1 March 2014 | NewScientist | 7

IT IS a heavy price to pay. China paid out twice as much to mop up after natural disasters in 2013 as it did in either of the previous two years. The rising costs are partly down to climate change.

Earthquakes, floods, droughts, snow storms and other disasters cost China over 420 billion yuan ($69 billion), according to the National Bureau of Statistics of China. The costs in 2011 and 2012 were just 260 billion and 220

billion yuan, respectively. Payouts for five kinds of disaster increased in 2013 compared with 2012.

Climate change has left its calling card in some of those disasters, says Lisa Alexander of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. Drought is increasing in parts of China, as is severe rainfall that causes flooding and mudslides. “And in tandem with that there’s an increase in extreme heat.”

Economic growth is also a factor, says John Moore of Beijing Normal University in China. “Things cost a hell of a lot more because more high-value things are being built in recent times and

sometimes possibly in places where they shouldn’t be.”

China’s National Development and Reform Commission released a report in 2013, outlining how it will adapt to climate change. Their plans are hazy, but include more monitoring and early warning. “China has had a focus on trying to evaluate what trends there are in extreme events,” says Moore.

Climate of disaster

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Flu hits youngYOUNG adults, beware. The swine flu responsible for the pandemic five years ago is once again the dominant strain in North America. So people of working age are again hardest hit by the virus,

which has hung around since 2009.So far, more than 60 per cent of

people in the US who have caught severe flu this season, or died of it, are 18 to 64 years old. This is similar to rates during the pandemic but double the number of severe cases in this age group in the past three winters, when the H3N2 virus – which is more likely to hit older people – was top dog. Only about a third of severe cases in the US this year are people over 65.

Meanwhile in Europe, the flu season has been split between swine flu and H3N2. What we are seeing is a battle for supremacy among flu viruses, says Lone Simonsen of George Washington University in Washington DC.

This means people of any age should get a flu shot. While older people have some immunity to swine flu from previous exposure, H3N2 can be deadly. Younger adults have more resistance to H3N2, but are succumbing to swine flu.

60 SeCondS

Oldest crustA zircon crystal has been verified as being 4.4 billion years old, making it one of the oldest known pieces of Earth’s crust (Nature Geoscience, doi.org/rpb). The crystal, from Jack Hills in Western Australia, is less than a millimetre wide, but it should teach us more about how the Earth’s crust cooled.

No climate quick fixWant to avoid dangerous climate change? The only option is to cut greenhouse gas emissions. It is possible to suck CO2 out of the air, but without emissions cuts the effect is insignificant, while cooling the planet with aerosols has damaging effects on rainfall (Nature Communications, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms4304).

Cancer pee testA urine test similar to pregnancy tests could one day be used to diagnose cancer. Mice were injected with markers that interact in the blood with proteins produced by tumour cells. Part of the marker was cut off by the proteins, ending up in the mice’s urine. The test has so far been shown to work with colon cancer (PNAS, doi.org/rn8).

Plato livesEurope is getting into the planet-hunting game. The European Space Agency has selected a space telescope mission called Planetary Transits and Oscillations, or Plato, for launch in 2024. The spacecraft, 34 telescopes strapped together, will search 1 million stars for potentially habitable worlds.

Bigger becomes normBeing overweight or obese is now so common in European children that it has become the norm, reports the World Health Organization. A third of Europe’s 11-year-olds and a quarter of its 13-year-olds are overweight, with numbers highest in the four countries worst hit by austerity — Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Spain.

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–A disastrous toll–

TRUST in Bitcoin may be low following the collapse of its biggest currency exchange, but a new virtual currency has an extra draw. Riecoin is designed to help solve a mathematical mystery involving prime numbers.

As with Bitcoin, Riecoin users “mine” virtual coins using a program that solves a difficult mathematical problem. But with Riecoin, this mining process also finds clusters of consecutive prime numbers. These “prime constellations” provide a way to test the Riemann hypothesis, a proof of which is worth $1 million (see page 15). Riecoin can’t find a proof, but it might find an example of a constellation that doesn’t fit with Riemann and so offer clues as to how to disprove it – although most mathematicians expect it to hold.

Riecoin is the second currency based on primes, after Primecoin.

Prime currency

“drought is increasing, as is severe rainfall that causes floods, and there’s an increase in extreme heat”

“We are seeing a battle for supremacy among flu viruses. People of any age should get a flu shot”

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