will not see nuclear-powered spacecraft for many years. “The technology is not mature enough yet,” says Surampudi. “We need to make sure that they are safe when you launch it.” Rigorous testing will have to be carried out to confirm such powerplants are safe to withstand the pressures of spaceflight. These new power systems that are being developed will allow spacecraft to operate for longer and to travel farther, but are in the early stages of assessment. Yet once they are tested, these power systems will be essential components for manned missions to Mars – and beyond. (BBC)