Features

RAJENDRAPUR, Bangladesh — Newly-hatched tortoises take their first steps at a Bangladesh conservation park, their feet barely visible under hard shells that carry the weight of the species on their backs.

These tiny newborns — 41 in all — belong to a species thought to have gone extinct in the country until seven years ago, when they were rediscovered by conservationists with the help of locals in the south-eastern Chittagong hills.

Once abundant across dense tropical forests in Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Thailand, the population of Asian Forest Tortoises has fallen sharply after widespread habitat destruction and rampant poaching.

With their local population estimated at less than 50 before the recent births, wildlife experts and forestry officials have worked hard to boost their numbers.

Two years ago they brought two male and five female adults to a forest reserve north of the capital Dhaka in an effort to breed them in captivity.

To their delight, the appropriately-named Casanova, around 15 years old, and Big Boy, aged between 50 and 100, mated with four females giving birth to 46 babies.

The 41 to have survived are growing at a “healthy pace”, conservationist Shahriar Caesar Rahman told AFP.

“It is a huge achievement because without this intervention they would have gone extinct from the country,” Rahman said.

“We are giving them a realistic chance now for them to get back from the brink. And we hope that in future they will survive and thrive in Bangladesh.”

Critically endangered

Across the region, the population of Asian Forest Tortoises has plummeted by at least 80 per cent in the past 135 years and the species is critically endangered, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Environmentalists say the success of the breeding programme is no guarantee the species will survive once the newborns are released back into the wild.

Logging and slash-and-burn agriculture are eating into their natural habitat, Rahman says.

The human population in the lush Chittagong hills has soared, with the area’s tribal minority groups pushed further into the jungle by the encroachment of settlers from elsewhere in Bangladesh.

Hills have been stripped bare of vegetation for new roads and development, and the tortoises are also popular in tribal cuisine.

World Bank conservationist Ishtiak Sobhan said environmental activists are working to encourage the indigenous population to cut tortoise meat from their diets.

Some tribespeople are also being trained to rescue the animals from poachers, with around two to three saved each year.

Meanwhile, a decades-long local insurgency has hampered efforts by authorities to protect the wild creatures and other endangered animals in the forest.

Senior forest department official Imran Ahmed told AFP the government will roll out new projects to conserve the fauna in the hilly area.

“Our plan is now to involve the local tribal people to conserve these rare animals. We want to co-manage the project with them. I think that’ll bring sustainable success,” Ahmed told AFP.

By Shafiqul Alam

By Jeremy Olson

Chemotherapy and radiation treatments have helped children survive cancer. Now University of Minnesota researchers are trying to find the ideal combinations that prevent the disease from coming back.

Comparing outcomes for 22,000 survivors, the researchers found, as expected, that children treated with tumour-killing radiation were at elevated risks of second cancers. But they also discovered that certain chemo drugs increased risks as well.

“We identified some very important dose-response relationships” between chemo drug doses and second cancer risks, said Dr Lucie Turcotte, a paediatric oncologist/haematologist who led the university’s research.

Second cancers were more common in patients who received platinum-based chemo drugs, and breast cancers were more common in patients who received so-called alkylating chemo drugs, the research found.

Chemo drugs generally disrupt the molecular processes that allow cancer cells to multiply. The drugs that increase second cancer risks are still most effective against some tumours, so doctors will need to prescribe them but monitor their patients over time, Turcotte said.

In other cases, doctors can consider different chemo regimens, she said. “We’ve had very good outcomes for many childhood cancers, so we’re at a point where we can start to think about modifying our upfront treatments.”

The study looked for second cancers in patients who first had childhood cancers diagnosed between 1970 and 1999. Results were published last month in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Second cancers emerged in nearly 11 per cent of patients who received radiation only, and in 3.9 per cent who received chemo only. The risk of second cancers in chemo-only patients still tripled the risk of first cancers in healthy adults.

A University of Minnesota study years earlier had shown the elevated risk of second cancers in children after radiation, which is now used in a minority of paediatric cases. Turcotte said the latest study was an attempt to find out whether second cancer risks have changed in the paediatric population since that time.

Next, she said she hopes to study a more recent population of child survivors to assess whether second cancer risks are affected by more modern treatments, such as precise proton beam radiation, and therapies that coax the immune system to attack cancer cells.

The disappearance of the CD from the music (and the computer) scene has a direct impact not only on our music listening habits, but also, as an unavoidable consequence of the change, on the audio equipment that lets us do the playback and enjoy the sound.

Your good not-so-old amplifier at home and your car stereo now look very different from what they used to be a mere five years ago. The whole concept of playing back music has changed, has evolved in a dramatic way, mainly of course because music is now accessed through the various channels found on the Internet: YouTube, Internet radios and the many streaming services available.

The widespread availability of cabled fibre optic and wireless 4G and soon 5G Internet connectivity has played a major role in making the population move from locally stored and kept audio media like CDs to cloud stored and remotely accessed music.

My otherwise sophisticated car CD player recently started behaving erratically. Repairing it was not a feasible option and playing music via my smartphone Bluetooth to the car stereo was not possible, because the system does not have this option — despite the car being not too old and having a few digital bells and whistles of its own.

Shopping for a solution led me to two different possible ones: to install and add a “retrofit Bluetooth kit” to the car stereo system, or to replace it completely with a new amplifier-receiver. I still have not made up my mind, but interestingly, most new car audio systems do not feature a CD player anymore. Instead, they come with Bluetooth wireless connectivity and a USB input to let you insert a USB flash drive with tons of music files to play.

Many models are mobile Internet-ready and are set this way to receive Spotify streaming audio without additional equipment. They also have full compatibility with the Android system. The mere notion of “compatibility” with an operating system like Android is but another confirmation that car stereo systems too are now turning into computers.

Sony, Kenwood and Pioneer are still the leaders in the automotive music market and propose very attractive models. The term often used to refer to these new-age stereos is “digital audio players” or for other brands, “wireless streaming amplifiers” like it is the case for Yamaha for example.

The concept is far from being restricted to vehicles on the road. At home too, audio systems have a new look, one that does away with anything that looks CDs and the like — no more CD players, definitely. Even the inputs and outputs have undergone major redesign: optical ins and outs, Internet port entry, Bluetooth antenna for extended range coverage, and of course USB connectivity, this is the name of the game today.

One particularly appealing such model is Yamaha’s WXA-50. It is smart, small, refined and simple. Naturally, Yamaha has not lost focus of the main, the core attribute: it sounds absolutely fabulous, provided you playback music from quality sources, be it MP3, streaming, high-definition uncompressed wav audio files, or other — it is still the starting point!

Being more dependent on the Internet and the digital high-tech world to enjoy music adds another layer to our overall reliance on the network in most everything we do or use. Which makes the prospect — God forbid — of a major, global Internet breakdown even more chilling. Even at local country level the scenario is a terrifying one.

By Amina Khan 

Scientists say they’ve developed a framework to make computer algorithms “safer” to use without creating bias based on race, gender or other factors. The trick, they say, is to make it possible for users to tell the algorithm what kinds of pitfalls to avoid — without having to know a lot about statistics or artificial intelligence.

With this safeguard in place, hospitals, companies and other potential users who may be wary of putting machine learning to use could find it a more palatable tool for helping them solve problems, according to a report in this week’s edition of the journal Science.

Computer algorithms are used to make decisions in a range of settings, from courtrooms to schools to online shopping sites. The programmes sort through huge amounts of data in search of useful patterns that can be applied to future decisions.

But researchers have been wrestling with a problem that’s become increasingly difficult to ignore: Although the programmes are automated, they often provide biased results.

For example, an algorithm used to determine prison sentences predicted higher recidivism rates for black defendants found guilty of crimes and a lower risk for white ones. Those predictions turned out to be wrong, according to a ProPublica analysis.

Biases like this often originate in the real world. An algorithm used to determine which patients were eligible for a healthcare coordination programme was under-enrolling black patients largely because the code relied on real-world health spending data — and black patients had fewer dollars spent on them than whites did.

Even if the information itself is not biased, algorithms can still produce unfair or other “undesirable outcomes”, said Philip Thomas, an artificial intelligence researcher at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and lead author of the new study.

Sorting out which processes might be driving those unfair outcomes, and then fixing them, can be an overwhelming task for doctors, hospitals or other potential users who just want a tool that will help them make better decisions.

“They’re the experts in their field but perhaps not in machine learning — so we shouldn’t expect them to have detailed knowledge of how algorithms work in order to control the behaviour of the algorithms,” Thomas said. “We want to give them a simple interface to define undesirable behaviour for their application and then ensure that the algorithm will avoid that behaviour with high probability.”

So the computer scientists developed a different type of algorithm that allowed users to more easily define what bad behaviour they wanted their programme to avoid.

This, of course, makes the algorithm designers’ job more difficult, Thomas said, because they have to build their algorithm without knowing what biases or other problematic behaviours the eventual user won’t want in the programme.

“Instead, they have to make the algorithm smart enough to understand what the user is saying is undesirable behaviour, and then reason entirely on its own about what would cause this behaviour, and then avoid it with high probability,” he said. “That makes the algorithm a bit more complicated, but much easier for people to use responsibly.”

To test their new framework, the researchers tried it out on a dataset of entrance exam scores for 43,303 Brazilian students and the grade point averages they earned during their first three semesters at college.

Standard algorithms that tried to predict a student’s GPA based on his or her entrance exam scores were biased against women: The grades they predicted for women were lower than were actually the case, and the grades they predicted for men were higher. This caused an error gap between men and women that averaged 0.3 GPA points — enough to make a major difference in a student’s admissions prospects.

The new algorithm, on the other hand, shrank that error range to within 0.05 GPA points — making it a much fairer predictor of students’ success.

The computer scientists also tried out their framework on simulated data for diabetes patients. They found it could adjust a patient’s insulin doses more effectively than a standard algorithm, resulting in far fewer unwanted episodes of hypoglycemia.

But others questioned the new approach.

Dr Leo Anthony Celi, an intensivist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre and research scientist at MIT, argued that the best way to avoid bias and other problems is to keep machine learning experts in the loop throughout the entire process rather than limiting their input to the initial design stages. That way they can see if an algorithm is behaving badly and make any necessary fixes.

The authors of the new study were quick to point out that their framework was more important than the algorithms they generated by using it.

“We’re not saying these are the best algorithms,” said Emma Brunskill, a computer scientist at Stanford University and the paper’s senior author. “We’re hoping that other researchers at their own labs will continue to make better algorithms.”

By Bob Chiarito 

CHICAGO — When Elysabeth Alfano hosts a Thanksgiving dinner for 12 at her home in Los Angeles, the menu will be traditional — with a few key changes that were all but impossible just a decade ago.

For dessert, she’ll have the staples that feature on nearly every American dinner table — pumpkin and apple pie. And the huge number of vegetable side dishes are not unusual.

But the “turkey” — the centrepiece of the meal — will be a vegan-stuffed breast made of chickpeas, wheat gluten, tomato paste, mushroom broth, seasonings and red wine. 

Her main dish reflects a shift in eating habits in the United States: there are an increasing number of Americans choosing a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle. But they’re calling it something else.

While still only around three per cent of Americans identify as vegan and 6 per cent identify as vegetarians, more and more offerings are being marketed as “plant-based” — a term which food industry watchers say is more palatable to all.

“Veganism is often linked with some sort of deprivation,” explains Michael Robbins, spokesman for the three-year-old Plant Based Foods Association, which represents more than 100 companies including food giants like the Campbell Soup Company.

“Plant-based is generally associated with the general benefits of eating plants” and “has been shown in research to have a greater acceptance to a broader set of consumers,” he told AFP.

Indeed, nothing is more mainstream in America than fast food, and the giants are all in — Burger King is serving meatless Impossible Whoppers, and McDonald’s is test-marketing its plant-based burger.

“Just as the horse and buggy gave way to the car and the typewriter gave way to the computer, we are seeing more and more people go plant-based,” says Alfano, a chef, coach and lifestyle expert.

“In the first half of 2019, 248 million plant-based burgers were sold, 95 per cent of which were bought by meat-eaters. The meat-eaters are the largest segment incorporating plant-based.”

Diet versus lifestyle

For decades in America, veganism has been linked to a way of life that transcends food choices.

Practitioners often don’t only refuse to consume any animal-based products — they also don’t wear clothes made from animal products like wool or leather.

Devotees of plant-based diets are generally all about the food, but they are happy to embrace the ethical debate as well, within reason.

Chicago-based artist Tammy Kohl grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin but has gradually shifted her diet, which has been completely plant-based for a year.

“To keep weight off by taking dairy out of my diet made sense. I did vegan cleanses and felt great and that inspired me,” said Kohl, who added that anti-animal cruelty efforts made cutting out meat easier.

But she noted: “I still wear leather. If you own leather, you might as well wear it.”

Holiday options

Jean Johnson, a sales consultant from Colorado, converted to a plant-based diet for health reasons and shies away from the term “vegan”, which she says conjures up an image to which she does not subscribe.

On Thanksgiving, she says she’ll stick to eating vegetable side dishes at a friend’s home — and isn’t all that worried if she happens to inadvertently consume animal products.

“I’m not so OCD about it where you can’t put any butter in the mashed potatoes — it’s such a small portion,” Johnson said.

Alfano, who splits her time between Los Angeles and Chicago, went completely vegan in 2016.

Her Thanksgiving plans are proof positive that the stigma which once surrounded non-carnivores, especially on traditional American holidays, is slowly fading away.

“What we have now that we didn’t have 10 years ago is good taste. We have convenience and we have price,” she says.

Kohl said she will celebrate the holiday with some relatives who raise beef cattle — a profession that hardly aligns with her veganism. But another family member is a vegetarian, and everyone gets along.

“I usually bring my own plate and very quietly fill it up,” Kohl said. “I’m not one of those preachy vegans.”

Fad or trend here to stay?

Johnson believes that her plant-based diet helped her beat cancer, and she identifies another benefit of plant-based diets these days — she has seen her grocery bills plummet.

“Meat and dairy, that’s not cheap stuff, whereas rice and beans, lentils and potatoes are cheap,” Johnson said.

Alfano agreed, saying it would also help Americans save money if healthier eating meant they could stop taking certain medications such as those to control cholesterol.

“It’s really expensive to be sick. If you can get off the pills, you’ll really be saving money,” she said.

Of course, meat producers are hardly on board for all this, but they’re not really worried either.

Hillary Makens, director of media relations for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, said vegans and vegetarians constitute a tiny portion of the US market, and her industry has bigger concerns.

“The beef industry has been competing against other proteins for a long time. When you think of chicken, pork, beans, peanut butter, all types of protein, it’s not really a new thing.” Makens said.

However, consumer research company Mintel said the number of new US food and drink products that mentioned “plant-based” grew 268 per cent between 2012 and 2018. 

Additionally, in a May 2019 report, Mintel said 38 per cent of US consumers report trying to incorporate more plant-based items into their diet. 

“Rarely in life do you ever get a triple winner — where one thing positively effects your health, positively effects your wallet, positively effects the environment and the planet,” Alfano says.

By Joe Jackson 

LONDON — British band Coldplay on Friday won plaudits for shelving a new album tour over environmental concerns, in the latest sign of climate change activism in the music industry.

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) praised the move, as the group released its latest album — “Everyday Life” — with only two gigs, both in the Jordanian capital Amman.

The performances, staged at sunrise and sunset without an audience, were broadcast free on YouTube.

“It is fantastic to see world famous artists stepping up to protect the planet,” said the head of climate change at WWF, Gareth Redmond-King.

“We all have a responsibility to lead by example in the face of this climate and nature crisis — inaction is not an option if we are to preserve our planet for future generations.”

Coldplay frontman Chris Martin told the BBC they would not tour until they had figured out how concerts could be more “sustainable”.

He listed the amount of flying required and the use of items such as plastic water bottles as the band’s primary concerns over touring.

Activists say international music tours impact heavily on the environment, with concern about the amount of electricity used to power stadiums to waste generated by concert-goers.

Coldplay played 122 shows around the world across eight legs as part of the tour for their last album, “A Head Full of Dreams”.

Martin said if the band do eventually hit the road for the new release, they hope the tour could be entirely carbon neutral.

The band is set to perform another one-off concert next Monday at London’s Natural History Museum, with the proceeds donated to an environmental charity.

Cleaning up their acts

Coldplay’s decision is the latest example of bands and the wider entertainment industry responding to growing concern about the climate crisis.

US teenage sensation Billie Eilish revealed last month that she had tried to make her world tour “as green as possible” with the help of a non-profit consultancy.

The singer told chat-show host Jimmy Fallon she had banned plastic straws and urged fans to bring their own refillable water bottles, and to utilise recycling bins at venues.

On her next world tour starting in March, every site will feature an “eco-village” where concert-goers can learn about environmentalism, she said.

Meanwhile The 1975, another British band, which this year collaborated with Swedish climate change icon Greta Thunberg, are also trying to move towards carbon-neutral touring.

It pledged in September to plant a tree for every ticket sold ahead of their upcoming tour of Britain and Ireland.

Teenage activist Thunberg refuses to fly because of the carbon emissions involved. In September, she travelled to a UN climate conference in New York by boat. She is currently sailing back to Europe.

In Britain, live music events account for 405,000 tonnes of greenhouse emissions, according to the campaign group Global Citizen, which stages its own zero-waste festivals.

Powerful Thinking, a think-tank focused on the festival industry, estimates the events generate some 23,500 tonnes of waste each year in the country.

This has led dozens of Britain’s biggest festivals to try to clean up their acts, initiating everything from bans on single-use plastic to using renewable energy sources.

The UK Music umbrella group representing the industry said 3.9 million people attended festivals in Britain in 2016.

Glastonbury Festival, staged every June on a farm in western England, is partnering with charities such as Greenpeace, Oxfam and WaterAid to improve its sustainability.

Organisers even deployed portable toilets that utilise technology to convert urine into electricity at this year’s festival.

First unveiled in concept form in 2011 in tandem with the more glamorous hybrid i8 sports coupe under the banner of BMW’s new i sub-brand, the i3 was designed as a more radical and practical, if less stylish, electric runaround.

Inadvertently conjuring images of a nihilistic future, the talk then was that the i3 was the car for busier and futuristic “megacities”, the i3, however, did not envisage the same “Megacity” as UK comic book series Judge Dredd. Instead, the i3 concept adopted and extended the idea borrowed and long trialled by BMW’s British Mini division.

Past and present

Based on the presumption that the future was for more high tech urban-friendly city cars that commanded the same desirability in the eyes of a well-to-do and up and coming generation of drivers willing to pay a price premium for badge, gadgets and technology as contemporary as traditionally reserved for bigger more luxurious cars, the i3 entered production in 2013. Since then, it spawned a slightly sportier model and a version with a small petrol-powered “range extender” engine. Meanwhile, its battery pack and performance has been upgraded twice since then. 

Arriving four decades after the BMW 1602 Elektroantrieb concept debuted at the 1972 Munich Olympics, the i3’s tall body and compressed dimensions, however, owe more to the 1992 BMW Z11 concept than the “02 series” sexy, shark-like and traditional berlinetta design. If anything, the i3 is conceptually more reminiscent of the license-built 1955 BMW Isetta bubble car. Launched in the aftermath of Germany’s crushing World War II defeat as a cheap, tiny, economical city car, the BMW Isetta was as much a departure in direction as the post-global financial crisis i3 was.

Design departure

A controversial design departure from BMW’s more conventional model range, the i3’s dimensions and configuration are informed by its compact rear-mounted electric motor and big heavy under floor batteries. The result is a tall body, short overhangs and a big footprint within compact 4-metre long dimensions. And not to everyone’s taste rather than conventional, the i3 also employs small rear-hinged rear ‘suicide’ door similar to the Mazda RX-8 and Toyota FJ Cruiser to improve cabin access, while its inconsistent glasshouse features radically different window lengths and styles to add to its busy and futuristic surfacing and styling.

Fronted with a big, tall and jutting bumper and slim compressed headlights, the i3’s electric motor sits atop the rear axle rather than behind its double kidney grille corporate face. Driving the rear wheels through a single-speed automatic gearbox, the i3’s electric motor develops an instant and constant 184lb/ft torque throughout 0-4,775rpm and 167BHP delivered in perfect progression at a 4,775prm peak. Silent, responsive and muscularly responsive at lower speeds, the i3 completes accelerates through 0-100km/h in 7.3-seconds and is versatile through 80-120km/h in 5.1-seconds, but with a single gear, top speed is limited to 150km/h.

Balancing act

With both power and torque output dropping off sharply past peak, the i3 performance potential and efficiency is somewhat limited beyond 4,775rpm. Best at lower revs and speeds, the i3 received a battery upgrade in 2017, to increase claimed everyday driving range to 200km and up to 300km, depending on criteria. Best for city driving and commuting, the i3’s range drops somewhat when driven more aggressively, on inclines and at speed. Charging times meanwhile vary significantly depending on five charger types, with an 80 per cent charge possible in 39 minutes using a high capacity charger and up to 11 hours using a 240v domestic socket. 

A rare consumer car built using lightweight and stiff carbon-fibre construction that is usually reserved for exotics, the i3’s rigidity reaps benefits in terms comfort, handling and collision safety. The i3’s lightweight construction meanwhile offsets its heavy batteries, in finding a balance between adequate driving range without being too heavy. Riding on large alloy wheels and slim 155/70R19 tyres that slightly favour aesthetics and efficient low rolling resistance over outright grip and impact absorption, the i3 is nevertheless reassuring and comfortable enough for it purposes, and benefits from quick and direct steering as a result.

Interesting and airy

If lacking the sounds and driveline interaction that make so many small city cars so fun to drive, the i3 has interesting rear-engine rear-drive handling characteristics, similar to a Renault Twingo, and not too unlike a much diluted Porsche 911, with light front end, rear biased weighting and good rear traction. Meanwhile it is an easy-to-drive drive car with better stability than expected owing to its big footprint and low weight concentration, and despite its tall cabin. The i3 is also an agile car with good in-town manoeuvrability and a tight 9.86 metre turning circle.

Pleasant and airy with its two-spoke steering wheel, light tone trim, thin yet nicely contoured seats, good front visibility and user-friendly layouts, the i3’s tall cabin has an un-aggressive, relaxed and somewhat up-market ambiance. Cabin access is easy with no pillar separating the front and small rear “suicide” doors, while front headroom is good. Somewhat narrow inside, the i3, however, offers better than expected, if not outright generous, rear space. But accommodating just four passengers, it lacks the practicality of most five-seat hatchbacks, not to mention the driving range or quick refuelling of combustion engine vehicles for long distance driving.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: Rear-mounted synchronous electric motor

Gearbox: single-speed automatic, rear-wheel-drive

Gear ratio: 9.665:1

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 167 (170) [125] @4,775rpm

Power-to-weight: 134.6BHP/tonne (unladen)

Torque lb/ft (Nm): 184 (250) @0r-4,775pm

Torque-to-weight: 200.8Nm/tonne (unladen)

0-60km/h: 3.8-seconds

0-100km/h: under 7.3-seconds

80-120km/h: 5.1-seconds

Top speed: 150km/h

Driving range, city/highway/EPA: 410/349/383km 

Battery: Lithium-ion, 353v

Battery capacity: 94Ah

Battery output, gross/net: 33.2/27.2kWh

Range (claimed): 200-300km, depending on various factors, conditions and criteria

Charging time: 39-minutes to 11-hours, depending on charger type

Length: 4,011mm

Width: 1,775mm 

Height: 1,577mm

Wheelbase: 2,570mm

Tread, F/R: 1,571/1,576mm

Ground clearance: 139mm

Overhang, F/R: 715/726mm

Aerodynamic drag co-efficient; 0.29

Weight, unladen/kerb weight: 1,245/1,320kg

Weight distribution, F/R: 47 per cent/53 per cent

Body: 5-door, 4-seat, carbon-fibre construction

Headroom, F/R: 1,006/946mm

Cabin width, F/R: 1,392/1,281mm

Boot capacity, min/max: 260-/1,100-litres

Steering: Electric-assisted rack & pinion

Steering ratio: 14:1

Turning circle: 9.86-metres

Suspension F/R: MacPherson struts/five-link

Brakes: Ventilated discs

Tyres: 155/70R19

By Andrew Sheeler 

Scientists have given a familiar name to a newly discovered species of parasitic wasp they say could be instrumental in keeping an invasive stink bug population in check.

Say hello to Idris elba.

The wasp — which belongs to a genus (Idris) containing more than 300 species — made its debut in the Journal of Hymenoptera Research, after scientists discovered it in Guanajuato, Mexico.

The insect may share a name with a movie star, but it could have a blockbuster impact all on its own.

Researchers say that Idris elba has been found to lay its eggs inside the eggs of an invasive stink bug, found in California, called the bagrada bug.

Bagrada bugs, native to Africa, feed on leaves, stems, flowers and seeds, and are known to damage broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage crops, according to the University of California Integrated Pest Management Programme.

“So far, measures to halt the bug’s invasion have proven largely ineffective, and its distribution is expected to reach new ecosystems of economical importance,” according to a statement from Pensoft Publishers, which announced the discovery.

It’s uncommon for a native parasite to attack an invasive host, but not unheard of, according to the statement.

“Idris elba is exceptional because it demonstrates that these wasps can make the leap from parasitising the eggs of spiders to the eggs of stink bugs,” according to the statement.

Dr Elijah Talamas is the one who discovered it was an “undescribed species”.

It’s no accident that Idris elba shares a name with People Magazine’s 2018 “Sexiest Man Alive”.

“Dr Talamas explained that explicitly naming the species after Idris Elba [the actor], also known as a patronym, would have to follow Latin grammar and become Idris elbai. By treating the second name as an arbitrary combination of letters, the grammar was avoided,” according to the statement.